i'm in manchester visiting the family. fortuitous timing: tovven just happens to be home visiting hers too, so we got to hang out and catch up last night. but tonight, mom, dad, and grandma are all going to the ryman for a concert... i was going to stay here and raid mom's video collection, but it has recently been pointed out that downtown nashville surrounds the ryman and that a free ride's a free ride. i'm still not sure if i'm up to wandering around by myself, but i thought i'd check -- anyone in/around nashville and horribly bored/want to hang out with me this evening? if not, got any good recommendations for a coffee shop, ideally in easy walking distance from the ryman and full of interesting people to watch while sitting around for three hours with a book? or directions to the nearest arthouse movie theater? or anything else you'd do if you were, say, stuck near the ryman from 7:30 until whenever merle haggard gets tired and goes away?

anyone out there have experience, good or bad, with buying refurbished cell phones? while trying to get my number changed up for a local one, i found out that my cell phone plan is expired, and to make changes i'm going to have to get a new-and-different account anyway. so i'm shopping. at&t has a refurbished nec 525 - that's one of the fancy picture-takin' internet-usin' flip-phones - for free with a plan... i'm used to at&t wireless, i can live with the crappy reception here and there, but if i get one of these things, will it die the 91st day i have it?

other than that, anybody have any strong cell phone deal recommendations? i've been using a dinosaur, so i barely know what features i want... i'm thinking the 650 anytime minutes, national calling plan (in selected at&t-happy towns, of course), free nights and weekends, plus 1 MB of data up and down and a free phone every year for $47.98 a month looks alright... is it actually highway robbery? is a MB far too big or far too small? aagh!

the complexities of modern society confound me. at least we don't conjugate people's names.**

** at least not beyond making possessive forms... (this was a parenthetical, but it got too big, so now it's an end-note.) i've been trying to teach myself latin. i didn't take it in high school because it was dead and i figured i could go back and do it later, once i had a handy-for-travel language under my belt. (and i do apologize - i seem to be in a dash-heavy mood today; i'm unable to resist splashing them everywhere.) little did i imagine that i'd end up at a university that barely believes in teaching living languages, much less the classics. but anyways, i'm used to navigating comparatively highly inflected languages -- ok, fine, language, it's french -- but this is ridiculous! i was alright until i got to the example sentence in 2nd declension nouns -- "Maecenas, amicus Augusti, me in numero amicorum habet." and it suddenly dawned on me that "Augusti" is the genetive form of "Augustus" and that if you want to, say, take "Augustus" somewhere as a direct object, his name's going to be "Augustum." and i screamed in anguish and started beating my head against the wall.

i no longer blame the french for strange mutations like changing julius caesar into jules césare. (which, by the way, made one of the best jokes in the astérix movie, in my humble not-natively-speaking-french-and-thus-missing-most-of-the-good-puns opinion.)

but now that i've gotten over the initial frustration, i'm kinda starting to crave my own declension...

midnight's probably not the best time to intentionally imbibe caffeine for the first time in over a month.

but what a rush! i ended up staying awake until around 5 a.m. on about half a cup of coffee.

anybody seen gothika? any good? call me a snob, but based on previews i really wasn't interested. until i heard that mathieu kassovitz directed. (hurrah, borders had a copy of the french edition of premiere magazine! and they always have at least one article on kassovitz...) you know, the guy who played amélie's love interest? which alone wouldn't motivate me to obsessively seek his movies, but he also starred in amen and directed la haine, interesting movies both, which indicates at least a certain degree of taste overlapping mine...

despite the sudden spark of interest, i got matrix revolutions for tonight... no great expectations, but dave and i agreed we might as well finish out the series.

hurrah for tax returns!

dave got his taxes done professionally, whereas i tackled the 1040A myself. he's getting a slightly bigger chunk back, and i think he said it was something called a "hope credit" that made up most of the difference. i'm happy with what i got, but i'm curious... i think it had something to do with paying to get educated. i took a deduction, i guess i could've taken a credit instead, possibly leading to bigger money? anyone know?

so the washer wasn't broken. at least i don't think it was. nor was it under warranty, as it turns out.

the warranty ran out march 16. no as-promised notification to say the warranty was up and offer renewal, and they wanted $200 to restart a lapsed policy.

after a visit to the laundromat to finish my interrupted load of laundry, we went to lowe's and found a similar washer for around $300... which led to a hell no to $200 for repairs. i convinced dave to try some simple stuff before getting the new washing machine. so we go home, unplug machine, put it in the other electrical socket, watch it go. yeah.

we're starting to suspect we have electrical problems.

angie and john came up to visit and save the day. and got me all contacted up with lu, who's lived here for a while. it felt so good to laugh and talk a million-miles-a-minute and have old stories in common...

i haven't really thought of myself being as lonely here as that last sentence sounded... i know it takes time to find a nitch and good friends and so on anyplace -- at least i have a common language with most folks here. no need to resign myself to the life of a hermit, but i get so impatient sometimes. poor dave, being the numero uno target for anything and everything i have to say in a typical day. often much more than i have to say... my current lackadaisical lifestyle generates few tales of wonder, yet the talking impulse goes on and on and leads to rambling and repetition...

like here. but anyway...

as temp agents go, i guess i'm employed, just haven't yet received a "go work here tomorrow" call. it took three hours, by the time i got there, found that my birth certificate would not function in the place of my long-lost social security card this time (actually, i could swear mom mentioned finding it not too long ago, 3rd grade signature in green ink and all; i thought i'd lost it in france), shuffled a couple blocks over to the social security office and back, signed who knows how many forms, rewrote most of my resume on their application, and took typing and proofreading tests. good thing they were able to transfer up my scores from word and excel... i type 69 wpm now, and my typical capitalization and punctuation habits seem not to have influenced my grasp of real english.

waiting by the phone...

just fixed up the encryption... turns out we were using different keys in different parts of the apartment, and crossing out a couple digits and replacing them fixed it.

but now... will it let me post to livejournal without complaint? for some reason, nearly everything for which you need a login's been malfunctioning all morning. ('cept my e-mail, which is how i got the last post in.) prob'ly just as well if it was going unencrytped... but yeah. if you see this, the non-encryption was indeed the problem.

**quick update: yay! it worked! and on that note... i should go job-shop. i'm tempted to add "fantastic ability to waste ungodly amounts of time tackling and solving silly computer problems with no prior knowledge of the issues involved" to my resume. s'pose it's why i like linux so much...**

hrm... haven't taken the time yet to go through and compare with this list of english's most frequently used, but the #1's there match...

the 117   it's 16   no 10 to 81   or 16   like 10 i 80   on 16   even 10 of 68   out 16   as 10 a 64   this 15   an 10 and 63   not 15   too 9 in 39   is 14   with 9 but 37   they 14   are 9 that 33   i'm 13   got 9 it 31   from 13   just 9 my 28   up 13   back 9 for 28   than 13   much 8 so 20   more 12   still 8 all 19   at 11   about 8 have 16   be 11   by 8 was 16   me 11   make 8

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LJ Word Count (Beta!) by hutta