blah. blah. blah.

Wash me!

2008-06-30T02:25:57Z

Oh, God, I hate spreading out cleaning house over multiple days. I'd much rather just get it done all at once. The problem, however, is I always either put off starting until late in the day, or stop in between tasks so many times that it's inevitable that the cleaning cup will runneth over (into tomorrow).

So it looks like tomorrow when I get home from work I'll be washing sheets and towels and making beds (HATE!) and also dusting (HATE! HATE! HATE!). I attribute the utter hatred of dusting to the fact that, when I was a kid, dusting was the one housecleaning task my mother always let me do. I attribute the utter hatred of making beds to laziness.

Aside from that, though, I have a thoroughly clean house. JOY! Well, except for sweeping the balcony and cleaning the furniture outside. SUCK!

This calls for a morale-boosting icon of Cure-love. For that, I choose Porl. Though, I wish I had one of him in full eye-makeup glory from the North American wing of 4Tour. All decked out, the man is a truly gorgeous sight to see. Rock star, indeed.

And see? Just the mere mention of The Cure banished all thought of housecleaning and put me in a better mood. Hmmm...perhaps, then, the reason I didn't finish housecleaning today was that I had the concert from last week playing on the DVR all afternoon? : p

Sad and pathetic. Or, why I am the world's worst librarian and English major.

2008-06-26T02:14:26Z

For my own future reference, if nothing else....

Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well, let's see.

1) Bold the books you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) I'm changing this one to...Capitalize those you actually own, but haven't yet read (or finished) because you're lazy.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 THE BIBLE (haven't finished)
7 WUTHERING HEIGHTS - EMILY BRONTE
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 LITTLE WOMEN - LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
12 TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES - THOMAS HARDY
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 MIDDLEMARCH - GEORGE ELIOT
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 DAVID COPPERFIELD - CHARLES DICKENS
33 CHRONICLES OF NARNIA - CS LEWIS (read The Magician's Nephew so far...)
34 EMMA - JANE AUSTEN
35 PERSUASION - JANE AUSTEN
36 THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE - CS LEWIS
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY - JOHN IRVING
45 THE WOMAN IN WHITE - WILKIE COLLINS
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD - THOMAS HARDY
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 ATONEMENT - IAN MCEWAN
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 SENSE AND SENSIBILITY - JANE AUSTEN
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 MOBY DICK - HERMAN MELVILLE
71 OLIVER TWIST - CHARLES DICKENS
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 VANITY FAIR - WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A FINE BALANCE - ROHINTON MISTRY
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 WATERSHIP DOWN - RICHARD ADAMS
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Rock Star!

2008-06-21T04:11:09Z

Didn't think it was possible to love Robert Smith any more than I already did, but, after watching tonight's Madison Square Garden concert cut into an hour on FuseTV....

Around five minutes before the end, he starts ruminating about how he should probably be talking more and how, when he does, the rest of the band finds him "fucking amusing"...and he always ends up reading about it on the internet the next day, where people are saying "What did he say?"--"blargh blahdy-blah blah giblibble blarghity blah blah blah" (and OMG, literally, those were the sounds Robert Smith made WITH THE ACCOMPANYING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS). And he says, "I speak very clearly, I think. Obviously not. clearly. enough."

Robert Smith wins at fucking everything ever in life.

And could Porl Thompson be any fucking cooler?

This totally calls for a new icon. Perhaps several.

Sublimely happy.

2008-06-17T20:42:24Z

That was the most fucking amazing experience of my entire life.

Three hours they played. Three encores. Only a couple of songs off the new album, so pretty much everything was something we knew and loved. We had great seats and binoculars. I could see Robert Smith so closely through them that I actually caught him mouth "I love you, too" to a fan on the floor. Holy fucking shit. I was in the same fucking room with Robert Smith last night.

It was the best night of my life.

Drive by squee!

2008-06-16T15:08:56Z

I'm stepping out in about half an hour to head to Charlotte to see THE CURE in concert tonight. They've been my favorite band for 18 years and finally, finally I'm seeing them live tonight.

WOOOOOOO!

The Cure!!!!!!!!!

I want to buy a house.

2008-06-01T03:53:15Z

*notices the noisy neighbors haven't made a 3 a.m. wake up call in ages*

*wonders if the noisy neighbors have moved out*

*thinks they haven't*

*notices a new person moving in*

*guesses the noisy neighbors moved out after all*

*realizes it's midnight and the new neighbor is still moving in with family and friends, quite loudly*

*thinks a new noisy neighbor just moved in*

DAMMIT.

Happiness just is.

2008-05-31T23:42:00Z

Today was a perfectly satisfying day. Instead of cleaning house, which I (predictably) put off til tomorrow, I lazed around and spent money and ate well.

It started with waking up early and catching a surprise episode of Nigella, then reading a little fanfic and running down to the corner for an egg & cheese bagel and a cup of (delicious!) blueberry coffee. I came home and read a little more and putzed about on the 'net, catching up on e-mails and whatnot. I took a shower with my brand new Banana Smoothie shampoo & shower gel, which smelled divine and made me smile. And crave a banana. So I had a banana for lunch and went shopping, where I bought many things, including:

a cute new doormat, which Home Depot (God bless them) gave me for $5 (!!!) because they couldn't find a price
new windchimes (unlike the last set--though I loved them--these don't chime constantly to the point of driving me insane and also won't break during high wind)
lots of adorable work clothes on BIG sale at Ann Taylor LOFT, where I had great coupons to use
a pair of totally comfy Crocs sandals, which, while not being the navy flips I was looking for, will go just fine with the clothes I need them to go with

Then I came home and made a fantastic and filling veggie pita and salad for dinner, which means I'm rocking the WW points today! And I'll still be able to have a lemon yogurt or something this evening, so yay! Hopefully I'll be down a couple pounds this week--I ended the week quite well, even though I didn't start it well and used up all my flex points for once. (Movie popcorn so owns me.)

And now, here I sit, finishing out the day in perfect fashion. I'm chilling out on the balcony in delightful weather, listening to my iTunes (I had forgotten how much I adore Social Distortion...and Irish folk music just makes me happy) and reading some great fanfic.

Seriously, I need to marry rich so this can be my life everyday. *g*

Til that happens, though, cleaning is on the agenda tomorrow. Then back to real life.

Bones. Kills. Me.

2008-05-20T01:49:07Z

Oh My *God*.

I'm not sure I've ever found an episode of television to be so very wonderful and completely horrible at the same time. And that's saying a lot, as those of you who've squee'd and *sigh*ed and ranted with me for the past 10 years in fandom might know. I am positively devastated.

Just. Beyond words.

"The Pain in the Heart" was totally the right title for this ep. Totally.

That's right, I have zero self-control.

2008-04-05T20:41:10Z

My Saturday has been made up of waking earlier than I do for work during the week so I could take the car to the shop because my Check Engine light had come on, to find out that--THANK *GOD*--it wasn't the transmission as I had feared, but was still $700 worth of repairs. So I? Am eating brownies. For dinner. Because I? Am all about the comfort food.

Also? Am spending the evening reading fanfic. Instead of doing the various and sundry things that need doing. Because my forthcoming $600 worth of economic stimulus? Will be stimulating the mechanic's economic situation instead of mine.

And my on-the-way-to-the-mechanic Starbucks? Was not what I ordered.

Boo, hiss.

But at least it wasn't the transmission.

And I have to say, Bones fanfic and brownie batter do amazing things to lift a mood. The combination should be prescribed like medication.

crazycrazydancer.

2008-03-09T16:53:03Z

What a great weekend.

I got my dance on at that party Friday night. It was fantastic--everything playing from '80s hits and classic rock (and I had a very sore throat the next morning from singing at the top of my lungs with a friend to Boston and Journey and AC/DC--awesome!) to techno and Stevie Wonder. Definitely exactly what the doctor ordered, with a side of beer and viscious jell-o shots. On the other hand, the guy that I was talking about earlier was there and my drunken friend was trying to push us together. Awkward. She stopped, though, when she noticed me giving her The Look of Painful Death and Revenge™.

It was great to reconnect with people I haven't seen in awhile. Speaking of which, next weekend a friend of mine is visiting from Richmond--which means housecleaning. Another reason why this weekend has been so great: procrastination. Ah, that old double-edged sword. Yeah, I've put off all the errands and chores, etc. in favor of listening to music and watching Bones and tooling around online. So now, today, I have to clean house. That also means that every evening this week is also earmarked for the various things I won't get to today--wrapping and mailing birthday presents, taking in the drycleaning, grocery shopping, sewing, catching up on e-mail, getting a haircut....

Blah. At least I have good coffee.

Of morons and men.

2008-03-06T04:05:01Z

Wow. I suck at writing in my LiveJournal. I'm sure this comes as no surprise to those of you who know me, though. Am I right? Yeah....

So I'm going to a party this weekend. And the coffee-and-godiva guy from last whenever (remember those LJ posts about how he was cramping my study-style during library school?) will be there. I've seen him in social circles a few times since those posts originated, while trying to keep a distance, still. Because apparently he's still harping on the fact that he "wasn't good enough" for me. OMGSTFU. Seriously?

I wonder what the chances are that I'll meet some random friend-of-a-friend at this party and he'll wind up being the man of my dreams. I've been thinking of this a lot lately. I blame Bones--the fandom that is currently eating me alive. (note to rillaotvalley: when I come visit you next month, remind me to pick up a hot FBI agent at the Hoover building) I also blame the girl throwing the party. It's her birthday, and she says she's OLD. She says this with emphasis and in all seriousness. She's a year younger than me. *rolls eyes til they fall out* Is it possible for your biological clock to tick louder simply because someone else suggests it?

LALALALALACAN'THEARYOOOOOUUUUULALALALALA. I refuse to get caught up in the whole "why am I single" thing. I like being single.

Oy. Shut my brain up, please.

2008? Where did 2007 go?!

2008-01-01T15:34:08Z

Happy New Year to all!

My sense of time can be perfectly summed up in the fact that, last night, I blinked and the first 10 minutes of 2008 were gone. I was all WTF? and had a sneaking suspicion that this was anvil-like foreshadowing of the year to come and the speed with which it would pass me by. Thus, the significance of today's post's icon.

Nonetheless, I'm starting the new year off right--I went shopping after Christmas and bought a GORGEOUS new camel-colored, knee-length wool coat for a ridiculous price. Then I found a fabulous, fitted, black velvet dress coat for an even more ridiculous price. So, coat-wise at least, I am super-prepared to be all hot and chic and awesome this year.

And also organized--I bought a gorgeous pale-blue leather Franklin Covey day planner on sale at Target yesterday. It is SO CUTE!

Back home to NC today and then back to work tomorrow with a big project ready and waiting to go live. New year, indeed. And definitely happy! :o)

P.E.! P.E.! WOOT!

2007-12-29T00:13:46Z

I am SO PROUD of my clingy girlfriend! SO PROUD! She passed her VERYVERY difficult, 8-hour engineering exam that has been stressing her out since October! WOOT! PROUDPROUDPROUD to the extreme!

Love you, Rhi! You rock like a smart thing, you P.E.!

Pee Ess: My parents are super proud of you, too, and send their love and congratulations!

Welcome to the Club!

2007-11-10T18:32:51Z

HAPPY BIRTHDAY rillaotvalley !!!!!

You're the coolest new member of the "I'm 30 and cool" club. GO YOU! : )

Culinary disaster averted. Maybe.

2007-08-31T02:11:57Z

I was just making a quadruple batch of Molten Chocolate Babycakes (and yes--thanks for asking--I am insane. quadruple batch at 10pm and all that.) and I'll be damned if as soon as I poured in the melted, cooled chocolate--the chocolate that I watched drizzle in purely liquid, not lumpy in the slightest--it lumped up into a giant quadruple mass of baseball-chocolate, totally useless and mocking.

I tried to mash it up again, but being a quadruple-baseball I had to switch to the Louisville Slugger of wooden spoons in my arsenal. For those of you into sports flicks, I was almost afraid mine would crack á la "The Natural". Ultimately, though, it didn't work for shit.

Nice.

So I popped the beater back on The Best Kitchen Purchase of All Time™--my Kitchenaid stand mixer. And beat the hell out of the baseball. Now it resembles the smooth batter it's supposed to be. HA!

Music soothes the savage...bitch.

2007-08-19T22:37:39Z

I think Starship's "We Built This City" is, quite possibly, the finest song to come out of the 1980s. It's now a proven fact that that song can pull a girl out of the deepest of funks.

And LL Cool J? So definitely cool.

Dean Martin? Awesome.

Oh, iTunes...how I love the shuffle.

Dude, where's my toilet paper?

2007-07-24T13:20:15Z

So the other day I came home and headed straight for the guest bathroom (it's marginally closer than the master and, dammit, I had to pee). I sat down...and promptly fell in. Surprise! Toilet seat's up! After the initial WTF?! (it fucking hurt, and I live with no guys), I realized that maintenance had been scheduled to come that morning and change out my A/C filter. Presumably, one of the guys chose my place for his pit stop. Whatever.

So yesterday, I sit down in the guest bathroom again, and reach for the toilet paper--roll's empty. Another WTF?! moment. I suppose it's possible that I could have used it all and not changed the roll and not remembered either using it all or not changing the roll (sounds a little suspect to me, though). Thing is, I don't use that bathroom very often. And I'm pretty anal--I'd change the roll if it was out.

Seriously, WTF? I guess I'll just assume that my mind's going, because any of the other possibilities kinda freak me out.

Dammit. I knew this would happen.

2007-07-17T06:22:27Z

It's almost 2:30 am and I want to fucking stay up and be all back into LJ. WTF?! Did I not predict this?! Is this not why I stayed away for so long?! Let this be a lesson to you all:

Do not deny the LJ, no matter how wise and prudent it may seem. Th LJ will always come back to bite you on the ass.

I'm going to bed now. Even though I just said not to deny the LJ. Which I'm now doing again, apparently. Hey, do as I say, not as I do.

Try not to choke on your coffee or anything.

2007-07-17T06:00:08Z

Huh. Okay, it would appear I'm back. Desperately trying to find a balance between catching up with all I've missed on LJ and all I should be doing instead (though, to be honest, at the moment it's just sleep that's coming in second to LJ). Ah, fuck it--LJ's more important than real life. Or at least more fun.

OMG, I had forgotten how awesome my icons were. How on earth do I pick just one to represent my reappearance? Do I pick Harry Potter (since I just saw OotP--and, let me tell you, it was bloody brilliant!), or do I pick Bitch!Face Sam (only because it's just effing hilarious), or do I pick "blahblah" Lizzy Bennet (since I've obviously got nothing of any type of importance or intelligence to impart in this post), or do I pick STFU Lydia (since my illustrious return is such a "holy shit!" moment)....

No. I'll pick the one true Icon of Awesome Returning. I can hear the soundtrack now....

No apparent subject at all.

2007-01-08T02:01:11Z

Okay, so I'm procrastinating. What? You thought I was done with that now that school's finished? Nope. I'm a lifetime member of the procrastinator's club. Apparently, I get it from my mother, who I remember staying up til all hours the night before Halloween every year to finish our costumes. She always did, and they always rocked...and now the torch has been passed down to the next generation.

So anyway, the good news--should I ever get a job interview--is that I still have one suit that looks reasonably good. The other two are now humongous and unusable, though still gorgeous. What a shame. The one that's viable now is actually one that I pieced together: I bought a beautiful charcoal wool jacket when I lived in England--it was on sale for 15 pounds (about $30 on today's market), marked down from 90 ($180) because it only had one shoulder pad. I paid 15 for it and just ripped open the lining, took out the shoulder pad, and sewed it back up again. Looks perfectly fine now. Anyway, it took me forever to find pants that matched the color and fabric, but I did. They look almost perfect together, and I say almost because--even if no one else notices, and I guarantee they don't--I still know they're two separate pieces.

I want to go shopping for a new suit, however, I need a job in order to pay for it...and you can see how this is a catch-22. Hopefully I'll get an interview and an offer before I lose any more weight--or else this suit won't fit either, and I'll be screwed. Hmmm...maybe I should prepare myself mentally for the possibility of a job (interview) by getting that massage I have coming to me (thanks again, Rilla!). I love my crazy, incongruous thought processes.

Don't Fear the LJ.

2006-12-21T15:02:50Z

Okay, I'm back. I've been avoiding LJ like the plague since coming back from graduation (WOOT!), because I've been scared of the masses of posts I'd missed. I've gone back, though, and have skimmed through everything, so now I'm caught up and ready to roll. With LJ, that is. I still have mountains of stuff to do before I'm caught up on Christmas. Maybe by this time next year I'll have it under control.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-12-12T03:07:22Z

I'm done. Holy shit.

Pod-Person

2006-12-10T06:28:37Z

At the risk of speaking too soon (though, let's face it--karma's gonna bite me in the ass one way or another, so I may as well go for it), I think I actually *like* SQL. Yeah, kinda freaks me out, too. It feels sort of like calculus, to me: when I don't get it, I can't even begin to wrap my brain around it and my thought process pretty much just shuts down; but, when I do get it, it's sorta fun. For all my identification as a reader/writer/thinker (and which side of the brain is that, anyway?), I can be quite the analytical technigeek when I want to be. I haven't gotten into the *really* heavy stuff, but the fundamentals, for the most part, make sense. So far, I'm finding this project to be pretty cool--except for the parts I don't quite get, which I'm ignoring for the moment in the hopes that they'll just go away. : )

And, just to prove my point about the not getting it and brain shutting down part, here's a snippet from my SQL textbook (italics and caps belong to the authors): "The precision controls the precision of the mantissa. The precision of REAL and DOUBLE PRECISION is implementation-defined." See? I've read the book, and that doesn't even make sense to me! WTF? Mantissa? Implementation-defined double precision? The fact that I think I'm enjoying this stuff...well, I'm worried I'm becoming a Stepford. Somebody help me.

Dragon. (get it? dragging? heh. beat oooo-kay.)

2006-12-08T05:35:51Z

I'm tired. I just had a cup of Starbucks. A peppermint mocha, so I should be all hopped up on caffeine and sugar. Except I'm not. I'm actually beat. Huh. Maybe that means I should just crash now and get up early and pray hard that I can focus tomorrow and get this project done by the time it's due tomorrow night. 'Cause God knows I'm not gonna be able to focus tonight, tired-ass as I am.

Fuck.

Quick as a Flash (the flash of a blown lightbulb, that is)

2006-12-06T15:58:23Z

Just a quickie, as I'm knee-deep in a Web Development project on Visual Design and Layout of Web Pages at the moment:

It seems that I maybe am emitting some weird electromagnetic thing (and oh, how that makes the Supernatural fangirl in me squee!) that causes random items around me to malfunction. The other day it took the form of my (relatively new) watch, which stopped keeping time in any sort of, well, timely fashion. It turns out it wasn't the battery, but the mechanism, which means I have to buy a whole new watch. Which would be cool if I didn't like my watch so much. But I don't want to buy the same one only to have it crap out on me again. *sigh*

Anyway, last night it took the form of the overhead lightbulb in my bedroom dying. It wasn't even a typical blown-bulb thing. The light just went out, without a pop or a flash or anything. For a split second, I though someone had just turned off the switch. Then this morning, I turned on my desk lamp (since the overhead light was still out) and that bulb blew--though in typical popping-lightbulb fashion, this time.

I wonder what's next. I hesitate to say it, but given my run of bad luck with my laptop a couple of semesters ago, and considering the fact that it's the end of the semester (and the degree) and I've got lots of work to finish up, computer problems seem highly likely. I think I'll go back up my hard drive now.

ETA: Oh, yeah--I just remembered that the malfunction-potential encompasses everything around me, not just the technical or electrical: the other day, I came home and had to nudge my door open with my foot, because my hands were full. I didn't do it hard--the door barely tapped the wall as it swung open. That was enough, though, to send my wall shelf and all its contents crashing to the floor. Nice.