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Lighten up

If there’s one thing I like about Wednesdays, it’s how much lighter my bag is at the end of the day than at the beginning. Most Tuesdays, including this past one, I work from home, which means taking my laptop home with me every Monday night and returning with it to the office the next day. It’s not ridiculously heavy, even with the battery, but my bag does feel wonderfully lighter at the end of the day.

Also lighter — check out the dismount on that segue! even the Russian judges are impressed! — is my musical mix for July. Only four songs total:

  1. “Guggenheim” by the Ting Tings
  2. “Calabria 2008” by Enur
  3. “When I Write the Book” by Nick Lowe
  4. “Abide With Me” by Emeli Sandé

I think that “Abide With Me,” from this year’s Olympics opening ceremony, is just too beautiful not to share:

NBC, of course, didn’t agree. They cut it out from their (overall pretty lousy) coverage of the opening ceremonies in favor of an interview with Michael Phelps. As I wrote on Twitter: Anyone who could listen to Emeli Sandé’s stunning “Abide With Me” and think, “let’s replace that with Ryan Seacrest” has no soul.

Just a day

Today was just a day. Hot and muggy, turning to rain. I read a little. I went and picked up a propane tank for the backyard grill. I watched some of the Olympics — although I think NBC is, counter-intuitively, trying to discourage that kind of behavior with their coverage. I took a nap.

This evening, I watched the pretty mediocre Lockout.

Just a day, you know.

Let the games begin

Dark and ominous clouds notwithstanding, last night’s thunderstorm turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. Oh sure, it rained, but not a lot, and considerably less than last week, and I don’t remember hearing any dire warnings before that storm.

This evening, I surprised myself by watching most of the Olympics opening ceremony. Here in the States, NBC decided not to air them live but starting at 7:30, some three hours late, with a whole lot of inane chatter over them by Matt Lauer, Meredith Veira, and Bob Costas. Despite that, however, most of it was actually quite moving and well produced. I’m surprised to discover that I actually have some small amount of Olympics fever this year…which I think just means I may watch a little of it now and then, as opposed to ignoring it altogether.

Saturday

I don’t quite know how it happened, but somehow I convinced myself that I’d had my car inspected back in April. That’s when it was supposed to be inspected, which means that for the past three months I’m just lucky I never got a ticket. My mistake was revealed last week when I tried to renew my car’s registration with the state of New York and discovered they didn’t have a yearly inspection on file. I’m not sure what it says about me — or this weblog — to admit that I combed through my blog’s archives to see if I’d made any mention of having the inspection done in April, or that I was prepared to send the New York DMV photographic proof of what in retrospect was an expired sticker. But I found no mention in the archives, and the sticker was expired, so I realized I’d have to bring the car in a few months late.

Which I did this morning. I got up around 7, which is kind of the last thing I want to do on a Saturday if I can help it, and drove to the auto-body shop in Mineola. It used to be you could get a train back from Mineola right after that, the station just a block’s short walk from the shop, but a couple of years ago the LIRR changed the schedule just enough to make that all but impossible. So I had to wait around for about half an hour, and then get a train to the station one stop after mine and walk home. (That’s just how the stations are set up: Mineola’s maybe an hour-plus walk away from my station, but the next station after that’s only about a twenty-minute walk away.)

It’s okay. The rain the other day really did cool things down, and it wasn’t an unpleasant morning walk. I knew I’d have to do it, so I had my iPod along with me.

When I got home, I called the air conditioner repair service to get a window on when they’d be returning the AC they took with them on Tuesday. Between 9:30 and 11:30, I was told, which basically gave me enough time to take a shower, have breakfast, and pull out all the plastic and plywood I’d used to cover up the big gaping hole in the living room wall. I did my best on Tuesday to disguise the hole, and make it exceptionally difficult for the dog to get out through it, or for burglars to poke their heads in. I even slid some furniture in front of it, but I have to admit I was glad to be getting rid of it finally.

Putting the air conditioner back in the hole took all of fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. And immediately you could tell that it was working. I paid and tipped the two guys, and they went on their way.

Then I went and picked up my car. I had to take the train back to Mineola, but luckily the LIRR makes a few other options available during the day. (Like one train every hour.) I got the car, after its inspection and oil change, and then I went grocery shopping.

Then I came home, napped a little, read some comics, and watched an episode of Touching Evil. (I was familiar with the US remake, which was well received but canceled right away, but I’d never seen the original British version. Apparently it’s now on Netflix.)

This evening, I watched Underworld: Evolution. Which was not very good. I was surprised back in January by how much I kind of liked the first movie in the series, but this was definitely a case of diminishing returns. And, pretty as Kate Beckinsale may be, I’m not sure I can bring myself to watch the next two.

So, anyway, that was my Saturday.

Happy Independence Day

Tonight the fireworks (or at least noise-making, pop-pop-pop explosions) are flying fast and furious outside, but otherwise today was just an ordinary day. It’s a little weird to have a day off in the middle of the week, and it’s hard not feel like the day ought to be given over to quiet reflection of what it means to be American, or the history that’s led us here, or something like that. I mean, if you’re not dressing up like Ben Franklin or another founding father, you’re obviously doing something wrong, right? But I spent the day pretty much just like I did yesterday, only Kaleidotrope submissions and a couple episodes of Would I Lie to You? instead of work.

That’s right. Today, on our nation’s birthday, the date that two hundred and thirty-six years ago we declared our independence from Great Britain, I spent watching a British panel game show.

You have to understand, though, I kind of love Would I Lie to You?

Anyway, no great plans for the evening either. We did a little barbecuing, but just because, well, it’s like a thousand degrees outside and who wants to light the oven in that?

Happy July 4th!