Consumer snowball effect

So we bought the HDtv from Andre.

So we thought, hmm, we could get the HD cable box from Comcast.

While Seppo was trading in the HD cable box, he was talked into getting the HD dvr* on top of that.

We now have two TiVos AND an HD dvr that has two tuners to record two shows simultaneously. Overkill!

Then we thought, well, we should get a media/tv organizer that works better with our setup.

So we went to Ikea and bought two TV stands (that have been placed side-by-side) to hold all the random boxes and some of our dvds.

Then we rearranged our couch and table and rug.

Because, you know, we got a tv. That we totally hadn’t planned on getting.

*By the way, the Comcast DVR is poo-on-a-stick. The horrible, horrible interface makes me want to pull out my hair. I love great UI and TiVo certainly wins hands down in that aspect. The Comcast DVR is only worth having because of the ability to record HD.

Splurge!

So… I have no idea how to justify this, but Seppo and I bought an incredibly-close-to-brand-spanking-new HDTV which arrived in the mail yesterday. Thanks, Andre! Why are you so awesome? 🙂

It is really quite gorgeous.

In a much smaller splurge, I am purchasing the Outlander Audiobook CD (Unabridged). It is 32.5 hours long. That’s nothing compared to the last book in the series, which is 58 hours long. 😀 Anyway, I am getting the audiobook to help with my commute. I’ve been listening to podcasts of NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and “Sunday Puzzle” the last few days, a change from listening to the local newsradio station and random music from my ipod, and this change has been for the better.

The first time, part 1

I still remember the first time I heard music in stereo sound. I was twelve years old. I had just received a Sony Walkman (my first!) from a visiting friend of the family, as it had been my birthday not too long ago. It was a hot summer night, and I was supposed to sleep in the livingroom along with my sister (because the guests were sleeping in our room), but instead of actually sleeping, I lay down on the floor with the thin sheet over me and my first headphones covertly placed over my ears.

In the dark, I closed my eyes, pressed play on the Walkman, and for the first time in my life, really listened to the sounds coming into my ears.

It was… indescribeable. It was amazing. The music came from both sides of me, all around me, from within my head. The music flowed through my consciousness, and it was like I was right there with the musicians, like they were playing a performance for me, in a small room with me. The music washed over me, became a part of me. Or I became a part of it. I don’t know.

—

In the fifth grade, the yearly school eye exam revealed that I was terribly near-sighted. My sight being the only sight I knew, I had no idea there was something wrong. I had figured that you can of course see things near you and not see things far from you. Except that I couldn’t see things most others could. In any case, a visit to the optometrist was scheduled, and a pair of glasses were soon procured.

That evening, I walked back from my piano lesson (I only lasted a month :|) which was just a few blocks away from my house, accompanied by my sister and my cousin, who were also taking lessons there. It was a fall evening, and it was starting to get dark already even though it was just turning to dinner time. There were crunchy dried leaves on the ground, and I looked down, dazzled at how much detail I could see of them. Looking up to the trees that were dropping leaves, I couldn’t believe I could pick out individual leaves. Looking past the trees, I was floored by what I saw.

I saw pinpoints of light. Little, individual, bright shining points in the night sky, different sizes, some twinkling, some steady.

I had no idea. I had, until that point, thought stars were more like the five-pointed stars we draw as kids, big fuzzy bursts of blurry, unfocussed light, some so close to each other that they looked like one.

—

I was in the eighth grade, at my new school. It was the first week or two of classes, and the new music teacher was trying to teach us how to really hear and appreciate music. He played a recording of what a violin sounds like alone, then he told us to listen for that sound and see if we could hear the “buzz of bees”. Puzzled, we waited as he put in another tape and hit play.

Of course, the tape he put in was a recording of the Flight of the Bumblebee. At first, it was just one big wave of music washing over me. I could hear the overall melody and what felt like just a big blob of other stuff with it.

But I stopped and really strained to listen. I tried to pick up the sound he had played for us earlier. And BAM, there it was. Holy moly. I could hear the violins, just the violins, almost as if they were playing completely alone. In a split second, it was gone. It was just a jumble of music again.

Until that moment, I thought when music was played with many instruments at the same time, you just heard the resulting cacophany. No, tht’s not even true. I hadn’t even given it enough thought to have formed an idea like that. Music was just sound and it was either pleasant or not. In that short moment when I could hear the violins, I felt like I had been jolted awake.

Metros I’ve Ridden

Take that, niralth and dre! In addition, I couldn’t find the DC metro here. [ETA: Added!] I also didn’t find the Santa Clara lightrail on here, but that probably doesn’t even count. Those aren’t real trains, I will admit. 😀

Got at b3co.com!

Now I have to admit that I am not sure if I rode the LA metro, but I’m pretty sure I did the bus & metro combo the one time I went off by myself to visit an old friend while down there for E3 one year (the same year I visited Holly and met Eventine and Ace).

Evite & Fundraisers

I don’t really have a problem with people I know personally using Evite to invite me to fundraiser events. However, I have a strongly viceral negative reaction to people giving my email address to other people — or worse, organizations — I don’t know at all who are having fundraisers. It doesn’t matter if it’s an issue I strongly support; it’s simply horrifically rude to basically give away my contact info to a unknown party without my consent.

I think it particularly bothers me with Evites because everytime I get one, I assume it’s a personal invite. To have a random stranger’s fundraiser mixed in with my friends’ invitations is a real pisser, because it feels like they are masquerading as friends and invading my personal space.

Seriously, don’t do it.

Losing Wisdom

Ok, it was just my wisdom tooth — lower left side, to be exact. I’m still a little numb from the novocaine, I took 600mgs of ibuprofen, and I’m icing it as I type, so the pain shouldn’t be too much of as issue.

I hope!

I asked to see my tooth afterwards. It was huge. My new dentist gave me a really interesting talk on bacteria and what different types there are and what causes what in the mouth, as well as exacerbate heart disease and other illnesses in older people. Really quite fascinating. I’ve never had a dentist that explained so much about the actual science of dentistry and dental health. It was great. No sarcasm.

Independently Wealthy

You know how there is that idea that you should think of what you’d like to do if money were not an issue, and that thing is the thing you should try to pursue as your career? I can’t see how this would work for me. Here are the things I’d do for myself if money & time were not an issue:

• Take cooking lessons and spend hours (almost) everyday food shopping and cooking up feasts. Also, go eat all over the world.
• Leisurely travel, staying for months in any given place until I feel like moving on.
• Get more pets instead of just looking over CuteOverload.com and wishing I had more.
• Go on reading & writing binges for weeks where I am completely absent to the world.
• Watch more movies & tv, catch up on the classics.
• Go to performances, whether of dance, music, or other demonstrations of art or skill, like martial arts.
• Take some dance classes.
• Learn random programming languages, run several random websites, write a bunch of fun applications.

My big issue is that there isn’t the One Big Thing I want to be doing; I want to be dabbling in all sorts of life’s little (and big) pleasures. I can’t see how this would translate into a career.

Todo

• Write up the rest of the honeymoon report. With my memory being what it is, without those entries, I’ll never be able to remember what we did years from now. Or even a month from now.
• Review French Laundry Potluck experience. Work on planning another one soon!
• Plan our trip to NY & Philly in October to visit Seppo’s parents and attend friend’s wedding.
• Take more notes for this year’s NaNoWriMo and maybe start some of the exercises.
• Go get a complete physical. I’ve been meaning to do this for months now. I have no idea what my cholesterol level is. I don’t even know my own blood type.
• Post pics more regularly to flickr.

Being Married

A lot of people ask us how our married life is. Frankly, it’s the same as before, except with the wonderful memory of having celebrated the public affirmation of our commitment in front of loved ones. On a day-to-day basis, things are the same. We’ve gotten our insurance under the same company, but we haven’t yet set up a joint bank account, although we keep meaning to. The only weird things so far:

• People have referred to me as Mrs. Helava
• People have called for Seppo, asking for Mr. Choi
• My new dentist just called Seppo instead of me to remind me of my appointment

On a related note, my dog’s antibiotic prescription was labelled for patient “Mobius Choi”. LOL! That’s just… weird.

I command you to live!

Incite a Novel has been revived and moved from blogspot to our regular domain. It’s only the end of July, but I’ve been kicking around a few ideas this week. So if you have any interest in participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for those late to the party) this year — and barring that, just interested in doing some writing — head over to the site because we’ll be working on various writing exercises for the next few months.

As an example, an idea that Seppo came up with is that we’d each write a short scene unrelated to the main stories with our respective main characters having a meal with a minor character. Then after posting all our scenes, we’d take the characters that other people have introduced and write a little scene with them. This would test the original writer’s ability to get the character across, as well as the second writer’s ability to translate that into a new scene. Hopefully, it’ll also help us “find” our characters too.