It's a rainy day here today. It's been a rainy day for about three weeks now. Instead of trying to fight the rain, I decided to join it. I built my own tour of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco online by typing in the keyword "rain", and viewing the results. I especially like this Japanese woodcut.

This must have been one of those ghost planes. We have those all over around here, ya know.

Just added a little code to show the 10 latest quotes I've added to the quote page.

I said in my dream
"Am I dreaming?
Do I dream I dream
This uncanny dream?"

- Anonymous Japanese Poem

a new reflective self portrait at the mirror project.

Lord of the Rings was spectacular...worth going to the midnight show. I went in without reading any reviews or seeing any trailers and I'm glad I went through the effort. I'll save my thoughts for a while so I don't spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen it.

I will say that the scenery (even though some enhanced with special effects) was incredible. I really want to visit New Zealand.

Last night we also picked up advanced tickets for the Wednesday, midnight showing of Lord of the Rings. I don't want to oversell it, but it's going to be better than 200 super bowls!*

*Simpsons, 4F12

Last night skp and I decided to go see Vanilla Sky. We went out for a nice dinner first, which went a little longer than we planned. We ended up at the movie theatre late, and had to see a later showing. They formed a line to get in, and we dutifully stood at the front, waiting. Finally they announced that due to technical problems the current showing was running a little late, and our showing would start about ten minutes late. I turned to skp and said, "What do you think?" She said, "I'm leaning toward leaving." With that, we walked out, full popcorn in hand. We'd waited about 40 minutes and paid $16. But the thought of a warm bed and a good night's sleep won out over the thought of two hours of Tom Cruise.

my friends are wacky.

The last few words my laptop said to me were, Unexpected Kernel Mode Trap. Dumping Memory and File close failed on BIOS.ROM. Old laptop friend, why couldn't you have been more like HAL? Daisy, daisy...

A good feature about blogging by linguest Geoff Nunberg on Fresh Air today. He compared blogs to The Diary of Nobody published in 1892...getting at the inside and outside experience of daily life. Funnily (to me), he said, "my friend who has a blog of her own said..."

skp and I made it back from Nebraska safe and sound. The train ride was great; though it somehow seems longer on the way home. I uploaded some snapshots:


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Today I had a great time visiting with family I hadn't seen since last Christmas. This week I hope to meet up with some friends. That means you, craig, yo. And it's not cold! (in the upper 50's.)

The trip to Nebraska by train was beautiful. There was snow in the Sierras, and all along the route until Western Nebraska. It was amazing to see the contrast from my earlier trip. The land seems hidden underneath the snow, but the contours more pronounced. And each snow saturated tree had its own personality instead of blending into a blur of forest. It was frustrating at times to watch it all roll by instead of being able to stop and explore areas in more depth; studying animal tracks in the snow, feeling the cold icicles in my hand, or following a path into the trees.


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Last night I was on the highway between Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska when I saw some strange lights in the sky. They looked like missles, and my first thought was 'oh crap, U.S. first strike'. I'd never seen anything like it before. Today, I found out it was probably an old Russian rocket burning up in the atmosphere. I feel lucky I got to see it.

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