The Best Time Of The Year

September brings Orion back into view and the Rose of Sharon start blooming like mad. It's been no hotter than 80°F with no humidity and at night it's near 50°F. My idea of heaven, yo.

The Best Time Of The Year

No? What Kind Of Negative Month Are You, Punk?

Did we watch movies this week? I can't remember. I was busy and I've got all sorts of bruises and stiff joints, so I'm sure I did something, but it's sort of a blur. Which is why I usually make notes all week, but I didn't even have time for that so I guess I was seriously into something. Hmm.

I finally saw the original Sabrina, which I got a kick out of because the remake with Harrison Ford is one of my all-time favorites (YES I ADMITTED IT SO THERE) and I love Audrey Hepburn so that was all good. Not exactly a new movie, however.

Another one that we'd somehow missed for years was Sleep Easy, Hutch Rimes with Swoozie Kurtz and Steven Weber. It's twisty.

Nan found Scary Movie 4 one night and we love that nonsense so I'd jump around and eat couch cushions to get you to watch it, but you know...it's silly fun.

Like Amazon Women On The Moon. I never saw that whole movie before, I only saw the bit with Arsenio Hall vs. the VCR and and Carrie Fisher being a reckless youth. And now I have seen everything that comes between those two sketches! That's my kinda crazy.

It got sort of freezing and these wild winds came through at one point this week, and while that was going on I worked on work-related things. The cabin fever took exactly four hours to kick in. Before that, however, I nearly removed my hand with the butt (eheheheheheh) of a rather largeish bit of gardening equipment, but I took our tree branches out of the neighbors' airspace, dammit. I feel so manly. *burp*

I added more crap to the sidebars of my blog! I figured out how the Last.fm radio player works and I actually heard some songs I'd forgotten I loved. I'm also doing NaNoWriMo again. As far as I know this story will be completely different from last year's, but then I never did talk about Coffeeman much so you wouldn't know, would you...but no, Queen Lulu has probably never had coffee in her life. I'm not ashamed of the people who live in my head anymore, or at least I've gotten over the idea that I'll be sent off to an asylum if I mention them. If only I'd known all these years that not having medical coverage has its perks.

No? What Kind Of Negative Month Are You, Punk?

Oil and Water.

This is a post in honor of the whopping $4 drop in barrels of black blood of the earth. For the record, I'm against any and all milkshake-drinking schemes.

I think I've said I love my house. It is the only house I have, after all, and i'll never have another. Part of the reason I know I'll never be able to actually take care of another human is because I can't even do what's right for this house, and the house only needs to be kept spiffy, it's not like I gotta educate my house--god help us all if the house ever realizes it could be so much more. It'd be worse than listening to me locked in a room with raw meat. Many sleepless mornings coupled with the episode of Cold Case involving that kid who just wanted to see Jurassic Park with his stuffed bunny have given me something other than myself to blame, however. That's right, all that makes me sad about my house is not my fault, it's the damn dinosaurs. Never liked those vicious bastards. I never did like Land of the Lost, either. What were those Sleestaks about? Hmph.

Here is a rather dismal list of things I've realized over the years:

Because of the oil bill we can't change to gas.

Because of the oil bill the oil company puts off cleaning the furnace.

Because of the oil bill our driveway gate still tilts and won't close.

Because of the oil bill we can't have the cherry tree looked at.

Because of the oil bill we haven't gotten new windows to keep the heat in.

Because of the oil bill the roofer won't come to see why it rains in the kitchen.

Because of the oil bill I can't look forward to the colder seasons I love.

Here's to a mild winter. I'd have wished for a mild hurricane season too, but it doesn't look like that'll be happening, so now all I can hope is that everyone down south stays safe and dry.

--I'm not saying putting one's head through a window is any way to greet visitors, but my dog Pookie totally had the right idea barking at the oil truck.

Oil and Water.

The Calling Plan of Doom Just Wants To Play

I don't write about the movies we've seen to be all, "Ha! Rented it on the first day," or anything, it's just that this is all sort of a writing prompt. There are few other times I'm experiencing the same thing as other people in the same room, so I try to remember it by writing it down. I think this week I'll totally go off on the movies, though, because these are two that have been out for a while.

I can't brag about seeing One Missed Call for instance, because I don't know what the hell it was about it lost something in translation. The movie was very short, so they could have worked some more plot in there and still made it under 1:45, but apparently the makers were content with the idea that the calling plan of doom gives out free candies. Also, peepholes are still a bad idea.

I feel bad about watching Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer without my aunt there to love every eyelash in Ioan Gruffudd's head, but she was at home with her own copy this week and we were down to that or Charlie Wilson's War (which was good, though, we saw that the next night). On Saturday we like to see the world get saved in a fun way that has little to no repercussions in the future, so we watched the Fantastic Four. If you liked the first one, you will probably like this one as well. Although I have fond memories of those cartoons, I like the movie versions better than the Hanna-Barbera version, because the cartoon people had scary eyes...I remember my childhood like it was a weird drug trip. It wasn't, either, man, aside from the occasional chewable aspirin and candy cigarette. But there's a surfer, and he's silver, and he surfs through planets but he can heal people and he hangs ten like nobody's business and Ioan Gruffudd dances and cries and I have to find out if my aunt's seen it yet because I swear I could hear her saying, "AWW!" in varying pitches as the movie went along.

Apparently my hair is really cute this week. I've heard that my hair looks nice. I'll be talking about the Asian long-horn beetle, and before I can say infestation I'm cut off with a compliment to my hair. Honestly, all I've been doing is wetting my head a lot so I don't die, but I guess that look is in this year.

Other movies we saw were an '80s movie set in the '40s, with Crystal Bernard (of Wings!) and Annabeth Gish (from X-Files!) as...women...I think they were detectives, unless only one was, I came in on it. It was okay until the dog got it. This is how I rate my movies, people.

We didn't stick with Sometimes They Come Back...For More after one character, played by Faith Ford, argues that the pissed off man heading for the door can't go out after someone because it's 60 below. "If he can survive it, so can I!" Mr. I-wear-green-camo-in-snow snarls, and proceeds to stomp out into the snow. I mean, I know I shovel in a T-shirt, but 60 below?

The rest of the week my free time went to catching up on the gardening I couldn't do in the heatwave that tripled in size overnight during the insane rainstorm we got. I would like a little rain every few days, please. Not three weeks of no rain and then 24 hours straight of water that will end up mostly inside my house.

Then I saw a baby pigeon. Baby birds are so cute in a freaky my-mother-could-peck-your-eyes-out way. It was standing on top of Domo-Kun. Luckily it flew back up to the trees and not into the sunscreen or the house. Because that would have warranted a post of its own.

The Calling Plan of Doom Just Wants To Play

That storm we had....

This was the view out the window:



(I'm testing Ping's ability to post photos, so if the view out my window looks suspiciously like your browser, I've done something wrong and the photo can be found here.)

edit: Ping cannot post pictures using HTML. Boo, Ping.

That storm we had....

JAFT, as we used to say.

There is a thing, it is called Ping and can be found at http://ping.fm and I'm posting this using it. It should post to my blog, my LJ, the MySpace and Facebook...all at the same time. Sadly, I won't have tags, or current music, but I don't even know what I'm hearing right now as it's New Music Monday on WFUV.

Ping is still in the beta stage, so if you'd like to try it out, the beta code is "tastyping" and it took me three days to figure it wasn't tas typing, so...don't expect me to know anything about this service. It's magic. Also it has all my usernames and passwords.

We're about to get hit with a "violent" thunderstorm, and I can tell it's for real this time because aside from the sound and flashing sky, the temperature is absolutely lovely out there right now. Breezy, cool...like an early May evening. It almost makes standing out in forky lightning worthwhile.

Okay, have fun pinging. Get away from the window and don't walk about with an antenna sticking out of your head. (I doubt I'll follow my own advice even once I read it back.)

JAFT, as we used to say.

The Notorious Potato Gang.

To protest the recent bad idea to can totally free accounts on LiveJournal, almost everyone I know is on strike from midnight to midnight (GMT) this Friday, which is like, now. So I don't get to post anything to mine until 8PM tomorrow. Which is just about what I do, except today I wanted to tell the story of how someone left their potatoes in the parking lot at Met, and I went back in--lost bag in hand--and wheezed, "Dolores, someone left their potatoes in the parking lot."

I assume it was interesting for people around. I'd like to think it was. I'd also like to hope that it wasn't a potato bomb, because my prints are all over that bag now.

After being blown by the glorious spring winds--happy spring, peeps!

This is what my life is like, I'm thinking, "I hope I didn't blow up the supermarket," and BANG, LOLpeeps just appear like that car that ran the red light. The next thing I know, the Chinese are skating to a song I used to play 20 years ago, and all the high-pitched music and spinning on the bright white ice is joining forces with that cup of hot dairy-infused sugar I knew I shouldn't have drank the first time three months ago, much less tonight--but we're celebrating Mum's ability to lift things again! And I completely forget what I was going to say.

After being blown home by the March winds (happy birthday Aunt Janet!), I sat in the relative quiet of my room putting together my papercraft Ceiling Cat, which I found on Tubbypaws, a blog of happy art. Tubbypaws is one of those sites I read in its entirety in one sitting because it did make me happier and happier, until I was weeping with happy at the sight of papercraft Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Silent Hill 2.

I'll end my post with Tubbypaws, because I would be sad if I kept you from the fabulous happy of that blog.

The Notorious Potato Gang.

The Week From Another Universe.

Last Saturday, we saw Robin Cook's Invasion, which was a made-for-television mini-series starring Luke Perry that I had managed to miss for eleven years. Now that I've seen it, my forehead hurts from being slapped so much, and I'm worried about my rock collection. Oh my...I worry that things I write are too close to stories that already exist, but this mini-series, the author (not so much Robin Cook as the guy who writes a lot of Farscape) obviously had no fears of this. By the end I weas expecting Luke Skywalker or Tom Jones or Will Smith to pop out, start punching people, and saying some regular-TV-friendly things while curing the aliens with farts. Okay, gas, but still, it's funnier to say farts.

Why hasn't an alien invasion story been done yet where the cure is farts? It would be a hit. I'm copyrighting that idea now, unless someone else already has. I'm not saying the special effects themselves weren't pretty good for CBS in 1997, but some of the dumbest people in creation managed to take down a dude in Sith makeup and an army base crawling with people infected by the space tinglies. For the first hour, the main doctor--played by Kim Catrall, who I loved in Big Trouble In Little China and Mannequin--is like, "Gosh, some people died really oddly, but everyone has the frikkin' flu, BUT IT CAN'T BE THESE STONES YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, I mean, it's not like children were coming in saying stones bit them, or anything."

And then they go to an underground government facility, but the student who knows how to use the Internet has to use his laptop to do stuff. Like they don't already have computers down there...okay, maybe they don't, the scientists would have all been playing Solitare instead of fighting space herpes. Oh wait, the underground government facility was totally deserted. Maybe security was in the other room playing solitare. Unless they were in the desert waiting for the spaceship. Or maybe it was an incredibly clean, yet abandoned facitity and that's why they had "VR microscopes" to show the nasties living in the rocks, which looked a bit like enemies from DOOM, but no Internet.

I can't say I didn't have a good time watching the movie, because I had ball. It was like Rocky Horror, I was rasping all kinds of helpful advice to the characters, it was great. I don't get to have three hours of fun like that often.

I didn't come back here and make notes of what outstanding things happened this week, so much of it is lost. I did bust out the pole pruner and take down some vines that were going to grow even longer and higher and tangle with the telephone lines eventually, but I didn't get to pick them up the same day I did it, so I was treated to the entertainment known as cats dragging a tangle of vines behind them on a leash, looking like, "OMG, it has me!" No, I'm sorry, that's mean, to giggle at my guys when they pick something up and get freaked out by it. Even if it is frikkin' adorable.

I also used the pole pruner and the bow saw and the entire palette of instruments of death to take down a young mulberry tree that was growing in the front yard. Mulberries can get to be about 80 feet high and six feet in diameter, and the driveway with my car on it was one foot away, and the power lines were even closer to the tips of the branches, so I did what I had to do, man. I'm not proud. But now I have a bargaining chip for all those trees I'm growing in the backyard, that are starting to become visible above the stuff I've had strategically placed for the past two years. Oh yes. Never forget the mulberry of the front yard.

The storm we had on Wednesday left me with even more nature to pick up and send off to the happy land where seagulls play, and I wrote a whole post about that with pictures. Some bird who liked to live dangerously was out trying to get worms in 35mph winds. Birds rock.

Although I can't remember the exact order this week, it's safe to say a lot of the rest of my time goes to things like sleeping, not sleeping, eating, working, driving around, gathering food, feeding my furry children, playing with my furry children, watching American Idol, drawing, writing, cleaning, spacing out, listening to music (this week it's Imogen Heap again), watching X-Files and movies I've already seen, and of course YouTube. Lots and lots of YouTube. Remember last year when I'd use Saturday to just post the crazy stuff I found on YouTube? Man, those were the days.

Have I mentioned that I'm crazy about this disturbing video of a Japanese guy wearing a horse mask and little else, cooking toxic mushrooms and dancing? No? YES.

The Week From Another Universe.

Surprise Backyard Blast!

You know I have been reading too many LOLcats when I start titling my posts with certain ones in mind. Last night, I'd just settled down to add to my word total on the book I can't re-read this week because it makes me cringe, and the wind kicked up outdoors. It kicked up so bad that it started knocking things over. Like trashcans and garden furniture, and whatever hit the transformer to the power line that provides electricity to the "new half" of our house.

Nan and I were sitting in the living room (part of the "old half") and so we only experienced a brief blip in the lights, and the TV went off, and the Internet went away. I rebooted the computer in front of me, because that seemed like the most sensible way to get the router working again. After about twenty minutes, I thought maybe I should go see if the router was having trouble synching. Turns out it wasn't on. The entire rest of the house was entirely in darkness. It was sort of like Silent Hill, without the creepy demonic things moving around in the dark. That I could see.

Luckily, there is enough old wiring in the house that each room had at least one working light, and my laziness paid off because those orange power cords I never put back in the shed came in handy for the fridge. Going by ConEd's recorded message, we seemed to be in for a few days of total unbearable darkness, day and night, with vampires and cannibals that would undoubtedly come out if I didn't plug the fridge into an outlet that had power. So I did. I can't stretch like Reed Richards, though. That would have helped.

After the rain quieted down, I ventured out into the yard to take pictures of the damage. I was not the only looney out there:



Okay, so...we didn't have damage so much as much-needed pruning of dead branches that I couldn't reach without a jetpack. That greyish thing there is a shingle, but as of yet I can't determine whose roof it came from. (Note to self: make the roofers put little happy faces on our shingles next time around. Sure.)



This was close. The forsythia's doing fine now, but that branch weighed about five pounds, man. Took me, two cats and a dog to move it.



All of our electricity was back on within a few hours, and the strong winds blew the clouds so far away that the cats thought it'd be a great idea to go out and wallow in the cold mud. I talked them out of it by putting their harnesses on and opening the door. They're not fond of wind that can blow the resin chairs around, so that ended well. I've found that just showing them what it's like out there works better than trying to explain it. They're very wary of humans selling them tales of foolishness like cold and rain and two feet of snow, and who can blame them? Even I've made the mistake of listening to weathermen over the years and ending up with a yard full of wayward chairs that looks like a WWF convention just came through. There were a lot of people who had serious damage done by the surprise storm...but that's not funny.

Surprise Backyard Blast!

The Weakend Reviews.

While it looks to me like I apparently do nothing but sit in front of a TV, I do have memories of feeding cats and playing with cats and feeding cats and playing ball with a dog and all, but that starts crossing the line of telling you how many times I tied and untied my shoes in a week, and unsurprisingly, that number is 7, but that's not what I started a blog for, y'know? I didn't really start it to tell you what new movies I saw, either, but hey.

For Mum's birthday I wanted to get Enchanted because she liked the look of it. It wasn't coming out until the middle of the week, though, so we ended up watching The Darjeeling Limited, which I'm going to go out on a limb and say was the better movie. I mean, some people like singing princesses, I prefer quiet movies with weird stuff going on. Not that The Darjeeling Limited was weird, but it was different. I liked it, but it might be because I saw it at the right time. There's a family drama plot thing in it that might trigger crazy in some people, but no, not me, because I know people like those brothers, so I laughed...oh, how I laughed. I also dug Anjelica Huston's hair, for some reason.

After that long-ass paragraph, I bet you wouldn't believe we watched two movies last Saturday. Wow. They were both under 1:40, though, and we'd had Wild Hogs on tape from cable for like a month, because I knew Nan wanted to see it, because she told me she couldn't wait to see it, because John Travolta and William H. Macy were in it! But somehow for a month, every time I'd say, "We've still got Wild Hogs," it was met with a general sense of hell no I'm not watching that.

Wild Hogs was fantastic. PPPPBT. I was ready to jump out a window during the bit where the annoying children of two of the characters were being introduced, but I told myself that within five minutes Nan and Mum would remember they wated to see the movie and like it. And they did. So this proves I have spent the past three decades studying them well. Apparently they've got me figured out as well, because every time William H. Macy did anything in the movie, they looked at me. Um. Hey, I wouldn't tell crazy bikers to break my legs. Um. Really.

I covered The Oscars in other posts, but yes, we watched them. All day.

Nan took The Puppy for walkies on Monday, and it's admirable to see how well we managed to train The Puppy on our own, that she didn't drag her mother up the street face-first. Nan's good with crazy dogs, though. Our six-foot-tall Pookie bear only walked on a leash without attacking dobermans for her. This walk was part of a plan to get some excercise to go with the diet. It then rained, snowed, or was freezing the rest of the week. Not cool, nature.

I wasn't crazy about the '70s week performances on American Idol Tuesday and Wednesday, but by god when the results were in on Thursday and they kicked off Alexandréa Lushington, I was pissed. Only because they kept a few who sucked. But there's no use blowing my top over it. Here. Again. I think I waved my arms in befuddledment enough on Thursday. Could it be I'm getting attached to the contestants again? I can already name five. Oh dear.

Last night we had more snow, and I got it into my head to pay back all our great neighbors by shovelling the snow all the way up to the corner. Of course, because it was me, you know it was midnight. I didn't tell anyone where I was going, but in my defense I was wandering around the house with a snow shovel and a vest and no one asked me why. Also, it rained after I shovelled and then the sun came out and melted what was left by the time everyone was waking up. Go me, I cleared up ALL the snow! Sure.

I think spring is finally heading our way, though, I haven't slept in three days. Well, I haven't slept until it's time to get up. That's the way that works. Someday, I'll write during one of those bouts of insomnia and it'll be like the old days. But not today. Today I'm sane enough to know it really wouldn't be as funny as I think it would be.

The Weakend Reviews.

Another Week And This Is All I Have To Show For It

Last Saturday, we finally got to see Blade Runner: The Final Cut. I bought it with my Christmas money, for some reason I feel I need to explain how I'm allowed to have nice things, and this thing...it's nice. The movie was so clear I felt like I never saw it before. Fabulous.

The U.S. National Figure Skating Championships were on all weekend, and that's one of the two skating events I still try to catch when it's on. Nice to see we've got some good skaters coming up, even though I only recognized about five of them and event hough two of the three female medalists can't go to the Worlds because they're too young to skate internationally or something. Would Mahai Nagasu spread the cute? Is that a danger? NBC has stolen the coverage from ABC Sports, and as a result they've now got ten different commentators, and Bob Costas, who keeps breaking into baseball jokes in a desperate attempt to stay macho. I wish I could laugh, but all I wondered was who would come out alive if Bob Costas and Robert Osbourne were locked in a room for three years.

Monday mum had her Unna Boot changed, and we all know how that went (seriously, scroll down to an earlier post).

Tuesday we realized it had been five days since The Puppy ate willingly, and she'd been having a runny bottom, so we made an appointment with her doctor. This may or may not have contributed to my total major crack-up that had me wanting to drink caustic things or take more than the recommended dosage of allergy pills. Either that or it was the fact that I don't like being yelled at by people who should have more sense than me. (WARNING: hey kids, don't drink caustic things or take more than the recommended dosage of any kind of pills. You probably won't die at first, but it will make you wish you had.)

Rudy Guiliani dropped out of the presidential race. My soaring joy over this was cut short as John Edwards also dropped out. So while we won't have President 9/11, we also will have to put up with those increasingly horrid drug ads. It doesn't matter now, John...someday. Someday.*

*EDIT FROM THE FUTURE: No, John, never.

The night before taking Miss Poopsalot to be checked out, we left on a movie called S.S. Doomtrooper. It's...not Band of Brothers as much as Altered Beast meets Call of Duty. Or something. It was hilarious, if the Nazis making mutant monsters on top of being Nazis can be hilarious.

At the beginning of the week, I was dreading Friday, merely because the past two times I've taken Mum around to the shops on a Friday, bad things have happened to me. By Wednesday, I sort of hoped I'd be happy to see Saturday, provided we all weren't dead or anything. By Thursday night, I was over the moon with glee because all was right with the world again and I was once again reminded that I chose a fabulous vet. The Puppy began eating and stopped pooping a lot, and the world was a delightful and sparkling place...until The Fluffy One developed a runny bottom on Friday.

Also on Friday, it rained. A lot. It rained and warmed up and the crocuses began to poke through the ground and it was cloudy and there is no way in hell a groundhog or a snake or The Virgin Mary or Brigid saw shadows in the state of New York. Winter never even began. The euonymus scale is still all over the leaves, there are little leaves showing up all over the trees, I've been waking up after two hours of useless sleep, but the Cailleach, that's still asleep. SPRINGTIME IS NOW.

Stay tuned next week when my weather forecasting abilities will be buried under ten inches of snow. (See, now either way the weather goes, I win.)

Another Week And This Is All I Have To Show For It

4 Days, 7 Nights

Last Saturday, we watched 16 Blocks, which Nan and I had seen, but wanted to show to Mum, who hadn't seen it with us...but had seen it another night. She just didn't want to mention that, because we'd said we didn't see the whole thing. We...kinda did. While the steadycam operators seemed to be on strike during the film, I'm not one to pass up a Bruce Willis movie and this one in particular reminds me that at least I don't have to drive in Manhattan.

The Painted Veil (2006) reminded me that I'm lucky I don't live down river from cholera. Oddly, the sun bouncing off water and nuns had the same effect as a high speed action movie, and I think from now on I will need to watch movies where no one moves around on every second week of the month. All that aside, it was a good movie. Wash your hands and keep your pianos in tune, kids.

On Monday we were promised a pummeling by the myriad snow fairies whose chain e-mail I did not forward. However, my own personal Ullr came through and I didn't have to shovel double my own weight in slush! Believe me, that is for the best. I've done it, I'm not averse to hard work, I'm averse to aggravating my hernias.

vixy.net has issued a new beta for their FLV converter, so if you use that...like I do...occasionally...for family things...there you go. Update.

Tuesday saw the return of American Idol. What is it, season 70? Who cares, I think this guy was robbed:



Wednesday, my mother had her Unna boot swapped by imbeciles. Yes, it took three weeks, but the idiots I remember as being common to the medical industry have surfaced. I love how "interesting," is clinic technician speak for, "I have no idea what you live with every day, but let me slap a bandage on this symptom so you can go away."

I managed to aggravate my hernias on Thursday, when it was time to play pallbearer to our old microwave. So much for escaping injury.

Nan found a movie we hadn't seen called The Confessor with Christian Slater as a priest. The original title was The Good Shepherd, but seeing as this was church intrigue instead of politics, they gave the away title to...the movie that it made no sense being a title to unless you count how many times those Skull and Bones guys sang The Whiffenpoof Song in that Matt Damon movie. Anyway. If you liked The Rosary Murders, you may like The Confessor.

Yesterday, I went around in the fog that only a combination of being me, sinus congestion, migraines, entertainment news on the television, sleep deprivation, hormones, and speaking for longer than two minutes can bring. Or drug abuse. But I have no drugs, only Niacin and Vitamin C. All I really remember about yesterday is that there was a neat looking cloud over the other clouds, and were I looking at a photo of these clouds, I'd swear someone had gone to town with the smudge brush, because this cloud, it looked out of place. It also made me think I was going blind again because it covered the moon, but it was so thin that it just made the moon blurry without changing the color of the sky. These are the types of things that interest me, people. This is why I haven't had a serious relationship in a long time.

This afternoon, at 1:30, our new microwave arrived with little stupidity. It's shiny, powers on and the door opens, so it's already passed my criteria.

4 Days, 7 Nights

The Second Week of 2008

I accidentally deleted the horoscopes from my bulk folder, so I didn't really know what to expect from this week, but now that it's over, I'm not sure what happened, so maybe that was the message of the horoscopes. I seemed to be changing a lot of ink cartridges and moving around when I probably shouldn't have.

On Sunday I found out figure skating is still around, who knew? I spent a few hours watching it last weekend, and I recognized like three skaters. Has it been that long? When Christopher Bowman passed away this week, I felt like it had been even longer since I enjoyed skating. Couldn't be that long, I remember watching this, it was only a little while ago.

This week, I got my Technorati Tags script for Blogger back, and I bet you didn't even notice I'd lost it, eh? I'd been pasting the div in, man. Hand-edited tags. I'm hardcore.

My eBay listing for Titanic was not a success. Not even one watcher. Maybe some free listing day I'll put it on there again, because now that day I banged into that woman's car has cost me an extra $1.60. I suspect the reason my listing was not the success Dawn Meehan's was is because instead of kids, I have only myself to make fun of, and no one out there can relate to that, at all. I mean, everyone else in the world is an excellent driver and has never dinged another person's car and had to have their mother lay out half the money the screaming driver of the other car was asking for, because I can't even sell a $5 movie on eBay. One day, this will not be an issue for me.

The weather was so lovely at the beginning of the week I mistook it for April and took down the Christmas decorations. The wires weren't even stiff. It was fabulous.

My mother got an Unna boot. She didn't like it. After three days, the doctor gave her another. This time they wrapped it looser. She still doesn't like it. That thing dries solid. My mother is wearing a cast on her leg. The dog offered to help carry her up the stairs to return the favor, but I don't see that working out so well.

We watched The Invasion and Undertaking Betty. Both good, but my love for Jeremy Northam sort of dampened my enthusiasm for what happens in Invasion, and that's all I'm saying about that without spoiling the movie for you. Betty, on the other hand, I've seen four times and I'd watch it again right now if I could.

Alas, I will be researching microwave ovens now. Preferably ones that don't need security clearance from The Pentagon to open after the little spring in the latch breaks. Give me back my hot pretzel, you radioactive bastard.

The Second Week of 2008

I am damp.

It's been a balmy 55° in the upper-east area of the states, and while I generally lament the loss of the polar ice caps and the impending doom that entails, it has been freakin' nice out, and I've forgotten what computers are for.

Oh yeah, I've also been driving more than I should. Which brings me to the point of this post. I have a question for the drivers out there.

 When Is Oncoming Traffic Visible?

• Behind the painted line next to the stop sign.
• Through the windshields of the parked SUVs.
• From the middle of the intersection.
• It isn't.
• When it is lodged in my car.

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(No, I didn't get hit, but my mother is starting to ask that I don't just close my eyes and hope for the best.)

I am damp.

Daryl Hall Says It's The Right Time, I Do Not Argue.

The media and stores have been insisting it's Christmas since October. The neighbors have had decorations and lights up since before Thanksgiving. This past week we got a ton of snow--and meterologists may frown upon my ballpark weight of the snow, but they didn't have to shovel it out of my walkway. Ton.

But it really isn't Christmas yet, it isn't even winter for another four days, even though Paul Winter's had his concert down in St. John The Divine already.

Today, however, I finally heard Jingle Bell Rock by Hall & Oates with Daryl Hall singing. There are two different versions, you know, and for some reason the station that went all-Christmas music before Hanukkah seems to only play the John Oates version. I don't have anything against Oates, you can't have Hall & Oates without him, but in 1983, the first year I decorated the tree mostly by myself, it was the Daryl Hall vocal I had burned in my head as my Princess Leia doll handed me red glitter balls and wondered if Han would make it for Christmas.

...I did say I decorated the tree mostly by myself. Tony the cat also helped.

But I digress, Daryl Hall has sung his song, and that was enough of a signal to get the stuff on the tree and start decorating.

Behold, videos for both versions of the song!

Hall:



Oates:

Daryl Hall Says It's The Right Time, I Do Not Argue.

My Theory on Seasonal Affective Disorder

It is difficult to write out holiday cards that should have wishes of joy and cheery declarations of love when all I want to do is put a hammer through my head.

The weather has turned frigid and I haven't seen the sun in two days. There is sad-sounding Celtic music wafting in from another room, and as a result I've turned my headphone radio up so loud I can heard Bruce Springsteen breathing down my neck. I like Celtic music, I really do, but outside of I Am Stretched On Your Grave, I don't dig the ones involving death and separation very much, because they get it more accurately than I care to notice when I see that I only have a handful of family cards to send out--which, btw, I'd love to do the card exchange thing, but believe me, you're better getting the thing I will post here...whatever that will be--and I can't keep anyone's name straight, especially my own, because honestly, I wrote it once, why do I have to keep writing it down? My mind does not know. Much like when I took piano lessons. You play one G major chord, you don't need to play it again in the same song, right?

I hope my meltdown is being entertaining, kids. I try. I really try.

My Theory on Seasonal Affective Disorder

Sundays suck.

There, I've said it. I hate Sunday. This Sunday has done nothing to change my opinion of its predecessors, as LiveJournal is down, and that is a wrench in the cogs of my life so large that any venting I might have done elsewhere, in a moderate false sense of privacy, cannot happen now.

It snowed today. It wasn't a lot of snow, it was pretty, and were I younger and healthier, the sight of the first snowflakes would have carried me through a dozen Sundays on a sparkly patch of icy glee. But no. Now I’m old, and the only place I’m allowed to enjoy the snow is in my backyard. We live on a street many people walk down, and so being a vampire with a hernia tends to clash with the idea of not causing people to slip. The neighbor next door, bless him, shovels the street in front of his house and our house. But he's got tendonitis and pins in his leg. Is it fair for him to have to shovel the street in front of our house? Of course not. But he does it, without asking or expecting anything in return, and that is why he rocks.

My tongue is sore and my head hurts. The psuedoephedrine-based allergy medication I took last week in order to understand the English language is leaving me unwilling to do much, and were breathing not an automated process I probably would not have bothered to be here to force this post onto my unsuspecting readers. I’m sorry I’m not funny today, I’m not funny a lot of the time, and if I plan to write something every single day on here, my charade is going to become more apparent than I’d like.

The usual reasoning behind posting emo vents like this is to let other people who feel the same know they aren’t alone. But we are, aren’t we? A dozen people avoiding human contact, unwilling to damage the smooth surface of the new fallen snow on a cold, dreary Sunday, are all, in their own square-footage, alone. We like it that way, too, don't we? No one would appreciate the snowballs I throw anyway, they end up looking like Italian ices from my bloody cracked hands.

I think Morrissey wrote a song about this. Far more entertaining, too.

Sundays suck.

News from Excitement Central.

Lightning hit a transformer near our house and there was a power outage at 10 o'clock, it lasted until 12:55. The fascinating part of this was that of the three-blocks-worth of houses in the dark, we seemed to be the only ones calling Con Ed. The woman we got on the phone said, "Don't tell me it's raining, I have to go to the Bronx later!"

Um, yeah, well, okay, lady. You be careful on the streets in the rain.

The next woman we got at about 12 told us our food going bad was the least of our worries. Maybe we really were in the dark. Maybe there be tripods in them thar streets.

To be fair, I agreed with her to the extent that the food wasn't going to go bad in a couple of hours or anything, that I was more likely to vomit all over the house from the flickering candles sooner than the milk in the fridge would turn room temperature, but who wants to hear that? Not you, I bet! HAHA. Vomit. Heh.

The power's back on now, it's not something I'd like to do often, but there it is. News. News that not one local news station covered. Pfft.

And yes, I turned the light switch on every time I walked into the room. What a dumbass.

News from Excitement Central.

It's Too Darn Hot.

Oh Cole Porter, you brilliant man.

I've been putting a lot of my resources into writing non-blog things, and drawing my strip, and tragically what happens when the weather is this hot and all-encompassing, I tend to just draw pictures of myself saying, "Damn, it's hot."

Also, in the hot weather my writing takes a turn for the worse. I'm sure it could be very good, if only I knew what it was I had written when I go back at read it. You see that typo back there? Yes. I have some sort of encryption built in, and whe nthe weather is hot, I turn into Ed Harris in The Abyss, after he'd gone down the great big hole. I'm not sure if I'd like aliens helping me out right now, as I would not be the one to persuade them to save humaity--that's humanity to the non-bleary--and I'd have a lot of explaining to do to my neighbors when the tidal wave took out their nice five-car garage. (Director's cut of The Abyss only.)

Resigned to stay indoors if I want to live to see the end of season 3 of So You Think You Can Dance? (and I do), I'm currently making nice co-ordinated covers for my computer parts and trying to win at Scrabble Scramble and 3-card Solitare. It's very much like the stay at the happy home many (all in my head) thought I required back in the '80s.

Are these the most exciting things I've been doing? Probably not, but I can't bloody remember anything else. My mind, much like the wiring in my house, is faulty in the hot weather, and we've been narrowly avoiding a blackout for three days. Provided I continue my habit of sitting in the dark when I want my computer, everything should be fine. Naked smoking man's got an air conditioner now, though, so the whole block may overload at any minute.

It's Too Darn Hot.

Bad Haiku for a Summer's Day

The ice cream truck jingles
With the severe thunderstorm mingles
I'm dry and lactose intolerant.

Happy Solstice, people.

Bad Haiku for a Summer's Day