Hmmm, it's been a week, where to start?

HuSi lunch, nothing new to report, except that I quite like toxicfur's tattoo design.

It seems that depression has been setting in on me again, but I did get out on the bike yesterday which seems to have remedied it quite a bit. It's like it's the severity is directly proportion to the time spent off the bike.

I felt great yesterday. I so love my bike. It's so quiet and smooth, it works perfectly, it fits me great, I love it. It was quite cool in the city, but once in the burbs it warmed up a lot. I took the abbreviated Concord-Carlisle loop, about 50 miles (the regular loop is about 70). I didn't take much money with me. I though I had $10 but it turned out I had only $8. Quite the shock when you order a sandwich and drink at the Country Store ("Work Hahd. Play Hahda.") and it totals out at $7.88. I also saw that Kimball's is open again!!!! Huzzah!

Next weekend is the first century of the year. We'll see how it goes. It's one of those I have to be up and at 'em at 5:30 AM. Ugh. It looks like a crowd might be there: two from last year's long ride and two bloging acquantances.

The organized rides are having a lot of scheduling conflicts this year and I'm going to miss at least three because of that. TFCE is the same weekend as NVP and Major Taylor is the same weekend as Tri-state. That's too bad, Major Taylor is a much nicer ride than tri-state, but I'm already signed up for tri-state. Ocean State, Gloucester, and Quabbin are all on the same day! Can't miss Quabbin, I like that one. Oh well, things can change.

My whiplash is acting up again. Argh! It's hard to ride a bike when it hurts to lift your head. Ow.

I was on a reading binge this weekend. It's the first time in a long time I read a book cover to cover in one sitting. Thursday and Friday I read Death in the Clouds Saturday, I went to the library and spent the rest of the day reading and finishing The Murder of Roger Akroyd. I also checked out one of the John Carter books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Gods of Mars. I read some of the John Carter books in middle school and liked them, so I thought I'd see if they were still good. They are! I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Lots of fighting, swashbuckling, and daring do. I also got one Miss Marple for later.

As a result, I didn't turn on the tv once all weekend. It was nice. Sunday was abnormally quiet, even for a Sunday. You'd think it was a holiday or something.

Quarterly doctor appointment last Monday. All numbers within target ranges. I did drop my glucometer on the tile floor and watched it shatter into three pieces, so I've spend the last few days trying to get another one. Finally got ahold of the right person and one is being FedEx'd tomorrow. I don't like going for long rides without one.

MediaWiki is extremely difficult to maintain on a hosted service, so I'm switching to TikiWiki. So far, I like it much better. The only two things I haven't figured out yet is how to redirect pages (go to some page, then auto-redirect to somewhere else), and how to include one wiki page in another. E.g. I want the home page to be an assemblage of several other pages. How do I do that? It's easy to do in MediaWiki (one of the only things that are really "easy".

Left over movie thoughts from a couple weeks ago:

Ed Wood

[Netflix] [IMDb]

A biopic about Ed Wood, often voted the worst director evar. Director of Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Glen or Glenda?

Johnny Depp does a fantastic job as Wood, in fact, most of the cast are fantastic.  Martin Landau’s performance as the drug addled Bela Lugosi really did deserve the Oscar he won. Sarah Jessica Parker was under used, but Lisa Marie as Vampira was outstanding. The film is shot in black and white and really would not have worked any other way.

; would own

Memento

[Netflix] [IMDb]

Since his "incident", Leonard (Guy Pearce) is unable to form new memories. Everything fades in a matter of minutes. To cope with this problem, he’s taken to the habit of taking snapshots of everything and writing notes on them as a sort of "photographic memory". For very important things, he tattoos himself with the information. That important information is what he hopes will lead him to his the killer of his wife (played in flashbacks by Jorja Fox). The photos are craftily used in a way that is very convincing.

This is the movie that’s shown in reverse. It opens with Leonard shooting Teddie (Joe Pantoliano) point blank in the head. The next scene is what happened immediately prior to that, and so on. It’s remarkably effective, especially when involving the whole episode with Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) and how she cleverly uses his affliction to manipulate the situation. In fact, most everyone uses him and in the end-- or is it the beginning?-- nothing is as it appears.

I wonder if this would be a good film if shown in a "proper" order. My guess is that it probably wouldn’t. The whole thing is based on not knowing how you ended up in a place, and finding that out is what the ride is all about. It also has the effect of putting you in Leonard’s shoes. Since you haven’t seen what’s happened before, you have no more idea how he came to be where he is that Leonard does. As a side bonus, Pearce spends a good deal of the film in various stages of undress.

; would watch again

You can sure tell it's a bank holiday, eh?