The latest news

After work Friday, I met with Paul S. at the Regal theater at Gallery Place to see Madea's Family Reunion. Paul and I counted only two other white people there. The movie was entertaining, but they could have snipped out at least a couple of story lines. The movie ended up feeling a little scattered to me.

After the movie, Paul and I walked around the corner to a Mongolian grill restaurant. Paul had never eaten anything like it and enjoyed himself a great deal. As for myself, I prefer a restaurant out in Bethesda, but this one was convenient.

We were planning on Paul returning to Baltimore with me, but we were a little concerned about the timing of our arrival at Union Station because Metro started routing the red line trains on a single track for about three stations around Gallery Place. However, we did make it to Union Station with plenty of time to spare and had an uneventful trip to Baltimore.

Saturday, we wandered down to the Inner Harbor for lunch and then strolled over to Baltimore's Museum of Maryland African-American History and Culture to meet the Baltimore chapter of Black and White Men Together for a tour.

My biggest impression of the museum is that it's too small to contain the exhibits. Everything seemed to be too crowded; you often had no room to share the space with other people while reading the exhibit labels. Despite this, I had a great time wandering around. I really didn't have the time to read everything. I could have spent at least a couple of additional hours there.

The rest of the group were all headed out to dinner, but Paul and I returned to my apartment so that he could catch a train back to DC. He was planning to walk to the light rail station, take the light rail to BWI and then catch a bus from BWI to the Greenbelt Metro station so he could take the metro home to Anacostia until I pointed out that if he just took the train from Baltimore to DC, he'd be in Union Station about the time the light rail would have dropped him off at BWI, for the cost of a $13 ticket.

After Paul left, Russell popped over and we had grilled cheese sandwiches and vegetable soup while watching the last two episodes of Battlestar Galactica. This week's episode was particularly good. Turning the story around to see what's happening from the Cylon point of view approaches genius, as far as I'm concerned. Caprica Six is a great character; I hope to see more of her.

Sunday, I'm going to do some laundry and then take the train to DC to spend the afternoon and evening with Michael A. — he's "Friday's man" from last weekend. I'll take along the DVD of Vanity Fair that Netflix just mailed to me. Perhaps Michael will want to watch it with me.

Monday evening is C1 dancing. Tuesday is Chesapeake Squares' club night. Thursday is C2 dancing. Saturday is a trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore with Eric.

Money stuff

I've connected my new DSL modem and called in to cancel my cable subscription completely. One less bill to worry about and I hope to save about $40 each month. I'm also expecting to save money on my wireless plan now that I've switched that as well.

I'm waiting for my expenses to settle down; I've made changes in my phone, cable and wireless expenses and I'm not sure what the net effect will be, but I'm almost positive that my living expenses will be less than $1000 per month.

Except for prescriptions. My new prescription plan doesn't have a fixed co-pay. Instead, I pay 10% of the cost of the drugs, with a $1000 out of pocket limit. I'll also be able to order a three-month supply for the cost of two months. I'll hit that out-of-pocket limit almost immediately, so I'll be able to plan on $1000 per month to live on.

That $1000 doesn't include discretionary spending, just stuff like rent, my commuter pass, phone bill, etc.

I tried to refill all of my prescriptions today before my current coverage expires at the end of the month so that I could take it easy while waiting for my new insurance card and what-not, but the new drug, Epivir, can't be refilled until March 4, after my current coverage terminates. I'll have to check with HR at work to see if I can get my policy information now and place a prescription order.

I'm eager for these things to land so that I can make some confident projections about my finances for the rest of the year. The good news is that I'm going to be able to cover these expenses with no difficulty.

www.misterpiggy.com

Russell's been going on a domain name shopping spree. His latest is www.misterpiggy.com, where he's posting scans of the little drawings I make of Mister Piggy.

I'm always a little bemused that he insists on collecting these sketches. They're just throw-aways to me, something that I dash off in a few seconds to get a chuckle out of him or lift his spirits.

Russell has some experience with this phenomenon as well. He folds origami models and people always treasure these little paper sculptures that he has no emotional investment in. To him, they're nothing special.

The funniest story about Russell's origami models one he tells about the collection that our friends Chick and Sheldon shared a few years ago. They had been collecting the models that Russell had made for them over a period of years. When the two of them decided to split, there was no argument over the disposition of their property until it came down to these models, when each insisted that Russell had intended him to have them! I have no idea how they settled that.

I think Russell's bought over twenty domain names in the past week. He's gone bananas with iWeb, but he's having a great time and I'm rather pleased with his accomplishments. I think he's too ready to believe that he can't do anything without my assistance, even though he's really very skilled. He's done almost all of this stuff without my help at all.

I doubt that he'll start a blog, though. He still refuses to touch-type.

Lunch

Michael called this morning to say that — while he really wants to see me again soon — having me over this evening wasn't going to work. He already had plans for this evening and he's expecting a house guest tomorrow. He was going to try to squeeze me in, but it will be less stressful if we just plan a day with less complications.

Instead, I returned to the grocery store to pick up a chicken for the crock pot. I ran into Russell on the way and we picked up stuff for lunch. He's been wanting to watch me make spaghetti sauce, so that's what we had for lunch. I tried to emphasize that this was a very cheap meal, which is a good, good thing because he spends a lot (the domain names, for example).

So here's what we bought for lunch:

• green pepper, 90 cents
• spaghetti, one box, 50 cents
• two mushrooms, 49 cents
• two cans tomato sauce, 25 cents each
• frozen garlic toast, $2.

I also bought my chicken and some celery for the crock pot. I'll have that for dinner and lunches this week.

At home, I chopped up part of the green pepper and some onion and sauteed them in butter and garlic. Then I chopped up one of the mushrooms and added it and the tomato sauce, along with some sugar, basil and oregano. I baked some chicken patties that I had in the freezer and we had a couple of slices of garlic toast to top it off. Russell paid close attention during all phases of preparation.

I still have most of a green pepper and a mushroom left over, along with half of the box of spaghetti. I pointed out to Russell that the fixings for the spaghetti and sauce totaled about $3.00 (I just rounded up to account for the onion and the garlic), and we used half of it, so that's 75 cents per portion there. There were eight slices of garlic toast in the box, so each one cost 25 cents, and the chicken probably cost less than 50 cents for each of us. So our lunches were less than $2 each, and I tried to impress this upon him.

My new plan for tonight is to hang out and watch Vanity Fair on DVD. When the chicken is done, I'll make some mashed potatoes and pack up a lunch for tomorrow.

Oh yeah...

While he was here, Russell read over my journal entries regarding his new web sites. He was happy to read the comments to the Mister Piggy entry. :-)

Wow.

My mother has been researching our family tree for a few years now, and apparently she's started using the tools at genealogy.com, because she has emailed me a link to our family tree.

Click on the link labeled "Descendant Tree of John Gouldsby" to see a PDF of our family tree springing from the root of John Gouldsby, born 1646, and his wife, Ellen. This is my mother's side of the family. Scroll all the way to the bottom and allllll the way to the right. That's my nephew! You can see a photo of my brother, Michael, and his wife, Nicki.

You can also see a photo of me that looks decidedly bearish. Wow. I had no idea I looked like that! There's no gray in my beard at all! Of course, my smile leaves a little to be desired, but whatever.

The Blitch family tree is also my mom's side of the family. The Hunnicutt and Smith trees are my dad's side. There's a lot of information on the Hunnicutt tree! Wow!

It's incredible to see your families laid out like this. Absolutely incredible.

Childhood fumblings

My earliest memories of fooling around, ( behind a cut to avoid offense )