Plan of Action

Where to begin...

The other half will be boarding an American Airlines flight that leaves at 10:45 EST, so as she was so rudely awakened by yours truly (at 8:45AM EST), it's a pretty safe bet she won't see this post until she is ensconced on her terrace at the W. The last 18 hours have been a blur, but in a great way, and until I manage to get over to her place tonight my head will be swimming in a sea of excitement, happiness, details and the like.

First off, a heads up to John Lalley: I started the caesar dressing last night. I got a salad and some stuff to go in it: a cucumber, some parmiagiano reggiano (which was already in the fridge), a yellow tomato and some yellow and orange peppers. Anyhoo, I made a dinner out of it -- and the dressing was rockin' -- so now I figure I need to have another 63 dinner salads and I'll finish off the container. If you need some caesar in the meantime, lemme know :-)

Second, I did a mild run-through of the apartment to get it somewhat tolerable for our eventual return. Since we'll be spending a few days at the W but a few days at my place as well, I wanted to make sure La Casa De Boogie wasn't too uninhabitable. Basically, I got the sheets and towels ready to go, cleaned the bathroom pretty thoroughly, and did a run-through of everything to make sure it wasn't too awful. It's actually funny -- I think I'm more stressed about the state of my abode than she is, which is nice. A friend of mine jokingly suggested that when we cohabitate she'll turn into a neurotic, maniacal clean-freak, and while I laughed, I explained to him that she couldn't be neurotic about anything if she tried. Amazingly, thus far I've been unable to get her pissed or seriously riled about anything I've done. She's just super-cool on a lot of levels. Oh well...my motto is: "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again." :-)

Third, while I was doing a mild cleaning/spruce-up, I tried to put a wrap on that DVD movie conversion I've been doing. To catch you all up, I don't normally bother trying to re-invent the wheel; I would have written this movie off long ago, but since it's only available as a UK DVD, there's no way I'll ever be able to get it to legitimately play on my home theater system (with region protection and the PAL/NTSC problem), and while I normally would just say the hell with it, I similarly never caved when the Powers That Be released Goodfellas as a two-sided disc (meaning you had to get up mid-movie and flip it over). I waited until six or so months ago when they released it properly. And it was worth it.

Anyhoo...I think I solved the mystery of the whole process. As we speak it's "transcoding" on my home PC and should be burned and complete by the time I reach the Casa later this evening. I've watched snippets of it now over a four- or five-day period, so I've pretty much seen the entire movie; however, seeing it "live" on the TV with the soundtrack booming from my HK will light me up. And instead of us watching "Fall" on DVD tonight or over the weekend, methinks we'll be watching at least some of "Who Dares Wins" over the next 120 or so hours. We've also got "Napoleon Dynamite" on tap -- it's a great movie, btw -- and we're definitely going to try and squeeze in "Sideways" as well. If it's really a great weekend we'll be shooting for the theater, but if it's rainy and/or cold we might wind up going to see "Sin City." While "Sin City" is supposedly a great movie to see in the theater (the visuals are supposed to be incredible), I dunno if my other half is too into seeing it, only because it's basically a Maxim Magazine-type film; lots o' hotties wearing next-to-nothing, a lot of strippers/hookers/scummy women and a few abusive, bad-guy types (plus Bruce Willis). If anyone reading this has seen it, gimme a holler and lemme know if it's worthwhile.

What else...oh...I also did some packing and some organization, so I am basically ready to go home, get showered and cleaned up, dressed and head down to the hotel. She's due in around four, but odds are she'll need a quickie nap and I'll not see her until about 7. In either case, I'm counting the hours and, as per usual, she has a permanent space in my head and my heart that I can't ignore, so I'm just going to try to get through the day with as little turbulence as I can; in the meantime, I'll try and keep updating this space with posts (both written and photos) when/if I get the chance.

-B-