I am still kind of in shock that it's already monday.

Friday we hit Dave & Buster's with Alfred & Co. I actually had a fun time, despite the general atmosphere that comes along with being at D&B. All I wanted to do was play Police Trainer, my favorite arcade shooting game of the last decade, but the guns were so wildly uncalibrated that it was nigh impossible to get to the next level. I shot some zombies instead. I had to avoid Police 911 because I needed my legs to be functional the next day.

Saturday after drum lesson we zipped over to help salami_salome move. (I was supposed to have softball practice, but my coach got injured when some dude slid home head and knee first.) Which, I have to say, was about the smoothest moving operation I have ever been a part of. My hat is off to the move-ee. Her new place is adorable. We all had dinner at Ledo's (the original in Adelphi! much tastier) after and I put away a startling amount of square pizza.

On the way home I said, "Jack, let's take a fun trip to the Verizon store." This ended in Jack getting the Palm Centro since his phone has been acting up. I didn't get anything, in a show of restraint. I am kind of up in the air about the data plan, though I shouldn't even consider it.

Then the weekend took a turn for the worse. ( all the bad stuff... )

In the midst of all the hectic cleaning, I had to go out to the Girls Rock DC camp volunteer interviews. It was fun, but I was really nervous! It's a lifelong habit of nerdness that I think I will never grow out of but everyone seemed much cooler than me. I found out that there is now like, an international assocation of Girls Rock camps, and they have annual meetings and junk. Working with kids is scary and maybe seems a little more scary now that I've learned more about it but I got a really good vibe off the organizers and other volunteers. We did have to do 2 extremely socially awkward things that I am confident we will have to do with the kids. The "untying the human knot" icebreaker, and ... skits. AIGH. Nonetheless I am way psyched. Hopefully they take me.

We also got to have dinner with our neighbor, Stephen, since his family is out of town. Going to the pho place is actually quite health-friendly, I am happy to report. And then that was it! There was no more weekend to have. Buh.

A final note: I have a new reward for my health plan. I have decided I am officially sick of my hair. It only took 2 years, but I have crossed the line into missing short hair. I want to reach up, touch the back of my head, and feel the buzz. So if I reach my goals it is coming off. I am thinking something like this, if my face shape can handle it. Do you think my face shape can handle it? Or are you saddened and hurt that I would chop it all off?

I had a pretty good weekend, despite the fact that I have been in a bit of a funk lately. I know the various reasons for this: me being lazy, feelings of inadequacy at work. It all comes down to that.

So friday I was totally selfish and showed up late to dinner with an excuse of manicure going over its alotted time. I feel so much better, however, now that the claws have been removed. I was starting to get a little Howard Hughes-ey there. Dinner, by the way, was a lovely event with people I get to see far too little of. I can't remember if I've been to a Cuban restaurant before but everything we had was very yummy. (Specifically we went to Cuba de Ayer in Burtonsville.)

When we got home, we played WoW.

Saturday I did a bunch of driving. First to drum lesson (new assignment: White Wedding!!!) then out to Leesburg to exchange my christmas present. So I finally after months of desiring have a fancy new watch. It's the basic Seiko Coutura and it was marked down to like half price because of some minor cosmetic blemish or other. Bah! It works great. No, it's not a perpetual motion one but come to find out they don't even make those in ladies' anymore because ladies apparently won't wear a watch that big. "Friggin' ladies", I believe, were my exact words to the salesperson.

I got back in time from the wilds of outletty Virginia to play some WoW, and then attend a showing of Juno at the greenbelt theater. Yes, it was as good as everyone said. Periodically it walked up to the "Too Twee" line and poked its nose over, but then sauntered back away to less annoying ground. Lots of belly laughs, however, and lots of J.K. Simmons. Sweet. After this we hit the diner.

When we got home, we played WoW.

Sunday I got up and managed to convince my butt to put in some laundry. I got ready and was just in time for my Buddhist anger management class. It was a much bigger crowd this time but the same adorable soft-spoken teacher taught the first part of the thing. By about halfway through, I was despairing as to whether there was any hope for me to let go, but by the end I had managed some helpful thoughts for eliminating bad mental habits. There was a helpful image early on about how going through life angry, rejecting all the things that happen that you cannot control is like driving with the emergency brake on. You have that moment where you ask yourself, "why is driving so hard?" before you release the brake. That is exactly what being angry is like, only we forget sometimes that we actually do have our hand on the brake lever. Next session is anxiety, in April, and BOY HOWDY do I look forward to that.

When I got home, we played even more WoW( digression about WoW )

Earlier this week I made the transition from my Timbuk 2 bag to my new and very beloved and fresh and happy Sherpani Vida. I sort of not really documented how everything fits in here and here and display how it looks on here and despair for its gross marketing here. So far you could consider its only downside to be the total ineffectuality of the drawstring, except that it has a flap and is no less secure than my T2 bag so I don't care. The lining inside is light and makes things easy to find, it makes all my heavy crap sit better on my shoulders, and it has 4 little external pockets for my 4 essentials: phone, ipod, camera, wallet. And the magnets make it so it doesn't stick to all other fabrics like velcro.

Remember when I used to do frozen meal reviews? Well here's another one:



Amy's Bowls Pesto Tortellini was actually quite tasty and probably no good for you. It didn't look colorless and unappealing before cooking, and it looks just about like it should after. There was no dearth of filling to the tortellini. I guess it would be hard to mess up tortellini and pesto sauce, but you can't be sure with the frozen foods industry. For 430 calories and 3 bucks, it's not a bad buy even for the health conscious and it filled me right up. It even had a reasonable amount of fiber. Another upshot of this review: now that I know there is such a thing as the heateatreview and that it has already covered the ground I care about, maybe I won't bother with this again!

And here is your obligatory cat picture:



WHO IS PRECIOUS AND FLIRTY MEOW MEOW

Flickr now lets you do some fun photo editing. :)

Local News:
If you are concerned about music and legal stuff or have a hate on for ClearChannel, take a gander at this link here about the live music venue in downtown Silver Spring. I feel reasonably confident that the market will determine what kind of acts will go in that venue, and I will get the same amount of interest either way, but I decided to sign the petition anyways.

Politics Hour with Kim and Jack:
Jack was telling me about the intelligence on Iran and them being not likely to have nukes. He said something about hoping they don't pull some bullshit like Saddam Hussein and comply for a long time but hide the fact. I was trying to explain why I understood the rationale and landed on the following explanation: Imagine if at your job, your boss told you that no one was allowed to wear purple underwear any more. It had been discovered that people who wear purple underwear are able at some point to strangle all of their coworkers with them. When the time comes for everyone to pull down their pants to show the underwear inspectors what color is on their bum, I might just refuse, even if I am wearing pink underwear. Particularly after I hear that the executives have no restrictions on what color underwear they are wearing, and are not subject to searches.

Jack's response was something like, what if your department was deemed 75% more likely to use its underwear to strangle its own employees?

Anyways, the analogy doesn't really scale.

Weekend Update: ( Read more... )

TV Updates:( Read more... )

Just what I love to see first thing in the morning: a cat standing next to the bed, sneezing right into my face. I am not sure how long he was standing there.

Blades of Glory was actually pretty damn funny. I spent the rest of the day enjoying the company of my moviegoing pals and eating alot.

And now it's sunday. WHY!

I was suddenly possessed to get audiobooks! It turns out the Maryland public libraries free audiobooks do not work with ipod. hrmf. Who wants to tell me about their experiences with audible.com?

This morning I woke up from a dream in which the VP (who is causing my possibly overly dramatic boulder description) made me clean and fold all his laundry, and I left the cats in the car for a while and the town was flooded and the cats nearly died.

(After waking) I stepped into the bathroom, saw a little blood and stool on the rug, and looked over at the cat, who had 6 inches of ribbon sticking out of his pooper. How's that for prescience??

Epilogue: Jack ran the cat to the vet & the cat is totally fine, but there were alot of skid marks to clean up. The weather is not helping my issues.

Netflix movie review: Tommy. To quote Jack: "They wrote this with madlibs."

+ Had my first drum lesson with my new drum teacher Kim. But not before having an anxiety attack that he lures innocents into his soundproofed basement for ritual sacrifices.

- The smelly cat now also has dandruff.

+ Having a fun Christmas (need to come up with a new and inventive way to say Christmas agnostically) decorating kerfluffle at the house.

- My glitter glue is stopped up and I may have to replace it. (How else am I going to make a stocking for the smelly, flaky cat???!)

+ Saw Rent last night and loved it.

+ Oh yeah, tzel reports that Peter Tork's band Shoe Suede Blues is playing Remington's in Laurel! On tuesday!!! I may go!

( cut for graphic cat talk )

jack admitted today that he likes a genesis song. 'trick of the tail'. it is a banner day.

aaggghhh why do i leave absolutely everything til the last minute.

The chips are down for many of my friends right now, to use a ridiculous trite phrase. I love them and wish I could have stopped all the unstoppable terrible things from happening to them. All I have to offer right this second, however, is kitty pictures.

( piccies )

( All about my trip to Philly and seeing Trespass. )

Since I've been back, it's been work work work and various highlights... for instance, this little gem, thanks to painkiller. And of course, there is that fact that this week the Video Show and Platinum Collection were released. I spent most of the beginning of the week squirming in anticipation and then last night watched the whole DVD (barring the CAS related videos. Sleep was more important.). That was alot of fun - I had only the vaguest memories of the more popular videos. The videos from the Phil era are shown in reverse from most recent to oldest, and it was strange - it was like watching Phil slowly die from some kind of wasting disease. For the WCD videos, he's hale and hearty, but by the time you get to "Duchess" it's like he weighs 99 pounds soaking wet. I reckon it was a rough time for him - and as far as I know, he didn't even do much drugs. The 80s fashion parade was a laugh riot.

Also:
- bought myself a single ticket to see Steve Hackett acoustic trio next month
- decided I need to make my own desk because nothing else will do - need carpentry advice
- finished One for the Morning Glory which was cute
- made a vet appt for hero who is breaking out all over his leetle face for the 3rd time
- noticed what a mess the house is, did nothing about it

This morning was a 2-kitty alarm morning. Some people hit the snooze twice, but for me it's measured in kitty visits. On a good day, Hero will come by and meow at me from one foot away from my face. On a bad day, Hero will meow, and Nicolas will poke me in the face. It took both to get me out of bed this morning.

I'm having budget misery. Seems I've been comfort-shopping a little too much lately. What's with all this latent stress? It's not like I don't feel great all the time lately? Blah.

Had my physical, everything checks out A-OK. ( TMI )

To do this weekend:
- clean out the car
- laundry
- clean out the closet and take everything to thrift store
- go to EC with my homies
- hit things with drumsticks
- get jack to get himself a new monitor so i can have his old one
- if i am feeling really excited, come up with a house to do list

I am so ready to get this weekend started. Then it's next weekend, and I'm going to philly, and I am so psyched for that. See, everything is good, why am I exhibiting signs of stress!

Mr. Kitty was the first kitty I had. I was 13, and it had been a little while since we had to put down our dogs. I really wanted a kitty. My aunt at the time had a litter, and I begged and begged to get a kitty from that litter - my parents were adamantly against it. Sally was not to be discouraged, however, so for my birthday in 1988 we got Mr. Kitty. I went through a few tries at naming - most of which were rejected by my parents. So Mr. Kitty it was. He was the runty one - so tiny at the time. My parents didn't want him to bond with them, so they made me pay all the attention to him. I think it broke his heart when I left for college, and my heart was pretty broken back then too... I never got it together enough to bring him to live with me, and by the time I could he was so dispositionally sensitive it would have probably made him more unhappy to move than it would have made him happy to be reunited with me. I'll always regret not making it work to bring him to live with me though obviously so many other things were broke with me back then. Mr Kitty liked to eat, he liked to sit on his little oriental rug next to mom or dad on the couch. He liked to pee wherever he damn well pleased. He died today because he got ringworm so bad (mom & dad don't know from where) that he had to be put down. (Mom & dad have it too, now. They are wondering if they will have to burn down the house. Argh.) Poor Mr Kitty. He did have a long and pretty healthy life apart from that. Dad says up until his discomfort he really did enjoy everything about his kitty lifestyle.

Bye Mr. Kitty. I really hoped I'd get to see you again.

oh well. i guess i won't finish sorting the office.

( sigh )

I just found a cat hair inside the barrel of my pen. This stuff is amazing.

I went to the Five and Below. I figured it would cure my shopping fever in one of two ways: either I would be able to purchase some small but useful thing at a nominal fee and thus feed the beast, or I would find everything such horrifically garishly abundant crap that I would decry my entire career as a compulsive consumer and never want to contribute to the culture at all again ever. It kind of did both. I got a brown satin purse for five bucks and I hate everything. Win-win!

Itunes has decided the Play Count file is corrupted and asked me to run chkdsk utility. I did, and this changed nothing. Now it won't update the ipod. WHY GOD WHY.

( This Animal Emits Indescribable, Horrifying Stink From Every Orifice )

Note to all cat owners: Hill's z/d results in THE STINKIEST POOPS.

I am telling myself that means it's more natural and um, rich in good things for them. Fecund, if you will.