(Note: I wrote this post Tuesday night and then forgot to hit publish. Was tired.)

Driving to the movies tonight, I spent a good 20 minutes driving in a sunshower… it was hot, the A/C was cranked, the sun visor was down because I was being blinded, and the windshield wipers were at the medium speed setting because it was a goodly amount of precipitation. I tried to see if I was on the leading edge of a storm cloud because all I could espy ahead of me and around me were fluffy clouds with sunlight streaming through them.

In the end, I thought to myself, “The rain must be coming from the next cloud over. The one I can’t see.”

I realize this is usually the case.

… would be Six Flags. Though, in New Jersey, we don’t call it Six Flags. It’s Great Adventure. The official name is Six Flags Great Adventure, so you’re not wrong either way.

I am far too tired right now to do much writing, but I must note that I’m pretty jazzed about two of the roller coasters we went on today - Kindga Ka and El Toro.

With Kingda Ka, it’s all about the bragging rights; it’s the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. It gets up to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds (via a hydraulic launching mechanism - fancy, and has to be sprayed with water after every launch since it gets ridiculously hot - or so people were saying). The main tower the coaster climbs after the launch is 456 feet high. Then we all dropped 418 feet straight down. Allow me to provide a visual representation:

What was especially nice was that we did this first thing in the morning when we got there, at about 11 a.m. Hence, the wait time was about 25 minutes. This was pretty terrific since it was up to 2 hours by the time we got off the ride. It was thrilling and exciting. Honestly, I didn’t feel very connected to my body at all through the whole ride. I had the distinct feeling that I was looking out through someone else’s eyes, though that impression passed rather quickly once we got to the little hill post-418′ drop.

And #2, El Toro. It also comes with some bragging rights, and I think my sister said it best, “El Toro wins today.” It has the second steepest drop of any wooden roller coaster in the world (76 degrees). It’s third tallest (188 ft) and third fastest (70 mph) in terms of wooden roller coasters around the world. The first drop is 176 feet down, followed by hills measuring 112 feet, 100 feet, and 84 feet. While this may not sound like much compared to the 418 feet of Kingda Ka, El Toro was actually a much more frightening/exhilarating experience.

Just by way of comparison, when we got off Kingda Ka, we didn’t really have any problems walking a straight line. It was intense, but there weren’t many lasting effects. After riding El Toro, we all felt a little drunk, had trouble walking straight and had some mild headache action.

But we had funnel cake and corn dogs (healthy theme park fare) and lots of overpriced lemonade, so it turned out OK. It doesn’t look or feel like I burned (I applied sunscreen a few times) but I’ll be certain tomorrow. I can’t feel much right now… just the Tired.

I’m putting together a list of books I plan on buying so that I don’t end up buying three previously unplanned books next time I go to the bookstore. This list is being placed in my new Moleskine notebook (softcover this time) since that way I know I’ll have it with me.

Some would say, “Eva, you’re not a technophobe or Luddite. Why don’t you just save them as a memo in your cell phone?” You know, I could do that. But I like writing things down in my notebook. I like being able to flip it right open and know what I’m looking for instead of navigating through the phone menus and whatnot.

So far on the list:

• Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker
• The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
• New Moon or Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (this series of vampire novels is HUGE young adult hits. Movie coming soon. I need to read one and see if they live up to the hype)
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy - NOT THE OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB EDITION. Seriously. I might end up ordering the British version through abebooks or alibris if I can’t locate an untainted copy.
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (paperback 9/2/08)

I’ve also got a few good recommendations which I’m writing down (The Outcast by Sadies Jones and A Summer of Hummingbirds by Christopher Benfey), but I’ll wait for the paperbacks on those. I prefer trade paperbacks. It’s a thing (charming quirk?) I have.

While the point of this list is to prevent me from buying far more books than I need, I want to be easy on myself. The whole magic of bookstores (which doesn’t exist in the online environment) is the chance you’ll find that unplanned purchase… the serendipitous discovery that introduces you to an author you didn’t know before or helps you find your new favorite book. That has only ever really happened for me when I’ve let myself get lost wandering the fiction section (though it’s happened in others, too).

The point is that seeing an interesting title or cover will prompt me to pick the book up off the shelf or table - and that’s something that just won’t happen on Amazon. I won’t spend an hour looking at EVERY SINGLE BOOK on the site. I WILL, however, spend an hour looking at EVERY SINGLE BOOK on a bookstore shelf written by someone with a last name beginning with M, N, O or P (for example).

And that’s how I end up with far too many books. I need to start going through my collection and unloading the retired books (I dare not call them unwanted) from my library and getting them out into the world where they might provide happiness to others. I won’t do the BookCrossing thing yet, either since some might be OK for a library and with a large quantity, bookcrossing might be difficult to do. I’d like to just fill up a shopping bag and bring them somewhere and say, “HERE. FREE!”

But I’ve had several friends request that I provide them with a list of what I’m planning on chucking since they might want first dibs. It’s nice to know that they trust my taste even that much. It’s a bit dicey with reading since I’ll read almost anything (almost) and that usually means that my more genre-minded friends will end up disappointed, as will my more literary-minded friends.

YES, I enjoyed both The Satanic Verses and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban equally. Strange, but true. I recognize them both for what they are and enjoy them accordingly. Rushdie for his use of language and imagery and humor… Rowling for the enthralling world she created and her sense of the fantastical.

This is turning into a bit of a soapbox piece. I think I’m just hungry - and a hungry Polak is an angry Polak, as my mother oft quips at family dinners. I went walking after work with my friend/co-worker and I’m now ravenous. But I can only think about soup and toast since my stomach is a little uncertain.

Below is a picture of what I made from Shrinky Dinks last night.

I am not entirely crazy about how the flower came out, but I love the leaves. I might make more since I think those would look awesome as earrings - strung two or three to a small chain? Or as a drop necklace. Yeah, the ideas are brewing.

I used my lovely German colored pencils for vibrancy. They really are the best colored pencils. I got my first set of Staedtler pencils when I was visiting Poland in 1990 or ‘91 (so, uh, when I was 11 or 12?). My grandmother took me to an art/stationery store where I got a set of those pencils and some blank notebooks so I could draw and write. It was just after the fall of communism in Poland and the stores were still running on the “everything is behind the counter -you must ask to see it” model. I remember that that was really weird to me - that I had to ask to see something, and that there was a sense of expectation of long consideration from me. I would just say, “Yeah - I want it” and hand over the money.

That was still something shop clerks and people in general weren’t used to - that sort of throwing around of money. But I was some little kid from America who just knew that her dollar was worth a lot more there and got all excited when she went to exchange money. And the whole time, I was figuring out how much things cost in American money because it was like everything was on sale. I recall that the exchange rate at that time was something like 8 złoty to a dollar, and a few years later it was up (down) to 4 złoty to a dollar.

I should confirm this with a family member since it seems kind of crazy.

I ran today. Not a crazily impressive distance or speed, but it was good for me. I was proud. And sweaty.

I climbed today. Again, not crazily impressive difficulty or anything, but I did better than last time and that was important to me.

Now I am tired, but feeling good about what I accomplished. Yay, physical activity!

I’ve always been very good about keeping my brain from turning to mush: getting new (purely intellectual) hobbies, learning new things, reading books, watching films, etc. But I haven’t been at all concerned with keeping the other physical aspects of me from turning to mush until fairly recently. It’s exciting and new… like The Love Boat theme song (RIP, Aaron Spelling - you gave us that, too).

In the “no pudding-brain” category, though, I have excitement brewing as well. My friend Sara gave me a guitar and I’m going to pick up where I left off in September and learn to play more than the two chords I still sort of remember. I have some books, I have a few friends who play (and will help me tune the guitar) and a spiffy new chord chart I printed off last night at the suggestion of my friend LJ, who proceeded to share chord progressions. I will figure them out and be able to appreciate them eventually, but I had to give a little “whoa” and mention that my brain doesn’t think in music - or at least not yet.

My history with music is spotty. I took piano lessons with my brother when I was younger, and the teacher was kind of a bastard who criticized my short fingers and inability to play scales properly. So that sucked. Then I played the flute in late elementary and middle school. The music teacher there was also an ass who told me that I shouldn’t be playing the flute since my fingers were too short to reach the keys at the end. So I joined the choir and that was fine - was in the madrigal group, sang a duet once or twice, was in the school musical, but nothing extraordinary. It kept me musically active, but without the crap.

However, those two summabitches gave me the biggest insecurity issue about my short fingers. My fingers are short (like the rest of me) but not unnaturally so; I certainly don’t have strange puppet fingers or anything. Standard size guitars have proved a bit rough for me to play between short fingers and bum wrist, so I’m really encouraged by the fact that the guitar I got from Sara is a bit smaller than a standard guitar (just not a baby version).

It’s getting late and I have been needing copious amounts of sleep lately. I don’t know what’s up. Maybe it’s the change in the weather - the warm 80+ degree days are not something I’m used to. Neither is the sun. And it was different in California… it was that much-lauded “dry heat.”

Here, in the mid-Atlantic, we have wet heat. And it’s certainly not as sexy as it sounds in other contexts.

Friday. I haven’t looked forward to a Friday this much in quite some time. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I’ve not been working out as much as I’d like and since I was getting angry at myself and aggravated at my lack of progress, I decided to take this week “off”. Come Monday, I’ll approach from a different angle and make it work for me. More running, more Pilates, more weights. It can be done. In the meantime, fun stuff!

• PAPERCRAFT STEAK DINNER?!??!? Yes. Fire up your color printer and assemble a paper steak to delight your friends and family. The site’s in Japanese, but you can figure it out.

• CROSS-STITCH! I’ve been thinking that once I finish knitting this baby blanket I’m making for my friends, it might be time to take up a new craft - like cross-stitch. To that end, I’ve been checking out the cross-stitch kits at my local craft stores. They’re all rather corny and so not me- “Footprints”? Precious Moments characters? A bald eagle against the flag? I’d prefer and old school grandma sampler, honestly. But that’s me. My aesthetic runs in a different vein. Just imagine my delight when I discovered this cross-stitch generator at Dark Lilac! I can upload a picture I create in Photoshop or a favorite image and it will generate a cross-stitch chart including the colors of DMC brand embroidery floss you’ll need. I have plans to create one of my gimpy wrist MRI (just have to resize in Photoshop) as well as one of brussels sprouts or other such food.
• SHRINKY DINKS. I stopped at Michael’s on my way home from work with my friend Krys. She was picking up scrapbooking supplies; I went in to buy unnecessary stuff. Craft stores and Target are perfect for that. I found they were selling packs of blank frosted Shrinky Dinks and my childhood came rushing back to me - like the fumes generated by sticking sheets of plastic into the oven to watch them shrink. That said, I bought a pack. I have colored pencils. I have an oven. I have jump rings. This means I can make pendants and keychains and other random crap - but however I want to do it. Crafty crafty! ($4.99 for 10 sheets)
• Summertime = bright nail polish colors. The new Essie colors for this summer left me a little underwhelmed. There was a color near the display, though, that attracted me. It’s not new for this season, but it fits right in and it’s awesome. It’s called Calypso - a bright fuchsia. It garnered compliments and that’s always nice.
• After much deliberation and whatnot, I’ve finally selected and ordered my new cell phone. Not a Blackberry, not the LG Voyager, not the Samsung Glyde. There were issues with each one (bulk, size, price, less than stellar reviews) so I did a Goldilocks kind of thing. In the end, I checked the Howard Forums and reviews for the phones I was considering - these led me to several people raving about the LG enV(2). It also had good ratings from c|net. It’s not as sexy as the others - it’s not a touchscreen phone; it doesn’t have a huge display on the front. But that’s OK. I wanted a full QWERTY keyboard - it’s got that. I wanted a larger display for web browsing and email composition - it’s got that when you open it up. I wanted a phone that’s easy to use AS a phone - this actually has a number pad for regular old dialing. And it cost me a whopping $49 after my upgrade discount. It arrives on Tuesday. Yippee!
• I’ve just pledged to be a part of Firefox Download Day 2008. It’s not a pledge to do anything other than download the newest version (that would be version 3) of Firefox on the day it’s released. Love love love love love. I love a browser. Hmmm. This might be part of the reason I’m single.

On Memorial Day, I opted to spend the day with friends. We went to the pool, did a little swimming (well, what passed for swimming since I had my contact lenses in and no goggles) in very chilly water that eventually became comfortable and then quickly turned bone-chilling again, and enjoyed a selection of the worst women’s magazines the media have to offer.

Magazines with tantalizing cover stories including:

• Candid Cameron on Sex, Dating and the Perfect Tan
• At Home With Miley Cyrus
• The Hottest Things to Do to a Man (in 60 Seconds or Less)
• 4 Things All Guys Crave Hearing
• Dragging Ass Lately? New Energy-Boosting Advice
• 9 Things That Make a Guy Worship You in Bed (and out!)
• His Ex Didn’t Do It: The Girlfriend Habit That’ll Deepen His Love
• 5 Signs a Guy is Capable of Rape
• OB-GYNs Tell You What’s Normal (and not) Down There

The last three are my favorites.

“His Ex Didn’t Do It” plays upon every insecure female who spends time asking her “guy” if his last girlfriend was prettier, thinner, sexier, [insert other superlatives here] than she is. It presents that desperate woman with a gift - the magical habit that she can adopt to make her better than her predecessor! Deepen his love! The magazine knows for a fact that the other chick didn’t do it.

“5 Signs a Guy is Capable of Rape” - beyond the (subtle?) ridiculousness of having this on the same cover as “4 things all guys crave hearing”, “dragging ass lately?” and “hottest things to do to a man” this article is a total misnomer/misleading title once you get inside the magazine. Then the article is suddenly, “How a Date Rapist Works”… and segues into “Five Traits of a Rapist”… which doesn’t even make sense. One of them isn’t even a trait (#2):

1. he carefully plans his attacks
2. he is likely a serial rapist
3. he holds stereotypical views of men and women
4. he uses alcohol and/or drugs as a tool
5. he uses psychological dominance more than brute force.

Ah, well. They warn against guys who try to take a girl “somewhere quiet” to talk, who hold their palms down when they gesture with their hands, etc. Basically, as my friend Theresa put it, “just don’t meet guys at bars.”

Last, but not least, “OB-GYNs tell you…” - down there. DOWN THERE? Are they actually using the euphemism “down there” on the cover of COSMOPOLITAN? Didn’t Tyra Banks boldly go where no woman had gone before and introduce us to a mystical world of more poetic and creative terms for a woman’s genitalia - like vajayjay? Really, anything is better than “down there” on the cover of Cosmo. It reminds me of the book my mother gave me when I was in third grade to teach me all about growing up.

Next time, I’ll be quoting from Steven Pinker. That’s who I’m reading right now. And not only to legitimatize myself.

On Friday night, some friends and I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We had free movie passes from the last time we went to see a movie together (Iron Man - the projector broke… twice… everyone in the theatre received two free movie passes) and this seemed like a perfect way to use one of them - on a solid eye-candy summer flick.

It did not disappoint in that regard.

It was the usual Indiana Jones treatment but:

WWII : Nazis :: Cold War : Russians

Hat : Indy :: Hair : Mutt

There are other analogies I could strike, but then I’d be revealing the plot. The plot that was a little ridiculous even for an Indiana Jones movie. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but I did find myself muttering, “WTF???” on several occasions and laughing out loud during moments of suspense because they were just so over-the-top. Suspension of disbelief, yes… but Shia LaBeouf (Mutt - Indy’s greaser son) suddenly going all Tarzan, inspired by some cute little monkey and swinging (his CGI self) across acres of rainforest in about two minutes? Or pulling some storyline and special effects from “The X Files” movie? And just how many dead languages does one need to pull into a movie to make up for 15 years of Indiana Jones-lessness? Answer: a lot. Pictograms, too.

It was a leeettle heavy-handed at times, e.g. “Knowledge was their great treasure!”

Overall, though, enjoyable. I’d see it again. Especially since I didn’t have to pay for it this time. Also, it’s a solid two hours, which does seem pretty long in this day and age, but it’s well-paced (maybe even a little too fast) and this viewer did not find herself checking the time.

I never wrote about Iron Man, which I liked very much. Robert Downey, Jr., is terrific and deserves a lot more credit for his acting chops than I think he’s gotten overall. I know he’s had some critical acclaim, but it hasn’t turned into a nomination or anything bigger - and Iron Man certainly won’t be that movie for him, either. But it should throw him in the way of other roles that will. And I get that that might not be his goal, but come on… it’s the trajectory. If he wasn’t hoping for some commercial and professional success, he could’ve stuck with roles like Fur (excellent, excellent film, by the way), where he played a man with hypertrichosis.

He and Christian Bale are following a similar path at the moment - both doing their big action hero roles for summer 2008, while toiling away on toothy “Actors’” roles elsewhere. Well done, gentlemen.

I’m looking forward to seeing The Dark Knight when that comes out. There was a longer trailer prior to Indiana Jones; it gave me goosebumps, and that was even before Heath Ledger was on the screen. I don’t have the whole, “Oh, poor dead Heath” thing… but between the music, the overall darkness of tone, Christian Bale’s voice, Ledger’s voice and the 10 or 15 seconds of the trailer where Ledger actually appears, I got some chills. Ledger as the Joker conveys something really unsettling and unstable; it’s going to make him scary as hell in that role.

Maggie Gyllenhaal looks about as useful as Katie Holmes was* in Batman: Beyond, so that’s too bad because she’s a good egg.

There were some other good previews before Indiana Jones - including one for Hancock, the upcoming Will Smith super-hero action/comedy. I’m torn. The concept is a little hokey, but I begrudgingly admit that Will Smith is charming and funny and wins me over in spite of myself, even if I don’t like the movie he’s in.

And the preview for Hellboy 2: The Golden Army sucked me right the f— in, even though my friends were totally disinterested. That’s OK. I’ll geek out to it solo. Guillermo del Toro does amazing things with fantasy worlds - he and his partners in crime have visions of monstrous beauty. Literally and figuratively. I’ve now seen some of the Spanish-language horror films he did before Pan’s Labyrinth and they’re equally frightening and lovely. He also wrote the first Hellboy (screenplay adaptation, anyway), Pan’s Labyrinth and Devil’s Backbone. He gets it, man. I’ll check it out.

And I’m done. I still haven’t even touched on books and music for this weekend’s media fix. Tomorrow.

* word around these parts was that her role could’ve been played by a squirrel

There was a haircut. I brought a photo of Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham because I liked her haircut as a general style. This photo:

I’m sort of fascinated. There’s just so much art and artifice; she’s so shiny and plastic-looking. And, um, surgically altered. In the left photo, she kind of looks like her wax Doppelgänger at Madame Tussaud’s must/will look.

Anyway - I got a cut based loosely on that. I like the shorter back and that whole jam. In trying to get a photo, I realized that it’s not easy to photograph the back of your head without a tripod. I gave up, but at least you can sort of see the (blurry) front:

I’m a big dork because it’s a three-day weekend and I just spent the last three hours of my Saturday night doing work… as in, day job work.

Why?

Because what I’m working on is something I enjoy, as well as something I know I won’t have much time to work on at work this week. Also, it involves the use of software I don’t have at work (though perhaps it will be worth requisitioning such software at this point) so it’s something I’d end up working on in a piecemeal fashion throughout the week anyway. But I have to quit this. I could (and should) be doing other things FOR ME.

And cleaning.

This week seems interminably long, even in light of a half-day at work tomorrow and a day off on Monday. It’s just been chock-full of activity - possibly because one of my co-workers is on maternity leave and the other is on vacation. This might just be me catching the overflow, but I’m thinking it’s something more. This doesn’t feel temporary.

But I’m feeling good in a small-scale philanthropic way because I just donated some moneys (not a lot, but apparently their most popular pledge amount) to my local public radio station during their pledge drive. I was going to forgo the thank you gift (another tote bag?) but then I saw that I had the option to get an iPod cover. I’ve been looking for a new iPod cover. So I’ll have this (mildly pretentious) cover in a few weeks:

I might have to start putting some of their podcasts on my iPod just so the inside matches the outside. Right now, my radio listening is NPR (WNYC, more appropriately), the oldies station (rarely now because DJs really annoy the crap out of me these days), or my iPod. That’s it.

I don’t think I’m alone in these listening habits - it’s a bit of the DVR/TiVo mentality:

a) I don’t want commercials
b) I want to hear/see what I want when I want it
c) I’m willing to pay a little more for this privilege (which is a little f’ed up if you think about, but it’s modern life - we pay a lot to maintain our respective levels of peace and quiet in life)

And now, I think I’m going to go by my local bagel shop and get a bagel before I catch my train. It’s a rainy morning and I’m feeling tired, but OK.

Once more into the fray!