Looking over my previous journal posts, i noticed that in my discussion of my wedding anniversary, i calculated that one year of marriage was equal to 31,536,000 seconds. Performing random mental calculations, i determined that 31 years should be about equal to 1 billion seconds. I therefore just wrote a perl script and determined that i am 986 million seconds old, and will turn 1 billion seconds on February 25 of next year.

I can see you cocking eyebrows at me already. Don't judge me!

To start off, for those unfamiliar with the source of the reference in the post title, you need to check out Steve Coogan's hilariously inept talk show host Alan Partridge. Veronica and i picked up the DVD set of his fictitious BBC talk show Knowing Me Knowing You at Best Buy on Saturday. Alan insists on completely ABBA theme music, and greets guests by saying "Knowing me, Alan Partridge, knowing you, Ted Graves ... a ha.", to which i would be expected to give a polite "a ha" response. I refreshed my memory of a few of the episodes on Sunday afternoon, including his contractually-obligated episode from Paris in which he argues with his French co-host and guest that Peter Ustinov is the greatest living philosopher, and that he should open a steakhouse with famous restauranteur Bernie ... *someone* (ack, my quote knowledge is slipping). Also great is his short-lived public policy discussion with candidates for parliament, disrupted by the presence of Lieutenant Colonel Kojak Slaphead III of the Bald Brummies Against The Big Footed Conspiracy Party. Good stuff.

On Friday evening Bob popped by our place after a few days down in Monterey, and we grabbed dinner in San Mateo at Bombay Garden before catching the late showing of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Quite good, very good-natured and lots of laugh-out-loud moments. I neglected to write that Veronica and i saw Wedding Crashers at the Metreon a week or two before we headed off to Europe. That nearly had me rolling in the aisles. A lot of wonderfully-concocted comedic bits. So that's two great comedies we've seen in recent months.

Veronica and Bob slept in a bit Saturday morning (we didn't get home from the movie until after 1am). I got up around 10am and tidied the kitchen and living room, and started the long process of washing all my laundry from the trip and before. I also managed to get out and buy some sundries. The bagel and Cocoa Pebbles i had upon returning kept me tided over until we got our act in gear and headed out of the house around 3:30pm. Bob was off to see friends in Santa Rosa for a few days, while V and i stopped off at Best Buy to get the aforementioned Alan Partridge DVD, as well as a few new PSP games (Death Jr. and Burnout Legends, which i literally had to convince the salesman that it existed), and a few Rock en Espanol cd's for Veronica. I haven't played Death Jr. yet, but Burnout keeps up the tradition of the excellent Burnout Takedown that introduced me to the series on the Xbox. Super fast, good controls, and some sweet visuals even on the petite PSP screen. How Nintendo expects the rapidly-aging Gameboy line to keep up is beyond me. They seem to have hedged their bets on hardware innovation (à la the DS's touch screen), but they are really failing to deliver any worthwhile titles. Their argument has always been quality over quantity, but they seem to be losing in comparisons to PS and Xbox software even in the quality department lately. The new Gameboy Micro appears to be a smaller Gameboy Advance with fewer buttons ... what problems does that solve? V and i watched a video of a press conference discussing the next-generation Nintendo console, code-named Revolution, demonstrating their new controller. It's intended to attract gamers put off by the complexity of today's controllers ... not a bad idea ... and looks like a remote control (usable with one hand), with a sort of Jeopardy!-buzzer thing usable by the other hand. It's motion-sensitive, and they showed footage of players using it as drumsticks, a baseball bat, a conductor's wand, and a sort of ... cattle prod to make Mario jump. I sum up the state of gaming as this: if Nintendo doesn't make an effort to get their games online and to challenge the technical superiority of Sony and Microsoft, they're going to be up s#@t creek.

After more shopping, we headed home, communed with the doggies for a few hours, then headed up to the city to meet up with Jenz at the evening's New Wave City vs. Popscene. The club was out in the boonies in the southern, industrial portion of San Francisco. We couldn't believe Jenz took the bus out there. Or that there was a bus that went out there. The club was fun ... i held my own aping Morrissey on the dance floor against more seasoned Moz impersonators, and V got to relive days of old in the gothic/industrial room dancing to Nitzer Ebb, Bauhaus, and Front 242. Told at the bar that the only beer available was Miller Lite, i made the tough decision to have a gin and tonic. I haven't drunk hard liquor in quite a while, ever since bad experiences with tequila and vodka shots in grad school. I felt distinctly weird after finishing that. I followed it up with a Campari and soda, made by someone who'd obviously never made the drink before as she mixed 90% Campari with only 10% soda. At 2:30am it dawned on me the club wasn't closing at the traditional 2am end of drinking, so we headed off the the Castro for a late-night meal at Sparky's. We didn't get back to our slumbering dogs until after 5am ... eek.

Sunday was therefore understandably spent mostly around the house recuperating. I did some more grocery shopping in anticipation of making a nice Sunday dinner, but that was shelved when Geoff and Naomi popped by on their way back from Santa Barbara. So we all convened to North Beach Pizza instead, before G and N continued their trek to San Francisco by way of Sacramento ... god knows when they got home. I'm planning on making dinner for Bob and V tonight, a hopefully successful experiment involving pasta and vegetables with chicken sauteed with basil. V's started a tennis class with one of her coworkers, so when she gets home there'll either be a yummy home-cooked meal or take-out and a garbage can full of an ill-fated culinary expedition waiting for her.

Chelsea continue to win, and attract the ire of the sporting press. This week Soccernet's "Team of the Week" is all Chelsea, and the text includes a conversation between Tedium and God where the latter has directed the former to take up residence in the Premiership. What a load of crap. Was everyone happier when Arsenal and Manchester United were the ones winning everything, year in year out? As the Soccernet Chelsea correspondent puts it: "Man U win the league 8 years out of 10 and everyone claps. Before that Liverpool dominate domestic football for 15 years and everyone claps. Arsenal go 49 games unbeaten and we all get to clap. Chelsea win the league and the Carling Cup once and the villagers light the torches and start running up the bloody hill." Our style of play, you say? I have to agree with Chelsea assistant coach Steve Clarke: "Ask our supporters if we're boring - I know exactly what they'd say." All in the eye of the beholder, i suppose. Anyhow, we are top of the table, the league's top scorers, and have yet to concede a goal. And we are still finding our feet.

I'm back in my friend's NFL pool this year, picking games every week and so far failing miserably. I think i'm picking winners based on my knowledge of football that is now three or four years old. What do you mean Green Bay is falling apart? Minnesota gets throttled by the freakin' Bengals??? What is this sport coming to?!?! As such, i don't expect to win much.

On the agenda this week is Bloc Party at the Warfield, and back to work generating funds for my lab.