yoga, books, movies, tv & too many crime procedurals – not necesarily in that order
Apple iPad – TERRIBLE name and a surprisingly disappointing device. It’ll prompt Amazon to send out more Kindle updates though, so I’m not complaining.
State of the Union. Yeah, I played WET on my Xbox instead of watching. Frankly, I think the whole point of the internet is to keep me from having to watch the news. I’m largely disappointed that everyone in Washington is too busy trying to keep their jobs to actually DO their jobs. I’m tired of them bitching about something being wrong when THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES WITH THE POWER TO CHANGE IT. That’s not to say that’s what I think Obama was doing but I couldn’t stand to watch all the bi-partisan asshattery.
As an aside, every time I see John Boehner I think “John Boner” and then wonder how someone named “Boner” got elected in Ohio. And then I go OH YEAH.
Listening to MoZella’s album and I LOVE IT. It’s like a cross between Feist and Maroon 5. Also the Glee soundtracks and am continuously creeped out by She’s Having My Baby – to the point where I may need to delete it from my entire collection. P.S. How did we get THAT but not Single Ladies?
Whip It came out in DVD. I was VERY EXCITED. I watched it three times. It will get its own entire post.
Indulged a little today by getting a manicure. I’ve been working with cardboard pretty much nonstop for the last month and have an event Monday and Tuesday. The back room project is over at work (at least this stage) and my hands can (hopefully) return to normal. At the very least, the mani will make me presentable for the event and then I can hopefully maintain.
Sometimes when my husband is looking for something and can’t find it, I want to hit him with a hammer.
Dead writers. I can’t be arsed to care, really.
Haiti. Well, the only time we care about poor countries are when there are natural disasters, not things like DICTATORS AND GENOCIDE. SIGH.
Booked my flight for the Seattle trip. Next up- hotel rooms.
We’re watching Public Enemies right now. I’m currently unimpressed. I did watch I’ve Loved You So Long on Netflix and I thought it was fantastic. The Edge of Love was passable but not great.
Listening to Middlemarch on my afternoon commute. The audiobook is DEFINITELY better than reading the damn thing myself – especially since it’s a practical use of the drive time. Eliot is droll but somewhat heavyhanded in the use of narrator commentary. I am reminded (as with East of Eden) that some topics are just as relevant now as they were in other centuries.
I still love work. I’m enjoying it immensely and have fun with my coworkers. Hard to beat that!
I feel like I actually have three jobs. After work today, I stopped at the grocery on the way home. Once home, I made chili (for dinner tonight), beef tikka masala (for this weekend) and blueberry muffins (for breakfast). Things not to do after cutting up your hands all day working with cardboard: cut jalepenos. Yeah. Awesome. I ALSO managed to get the kitchen cleaned. I am Supergirl.
The muffins allowed me to test my new silicone muffin pans and they are FANTASTIC. I love them. If I could, I’d replace most of my bakeware with silicone. On the current wishlist: those measuring cups/spoons that flatten, as well as a colander.
My Xbox is wending its way to the house as we speak. I’m very excited about it and picked up some used games from GameStop. Fatima promised we could conference and watch bad movies on Netflix, so I’m looking forward to that.
My hands ARE pretty thrashed from work. I’ve been having issues for the last year/year and a half with dry nails that peel (rather than split or break) and recently discovered that a fix seems to include 1. No nail polish and 2. Lots of lotion. I trimmed my nails tonight and there wasn’t a single peeler. The hands ARE hella dry from all the cardboard though. I might actually have to get out my lotion gloves overnight.
New current playlist is an autolist with Lily Allen, Kelly Clarkson, Britney, Gaga and Katy Perry. I’m REALLY enjoying it.
Other random news. Brit Hume- WTF? Because Christians, especially FAMOUS Christians, NEVER have extramarital affairs? WTF *SouthCarolinaGovernor* cough. I think Brit’s a first class idiot. See also: not everyone subscribes to your idea or need for forgiveness. Jackass.
Tomorrow’s post-work excitement will consist of seeing Avatar again and/or cleaning the basement. Piper was mad that we left today and got into the coffee grounds in the laundry room garbage. Mmmm. Coffee grounds. This would likely be less annoying if I 1. drank coffee and 2. thought coffee smelled good. Damn dog.
I might do some more reading before bed tonight- Middlemarch is even more effective than Ambien.
Last week I clocked just over 40 hours at job 1 and almost 20 at job 2. They also requested that I come in a couple of hours early tomorrow and, while I’m happy to comply, I’ll be heartily glad when I’m down to just the one job. On the plus side, my drive time has gotten me caught up on backlogged Talk of the Nation podcasts. Most interesting of the lot: The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs
Speaking of which, I have a day off this week (!) and Spouse has mad noises about a second viewing of Avatar. I’m all for it.
Chuck returns next week! So does Burn Notice!
I finally decided what to spend my h$liday money on – a long-wanted XB0x 360. It was a close battle between that and the entire 5 seasons of The Wire but I opted for multi-user fun. Not only that, Fatima helped sway me with promises of long-distance movie viewing and snark. The 360 marks the last of my ‘frivolous’ purchases for the next 4 months (save for “gift” money)- the only resolution I made this year. No books or music until I’ve read through everything on the kindle and listened to everything on the Zune at least once.
Happy New Year!
For example, I’m not sure I can adequately describe how incredible it is to use a laptop with a FUNCTIONAL BATTERY. The last year-plus has been spent tethered to an outlet because the battery on my Toshiba was croaking its way to annihilation and wouldn’t hold a charge for more than 7 minutes. Every time I wanted to use my laptop, I had to scope out outlet locations which – let me tell you- are at a PREMIUM in places with free wifi. They are also rarely located CONVENIENTLY.
I say this as I am currently reclined on my sofa, dogosai on my feets, and no power cord in sight! It’s delightful! Liberating, even!
One of the great advancements that’s happened since my last computer purchase is an improvement in the touchpad to eliminate right and left clicks with an actual button. I can do both by tapping the touchpad and it’s GREAT. Don’t get me wrong- it’s definitely taking some getting used to but the new laptop is so far and away better than the old one that it makes me feel like I’ve been driving a Ford Model T for three years and just got a Jag.
The internets are all atwitter about Tiger Woods but it turns out I just don’t care. I’m more worried about when Chuck is going to return to Monday night TV.
Tonight I worked my first training shift and it was pretty great. I’m definitely going to enjoy work this holiday season.
In other internet news: troop levels in the Middle East. Here’s the thing. Back when Hils and Barack were just campaigning for the office of President and we were already embroiled in all this shit, I knew it was a bad idea to start promising troop withdrawal. You know why? Because ANYONE could see that there wasn’t a CHANCE we would be getting out SOON. And by ‘anyone’ I mean ‘people who don’t have access to national security information.’ Why did I say that? 1. Korea 2. Germany 3. Afghanistan
You can’t go into a country, dismantle its government, disrupt its infrastructure (such as it is) and then BAIL OUT. That’s not how it works. That’s pretty much NEVER been how it works. Ergo, there was no chance we’d be getting out early. My major bitch with this, by the way, was that in order to GET a job all the candidates LIED about this fact. They all knew there was no chance of it happening – hell, they all started backpedaling on it DURING the campaign. All I want is for people to be HONEST about it. Be STRAIGHT with people about the realities of the world. Maybe then the country would put on its Big Kid Pants and get a grip.
Oh. P.S. Dick Cheney, you can go straight to hell for saying you had nothing to do with the epic clusterfuck that you ACTUALLY STARTED in Afghanistan as a result of all this Iraq nonsense. Asshole. Hell might actually be too good for you.
And since I went on a political rant, here’s a moment of zen:
And then I realized that my headphone jack is too big. Damn and blast.
Tonight’s dinner is London Broil with Roast Potatoes. Husband hasn’t been feeling well and came home early, so I made these cheesy pastry appetizers as well. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart’s Halloween magazine this year (great stuff!) and just opted to make the big rectangle (albeit sliced bar-style) without digging out a cookie cutter. I’ve never made a London Broil before so I’m interested to see how it turns out.
I also installed Calibre to help manage my Kindle – it lets me mark things as read and add my own tags. Not only that, it will automatically search out news feeds and add them to the Kindle so that I don’t have to subscribe through Amazon. Alas, I should know better than to not read the instructions. I simply uploaded all my new metadata to the Kindle, which added all my books a second time (grr) and then when I took off the ones I hadn’t recently updated, it lost my place in East of Eden. Whoops. I suspect all my bookmarks are gone as well, but as I don’t make them very often it’s no big loss.
