Saw Prince Caspian tonight. Very satisfied. Very well done. Better than expected.

More later.

Oh man, there's just nothing like getting a brainfreeze from a Coke Slurpee. There just isn't.

I broke Halo.

So, I was playing Assault on the Control Room, and you know that part right after you get the Scorpion, where you can either go through the tunnel or around the mountain that the tunnel's in, and you emerge into a large outdoor area with a Wraith, lots of random Covenant, and a tunnel with Hunters in it?

Well, after you kill the Wraith, if you look around there's this lit platform up on the cliffside, and if you shoot the bottom of it a bunch of times, a Banshee falls down.  So I hopped in the Banshee, took out all the Covenant, took it through the tunnel, took out all the Covenant in the indoor chasm room with the two bridges (one broken, one whole), and basically skipped a lot of stuff, triggered a checkpoint further on, came back and triggered some of the checkpoints I'd missed, got out and ran through the building and triggered a bunch more, went back to where I'd left my trustee Banshee....

Anyway, I had three different parts of the soundtrack playing at once.

INCLUDING THE FLOOD MUSIC.  FOR THE FLOOD.  WHICH DO NOT APPEAR IN THIS LEVEL.

WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNN!!!!!!!

Okay, I can forgive our erstwhile "friends" across the pond for a lot of things in the name of international amity. The sight of Graham Chapman in lederhosen, for example. Or the Gallagher brothers' careers. Or fish and that mealy version of the fry they like to call "chips". Or cricket, whatever the hell THAT is.

There are even some things -- Blur, double-decker buses, BBC radio, the original "Coupling" -- that I quite like. And there are still other things *coughDoctor Whocough* that I still maintain we would have been far better off without.

But messing with a good-old fashioned American tradition like the Oreo?!?!? Okay, Guy Fawkes, now you've up and picked yourself a FIGHT. You clearly don't understand the superiority of the cultural import that you choose to disparage. You go on continuing to dunk your gritty little "biscuits" in your weak tea, and leave me my mushy brown creme-filled milk-sodden stacks of joy, okay?

First person who comments to the effect of "Hydrox are better" gets banned from the friendslist for life. :D

Everyone else is posting this link, so I might as well too. In partnership with NPR's economics and business reporter, This American Life did a great segment last week on the subprime mortgage crisis: The Giant Pool of Money.

There's this thing that always happens about two weeks before school gets out, where I completely run out of steam, and lie around dedicating an obscene amount of time to nursing my malaise/ennui, and pondering really deep questions like this one:

Do vegan chicks feel guilty when they swallow?

I thought about googling that, but was too lazy to get up and plug in my computer, whose battery had died. It's not that I don't have things to do. Rather, my life as I know it is rapidly coming to an end, and even though I'm desperate for the transitional phase in general to be over, I find myself wanting to preserve each individual moment of valley-life indefinitely.

Naturally, since it's about 100 degrees and sixty percent humidity, I am making bread. ( The no-knead kind ), which I've timed to be ready breakfast-ish tomorrow. I'll get up and flop it over about six, wake up at eight and bake it, eat too many slices, and then vow to swear off simple carbohydrates for all of eternity.

I did go into my classroom to make sub-plan for Monday, and concluded that I have so much to do that it was better not to get started. Read a few hilarious essay's from ( Sloane Crosley's ) "I Was Told There'd Be Cake", and marveled at the fact that she was EXACTLY the type of upper-middle-class-suburban-New-Yorker I had learned to loathe while working as a camp counselor in CT so many years ago. But in her book? I love her.

Now, back to the kitchen to ponder the fate of a wilting bunch of Brocoli raab, a bottle of pomegranite molasses, ( a blob of salted white-chocolate-oatmeal cookie dough ) (better than it sounds), and a pitcher of sun tea.

Next up on my jam-packed procrastination list? Paint a mask, ( study Chinese ), and maybe find a suitable piece of creative non-ficiton for ( this National Geographic Foreign Correspondant thing I'm trying to get ).

Oh, the tortured life I lead...

When I first started staying in this apartment, I would get these little happy stomach flips over the noise.

Now, I miss my NC apartment for many reasons. It was well-lit, had a gorgeous view, felt open and roomy, and everything worked. But, it was quiet. Very, very quiet. Occasionally, I would hear the geese or ducks. Occasionally, I would hear my upstairs neighbors vacuuming (before I was working night shift, I was amused at the 11PM cleaning sessions they had).

Sure, those days in the South were tranquil and sleepy, relaxed and easygoing. But I missed the feeling of being a part of a greater human whole.

Here, this morning, I can hear a kid playing with a basketball. Sometimes the thud thud thud is the little boy named Sean who lives two doors down, with his large red kickball. There is always playing. Right now, there is a dog barking. I can hear the clear, metallic clank of cutlery from the apartment building next door, and someone's been hammering for a little while now on the fence outside my bedroom window. I can hear a helicopter, probably scanning the freeways for unusual traffic patterns. When the immediate noises are not as frequent, I will hear birds, landscaping machinery, airplanes, the freeway, and a couple kinds of birds, especially mourning doves. My upstairs neighbor here is very quiet - I can hear him walking around, but it's minor. I try to return the favor by keeping the TV volume down when I play Halo.

It's nice to be back in the mix again. Sure, I've traded salt-encrusted cars for palm trees, but I'll try not to complain too much.