August 2005


Long Day

The work day seemed rather long, although I've had longer days. Dad made a stop at the bank and post office on the way. He obliged me a stop at Subway to pick up some lunch before getting to work at about 11. There was plenty of work unfinished yesterday which I took care of today. I got the reports done around two but I had enough to look over to keep me occupied until we left the office at about quarter to five. I did a little laundry this evening. I didn’t quite finish it up and I have a bunch of clean clothes piled up in my room as I so often do. Late in the evening I watched most of Chinatown. I was too tired for the last 20 minutes. This and a few past entries were typed on my SRX series Vaio. I find I’m growing accustomed to the smaller keyboard, although I still don’t think it’ll become useful enough for serious work.

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Monday

I worked from about 10 to 4:15 today. There was plenty of work waiting for me from Friday. I got some of it done but there’s plenty left for tomorrow. Later in the evening I watched the Six Feet Under episode I missed yesterday.

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Phil and Paul

l went with Bianca to meet a photographer at PJ’s Coffee this afternoon. She wasn’t sure what time the meeting would be but she finally heard from the guy, Phil Casper, sometime time after three. They agreed to meet five. We were going to take the bus down Gen. Degaulle but my dad got home from the store just as I was leaving so Bianca and I got a ride. We were early so we wandered around Blockbuster for a few minutes. Phil arrived early himself at around 4:30. He and Bianca spoke about an upcoming photo shoot, among other things for over an hour. After Phil left, we stayed around for a while longer, just sitting and talking for a couple hours in front of the frozen yogurt place. We saw Ashley Murray, a high school classmate while we were there. She used to work at the place and stopped by as a customer. I last ran into her at the French Quarter Festival last year. Dad called me sometime before eight and said he was going to the Rock ‘n’ Bowl. I’d forgotten that I was planning to go with him and invited Bianca to join us and she accepted so Dad picked us both up where he dropped us off. Paul Varisco and The Milestones were having one of their reunion shows. Dad goes to all of these, usually twice a year. Like the last two times I’ve seen them, it was remarkably crowded and loud. The music was decent, the band has a great horn section. We arrived late but we caught the second and third sets. Bianca tried to get me to dance with little success and we bowled a few frames. We left to go home around half past ten and got home by 11. I was on the computer for a couple hours. Ami called me shortly before two and we talked for over an hour before I got to bed at three.

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Otra: Back on Frenchman

My parents, Andrew and I went to Office Depot this afternoon to buy Andrew’s school supplies. I came along to get some things I don’t need and look at the ‘toys.’ Later in the evening, Dad and I went to see Otra play at d.b.a. at 11 this evening. I haven’t seen them since Jazz Fest, as they haven’t played much lately. A few of the regular band members were not there tonight, but they still sounded pretty good. The place was pretty crowded. You could barely move, but some folks still managed to dance. We stayed there until sometime after midnight, maybe closer to one actually. We left shortly before they started the second set, as it was rather late.

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Surgury

I arrived at work sometime after nine this morning. There was still plenty of dictation remaining from yesterday that I worked on over the course of the afternoon. I still didn't finish though, especially with a whole new load of dictation done this afternoon that will be waiting for me on Monday. Dad and I had lunch at Bangkok Cuisine just before noon. We got a Phat Thai as always but got desserts today. I have the banana’s foster pie, which was pretty good. We remained at the office until about 2:30 and then left to go home. We made stops to wash the car and buy a few groceries. Both the hinge and touchpad I ordered for my new laptop came in the mail. The hinges on my ‘new’ SRX77 are loose, causing the display to fall backward. The touchpad was also rather worn and needed replacing to I performed a little surgery on the laptop to fix the problems. I didn’t have any problems, although it was slow work in making sure not to damage the tiny notebook. I also burned a couple hours trying to fix the PC Card release button, which isn’t working. Unfortunately I would need a soldering iron to remove the PCMCIA interface and correct the mechanism so I gave up and decided to let the issue remain not a big deal anyway as I don’t have much use for the card slot anyway. Later in the evening I watched Battlestar Galactica and talked to Khadijah on the phone for a little while.

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Death of a Deli

Once again I’ve skipped a few days in the log. Suffice it to say, Grandma came over for dinner on Sunday, I worked Monday and Tuesday and not on Wednesday. Perhaps something interesting happened, but I don’t remember anymore. Anyway, Dad and I left the house sometime after ten. Dad needed copy paper and some other things for the office so we stopped at the Office Depot on St. Charles. I looked at some grown-up toys while Dad got what he needed. Not to long before we were ready to check out, the electricity in the store went out. That slowed things down in the check out lines more than somewhat. They have a crash kit for such things though and eventually we completed out purchase and left the store. Apparently, the fire department intentionally cut the power to a length of the street due to an incident at a restaurant about a block down the street. With copy paper in hand, we stopped at Loyola Law School to give Mom her cell phone. She left it at the house this morning. After that stop, we made our way to the office. As we approached the office, I had a look at the deli across the street to see if they were open today. They’ve had a sign on their door for a couple weeks now saying ‘renovations’ are in progress. To my shock and dismay, I saw some workers putting up a sign that read “Hong Kong City: Chinese Cuisine.” It’s pretty ugly signage too, black letters on an orange backdrop. I suppose I should have suspected something like this was happening. The Mid City Deli has been under new management for a few months and there was no necessity for renovation. The restaurant was a very neat looking place. It was by no means the least bit dirty or in need of refurbishment. I’ve been buying lunch there as long as I’ve worked at Dad’s clinic, which has been intermittent for the last three years. I don’t even want to think about how much money I’ve spent there. It’s not the cheapest place, but I found the food to all be quite good. Their po-boys rivaled Mandina’s according to a Zagat entry and I’d agree. Converting the place into another Chinese restaurant just doesn’t make any sense to me. New Orleans has no shortage of them. In fact, there just such a restaurant in the same strip mall as the deli, a rather good one I might add. Oh well, we’re supposed to be moving the mid city office soon so this will soon be water under the bridge for me anyway. I’m still gonna miss the Mid City Deli though good po-boys. We arrived at the office at quarter to noon. I was pretty busy today as doc had plenty of dictation to do on Wednesday. I got seven discharge reports done. There’s still a few left that I’ll work on tomorrow. Dad and I left to go home at about six. After dinner I went to put a new insurance card in my car, which hasn’t started in a few weeks. I tried starting it for grins as I’ve done every few days. It actually started tonight, a great relief. Dad and I thought it may be the starter but apparently it was just the battery, a great relief. With this newfound opportunity to move the car I put in the driveway and washed it, which it direly needed. I have to park it in the street under this little tree that deposits all sorts of nasty crap on the hood, dirt of a dozen varieties. Later in the evening I watched a show we recorded from a couple days back. It was a show on PBS featuring old television commercials from the New Orleans area. I found it rather fascinating. I’ve only lived here in the city for just under 10 years so of course I’d never seen most of them before. A lot of the older ones were entertaining for a variety of reasons. Even later in the evening I typed this.

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Astral Project

This past Thursday and Friday were nothing special. I can’t ever remember anything actually. I worked 11:30 to five on Thursday and 10:30 to 2:30 on Friday. I was at home most of the day this Saturday, doing nothing especially productive. I did make it out of the house this evening though. Dad and I went to see Astral Project’s 11 o’clock set at Snug Harbor. This was my first time seeing the late set there. They put on a pretty good show, not the best performance from them I’ve seen, but pretty good. We had a drink at d.b.a. and walked around a bit before heading home.

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Long Day

Dad and I didn’t go to work too early this morning, but we were sure gone for a while. We stopped at the Mid City office first, arriving at about 10:30. Dad had to take care of some things that accumulated while he was away. Sometime around one, we left and went to the east office. Between all the patients and dictation waiting to be done, Dad and I were stuck at the office until 7:30. I didn’t do any actual work all day and I was further reminded why I have Wednesdays off. We got home around eight most of the evening was gone. I fooled with my new laptop for a while before bed.

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Family Back Home – Laptop Arrives

I wasn’t in much hurry to get to work this morning as the doctor doesn’t get to the office until after two. Before leaving I did just a little tidying up the house as my folks would be back home this evening. I arrived at work at quarter to noon. Although I didn’t have anything to do outside of babysitting and occasionally answering the phone, work was still exhausting as the clinic was exceptionally busy today, all day. After getting doc out of the office, I went home myself at 6:30. The laptop I won on eBay, a Sony Vaio SRX77, arrived in the mail today. I spent most of the evening fooling with it. I replaced the 20 GB HD with a 60 GB HD I bought earlier this week. I’ll upgrade the internal wireless card soon as well. It’s in almost perfect cosmetic condition. There is a single scratch on one end of the lid and the touchpad is pretty worn down, making it a bit difficult to run your finger over it. The hinges are loose as well and will require replacement, unfortunately. I was also a wee bit disappointed in that the included DVD-ROM uses the PCMCIA interface rather than the powered firewire socked, but that’s no big deal since I have no other PC card slot devices at present. I’m still happy with my purchase, although it would have been nice to know about the hinges ahead of time. Even after seeing hundreds of pictures and seeing specs and such, I was still amazed at how small it is. It makes my R505, which is rather thin and petite itself, look cumbersome. The keyboard is rather small to fit the notebook, so I don’t think it will replace my R505, which has a nearly full size keyboard. My family arrived back home late this evening after a trip to Michigan for Jeff’s college orientation. They all spoke pretty highly of Ann Arbor… supposedly, even the food is tolerable.

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Sold

I took a cab to work this morning as my parents are still out of town. I arrived at 10:15. There were a few tapes of dictation waiting from the weekend that I took care of over the afternoon. I took my time with the work but I still finished pretty early. I remained at the office until 4:15 this afternoon and went home. I was a bit disappointed as I was expecting my new laptop to come in the mail today. I sold my fist item on ebay this evening. I bought a broken laptop similar to mine not too long ago. It wasn’t in satisfactory cosmetic condition to I decided to sell it. I was only hoping to recoup some of the money I spend but I actually made a little profit. Perhaps I’ll try unloading more items in the future. I watched The Notebook this evening. Ami called me rather late this evening. We talked for a couple hours, among other things, about the possibility of her leaving Payson.

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