7-30 and 7-31

7-30

I got one of those fun "Prove it's really you" tests over on Paypal today, where it wanted me to confirm my identity by sending me a text to my phone, then I had to type it in on the computer before the time elapsed.  No big deal, right?  Except for once I typed it in, I got the error, "Sorry, unable to verify your ID," and it wouldn't log in.

Didn't quite get 700 words today.  I kept trying to find synonyms for "concern" and "worry."  There aren't a lot, at least in my mind.

Anyway, I'm gonna head home and get some more reading done.  I'm in the home stretch now.

Oh, hey.  CatsCast asked if I wanted to do another story for them already.  I'll have to come up with something funny to say in my bio.

Writing or Exercise: Writing

7-31

So, last week, David Warner died.  He was an excellent actor, nearly always playing bad guys (in TRON and TIME BANDITS and TIME AFTER TIME and even TITANIC), and played Gul Madred in the excellent two-part "Chain of Command" episode on Star Trek: TNG.  David Warner was cool, and because he died while I was reading Abbie's book, I thought I'd try and make one of the new characters sound like him.

The same day, Paul Sorvino died, who had a great film career . . . but also played Worf's foster brother on a seventh season TNG episode called "Homeward."

And then today, Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura on the original "Star Trek" (and six movies), passed away too.  She was 89.

My friends and I were always disappointed that Uhura had nothing to do on the show, especially knowing how important she was in inspiring so many people to pursue communications, linguistics, and the space program.  And hey, anybody who was on the original "Star Trek" is pretty great, between you and me.

There were so many tributes, both from Trek alumni and from others, and that was great, but Pat Carroll, who played the GOAT of all Disney villains, Ursula the Sea Witch died that same day, and I wished she'd had a day of her own to be appreciated.

I had a long drive in the morning, which is pretty irresponsible considering the price of gas (which has dropped more than thirty cents since the start of July, so it could be worse), but there was a guy who's moving and wanted to get rid of some of his figures, and the deal was good enough I was willing to make the drive. 

I made sure to finish reading Abbie's book, though it didn't take much (the last several pages were author's notes, and I had read those as I went along).  Then my nephew wanted to ride his little bicycle around, so I told him I'd take him to the park, and he could bike while I ran.  It was hot and fairly miserable, but we went all the way around, and I did the stairs three times (well, four times, technically, since there's another set of much steeper steps on the far side of the park).  Afterward, I got him (and me) a Slurpiee, and figured we'd both earned it.

Writing or Exercise: Exercise