confusion

This [reuters.com] is so all kinds of bad, and just plain wrong. Reguardless of being vegitarian or not, feeding live chickens into wood chippers is wrong.

After much toil and “a little help from my friends” (thanks S██████) I can once again boot my computer. In fact I can, load my network driver (still haven’t figured out how I did it much less make it do it automatically,) I have also configured and loaded X so I can see pictures! And while I am typing this in a text only web-browser I will soon have mozilla downloaded and installed! Now a lot more baby steps and I will be able to actually use my computer…

The Unexpected party:
I guess it was Thursday J███████ asked me if I wanted to go to a place called Bilbo Baggins for dinner on Friday. So on Friday afternoon, I met up with J███████, K– and S██████to go have dinner in Old Town Alexandria at a place called Bilbo Baggins—Global Wine Cafe and Restaurant. We where invited by S██████’s friend K–, who I have met a few times, she’s kind of like my sister but without the depressive sadistic side. Any way she and a few other friends of hers met us at Bilbo Baggins for dinner around 7:30. J███████, K–, S██████ and I got there a little bit early and had a pint in the pub first—they have a very good selection of beers. The whole first floor of the place has a distinctly British country pub feel, befitting of it’s Tolkienesk name. We had dinner upstairs in a more, provincial France / rural Italy feeling (because of
the paintings on the walls) dinning room. The food was a little bit more they we would normally pay if we where going out, but not overpriced at all. And it was amazing. S██████ and I split a French Country Cheese Platter, which had what was probably the best Brie I have ever tasted on it. And I had the Gnocchi Napolitano—which makes my mouth water just thinking about it! I also had a glass of Bonny Doon, Glaciere Muscat for dessert! It was soooooo good. Anyway, a lot of good conversation, excellent food all made for a great nite we’ll have to do it again.

More food stories:
Saturday afternoon, J███████, K– and S██████were supposed to come over to my place to cook. So I cleaned up a little Saturday afternoon (because I slept in till 1pm like an invalid) and went shopping for a few thinks. We had planned to get together around 6:30 and cook, but at 7:30 I got a call from J███████, that his car had broken down on 66. Seems it overheated—and I can completely sympathize with sitting on the side of the road in NoVa with an over heated car, been there, done that. Twice! So I had kind of written the evening off and planned to work on my laptop when J███████ called me back and asked if I was still up for at very late dinner. Of course I was, so he, K– and S██████ climbed into K–‘s car and meandered their way into the District, this time having to deal with whatever caused half the roads around the White House to be closed, but they made it. We started cooking around 9:00, Jon and Kim did most of the work, S██████ played with my laptop for me and I put the music, Norah Jones (boy suddenly I feel useless… no wait, it was my kitchen and my dishes. OK I feel better!) Well, J███████ and K– made excellent food, as always and we sat around and talked till midnight. Lovely evening, there is not much that is better then good food, good conversation and good friends. (Though someone was missing…)

Geeky!
On Sunday it was my turn to run the d&d campaign. I had like two months to get it set up and still I found myself scribbling notes as late at Saturday night on how I wanted things to work. Now I used to be a fairly good dm but it’s been years since I did really dm, and I don’t read as much fantasy as I did back then. I think that this has caused me to loose some of my d&d plot creation ability… the complex plots of Dostoevsky and Sartre do not lend themselves to player driven role playing. So I agonized over the whole thing, but in the end J███████ and S██████ both said it worked well.

Also on Sunday I returned to the problem of my laptop. Now on Saturday night—as mentioned above—S██████ started looking at what was wrong with my laptop. He took it back with him when he left and apparently spent a significant part of the night sitting on his bed playing with in. With the help of a working computer with witch to connect to the Internet and read the documentation he discovered what he believes is my problem. I won’t go into all the gory geeky details here but, I think he was right because on Sunday night I sat down and in an hour or so had managed to get to computer to load the network card an think it was connected… now things don’t happen in the right order automatically so it all has to be done by hand right now, but it did say I was connected! Then I typed $ startx and BOOM! it blew up… no wait, it just said there was no screen defined, but X never works on the first try. Hopefully I will be able to get it configured tonight and then I will once again be able to connect to the
outside world from home! Yea!

Whig:
Oh yea, funny story. Riding the Metro out to Vienna to get my truck on Sunday and go play d&d I watched a man take his whig off several times and brush it. Now this whig so totally did not fit the man—he was older, but the hair was bright blond and currly, but that’s not the funny part. The funny part was the look of horror on the two girls who got on and sat across from him when they saw him take his hair off and begin to brush it. They got off at the next stop… somehow I don’t think it was their final stop. And dude played with his hair, putting it on, taking it off, brushing it, and looking in a little mirror trying to get it just right for the while 45 minute ride. It’s like seeing the bodies at a bad car accident—you’re horrified but you can’t take your eyes off it.

All in all, it was a very good weekend, one of the best in a long time. Hopefully this week my loptop issues will be resolved and I can stop the weekend reports and write there things as they happen from home.

Form The Economist [economist.com]:

America intends to use Iraqi oil revenues to finance the country’s reconstruction. But France and Russia have a list of oil contracts waiting to go ahead once sanctions are lifted, and both countries are among Iraq’s biggest creditors. America may find it has to promise that the new Iraq will honour those debts and that, even if old oil contracts are not honoured, opponents of the war will not be excluded from new contracts. Failure to give such assurances might tempt the French and Russians to wield their vetoes on the Security Council.

Weather you agree with America or with France/Russia/Germany, with the war or not, I think the above paragraph speaks for itself. It’s a pity that there has been no creditable voice for or against the war—one without political or economic motives. Perhaps they are out there and it is just that they are not interesting enough for the media.

Outside it’s raining. People scurry by the window with umbrellas or hoods puled low over their faces. The clouds deepen the early evening darkness. Street lights create little pools of radiance as their light reflects of the falling rain drops. Cars speed past down Connecticut Avenue. The light from inside illuminates an anti-war poster tapped to an ugly tree just outside.

Inside the air is filled with quiet jazz and conversation. Baristas call out orders, people chat as they drink their coffee, or tea. The window reflects the modern counter, high celling, drop lighting. It reflects the purple chairs. I sit in one of the chairs, my copy of this weeks Economist in my lap, an empty cup on the table next to me. Looking out at the rain.

My thoughts are half a world away in another coffee shop. Standing at the door, ready to head out into the rain. We wait for the light on Goswell Road to change, then dash out and cross the road. It’s only a couple of blocks back, but the rain is cold and the wind drives it around the umbrella no matter how you hold it. The two of us huddle behind the umbrella braced against the wind, she wraps her arm around mine and huddles as close as she can.

Little memories just sneak up on me all the time, vivid images, reminding me of how much I miss that time. Walking past a brick wall reminds me of a pub in Oxford, sitting with J███████ talking about nothing. The pattern in a carpet brings back the hallway of a hotel in Milan, A—– and I exhausted after a long night wondering the city. But most of the memories remind me of how much I miss her. The way she smiles, the way she pushes her hair behind her ear, the sound of her voice, the feel of her hand when she held mine. Nights spent walking around London, days spent sitting in coffee shops. Not a day goes buy that I don’t think of her, that I don’t wish I could find some way to be near her.

I miss you Tati