Day after thanksgiving

[kragen@pobox.com (Kragen Sitaker)]

Had a pleasant day.  Got up rather early -- about 8 -- after dreams
about tackling burglars in the kitchen.

For breakfast, I fried an egg in sausage grease in a cast-iron skillet
on a gas range.  It was really nice to work with the old familiar
stuff.  I had green chile on top, and some sausage patties on the
side.  Yum.

Lunch was turkey sandwiches.

Spent time helping Carolyn put some stuff up for bidding on eBay.
Introduced my stepfather to the Jargon File and gnu.org; he seems to be
a hacker at heart, despite using WebTV for his Internet access.

Carolyn and I went through some of Karl's pictures; I guess a Center
for Southwest Research at UNM will be purchasing them soon, and she
wanted to give me the opportunity to pick prints to keep before she
sold them all.  We got into an interesting dialogue about the tension
between meaningful relationships with others and freedom.

Went over to Jay and Katie's house for dinner; Greg and Paula came
too.  I counted the movies on their top two bookshelves; there were
68.  I had seen 9.  I guess that makes me not much of a movie buff.

Played with their cat Keyser.  Greg and Jay played catch with a little
green stuffed alien; Keyser jumped several feet in the air several
times to catch the alien.  It was really impressive.

Jay showed me an old IBM Thinkpad, which he had confused with another
laptop he had been going to sell me.  Perhaps we can obtain that other
laptop from Charles tomorrow.

I arm-wrestled with Jay, which was fun.  It was rather indecisive with
right arms -- I could force his forearm down to the ground, but not his
hand.  (His arms are shaped a bit like Popeye's, you see.)  My right
shoulder feels a bit limp now.  Left arms went much quicker; I was
quickly and unambiguously defeated.

Paula recommended _The God of Small Things_; I recommended _Stiffed_.
Then I tried to explain what the book was about but could not.  Perhaps
I don't really understand the point of the book.  I'm having a great
time reading it, though :)

Katie is a bit of a neat freak; Jay is every bit as messy as I.  I
inquired how they managed to get along, as this has been a major point
of difficulty in my relationship with Marilyn.  (Their house was
extremely tidy.)  Katie's version is that Jay keeps things clean.
Jay's version is that they're never home, so things don't get messy.

Among the books on their shelves, I saw lots of Piers Anthony, Anne
Rice, John Saul, etc., and also _Backlash_, _One True Thing_, etc.
Videos occupied more shelf space than books did.  I'm not sure what
conclusion to draw from this; perhaps I should refrain from judgment.

One of Jay or Katie asked me about my painted fingernails, as did a guy
at the gas station.

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
The Internet stock bubble didn't burst on 1999-11-08.  Hurrah!
<URL:http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/bubble.html>