Saturday, October 9, 2004
Breakfast at home with Patrick: I had scrambled eggs and hash browns. Patrick had soggy grape nuts in milk. Errands in the Castro. We had a pumpkin cookie and lattes at Sweet Inspirations. I read from Harry Potter 5 (my second time reading it) and Patrick read from Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. Home. Installed a new shower head (Lasco, 08-2377, massage action, 2.5 gallons per minute, white and gray, $8.00)—our old one had cracked and was looking rather filthy. Installed a faucet spray (Lasco, 09-2103, Model S, thread on, $4.75) on the kitchen sink. Both items work well. The shower head required some teflon tape ($0.65 for 260 x 0.5 inches) to be applied before threading the shower head on. Looked online for Halloween costumes. Dinner at home by myself: leftover chicken, leftover mac and cheese, peas. Patrick went to dinner with Aaron, and they both went to Alan Hollinghurst's reading at A Clean Well Lighted Place. After the reading, he and Aaron, Kai, and Alina went bar hopping in the Castro. I experimented with Windows Movie Maker 5.1. I was able to learn its interface quickly and edit commercials out of a Simpsons episode and create a cheesy title page, but I realized the whole thing was useless to me when I discovered that it was unable to export or save as MPEG. I don't want my creations locked up in Microsoft's proprietary WMV format! I couldn't find a way to uninstall Windows Movie Maker, so I deleted the shortcut for it from my Start Menu.