personal

Tuesdayier is too a word

Today was a lot like yesterday, only Tuesdayier. We had a planning meeting at work for three conferences I won’t be attending — New Orleans, Boston, Vancouver, all places I sort of wish I could go — and I worked on a couple of projects sitting on my desk. Not what you’d call especially exciting, but I’m taking off this Friday, so at least my week is already half over.

Just another Monday

The most exciting thing I did today was finally mail in my federal and New York state taxes. There’s no good excuse for why it’s taken me this long, since I actually did my taxes weeks ago. There was some reason, which I can’t now remember, why I didn’t just e-file, but the paperwork has just been sitting around all this time, waiting to find its way into a pair of envelopes. Thursday is tax day, the final deadline, so I was kind of running out of time with which to continue my senseless procrastination.

Beyond that, though, it was just a pretty humdrum Monday.

Sunday’s end

Something happened today while I wasn’t really paying attention. That something? Sunday. Somehow the day just sort of passed right by.

Not unpleasantly, of course, but beyond finishing Craig Ferguson’s funny and surprisingly touching memoir, American on Purpose, watching an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1983’s dreadful Warrior of the Lost World), and failing to finish the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, I’m not sure I can really say how I got from there to here.

Sundays are just like that sometimes.

How I spent Saturday

Today was a pretty good day.

I woke up early to bring my car in for its yearly inspection and an oil change. My father was kind enough to give me a ride over, and then back again later to pick the car up. There used to be a pretty convenient train in the morning that would take you from the mechanic (half a block from the station) back to our station (one block from the house), but the LIRR saw fit to muddle with their schedule and only run trains once every hour between those two stations. So it’s just easier to get a ride.

I didn’t do a whole lot else today. I went for a long walk, and I took a very successful nap, and I played with the dog. I also watched a little television.

I watched another episode from the first season of Fringe — I keep waiting, I think maybe in vain, for it to get better than its pilot, which I watched when it first aired last and didn’t love. It’s not an uninteresting show, kind of a glossed-up X-Files, but right now I’m not seeing a whole lot to make me revise my original opinion of the show.

The second episode of the new Doctor Who fared a little better, though I do think it coasted by a little too much on costumes and set design and ultimately couldn’t hide what was a little thinness in its story. It was clever and fun — and thank goodness they didn’t do that click-click-click what-did-the-Doctor-just-see thing again — but it felt strangely cut short. (There were a couple of minutes at the end that were nothing but establishing shots for next week’s episode.) It wasn’t at all disappointing, but that delightful sense of wonder I felt last week did feel a little under-served by the end this week.

And then I got caught up on the last two episodes of Chuck, while I pulled together issues of Kaleidotrope (which with luck will be mailed out before next weekend is out). I’m occasionally mystified by Chuck‘s difficulty in pulling in a bigger audience — it’s a fun action comedy with some great characters — but if the show has to end this season, “Chuck Versus the Other Guy” was a several steps in the right direction and just a cool episode to boot. (Nice to see Mark Sheppard continuing his plot to appear in every television show on the air. Also nice to see, however briefly, Ida from “The Middleman”.)

And finally, this evening, I watched The Informant, starring Matt Damon. It’s kind of an odd movie, but that’s probably because it was a pretty odd story. I don’t think it’s spoiling anything to say that Mark Whitacre is a fascinating character — if you haven’t already hear the This American Life show about his case and all its convolutions, you should. I thought Damon did an excellent job portraying a man who just keeps lying, it seems, because he just doesn’t know what else to do. It’s actually a pretty fun movie, despite all that, and is more a dark comedy than anything else.

And that, such as it was, was my Saturday.