New books, new books, new books...

I tried, I swear I tried, but I just could not get through either The Botany of Desire or The Ominvore's Dilemma both by Michael Pollan. I made it through the section on corn in The Ominvore's Dilemma, but I couldn't handle his writing style anymore. So I stopped. Then when I tried to read the apple section in The Botany of Desire, it seemed a replay of a recent "Suppressed Transmissions" by Kenneth Hite in the online 'zine Pyramid. So I quit.

So since since then I've read Nancy Cartwright's autobiography My Life as a Ten Year Old Boy. It has some neat things in it like her first time meeting Phil Hartman to the ridiculousness of Elizabeth Taylor and "directing" Kirk Douglas.

Then I got William Shatner's autobiography Up Till Now. That was great. I read it in a day and a half, getting it Saturday morning and finishing it Sunday night. The thing that makes it so easy is that its like he's talking to you. You can hear his voice. And not just the... pauses. It's so conversational. The best sections are the ones covering his three big television series, but it's amazing the parts he played in TV and movies, and even on Broadway. The part that was the funniest was the charity paintball tournament. It made me laugh out loud it was so funny (Oh, wait. This is the Internet. "It made me LOL!"). If any out there reads it, let me know when you get to that point. My overall favorite part was him describing how he came to be with his fourth (and present) wife.

He made a list. He became incredibly lonely after his third wife had died from drowning in their swimming pool while drunk and home alone. So he decided he would make a list of everything he would want in a woman. And very quickly, he found her. I found this extremely touching because when I was in Kentucky for graduate school, I was feeling lonely, and I felt I needed to really define what I was looking for in a woman.

So I made a list. And within a year I was dating Jennifer. And she is everything that I had put down. I think that's why we liked "Practical Magic" so much because as a little girl Sally Owens makes a list of what kind of boy she wants to marry. And even though she made the list to be impossible to match, that is who she ends up with at the end.

Oh, just in case... Spoiler Warning. Sorry.

And so as you can see, I am now on to Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews. And of course interspersed are my basic comic books.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

And it's Monday... again.

Thursday, Jennifer went to Oregon to help her parents move to their new place in Yamhill. And I kept myself busy reading William Shatner's autobiography Up Till Now. It was really fun to read, and I ended up finishing it last night.

Friday night, I went to Beckett's in Berkeley and had dinner with John. I had nice pints of beer and their Friday Prime Rib special. Afterwards we walked to Games of Berkeley and I bought too many lead miniatures. Then we went to Thalassa and played four games of pool.

I BARTed, and got caught up in the 25 minute delay switching from the SF line to the Richmond line. But the ride home was fine, and I listened to my iPod the whole way there and back. When I got home it was cool. Not comfortably cool, but cooler than the day had been. The air conditioner seemed to be running when I got in but the thermostat measured 80 degrees. I went to check outside, and (after killing black widow number 3 of the week) found that the AC was not running, just the inside fan, and apparently the fuse had blown. I ended up sleeping with the hall fan, and the ceiling fan going and the windows open to try to cool the house down. I ended up getting it down to 75 degrees by 8:00 AM.

The AC system at the house is part of the old wiring system that caused problems earlier this year. The AC has two ways of protecting itself. First is a double circuit breaker on the main board in the garage. The second is a fuse box (yes, fuses) that is outside near the AC unit itself. It was under this that the black widow had made her home. I pulled the fuses panel out, and could see nothing wrong. We had had this problem last summer, but didn't know about the fuses, and got a lesson in how to fix the situation from an AC serviceman. He had replaced the fuses, but we had no way of knowing which one went bad because they didn't have a window to show.

So early Saturday, I went to Home Depot and bought two 30 amp fuses. I replaced the one that looked older, plugged the panel back in, flipped the circuit breaker, and the AC started right back up.

The rest of Saturday was relaxing. I went to Livermore and got my comics. I had a Philly Cheese Steak and sat in a hot restaurant because their AC was out too.

Then I went home and painted miniatures while not watching "The Fifth Element", "The Princess Bride", and "Bug's Life".

Sunday I read Shatner's biography, had dinner with my parents, and then came home and finished the biography.

Jennifer got in this morning, and I am looking forward to seeing her when I get home.