For some reason i keep putting off posting until i get home from work ... well, for an obvious reason: i've got work to do at work. Then when i get home, i zone out in front of the TV or the Xbox/PS3. Not the Wii, as i still haven't found the game to hold my interest in the Nintendo gimmick. And so the journal has languished unattended, night after night, week after week. I can't promise the same won't happen after this post, but hey ... i'm aware of the situation. At least i got in one November post.

As i can barely remember what the hell i was doing when i last posted, i'm going to start at the present and go backwards. Like that Seinfeld episode. Only less Seinfeldy.

Just finished watching Scorsese's Oscar vindication in the Departed. With just me and the dog at home, i turned off all the lights, cranked up the surround sound, and queued up my HD tivoed copy from last night. I've never been a huge Leo fan, but Di Caprio was flawless in this role. It was odd listening to Boston accents for two and a half hours, but the cast seemed tailor-made for the locale. I was surprised to learn that Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg were the only true beantowners in the group. I've been into the brutal, intense downer movies lately, having seen the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men in Iowa while the de la Moras and Dispiritos opted for Enchanted. Guess i've just been in a fatalistic mood these days. Must be, since i particularly resonated with the "no longer understand the evils of the world" ennui of Tommy Lee Jones in No Country and the "we're all corrupt in some way" existentialism of the Departed.

I flew back from an eighteen hour trip to L.A. Thursday morning, after attending Matthew and Dionne's ten year wedding anniversary/vow renewal and picking up a head cold. Flying sick is always pure torture. I spend my time leaning my head from one side to the other to drain my sinuses. After landing in San Jose, shuttling to the long-term parking lot to get my car, fetching my dog from my parents' house, then driving home, i promptly fell asleep. I woke up for an episode of the abysmal Law & Order: Criminal Intent, what a freakin' joke. Watching a subsequent episode of the original on TNT, aka the L&O network i learned that recent episodes aren't much better than its spinoffs. Back to sleep. I managed to recuperate enough in a day to handle giving a two hour lecture this morning. Thank god for vitamins.

Only two days earlier did i return from Thanksgiving in the heartland. V and her grandmother stayed for one more day, returning instead to LA, with V's eventual homecoming happening tomorrow. 10 days of rest and relaxation with Arlene, Alan, and Ana in Ames. As the AAA house now sports a wireless network, much of this time was spent at the dining room table with Arlene, Veronica, and i parked in front of our respective laptops. Which now makes me wonder how i went 10 days in front of a computer doing basically nothing and still didn't manage a single journal entry. Well, i did tag and sort all 5300 of Veronica's mp3's. Don't laugh, that took a good 15 hours or so. They were added to my iTunes library when i returned to work. Today i produced a 13 page list of albums for which i now need to locate album art. 850 of them. Not a pretty thought, considering my exacting standards for cover images.

Other Iowa activities included the aforementioned movie Saturday, a Sunday afternoon spent driving a few towns north to see presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, aiding Ana's ill-conceived snowflake manufacturing and sales business, winning all the cups on Super Mario Strikers while my teammate Ana took more interest in tackling me than scoring or defending, and missing Ana getting her ears pierced because i was down the mall in the Apple store getting my squeaky Macbook space bar fixed at the Genius Bar (which despite my recent pro-Apple conversion still sounds like *the* most pretentious name ever). Thanksgiving itself gave Alan a chance to organize a few more culinary masterpieces ... in addition to the breakfast, lunch, and dinner he prepared every other day. Home-cooked food in the heartland, right?

I dropped Tara off at the kennel the day before we left for Iowa, where she suffered for 10 days until my parents picked her up before fetching me at the airport. Seeing as she was left with my parents for another overnighter just two days later, she must think we're torturing her.

Veronica's grandmother stayed with us for a week in anticipation of our trip to Iowa. However this visit meant she had to somehow arrive in Redwood City from V's aunt down south. We resolved that we would make a one day trip to and from SoCal to fetch her, and scheduled it for the Saturday a week before our flight. However when i arose at 6:30am that morning and readied myself, V groaned from bed. She wasn't feeling well, so i convinced her it was no problem that i go by myself. That old ruse. I hit the road at 7:15am, arriving in Whittier at 1pm after spending the drive down the 5 listening to Howard Stern. After lunch with Bob and talking with Annabelle, Jose, Arman, and Austen for an hour or so, Ramona and i hopped in the Jetta and drove back north. The L.A. traffic had me yawning before the grapevine, worrying me that i wouldn't retain consciousness all the way back to the bay, but a venti coffee at the La Val Starbucks provided me the energy to go the distance. I however announced to Veronica upon our 10:30pm return that i would be doing absolutely nothing the next day.

My sister loaned me a book on Mormon fundamentalists, which i finished a few weeks ago. An odd suggestion, but it was spurred by the fact that the book was written by Jon Krakauer, the author of the recently movie-fied Into the Wild which i'd read on a fall trip to D.C. to review grants. How to put this delicately ... Mormons are f@$#ing insane. Native Americans are the lost tribes of Israel and Jesus came to America after the crucifixion? WTF?!?! And it's odd that the proclamations the prophets receive from God all happen to enable their individual vices. Gee, i always wished my wife would let me sleep with other women ... maybe if i tell her that it's God will. Hey, it's not me honey, it's God. In other religious nutjob news, i found a great review of the "Creation Museum" in a blog. After getting my fill of Mormons, i finished off Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. A somber homage to nerd culture, rife with philosophy. I dog-eared a lot of pages in that one. I occupied myself going to and from L.A. this week reading Howard Stern's autobiography Private Parts. You get a lot of weird looks reading that in a public place. It's odd perusing a 14 year-old memoir and comparing it to my knowledge of Howard from listening to his show for the last three years. His perspective has certainly evolved ... especially considering he defends Jay Leno in the book and now considers him a douchebag.

My memory is getting hazy now. I recall watching Idiocracy on Tivo ... great concept (idiots outpopulate intellectuals and reduce the world's average IQ to 35 by 2500), lousy execution. I'm waiting impatiently for the Alpine Sirius adapter to become available, so my car's superstereo can play Howard without the intervening Sirius unit. Despite the deluge of good games coming out (Call of Duty 4, Rock Band, Assassin's Creed, Half Life 2: Orange Box, hell even Super Mario Galaxy has got me interested), i've only picked up Guitar Hero III. If you like metal, which i DO, this installment is the best yet. I watched a Chelsea match weeks ago ... ah yes, it was the 6-nil drubbing of Man City. A great display, but whether we've turned the corner is still up for debate. Wait, strike that ... it's not up for debate. The answer is no. We're not beating United or Arsenal this season. No Champions League glory either. A few lucky breaks and we may wind up with the League Cup, or god forbid the FA Cup, but that's about it.

Okay, anything else that's happened to me is lost in the mists of history. Maybe i'll recall a lost morsel of wisdom in a waking dream. Or a sleeping dream, just before a snake in a vest rolls a donut past me. Yawn.