21 March 2002

Matt and I have been saving up some minor repairs around the house. The garbage disposal sounded like there was a piece of loose metal in it, except that we couldn't find it when we stuck our hands in there. We have two light fixtures that burn out their bulbs within a couple of weeks that obviously need something to be fixed.

The thing that spurred us to actually get off our duffs and call the electrician/plumber, though, was the water leaking from the vent in the dining room, which just happens to be immediately under our shower.

I left a message with the dispatcher, who took my list of ailments and promised to have someone call me back. The electrician called around noon, and we made arrangements for him to come to the house first thing this morning.

The plumber called just a little after 3. "Are you home? Can I come now?"

"I'm at work," I answered. "Can we schedule something for tomorrow?"

"I don't know what my schedule is going to be like tomorrow," he returned.

Rather than continue to discuss the intricacies of the word "schedule" with him any further, I told him to give me twenty minutes to drive home.

The garbage disposal had spontaneously fixed itself in the month or so that we've been avoiding using it. The drip under the shower turned out to be the combination of a shoddily-installed faucet, which wasn't flush to the wall, and the recently-broken showerhead, which was leaking water straight down the shower wall and therefore allowing much more water than usual into the crack created by the shoddy faucet installation.

The plumber replaced the o-ring on our faucet, which he said was cracked, and caulked over the crack to prevent more water leaking, and suggested strongly that we replace the showerhead as soon as possible.

(We'd been planning to do that anyway. Taking a shower with only half the normal water pressure really sucks.)

So right now, as I write this, I'm sitting at home. The electrician showed up promptly on time, which made me happy. He thinks the problem with the light fixture in the living room was - oh, go on and guess - shoddy installation. The wiring wasn't properly insulated or something, and had damaged the fixture itself, resulting in the swift burn-out of our bulbs.

Well, fine. I'll buy that. Especially since the plastic insulation around the sockets crumbled when he started to unscrew the fixture.

I'm less happy with his examination of our porch light - he says that fixture looks fine, and he thinks the bulbs are burning out too fast because we bought cheap bulbs.

So right now, he's gone up to the hardware store to get a new fixture for the living room, and some not-cheap bulbs for the porch light. He did say that if those bulbs burnt out too quickly, he'd come back free of charge. Which is nice except that it means Matt or I will have to take time off from work for it again.

He should be back in the next ten or fifteen minutes, and replacing the light fixture should only take him another five. After that, I have to decide whether I'm going in to work today or not.

I'm sure no one will be shocked or surprised if I say I'm tempted to just stay home...

So. I went with K.T. and Kevin last night to see The Time Machine. I'd seen the previews and been distinctly unimpressed. Every review I'd seen hated the movie, except for one - and that one was from a reviewer that I disagree with at least 75% of the time.

But K.T. wanted to see the movie, so we went to see it. I went in with a carefully cultivated attitude: I was not going to hope that the plot would hang together. I was not going to hope that anyone would do anything logical. I was not going to hope that I would not trip and fall into gaping plot holes. I was, in fact, going to this movie solely to enjoy the special effects and other eye candy. (Though Guy Pearce isn't my first choice for that, either.)

Certain movies require this attitude. Both of the Mummy movies. The Matrix. Well, honestly, just about every action movie ever made. But if you can successfully get into this attitude, the movies are a lot of fun.

Time Machine was no different.

The movie was based in New York, but they were they all speaking with London accents.

It was awfully convenient that people 80,000 years in the future had preserved the ancient language of English without even modifying any pronunciations or anything.

Alexander able to climb towers and fight off a Morloch - and then do a heck of a lot more - with broken ribs. (I know adrenaline gets you pretty far, but sheesh...)

Less of an actual plot hole than mere silliness: His hair got fluffier, the more adventurous things got.

The special effects for the brainy Morloch were neat to look at, but evolutionarily unstable.

It was awfully convenient that no one ever built anything right through the middle of the machine, or that it didn't get submerged.

The physics of the time machine itself were inconsistent.

But I noticed all these things without actually letting them bother me. The good guys were pretty; the bad guys were ugly. The special effects were neat. The thing with the moon was super-nifty. The math that Alexander was scribbling on the blackboard at the beginning of the movie had at least some resemblance to real mathematics.

It was, in short, a fun movie. Just trust me on this, if you go: Leave your brain behind.

The story I'm writing about Dawn and Dusk is going slowly at the moment. It's about six pages long so far, and I've only just touched on the meat of it. I think part of the reason is that I'm still waffling between a couple of different scenarios, and I'm not sure which one would make a better story.

But that's all right. I'm enjoying it, and that's the important bit, right?

--Liz