Friday night we went bowling. I enjoyed myself, but I won't be joining a league any time soon. I'd bowl three frames worth of gutterballs, then get a strike. I couldn't seem to release the ball the same way two times running. My entire vocabulary when bowling condenses down to single words: "Jeez. Ack. Yikes! Go! Yes! No! Augh!" It was not terribly satisfying, especially since no one around us observed the normal courtesies like not bowling at the same time someone in the next lane over stepped up to the mark. The truly distracting part was the loud rock/metal music blasting out of a speaker directly over our lane. It started out acceptably loud, but someone kept cranking it up with every song until it finally became almost painful to listen to. I felt like I'd turned into my own grandmother when I caught myself grumbling about not being able to hear myself think.
Today, I went to the mall to buy a good travel guide to Chile. I went to Phileas Fogg which is a travel bookstore. Just stepping in their door makes me breathe a little faster. They have a peerless selection of travel books in floor to ceiling bookshelves. All those gorgeous books, and accessories, and maps set my wanderlust in motion. When preparing for a trip I prefer to read a thick, photo-laden guide with lots of information on culture and history, like Insight Guides. Fodor's and Lonely Planet are good, too, but they never provide the amount of general information I want when first researching a country. Most guidebooks will tell me what sights to see, but I like getting a sense of the country itself before I worry about where to go. I take something lighter weight that focuses on sightseeing when I actually travel, like the Michelin guides.
I got my Insight Guide to Chile, then stood reading a fascinating book called The Accidental Office Lady by Laura Kriska. It was about a young American woman who went to work for Honda in Japan. I think I may have read half the book before I finally noticed I was shifting from foot to foot from having stood uncomfortably long. I had to put the book back, though. I couldn't buy it because earlier in the week I blew most of my spare cash on translations of Livy, Tacitus, and Caesar, plus a swell reference book on all things ancient and Roman. Now I'm set for lunchtime, train, and bedtime reading material. These should last me at least two months.
This evening, instead of going to a party in the city with John I stayed home and rewrote code, transfering some of the Digiverse verbs to ElderMOO where I think a lot of people will be delighted to see them on Monday. It took ages even though it wasn't particularly difficult. It's like anything else online: one itty bitty misplaced colon or missing quote mark and nothing works right. I chatted on ICQ while wrestling with forgotten protocols and long unused classes. It was fun. This is the geekiest thing I do. Otherwise, I'm not much of a geek. A side benefit of having taught myself MOO code is I now have a pretty decent clue about what John does at work. He programs in C++, so after years of just nodding thoughtfully as he told me about some cool data the particle detector turned up I can now relate to the actual work he does. Not that I know what it's used for. It's still particle physics to me.
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