Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Tuesday, 28 May 2002

# 11 PM

This afternoon, I spent a good hour in the bank putting two years' worth of small change (pennies, nickels, dimes) into rolls so that I could deposit them. It came to $40.22, which is not trivial; however, I'm left somewhat disgusted at the bank. Why on earth don't they have a counting machine? Bank-scale models only cost about two thousand dollars, which is chump change from their point of view, and I'm sure they have plenty of customers who could use it (think small businesses; two grand is not small change to your typical low-margin restaurant).

# 3 PM

Neglected to mention, yesterday, that while Dara and I were loading the futon onto my car we saw and heard some military jets scream by overhead. I don't know what they were doing, and it didn't make even the local news. It still makes me nervous.

On a related note, here's a feature article for the Washington Monthly discussing whether or not the USA should attack Iraq.

# 12:30 AM

I picked my sister up at the airport this morning, she was flying back from having spent Memorial Day weekend down in L.A. We visited the SF MoMA; they were showing a bunch of themed selections from their permanent collection, and a retrospective on the work of this photographer whose name I unfortunately cannot remember (and their website is timing out on me so I can't look it up either). He lived in Carmel and took hundreds of photos of, at, and around Point Lobos.

After that, we went to pick up a futon she was buying from this guy who was moving out, and deliver it to the apartment she'll be living in this summer. That would have been easier if the frame had come apart all the way. They're supposed to break down into five or six relatively flat pieces that fit into my car's cargo space. This one's fasteners were frozen, so we wound up lashing most of it — still a three-dimensional object — to the roof. Driving up and down San Francisco hills with this thing up there was, well, an experience. But we did arrive with no injuries and nothing broken.

Finally, we went to the Cliff House for dinner. We were too tired to visit the camera obscura afterward, which was kind of a shame; I've done that before and it's really nifty.