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February 10/12, 2004 The title goes here. I have a crazy-busy day today (a meeting at 9:00 followed by a meeting at 10:00 followed by school followed by a hurriedly gulped sandwich followed by a 1:00 meeting followed by a 1:30 timestudy that goes until 3:00 followed by an hour and a half of e-mail catch-up and data crunching followed by a 4:30 meeting that goes until 6:00 followed by a stir-fry dinner and a Special Night of Friends and a Normal Night of 24 and glimpses of American Idol and homework and working out and BED). This entry is likely to be one of those disjointed ones that carries over through a day or three. Right at this second, I have not a whit to write about. I have a cold, I'm hopped up on meds and green tea, and I have a hazy nervous energy thing going on that contains little in the way of productivity and much in the way of jittering. I have plenty of PA that I could be taking right now, but I also have plenty of work that I should be doing right now. I want to be curled up in bed with Oz and a cup of tea and a book (Angels and Demons and Seduced by Moonlight should be arriving from Amazon any day now - and MAN isn't my reading list shamefully un-updated), but instead I'm not-curled-up with my laptop and a cup of tea and florescent lights that make my cold seem worse. I went to see "Monster" with my friend Dani on Sunday afternoon. Oof. Charlize Theron well and truly deserved that Golden Globe, but the movie was so damned DISTURBING. Very real and gritty; graphic, with no pulled punches as to the lifestyle it was portraying. Charlize's character was downright ugly, and she pulled on the mannerisms and personality of this serial-killer/prostitute like a second skin. It was hard to remember that she had ever been classy, or pretty, or graceful. There were a couple of girl-on-girl scenes with Charlize and Christina Ricci, and they were so NOT hot - they weren't intended to be (Calvin doesn't believe me - he'll see, when we rent it on DVD). It seems to me that quite often Hollywood portrays lesbian acts that end up looking stilted and affected, thrown in there because it's the "it" thing to do (the same can definitely be said for hetero sex scenes, as well - like every single sex scene in "The Color of Night" Oy. That whole movie was affected.). In this case, the relationship between Charlize and Christina was portrayed as emotional, confused, co-dependant, desperate, defiant. I was asked if I liked the movie, and if I would recommend it. I will say that the movie was exactly as it was intended to be, and while I really admired the artistry and pure talent of the acting, no, I didn't like it. I would recommend it as a demonstration of some truly excellent acting, but the movie definitely didn't leave me feeling anything other than uneasy. It was a very, very dark movie. That stuff up there was from Tuesday - it's now Thursday. Contrary to the first paragraph that went on and on and ON about what I had to do that day, it actually stopped at "...followed by school". I sniffled my way through my Microeconomics class, only getting up about FORTY times to blow my nose. I just can't blow my nose in public - I'm convinced that if I don't look in the mirror afterwards, I will have a schnoogie hanging from my face that even fifty passes with a tissue somehow managed to miss. Plus, it completely grosses me out when I have to listen to someone blowing their nose in public - I ain't about to contribute. So, trips to the bathroom every five minutes. I stopped at Walgreens on my way home (not the one I normally visit, but the one near school) and asked for a refill of Allegra to help with my cold's congestion. There were no refills left - my doctor is stingy and only refills one at a time. This news irritated me all beyond proportion, and I stalked back to my car absolutely seething. I have no idea why it made me so angry - I chalk it up to just feeling stuffy and miserable and frustrated because I couldn't hear out of my right ear and kept having to say, "What?" every time someone spoke to me. I was nice and polite and smiley to the pharmacy tech, though - she was really very sweet in her sympathy over my red nose and croaky voice. Every song and every commercial grated on my nerves, so I turned off the radio - practically unheard of, I'm so dependant on driving music. Every slow, stupid driver thwarted me, and every light changed in that one integral moment when you have to decide whether you can punch it and make the light, or have to brake hard to stop in time. I was so grouchy and growly that all I could do was glare straight forward out of bleary eyes and grumble under my breath. I stopped at the grocery store and stocked up on cold medicine, tea, honey, and Gatorade. Couldn't find the honey, grouse grouse grouse. Checkout chicky was too chatty with the customer in line ahead of me, grouse grouse grouse. Idiots parked too close, and crookedly, next to my truck, giving me about three inches total to open my door, grouse grouse grouse. Had to make two trips to and from the truck to carry in the bags, my laptop, my lap desk, and my lunch bag, grouse grouse grouse. A big box was delivered from Overstock, containing our new bedding, which dictated that I do something with it before I could relax, grouse grouse grouse. Had to dial up the pharmacy three times, finally getting past the busy signal and ordering my prescriptions, grouse grouse grouse. Grumpy britches. I *finally* got settled in bed, dosed up on Tylenol Cold, in my jammies, with the new bedding washing, my laptop fired up and ready to go, Gatorade on the bedside table, and a book within reach to entertain myself with during network lag times. When I'm *really* sick, I suffer in silence. When I have a cold, I turn into a big whiney baby. I have to write a paper for my English Comp class, a four page analysis of one of the stories from "The Decline and Fall of Just About Everybody" by Will Cuppy. The teacher refuses to scan the material and put it on the college bulletin board, the school library only has two copies, and none of the other local libraries carry it. Two copies, to share among twenty-plus students, for a paper that's due in a week. Yeah, right. I'm going to buy the damned thing. Except that I guess I can't. I just called all the area bookstores I could think of, and none of them carry the book. It wouldn't be here for another week or ten days if I special ordered it, which doesn't help me as the paper is due next Wednesday. If I ordered it on-line, I'd have to pay an extra $25 in shipping just to get it here on time. Grrrrrowwwl. I'm not learning a damned thing in this class. We've spent since the beginning of the semester - a full month - editing and revising the same two-page paper. My workgroup stopped making edits of my paper after the first draft - there was nothing more to change. We turned in our final drafts yesterday, and I suspect we'll spend the *next* month on the next paper. I'm so mad that I can't test out of this class, I could scream. We're heading out for a ski weekend on the 20th. Sunrise is having a good season, finally, and it's been ages since we've gone skiing. Strangely enough, Marie might want to bow out of this trip - a friend of hers is coming into town that weekend, and she wants the chance to see him. So, she may spend the weekend at a friend's. I must say that, much as I enjoy our family vacations, the possibility of having my husband all to myself for an entire weekend is a delightful thought. We've only had two vacations on our own, in the nearly seven years that we've been together - a week-long trip to Maine waaaaay back in the beginning, and a long weekend in San Diego several years ago. Our family does vacations up right under any circumstances, but the atmosphere is very different when Calvin and I are alone. And that atmosphere is the very thing that I'm craving at the moment. At any rate, Marie hasn't quite made up her mind if she's staying or going. Either way, I'll be happy. Because any vacation with my family is a good thing, and, hey! It's skiing! Woo! Plus, handily enough, my chiropractor informs me that he'll be there the same weekend. So if I crash and burn, he may be called upon to snap me back into alignment. And now, for some TV assessments: 24: Would Jack just SHOOT NINA IN THE HEAD, ALREADY?!? My Big, Fat, Obnoxious Fiance: I LOVE Steve. I bet he'd be a total gas at parties (guffaw! No pun intended). Randi needs to get over herself, and her whole family is the biggest bunch of stuck up, arrogant, pretentious freaks I've ever seen. I can see where Randi gets her princess complex. I can't wait to see the look on everyone's faces when the plot is revealed. Angel: I've almost stopped watching. It's getting lamer by the episode. Which is sad, because it's my last connection to the Buffyverse. I guess I'm going to have to buy all of the season box sets - Archibael has been kind enough to lend me his, but it's not the same as owning them. Calvin's rolling his eyes as he reads this, I guarantee. CSI: Miami: Melodramatic, yet strangely entertaining. We heckle the show all the way through, every episode, and yet we tune in every week. Make a drinking game out of it! Take a swig every time Horatio puts his sunglasses on, takes his sunglasses off, or does a William Shatner impersonation. Sex and the City: Carrie will go to Paris. I feel no mourning at this show's passing - it's the right time, I think. It got border-line tired for a while, but rebounded admirably and is ending on a good note, in my opinion. Friends: It's time. My prediction: "Joey" will crash and burn. I believe a network only has a limited opportunity for success with spin-off shows, and "Fraiser" was it for them. American Idol: Yep, we're watching again. I don't have an opinion yet on who I think should win. Randy's "dawg" act is getting pretty tired pretty quick, though. ER: If they're hedging the viewer's interest on Luca and that new nurse, they're making a mistake. I predict that John won't convince that chick he got pregnant to stay in Chicago, but she'll be a recurring character and irritate the hell out of everybody. Commemorating the new hospital wing for gay/lesbian/transgender support in Robert's name was just killer. The show's starting to get boring, though. I may not watch beyond this season. Two and a Half Men: "Men men men men, manly men men men.... MEN!" The shortest intro to a TV show in living history. Love. This. Show. How can you go wrong with Charlie Sheen and the guy that played Ducky in "Pretty in Pink"? Just a quick note, I added a search engine to the index page. You know, just in case you get a yen to read every single entry in which I mention my Soon-To-Be-World-Famous Meatloaf. Comments on this entry? Head on over to Colloquial!

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