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Unfortunately I can't LJ from work anymore, and somehow Facebook is sucking most of my available online time at home. I'll try to do better about keeping up with you all in the new year.

In summary: It was much better than Lost Boys 2: The Tribe (if nothing else, they managed to cast some actors who've actually heard of charisma as the vampires). It gets brownie points for not having a sex scene with 'Cry Little Sister' as the background music. (Really. That's creepy enough that it might count as a redeeming characteristic of any film that isn't The Lost Boys. Or, well, Lost Boys 2. Sorry, Lost Boys 2.)

Comparison with the original Lost Boys revealed the real fatal flaw of both the sequels: they just took themselves way too seriously. There was nobody really stepping into Corey Haim's shoes - the little brother with no filter between his brain and his mouth who never let the opportunity for a wisecrack to pass him by - and the films really suffered for it. (That said - the most entertaining scenes in Lost Boys 3 were probably the ones where they went a little bit over-the-top...)

A repeat of the experiment determined that coffee/non-dairy creamer stratification results from creamer pouring technique, and has nothing to do with the starchy packet-filler in the sweetener. Apparently very little vertical mixing happens in an undisturbed coffee cup. Adding the packet of sweetener rearranged the layers a little bit, mostly from mechanical action by falling particles, and actually resulted in an expansion of the "lots of cream" layer.

That settled, hopefully I will spend this afternoon less distracted by my coffee cup.

When I poured the little plastic thingie of creamer into my coffee, I didn't stir it immediately. I was a little surprised that it then separated into a thick layer of "coffee-with-cream" in the bottom of the cup, and a thin layer of "coffee-with-dramatically-less-cream" on top of it. (I can tell this because I have an awesome beaker mug).

That was 15 minutes ago. Apparently the ability to accurately measure the height of different strata in my coffee column is more interesting than drinking the coffee, because I haven't touched it yet. For what it's worth, the cream layer seems to be separating into two substrata, and the cream that was in the top layer may be floating to the top of that layer, but the two main strata aren't mixing.

ETA: Having noticed no changes for a period of time, I decided to microwave the coffee and drink it. In the process of carrying it to and from the microwave, I didn't disturb the layers overly much, but I must have sloshed it a bit because now there's a really fascinating, complex oscillation at the boundary between the "cream" and "less cream" layers, and the bottom sublayer in the "cream" layer is much shallower but dramatically denser. Again, I find myself watching my coffee cup rather than drinking the coffee. If I'm this distractable today, I'm in deep trouble.

ETA again: And the oscillation eventually served to mix the top two layers. There's now one large "medium cream" layer on top of a thin "serious cream" layer. Did I miss my calling as a geologist? Anyways. I'm stirring the cup FOR REAL this time. Or maybe I'll just see if I can drink it without disturbing the layers...

ETA, and finis: Empirical evidence (by which I mean my tongue) suggests that the difference between the "medium cream" and "serious cream" layers was the presence of artificial sweetener, which is, of course, carried along with a certain amount of starchy packet-filler, which also did not get stirred. Assumption: something in the non-dairy creamer got bound to the starchy packet-filler, which then vaguely sank; being heated intensified the effect. (Bored? Nerdy? Why, yes, yes I am....).

If I put $2/week in a coffee can, and took the coffee can to the bank and opened a savings account when it had enough in it to cover the minimum balance, and started putting my $2/week in the savings account at that point, at the end of 10 years, I might have about $1050 in my savings account. (Interest rates ain't what they used to be.)

Having run the "Twice a week for 10 years" option on this Incredibly Depressing MegaMillions simulator about a dozen times, the most I have come out with is $109, after spending $1040 on tickets. Usually it's closer to $80.

Or, for a more direct statement of the issue: I can't help but think of the lottery as a tax on people who can't do math. The states are, after all, running the game as a fundraiser...

Saw this with Hubby and fmh last week, when we all needed to get out of the house and watch things blow up for an hour and a half, and were willing to pay $5 a head for the privilege. A few brief thoughts:

1) Somehow Sylvester Stallone ended up with Robert Downey Jr.'s beard. It kind of weirded me out.
2) Dolph Lundgren is a chemical engineer, and highly educated even beyond that. Betcha didn't know that.
3) My initial thought that the two scenes with Charisma Carpenter could have been cut without anyone noticing actually, in retrospect, turns out to be wrong. Mickey Rourke's character kind of explains why at one point.
4) The fight choreography also did a pretty good job of integrating the very different fighting styles being brought to the table.
5) My initial thought that the whole climactic action scene was really, when you get down to it, a bad case of tragedy that might have been avoided under different circumstances, in retrospect, does not turn out to be wrong.
6) Speaking of the climactic action scene, it featured a quantity of boom that even a battle-hardened Mythbuster would probably consider gratuitous and excessive - which meant it was just right for an afternoon where you're in the mood to pay $5 to sit and watch things blow up for an hour and a half.

I left the movie feeling vaguely testosterone-poisoned, which was probably the desired outcome. I left wanting neither my money nor my time back. It's certainly no masterpiece of modern cinema - but if you went in expecting anything other than what you got, it's your own fault.

The First Amendment ensures that the government cannot restrict your speech based on its content. It does not, however, guarantee you freedom from criticism - even rude criticism! It also does not guarantee you access to privately-owned mass media outlets, nor does it require the sponsors of your access to media to continue doing business with you no matter what you say. Your right to say what you like does not require others to pay for your soapbox.

Fortunately, in our age of cheap access to high technology, there are plenty of other opportunities for you to say whatever your heart desires. Beyond the time-honored "stand on a street corner and yell at passers-by" method, we have public access cable, multiple choices of vanity press, YouTube, and the good old-fashioned blog. Hopefully one of these will meet your needs.

Helpfully yours,
Me.

Remember a couple weeks ago when Violin Strings wasn't acutely ill? And we weren't too concerned because his cough didn't seem to be getting worse?

Yeah. Not so much.

Last Friday night, we noticed he was hiding - usually he came to greet us when we got home, demanding a bit of attention, but he didn't that day. He eventually came out after a long period of calling him (shaking his kibble dish, skritching the bed, and so forth) - but then after a little petting, he just kind of laid passively on the floor, and Hubby noticed he was having trouble breathing.

Happily, we live five minutes from a 24-hour vet clinic. They gave him oxygen, which stabilized him enough for an X-ray, which showed a pretty dramatic amount of fluid in his chest. This is surprisingly easy to fix in the short term - they can drain it with a syringe. Examination of the fluid and a second X-ray seemed to indicate congestive heart failure; they gave us a diuretic to help manage the fluid buildup, a referral to a veterinary cardiologist, and a recommendation that we avoid any kind of stress or excessive excitement, in the name of giving him a fighting chance to live out the week.

He seemed to be improving a bit - he ate and drank a little on Sunday, and he switched between three different places to lay quietly instead of limiting himself to just one. But I think the improvement in energy was what did him in: when we gave him his pill last night, he fought it hard enough to trigger a pretty bad respiratory attack - which, of course, stressed him even more. We went back to the vet, and the X-ray this time showed fluid building back up, even with the diuretic - which we were now reluctant to give him, because obviously getting a pill was over his present level of stress tolerance.

The respiratory attack itself had disabused us of the notion that, if he died of heart failure, it would be a peaceful death - he was struggling to breathe and visibly panicking. Given that even on the medication, his chest was filling up again - it seemed kinder to let the vet give him that peaceful death, instead of putting him through repeated chest taps and attacks and trips to the vet in the nasty growly car, and we chose not to wait for another emergency.

It still felt like murdering my cat. I'm still second-guessing the decision not to wait. I think Hubby is too. Daughter is away at camp, and doesn't know he's passed, although we did send a letter warning her of the possibility - I hope she understands.

It will be strange to not see him in my bedroom window when I come home tonight.

1) Cat-related.

For about a week, Violin Strings has had a very, very sporadic (maybe once or twice a day) cough. It looks like he's trying to bring up a hairball, but the sound isn't quite right - it's more of a wheezy sound than a hairball produces - and he'll keep it up for about 30 seconds, then swallow something. Yesterday Hubby thought he was running a fever as well, so they went to the vet. No fever. No fluid in his lungs. No audible wheezing in his lungs, either. No problems with his heart. Just a cough. His weight is fine. His teeth, muscles, and joints are in such excellent condition that the vet would not have guessed he was 11 years old, except that she had records from when he was a kitten. (From my perspective, he's definitely lost a step in the last year or so, but he was enough of an athlete before that he still leaves most adult cats in the dust.) Verdict: "If it doesn't get better, bring him back for an X-ray." It's good to have confirmation that he's not acutely ill, but a little more information would have been nice...

2) Car-related.

Last night, I was running errands, and my car started yelling at me about how it was almost out of gas. There is a gas station right across from the grocery store I was shopping at, so I figured: get the groceries, get the gas, then head home. Except when I came out of the grocery store, the car wouldn't start, despite an enthusiastic crank. "Great," I figured, "I guess I should have gone to the gas station first. On the bright side, I had a gas can in the trunk. On the not-so-bright side, adding a gallon of gas to the tank didn't change the situation - and I noticed that when it failed to start, the radio display read "CALIBRATE" for a second. (The radio itself worked fine.)

Called the tow truck. Called Hubby to pick me up at the shop, and also asked him to Google what it might mean when the radio display on my car says CALIBRATE. He called me back telling me, "You're not gonna like this...." It seems that "cranks, won't start, radio says CALIBRATE" is a not-entirely-uncommon problem with my model of car, and invariably the car will start without a problem the next morning - sometimes even just an hour later. It also appears that a) it tends to recur, and b) at least as far as the Internet is concerned, there isn't a consensus on what causes it. There was talk of a lawsuit against GM for an obvious design defect. There was also talk of one marriage splitting up over the issue: the husband thought the wife was lying about her car trouble, because they'd had it towed three times, and it started up for the mechanic (or for him) every time...

So we towed it. Tow truck driver thought it might be the fuel pump. It was also nice to have the car die just a couple miles from the shop...the tow bill was in the neighborhood of reasonable. And the mechanic called Hubby to let him know... drum roll...... that as far as they can tell there's nothing wrong with it. Started on the first try. Drove like a dream. Of course it did.

So that rhythmic sound? Yeah. Forehead. Desk.

Intermittent problems suck.