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Let's go fly a kite
Aug. 6th, 2004 03:54 pmBeen an interesting day so far.
Mom's home with a migraine (she's been getting them a lot the past few years), so I've been pampering her according to her requests. She was very upset because the cable was out in our house, so she can't watch QVC and was unhappy about missing some special they had. Although she said she was feeling to crappy to do anything other than watch TV, she got up the energy to call the cable company on the phone. When they said they couldn't fix it immediately unless other people had their cable out, Mom started calling the houses up the street. Nobody was home, though. She sent me across the street to ask if the cable there was working. The family wasn't home, but there were some contractors working there, and one of them checked the TV for me. I can't believe Mom's so fussy. It's only the television. Of the two of us, I should be the one fussing about the TV being out, but you don't see me doing that, now do you?
I got some more work on my fic done today, which was a major accomplishment. Since the weather was nice I went out to the school soccer field with a kite to see if I could fly it. It's a very pretty kite, all in flourescent colors, shaped like a hot-air balloon. In profile, because it's flat and all. There were good breezes but they weren't constant. It took me a few tries to get the kite flying. In the end I managed it and got it so far up that I used all the string on the roll. It looked so lovely against the blue sky with all the clouds. I wish Mom or Dad or the boys had been able to see it.
Now, I said getting the kite in the air took a few tries. That wasn't the hard part. The hard part was getting it down without getting it stuck in a tree (at which I failed), ravelling up all the string without getting it tangled (I got it tangled but I got it untangled quickly), pulling the kite out of the tree without breaking the string (failed), dragging over a ladder from the garage (succeeded, with difficulty), using it to get the kite down (succeeded, with help from a maintenance guy at the school), and dragging both the ladder and the kite back home (succeeded, with great difficulty). Maybe it was a lot of trouble to go to, but if I'm going to screw up I might as well try to fix it.
I also found out what happened to the cable. Apparently the county put in some new signs by the curb to tell people not to park their cars in front of the gutter drains, which are at the ends of the street. Our house is on the corner, and part of the curb in front of it is taken up by this drain. Some genius didn't consult with the cable company about where they'd laid their wires, and ended up severing the cable. Some people from the company are out there right now - they dug a hole in the ground to fix the cable and now I think they're filling it back up. The TV works again. Joy oh joy.
Speaking of TV, I'm still watching too much of it. Last night (or early this morning) I was watching this cartoon on Adult Swim called Case Closed. It's an 80's anime series about a gifted teen detective who gets turned into a six-year-old by some bad guys who slip him an experimental poison. I feel rather indifferent about it, except that a couple things strike me as weird. One is that the protagonist, in the premier, shares his aspiration to be as great a detective as Sherlock Holmes. This wasn't just something done on the whim of the translator, because the kid goes on at length about it, and you see anime stills of the great fictional detective (and he actually looks pretty good anime style, not ridiculous at all). I find it funny that a Japanese guy would be such a big fan of Holmes, although I guess the Japanese don't have classic mystery literature of their own. Though you may not want to listen to me when I say that, because I haven't done a great deal of research on the subject. Anyway, I thought it was quite odd that this kid was praising Holmes, mentioning that he could play the violin, he was a great scientist, very observant, and physically fit (like the kid, who was a star soccer player before he got dosed with the poison). He leaves out the fact that Holmes was very eccentric, a compulsive smoker, a coke addict, a terrible misogynist, and an all-around arrogant bastard whose only friend was the patient and devoted Dr. Watson. Not to mention that he was a Brit in the Victorian era, something which some people consider to be utterly unpardonable.
On a parting note, you know Joan D. Vinge has gotten to you when the phrase "I'm a summer, not a winter!" in reference to style types gives you the heebie-jeebies. I think I already mentioned the Starbucks thing.
Mom's home with a migraine (she's been getting them a lot the past few years), so I've been pampering her according to her requests. She was very upset because the cable was out in our house, so she can't watch QVC and was unhappy about missing some special they had. Although she said she was feeling to crappy to do anything other than watch TV, she got up the energy to call the cable company on the phone. When they said they couldn't fix it immediately unless other people had their cable out, Mom started calling the houses up the street. Nobody was home, though. She sent me across the street to ask if the cable there was working. The family wasn't home, but there were some contractors working there, and one of them checked the TV for me. I can't believe Mom's so fussy. It's only the television. Of the two of us, I should be the one fussing about the TV being out, but you don't see me doing that, now do you?
I got some more work on my fic done today, which was a major accomplishment. Since the weather was nice I went out to the school soccer field with a kite to see if I could fly it. It's a very pretty kite, all in flourescent colors, shaped like a hot-air balloon. In profile, because it's flat and all. There were good breezes but they weren't constant. It took me a few tries to get the kite flying. In the end I managed it and got it so far up that I used all the string on the roll. It looked so lovely against the blue sky with all the clouds. I wish Mom or Dad or the boys had been able to see it.
Now, I said getting the kite in the air took a few tries. That wasn't the hard part. The hard part was getting it down without getting it stuck in a tree (at which I failed), ravelling up all the string without getting it tangled (I got it tangled but I got it untangled quickly), pulling the kite out of the tree without breaking the string (failed), dragging over a ladder from the garage (succeeded, with difficulty), using it to get the kite down (succeeded, with help from a maintenance guy at the school), and dragging both the ladder and the kite back home (succeeded, with great difficulty). Maybe it was a lot of trouble to go to, but if I'm going to screw up I might as well try to fix it.
I also found out what happened to the cable. Apparently the county put in some new signs by the curb to tell people not to park their cars in front of the gutter drains, which are at the ends of the street. Our house is on the corner, and part of the curb in front of it is taken up by this drain. Some genius didn't consult with the cable company about where they'd laid their wires, and ended up severing the cable. Some people from the company are out there right now - they dug a hole in the ground to fix the cable and now I think they're filling it back up. The TV works again. Joy oh joy.
Speaking of TV, I'm still watching too much of it. Last night (or early this morning) I was watching this cartoon on Adult Swim called Case Closed. It's an 80's anime series about a gifted teen detective who gets turned into a six-year-old by some bad guys who slip him an experimental poison. I feel rather indifferent about it, except that a couple things strike me as weird. One is that the protagonist, in the premier, shares his aspiration to be as great a detective as Sherlock Holmes. This wasn't just something done on the whim of the translator, because the kid goes on at length about it, and you see anime stills of the great fictional detective (and he actually looks pretty good anime style, not ridiculous at all). I find it funny that a Japanese guy would be such a big fan of Holmes, although I guess the Japanese don't have classic mystery literature of their own. Though you may not want to listen to me when I say that, because I haven't done a great deal of research on the subject. Anyway, I thought it was quite odd that this kid was praising Holmes, mentioning that he could play the violin, he was a great scientist, very observant, and physically fit (like the kid, who was a star soccer player before he got dosed with the poison). He leaves out the fact that Holmes was very eccentric, a compulsive smoker, a coke addict, a terrible misogynist, and an all-around arrogant bastard whose only friend was the patient and devoted Dr. Watson. Not to mention that he was a Brit in the Victorian era, something which some people consider to be utterly unpardonable.
On a parting note, you know Joan D. Vinge has gotten to you when the phrase "I'm a summer, not a winter!" in reference to style types gives you the heebie-jeebies. I think I already mentioned the Starbucks thing.
