I'm Still Here, And Still As Happening As Always

I know, I haven't blogged in a couple of days. Highly unusual for me. What can I say? I honestly don't have anything in particular to talk about this weekend, it seems. Not that that usually stops me, I know. But it's definitely been a lazy, uneventful weekend, in large part, I think, because I suddenly realized that all the really urgent things on my to-do list had either already been done or simply can't be done at the moment. And the non-urgent things, are, well, not urgent and can wait until after I get back from vacation. So I've just been puttering around and relaxing and enjoying myself, which is, needless to say, really nice.

Here's some of the things I've done this weekend:

Laundry. Clean underwear is a good thing.

Reading. Currently I'm reading A Primate's Memoir by Robert M. Sapolsky. It's about the experiences of a guy who went to Kenya to study stress in baboons. Very lively, funny, interesting book. I'll probably review it for my book review page at some point, since I really do need to start doing some more reviews.

Attending the Jansky Lecture. This is a popular-level astronomy talk that's given every year and hosted by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, where I work. This year the topic was gamma ray bursters, which are pretty darned cool.

Watching Firefly. Have I mentioned lately that this is a really fun show?

Beta-reading. This is the technical term for what goes on when a writer finishes a story and gives it to somebody else to read so they can point out the typos and plot holes and otherwise criticize or praise as appropriate. And, man, if I had a dollar for every time somebody came to me and said, "Hey, can you read through my novel/story/term paper/fan fiction for me before I send it to the editor/post it to the internet/turn it in to the professor/run it in the APA?" I could quit my job and do it professionally. Well, maybe not, but it's a nice thought.

Movie-watching. I actually went out and rented a movie for the first time in ages. Watching Reservoir Dogs a while back gave me a bit of a hankering for some more Tarantino, so I got Jackie Brown, which I hadn't seen before. It's a pretty good movie: good plot, good characters, good acting, but, I dunno, it seems to be lacking... something... that Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs had. Don't ask me what, though.

Hanging out with friends. Because my friends have discovered the surest way of getting me to come and hang out with them: free food and digital cable!

Playing The Sims. I moved a bunch of Buffy vampires into my new SF-TV-themed neighborhood. At the moment, Spike is passionately in love with Drusilla, who doesn't love him back. I'd call this a case of life imiatating art, except that would seem like a really strange thing to say...

E-mail. Sometimes it seems that half my life is spent reading and writing e-mail. At the moment, I'm having various long discussions with various people about Blake's 7, and Star Trek, and Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy and probably several other things I'm forgetting at the moment.

So, yup, now you all know about the amazing and exciting things I do in my spare time! Though, alas, that spare time is slowly drawing to an end, as I'm afraid I have to go in to work in a few hours... I should log off now, really. I've still got a lot of important lazing-around to do between now and then!