Hello Strangers...

Well my friends in the blogosphere it’s been a while since I, like Jim Anchower, rapped at ya. It’s been pretty hectic.

Here’s what’s new. When last I was posting you were seeing posts from beautiful Frascati, Italy.

Obviously I took the big ol’ jet-airplane back to the US and arrived just fine. The flight was long and a bit more grueling than I recall. The real cursable thing about flying west from Europe is that if you catch a morning flight, you really feel quite compelled to stay awake the duration of the flight.

Assuming you’ve gotten your body on the Continental clock, you’re feeling like “Oh, it’s 11 am, lunchtime, etc.” and the idea of “Hey sleep for 8 hours” is, for me anyway, not in the works. OK, if you stay up all night the night before this might be in the cards, but creates such a miserable experience otherwise, it’s not worth it.

So on my flight back across to NYC I finished Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto which I very much liked. It was a very interesting study of human relationship in terms of class and privilege and how, under duress, this breaks down and people truly start dealing with each other as people, come to know each others’ problems and identities, and actually start to build real community….and how quickly the machinery of modern society will lash out against real interaction.

With that book polished off and a lunch consumed I found myself about 3 hours away from Long Island so I watched some interestinf TV programs and used the last hour for some old-fashioned staring out the window.

Arriving in NYC was a breeze and customs didn’t hassle me. I guess, unlike when I returned from Holland after a year at age of 21, I don’t look like I’m carrying a tonne of ecstasy in my valises (and, for the record, I have never stuffed my valises with ecstasy).

The flight back on my now most favorite airline Song was lightly booked so I had the exit row all to myself. If you can believe this, after 1 week of coding Cocoa non-stop I actually worked on a Cocoa application some more. Eventually my (by that time quite) timezone frazzled mind started fritzing and I took the edge off with some Tostito’s and processed liquified cheese food (making, uh, a nacho) and a Heineken.

Thanks to my AWESOME APC UPB-80 battery I still had enough juice to watch a DVD (and then some), so I watched my buddy Franco’s lent copy of Dead Ringers.

This movie is totally awesome…if you like edgy movies. I feel it redundant to give pedestrian synopses of movies on the internet because anyone reading anything I wrote could read the imdb review or the Amazon review, so I’m going to save myself the effort.

I find Cronenberg’s movies very challenging and very disturbing (generally). He seems to have a very complex relationship with the modern experience of life which is mediated by technology. He frequently has the erotic be a function of technological progress or medical production of medical mutation. It’s the same sort of curious revilement that underlies 9th graders looking up “elephantitis of the testicles” in the book of medical strangeness – but Cronenberg never lets “hey look freaks!” override an intricate story full of subtlety, art, and tenderness (strange to atrtibute that!).

The real hilight of the film is THE GREATEST ACTOR ON THE PLANET, Jeremy Irons, playing two identical twins. How he, one person, can play two different personalities that, effectively, share one soul, and make both of them seem alive, vibrant, and different is absolutely staggering.

I wish he’d do more Shakespeare. He’d be such a great Iago.

So anyway, having watched that I was pretty much into the stay of overtired and couldn’t sleep. On the up side I was only about 90 minutes away from my beloved San Francisco. I watched some TV programs and then was landed.

Upon arriving my beautiful girlfriend was there at the baggage claim in a wonderful fuzzy, new, sweater. It felt very good to be holding her again after so many days away! We returned to our new house in Sunnyvale, I ate a bowl of oatmeal, and went to bed. I was out before she returned from brushing her teeth.

The next days were spent in recovery from jet-lag. While I didn’t have any troubles on the way over, I was not all that well off upon my return. We went to the mall at 10am (uh, because I was ready to) and I had a good lunch and got one of those cool Chinese massages.

The following days were spent avoiding unpacking from the trip and trying to finish off the unpacking from our move. I eventually finished by work e-mail backlog and got things rolling there again.

In the evening times, instead of TV or blogging, I’ve been working on my Cocoa program - I’m trying to make sure I use what I’ve learned instead of letting it slip away. I’ve also been trying to get the house all caught up because of my elective surgery on 02/02.

I’m getting Lasik Wavefront surgery tomorrow. I’m nearsighted and would like to snowboard / surf / etc. without this hind’rance any longer. I’m a bit apprehensive, but the surgeon is one of the most practiced in the area and the technology seems sound to me, so, here I go.