8.27.2009
"Now, There's Something I Didn't Expect," Revisited
Another of my new housemates, Ben, is British and very cool (and, yes, has a very cool accent as well). He also plays guitar and piano and sings. Sometimes he practices downstairs while Natasha and/or I are upstairs, and the sound carries well, so it's easy to listen as he does it. I've heard his renditions of quite a few songs - some oldies (The Ronettes' "Be My Little Baby," The Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," etc.), some more recent ones (I want to say he did "Drops of Jupiter," for example, but I may be totally misremembering here).
So what do I hear him playing on guitar and energetically singing just now? "MMMBop."
Now, there's something I didn't expect.
So what do I hear him playing on guitar and energetically singing just now? "MMMBop."
Now, there's something I didn't expect.
8.17.2009
Why Sometimes Having a Team Might Not Help
Tonight at trivia: eight of us (almost tag-teaming a little - Carrie left early, Joe came late).
Points scored prior to the final round: thirty-five.
Which, coincidentally, happens to be the same number of points I scored during that same period on my night playing alone last month.
However, I should point out that this was the night of the Hardest Trivia Questions Ever at CyberCafe, at least as far as we've ever experienced. I think the majority of the other teams were within about ten points either way of our score, whereas the night I was by myself my score was definitely one of the lower ones.
Following five rounds of mostly-ridiculously-difficult questions, however, we were presented with pretty much the Easiest Final Question Ever at CyberCafe ("What is the last letter of the Greek alphabet?"), so we still tied for fifth place.
I know this isn't necessarily interesting to you, but that's the chance you take, reading the blog of a nerd.
As for everything else, it's okay. For many reasons, I am trying for about the eightieth time to get more sleep, though it wouldn't be accurate to say as yet that I've met with a big wad o' success. Little wads o' success, maybe. It depends on the night. Also, at this point, the best excuse I can think of for why I still don't have anything on my walls except my calendar runs along the lines of its being, if the time-and-temperature display at the store nearby is to be believed, in the eighty-and-ninety-degree range outside lately (today's reported temperature around 5 PM: ninety-six), so doing anything in my room that does not involve sitting or lying down has been a less-than-attractive prospect.
Okay, there's your update. You may now go back to your lives.
Points scored prior to the final round: thirty-five.
Which, coincidentally, happens to be the same number of points I scored during that same period on my night playing alone last month.
However, I should point out that this was the night of the Hardest Trivia Questions Ever at CyberCafe, at least as far as we've ever experienced. I think the majority of the other teams were within about ten points either way of our score, whereas the night I was by myself my score was definitely one of the lower ones.
Following five rounds of mostly-ridiculously-difficult questions, however, we were presented with pretty much the Easiest Final Question Ever at CyberCafe ("What is the last letter of the Greek alphabet?"), so we still tied for fifth place.
I know this isn't necessarily interesting to you, but that's the chance you take, reading the blog of a nerd.
As for everything else, it's okay. For many reasons, I am trying for about the eightieth time to get more sleep, though it wouldn't be accurate to say as yet that I've met with a big wad o' success. Little wads o' success, maybe. It depends on the night. Also, at this point, the best excuse I can think of for why I still don't have anything on my walls except my calendar runs along the lines of its being, if the time-and-temperature display at the store nearby is to be believed, in the eighty-and-ninety-degree range outside lately (today's reported temperature around 5 PM: ninety-six), so doing anything in my room that does not involve sitting or lying down has been a less-than-attractive prospect.
Okay, there's your update. You may now go back to your lives.
8.08.2009
Life Downtown
It's not bad. I still haven't fully unpacked, but that's another story.
Tonight, finally running low enough on clean clothes that I couldn't procrastinate much further about it, I went to a laundromat for the first time, since there's no washer-dryer in our house. The price is mostly comparable to doing laundry in Alfred - there, two bucks got you a basic wash and dry, $1 for each machine (though I hear they're switching to free laundry now!). Here, it takes $1.50 to run the standard washer, but the other fifty cents might conceivably, on high heat, dry your clothes to an acceptable level because the dryers are so big that the air circulates a lot better. I was working with low heat myself, since some of my stuff is probably shrinkable and the tags say "low" and I didn't want to push it, but was pretty impressed at how close to dry they were after a mere half-hour (the standard time you get for a dollar). I put in another quarter for a few that were still a little too damp to just deal with, which bought me another seven-point-five minutes. I wonder whether I could get a better deal at another laundromat.
And then I wonder, am I actually going to price-compare the many laundromats of Main Street, Binghamton?
I might.
In other news, today I read the novel of M*A*S*H, since I love the TV show (to most of you, that's a reminder, not a piece of news) but have never seen the movie or read the book. I have to say, I like the TV version much better. It's not just the difference in what I'm used to - in the book, Hawkeye/Trapper/Duke (no, you won't remember Duke from the show...that's because I don't think he existed there) are supposed to come off as fun-loving and mischievous, but actually they kind of come off as a little skeevy. I wonder how closely the movie takes after the book.
The penultimate sentence of the previous paragraph reminds me: Natasha's English vocabulary is excellent, but yesterday, as necessitated by our conversations, I defined for her all of the following: "skeevy," "Muzak," and "cold feet." She, in turn, taught me that Russians have a literary concept called "talking names" - it's a term used to describe a character name that reveals something about said character's personality, like half the people in Harry Potter ("Luna" like "lunatic," "Draco" like "dragon," "Severus" like "severe," et cetera).
This week I put in the full 20 hours that's supposed to be the limit on my at-church work time (I got officially hired on for the fall semester, which gladdens both Reverend Anne's heart, because otherwise she'd have to do it, and mine, because I get what amounts to another comp-section's worth of pay without acquiring the additional out-of-class prepwork that would have come with it) because one of the ladies of our congregation got married and had me do the wedding bulletins on top of the normal work. I mention this not because I didn't want to do the bulletins or something, but to partially excuse what I'm about to say next: that I've been here for a little over eight days and still haven't put anything up on the walls except my calendar.
I went to the local farmers' market on Friday. It was smaller than I expected (maybe it was bigger back in June or something), but I bought some corn on the cob (very good - nice and sweet) and apricots (not quite ripe - maybe they were ripe by today, but I didn't try, so I'll have to go back to them tomorrow) and garlic (haven't yet had occasion to use it). Next I want to try the one at Otsiningo Park, but I'm gonna have to wait a while, as that's Saturday-only and today I missed it.
Well, it's probably time I went to bed. Much love from here within the city limits.
Tonight, finally running low enough on clean clothes that I couldn't procrastinate much further about it, I went to a laundromat for the first time, since there's no washer-dryer in our house. The price is mostly comparable to doing laundry in Alfred - there, two bucks got you a basic wash and dry, $1 for each machine (though I hear they're switching to free laundry now!). Here, it takes $1.50 to run the standard washer, but the other fifty cents might conceivably, on high heat, dry your clothes to an acceptable level because the dryers are so big that the air circulates a lot better. I was working with low heat myself, since some of my stuff is probably shrinkable and the tags say "low" and I didn't want to push it, but was pretty impressed at how close to dry they were after a mere half-hour (the standard time you get for a dollar). I put in another quarter for a few that were still a little too damp to just deal with, which bought me another seven-point-five minutes. I wonder whether I could get a better deal at another laundromat.
And then I wonder, am I actually going to price-compare the many laundromats of Main Street, Binghamton?
I might.
In other news, today I read the novel of M*A*S*H, since I love the TV show (to most of you, that's a reminder, not a piece of news) but have never seen the movie or read the book. I have to say, I like the TV version much better. It's not just the difference in what I'm used to - in the book, Hawkeye/Trapper/Duke (no, you won't remember Duke from the show...that's because I don't think he existed there) are supposed to come off as fun-loving and mischievous, but actually they kind of come off as a little skeevy. I wonder how closely the movie takes after the book.
The penultimate sentence of the previous paragraph reminds me: Natasha's English vocabulary is excellent, but yesterday, as necessitated by our conversations, I defined for her all of the following: "skeevy," "Muzak," and "cold feet." She, in turn, taught me that Russians have a literary concept called "talking names" - it's a term used to describe a character name that reveals something about said character's personality, like half the people in Harry Potter ("Luna" like "lunatic," "Draco" like "dragon," "Severus" like "severe," et cetera).
This week I put in the full 20 hours that's supposed to be the limit on my at-church work time (I got officially hired on for the fall semester, which gladdens both Reverend Anne's heart, because otherwise she'd have to do it, and mine, because I get what amounts to another comp-section's worth of pay without acquiring the additional out-of-class prepwork that would have come with it) because one of the ladies of our congregation got married and had me do the wedding bulletins on top of the normal work. I mention this not because I didn't want to do the bulletins or something, but to partially excuse what I'm about to say next: that I've been here for a little over eight days and still haven't put anything up on the walls except my calendar.
I went to the local farmers' market on Friday. It was smaller than I expected (maybe it was bigger back in June or something), but I bought some corn on the cob (very good - nice and sweet) and apricots (not quite ripe - maybe they were ripe by today, but I didn't try, so I'll have to go back to them tomorrow) and garlic (haven't yet had occasion to use it). Next I want to try the one at Otsiningo Park, but I'm gonna have to wait a while, as that's Saturday-only and today I missed it.
Well, it's probably time I went to bed. Much love from here within the city limits.