One of our neighbors installed a home alarm. I know this because it went off for a good part of the day Saturday, at least twice yesterday and it went off again this morning. I don't think it's going to help.

This month's Entertainment Weekly has a major feature on the movies coming out this summer and for the first time in a couple of years there isn't much that I'm excited about. I'll be there for Troy but I don't know what else. Since we got netflix I get all my movies delivered to my door and I can watch them whenever I want and I don't have to park. AND they have TV shows. Our queue goes on and on.

I'm always complaining how I never have time to do anything and yesterday I had time and didn't want to do anything. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere. I goofed around a bit. I researched new webhosts and read newspapers and magazines and finally got off my butt and did a bunch of spring cleaning stuff: mucked through cupboards, vacuumed my car and swept the garage.

I cleaned out the front flower bed this past weekend. It needed it badly. One of the plants I bought last year did not come with a warning sticker: "this will take over your yard." I didn't notice how much it had spread around until I started digging. I thought about pulling the whole thing out but I'm going to wait and see what it's doing at the end of the Summer. I'm sure that at the end of the summer I'll decide to wait and see what it's doing next Spring. This is the way I pretend to take action while actually putting off taking action. It's a great system.

My Free Will Astrology this week said:

You may find this hard to believe, but it's very important for you to decide what actor or actress you'd choose to play you in the hypothetical movie based on your life. For me, it's obviously Viggo Mortensen, though if he weren't available I'd probably accept Robin Williams or Snoop Dogg. But then I can afford to indulge in the luxury of indecision about this matter, whereas you really can't. For reasons you can't imagine -- reasons that have to do with you taking your life's work more seriously than ever before -- you must expand and deepen the mythic intensity of your life story.

These are the actresses I came up with: Lily Taylor, Frances McDormand and Holly Hunter. Any other ideas?

What did people do to waste time before the Internet? This site is hilarious: Who is that with Jeremy?

I got a digital camera for my bday and I'm adding more picture.

Last week we got an unsolicited fax at the office to inform us that we were possibly eligible for an award in a class action suit against DirecTV for sending out unsolicited faxes. I checked it out and it is legit but I don't have the URL handy and I'm not going to look for it now. The notice included fine print that said that the law firm would get either $8.2 or $8.6 million dollars for their fees and expenses -- I can't remember exactly how much -- for defending us against this terrible violation of federal law. Except -- that we just got another unsolicited fax -- from the people who "earned" over 8 million dollars. What's the point? What are they saving us from?

Captainhoof is my latest online must-read. I went back and read the whole thing. The comments border on excruciating but there are some gems in there as well. You might also want to check out this Gawker bit -- the item about the anonymous blog.

Yesterday there was some poor befuddled driver trying to get around downtown at the tail end of rush hour. I know he was befuddled because he was in front of me and very tentatively went to make a turn down the wrong way of a one way street. I helpfully honked which he apparently interpreted to mean "hurry up and turn" and off he went the wrong way. What else could I do? I heard other cars honking and I didn't hear brakes squealing or metal crunching so perhaps it worked out okay. I never use my horn. I think that was the first time in this car. It's not like it helps when traffic is screwed up and you never know what whacko lurks behind the wheel so you don't want to honk at jerks because who knows what could happen?

Another thing I never do is return things. I don't know why, it always embarrasses me. However, I bought this software which turned out to be total crap and I contacted the company yesterday to see what they could do for me. It appears they're going to let me return it -- on my own dime which is no problem. I bet I can send it back for about $3. They charged me, ahem, $9 for an item the size of a DVD.

Bob gave me a bottlecap so I could get a free song from the Apple music store. There's this song I heard on the radio a couple times several months ago and I never got what it's called but I thought it might be by Good Charlotte so I listened to all the samples and that wasn't it so I listened to samples by a bunch of bands that sound like Good Charlotte (and turns out there are a lot of them) and I couldn't find my song. I've been looking for it for awhile. I gave up on that and looked at the top 100 lists in alternative, rock and pop to see if there was anything else that caught my eye. Number 12 on the rock list was Eye of the Tiger, Survivor. I remember that song from high school. How can that be number 12 now? That's not the song I got. I picked "Clocks" by Coldplay.

Everybody looks stupid in a backwards baseball cap. It makes even the smartest person look 25% stupider. The other day when I was on the marathon drive home from hell this kid in the car behind me very carefully put on his backwards baseball cap -- adjusting it and readjusting it as if a backwards baseball cap requires a thoughtful angle or something. Periodically he'd look in the mirror and check it and then give it another tweak.

Last night I watched Kingdom Hospital -- which isn't as great as I hoped -- but I haven't missed an episode yet. They have these ads for anti-depressants and it's like watching SNL joke ads. You have a politically correct diverse group of adults doing things like climbing out of their minivans with their two kids, boy and girl, and their dog, purebred lab, OR a lady arranging flowers in her immaculate kitchen OR a man with little wire glasses in a slacks, shirt, and tie in a huge corner office with windows, talking about how great this drug is for their depression and meanwhile the voiceover reels off this endless list of warnings and side-effects: "don't use if you have kidney, stomach, spleen or lung problems, don't take if you've ever had an eating disorder, headaches or backaches, may cause itchy feet, bad breath, nose-bleeds or flatulence, might cause dry mouth, and insomnia, you might not have bowel movements for weeks." And then you have this person look at the camera and tell you with complete sincerity how much better they feel on this drug.

This weekend I'm doing an extended yoga workshop with David Magone who is one of my former classmates and fantastic teacher although I don't think he gets enough junk food or something because he's developed some crazy ideas and has managed to find variations on even the simplest poses to turn them into agonizing marathon holds and painful pretzel variations. Truthfully, it's incredibly fun although there were moments in both sessions yesterday where I wasn't sure I liked him anymore.

One session was in the morning and the other in the evening and there didn't seem any reason to go all the way home so at first I intended to go to the office between sessions. But then I decided to take MAX to Lloyd Center to use my Ann Taylor gift certificate. I hardly ever use public transportation and both outgoing and returning I had to help other people figure out what they were doing. Same thing when I used BART in SF. Good thing I've had all this practice in cities where I don't even speak the language. The train was packed due to something at the convention center. Lots of professional looking people with bright green cords for their badges and dragging around big bags. We also had a "colorful personality" - some guy who looked like Ted Nugent who felt it was important to warn us something about the military following us. Unfortunately I had to exit the train before I got all the details.

Struck out at the mall. Nothing fit. I tried various sizes petite and not and none of it worked. I did run into Mark from my writing class and caught up with him so it wasn't a total waste. When I got back to the office I ended up taking a nap because the yoga workshop almost killed me and also I went to bed late because we saw Ian McEwan at Arts & Lectures. McEwan was detained at the border and told us we should be pleased that homeland security was protecting us from British novelists.

Last night on the way home from the second yoga session I stopped to buy gas. I haven't been to the gas station on a friday night at 9pm in eons and it was the happening spot with a group of kids that looked like A.J. Soprano and pals standing around and a lot of small beat-up old cars squealing out of the parking lot.