A Not-Much Day

I didn't do much today, which as you might have guessed is pretty much what I wanted to do. I did think idly about going for a bike ride, since I haven't done Lake Monona in a while, but I decided that biking to work is enough "required" exercise for now, and I didn't really want to do anything that required me to psych myself up even a little to do it.

Heck, the only time I went out today was to get PowerBars for breakfast this week, which only entailed a short walk to the co-op.

CHECK-OUT GUY: That'll be $14.37. Are you a member?

MHR: Sure am.

CHECK-OUT GUY: Have you renewed your membership for this year, and gotten a bright red card?

MHR (showing card): Yep, I have.

CHECK-OUT GUY: Great. Would you like to chip 14 cents today?

MHR: Suuure.

CHECK-OUT GUY: Your total is $14.51.

MHR (handing the guy a twenty): I guess the only thing I can't do for you today is give you exact change.

CHECK-OUT GUY: That's fine, as long as you have enough money to cover it.

I spent the early afternoon watching lots and lots of New Batman/Superman Adventures episodes, since I had about six-and-a-half hours saved up from last week. I watched about half of them. Will watch many more tomorrow night, probably. I will probably stop watching them soon so I can resume my anal-retentive re-taping of Babylon 5 when the TNT re-runs get a little deeper into the fourth season. I doubt I'll keep that up for very long, though. Maybe finish season four and take another break and wait until the dailies come around to season five again. (I do want to be massively compulsive and fit "Thirdspace" into its proper location in season four, though.)

I was originally going to plunk down $200 for a copy of Filemaker Pro (I think I mentioned this), but a friend suggested that I use ClarisWorks' db instead. It's pretty simplistic, but since all I want are lists of things (i.e., I don't really want to do relational computing), it looks like it might suffice for my needs. My only concern is that maybe I'll hit a record limit at some point, which would suck, but I figure if that happens I can buy a copy of FMP and transfer the ClarisWorks data into it (via ASCII file, if absolutely necessary). So it seems like a no-lose scenario.

It took me about an hour to enter data for my comics collection up through All-Star Comics. This will be a long-term project. But it's been sitting on my "to-do" list for years, so any progress I make is worth a little something.

I also want to catalogue my books, CDs, and electronic equipment. As I've said, I'm mainly doing this for insurance purposes. I'll probably do the electronics soon (next weekend, maybe), since it will be a very small database, and will give me the most bang for my buck in terms of having that info recorded for my purposes.

Somewhere in there I got a call from my Dad, whom I hadn't talked to in a while. He'd gotten back from his vacation to Cape Cod, and sounded like things were going fairly well.

I also gave my cats some attention, let them out on the porch, and accidentally locked Jefferson in the closet. (Dumb animals. I lock one of them in a closet and he doesn't meow and his brother doesn't come get me, but just sits by the door and looks around innocently. What, did they think this was some sort of test?)

Sunday night jazz is doing a tribute to Miles Davis, although mostly they seem to be playing his popular stuff (from Kind of Blue and In A Silent Way, for instance). I'm trying to debate whether I want to buy some of his 80s stuff (I've heard good things about Amandla and We Want Miles), or pick up that huge collection of his 1960s stuff (the period after Kind of Blue but before his fusion albums).

I should write another big jazz entry sometime soon. But not tonight, since I've already written three times as much as I'd intended. I do go on, don't I?

Michael Rawdon (Contact)