Month: June 2008

I do believe it. I do believe it’s true.

Today was my company’s summer outing. (I’d say “annual” summer outing, but I don’t think we’ve had one before this, in the three and a half years that I’ve worked there.) We went to the Bronx Zoo and had a thoroughly good time. I haven’t been there — or, I think, to any zoo — in decades. It definitely beat a day sitting at my desk — especially since sitting at my desk tends to hurt a lot lately. I had a lot of fun.

Roger Ebert on Mike Myers in The Love Guru:

He has a strange manner of delivering punchlines directly into the camera and then laughing at them — usually, I must report, alone.

Have you seen these new Bank of America commercials? The “this is America, where you can do whatever you want and don’t let anybody tell you different” commercials? (Voiced, unless I’m very much mistaken, by Kiefer Sutherland.) They try for playfulness, but they also play into a very American sense of entitlement that’s just a little distasteful. I don’t want to read too much into the commercials, but there’s one I saw last night that struck me in particular.

It was a commercial for their “Keep the Change” program. If you use your debit card, they’ll round up the cost of the purchase to the nearest dollar and throw the extra change into a savings account for you. Leave aside the fact that the change would still be in your checking account if they didn’t do this, that you’re not gaining any money you would have otherwise lost. What struck me were the references to (and camera shots of) loose change lying around, most notably in tip jars or those “take a penny” trays you see on store counters. Don’t waste your hard-earned money on those things, the advert seemed to be saying. You deserve those extra twelve cents more than any local coffee shop clerk! This is America, and nobody tells Americans when or if they have to tip!

Again, I don’t want to read too much into the commercials. They just sort of rubbed me the wrong way, I guess.

I just got off the phone with the orthopedist’s office. I apparently have a herniated disc, which is likely what’s been causing me pain in my left leg. This isn’t great news, but it’s nice to put a name to it, especially when it’s something that will hopefully respond well to treatment. I absolutely hurt my back when I was in New Orleans at the end of March*, but I’d felt like I had made a full recovery right away.

Well, maybe not. I don’t know that the herniated disc has anything to do with the slight but persistent numbness I’ve been getting in my opposite toe, but I have an appointment with the orthopedist next Wednesday to discuss all of this — and one with a neurologist in July, if it turns out to be unrelated.

Again, it’s not great news — hooray! my spine is falling apart! — but it’s preferable to being in pain or discomfort all the time and not knowing why.

* Did I mention this? How I went to the convention center across the street from the hotel, carrying maybe forty pounds of books, only to discover (after I first registered at the wrong conference and walked three or four city blocks carrying those damn books) that the conference I was looking for was actually inside the hotel? I was in a little bit of agony the rest of that weekend. It didn’t help that the hotel bed was ridiculously soft and high off the ground.

No, I didn’t get my economic stimulus package. But I got a letter telling me how it should arrive by June 20. The check, as it were, is in the mail.

And I haven’t heard anything back from the state of New York, contesting my assertion that I don’t owe them any money. I did note, with what I guess was amusement, that the envelope they enclosed with the bill really was big enough only for the bill portion, not the the form you fill out if you’re contesting the bill. Including the whole thing, plus my explanation of why I don’t owe them anything, took some creative folding.