Cast Away

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.
-- Tennessee Williams

Wednesday, January 24, 2001
One year ago: Smell of Creosote
Two years ago: Potlatch 8, Day 3

One of the first things in my inbox this morning when I got to work, was email from Jack, sent to me last night around midnight. He asked me, was I still awake? If so, he had something he wanted to talk to me about.

Well, I was awake now, and maybe he hadn't gone to work yet. He said he did have something to talk about, but it was no big thing. How tantalizing!

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I spent a lot of time today at work, fixing up a column from one of our contributors. He had tried a new method of creating point and figure charts, the ones with Xs and Os. This new method would be a good thing to get working, because he could include more charts in each column, and create them himself rather than have me do it for him. But the picky details of altering a big block of pre-formatted text that was software-generated were difficult even for me, so I don't think we'll be able to ask our writer to do this.

It was late when I left work, so I decided to eat chinese food at the steam-table place I like, then go see a movie if something suitable was playing at the Bella Bottega. I do still like that Joy Wok place -- it's a great value at the price, and they have a good variety of dishes ready. I had pork with eggplant, and orange chicken tonight.

The movie I picked was Cast Away. Jack had seen this already with his daughter H----, while I was at dance camp. The film was still showing on a big screen, even though not many people were in the theater this many weeks after the first release.

I did enjoy it! Who else but Tom Hanks could we tolerate being on screen for so long, almost every shot. It did drag a bit at the end. I wonder if this was conceived as a serious version of My Favorite Wife, where a shipwrecked wife comes back after seven years to find her husband about to have her declared dead so he can remarry -- that one is a screwball comedy with Cary Grant and Irene Dunn!

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I gave Jack a call when I got back home. It turns out the topic on his mind was finding internet hosting! He's got a company picked out that allows reselling, so it would be a good deal if I hosted my domain there, too, through him. Was I interested? Ha! Sure, ok, that's fine. I was slightly relieved that there wasn't anything more serious on his mind; this "something to talk about" stuff can't help but sound ominous.