Friday: My regular shift got cancelled because the office had been dead all day and they weren't expecting any work. This means I'll be out 100-ish dollars from my check (because I'm a temp and only get paid when I'm there), but worse, am concerned this is the beginning of the end at a job that's been a fairly steady source of income for over three years now. They moved a lot of the operations to Florida, but they still can't quite function without some people in the NY office. They tried to get rid of third shift before, but lawyers threw a fit that there was no one in our department overnight, so they brought us back. Am paranoid they're going to decide we're not needed after all.

Saturday: Got called for a short shift at a firm I've never worked at before. Hurray!

Sunday: Got called for a full shift at same place. More than makes up for missed hours at regular job.

Monday: Got called by place I worked over weekend. They like me and want me to do a second shift. But I have stuff I need to do at home and can't quite face a full shift at one place followed by a full shift at my regular place. If it weren't for my third shift commitment, I would absolutely take this job.

And now I'm obsessed that I'll get cancelled for my regular job again tonight, which ticks me off because if I knew I didn't have to go in tonight, I wouldn't have said no to the new place.

- My flist is like 80% posts from doctorwho. I mean, I'm excited about Series 7 and all, but it's sad that there is less and less activity here from individuals. OF COURSE I AM NOT HELPING.

- I saw ParaNorman this past weekend and LOVED it, though on several occasions I found myself boggling that this was a film marketed to children. It is quite saucy, and it may in fact be the first American "children's" film to have a gay character. And it's done in such a cool, "no big deal" way that I was kind of amazed. Also, I want to live in the little town in the movie, with all it's witchy goodness (Witch's Wieners LOL).

- So I turned a year older yesterday. I didn't do much for the occasion, since I had to work. I thought seriously about calling in, and after this past night's butt-kicking I kind of wish I had. I did manage to pick up the Jaws Blu-Ray and Juan of the Dead DVD that I ordered from Amazon.

- I created an IntenseDebate account so that I could fully comment on Mark Reads/Watches. If any of you are following his Buffy and Angel posts and want to see my comments, they're here. I'm elphaba_cee, as in Wicked ("...and I only wish there were ... something I could do for her, to repay her ... Elphaba see..."). I'm planning to take a break once the Whedonverse is finished (he's doing the two short seasons of Dollhouse with the last season of Angel) and I'll pick back up in March when he starts The West Wing and Friday Night Lights (the latter of which I've never seen but I know a ton of people who love it).

- I picked up my annual copy of EW's Fall Movie Preview. And promptly ripped the stupid Breaking Dawn cover off. :P I've done my yearly marking of the day planner, and if I ever do a movie post again, I'd love to do a list of my most-anticipateds. Anyone seen the poster for Spielberg's Lincoln? I wish they'd start showing us Daniel Day-Lewis in character, as opposed to the reanimated Lincoln corpse they seem to have been propping up for these pictures. (Seriously, it is UNCANNY!)

- I got my dad Game of Thrones for his birthday, and he is hooked! I talked to him yesterday and he had just reached the Baelor section. I really need to get cracking on A Clash of Kings myself, but gah, there's so much I'm behind on that I had intended to have read by now (don't even say the name Bujold to me).

I love our little group that meets in Brooklyn (usually) once a month to watch a Rifftrax movie or MST3K episode. There was another one tonight. We watched The Last Airbender and hoo boy is it every bit as horrible as everyone said. More so, I think. Horrible acting, amazingly awkward dialogue (references to Tommy Wiseau and The Room were not at all unfitting), bizarre editing, and no storytelling skills whatsoever.

As usual, my navigational skills failed me when forced to make my way through the labyrinth of DUMBO, despite my having been to this particular meetup location several times before. I was glad to see that I was not alone in my befuddlement (though, I guess I should concede that most of those people were probably trying to find this place for the first time). I always have the vague thought as I enter the building (which is former munitions factory that has been adapted into a few lofts) that I'm either secretly in an Adrian Lyne film and on my way to a smutty tryst or in a horror movie about to be stabbed. This time I had the added joy of imagining that I was in A Serbian Film, where both those eventualities would be possible, perhaps at the same time, in a location such as this. Oh my dear brain, what have you become?!

Next month, we sparkle on with Eclipse ("Volturi - that's Chevy's new midsize sedan, right?"). Rifftrax is the only way to see the Twilight movies.

1 ) As I was getting onto the New Jersey Turnpike last night, the last leg of my drive from Nashville back home, it occurred to me that getting to the island of Manhattan by car is like getting to the "Lost" island. You have to be in just the right lanes and have just the right bearings, and if you're not, you will not get to the island. There might also be considerable time loss. If I weren't returning my GPS with the rental car today, I would totally name it Daniel Faraday. Or Frank Lapidus, but more likely Daniel Faraday.


2) As I ponder the latest Twilight news and the time comes closer for me to actually start caring about American Idol, I can't help thinking that Twilight is a lot like former AI finalist Sanjaya. Nothing of quality to speak of, but immensely appealing (for some reason) to a large number of young girls and even grown women. And a whole lot of the attention it gets is from people who can't really stand it and think it's hilarious to parody it and puff it up into something it's not (like all those people who voted for Sanjaya as a joke). Meaning that it has popularity in its own right, but much of its notoriety also comes from the people who don't like it.


Crying Sanjaya Fangirl poignantly sums up my feelings about driving on the NJ Turnpike,
as well as my frustration with the Black Plague of Sparkle.

* Things are progressing on the job front, and I find myself simultaneously wishing things would speed up (for my bank account's sake) and wishing things would slow down (for my nerves' sake). I'm now registered with several agencies that specialize in legal proofing, and the trick now is to keep calling them, a few times a week, to get on their radar and let them know that I'm serious about working. I'm anxious about the first job, though.


* I went to see a free performance of 'Hair' last week, thanks to Central Park's 'Shakespeare in the Park' program. Yes, I realize that 'Hair' is not a part of Shakespeare's oeuvre, but they always pair one of his plays with a non-Shakespeare offering. This year was centered on the theme of "What a piece of work is man," which linked their two productions, 'Hamlet' (which closed before I moved) and 'Hair.' It was an incredible performance, and one that occasionally invited audience participation. I particularly loved the curtain call, when the cast invited probably close to 100 audience members on stage as we all jammed to 'Let the Sun Shine In.' The whole thing was quite an experience, and not just the play itself. I quickly learned the hard way that if I wanted a ticket I would have to get in line with all the other crazies at 6am and hold my place for about 7 hours until they actually passed out the tickets. That was a nice little warm up for Butt-Numb-A-Thon, I don't mind telling you.


* I have been absolutely glued to MSNBC during the lead-up to this week and now the Democratic National Convention. There's still a part of me that resents Ted Kennedy and the way he helped so many other Democrats stab the leader of their party (then president Jimmy Carter) in the back. But I can't help admiring him for the amazing thing he did last night. And I absolutely loved Michelle Obama's speech, perhaps especially the moments after it was over, when her girls talked to Barack via satellite ("What city are you in, Daddy?"). That was such a 'mom' moment, when she kind of tuned out the crowd and focused on her daughters, perhaps thinking "Please, be good." :P

I'm getting kind of annoyed with the political pundits, saying that the Dems wasted the first day of their convention by not immediately going after John McCain and the Republicans. First of all, what was Nancy Pelosi, a potted plant? How many times did she lead the crowd in that chant "Barack Obama is right, and John McCain is wrong."? Secondly, I thought this was the kind of politics-as-usual that the campaign was trying to avoid. Obviously, that's easier said than done, but they can at least start on the high road, can't they?


* I'm very excited about Melissa's upcoming book. I'm afraid I may have to wait a day or two to actually read it, though, because it comes out on Election Day, and I don't think I can focus properly on anything until I know what the fate of our country is going to be. I love what I've seen of JKR's foreward, and the comment about feeling like she's been to a midnight release makes me think I'll have to read it with a box of tissues nearby.


* Thank you all for your lovely birthday wishes, and thanks to the Usual Suspects for the piratey goodness and my lovely, rare edition Ninth Doctor. And thanks especially to rhrsoulmates, for making sure I didn't have to spend the first birthday in NY alone. We went to a goofy theme restaurant on Friday called Jekyll and Hyde (the smaller one, in the Village). Our waitress was slightly aloof, and the music was oddly eclectic (from Bernard Herrman's Psycho score to the theme for Ghostbusters - twice!), but the in-house entertainment was enjoyable, especially our frequent visits from someone who looked alarmingly like Robert Downey, Jr. Good times.

I hadn't said anything about it - because I've been so busy getting ready for it! - but this week is the infamous Vacation Bible School week. I've felt better about it than I have the previous five summers, and it's been shockingly unstressful so far, but it has almost completely consumed my life.

I've been given two days off next week, in addition to the holiday, and I have never been so grateful for a breather. I am abhorrently behind in EVERYTHING. I had intended to rewatch most of my Movies of the Day, as a refresher, but that has been the first thing to fly out of the window. As the stressful part of VBS comes to an end, up comes crunch time for Scribbulus as we push to get a new issue out this weekend. And I've been horribly derelict about my chapter-a-day canon re-read community, and even more so with my personal re-read (our posts are on Chapter 8 of HBP today, but I'm still just a little past halfway on OOTP).

Add to that the impending hysteria surrounding the new HP movie (the hysteria has pretty much already started - yayz for actual clips!) and of course the last HP book (Spoiler Week should hit in a couple weeks time :P), and it's all I can do to remember my name and what language I speak. Oh, and I still have to find time to make my house look a little less like a disaster area for guests who are coming in a few weeks.

Where's a Time Turner when you need one?

My former high school band has a livejournal: mcgavockband

That's just ... weird. Cool, I guess, but weird.

I think I've finally recovered from Lumos and am back to semi-regular sleeping patterns. And yes, angua9, I finally did shed some belated tears over leaving Vegas and all the wonderful peeps I hung out with there. It's a strange feeling to be on the other side of something you looked forward to and planned for a long time - especially when you don't have any particular plans for something else in the future. I'm big on countdown calendars, and now that there's nothing to count down to (sorry, I can't bring myself to count down 300-some days until OotP), it feels like part of my life has kind of stopped. Weird.

I'm housesitting/dogsitting this week, so I'll be getting used to a foreign space for the next couple of days. Hopefully, I won't have any trouble getting on the wireless internet so that "real" life won't have to be put on hold. :P

In other news, I find that my passion for Pirates has somewhat cooled. It's not that I'm tired of it or don't like it anymore, by any means. But I find that my unbridled "wahoo!" enjoyment of it is sort of undercut by all the discussion. Of course, there's nothing wrong with discussion, but the movie doesn't feel like "my" experience anymore when I watch it, where other movies do give me that feeling. I don't feel like I can think what I want to think about it, because it's a bigger story now and there's a "right" way to think about it. For some reason, the "right way" issue doesn't bother me about HP at all - I guess I just experience books and movies in different ways. *shrugs* I'll probably be back in excitement mode next May anyway. :)

Okay, I am CRAXING up over this article. The idea of "sexing up" a movie about thirteen-year-olds is more than a little pervy. I'm guessing this idea is some sort of mutation of Cuaron's joking comment about "lots of nudity and sex" being the manifestation of the hormonal teenage stuff. I love how the article feels the need to add that there "won't be any real love scenes." Shucks - I was really rooting for Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice and Ron and Hermione. I guess we'll have to wait till GoF for that, though. ;)

I'm still sick, though I'm getting a little better. I find it hard to believe that so much crud could possibly be in my fairly small nose. But I think I will cut the work day short today (I'll try and duck out just in time to miss staff meeting).