Who wants to share their Wii friend number for some happy time racing fun???

There is evidence there will be a major flu epidemic this coming fall. The indication is that we will see a return of the 1918 flu virus that is the most virulent form of the flu. In 1918 a half million Americans died. The projections are that this virus will kill one million Americans in 1976.

-- F. David Matthews, secretary of health, education, and welfare (Feb., 1976)

I haven't used Skype yet but it is installed on my computer.  One of the things it does is to tag any phone number it comes across on the internet so you can just click and call.  I was amused to see it catch one of the songs on my last.fm account:



Apparently that number originates from Micronesia.  The song makes no mention of that oddly enough.

I'll post a few more reminders in the coming weeks, but I wanted to get it out there now that zena73 and I would love to get a group together to catch Star Trek when it opens next month.  Opening day is May 8, so you should all have plenty of time to make arrangements and whatnot.  Depending on who comes, we can meet in the most logical place (doesn't have to be down by us).

So ponder it for a bit, and let me know if you're interested.

Is that not the coolest DVD art ever?

Paddy O'Furniture.

( Adventures in yardwork contained herein... )

So I found out during my most recent tutoring session that my student has a family health crisis and will be returning to China for a few months starting in two weeks.  I'm a bit conflicted - obviously the situation sucks for her and that's of paramount importance; but of course it sucks for me as I was just getting into a bit of a groove.  Turns out planning even one 2-hour lesson a week takes a lot longer than I thought it would, but I realize I'm a beginner at this thing.

On the other hand, though, I'm a little relieved.  The beginning of this tutoring actually came at a bit of a bad time, seeing as how things have really picked up at work and I now spend at least a few nights catching up on stuff at home.  So from a practical standpoint this is a much-needed temporary relief.

And I suppose I can take the time off to start making better lesson plans and charting a real course.  I've been focusing in on grammar pretty hard, but I can now plan to introduce some civics as well (since she does want to become a citizen and that means passing the exam).   So there's your silver lining I suppose.

Maybe, but even if not it will have the greatest soundtrack ever.  Oh and needless to say, I'm all over this.

After biding my time for the last few years, I was finally able to scoop up the grayflannelsuit.com domain (I was forced to take .net when I started my site).  Woo!  Not sure how I'll work both domains, but I think eventually I'll just have one automatically redirect to the other.  And if somebody wants to pay for grayflannelsuit.biz, they can have it.

Last night was tutoring session #1, at a library about a mile from my house (so once the weather gets nicer I can bike there).  I hadn't prepared anything formal, as I just wanted to do some introductory stuff and get a sense for how good her English is.  And fortunately it's pretty decent.  She actually quite the self-starter, and watches this show on one of her Chinese stations that teaches English. 

She's in her mid-40s (by my estimate) and has one adult child who is working back in China now.  She's been on the continent for around 11 years, having spent the first 8 or so living with her husband and son in Montreal.  She's able to communicate her ideas when speaking, which is a big help for me.  I haven't seen her writing yet but she says it's not very good.  

One of her main goals is to become a citizen, so I can probably combine that with the basic English teaching to accomplish two goals at once.  And hey, we already got something accomplished, as she now has a library card.  We'll be meeting every Wednesday for a few hours, so I guess now I have to put together something resembling a lesson plan.

And I've already learned something myself - Chinese women typically do not take their husband's family name when they get married.  So there you go.

When last I wrote about my foray into tutoring, I had expected to get going last fall.  Long story short - it didn't happen.  I managed to get in touch with my student assignee a few times but we could never get a meeting set up.  So last week I received a new assignment from Literacy Volunteers, a Chinese woman also looking to improve her basic English skills and become a citizen.  I sent her an email on Friday and had planned to call tomorrow, but to my surprise she took the initiative and called me last night!

So we have our first session scheduled for Wednesday evening at a local library - I don't plan on doing anything formal, it'll just be a meet n greet type thing.  It's been so long since I took my certification classes that I'll have to dust off my materials and make sure I remember what to do.

For those who haven't hopped on the Christian Bale Meltdown Bandwagon, it's not too late.  Thanks to the AV Club, the original rant and its many progeny are all located in one convenient place.  Even the comments have great links.  So go forth!  Just don't get in his line of sight, whatever you do.

Over on this here website you can see a bunch of imaginary book covers made to look like '60s era novelizations of movies.  Very clever.  Here's a few samples:

I challenge anyone to watch this and not think it's awesome.  Go ahead, try.

Another blog I read posted this today, and it seems appropriate.  Here's a live performance by the legendary Marvin Gaye of two of his greatest songs - "What's Going On" and "What's Happening Brother."  Take 9 minutes out of your day and enjoy a great performance and some interesting old footage.

We finally got caught up with the Underworld series, having watched Underworld: Evolution last night.  Pretty good sequel, though I'm not sure it was as good as the first movie.  It certainly had a crapload more blood and guts though.  They probably could've named it Underworld: Splatterhouse and been more truthful. 

So now we're ready for the third entry, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, which opens next weekend.  It'll be cool to actually see one of these in the theaters, so hopefully the law of diminishing returns isn't in effect.  It seems it's going to feature a lot of Viktor, which is cool as he's my favorite of the Vampires.

I got bored with the limitations on the free LJ accounts so I upgraded to Plus.  It's still free but they place ads here and there.  Still, I get more icons and a lot more design styles to choose from.  Eventually I'll settle on one, I reckon.