Catching my breath... but from what?

When I got home last night, Lee and Dwayne were there, sitting at their respective computers and typing for all they were worth. If they were to start getting paid by the keystroke (which, in a way, is the way I get paid), they’d be making money hand over space bar. They were linked to what has become the focus of their lives, a MUD called “Threshold.”

I know what it’s like to care about something like that. In retrospect, you wonder just what it was that held you there, like a spell, but in medias res, as it were, you can’t imagine yourself doing any other thing. I’ve tried to talk to Lee and snap her out of it, and she has experienced remarkable moments of clarity from time to time (the most recent being her telling me of the realization that all of the time invested playing the game has given her no marketable skill, except maybe typing). But soon she goes back to the keyboard, to continue to interact with her net friends and fight her battles.

I was definitely in the mood for a movie last night. I would have gone to see Spider-Man, except that Lee made noises along the lines of wanting to go with me, and then made me wait while she vanquished another foe or concluded another pact, and then deciding she didn't want to go at all. In the end, I dropped by the neighborhood “Hollywood Video” and rented Oceans Eleven.

The movie was a nice diversion, with some nice scenes in it. The normally luscious Julia Roberts was transformed, in my opinion, into a physically freakish character with protruding lips, and it was a little difficult for me to watch scenes with her and Clooney, as I kept getting distracted by her lips. Poor me.

The routine thus far today has been slow. Only two Forms 24 have been received from the Russian side. The highlight of the day was going down to the Moscow Support Room to ask two questions about tomorrow’s Form 24, both of which were answered fairly quickly. The situation is unusual, as normally, there is more work to do, and most of it is normally received by noon, which was over two hours ago.

It is, however, too early to consider the day to have ended. The folks over in the Moscow control center have been known to zap files over to Houston as late as 3 pm (if not later), so I am not out of the woods yet.

Film at 11... maybe.

Cheers...

Light day...

As it turned out, the load for the day was just the two Forms 24. If precedent holds, that means that the rest of the radiograms intended for transmittal today will be sent over tomorrow along with all the stuff for tomorrow, resulting in twice the work load.

You can't win.

* * *A pre-LJ acquaintance of mine (LJ friend avva) mentioned yesterday's post of mine in his journal, resulting in a noticeable bump in the number of people who are now following my LJ. Welcome to all, though I don't often post in Russian (а когда пишу на русском, текст записи почти всегда двуязычный).

It turns out that about half of the posts that currently appear on my friends page are in Cyrillic. These posts provide a unique education for me by exposing me to some interesting ideas and modes of expression. I've found some posts (notably a couple by avva) have even been useful in my translations.

* * *Some follow-up thoughts to yesterday's rented Oceans Eleven DVD:

In the final scene, the bad guys are following Our Hero. This leads me to believe that, if the Head Bad Guy really believes Our Hero Did It, all he has to do is commission his henchpersons to stick like glue to Our Hero... forever. At the first sign of untoward prosperity... POW! For a modest ongoing expense of, say, $100,000 per year per "hench," the Head Bad Guy could prevent Our Hero from enjoying his $15 million or so of ill-gotten gains.

This, of course, assumes that the HBG doesn't get tired first and decide to whack OH just for the hell of it.

The second objection I have has to do with fellow LJer joelgrus's recurring theme of "X can keep a secret if (X-1) of them are dead." I mean, we're talking eleven people here, folks. Eventually, one of them is going to run afoul of the law (and I don't mean by breaking it... I mean by simply doing things with their share of the money). In turn, the law may start to ask all sorts of embarrassing questions, which may ultimately lead to such questions being asked in a small room under a bright light. Since all the perps are pretty much known to each other, the fall of one would entail the fall of all.

But then again, I have to remind myself that this was a story. Nonetheless...

* * *Tonight's entertainment, once I finally got home, was Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, which was a harmless waste of time. The formula for this film mimics that of the previous two, except that the setting on the "ridiculous" knob seems to have been set a bit higher than in previous outings. Still, it's just good to see that Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski both look healthy, at any rate.

* * *Returning home today was a copy of yesterday, with both Lee and Dwayne hard at it. They've gone now, off somewhere to discuss MUD strategy with some friends. I was left to rawrite a Linux boot image for Lee onto a floppy disk, which I did in about 30 seconds. She said something before she left that led me to believe she didn't quite understand what needed to be done. Sometimes, I wonder about the kid...

* * *Time to hit the hay. As I said at the top of the post, I think tomorrow is going to be a humdinger of a day.

Cheers...