Multitasking, as usual...

Things have been accumulating in storage for a while, with a large bump in volume as a result of selling the Pearland house. Galina and I decided to bite the bullet and rent a truck to haul it all to Pagosa, especially as how the truck is going to cost about the same as about 6-8 months of storage space rental. (Of course, one could argue that we could just as easily chuck all the stuff that's in storage, since we haven't used it in a while, and the truth would probably lie somewhere between the two positions.) I do plan to chuck a lot of stuff before it even gets on the truck, but there are some items (e.g., aluminum ladder) that have been missed in Pagosa.

At any rate, the whole process of finding and reserving a truck was done over the Internet, and included a fairly significant discount ($70) on the rental due to the fact that I used Google to find the Budget truck rental site. I'll be picking up the truck after my last shift and packing it that day, and planning to leave for Colorado the next morning.

* * *Larry King is apparently doing a series of shows featuring evangelists. The other night, I noticed a very old, yet curiously vital Billy Graham on the King show; tonight, King interviewed Joel Osteen, whose Lakewood church recently bought the former basketball arena here in Houston.

My opinion of Osteen was reinforced by tonight's segment, and underscored my observation that here is a preacher who doesn't have all the answers and frankly admits as much. Furthermore, along the same lines - and this is one of the things that holds my attention when he speaks - Osteen refreshingly avoids trying to tell me what God is thinking when he preaches and is most uncharacteristically free of that judgmental streak so common to the profession.

* * *I've never been a big fan of Circuit City, per se, but something they did today changed that. I stopped by quickly to check out a pair of in-ear ear buds (because while the Bose earphones do a bang-up job of noise cancellation, they are generally too bulky to wear on a day-to-day basis).

I'd heard that some such high-end buds run over $100, with other prices hovering in the $40-$60 area, and frankly, I was on a window-shopping trip. I was surprised to see a pair of Sony MDR-EX71SL ear buds on sale for under $16, and since the price was right, grabbed a pair and headed for the checkout.

When the cashier told me my total was $50 and change, I flinched and mentioned that the tag on the wall indicated a price of less than $20. After a few minutes spent going back to where the earphones were displayed, we established that the price on the wall was wrong, but to the store's credit, they offered to sell me the merchandise at the price I saw. I think that's pretty classy, and it certainly changed my opinion of the chain. (FWIW, buy.com will sell you these buds for $30.99, while amazon.com offers them for $31.29.)

* * *Lunch today was at the Vietnamese noodle place around the corner from the Tokyo Bowl. I had my usual small bowl of rice noodles with some thinly sliced sirloin and tripe in a bouillon, while Galina had grilled pork over rice noodles. Afterward, I stopped at the tea shop next door for what is definitely the worst tapioca tea I've ever had.

* * *Sleep came with difficulty, especially with the phone going off several times. Once it was the folks from Ireland, offering more rush work which I might have accepted if it hadn't had such a short deadline (4 hours) and I wasn't so weird about wanting to get some sleep before the start of my shift. Another call was an assignment due Friday, which I did accept. Eventually, I did manage a couple of hours of shuteye before getting up to get ready for tonight's shift.

And here I am, standing by.

Cheers...