Ruminating Slav

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

So BK's been out of town a lot this month. Baxter was very excited to have him back this weekend.



What has the Slav been up to, you ask? Well! I hope you're sitting down. After I read Harry Potter #7 I was so sad and woeful about the series being over that I went back and read all seven books in a row. After that I was all excited about reading so I read all 13 Stephanie Plum mysteries. I figured this Janet Evanovich couldn't be all bad if she was publicly admitting to reading Buffy Season 8. Now I'm itching to sink my teeth into another thoughtless yet not completely crap mystery series. Suggestions?

Last night BK tried to take me out to eat for my birthday, but seeing as he hadn't actually made any reservations the waiter at Bijoux laughed at us when we strolled in and asked for a table. We ended up at Rouge, which served surprisingly good tapas. I also limited myself to two sangrias, which, as anyone who's ever been around me when I've consumed too much sangria can vouch for, is a very good thing. Then we saw Superbad, which was good fun. I enjoyed all 186 uses of the word "fuck."

This week marks my last week of employment before my shit-canning goes into effect. I guess that's a little bit of boo and yay combined. I've had a laid-off version of senioritis since I heard the news, so it'll be nice to not have to do work seasoned with resentment any more. But then, no more paycheck, however meager. This week we're also tagging along with BK on a business trip to NYC, which should be nice for a change of pace. It might even be cool enough to go outside, something we haven't experienced in the post-8 am hours for months here in Texas. Central Park, here we come!

Wherein I give you, reader, a few more reasons to sneer in my general direction

My MacBook Pro arrived back home today with its logic board replaced. They also replaced the topcase assembly, which is pretty funny considering the topcase assembly was replaced less than a month ago, last time I sent the MBP in. Now, me, if I were a tech at the repair facility and I was working on a machine that had been sent again for a problem that remained unfixed, I might actually read the notes from the previous repair. But hey, that's just me. Perhaps Apple has a huge overstock of MBP topcase assemblies and they're replacing them on every unit that comes through the repair center. Maybe.

So now the wait begins. The first time I shut the lid on this bad boy and it doesn't go to sleep, I'm going to be on the horn to executive relations faster than you can say, "Help me, Steve Jobs; you're my only hope."



By way of congratulating Apple on getting my laptop back to me, I wandered on over to my local Apple store this afternoon and bought the new Apple TV. Why, you ask? Because I am a sucker. Duh. On the bright side, if you've been itching for a widescreen, HD slideshow of my son (and you know you have), come on over!

The new season begins...today!
Originally uploaded by macslost.

Have we discussed the Buffy comics yet, interwebs? Run, do not walk, to your local nerd emporium comic book store and pick up the first issue, cause that shit is goooood. Although I have to say, I don't know how comic book fans (BK!) do it, cause one issue is like ¼ of a TV episode and then you have to wait a whole month to see what happens next. What's that all about? I for one would be willing to pay to have them speed that shit up. Then again, I'm also the person who bought the variant cover of the first issue and will be buying the slightly different, second-printing cover as well (much to BK's chagrin). So maybe I'm not really the person to ask. (Along these same lines -- only not -- I also think that professional sports games should end early if the margin between the scores is an preset, impossible to overcome amount. Yes, I have lots of opinions. Just ask me.)

Clare and Baxter
Originally uploaded by *Karo*.

Since I'm in an dork-tasticly oversharing kind of mood, I should also note that I not only bought my first-ever comic book this month, I also attended my first-ever comic book convention, where I met Clare Kramer, a.k.a. Glorificus. Here she is with Baxter. As you can see, he just taking a breather between screams, which is merely a fitting reaction to close proximity to a hellgod, and not at all the onset of the terrible twos seven months early. RIGHT???

For the Mac Mafia

Dudes! Check out what I just learned about on Lifehacker (the newest member of the Gawker empire, and very useful -- I learned how to make a favicon for the Slav last week!): Delicious Library. You can use your iSight to scan the barcodes of your books, CDs, DVDs, etc. and create an iTunes-like digital library of all your media (you can also just paste in the ISBN number). It's so very pretty and so appeals to my OCD-like sense of organizion. I'm actually thinking about plunking down the $40 for it.

OH MY GOD CAN YOU IMAGINE THE SCANNING THAT WILL BE DONE???

Promoting the emigré agenda

Dudes! I finally finished The Russian Debutante's Handbook. It took me weeks to finish. WEEKS, I tell you. I think it may be nipping at the heels of Mists of Avalon in the lists of books it's taken Karo a really long time to finish only not really because for some reason I putzed out like 10 pages before the end of MoA so I guess I can't really claim to have finished it and no I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. Why don't you ask Susanna Clark cause I never did finish her geedee book, either. Whoops.

ANYhoo, back to Gary Shteyngart. Contrary to what you may think, it took me such a long time to finish his book because it was good. He was all being a good writer and shit (Like me! Right now!) and that made it hard to fly through the book like I do with a lot of the slop that crosses my path. Every sentence had a purpose, oftentimes more than one -- clever little inside jokes would be lurking where you least expected them. And lemme tell ya, clever little inside jokes referencing the plight of the post-Stalinist Eastern European immigrant are a not exactly a DIME A DOZEN, PEOPLE.

That being said, I'm not sure if some of the book wouldn't be lost in translation on someone without at least a fraction of those memories and cultural touchstones. If you've read The Russian Debutante's Handbook, or ever do, let me know what you thought.

A love letter

Dearest Public Library,

I am writing to you in hopes that you will forgive me for the shameful way in which I've treated you since we broke up. I forgot how you stood by me for all those years I moved from place to place, knowing no one and leaning only on you for support. I traded you in for younger models, the flashy amazon.com and others of his ilk. Sure, they were shiny, wealthy and new. But Public Library, I'll be honest with you -- dating Jeff Bezos' love child was an expensive endeavor. We are now just friends, and I've come to beg for your forgiveness. Please take me back. You have everything a girl could ever hope for -- wide selection, online renewals and requests, and best of all, you are free. I love you, Public Library. Let's be together forever.

Love,
Karo

Walking David Sedaris

I am not a big fan of David Sedaris. *collective gasp from the peanut gallery* The one book of his I've read is Naked, and that experience solidified that he and I do not share a sense of humor. In Naked, Sedaris describes a trip he took to Greece when he was a teenager, to attend Greek Orthodox summer camp. Apparently he'd never had to share a bathroom before that trip, and the idea of pooping around others horrified him so much that he just ... didn't. The man did not poop for the entire month he was in Greece.

Apparently, my dog is the canine incarnation of David Sedaris. When I picked him up from the boarding kennel Tuesday evening, his abdomen was VISIBLY BLOATED with packed-in poo. Every walk since then, there have been VOLUMES of poo. Were it not for the scores of poo baggies I carry with me on walks, our neighborhood would be awash with the tidal wave of Buster's poo.