Rich's response to the last post: FYI, the proper usage is "eleventy-first."

NEVER SAW 'WRATH OF KHAN'?!?!?

Smelling salts... Please...

I told you, I'm working on it....

Happy one hundred eleventieth birthday, JRR Tolkien.

(Wendy told me. Brian knew. John failed miserably. )

I celebrated, quite by accident, by watching Star Treks 2, 3 and 4 while sorting through all my crap. No, I'd never seen them. I never really watched TOS, so I never bothered with the movies. Yes, I'm a very bad geek, but at least I'm working to mitigate my geekly deficiencies.

I'm also catching the goofy Animal Planet quasi-"documentary" The Future is Wild, which theorizes about what sort of weird-ass creatures will evolve several hundred million years into the future. Strangely, there seems to be a hell of a lot of charismatic megafauna. I'm hardly a biologist, but would tortoises really get that big? I'm quite creeped out by the idea of spiders "farming" the last living mammals, but I do appreciate the "as a side effect, the sharks got smarter" beasties.

The best part? According the fabulous scientific minds that Animal Planet consulted, squids will inherit the earth. Vindication!

What do you mean, I watch too much television? What the hell are you talking about?

(Click. Click. Click.)

In my drive for efficiency and order, I got some spiffy new equipment (scanner, laser printer) and decided to once and for all untangle the snakes' nest of cords coming from my computer. Unfortunately, I neglected to label which power source went with which device. Yes, it does matter, as my now-fried Airport Base Station and old inkjet printer can attest. (I'm just lucky I didn't manage to fry my CPU. Gah.)

So, I had to make a quick jaunt this morning to MicroCenter for Airport, printer, cables and such. And oh yeah -- small labels to attach to the cords.

I hope this isn't a portent for the new year....

General goals for the new year:

• Less squalor, more order.
  
• Pitch what I want to do, instead of just doing the stuff that falls into my lap.
  
• Money money money -- make some. And get a handle on managing it.
  
• Tend toward health and exercise rather than crap and sloth.
  
• Keep in touch with people, ferchrissakes.

Along those lines, I really want to track down old friends I've lost. Recently, Heidi Christensen (hi, Heidi!) found me again through Jeremy. (Thanks, Jeremy.) Which got me thinking: Who else have I lost? Here's a partial list, with identifying details if you feel like helping:

Matt Miller
From Madison, WI
Worked with me in HK at Asian Sources, then jumped... to some other trade mag, the name of which I've forgotten.
Last seen in the Boston area (Framingham?) working for a electronics trade mag (or something).
Wife: Alice, whose last name I don't remember, from Hong Kong.
Notes: "Miller" is entirely too common a last name.

Liz Linderman Coligari
From DE.
Former Navy officer.
Married to Charles Coligari, and I'm probably misspelling the name horribly.
Last known location: Princeton, NJ.
Notes: I was a bridesmaid in her wedding, for God's sake. You'd think I'd have a clue.

Andrew Ling
Another Hong Kong guy, also from Asian Sources.
From Australia, but currently in Hong Kong (I think)
Notes: Airplane junkie, and I think is working somehwere in the airline industry.

Becky Lang
From ... Montana, right? Or Oregon. Somewhere with no sales tax.
Went to Medill with me.
Notes: No clue where she ended up.

As for the people I do have located, but am crap about keeping in touch with (that means you, Zeke, Heidi, Ariel and loads more): Sorry. I am working on it, I promise.

Home again, in uncharacteristic 50-degree weather. Very odd. I'm sure it's just a phase.

The rest of the vacation at home was nice and relaxing. I met up with Nona Smolko, a teacher from Friends who probably kept me from going insane (er). She is now, interestingly enough, a social worker. I guess she was able to practice on me. It was great seeing her, and something of a shock to see her daughter Kate and pictures of her son Mark, who I used to babysit. They're all grown and adult and everything. What's more, Mark is apparently about a foot taller than me now. That's just not right.

I've pretty much gotten over Joe Monaghan being adult-like. Up until now, I tended to insist he was 12 whenever I saw him. I finally gave up when I saw him drinking beer and scotch (not at the same time) in front of his parents. So I'll grant him adult status. I still think it's excessive for him to be two years out of grad school, however. Harumph.

At the Monaghans, I kicked some ass at Trivial Pursuit, and therefore gloated in a most unbecoming (and characteristic) fashion. That was knocked out of me a few days later, when I met a bunch of Laura and Jorge's friends and got my ass handed to me at Scrabble. I just suck at that game. Yeah, yeah, I've got the vocabulary thing, but I'm crap at strategy. I frittered away s tiles and only started getting the hang of building multiple words off a couple of tiles at the very end. The worst part was that Jorge had talked me up to the group, and one of them was a trash-talking Brit type. Grr. I hate losing. I was, however, able to be mean and snarky and know that he wasn't taking it personally. (Right?)

Speaking of trash-talking, I got the following message from Jeremy: I demand a Kahuna rematch! You must visit again. Or, if I do show up for Jersild Day (which is pretty unlikely), expect to be cornered at some point and forced to play and lose. Yeah, that's big talk from someone who hardly had an island to stand on at the end of the game.

Tomorrow: More unseemly and obnoxious competitive behavior, as I'll be hanging out with the Girl's Night crew at Kristin and Maneesh's. Whoo-hoo!

In the meantime, it's all about the cleaning frenzy with me. I've been so busy that a certain amount of excessive squalor has built up. That and all but one of the bulbs in the kitchen light fixture has burned out. Very odd.