Not tired but must to bed

Last night I signed up for  a free trial of Carbonite, an online file backup service. I figured $55/year for unlimited backup was a good deal. I did the math, and with my 5Mb/s uplink speed, 8 hours overnight ought to upload 144GB of data. 100GB would have been acceptable. This morning when I checked it was only up to 1.2GB. Nope, that's not going to work. Uninstalled the program and told their survey to let me know when they increase their speed by about 70x.

Remembered to push away from the computer at 10 to take my meds. At 11:30 I was showered and dressed and on my way to Wat Buddhanusorn in Fremont, and was surprised to see both parking lots full. I had to park up the road a bit where they had a van to bring us back to the temple. After buying some tokens and using them to get BBQ pork & sticky rice and a soft drink, I looked around for familiar faces. P, the woman who had called me last Sunday was busy making somtam at one of the food stations. I never understood somtam - it's made by running a grater over the outside of a papaya, and then adding garlic, chilies, tamarind and a bunch of other things which make it (to me) even less edible. I wandered away from the main seating area, walking around the wat building, and just as I was about to give up and find a place by myself my ex-boss B waved, and made space for me where he and his wife and daughter and another couple were sitting on a mat on the lawn. They said there was some sort of special occasion going on, but didn't know what. While we were having lunch and chatting, a woman came by with flyers, and in Thai said they were having some people from the Thai consulate giving a talk nearby for Thais only, about the legal stuff around living in America, including getting married. 

I told them my story about P**,  and the woman of the couple in our little group asked me if I was looking for a Thai wife. I said sure. We joked about how old she could be, and she said a friend of hers who was divorced was coming at the end of the month, and she'll introduce us.

**The story goes like this. We were at B's party last weekend, and P said if I would like to meet a Thai woman, and I said yes. After three margaritas, P decided she was that woman.

After the traditional three times around the temple parade, we all decided to split, so I found the van back to the car and headed home. I still had most of the BBQ and a whole serving of mango with sticky rice, which I reheated and finished while watching football.

After all that heavy rice, I went upstairs to take a nap, and slept for about 2 hours. Probably why I'm not too sleepy yet. I had a weird dream but it was too short for a separate post - it went like this: I was online filling out a form. Each time I clicked on a box which said "check this box" the form refreshed and the came back up with the check box unchecked. It just kept doing that for the whole dream.

Watched Sunday Night Football,  gave the kitties their evening treats, then went upstairs and put in an hour editing the first 8mm --> AVI transfer. I had done a DVD in a rush back in June, hoping to give it to my dad on a trip I'd scheduled for the 12th, but he died on the 11th. I brought it with me anyway and all my sisters got a chance to see it. Now I'm re-doing it the right way, taking out the bad end of reel edits, compensating for the more blatant exposure errors, and putting in transitions and chapters. I got 30 minutes of video done. It will go faster as I learn the routine of the software, and as the quality of the videos improves. The ones I am editing nhow are the first times Mom & Dad had used a movie camera, and the quality of Kodak 8mm film and processing improved over time as well. And the newer film has had less time to discolor and fade.

And in other news, I got a feeler for a full time permanent job at a place which does the kind of video I am interested in. I've asked for a job description.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Kaiser - pick up a prescription
BASFA (?)

Poll a Holic

A very simple poll. Just curious. This applies only to the types of hard alcohol which are intended for drinking. No whining about wine, please.

[Poll #1621005]

It's Just A Fish

Why does the phrase "genetically engineered" throw people into such a flurry of mindless panic? How could gene splicing possibly make an animal unsafe to eat?