{"id":4587,"date":"2010-09-03T22:53:07","date_gmt":"2010-09-04T02:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=4587"},"modified":"2010-09-03T22:53:07","modified_gmt":"2010-09-04T02:53:07","slug":"and-so-begins-my-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=4587","title":{"rendered":"And so begins my vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/81595350@N00\/4955382167\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4092\/4955382167_20cbecaacb.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Today marked the end of my summer hours at work and the start of my week-long vacation. My parents are headed off to England tomorrow evening for a week of their own, and I don&#8217;t go back to work until Monday, September 13. It promises to be a quiet and relaxing week, just me and the dog.<\/p>\n<p>Today was the last of my half days, though even the people who didn&#8217;t take advantage of summer hours got to leave at 3 o&#8217;clock, thanks to the Labor Day weekend. Judging by how crowded my train was before two o&#8217;clock, I&#8217;m glad I didn&#8217;t have to stay in the city a lot longer. I also wanted to go pick up my new eyeglasses, which you can see in the photo up above. (Or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/81595350@N00\/4955385773\/\">here<\/a>, if that&#8217;s too extreme a close-up for you.) They&#8217;re a lot different (and a little heavier) than either of my other pairs, or any of the glasses I&#8217;ve worn in decades. But they&#8217;re comfortable, and I actually quite like them.<\/p>\n<p>This evening, I watched (and pretty much enjoyed) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0073802\/\">3 Days of the Condor<\/a>. It&#8217;s maybe a little dated and occasionally a little implausible, but it&#8217;s a taut and well-crafted &#8217;70s thriller. And how can you not like a movie with the line &#8220;You can always count on the old spy-fucker&#8221;? I can certainly see how it was an influence on AMC&#8217;s new conspiracy show <i>Rubicon<\/i> &#8212; which I&#8217;ve also been quite enjoying.<\/p>\n<p>And I also finished reading Paul Auster&#8217;s <i>Invisible<\/i>. I hope to write more about that later, but it&#8217;s quite good, if occasionally disturbing and difficult to puzzle out. And I&#8217;m not sure how well it hangs together, or is meant to, in the end. I also don&#8217;t know that it actually &#8220;is the finest novel Paul Auster has ever written&#8221; (as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/15\/books\/review\/Martin-t.html\">the New York Times claimed<\/a>), but it&#8217;s definitely a return to form for him after a string of disappointing novels. (Of which, admittedly, I&#8217;ve only read <i>Man in the Dark<\/i>, but that was pretty weak stuff.) Again, hopefully more later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today marked the end of my summer hours at work and the start of my week-long vacation. My parents are headed off to England tomorrow evening for a week of their own, and I don&#8217;t go back to work until Monday, September 13. It promises to be a quiet and relaxing week, just me and &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=4587\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[16,14,28,17,52],"class_list":["post-4587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books","tag-movies","tag-personal","tag-tv","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}