Tuesday, December 31, 2002
Brunch at home with Patrick: broccoli omelettes, bacon, toast. Did the dishes. Watched Star Trek Nemesis with Patrick and Sam at Century 20 in Daly City. The film was okay. "Not a great film, but entertaining," said Patrick. Spoilers follow—don't wanna see'em? Skip to next year. I was laughing quietly at many parts of the film—the typical plot developments ("Captain, I am detecting something unusual on the radar...") and the ideas stolen from other films (Picard in handcuffs with Chewbacca—I mean Data—behind him pretending to be his captor while they sneak through enemy territory) as well as other Star Trek episodes (Picard deciding to sacrifice his ship and crew to save the Earth just as Janeway did in that time-travel mindfuck episode years ago, the Data's Head episode, the episodes in which we meet a character that looks like Data but isn't Data). And like The Two Towers we saw on Christmas day, we had much suspending of disbelief to do. After seeing Riker jump so ungracefully into that tube, who could believe that he didn't get stuck on the way down? That was the most incredible part of the whole film. Sam bought us coffee at Starbuck's afterwards. At home I discovered some mildew on the wall behind a bookcase and water leaking into the carpet in our storage closet. Also discovered an old spider nest so I vacuumed it up and the tiny little spiders I could find that came out of it. Patrick has just one new year's resolution ("for now"): to finish writing his second novel. We spent the evening at home, not wanting to spend US$55 or more per person on a dinner and then the same again for dancing or other festivities. Patrick thought of another resolution: "I want to see my mom." And another: "I resolve to learn how to drive a stick-shift." I got a late christmas present from Victor, Lindsay, and Harper: a book called The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of by Thomas M. Disch. The title wasn't long enough, so there's also a subtitle: How Science Fiction Conquered the World. It wasn't on my wish list, so it must be a book Victor thinks I'll like—a thoughtful gift. We'd gotten worried about them since we hadn't heard from them in a long time. Wrote an e-mail to Chris De Lay today: "here's a link back atcha: http://www.wilwheaton.net/faq.php . he's surprisingly funny. patrick found the link. we saw nemesis today <shrug> it was just like you said—a bunch of previous movies in a blender and the blast-em scenes were pretty good. funny how the entire vacuum of space always takes at least 5 seconds to suck millions of cubic meters of air out before the breach is sealed and then everyone instantly has perfectly good air again. that reliable, automatic emergency air generation system even works when the rest of the ship is damaged!" Patrick called his mom at midnight in New Orleans. We watched Simpsons episodes and drank a bottle of Moet et Chandon champagne that we'd had so long we almost forgot who gave it to us. At midnight, we paused the Simpsons episode we were watching, drank champagne and kissed. Patrick called Sam. I called Tina who was at Domenica's with D, Tony, and Daniel. We were in bed by 1:00 AM.