Posting this just after midnight, so read "yesterday" wherever you see "today"
So, we got all the hardware hooked up, but Verizon was giving me crap about setting up the sub-accounts for me and Carter. Really tiny little type saying "this veature is not available right now". Gee... thanks.

The whole DNC thing is weird. First, I'm not exactly sure what the attendees do when they're not nominating someone for President. Are there seminars on how to be a better Democrat? Panels on convincing people that higher taxes are a good idea or how to oppose gay marriage without offending that part of your constituency? Lectures on how to fight for better public schools? You never hear about those things, but isn't that what conventions are usually about?

Second, it's made the population of the city across the river odd. Lots of native Bostonians went on vacation, but from looking at the street, it's roughly the same number of people as came in for the event. The area around Quincy market was just packed, but it was mind-bogglingly easy to get a seat at a restaurant. No waiting at all.

Oh, and for the record, I found out that Martin/I was really missing out for twenty-odd years by being allergic to coconut. I had this coconut shrimp dish and it was absolutely delicious. It really amused Doug how much I was into it, and he asked if everything tasted different for me now that I was using different taste buds.

It doesn't, not really, any more than having green rather than brown eyes has changed the way I see. I remember that being a factor in one of the books featuring characters in the body of someone of the opposite sex I've read over the past year - it's become sort of a guilty pleasure, seeing what they get right and get wrong - and I suppose it may have happened a little, back a year ago, but it gets back to how memory and such is holographic. I don't imagine it took long for the visual parts of my brain to adjust how it interpreted data do render the sky in the proper shade of blue.

Anyway, coconut shrimp - good eating.

Then we saw Spidey 2 in IMAX. Still great - it's a shame Raimi won't get an Oscar nomination for this, because he just nails every second of this movie, and it's certainly a technical challenge. I know that's a fanboyish thing to say (and, yeah, "fanboy" still seems to be the proper term regardless of anatomy). The only shortcoming to "the IMAX Experience" is that Raimi and Bill Pope shot the movie scope, while IMAX screens are close to Academy ratio, so almost half of it was left blank. When Apollo 13 had the IMAX version, they used the whole screen. Understand, I only buy widescreen DVDs, but Ron Howard really seemed to want to use the whole field of vision for that one. Even if the screen is still 85 feet wide on Spidey, "only" 36 feet of the 65 foot height is used, which isn't that much larger than, say, the largest screen at AMC Fenway. It's impressive and a very clear picture with great sound, but it's not like seeing a real IMAX movie.

Getting back home was actually trickier; there seemed to be a whole bunch of random security fences thrown up between last week and today. No rhyme or reason to it, and I swear South Station changes layout on a weekly basis. Must be the combination of the convention and Big Dig.

-Martina
- posted 12:16 AM - - (archive use only)