Limp

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Words.  Interesting thoughts.  Other words.  Yoga was especially nice tonight, but all that breathing and relaxation at the end drove any semblance of coherence away.  I’m barely upright (it was a long and tiring day), but very loose, so I’m heading to bed and hoping I don’t have any cop drama dreams tonight.  The alarm went off this morning as I was throwing a small bomb out the window so it wouldn’t blow up in the house.  It might have been a grenade.  Grenades are basically just small bombs, right?  But I could do without that kind of tension in my dreams.  Wish me luck.

I might be the only who’d pay to see this movie

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I think I just joined a book club.  I went Friday night to my neighbor’s book club to meet people, drink wine, and talk about The Snow Child (we certainly talked about it, but that was far from the main event).  There were 9 other women there, and all of them have known each other for a long time, so I wasn’t sure how this was going to go.  Four people in this group started the book club FOURTEEN years ago (one of them is my neighbor), and three of those four (the three who are not my neighbor) have known each other since high school (which for me was 15 years ago, so longer than that for them.  I think).  Thankfully, it was not at all awkward.  They were so welcoming, really friendly, and despite the fact that I was the only one there who does not work for a local school district in any capacity and who doesn’t have kids, I didn’t feel like an outsider.  It was fun.  Really pleasant.  I’d like to do it again.

It could have been a movie.  All of these women, all gorgeous in cute but casual clothes, clustered in ever-changing groups around the island in our hostess’s beautiful kitchen, chatting, drinking wine, snacking.  I can just see a camera swooping in from an upper angle and swirling around to follow snippets of conversations.  Later, the camera would follow our move to the family room to talk about the book.  We sat in a circle around the coffee table (some on the floor, on the couch, on ottomans), and the camera would shift from the middle of the group to an over-the-shoulder shot and back until it lifts out of the center and off to the side.

I think I’ve already seen this movie.

MIA

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My weekend was packed full of homework and a couple of fun things.  Mostly homework.  Which will be the theme of the next three weeks.

Tonight, however, we watched last year’s Doctor Who Christmas episode (“A Christmas Carol”), and it was AWESOME.  Really good episode.  It was written, of course, by Steven Moffat (who writes all the really good episodes, as someone (I think Brian – hi, Brian!  Sorry I missed you today!) pointed out a few months ago).

We’re still going at super-slow-snail speed on Doctor Who because we decided it’s nicer always knowing there’s more.  We don’t like getting completely caught up on a show and then having to wait MONTHS for the next season.  Sometimes it’s unavoidable (Sherlock, True Blood (still a full season behind on that one, though), Eureka, Downton Abbey), especially with British shows (WHY are the seasons so short?  It can’t be just to torture us, can it?), but if we can help it, we do.

I’m off to bed so I can be well rested for my SQL exam tomorrow.  I certainly feel prepared.

I really cannot make a bad decision here. Why is this so hard?

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What should I read next?  I created a spreadsheet (yes – shut up) because I can never remember which book I planned to read next.  I get these great ideas when I’m in the middle of a book, but when it comes time to actually pick the next one, I can’t remember which one I wanted to read.  So now I have a list.  Actually I have two lists.  Three.  One lists books I want to buy (recommended by friends, websites, authors, etc.), one lists books I own and haven’t read yet (the ones I realize I want to read when I’m in the middle of something else), and the third lists books I’ve read and want to re-read (sometimes for the fifteenth time).  The second list is the hardest one to keep up to date, again because of the short-term memory loss I suffer when I’m reading something else.  Which is always.  Even now, I’m still a few pages away from the end of Just A Geek (I forgot to update my current books widget – I’ve been reading Just A Geek for the last couple of days), I finished The Snow Child last week (for the book club meeting tomorrow night), I finished listening to one of my new favorite books on Tuesday, I listened to a little more of The Prestige at the gym this morning, and it’s vitally important that I know what I’m going to read next.  (I don’t usually have this many plates spinning at one time.)  I should look at my list.  I should add to my list.  And all I’m doing is putting the decision off.  Which is ridiculous.

Have I not yet said what book we were listening to that I loved loved LOVED?  Oops.  Didn’t mean to keep you in suspense.  We listened to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  Ridiculous title.  Super good book.  We laughed, I cried, and the woman who read for the main character sounded like a young Julie Andrews.  It was awesome.  I highly recommend listening to it rather than reading it.  Although I’m sure it would be very good on paper, too.

Time to figure this out.

The quick update

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We’re home, safe and sound, and so are the dogs.  Nothing happened to Roxy this weekend.  (Thank you, Jess.)  We had a  highly successful Passover seder Friday night, I drank all the wine in the house Saturday night (Mom assures me I most certainly did NOT drink all the wine, but I felt like I had by Sunday morning), and we spent much of Sunday stealing books from Mom and Dad’s basement, all of which now live in OUR basement.  The drive home was much better than anticipated (mostly because we listened to a fantastic book the whole way, but I’ll have more on that once we actually finish it – we have about an hour left), and when we arrived, we unloaded the books in about 30 minutes and picked up the dogs just before the kennel closed.  Busy, but quick and over and done with.  Details tomorrow.  Maybe.  I’ll think about it.

She’s going to be fine

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Roxy had a seizure yesterday morning while John and I were out running.  It had been two weeks since the last one, and her recovery time was really quick.  Nothing to worry about.  Then she had one around 10:30 last night.  Again, short seizure, quick recovery.  Then she had another one around 11:15.  A little worrisome, but super fast recovery again.  Then she had one this morning just before 7am.  Fast recovery (she’s still a little woozy, but she answers to her name and begs for treats, so mostly normal), but that’s four in 24 hours, so I made an appointment with the vet for this evening.  There’s not much they can do beyond increasing her meds (again).  To make matters worse, we have to kennel them this weekend.

Repeat after me: Nothing is going to happen to Roxy this weekend.  Nothing is going to happen to Roxy this weekend.

Rationally, I have no reason to think anything would.  Yes, she had four seizures in 24 hours, but she’s done that before (well, 3 in 24 hours).  This could have been caused by me, since her meds weren’t exactly right Tuesday morning.  (She takes three different medicines.  Tuesday morning, we were short one pill and I didn’t get the refill in time, so she only got two meds that morning, not three.  Fixed by evening.)  Is it possible that missing one pill one time would cause this sort of reaction the very next day?  Is the balance of meds in her system that delicate?  If so, this is my fault.  But if this is because of her medicines, it should even out since she only missed the one pill two days ago.  Which would be good.

If it just happened because it happened, then a visit to the vet and a dosage increase might be all that’s needed.  Her quick recovery is encouraging, and she really does seem fine now.  Of course I don’t know when she’ll have her next seizure, but judging by her history, she’s just as likely to have one in the next few hours as she is to wait another two weeks before the next one.  Worrying is pointless.  Doesn’t mean I won’t do it (try to stop me).

It helps to know that the kennel we use is in the same building as our vet, who will be open all but one of the days she’ll be there.  They know her and love her and they’ll take good care of her.  If they have to, which they won’t, because nothing is going to happen to Roxy this weekend.

That's my sweet pea, napping in the sunlight

Idiocy

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I had a hard time getting moving today.  I needed to do laundry.  I thought about it several times throughout the day.  All I had to do was get up and do it, but my butt stayed in the chair.  It’s not hard.  It takes very little effort on my part.  I just didn’t make the effort.  (I did eventually get the laundry started.)

I’ve had a headache for the last, oh…3 hours.  Have I taken anything?  No.  Because that would be the smart thing to do.  And it would mean I’d have to move.  Get up, get water, get pills.  Put the laptop down…eh, my headache’s not so bad.

Riley is going to get stung one of these days.  Every time a bee or a wasp gets near him, he leaps for it and snaps at it.  I keep telling him he’s got it all backwards (“Buddy, it’s not a good idea to antagonize flying insects with stingers.  Trust me.”), but he’s not listening to me.

Maybe Riley can fight our battles for us.  He can wrestle with the developers who leave me hanging.  He can argue with the administrators who are running John’s paperwork in circles, and he can twist the arms of John’s committee members so they’ll show up for meetings.  Maybe all that fighting for us will take his (tiny crazy little) mind off trying to catch bumblebees in his mouth, and he can be spared the sting he’s heading toward.

Hey, I think my headache is going away.

After all this time, I still bleed blue. A little. Enough.

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I don’t think I have to tell any of you how little I care about sports.  That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy watching a game of whatever here and there (I’d rather go to a game than watch one on TV, not that that happens very often), but for the most part I don’t care who wins.  The other day was different, though.  UK playing Louisville in the Final Four – hell, yeah, I had to watch that one.  (Let’s ignore that I don’t care even a little when they play each other during the rest of the year.  The NCAA tournament is different.  It is.)

So even though I didn’t go to UK or U of L, even though I haven’t lived in Kentucky since 1997, even though I’ve only been to ONE college basketball game in my life (and that was at GW, not either UK or U of L), I HAD to watch this game, and, like I have during every game I’ve watched since 1987, I cheered (and gasped and yelled) for UK.  (Are you thinking that that last clause sounds like I root for UK even when they’re not playing?  Well, maybe I do.  Even though it makes no sense.  I’m loyal that way.)

Why 1987?  It’s more complicated than just that that’s the year we moved to Kentucky.  That’s the year I had to pick a side.  Or else.  Picture 8-year-old me.  I was in third grade, brand new school, brand new state.  One of the first things I remember somebody saying to me at school was completely unintelligible.  “Yookay or Yoovell?”  “What?”  More insistently, “Yookay or Yoovell?”  I had NO idea what they were saying to me, and they couldn’t understand what was so hard about the question.  (I don’t even know why it mattered right then.  It was too early for basketball season, and football doesn’t really count in Kentucky.)  Somehow it got through to me what they were asking, but I still had NO idea what the right answer was, or why anyone cared which one I picked, and why won’t they stop asking and leave me alone?  I remember asking them which one they were for, getting more Yookays then Yoovells, and going with the Yookay kids.  (It was the right answer for several reasons.)  Somewhere along the line I made the mental switch from Yookay and Yoovell to the actual school names, and then Allison introduced me to Travis Ford and his three-pointers (Not literally, of course.  She didn’t know him, but he was only 5’6″ and rarely missed, and she had a crush on him.  We were 14.), and I started watching games.  Just in time, too, since that was 1993-94, and the championship wins were ’96 and ’98.

I fell off the wagon after that, though.  I watched the ’98 tournament by myself in college (I couldn’t believe I knew so many people who didn’t know what March Madness was) and then paid very little attention to basketball except for the occasional UK game (and that one UNC game we watched the night of Jess and Chuck’s wedding).  Even though I enjoy the games when I watch them, the paying very little attention part is still true and unlikely to change.

Still, UK playing UofL in the Final Four is pretty awesome (especially with Rick Pitino (the UK coach during the years I cared) coaching UofL now), and I didn’t want to miss it.  And considering what a good game it was, I’m glad I didn’t.  Even John watched it, although he was rooting for UofL (For reasons unknown.  Out of a sense of balance?  An appreciation of how well they were playing?  Solidarity with Mark?  Sheer orneriness?)  UK won, I cheered, and the championship game is tonight.  I could watch it.  I might watch it.  What time does it start?

Whoa, whoa, whoa.  The game doesn’t start until nearly 9:30?

Yeah…I’m going to bed.  UK, you’re on your own.

Not in the mood

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I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing.  Big surprise.  And I’m going to regret it real soon now.  But I’m also not in the mood to be doing what I have been doing, which is checking out new blogs.  New to me.  Not new to the internet.  Blogs that bloggers I like like.  (I have never written a more perfect sentence fragment.)  If they like them, it stands to reason that I will too, right?  But I haven’t liked a single one so far, so I think I need to stop and try again some other time.  I mean, yes, I’m allowed to not like other blogs.  Of course I am.  And my reasons for not liking them are legitimate because it’s a matter of personal taste.  One blog was boring, the writing style of another drove me up the wall, and I left a third because the layout made it difficult to read the full post.  (That’s why I never used to read Mighty Girl.  Her layout bothered me.  I just checked it out, and I like it better now.  Maybe I’ll give her another try.)  I’m not sure I’d like anything new right now, though, so I think I’m going to put the new blog search away and get some homework done.  The homework I should be doing so I don’t have to worry about it next weekend.

Fighting with my phone

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Remember a few months ago when I wrote about my phone problems?  I still have those problems.  It seemed to get better for a while, but that’s probably because I avoided any data-heavy apps.  Unfortunately, my phone has rebooted itself many many times just in the last week.  I did a factory reset on Tuesday (which is what both Sprint and HTC recommended when I called them all those months ago), and then my phone rebooted four times IN A ROW Wednesday afternoon.  So the factory reset was not the solution.  I will probably try to take it to a Sprint repair center sometime soon, but that’ll cost me.  If I can hold out until August, I’ll reach the end of this two-year contract, and I can get a new phone for practically nothing.  But can I hold out until August?

Eddie Van Halen is a weird-looking dude

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Last night we saw Van Halen at the Verizon Center in DC.  All of Van Halen (almost).  Van Halen as they were meant to be (although a bit older and with Eddie’s son playing bass instead of Michael Anthony – I’m nitpicking here).  I’m referring, of course, to the return of David Lee Roth.

Our seats were on the side, level with and just slightly behind the stage, but we were pretty close and had a decent view.  Eddie and Diamond Dave (who glittered through at least 6 costume changes) spent plenty of time facing our way.  They both looked pretty darn happy to be performing (Eddie gets this crazy/happy/goofy grin on face sometimes).  And the sound was SO much better than the last time we saw them.  Of course, so were our seats.  It was a good concert.  They ended with “Jump”, but I woke up this morning with a song they didn’t play (from the new album) running through my head.  Over the ringing in my ears that hasn’t completely gone away yet.  (Under the ringing, I guess, since the music in my head isn’t really competing with the actual ringing sound.)  As we drove home last night, my ears felt all pressurized, like we’d just changed altitudes.  Our seats weren’t THAT high up, but it was THAT loud.  And THAT fun.  John had his little digital recorder out for most of the songs, but I kept forgetting it was there.  Which is unfortunate because now he’ll know how many of the words to his favorite songs I DON’T know.

(Also, if you’re near the Verizon Center and happen to be looking for a cheap-ish lunch/quick dinner one day, try Camille’s.  The Mexican Daredevil Grilled Hot Wrap was crazy good.  Menu.)

Today, though, I’m tired and cranky.  And hungry (which leads right back to cranky).  Starbucks gave me the wrong drink this morning (and naturally I didn’t realize it until I was in the office), and when I tried to get the right one around lunch time, it was TERRIBLE.  So no caffeine for me today.  We didn’t get to bed until around 1am.  Maybe I should just go to bed now…

Text Box: Lower Level,Text Box: Mid Level (Our Seats)

Not paying attention

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John and I are sitting on the couch together, laptops on our laps, mostly ignoring a TV show.  We started watching MI-5 the other day, and we’re enjoying it, but for some reason neither of us is interested enough to put the laptops aside and actually watch it.  But we don’t want to admit it, so it’s still on.

Hilarious (and terrifying).  The last 10 seconds are the best part.

Hey, Min, remember that time geese chased us at the zoo?

Reading fast

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Faster than usual, I mean.  Especially lately.  I started A Princess of Mars two weeks ago.  TWO weeks ago.  That’s ridiculous.  Turns out I didn’t really want to read it.  Over the weekend, I got invited to join a book club, but I can’t start the new book until I finish the one I’m reading.  So I stayed up too late last night, racing through it as fast as I could without skimming, and I finally finished it when I got home from work.  I’m free!  And now I can start reading The Snow Child.  It’s a new book, only out in hardcover, so I decided to use this as my Kindle test.  I bought my first Kindle book, and now that I’m free (!), I can start it.  And that is a little bit why I’m not writing any more tonight.  Also because I am sleepy.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane!

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Someday we’re going to live in a place where good sushi isn’t readily accessible.  I’m not looking forward to that, but I can’t really see making sushi a deal-breaker when looking for a place to live.  Not that we’re looking right now.  Still, sad day ahead.

You know what’s not sad (or who, I should say)?  Erik and Margaret’s teeny baby when I’m holding her.  We went to their place yesterday to meet adorable little Corinne, and I surprised us all by turning into Supersitter!.  Supersitter! took the baby (who was fighting her nap) when we got arrived, and Supersitter! swung and bounced her while we chatted in the kitchen, and then Supersitter! soothed wee baby Corinne right to sleep, head buried in Supersitter!’s armpit (which seemed odd to Supersitter!, but what can you do?).  It certainly wasn’t Supersitter!’s arms that got tired or Supersitter!’s stomach that was growling – those things don’t happen to Supersitter!.  It was a nice afternoon.  Good to see them all.

Then I spent last night and most of today getting ahead on my homework.  Exciting.  And apropos of absolutely nothing (but courtesy of The Bloggess), here are some otters that look like Benedict Cumberbatch.

Where the grass is labeled

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This is still my favorite XKCD comic.  I think.  It’s one of my favorites, definitely, because it’s one of the ones I continue to laugh at, even though it’s been years since it was posted.

Also, this one.

Do you have the Draw Something app?  Our friendly neighborhood Wombat asked me that exact question just the other day.  My response (after immediately downloading it to my phone) was “I do now!”   I am so very bad at it, but it’s fun.  It’s like Pictionary without the yelling.  (Usually.)  And Wombat is being very gracious about my terrible drawings.  She’s good – she drew a great cheeseburger.  I really suck.  Truly.  But if you download it and you want to play, send me an email!

I have never seen a Marilyn Monroe movie

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Are you watching Smash?  I started it today and I’m three episodes in (yay Hulu Plus).  So fun!  And right up my alley.  I mean, come on.  It’s a show about a new Broadway musical.  Singing, dancing, backstage drama, singing, dancing…  Did I mention there’s singing and dancing?  I love singing and dancing.  I didn’t even bother to ask John if he was interested in watching this one with me.  Singing and dancing!  The only thing I’m wondering is how it’s going to keep going for a whole season.  I’m three episodes in, and it seems like we’ve already seen half the musical.  There seems to be plenty of plot to keep it going, but not enough show.

I went for a run this morning (unusual lately).  I wouldn’t say it was easy, but it could have been SO much harder.  It was also SLOW (no singing and dancing).  I didn’t take my watch (just as well – the details would have been depressing), so all I know is it took me less than 40 minutes.  How much less?  NO idea.  That time included a short warm-up, some stretching, and a walk back to the house to cool down (not included in the mileage). And for today, I guess I don’t really care.  I’ll try again on Thursday.  DC for work tomorrow, so unless I get up at 5, I’m not running tomorrow.  Nope, not even if I get up at 5.  I don’t like to run in the dark.

Meanwhile, catty backstage drama is catty.