Saturday was a gloomy, overcast day, or at least it started that way. Looking at the sky, you'd swear that rain was imminent. But there wasn't any on the forecast. It was a perfect day for hanging around the apartment, getting things done in between going for a run and playing tennis.

One of the conclusions I'd come to in my trip to Tahoe was that in the event I couldn't find a new apartment or my landlord wouldn't let me out of my lease early, I had to do everything I could to ameliorate the noise issues that bug me so much. So on Saturday morning, I wired up a second set of speakers into the living room - that way I could run my stereo throughout the whole apartment and drown out some of the noise.

I've never mentioned it, but my next door neighbor plays his music very loudly too. Now, I've always acted like Mr nice guy - I've never played my music or TV loudly - I think I'm a very considerate neighbor - probably too considerate. But I finally decided that my consideration was wasted. So after wiring up the speakers, I blasted up Mahler's 1st symphony "Titan". The slow, lazy fanfares in the build up to the first movement give no indication of the magnificent (and loud!) excitement that's to come. As always, the finale left my heart beating - it's honestly almost as good as sex. I always have to get up and conduct the finale myself to make sure it ends right :)

Saturday night, Bret and I saw "Dogma", one of the best movies I've seen all year. It's a fantasy based on Catholic dogma, which is why the Catholic Church hasn't reacted well to it! But it's hilarious and moreover, it's spiritually uplifting. In it's real love of Jesus it strongly brought to my mind the feelings of love and reverence I occasionally felt during my couple of Christian years, over a decade ago. If it can have that effect on a complete atheist like me, I can't see that Catholics can complain too much.

Another weekend routine of mine is to watch the English soccer on Sunday night. It's actually an American program, on the Fox Network, but they get the matches and commentary from Sky Sports in England. At first, I hated the guy who runs the program, Lionel Bienvenu, because he, in my mind, tried to americanize the sport, coming out with crass statements like "And he's surfing the net AND IT'S GOAL.COM" when somebody scored. But he's grown on me - he has an almost English sense of dry humor. My own team, Newcastle United, have had a dreadful year and they're only just now starting to stage a recovery, half way through the Season. Where I come from, soccer is a religion. Any given Saturday night in Newcastle, you will see half of the men out on the town wearing the Newcastle United soccer shirt as clubwear. And the people of Newcastle aren't renowned for their beauty, as the photo below, from the "Electronic Telegraph" (of supporters at a recent game in Rome) makes clear!

Newcastle United supporters

This morning at work, my worries and concerns about my job reached a new peak. The project I'm working on is so disorganized and badly led. After trying to make progress all morning, I finally sent off an email to the two other people on the project saying that, in effect, I was throwing my hands up and couldn't make any progress unless the three of us got together to plan how to proceed. I also started communicating with some people in the R&D arm of our company about the prospects of transferring. While wandering the downtown streets at lunchtime, deep in thought, I even started to question whether a complete career change wouldn't be a bad idea. Maybe I could take a course in journalism, for example? It was ironic that when I got back to my desk and started reading the "New York Times" over lunch, that I saw an article on the discovery by astronomer's of more planets outside the solar system. It was a reminder of an career I always thought I'd take. My minor in college had been astronomy. But I'd given it up for practical reasons - primarily the scarcity of jobs in that field. Now the celestial grass seems so much greener.