a battle royale between Thor and a Frost Giant

Yesterday, my wife and I had lunch with fellow blogger Janet Brennan Croft, who's in town for Mythcon. Janet eventually had to rush back to the con, but it was a nice chat. I already knew that the Beatles had wanted to film "Lord of the Rings" and that Lennon would have played Gollum, but Janet revealed that Harrison would have been Gandalf. Before she went, Janet took a photo of me that confirms what Sue had said last week - David Strathairn does have more hair than I do.



Besides that... Not long after we came back home, our internet access went belly-up. After my spending quite a bit of time on the phone, it was decided that the problem was with our Comcast-provided modem so I set up an appointment. The earliest a technician could come was Wednesday during lunch time. Bah... After that, the nice lady transfered me to the billing dept because of some other issue. Apparently, when we switched to their Digital package last year, they mistakenly gave us access to many more channels than that package allowed. Since that'd mean our losing Turner Classic Movies's HD channel, I upgraded our package. And it'll cost less than we currently pay. That does sound too good to be true, doesn't it? Anyway, I made an appointment for a technician to come tinker with whatever it is that technicians tinker with. This morning. Oh, and that person could also look into our modem's issue. After I hung up, I spent a couple of hours making my wife's work room presentable since that's where the modem and our WiFi gizmo are located.

I'm home, waiting for the technician, and, yes, since I just posted this, it means that our modem has miraculously become functional again. That means I didn't need to straighten Sue's office after all. On the other hand, in the process of my doing that, I realized that the surge protector under her desk had 3 or 4 cords that weren't connected to anything anymore so that allowed me to reduce the room's clutter.

"Leverage: The van Gogh Job"

Yesterday night's episode of "Leverage" was especially good. Written by the series's creator, it doesn't involve a con. Instead it features Danny Glover as an old man who refuses to bow down to threats from bad guys who want to know what he did with a lost van Gogh he found while fighting in Europe during the War. Only when he sees SF/computer geek Hardison and crazygirl Parker holding hands does he decide to them. He then tells his story, which we see played out by Nathan's people, focusing on the racism of the Good Old Days, especially if one had the temerity to fall in love with a white woman who loved him just as much.

Definitely excellent.