Travel Lesson
I’m back in NYC. Lesson learned from my trip: Never eat at a restaurant named after a cable TV channel.
Before my return flight from Chicago, I had dinner at the “Fox Sports Channel Bar & Grill” in the airport. In my defense, it was the only food option in that terminal other than McDonald’s. When I walked in, nobody was there to seat me–all of the waitresses were in a little group, apparently arguing about something. I waited awkwardly near the little group, the argument continued, and I eventually had to ask them, “so, uh, should I seat myself, or what?” At that point, one of them detached herself from the group and seated me. Also, they forgot the cheese on my cheeseburger.
Not a disastrous experience, obviously, but I think Fox Sports Channel’s expertise is in running a TV channel, not restaurants.
Travel | Comment (0)Revising Quotes
Have you ever tried to transcribe the way people talk exactly? I’m writing down quotes from a focus group I’m watching, and I find myself correcting their grammar as I go along. Fixing the subjunctive, subject-verb agreement, things like that. I’m not even consciously doing it, I just find myself writing down grammatically-correct versions.
Which is fine for what I’m doing, since it’s the gist of the statements that really matters, but I think I’d have a hard time being a court reporter or similar, doing something where you really need to get a word-for-word transcription.
Wordplay, Work | Comment (0)More travel this week
More travel this week…heading to Denver tonight, spending tomorrow there and then Wednesday and Thursday in Chicago. I’ve already gotten so blase about this stuff, it’s amazing. I just throw a few things in a bag and go wherever the piece of paper tells me to.
Travel | Comment (0)60,000!
I broke 60,000 Delta miles this month! I’m up close to 63,000, in fact. So now I have enough for a free trip to Japan. I’m thinking sometime early next year, before March, to use up my week of carryover vacation time.
Travel | Comment (0)Link: “My cone is melting in the sun”
Sorry about the lack of posts. I’ve been super-busy with social activities, something going on every night. Which is nice, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t leave me a lot of time or energy to blog about it.
When I was a kid, I loved the cartoon “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” For some unknown reason, there was a particular line that my brother and I latched on to as being incredibly hilarious. It was Shredder, the main villain, asking his lackey Baxter to do something, and Baxter replied, in a whiny voice, “but my cone is melting in the sun!” Anyway, I finally tracked down a copy of the line on Youtube. It’s in this episode of the show, at 4:55.
Links, Meta, TV | Comment (0)Why I’m Impressed by Fallout 3
Why I’m impressed by Fallout 3:
Because I’ve spent at least half an hour exploring the smashed-up, post-apocalyptic version of the Air and Space Museum. I went there to find a quest item, but if I were just in there looking for it, I would have been in and out much quicker. No, I’ve spent all of that time looking at the half-ruined artifacts, reading the informational plaques and learning all kinds of details about the elaborate alternate future history of the Fallout world.
And the whole game’s like that. The world is so detailed, and so carefully thought out, that you can just get lost in it. Fallout 3 would still be fun (not as fun, granted, but still fun) even if there were no storyline, no quests, and no enemies to fight. If you could do nothing but wander around, exploring this elaborate world that the Bethesda team has created. I can’t think of any other game that I would say that about.
Games | Comment (0)Link: Onion on Sports and Obama
I don’t normally like the Onion’s sports articles, because I don’t follow sports enough to get any of the jokes. But this one is really cute–a writer who’s supposed to be writing about some basketball game, but so excited about Obama’s victory that he can’t keep his mind on it.
Links | Comment (0)