~Saturday~ I met Patrick Barclay for lunch at noon at The Diner. We had good conversation, and a good brunch once our ham and cheese omelets were whisked away and our actual-ordered three-cheese omelets arrived.
They had a shortage of pens there, and to that end they grabbed ours just as soon as we finished signing our credit card receipts. Perhaps it’s time for a trip to Target or something. I mean pens are kind of a critical tool in running a restaurant business.
After lunch, I stepped across the street to Helios, where I intended to devise my Friday’s blog entry, but that ended up not happening.
Most of my friends know that I hate talking on the phone, and a because of that, a couple of them either forwarded to me, or pointed me to, 10 Reasons to Avoid Talking on the Phone. Surprisingly, only one of them really resonated with me—#9. I guess, but to a much lesser extent, #3 did as well.
As I mentioned in a recent post, my Mostly Social Book Club is reading Jill Bolte Taylor‘s My Stroke of Insight, and today this passage explained something I’ve always wondered about:
| Most of the different types of cells in our body die and are replaced every few weeks or months. However, neurons, the primary cell of the nervous system, do not multiply (for the most part) after we are born. That means that the majority of the neurons in your brain today are as old as you are. This longevity of the neurons partially accounts for why we feel pretty much the same on the inside at the age of 10 as we do at age 30 or 77. The cells in our brain are the same but over time their connections change based upon their/our experience. |
At around 4:00, I ventured out to Cary Towne Center for my first visit to a mall in 2010. It could very well be my last, as twice or three times a year is pretty much the most I ever do. Actually, I’ll have to go back in ten days to pick up my new glasses.
So, those of you who’ve been reading a while know that in January I had an eye exam, after which I ordered new lenses to be put in my same frames, and that totaled to $509. In writing about it here in my blog, a couple of people commented about what a rip off it usually is to get glasses at your eye doctor’s office, and as a result of that discussion, I canceled my order and got a $509 credit back to my credit card. About a week later, I requested that my eye doctor’s office send me my prescription.
I’m happy to report that today, at Lenscrafters, where they were having a 50% off sale on a lot of frames, I promptly picked out the only pair I saw under $100. They were $99, and I didn’t see another pair around them for less than $200, if not $250. I turned down all of her upselling attempts, and when I told her I didn’t want the “featherweight” option, she said, “Well, we only stock those. I’d probably have to order them if you wanted the regular ones.”
“How long would they take to get here, and what’s the cost difference?” I asked.
After pushing way too many buttons on way too many screens, with nearly inch-long bright-red painted fingernails that slapped against the keyboard above the letters the pads of her fingertips tried to mash, she said, “We can get them without that option. They’ll take ten days to arrive, and they’ll be $50 cheaper.”
Let’s see, $50/10 days is $5 a day. “Perfect,” I said, “I’ll wait for those to come in then.”
I walked out of there paying $198.60 for a new pair of glasses. That’s over $300 cheaper than what I was going to pay at my eye doctor’s office, and these include new frames. Sweet. Thanks Dan and Scott. 🙂
On the way back from there, I stopped at the gym, where I first spotted Bubba looking around at the people next to him, pretty much deciding on who he was going to talk to. He pounced on the guy next to him on one of the free-weight machines, and I timed over ten minutes that he usurped that guy’s time. I mentioned recently that one of my dad’s favorite sayings is, “That’s an accident waiting to happen.” Well Bubba is, “A conversation waiting to intrude.”
I did a 40-minute cardio workout on the cross-trainer for a 830-calorie burn.
I met Robert in Durham at 7:00, and we had dinner at C&H Cafeteria, where I had baked ham, fried zucchini, home-fried potatoes, and a salad. Yum.
We saw the 8:15 performance of Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom at Manbites Dog Theater. I actually got two comp tickets, which I don’t think I’ve ever done, even though I’m entitled to them all the time as a member of the board of directors.
Although I’m not a gamer, I have studied the effect on the Internet and society of massively multiuser online role playing games (MMORPG) as well as the newer mixed reality games. Blast Theory is a group doing a lot of work in the area of mixed reality games, in which an online game uses the real world as its “board.” A couple of their games include Can You See Me Now and Uncle Roy All Around You:
To that end, I found the ideas explored in this play congruent with the types of questions that came up while studying in grad school the implications of playing out virtual games in the real world. Good job, Jeff!
If you’re a gamer, I’m pretty sure you’d enjoy the play. More about it and ticket information are available on the Manbites Dog Theater website.
I met Joe out at Flex after the play. It was blackout night, which pretty much wasn’t blacked out at all due to one of the TVs left on, which pretty much lit up the majority of the main bar area.
It got fairly crowded, as tonight was the HRC Gala in Raleigh, featuring these speakers and entertainment:
after which people were out and about. And I mean out.
When I got home, the townhouse across from mine was having a party and there were two cars parked in my parking spots. I walked across the street and up to two guys who were standing out front, I asked, “Would you take me to one of the people who lives here, please?”
To which one answered, “We don’t know who lives here, man.”
I asked, “You don’t know who lives here? You just came to this party without knowing the people who live here?”
“Yeah, man. It’s a college party, and we’re college kids,” he replied as if I were stupid for not surmising that of my own volition and it explained everything. It explained them, that’s for sure.
I opened the door to the house, which was wall-to-wall with people with cups in their hands. Their kitchen is the first thing in the door to the right, and I stepped in there and tapped the nearest person on the shoulder and I said, “Hey, who lives here?”
The guy stood up on his tip-toes and pointed to someone way in the back of the living room, whom I couldn’t see, and he said, “That guy right back there in the corner.”
“I can’t see who you’re pointing me to. Would you take me to him, please?”
The guy was behind a long table set up with a bunch of equipment like you’d see in a DJ booth and I guess he was “spinning or mixing tunes” for his “college party.” I said to him, “Hi. I live across the street, and two people are parked in my parking spots.”
He started following me out to the front door, and I continued, “I just want to park in my own parking spot. And I really don’t want to have to get the police and all that drama involved, so if you’d…” Before I could finish the sentence, we were at the front door looking across at my place, and one of the cars was pulling out of one of my spots.”
“That’s great,” I said, “Thanks.”
“Did you want me to find out who’s in your other spot and have them move?” he asked very politely.
I said, “No, that’s fine. You guys carry on.”