Zathras' Great Machine

The past 24 hours...

...have been reasonably enjoyable and productive. Yesterday morning did start off a bit shaky. I was an hour late getting to the office because someone decided to attempt suicide by jumping in front of a subway train -- at the Metro Center station, too, of all places. And I had a backlog of work to attend to once I got to the office. The afternoon, though, started to slow down and get mellow, to the point where I even felt up to heading over to Hecht's right after work for their huge Spring Sale. I buy clothes about as often as we have elections (only a slight exaggeration), so this was overdue, as it always is. And knowing myself as I do, I made sure to buy a lot of stuff, because I'm probably not going to make it back in there for at least a year. I bought virtually an entirely new wardrobe, all for only about $150. Not bad.

After that, I had a light dinner -- a slice of pizza, a large salad, and a bottle of water -- before heading back to the apartment to relax with a hookah in front of some reruns of Next Gen (good ones, fortunately). I'm having a good time experimenting with different types of coals, foils, screens, and tobaccos. So far, the Nour charcoal logs seem to be the best. The lemon wood coals burn nicely and are flavorless, but they're a hassle to break apart and light. Olive wood coals burn well and don't need to be broken, but they taste bad. Quick lights are convenient but don't burn hot enough, and they don't last long enough, either. The Nours seem to offer the best compromise on everything: they're pretty easy to break, they take only a few minutes to light, they last about an hour, they burn quite hot, and they don't have any taste to foul up the flavor of the shishah. I'm going to keep experimenting before I'm settled on them for sure, though.

My plan had been to finish my pipe before logging on to IM with Denise, but this Romman tobacco lasts so long that I realized that plan wasn't going to work out, so I started my IM session about ninety minutes into my pipe. Denise doesn't smoke, of course, but was still kind enough to feign interest in the hookah by asking me a bit about different flavors and so on. :^)

My Saturday morning routine is pretty much all set, and I've got the afternoon free. I think I'm going to hang out at the office for a little while and work on the crossword puzzle before I decide whether to go to the movies or just head back to the house. Probably the latter -- I don't feel like dealing with the public today.

Current annoyance: I'm relaxing with the crossword puzzle. I'm one of those people who tends to have difficulty with proper nouns, and while I generally enjoy crosswords, my proper noun problem can cause me to stumble. Case in point: I've been sitting here looking at clue number 84 down: "It was returned to China in 1999." I know what that is, and even where it is, but I had to think about it for over an hour, before I finally remembered (just a minute ago, as I was typing this entry, in fact) that it's "Macau". Damn proper nouns. I hate them.