Random Access: 2010 Brain Dump

• I had a New Year's, starting at Jimmy's and then going to McCormick & Schmick's in Ye Olde Towne Centre. You can see it here, if you really want to -- the photo below is a remarkably accurate representation of the evening -- the only thing not depicted was how long it took to get a drink at times:

• My credit card wouldn't take, though the card company (later) says it's fine, so I'm wondering if I accidentally put my wallet on the magnetic latch on my Macbook. It's been a recurring fear of mine, although I've never done it.

• Speaking of credit cards -- here's a photo of someone else's signed slip, that I saw as I was waiting for my own card to get declined:

Zorro leaves a $3 tip on a $49 tab? At least he got the math right.

• I spent the last part of New Year's Eve Day with an impromptu Joseph Gordon-Levitt festival, re-watching Inception and Brick, and then seeing (500) Days of Summer for the first time. It was a little twee, but I liked it, especially how the non-linear chronology converged towards a specific point. The only thing I didn't like (outside the fact that the "drunk" acting by Gordon-Levitt and the dude from Super Troopers who's married to Christina Hendricks [*mind boggles*] looks like actors trying to act drunk) was I identified far too closely with the male lead, who's in his early to mid-twenties, whereas I am... not. Very much not.

• Oh, and I finished things out with Inglourious Basterds, which was completely not what I was expecting and I can't quite understand what all the fuss was about.

• My first workout of 2011 was really my last workout of 2010. I'm caught up now, just in time to join all the "resolutionaries."

• Up until a recent year-end top music countdown on the local dance music station, I though the chorus of Taio Cruz's Dynamite (I had to look that up) went:
  

  "I throw my hands up in the air sometimes, saying "AY-O... Galileo"

  leaving me wondering why a club music dude was name-checking astronomers.

•  I have a nagging cough that's got me all phelgmy and sounding like I have laryngitis.

• Every time I see the temporary traffic light truss (it will be replaced by a full-on overpass) at the intersection of Fairfax County Parkway and Reston Parkway, I kind of get the urge to climb it so I can crawl across it. I'm a little surprised no one has been arrested trying it yet: