I've been back from Seattle for over a week, now, and still no laptop power adapter. For those of you not in the know, I had left it in an art gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia a couple of weeks ago (during a day trip). Which, in retrospect, really serves me right for (a) Going to British Columbia and (b) Going to an art gallery. In fact, the painful result that is my current lack of laptop is really well-matched to its first cause. Lesson learned: No more pretensions towards admiration of the 'finer' things in life, and all further aethestic appreciation is right out the window. Can I have my cable back?

I did finally hear some word of it today - evidentally Dave (a wonderful person who I am honored to call my friend, and the person I went to Seattle to visit) just got a package from the gallery (the BFly Atelier), and he is sending it on to Queens. Which is funny because he's flying to Long Island at the end of the week, and there is a non-zero probability that he will visit my apartment before the cable gets delivered. Eh, what are you gonna do?

So, I quit my job a few weeks ago. Did I mention that? I don't know if that's the right phrase to use - people always seem to get the wrong impression when I say it. There were no raised voices or bruised egos - I gave a months notice, the boss took me out to lunch and my peers took me out to a bar, hearty handshakes all around. But I'm almost positive it's not correct to say "I retired." "I left," maybe? Hence the trip to Seattle, and the news item warning of a precipitous drop in our nations GDP. I will soon (well not soon really. Not by any reasonable metric that is) start working at Bloomberg LLP as a Junior Software Developer. I'm really excited about that. But what I'm far more excited about is that until then, I really have nothing to do but... Well, nothing. My current project is entering Central Park at different entrances, and walking around until I find something I recognize. I've been at it for a while now, and I haven't succeeded once. For a while I thought was able to find the same spot over and over, but I realized that I was determining my position by referencing some guy who was following me.

On rereading the next paragraph, I see that this next paragraph I wrote might seem a bit unwieldy. As such, I'm going to give you a heads up that there's a simile coming up, and to watch out for it.

I'm trying to work on a couple of things during this time, as well. One thing I'm working at is increasing my vocabulary. I think words are awesome, and I want to know as many as possible (I also need it to work on my Scrabble skills, since I have a friend or two who are to Scrabble what TV's Burt Ward was to making pithy and context-appropriate phrases that start with the word "Holy." Which is to say, "quite good at." So I bookmarked a word-a-day page online somewhere. Which was a big mistake. It's made me angry everyday. The other day, the word was "antediluvian," and I got really upset that a word was needed for that concept. Have you ever had a conversation where the position of the events in question with respect to the Great Flood wasn't easily gleaned from the context? "Oh, that was ANTEdiluvian? I thought you meant Jacob from Baltimore was wrestling with an angel all night. Weird."

Stupid English. It was my fault, I just realized. I changed the bookmark to that for the OED. Although, looking I can see that todays word of the day is

"dis: trans To show disrespect for by using insulting language or dismissive behaviour; to abuse or insult, usually verbally. Also intr.

That's definitely not a Scrabble word. Stupid OED.