Give 7 minutes of your lives to these two videos

This explanation of action movies is pretty awesome. There were a couple clips I didn't recognize, but when they list the movies at the end, the only one I haven't seen is Dr. Strangelove, so I guess my observational powers are on the fritz. I can't even imagine how long it took to put this together. I don't have that kind of patience.



You know what must have taken far longer than that? This homage to the most overused phrase in reality television. I read this guy's website because his America's Next Top Model recaps are really funny. With this video, he continues to be awesome. If you don't watch America's Next Top Model, you totally should. It is completely, ridiculously sublime. At this point in it's run, it's pretty much a parody of itself, just as Tyra has become a caricature of herself. So, yeah, read FourFour if you watch ANTM or just enjoy smart pop culture essays on a variety of topics.

Language Arts

I was having a nerd moment the other day because I was reading a book and they kept saying that some dude said such and such 'drily.' I know it's a word and I know what it means, but my problem is that although it is an acceptable spelling, drily doesn't look right to me. If I were going to use it in that manner, I would probably go with dryly. Is this just me?

This movie poster quiz is really hard. I only managed to get just under half of them. I am so embarrassed. Or not.

After the project I've been working on at work all day today, plus all day Friday, I think I don't ever want to see the word origin again. It doesn't even look like a word to me anymore. And I'm not even finished. I'm actually only about halfway there...(moan). Origin looks like a foreign word to me now. I feel like it should be a Slavic word, although I'm not certain why. Maybe because in my dazed state it seems similar to Onegin...

I know you know that I'm not telling the truth...

I really like the show Psych on USA. It's light and funny and I love Dule Hill's outfits. I think his character would covet Chuck from Gossip Girl's closet. You know what I don't love? Short-sleeve dress shirts on men. I'm really not sure why, but I just don't like them. Last night I made Shannon watch this minute of this week's episode because I think it clearly demonstrates why I like this show. Even though I never say things like that to people, I want to often. I hate it when people say they could care less. It's so glaringly wrong! Shannon just laughed at me. Anyway, watch this because it's funny. Also, this show has an awesome theme song.

Oh dear

I was being a nice person today and picking up lunch for a coworker on the way back from my lunch and I saw this sign. It made me giggle.

Oh noes! Not Harry Potter!

Dude, this sucks. I don't think they would necessarily make less money if they actually released Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as planned in November rather than 7 months later. That's insane. Plus, they've already started marketing it and so people are all kinds of excited. If they don't plan to alter the release schedule for the two-part one of the seventh book, then what is really the point of this? Even though people will be mad and sign petitions and crap, it's not like anyone who is really excited about the movies would actually boycott them. They'll still go, so WB isn't losing anything other than some goodwill. As much as the decision to push back Harry Potter doesn't make sense to me, I understand even less the decision to push back that Bolt animated movie. I've alreayd seen several previews for it and there were ads for it in all the busses at Disney World. I've only seen one trailer for Harry Potter, although that was enough to get me excited. This is just weird. It seems pointless.

Some pictures of some stuff I saw throughout the past month...

Here are some adorable people. I have a really cute picture of them kissing right before this was taken, but I though Rachel might not like me to post it.
Me wearing Dave's hat.
Dave wearing Dave's hat. I know, I'm so gangsta and he's not, but it does fit his head better...
Me and Dave's hat at the Liberty Bell. That's Independence Hall in the background, as it is directly across the street.
Addie and Belle at the princess breakfast.

The shoes I wore to work Monday with my brand new way too long pants that fit my hips! Aren't they freaking awesome?

Hair don't?

I wish I could find my awesome purple sunglasses. I tend to use my sunglasses as headbands when I am indoors, and those were not too loose to stay on top of my head. They were perfect. Eh. I dyed Shannon's hair Sunday and it really made me want to dye my hair. I convinced her to go with a dark auburn, even though she was scared that she couldn't do red, but it looks great. She should always trust me-I would not steer my friends wrong. But it really makes me wish my hair were red even more than usual. I have wanted red hair for 18 years. And all my hair has been doing the past few years is getting darker. That's no good. I am scared of dying it though, because I'm afraid that it won't be this color later. I'm ok with my hair color, it sort of has some natural highlights, whatever, but it's pretty boring and it comes closer to looking orange in the sun than it does red. I really want red hair, but I also hear that red is the hardest to keep up with, dye-wise. So instead of dying my hair and regretting it later, I got a haircut at lunch today. Just a trim and then some shorter layers, but it seems a lot shorter to me. Well, my boss's daughter is entertaining me now, so I should go.

In which I do stupid things in life and in dreams

I had this weird dream the other day that I got a tattoo and then all of a sudden I had a bunch of tattoos. I kind of do want a tattoo, but just one, and a small one that's not of something stupid. So I won't tell you what I actually want, although I told a couple people and none of them thought it was dumb, and they were the friends who would be like, that's stupid, don't do it. Anyway, I probably won't do it because I am indecisive and I don't know where I would get it and I have a mild fear of needles. In my dream, the first tattoo I got was a fairy, which is definitely not something I would get if I were to put something on my person permanently. And it was on my ankle, which I hear is a fairly painful place to get them. And then all the other ones I had were on my torso, rather than in places they would have been visible. It was strange.

Anyway, I burned the crap out the front of my legs on Saturday. Like, from my hips to my ankles is very red. It doesn't really hurt that much, which is strange because it is angry red. It'll be fun once they start peeling. And we were supposed to dress kind of nicely this week because of the auditors, but because I did that to my legs, I didn't want to wear any of my really cute skirts. Sunday I was on graphics and I had to be there at 7, so I hopped up and put on the only pair of pants I had that were not jeans and then once I got to church I realized that they were way too big. So large, in fact, that I could pull them off easily without undoing the buttons. Yeah. I went to buy some pants after church. And the shirt I put on today was fitted before and now it's just kind of hanging there. Awesome! I better not get too excited though, or I will backslide. Also, I'm kind of excited that even though I've been losing weight, my boobs have not disappeared. I like having the option of cleavage.

My calendar at work is a UPS calendar, because the giant desk calendars everyone else favors just get in my way, and the UPS guy brings us a calendar every year anyway. I just turned it to August (I fully realize that it is August 12th and I am only now turning it because I was working on stuff that had to go into our system in July and it helped me keep my dates straighter to just keep looking at July until I finished it), and the caption under the picture says "UPS Freight service is poetry in motion." Next time you're feeling poetic, turn to UPS!

Less time, mo' problems

So, Friday at 4:20 I discovered that our air conditioner was leaking. We actually had that problem earlier this summer and it was something about ice building up and we had to turn it off and wait for it to melt before it could be fixed. We turned the air off and went home. So we already knew there would be no air here this morning, but apparently one of my bosses came in yesterday to discover that the entire basement (where our president and two vice presidents have their offices, as well as our record room) was flooded, with three inches of water standing everywhere. It seems that where they had been working on widening Lovers Lane, they had managed to do something to cause one of our pipes to burst. Score. So now we have no water today. They promised to have it back on by the end of the day. And our new auditors were coming for the first day today, so we made a great impression. At least the air guy was here by the time I got here at 7:45 and had the air back on by 8:30. So it's getting to be cool in here now, but we still have no running water. I wish I hadn't just drunk a giant bottle of water.

So I feel like I've been bouncing around crazily all week. I was stressed and busy, but weirdly hyper and happy. I don't know what that's about... I guess it's better than being unhappy though. I have a rather nasty migraine this afternoon, and I was pressing my thumbs into my browbones in the exact spot that helps when I noticed that my palm smelled like Champs Elysee. Which is weird, because I wore that perfume yesterday, but I totally showered this morning and I washed my hands at least 15 times yesterday. The lady selling the perfume said that you should spray it into your palm and then put your palm where you want it. I'd never heard that, so I tried it. It did make my palm smell rather strongly of perfume for part of the morning, despite repeated hand-washing. Eh.

Wasting time I don't have...

I get really antsy when I have a lot of things that I really need to be doing. Like, I can't just sit and concentrate on them and I wind up doing everything except them. It's no good. And the internet is made for procrastinators. The other day I was wandering around avoiding things and I actually wound up singing a medley of time-centric songs. I'll leave you to come up with your own, rather than tell you which ones I inadvertently went with. I'm just glad Shannon wasn't there to notice my insanity. I had gotten through choruses on like four different song before I realized I was doing it.

On an unrelated note[;)], I saw this new Weezer video. I am not huge on You Tube because I have other ways to waste my time, so I don't recognize all the "famous" You Tube people in that video. I do love a good "all your base are belong to us" joke, though. I need to work on my pop culture education, I guess. I need to be part of the zeitgeist. Also, You Tube usually inspires schadenfreude (I just used two words borrowed from German in successive-and successful, I think-sentences!). Why do I always have trouble embedding videos? It makes no sense, but I do, so that's why I've only embedded things like twice.

I saw this post on Go Fug Yourself today and I was like, oh, wow, eeww. For one thing I didn't even recognize him as Zack Morris, I thought it was this guy. But then I totally couldn't stop singing (inside my head) "fugging it up" on The Barry Gibb Talk Show to the tune of the awesome theme song from the SNL sketch with Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake-I especially love the part where they sing about crazy cool medallions(and they did that sketch more than once-look for the other(s?), just not on Hulu). Seriously. It was weird even for me. So I did something even more unprecedented than yesterday's super early bedtime. I e-mailed Heather and Jessica (the founders and writers of the website, which I actually first stumbled upon a long time ago from links from their TWoP recaps) and told them that and that I hoped that was their theme song (especially since when I went to e-mail them, I realized the e-mail address was fuggingitup@gmail.com). She(they?) e-mailed back and said they sing that song all the time, with all kinds of things standing in for talking. It just made me happy. And surprised that I got an e-mail back. Also, I started to label this post and realized I have a label for nerdiness and one for dorktastic. Let me know if you have any thoughts on how I might I have been differentiating those when I created them. Or how you might differentiate them?

Help?

So, I'm not into gardening or anything, but I've been keeping five indoor plants alive at work for three years. Two of them are peace lilies (one lady I work even brought he own peace lily in a few weeks ago because she had killed all but like one tiny leaf on it-it now has about ten leaves which are getting taller every day!) and they are in front of the same window, but one of them is several feet (the length of a bench) further back. The one in the front has 12 (!) blooms on it right now and the one in the back, while still very green and shiny and healthy looking, has no blooms. In fact, hasn't had any blooms in a couple of weeks. These two plants generally bloom throughout the seasons, although not usually as copiously as the slightly smaller one is right now. So, basically I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on why the second one is not blooming. Or why the first one is blooming so prolifically(I totally typed proliferately, but then thought that sounded weird, so I checked to see if it is a word and it would seem "ly" is not a viable attachment for proliferate. Sad. So I thought about proliferous, but when I checked to see if the meaning would be the same, it is not quite. Unfortunately, it took me that long to think of the word I was trying to think of in the beginning-prolific. I am a crappy nerd.).

I am old

So I went to bed like super early last night. It was weird. And I slept for 10 hours. I thought I was maybe getting sick because my nose was feeling funny. And I don't like that. Although I do think I have either another polyp or a bone spur or need my adenoids cut back again because not much air is moving in the right side anymore. Nerds. And it's been crazy at work this week and I'm trying to get 12,000 things done and all sorts of other things. Shannon left yesterday to go house-sit for her parents and take care of their dog and pool. So she'll be gone for a week and a half, so I will get as much alone time as she had when I was gone, and possibly start going crazy from it. It's always nice at first, but then after a few days you're like, I'm bored, there's no one here but the animals and they are driving me insane. But I'll probably go hang out there with her some this weekend. And she doesn't work on Wednesdays right now, so when I got home last evening(late), she had cleaned the whole house! It was awesome and smelled good because she put stuff in the diffuser. So I thought that was nice and unnecessary, but she said she'd meant to have the house cleaned before I got back from vacation. Still, really nice and made my day. So that meant I could go to bed shortly after she left for the Grove(after I read for a while on the couch with the air off so I could listen to the really good storm outside). So, good end to a long day.

It would seem I inspired a game...

After being morose for a while yesterday afternoon, I had a visitor who cracked me up. One of my bosses has a four year old(almost five) daughter who comes upstairs and talks to all of the girls when she drops by. She came in yesterday and kept asking if she could help me with my work (sometimes we'll give her something to take to someone else in the office or let her shred things), and no, she couldn't. The phone rang and I picked it up and noticed she was watching me intently. Her mom came up and told me that she really likes to listen to me answer the phone. She said they have a game they play called the ETR phone game where she is me and answers the phone [in the (so I'm told by several people) singsong way I say our company's name] and the daughter asks for people and then she asks if she may tell them who's calling and the daughter makes up a silly name and then they start over again. I was like, hmm. It made me giggle a little.

I shouldn't be doing this. I have a ton of work to do and I can't stay late because I promised Shannon I would cook some chicken for her tonight, and after I got to work I realized that I am on graphics this Sunday, so I have to go to the rehearsal tonight at 6:30. Nuts. Maybe I'll come back later. That might help. Urgh.

Where ARE you guys?

So...Ham. Ham was what Addie kept calling Grandma's friend Pam. Pam rode with them to Disney World and shared a room with Zoe and me and hung out with us some, when her daughter had to be at work. Addie continued to call her Ham, claiming she couldn't say Pam. Rachel finally got her to do it, but then Pam happened to come back and Addie was jumping around the room singsonging Pam. It was pretty funny. Rachel seemed to think this needed explaining. It's probably not funny to anyone else. Also, I have been wandering around singing Aux Champs Elysee under my breath all day. I hope no one has noticed because I cannot get it out of my head.

I had called my pharmacy to get a refill on my stomach medicine before I left for DW because I was going to come up a day and a half short. They said that the company that makes the generic, which I have been purchasing at $7 a month for like 3 years now, stopped making the generic, so now I have to get a real drug with a brand name. Apparently my insurance wanted me to start paying $30 for the new/same drug. Urgh. I was irritated and the pharmacy called me back and let me know they were on the phone with the insurance company and that they (the pharmacy) would give me three pills to get me through until they worked it out with the insurance company. I ran out of time though and didn't get to run by there and get them before I left for Philadelphia, so I just didn't have any Saturday night or Sunday. Which was not ideal, but I dealt. So I called them today, now that they've had a week to hassle the insurance company and they said that I only have to pay $10 a month. So, score! Only three dollars more per month instead of $27.

Where's Ham?

So, taking a cue from Rachel, as I'm uncertain as to my ability to form coherent sentences right now anyway, some stuff that I enjoyed recently.

Addie, studying a replica of the "Spitting Gargoyle" from Notre Dame, asking me why he had a bow on his head. I informed her that it was actually horns and she wanted to know what they were for. Excellent question, little one.

Rachel laughing her way through Space Mountain. It always cracks me up.

Dave and I laughing our way through Expedition Everest, except for the part where they took our picture, which was apparently exactly when we, sitting in the very front, looked down and saw what appeared to be a straight drop. It wasn't. :)

The look of sheer delight on Addie's face as she was going down slides of any kind.

The look of delighted relief on Zoe's face as she got to the end of any slide.

All of us having funnel cake for the second time this summer!

Zoe explaining that she didn't think any of the Jonas Brothers were cute. When I pressed her as to why she knew so much about them, then, she was at a loss.

Coming home today and making some room in the freezer for the groceries Shannon's mom bought us and pulling out a quarter of a giant bottle of white wine, frozen, with a latex glove shoved in the opening (I use gloves when cleaning the cat litter box and sometimes cleaning the bathroom or doing the dishes. Depends on how OCD I am feeling that day.). It seriously cracked me up. Apparently it seemed like a good idea to drunk people to stopper a bottle with a glove since the dog ate the cork. I should have bought a Mickey wine stopper, Rach!

Addie doing the same thing with alligators in the car that she did with bears in the car in Gatlinburg.

Getting rained on several days in a row, with differing adult females of our party wearing white shirts (when it was my turn, I actually wore a white dress. Smart.) each time, so deciding for us who got the poncho. Until we finally wised up and bought more ponchos. ;)

Dave and his cool Indiana Jones-ish hat. It came with a four-page owner's manual. Bet you didn't know hats were so involved.

The fact that all of the five flights I was on in the past fortnight left at least five minutes early, and all of them arriving at the destination at least 15 minutes early. Awesome and unprecedented.

Getting to spend an entire week with some of my awesome family, including the Balls. Thanks for all the memories!

It was really fun and stiflingly hot and I wish I hadn't started out with blisters on my feet from my day in Philadelphia with inappropriate footwear. I am so glad to be home. And so not ready to go to work tomorrow. But so incredibly ready for bed right now.