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I came to be in Manhattan Friday night because my father didn't want to drive. My other brother, and his girlfriend, were to be in the city for work-related reasons. My mother suggested that she and the girlfriend get together to socialize and to shop for baby stuff, since I am to be an uncle again sometime in early September. After my brother's workday, my father was to join them for dinner. My father didn't want to drive, so he said he didn't want to drive because of his imminent glaucoma, and that's how I got invited along. Somewhere around the Holland Tunnel my father even told my mother, over the phone, that I was coming along.
This was my first meeting of the --- I don't know what to call her. Girlfriend-in-law, I guess, since I've heard no rumors of marriage. I felt comfortable with her swiftly, and got vague ideas of just what she did (it involves a lot of travel, which she and my brother are at the stage of life where they appreciate it), and got some favorable glimpses of smaller parts of her personality. For example she's found the Original New-Effect Star Trek on Netflix Instant, which is unimaginably awesome, and is getting to be a proper old-school Trekkie. She's even made my brother switch allegiance from Picard to Kirk.
Of course a lot of her talk was baby-stuff-oriented. She and my mother were irritated that so many baby clothes and accessories are made in Boy Blue or Girl Pink, when my brother and girlfriend-in-law have decided they wish to be surprised. And I appreciate her desire to not get stuff which will be wasted, but I wouldn't look for a diaper bag which could be used for some other purpose afterwards. But even here are optimistic touches: they'd got an eggplant to use to practice swaddling [1], as some How To Have A Baby book suggested. Feeling confident in their swaddle skills, they realized ... what to do with the eggplant? Why, they found a great-looking baba ganoush recipe. Her mother was horrified. Everyone else, my parents included, was delighted. I'm fairly sure they'll remember with the actual child to stop before adding olive oil.
[1] ``Swaddling'' is on my list of Favorite Words Of All Time, and possibly my favorite word that mostly enters my life only for A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Trivia: Johanne Gottfried Galle searched for Neptune at right ascension 21h, 46m; declination -13d 24'. It was found at right ascension 21h 53m, 25.84 s, the night of 23 September 1846. Source: In Search of Planet Vulcan, Richard Baum, William Sheehan. (And apparently it's back at that spot, which is why this comes up today.)
Currently Reading: Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August 2011, Editor Stanley Schmidt. Only two nonfiction pieces mention Isaac Asimov, who died long enough ago that college freshman were born after Asimov's death. Also, in the editorial, Schmidt is annoyed at all these so-called researchers trying to establish whether humans can multitask when they should be figuring out what kinds of people are best at what kinds of multitasking, and speaks ominously of the day They try to Stop Multitasking.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-11 08:05 pm (UTC)I'm currently on a Futurama binge, having never followed the series before and suddenly realizing it can be pretty funny.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-12 03:16 am (UTC)I used Netflix Instant just that way, to fill in the gaps in my Futurama experience (particularly the made-for-DVD movies). I've also been using it for Better Off Ted, which is as good as you'd expect a show with that title to be awful.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-14 04:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-15 04:41 pm (UTC)I was reading about that. I'm not sure what choice I'd make were it my Netflix account, although since I've been slightly overwhelmed for choice on just the streaming downloads I suppose that's the natural way for me to go. Of course I keep running across shows I would like to watch which are DVD-only (Father Ted, looking at you here).
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-15 10:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-16 05:59 am (UTC)The price hike really isn't terrible, I think it's been underpriced at that.. but a 60% rate hike sure looks a poor choice. (Speaking with others, $12-$13 would be about their most likely rate to keep people doing the combined plan.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-16 06:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-17 12:35 am (UTC)Hey, the Redbox at Quality Dairy did have Alpha and Omega; what more could you want? I mean besides Gnomeo and Juliet?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-17 12:37 am (UTC)It's like companies never learn, customers will accept price hikes without protest if they're small enough units, but not if they exceed some barrier. Admittedly they have to experiment some to find that biggest-tolerable-hike, but this seems like they picked a number way outside what reason would have suggested.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-17 12:39 am (UTC)Yeah, I understand. There are a bunch of movies or TV shows that I'd watch which are DVD only and I imagine if I actually paid for my subscription I'd make a queue with all sorts of ``let me watch this someday''. I rarely have to see something right away.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-17 05:10 am (UTC)--Chi
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 03:33 am (UTC)That reminds me! I found where I left Ratatoing for safekeeping.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-11 11:53 pm (UTC)I question whether watching new-effect Star Trek provides proper qualifications for being an old-school Trekkie. I for one find the updated-effects business rather awful, and I'm not even a Trekkie.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-12 03:10 am (UTC)I think becoming a proper old-school Trekkie has to be a process; just by chance people are more likely to run across New Trek stuff first and seek out the older. If the new effects make it easier to get into the old stuff, good. We'll know she's made it if she starts pondering the evidence that Earth was not actually a member of the Federation at least before the second season.
Actually I was surprised that I didn't resent the new-effects edition nearly as much as I would have anticipated. Possibly the surprise with which it was pulled on everyone helped; most of what I dislike amount to disagreements with the composition or framing of a shot, rather than whether the shot should have been at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-13 05:29 am (UTC)That probably sounds like foolish purism or stubborn dislike of change and quite likely it is that in part but I like to believe there is something more to it. Wim Wenders said that every film is also a documentary of its own creation and I have always found that idea to resonate with me. The errors and imperfections, the limitations of budget and technology, all those tell us something about the environment in which the film was forged. I prefer they be left alone.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-14 03:36 am (UTC)It doesn't sound foolish or stubborn to me. All the evidence of my life up to the release of the New Effects version was that I should have hated it on principle. I can't give any reason for why it didn't offend me as tampering with the real Star Trek, original effects and editing limitations and all.
Possibly I was buttered up to it with the Yet Another Special Edition of The Motion Picture, but there they could at least claim the changes were the director making modifications which, had time and budget permitted, would have been done, and they tried to keep the spirit of the effects within what would have been possible in 1979. (Mostly.) There I was able to settle my fanboy rage on the seriously wrong-headed changes they made, like shrinking Vejur's cloud down to two AU's in diameter and striking the ``we all create God in our own image'' line. But you can see how the precedent might have gone far to make the thing, once done, less of an outrage.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-12 10:19 pm (UTC)Slickpuppy, a die-hard TOS fan if there was one, likes the new effects.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-14 03:17 am (UTC)The thing about the Original Trek that most startled me, when I was watching every episode twice to see the New Effects versus the Old Effects, was not just how much time it had --- around six minutes more than Next Generation, and about ten minutes more than Voyager or Enterprise had --- but how few distractions there were to it. Not every scene was critical, but there just weren't the A/B story divides or the pleasant-but-irrelevant scenes, like the poker games. It made for a radically different texture.
Well, apart from the obvious difference, that the Original Trek was a western, while Modern Trek is an office drama.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-13 12:55 am (UTC)Of course; that's where you use baby oil.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-14 03:10 am (UTC)See, that's the kind of insight only the professional cook will know.