Another Brief Update

Didn’t go to see William Gibson. Did enjoy an evening at home, watching Dirty Harry with Laura. We’ve been watching a whole lot of iconic-but-not-necessarily-good films lately.
Did go scuba diving, finally, on Sunday. Laura got to try a new, much smaller, wetsuit, which fit. We went to Brackett’s Landing (aka Edmonds Underwater Park) with Cindy and several other people, but the visibility was terrible enough that we gave up after the first dive. Which leaves me with 49 dives under my belt. (I’d been hoping to hit fifty — guess that will happen next time.) Other than the poor viz and a long surface swim, it definitely seems like a promising dive site, given how close it is to home, and the size of the few fish we could see through the murk, cabezon and lingcod alike.
Next Thursday, Laura is abandonining me vacationing in Chicago without me for two weeks, to celebrate her unemployment, and see old friends. Wish I could join her, but I’ve got stuff to do. Heck, I might even be traveling for work myself for a week of that time. I’ve also got a long list of my own projects that I need to address.
I’m constantly torn between my deep-seated desire for stablity and my wild yearning for radical departure. This day, this week, this month, this year are no different in that respect. Just throwing that out there.
I’m still trying to find more people who want to go scuba diving in Seattle on a regular basis, either with both me and Laura or just a singleton needing a buddy, as Laura and I have somewhat different dive appetites at the moment.
The six-month-old home theater experiment has been a success, so far as reducing attendance at movie theatres: the only film we’ve seen together in the theater since December was the new Indiana Jones movie. (During my last month of business trips, my colleagues and I saw some forgettable schlock horror film and Laura got to see Cecil B. Demented presented by John Waters himself.) If we previously went to the theater about twice a month on average, at something like $40 with snacks and drinks for the pair of us, that’s $40 x 12 = $480 we’ve saved, about one-third of what we spent on the improvements. (The cost of staying at home is a DVD or Blu-Ray rental, which given our pre-pay at the video store is less than two bucks apiece. Even including our entire video block in the cost of the home theater, it’s still better than 25% of the way to payback.)
Work manages to be challenging, and to provide lots of opportunities for both company and personal improvement. A lot of the time it feels like treading water or worse, but I do feel that other people frequently recognize my accomplishments.
I’m putting enough time and energy into work that I’m not able to write effectively. I just don’t have the time. I have a full story drafted in a notebook that I need to type, edit, and perhaps rewrite; I have another story about one-third done, a story that I’m really excited about but just don’t have time to complete. Perhaps I’ll get to finish it when Laura’s out of town.
Almost finished watching Season 5 of The Wire, which is without a doubt the best television show ever. I’m more than a little sorry to see it end.
Maybe writing in bullet points lets me say more, since I feel less compelled to explicitly connect my thoughts to each other. The connections are there, but more oblique.
Saw Tonx and Emily for dinner the other night. It was good to see them, and I’m looking forward to their return to Seattle in the coming months.
I’m bummed by my growing inability to reach out and connect to my larger circle of friends, scattered across at least this hemisphere. It’s almost entirely my failing that I’m so bad at keeping in touch, despite really really missing a whole lot of people, and wanting to enjoy their company, if only virtually. But of course, the longer I let these things lie, the more challenging it is to reconnect.
Laura’s back from her evening walk/jog session. Time to go do other stuff now.