18 January 2010
I can’t really complain that I had a paid holiday today, but I guess that’s what I’m goin to do…
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the great Dr. King, but I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do on this day off. I would much prefer having Election Day or even Halloween off, because at least on those days there’s something to do (something relating to the holiday, at least). And unlike Memorial Day and Labor Day, most of my friends and family don’t have the day off, so it’s not like I can hook up with any of them. But, like I said, maybe it’s a bit ungrateful to complain about this.
At any rate, the day was pretty great. We had a leisurely morning, followed by some errands-running. We played Uno in the evening (Owen makes us play Uno nearly every day) and I whipped up another five gallons of homebrew. There are now ten gallons of home-brewed beer in my home. Yee-hah!

19 January 2010
Last night, I watched the first half of the film Chaplin. Today, I watched the second half. It’s kind of funny to me that I had never watched this film before.
I am a big fan of Chaplin. I was first intorduce to him in a high school film class, where we watched The Gold Rush. Curious to see more, I rented more of his films. I’ve seen most of his ~70 short films, and I’ve seen seven of his ten feature films, even seeing Modern Times at the theater. I love his timing in comedy, which is endlessly copied now. He’s a bit sentimental in some of his films, which doesn’t play well with modern sensibilities, but at times, it still works powerfully (such as in The Kid and City Lights). Chaplin’s films took on many issues, a rarity of the time – in fact, he even released The Great Dictator, a film ciritcal of Hitler, in 1940 – well before such criticism became accepted in ‘neutral’ America. I also think it’s amazing that Chaplin managed to successfully remain in silent films for some 12 years after everyone else had gone to sound.
Anyway, when my interest in Chaplin was first rising, the aforementioned biopic was released. I couldn’t go see it at the theaters because it ws rated R (and that’s a no-no for Witnesses), but I did buy a t-shirt that said “Chaplin” and showed his silhouette. I wore the shirt to a party one day, prompting one girl to come over to me and say “I’m surprised you have the nerve to wear that shirt.” I told her I was wearing the shirt to honor the man – not the rated R movie.
I finally put the movie on my Netflix queue, but it wasn’t available until recently. It languished near the bottom of our queue for some time, but last night, I was looking for something to watch, and Jennifer said she had no interest in it. So I watched it alone.
I’m glad I saw it. I didn’t like the dialogue-heavy scenes with his editor that bracket the flashbacks (seems a tragedy to tell the story of Chaplin – someone so gifted at using visuals – by using poor dialogue transitions). But the lengthy flashbacks themselves were great. Robert Downey, Jr. does an impeccable impersonation. The film drops hints of how Chaplin came up with some of his film ideas, and traces his path from the Keystone Cops days (Dan Akyroyd plays a hilraious Mack Sennett) to his later films. The film’s style often paid homage to the silent-film era, such as iris transitions and sped-up chase scenes, though I wish the film would’ve shown more.
The best part of the film is the final segment in which an aging Chaplin is invited to America (after being banished for over 20 years) to accept a lifetime achievement award from the Academy. As old Charlie is wheeled out onto the stage, we see everyone, even stagehands, rushing to the sides to see the film montage. Walter Matthau offers a tribute to Charlie and then a long reel of his old films begins. In the days before Netflix or even VCRs, being treated to 10 minutes of old Chaplin films must’ve been a real treat for the audience. The film Chaplin shows the exact footage that was shown to the Academy on that day, nearly 40 years ago. I laughed along with the audience, and it nearly brought a tear to my eye to see such wonderful, poignant footage. All the while, Downey’s character is on the sidelines watching, and he cries, too. From reading about this event, I know that after the montage, Chaplin was given the longest standing ovation is Oscar history, and I was excited to see this moment in the film. However, as soon as the montage concluded, the words “The End” came on screen, and Chaplin was over. In retrospect, that was the perfect ending. Without a word, there ws nothing else to say. Chaplin was a good film about a great man who made beautiful films.

15 January 2010
I was late to work today and, while driving in, I received a call from my supervisor wondering where I was. I had emailed her two hours earlier explaining why I would be late but, as luck would have it, she didn’t get the email. I’m not sure why; on my home computer it shows that I emailed her, yet she showed my her email file at work, and she clearly didn’t receive anything. She didn’t mind, which was cool of her, she was just concerned that I wasn’t showing up at work.
Why does that sort of thing always seem to happen? I can send out the most asinine emails, and they arrive at their intended destination with no problem, but important stuff too often gets lost in cyberspace. Weird.
Speaking of emails, one of my co-workers sent this to me the other day, and I think it’s probably the funniest thing I read all week. If you read it, make sure you read the whole thing (come on, it’s not that long) and don’t read the final paragraph until you get there: CLICK THIS.

16 January 2010
Today we went to the Children’s Museum. It was a last-minute decision. At about 11:00 this morning, Jennifer said I should try and find something for us to do. I opened up my laptop, and I had left the internet open to the Minnesota Atheists Meet-up page. There was a meet-up scheduled for noon at the Children’s Museum, so we got ready quickly and drove there.
There were about 20 people in attendance from our group, and we all met in this little cafeteria area and ate lunch first. I liked the idea of being there with a group of people, though sometimes it was tough to stay together as a group. Not that it mattered too much, Owen doesn’t really play with the other kids.
The thing he likes to play with best is this assembly-line-type deal (yeah, I don’t know how else to describe it). There’s a conveyor belt that kids put these grey cubes onto. The belt lifts the cubes up to the second floor where they fall onto tracks that drop them onto another conveyor belt. Then the kids can drop them down a hole where they land back on the first floor and the whole process can start again. I guess it’s one of those things you have to see to understand. Anyway, Owen thinks it’s the best exhibit at the Museum and I think he would spend all day intensely moving useless cubes from point A to point B and back to point A again.

17 January 2010
Today I went to hear Representative Phyllis Khan speak about how to lobby your State Legislator. The presentation was sponsored by Minnesota Atheists. Though it’s always interesting to meet up with someone in government, she didn’t actually speak on her topic. She just kind of talked about some things going on at the state-level right now and answered several questions from the audience. One woman, who admitted her question was was off topic, began by saying that she is an optician and she wants to know how to get a law passed requiring licensing for opticians in Minnesota. This was a subject I knew about all too well a decade ago when I was in the optical industry. Basically, here’s the problem: in nearly every other state, persons must pass a state test to become opticians. In Minnesota, though, anyone can go in and get hired at, say America’s Best Eyewear, and wear a name tag that says “optician” on it. The woman specifically called out Lenscrafters for their attempts to block such legislation, which is true, but I think it’s a bit unnecessary. First of all, if you go into Lenscrafters or any other eyeglass store, just ask to be assisted by a certified optician. A certified optician is someone who has taken & passed the American Board of Opticianry examination. When I was employed at Lenscrafters, I started as just a regular salesperson. After quite a bit of in-house training (including written tests), I was promoted to Apprentice Optician. I was an Apprentice Optician for nearly three years, during which time I garnered even more experience, and took a college class on opticianry. Finally, I took the A.B.O.’s test, passed it, and then – only then – was I given a new name tag showing that I was an optician. Hanging on the wall in the store for all customers to see was my certificate.

11 January 2010
Today was one of those days when I said something I shouldn’t have. I’m not sure why I can recall obscure facts about history, music, movies, and science and all sorts of unimportant dates in my own life, yet can’t seem to remember when I shouldn’t say certain things.
I like to attribute this problem to my upbringing, as I was raised by a pack of wild New Yorkers. But this is just shifting the blame and, besides, some members of my family (such as my Dad) seem to be really good at saying the right thing all the time. Oh well.
And this brings up another point: I’m starting to wonder if writing about something from each day is such a good idea. More than once already, I’ve had to edit or tone down what I said at the risk of upsetting some people who may read this. Also, I find myself purposely leaving out some of the events of my life becuase I’m not sure this is an appropriate forum. For example, maybe I shouldn’t talk about such-and-such, because that’s work-related, and I don’t want my job to get angry with me. Or, I think I should leave out this thing that happened today because, even though it’s interesting news, it’s not really my news to announce. Stuff like that.

12 January 2010
Today I found time to prepare query letters to four more literary agents. As I mentioned earlier, I already emailed just about any agent that accepts email queries, so now I’m moving on to those who like snail mail. In a way, I don’t like these agents as much. I mean, come on, it’s 2010! What kind of business does not accept emails? I learned that it takes a lot longer to prepare queries that are going to be shipped via USPS, because in addition to gathering the materials, I also have to ensure they print properly, and I have a hate-hate relationship with printers. I also have to print out address labels, create SASEs for each agent, and use up all kinds of stamps. It takes at least two stamps per agent, as they all want an SASE (which is a pretentious acronym for “self-addressed stamped envelope”). Anyway, I hope to hear back from them…

13 January 2010
I received an email from my Dad this morning. This is a rare occurrence, and it catches me off guard because when I seemy own name in my in-box, I assume it’s an email that I had sent myself. I’m sure that sounds weird, but it’s true: I often work on an article, blog post, or list at work, then email it to my home account. At home, I’ll work on something some more, then email it to work. Or, I’ll send myself little reminders, such as the email I sent the other day that said: “brewer post,” which was my way of reminding myself to stop at Northern Brewer and the post office on the way home from work.
Anyway, in his email, my Dad said that he got terminated from his job and to not contact him at this email address any longer. Of course, I wanted to reply to find out the details, but since his email specifically said not to use that address anymore, I figured I shouldn’t.
I called him tonight to see exactly what happened. He was laid off. It wasn’t totally unexpected, as his company had laid off other employees as recently as Monday, and they had been losing many clients.
I feel bad for him. He’s had at least 5 jobs in the 9 years he’s lived in Florida. From what I’ve seen, the economy there is always slightly depressed compared to Minnesota, but this recession has really hit the Sunshine State badly.

14 January 2010
Today, at my job, we had a birthday breakfast. As the name implies, our whole department headed down to the cafeteria for breakfast in celebration of our co-workers’ January birthdays (there are three people in my department who were born in January). My company picks up the tab, which is cool because it allows me to do things I wouldn’t normally do – like grabbing an orange juice when I’d normally just drink water. Or getting two servings of hash browns instead of just one.
While sitting at a table with my co-workers, my cell phone rang. I usually don’t answer my phone when I’m in front of other people like that, but the call was from Jennifer, and she was calling right at the time she should’ve been leaving to bring Owen to preschool. I figured she was going to say something was wrong with the car. And, well, that’s kind of what she did say: the car keys were no where to be found. Where were they? Oh, that part was easy, they were in my coat pocket hanging in my cubical. So, leaving my half-finished breakfast there, I ran to my cube, grabbed my coat, and drove all the way home. I was really mad at myself since that was a really stupid mistake. More than that, I think it’s important for Owen to go to pre-school, and I want him to have a good experience there. So, I don’t want to be the cause of him missing any days.
Turns out, there was an accident on highway 94, so I was stuck in traffic for about ten minutes. As always, the accident wasn’t blocking any traffic, it’s just that everyone had to slow down to gawk. I really really really hate that people do that. First of all, such behavior simply causes more accidents. Second, if you’re really that interested in the accident, pull over and watch it from the sidelines and let people like me, who are on the road because we want to get somewhere (I do NOT sight-see when I’m driving), get to our destination.
Anyway, I finally got home. We arranged things so as to minimize any delay: Jennifer and Owen were already in the car waiting, and I ran into the apartment to lock the door for them. Owen was only a half hour late to preschool, so I guess that’s not so bad. And one of my co-workers was kind enough to bring my donut back to cubeville for me.

09 January 2010
We took down our Christmas tree today. It’s funny how the tree begins to lose it’s appeal once the new year commences. Last year we took the tree down right after the new year (on the 2nd or 3rd, I think), but this year, I purposely wanted to keep it up through last weekend, as my sister and her husband were coming over for one last holiday get-together. So, this time, the tree lasted until January 9th. Also unlike last year, we sawed all the branches off and dropped them off at the compost heap all in one day. Last year, I simply carried the tree down to the garage, where it sat until, like May. Then I cut off the branches and put them in bags, which sat in the garage until August, I think.
You might wonder: why not just dispose of the whole tree. Good question. The answer is this: we use the trunk of the tree to make other things. Aren’t we green?

10 January 2010
Today we went to Jennifer’s parent’s house. Jennifer’s brother and sister were there, too, along with their families. This is great, because it gives Owen a chance to play with both of his cousins, but it also can be a bit overstimulating for him. In the three hours I was there, I saw Owen get worse – he seems unable to communicate effectively and he gets cranky and whiny. The TV was on in the background, too, and I’m not sure why people like to have that white noise cluttering up the conversation; it just makes things more noisy a chaotic.
Anyway, I hope Owen’s having a better time now. He stayed their to spend the night, and I’m sure things quieted down after most of the people left.
Jennifer and I, meanwhile, drove to the theater and viewed the film Precious. In it, a distractingly obese teenage girl tries to better her life while being pushed down by her mother and being pregnant (for the second time) by her father. It was a decent film, nothing special. I’m not sure when this shift in style took place, but at some point in the last three years, film-makers became enamored with showing really gross stuff. I mean, I expect this sort of thing in horror films, but not in more mainstream films. In particular: vomiting. It used to be, if a character in a movie was supposed to vomit, you’d see them run off into a bathroom stall, or you’d just see them raising their head from the toilet bowl. Now, it seems, the director forgot to yell “cut”. I’m not sure what it adds to a film to see a character’s vomit. It certainly doesn’t add to the story, since I already know they are about to vomit. It certainly doesn’t make for a beautiful scene, such as, say, fawning over some lush landscapes (which is equally unnecessary, but at least pretty). The main character, named “Precious”, realizes she sick to her stomach, jumps up, heads over to a garbage can, and we are privileged to about 20 seconds of retching stomach contents emitting from her mouth into the garbage can. Mercifully, I can’t recall exactly which other movies have featured this lovely new cliche’ recently, but rest assured there have been some. And I must say: that’s enough.

07 January 2010
I hosted Atheists Talk again. It was my 11th time hosting, though my first time since August. The taping consists of two half hour shows; usually they’re related in some way, but tonight they were not. For the first show, I interviewed Mike Davis regarding his new book The Atheists Bible Companion to the New Testament. I received a copy of his book nearly two months ago, with the idea that I was supposed to read it and write a review of it. While reading it one night, I flipped to the “about the author” section and discovered he lived right here in the Twin Cities. So I looked him up online and emailed him to see if he’d like to be interviewed on the show.
I finally met him tonight, and I think he had as good of a time as I did, despite the fact that there were technical difficulties with the microphones, and we ended up sitting on stage chatting for about a half hour while we waited. There was so much interesting information to cover, I was scrambling to wrap it up in a half hour. I like when that happens.

08 January 2010
Today I noticed a bunch of women on Facebook were updating their status by simply stating a color. After reading enough comments, I figured out that this was the color of the bra they were wearing. After further research, I learned that this was to raise breast cancer awareness. I think showing support for causes is all well and good, but in this particular case, I fail to see how a statement so vague as “red” or “white” could serve any purpose other than baffling one’s Facebook friends. I think a more productive method would be to post a fact about cancer or cancer prevention, or perhaps supply a link to a site where people can learn more or donate.
Today also happens to be my Dad and Stepmom’s 10 year anniversary. I hope they had a good day.