23 December 1999: Clouds of Witness

Gazing into the Abyss: Michael Rawdon's Journal

Clouds of Witness

It's been a pretty quiet week at work as people gradually filtered out of the office for their seasonal vacations. Most of the department was absent today, for instance.

Yesterday, however, the woman at the top of our department's hierarchy (I'm not even sure if it's really our department, or our division, or something in-between those two, or what; Apple's hierarchy is pretty confusing at times) held her annual holiday party for all of us under her. We went out to her house in Saratoga during the afternoon, and boy, is Saratoga ever pretty! It's all forested and/or hilly, and her house (which is huge) is near the top of a hill with a terrific view from both sides. No doubt she's lived there for ten or fifteen years; it must be a multi-million-dollar home. And it's a far cry from the urban landscape around where I live.

The party itself was fun (aided by the fact that the temperatures have been in the 60s and 70s all week). There was a gift exchange which involved basically exchanging at random something you had at home which you didn't want anymore, with a couple of extra rules thrown in to make it exciting. I didn't participate, but it was fun to watch. There were some pretty cool gifts (a couple of nice vases, for instance), and some truly awful ones. Plus a few which would only be good gifts for certain people (such as a pair of Barbie slippers, which would appeal mainly to people with girl children).

Much foosball got played this week. I'm coming along pretty well on my offense, making some good angle shots and getting better at controlling the ball. My defense is erratic, though; I can make some terrific plays, but sometimes (like today) my defense just falls completely apart for a game. Practice, practice. It's been a while since I've really worked at developing a physical skill like this, though, so it's rewarding, overall.

I finished reading the second of Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, Clouds of Witness, which is much better than Whose Body?. The mystery largely progresses quite reasonably, with some good red herrings which obscure the fact that it's hard to see exactly what happened the night of the murder. I happily figured out the majority of the mystery about 40 pages before Wimsey did, although I didn't actually determine the identity of the actual killer, but I did resolve all of the red herrings.

However, I was a bit disappointed with the ultimate identity of the killer. A bit cheated, actually. Still, I enjoyed it enough that I'm looking forward to plowing into the next few books in the series.

If I don't write again before then, everyone have a very pleasant holiday season!

Links du jour:

I recently learned (from Comics Buyer's Guide, of all places) that the food chain Boston Market filed for bankruptcy protection and is about to be bought by McDonald's. I've enjoyed Boston Market for several years as a fast food place with much better food (taste-wise) than your typical burger joint. I'd figured they were doing quite well, but apparently they expanded too quickly.
Have I plugged Bob Rokazis' Anything Goes Trivia yet? It's a comic book trivia page which I visit nearly-daily. I think I get about half of them right. Rokazis is a longtime comic book writer and was DC Comics' "Answer Man" back in the 1970s.
ESPN's Athletes of the Century series will feature newly-discovered footage of Babe Ruth's famous "called shot" from the 1932 World Series. The episode will air either Friday or Sunday, since ESPN is keeping the order of the top four athletes secret. My bet is that Ruth is #1, though, so that would presumably be Sunday...