Things That Occupy My Time

Yesterday I slept in and then did, well, bupkis for the rest of the day. Did some work on my Web pages (like adding images to my strategy games page) and also added my photo and some favorite item lists to my Amazon About Me page. Did some laundry, ate some Thanksgiving leftovers, yadda-yadda-yadda.

Heck, I even took it so slow and easy that I did the Saturday and Sunday crossword puzzles in the paper. (I should explain: I get the entertainment sections of the Sunday Mercury News for some reason, so I can read "tomorrows funnies today", or something like that. (If nothing else, I can ooh and aah over the photos of Jessica Alba in this week's Parade section. I hadn't realized that she's only 19 years old!)

Anyway, I did worse-than-usual on the Saturday Merc puzzle, and my usual utterly abysmal job on the Sunday Noo Yawk Times puzzle.

I finished up the afternoon by watching a few TV shows. I'm still about three weeks behind. So the episode of Gideon's Crossing dates from mid-November. It was an excellent, if agonizing, show which starts with the revelation that a patient who came to the hospital complaining of chest pains died over the weekend. It then examines everything that happened that weekend, and the individual steps that each resident took which contributed to his eventual demise. It's agonizing because you know, each step of the way, that things aren't going to turn out well. It's obviously not an episode designed to inspire confidence in doctors, but then, doctor make mistakes, and purely statistically speaking, there's always risk. It's still a strong episode, and shows us to some degree how the doctors deal with the ramifications of their mistakes, when confronted with the results.

Okay, on a lighter note, in the evening I went to a party thrown by my Apple (and ex-Epic) cohort Mike Trent and his wife Angela. They catered (!) in food and cookies and such which were pretty yummy. Most of the other attendees were Apple and former NeXT employees and their spouses, along with a college mate of theirs who has moved to the area.

Most of us were there until after midnight, talking about geeky things and about living in the Bay Area. We had the obligatory Microsoft rant, and I talked to Angela for a while about comic books (she reads a few alternative books like Strangers in Paradise and Bone) and I might loan she and Mike a few books I have which they might enjoy. (Yes, I'm just the comic book pusher around here.)

It was a very fun time. I'm glad they invited me.

Today I basically completed all the tasks I set for myself, those being:

• I worked out.
• I went by the Goodwill drop-off station to find out what I need to do to donate clothes. (As I suspected, I just need to bring them by.)
• I ate.
• I watched football.
• I finished reading the book on house buying I picked up, Buy Your First Home!

Reading the house buying book has left me appropriately startled about the process of buying a home. (Heck, wait 'til I start looking. Then I'll be startled!) I think the two things that most concern me are learning that the real estate agent won't be "on my side" since she'll probably be representing the seller's interests primarily, and that I should probably get a real estate lawyer to consult with me on the paperwork. (I should also probably find a tax accountant too, to discuss tax ramifications ahead of time. But I've been thinking I should hire one just to go over my taxes for the last few years anyway.)

I'm also obviously concerned about how much money will get plowed into various fringe things in buying a place, which means less money for the down payment. But I'd mostly reconciled myself to that. It's the seeming complexity of buying a place which has me concerned just now.

But hopefully I calm down over the next few days.