Getting an M.A.

The top five things getting my masters means to me:

5. Not being able to watch the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy because I have a Thursday night class.
4. Taking two night classes a week, each at 3 hours a pop.
3. Getting to write a 40+ page thesis
2. Once more spending months on end without being able to see my guy half as often as I'd like.
1. More student loans.

Yes, there's lots of fun involved. It's a riot. Yet, to have any chance of getting decent job as a professor at a college/university, a masters is essential. Also, I have to admit that I like being a student. Yeah, I'm a freak. Kathy, the professor I'm working for on campus, told me straight out to go for my PhD, but I don't think that'll be immediate. Another few years, another few thousand in loans, yay!

Book Review: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. Not a discworld book, but still having all the great fun of Pratchett's style, which Gaiman's meshes well with. Two clever chaps and a very funny book. It's about the end of the world, the anti-christ, and the war between good an evil. Of course it's hilarious.

Quickie

"I am immortal, I have inside me blood of kings - yeah - yeah
I have no rival, no man can be my equal
Take me to the future of you all."
-Queen, "Princes of the Universe"

The past few days I've been checking out the graphic novel collections of the two biggest local libraries. My, their collections leave much to be desired. About the only thing they have worthwhile is Frank Miller's Sin City. *Sigh*

My brother is going to be home this weekend from the Air Force Academy and since my mom's worried about him-he's gone from being mundo extroverted to fairly withdrawn and that freaks her out-I told her I'd make an effort to hang out with him. Now that he's over that whole annoying me for entertainment phase, I rather like him, so it's not any big sacrifice I'm making or anything. Since I'm Netflixing Highlander right now, the plan is to have a mini-marathon Sunday. It's hard though, since I have a Highlander disc sitting on my desk at home right this minute, to resist the temptation to put it in my TV right now. Will power, discipline, etc... Sunday had better hurry up and get here already.

In other news, I plunked my butt down in front of my computer last night and typed out just under 3,000 words for my next submission of Oracle. Now I'm at a pausing point because while I know exactly how I'm going to end this chunk (I already have the scene mapped out in my head and everything) I'm stuck on what to do between that and what I've already got. It occurs to me, as I write this, that it might be a good idea to put up a post that's along synopsis lines, so the whole two people who look at this blog every now and again will have some idea of what the hell I'm talking about. *Note to self: duh*

Colm Meaney Day

Jerry Lynch: "You just don't have the requisite Celtic soul, man."
-Intermission

Colm Meaney is an interesting fellow. He played Miles O'Brien for years and on two different Star Trek series. He's also done a score of films, and I wonder how he finds the time for it all. Since I've recently Netflixed a couple of his movies, I thought I'd dedicate this post to him. (Sorry about the lack of images-stupid library computer)

Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation. Good fun, often more than just a little dorky, and vastly, vastly better than the original.

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. My favorite series of the franchise. Interestingly enough, like TNG, it also featured a bald commanding officer. Coincidence? I think not. Here's where Miles O'Brien came into his own though. He got a family and a bigger role, and dozens of his own adventures.

Movie: Intermission. An overall nut-job of a movie, though in a good way, like Snatch where you get a dozen separate characters that all end up falling together in fun ways. Meaney makes an appearance as Jerry Lynch, a nutter of a cop who's out to prove he's "all that," and failing. He does and excellent job with his role, and there's a turn at the end which is rather well done.

Movie: The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain. Long title for a movie, but it has some fun moments-like those with Meaney. He plays Morgan the town pub owner and local womanizer who's always scheming about making a bit of extra money. Not a bad movie, but I'd never watch it twice. If only they cut out more of the Hugh Grant and added more of the Colm Meaney...

Movie: Bitter Harvest. Adapted from a short story, the flick is set in 1920's Ireland. Meaney plays Harry, a bitter man who's hell bent on ruining the life of his "enemy" the local pub owner. The problem, of course, is he becomes consumed by this vendetta that he himself started, because "a man is known by his enemies" and the pub owner is the best he can have. The movie won a few awards, but I ended up struggling with the directing. The acting was good, the setting was great, the story wasn't bad, but the director didn't take advantage of them. His shots, angles, etc. really could have been done better, but I guess other people liked it just fine-one of the awards was Best Feature Film from the Newport Beach Film Festival. Okay, not quite an Oscar, but those folks were more impressed than I.

After all this, I can't help but wonder where Meaney will pop up next.

Immortals, Newfies, and Slackers

Ramirez: You cannot die, MacLeod. Accept it.
Connor: I hate you!
Ramirez: Good. That is a perfect way to start.
-Highlander

School doesn't start for another two weeks, and my campus job doesn't resume for one. I don't start babysitting again until after Laborday. All together, this means all I'm doing right now is working at the bar three days a week. So, that accounts for about twenty some hours a week which are already spoken for. Sheesh, compare that to my schedule for my last semester of my undergrad studies:

Monday, School 10:00-8:30
Tuesday, School 9:00-2:30, Bar 4:00-9:00 (or later)
Wednesday, School 10:00-3:00, Bar 4:00-9:00
Thursday, School 9:00-2:30, Bar 4:00-10:00 (usually)
Friday, School 10:00-3:00, Bar 4:00-9:00
Saturday, Bar 4:00-9:00

Counted in with the school hours are the ten hours a week I worked as a tutor in the Writing Room on campus. What all the above means is that I was working full time while also carrying eighteen credit hours. So, the fifty + hour "work" week was my norm. Now, to more than halve that... I don't quite know what to do with myself and I'm feeling a bit of slacker guilt. Fortunately, I only have a week before I start back up with having stuff to do all the time. Free time is all about that happy medium, it's good to have some, but once you hit a certain point, it starts to grate a bit.

Well, here's my entertainment updates: I've taken Hercules: The Legendary Journeys off my Netflix queue. The plots quickly got to the point of boring predictability and they had one too many villains laughing maniacally. Yeah, it's a peeve. I mean, come on, the good villains are the ones who, creepy as they are, you can actually understand where they're coming from. Take the Operative from Serenity who's all the more flesh-crawly because he's so sincere about how he's making the world a better place. I'm going to try Xena, because though it's the same ilk, I remember liking it more than Hercules. So, we'll see how that goes. It'll be a while, though, I'm going to do Futurama first. That, and Highlander-which has become my new TV series addiction. I mean, come on, Duncan MacLeod is totally badass and Tessa's no wimp, and Richie is wonderful because he's bad. It's the Jayne appeal, though Richie is far less hardcore. What is about "bad" characters that makes them so instantly likeable?

Movie Review: Highlander. I adore the show, so it made sense to check out the movie that started it all. The dialogue is good, the characters are too, and it scores extra points for having Sean Connery. Connor's nemesis, the Kurgan, is so over-the-top as to be almost too tacky for words, but the general groundedness of the rest is enough to keep the Kurgan menacing and not just comical. To compare the movie to the series, I was vastly entertained at how much they blatantly changed from one to the other. Namely, the movie ends the whole "There can be only one" idea, because there is only one at the end. So, what's the point about having a show about Duncan if he doesn't win the Prize? But, that's why they changed it, eh? The other one that sticks out is the movie implies more invincibility-stab an immortal in the heart and they just keep on going-whereas in the series if you stab an immortal in the heart, they would "die" for a while before they revived. I like the series approach better. Right, to sum it all up-the movie is fun, and the series is too, but they are different animals. Which makes the series pilot totally ludicrous (since "Connor" makes an appearance as Duncan's clansman), but hey, you can't win 'em all.

Movie Review: The Shipping News. Alan Doyle (of the band Great Big Sea) says the book didn't quite capture Newfoundland, but the movie nailed it. Given such an endorsement, how could I not watch? Especially given that both Julianne Moore and Judi Dench star, with Cate Blanchett as a minor (yet essential) role. As an added bonus, Rhys Ifans makes an appearance as one of the Gammy Bird reporters. He would be the same guy who played Danny in Danny Deckchair, though how he wound up in this flick is completely beyond me (not that I'm complaining, mind you). The movie itself was great, one of the few I'd go out of my way to watch twice, in fact. Kevin Spacey is the main character, a screwed up guy who moves to Newfoundland after his wife (Blanchett) abandons him. He does a good job of going through the character's journey. Trivia note: the actress who plays Spacey's daughter was actually three actresses-a set of triplets. My favorite aspect of the movie has to be how the Quoyle's history unfolds and how big a role the setting itself plays into the story.

Book Review: Duchess of Nothing, by Heather McGowan. It has great reviews, and very pretty prose, but I abandoned it anyway. I'm in the mood for story right now, not pretty prose. From skimming a bit here and there, I know all the essentials of the story, so why read the rest? It doesn't help, either, that there are pages of text without a single paragraph break, that McGowan refuses to use quotations to mark dialogue, or that she thinks nothing of starting sentences with "and" or "but." Minor things on their own, but pile them up and I want to take her aside and say, "Look, why are you making your prose intentionally hard to read? Clean up the prose or else you're going to irritate people, which means they won't read this." It's a style thing, I know, I just get frustrated when the style becomes more important than the story. I'm of a Hemingway frame of mind-keep it simple, tell us what we need to know as efficiently as possible so we can start paying attention to what the story's about vs. how it's written. So, I'm not saying it's a bad book, there's a great chance that you could absolutely love it. I just didn't.

Chic. Lit, Death, and Immortality

Duncan MacLeod: "I am Duncan MacLeod . . .of the clan MacLeod . . . and you are dead."
Richie: "Uh . . . dead? Whoa, heheh. Geez, I ripped off a couple of cups and a bowl. I'm sorry, all right? Here, take them. They're all in the bag. I'll pay for the window. It's over. Okay?"
Duncan MacLeod: "It's over when I cut off your head."
Richie: "Cut off my head?!? You don't think that's a little extreme for petty theft? Hey dude, chill. Your insurance will cover it."
-Highlander, Pilot Episode

Book Review: The Queen of Babble, by Meg Cabot. I admit it, I watched The Princess Diaries when the movie was on TV. I was even entertained enough not to switch to another channel. This book, by the same author, also proved worthwhile enough to read to the end-though it was pretty touch-and-go in spots. If you're looking for a book that's a quick read and won't fill you up before dinner, this one isn't bad. Though the ALL CAPS scattered all over the first chapter and the overt predictability of the plot were a bit irritating, the main character was interesting enough to redeem it.

Movie Review: The Descent. My guy wanted to see it, so against my better judgment I agreed to go with him. There's hardly any part of this movie that's at all feasible, believable, etc. Of course the gruesome girlie violence is fun in bits, but that's way too small a thing to make this movie worth the price of a ticket. Don't waste your time.

TV Review: Highlander. I remember watching the show with my dad when I was a kid. Re-watching it is just as fun. I've only seen the first three episodes, but I'm already eagerly awaiting the next disc from Netflix. Okay, I'll admit it leans toward the cheesey-especially the pilot episode-but it redeems itself with mundo nifty sword fights and fun flashbacks to the past. Oh, and with Richie. Of course, having scenes where Adrian Paul is shirtless does no harm. The costuming of the show catches my attention more than on most shows. This is due, in part, because it's set in the early nineties which was close enough to the eighties for fashion to be more than a little hilarious at times. It's also fun, though, to see the costuming choices they make to define characters. Fun stuff.

Two Weeks' Notice

Mal: "How come you didn't turn on me, Jayne?"
Jayne: "Money wasn't good enough."
Mal: "What happens when it is?"
Jayne: [smiles] "Well that'll be an interesting day."
-Firefly, "Serenity Pt. 2"

When I started working at the bar, I worked in the kitchen. Then, due to a combination of me taking night classes and basic personality difference (even though she didn't mention the second, I think it had something to do with it-it definitely had to do with me agreeing to leave) with the new kitchen manager, the owner Mary, decided to put someone else in the kitchen.

So, the new gal comes in and I go from kitchen and waitressing to only waitressing. The new gal, well, I started out liking her well enough. Then she wanted me to make my own order once or twice (sorry, but I get paid shit to wait tables, I am not working in the kitchen on waitress pay), then she got bitchy with me a few times, "I told you we're out of that," (she didn't) etc, and most of the time I see her when she's working, her cell phone is glued to her ear-which really doesn't help with getting orders out in a timely fashion. Oh, yeah. Another peeve is that I would go back into the kitchen, say something like "Can you put that order on two plates?" and get no response from her. It's a minor thing, but it gets me miffed when someone can't even be bothered to acknowledge that I'm speaking to them.

Right. So, then we have yesterday. I was there for about an hour and a half and went back into the kitchen to wash a coffee pot when the gal is crying and asks me if I can cover the kitchen. She was having a crisis-apparently her cousin's mom is in a bad way and she thought her cousin would kill himself if she didn't go to him right then and there, and her mom kicked her out of the house, and... Breakdown, in any case. Mary told her to ask me if I'd do it, and so I said I would. Slow night and the bartender said he could cover the floor, no problem.

I ended up spending about an hour and a half in the kitchen and getting thanked by Mary and Rob. Mary also said she'd given the gal a deadline, "Get your shit together in two weeks, or get another job." She said it nicer, but that's the gist. Apparently, this isn't the first crisis. Rob also told me that he was more than ready to get rid of her. It's not that I'm without sympathy, I do have a little. It's more that I find it hard to feel bad for someone who doesn't do her job all that well (I've heard complaints about her even from the kitchen manager) and who's been bitchy to me on a number of occasions.

Mary told me to keep an eye out for someone looking for a job. I wonder what the next person will be like. So far, there have been two others who were hired to help out-one left a sticky note on Saturday for the K.M. to find on Monday saying she wouldn't be coming back. The other called one morning to say she wouldn't be in that day, nor the next, nor the next... Whatever happened to two weeks' notice? Professional courtesy? I mean, come on. I loathed the dry cleaners where I worked pre-bar, and the owners, but I still gave them two weeks and stayed civil. Alright, that's the end of my work bitch, I promise.

Movie Review: V for Vendetta. In honor of the DVD release Tuesday, my guy took me to his friend's house to watch it again. I have to say, while I thought it alright the first time around, I liked it better the second time. Certain things made more sense the second time, and I knowing the gist of what was going on let me pay more attention to the dialogue-hearing V talk is, alone, worth seeing the flick. Also, now knowing that the comic book was written by the same guy who did From Hell, made me pay better attention. Hrm, I think I have to add From Hell to my Netflix queue.

Vehicular Fun

"We're stuck in Michigan. The truck broke down. There was gas in the tank."
-Paraphrase of a phone message from my mom yesterday morning. Since there was no mention of who put gas in the diesel truck, I have a suspicion the perpetrator was in fact my mom.



I finally got my car registration taken care of. Gah. What a headache. But now it's done and all I need is a screwdriver to finish the job. Then, voila! My car will officially have plates.

I'm being productive today. Not only did I take care of my car: this morning, I finished my first critique of this month's batch. I also did the major grocery shopping thing this morning $125 all total. I shouldn't have to buy food again for a good long time. Still, feels kind of obscene for a single gal to have a cart that full of groceries. Oh well.

Kitsch, Trash, and Other Adventures

Ares: “I can't believe you have these mortals convinced that you're this 'Kevin Sorbo' character.”
Hercules: “Some people just aren't ready for the truth.”
-Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

Writers’ Group was yesterday and I ended up having to butt in and referee a few times. See, we now have a couple of people writing historical fiction and a couple of people who are history buffs. Put the two together, and you get tangents of a history lecture kind of nature. Me: “I’ve got to interrupt, guys, we have to keep going.” When there are half a dozen pieces to critique in one meeting, and one person (in a group of thirteen) wants to blather on for fifteen minutes with their comments, it just doesn’t work.

In related news, two of our new members submitted for the first time yesterday. One, our youngest member (18ish?) who’s a bit of a punk (in a good way) turned in a short story. I’m infinitely curious, given his critiques on others’ work, what his own will be like. His’ll be the first piece I critique. The other guy, an Australian, is one who I just don’t care for because he’s rather a bit pompous and tends to neglect doing critiques-he did about half for yesterday’s meeting and fewer for the one or two meetings before that which he attended. So, we’ll see if he gets his ass in gear now that we’re critiquing his stuff. If not, I’m going to have to ask Jayne if we can prevent him submitting. Technically, two non-critiquing months in a row and you can’t submit until you catch-up. I also have no idea what to expect from his writing, though I’m leaning on the side that I won’t be impressed.

Book Review: I, the Divine, by Rabih Alameddine. This one was a great find for an English major. It’s an experiment where the whole novel is a series of “first” chapters. The idea is that the narrator, Sarah, is attempting to write her memoir, but can’t get past figuring out how to start it. The book itself is pretty good. More than that, the experimental quality is wonderful. Like a short-story cycle, there are so many ways to look at how each section works that I can easily see myself writing an essay about the novel or including it in my masters’ thesis. Hey, that’s an idea. I think I might do that, actually.

TV Review: Cleopatra 2525. I love Gina Torres, but no. I watched one and a half episodes and it hurt to much to go any further.

TV Review: Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. I remember watching this on TV, and figured I’d revisit it. Right now I just finished episode three of the official series. It’s a bit messy at the beginning thanks to the transition from TV movies to TV series, but I can forgive it. After all, it’s fun kitschy stuff and provides lots of comedy, both intentional and incidental. I mean, come on. Would the real Hercules have taken time out of his journeys to keep his hair so perfectly styled? I think not.

Vertigo

"If wishes was horses, we'd all be eating steak."
-Jayne

Right, so the past two weeks have alternated between being a complete waste & a bit of a nightmare. The one exception being two and a half days of a convention that I rather enjoyed. Here's the short version:

Two days before I left, I found out that the papers for my car didn't go through at the county clerk's office because when I bought the car the guy filling out the paperwork wrote down my wrong middle initial. I had no time to stand in line at the courthouse (with new papers) for a couple hours, as I had to pack, stop the mail, go to work, pay rent, do other last minute errands, etc. So, I left without having gone. This becomes relevant later.

Went to the airport to catch a plane to PA for the convention-flight was delayed, delayed, and canceled. I ended up trapped in O'Hare and spent the night on a row of seats (got maybe two hours bad sleep). I finally arrived at the hotel for the convention, got checked into the wrong room, had to move my stuff. The convention itself I enjoyed. I brought out my most extroverted self and it was all the way until the last hour or two before I got to the state of "Everyone, go home and leave me alone already."

The trip home wasn't bad-it completely lacked an airport overnighter. My guy met me at the airport and it was very, very good to see him. Woke up the next morning, had to throw up. Did that a few more times over the course of the day. (This would be Tuesday we're talking about now) and anymore, being sick enough to vomit brings on my vertigo.

Short digression: Vertigo. I've had it as long as I can remember. I don't mean a sick to the stomach feeling when you're up too high, either. I'm talking about vertigo as an inner ear problem which is defined by unpredictability. To paraphrase the doctor who finally figured out it was vertigo, "The only thing you can really predict about it is that you can't predict it." This means that at random times, with no warning, I tend to wake up one day and have symptoms. They tend to last about five days and the severity varies. Sometimes it's no more than light twinges here and there, once it was so severe that just standing up was enough to knock me over if I didn't grab onto something. So, basically, during this period I become very sensitive to certain things. Again, this tends to vary from one time to the next. Sometimes I'm very sensitive to light (like this most recent one) which means walking from a light room to a dark one, or having a light flashed in my eyes, makes it feel like someone just spun my head (imagine a top-one moment not moving, then someone turns it and away it goes). Sometimes I'm more sensitive to movement-like bending down to put on my shoes, or going from sitting to standing. Two things I make it a rule to avoid during these times are driving (for obvious reasons) and computers (something about the glare from the screen really aggravates).

So, right. The vertigo hit and I've been trapped in my house for four days. Yesterday, I braved it and went to the courthouse, for the sake of my car, in the afternoon when I was feeling pretty good. For some reason it's always worse in the morning than afternoon. I went to the "dealers only" part of the clerk's office because the title officer at the dealership told me to. I sat and waited for half an hour only to be told I had to go "stand in line." Telling the clerk that the gal at the dealership told me to come there instead did absolutely no good. The line was a good hour long and there was no way I would've been able to make it, so I went home very frustrated. My temporary tags expire today (Saturday) and the courthouse is closed, and the writers' meeting is tomorrow. Let's see if I get stopped. Of course, that will only add to my great joy at how the end of this month has been going.

Alright, the bitch-fest is over. I keep reminding myself that the meeting is tomorrow-along with the post-meeting dinner that I always look forward to. Also, this month I'm submitting a chapter of Oracle that I've been planning for months-two main characters get killed. So, I'm kind of excited about that. I just have to make sure I don't die or total my car or something before then. Wish me luck.

Wedding update & movies

Pintel: ...I always heard it said "kray-kin"
Ragetti: What? with a long A? Na-na-na-na-no-no no "Krah-ken"'s how it's pronounced in the original Scandinavian, and "Krakken"'s closer to that.
Pintel: Well we ain't original Scandinavians, are we?
Ragetti: It's a mythological creature, I can calls it what I wants!
-Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Jayne, myself and the other bridesmaids, and another gal pal went to see this for the “bachelorette party.” In short-if you liked the first one, go see the second. I laughed, a lot.

Yes, it’s been over a week since my last post. I’ve been a slacker all around though, so it’s not like I’ve been neglecting the blog alone.

First thing-wedding update. The ceremony was nice, short and sweet with only the minor mishap of the keyboard player’s music stand crashing to the ground during Judy’s song. The keyboard player stopped, but Judy handled it wonderfully and just kept on going. The day’s other notable mishap was Sean’s state. The night before the bachelor party hit the bars and all was going well (moderate drinking only) until the last stop on the way home. The bartender was so drunk that a patron was mixing drinks and once other patrons knew Sean was getting married, they bought him drink after drink, including a round of tequila shots sometime after two in the morning. I think during the ceremony he was still mostly drunk and it wasn’t until the reception that the hangover started beating on him. Needless to say, he looked pretty pathetic. The newlyweds left the reception early (in a car covered with heart-shaped sticky notes, by the way) and I’m sure Sean went to bed as soon as they got home.

Now, to catch you up on my Netflix adventures.
Purely by chance, I happened to watch two flicks in a row with Jim Broadbent. He’s a fun actor, and one of those who seems to pop up in random places-he seems to have a preference for the slightly odd-ball which scores points in my book.

Princess Caraboo: Fun for its imaginative quality. Broadbent plays the husband in the couple that takes the girl in.

Rough Magic: Another one that’s fun for its imagination. It’s a bit farce, a bit magical realism, a bit detective drama. Add in Russell Crowe, and voila! A fun flick. In this one, Broadbent is a “doctor” trying to find the secret to a magic tonic who teams up with Crowe and Bridget Fonda in Mexico.

The Sum of Us: Made the same year as Rough Magic and also featuring Crowe (he must have been pretty busy). It’s a bit family drama, a bit comedy, and a bit romance, though seeing Crowe making out with another man is rather unsettling. I love Jack Thompson in this movie, he plays Crowe’s father. The soliloquies are a bit strange, hold-overs from the play, but they weren’t too distracting and there was one or two moments where they were totally wonderful.

Alright, that’s all for now. It’s time for me to go see Mary and work on her neighbor’s house.

Weddings, Weddings, Weddings

Willow: Buffy, it's hideous. Oh my god, Buffy. Look at its arms!
Buffy: I know. But it's my duty. I'm... Buffy the bridesmaid.
Buffy, “Hell’s Bells”

So, the Jayne & Sean wedding is tomorrow. Coincidentally, another member of the university English majors is having her big day tomorrow. Kathy, the professor I’m working for on campus is a bridesmaid in the second wedding. Jayne = laid back bride. Other gal = Bridezilla. I just got a whole tirade on the other gal and damn, I’m impressed. Let me a brief comparison.

Jayne’s wedding requirements
Dress: $75.00
Shoes: Whatever (Borrowed from my mom)
Hair: Whatever
Rehearsal: Followed by Pirates of the Caribbean viewing (Tickets courtesy of the maid of honor)
Total Bridesmaid cost: $145, including gifts and a necklace I made for Jayne.

Bridezilla’s wedding requirements
Dress: $400.00 strapless (“Like I have anything to hold up a strapless dress!”)
Shoes: Silver stiletto sandals (“I can’t even walk”)
Hair: Bouffant (“I told her to kiss my ass”)
Rehearsal: Dressed up dress rehearsal (Me: what’s the point of that? Kathy: Don’t even get me started)
Total Bridesmaid cost: Roughly $1,000 and I don’t know if that includes a gift.

All I can say is damn.

My guy and I have talked about getting married and about how exactly that’s going to work. Our plan is to go to the courthouse with the fewest number of people possible, probably just our parents and siblings. After we sign the paper, we go home and have friends over for a BBQ. Neither of us wants the boredom of a formal ceremony nor the stress of a formal to-do. This plan means we still get to hang out with friends and family, but we don’t have to stress about all the typical details like flower arrangements, catering, what I’m going to wear, etc.

Let’s face it folks, the wedding is one day. The important part is what comes after, right? The marriage part that lasts, in theory, the rest of your life.

Business Grammar

"No Shoe's
No Service"
Laundromat Sign

I did laundry today and was reminded, again, of what a snob I am. The English major in me has a hard time going to businesses that have mispelled or grammatically incorrect signs. However, this laundromat is the closest and I'm too lazy to be that ethical/snobbish.

Movie Review: The Omen. My guy and I were out and about the other day and stopped by the theater to watch this remake. I never saw the original, so I have no idea how it compares. The best part of this movie was the parts that make you jump. I'm no horror buff, but when something makes my guy jump too, I know it's caught people off guard. The timing for sudden attacks and that sort of thing was excellent. Otherwise, there seemed to be a lot of elements in the movie that just didn't make sense. Maybe the original did a better job of answering quesitons like, "What's the story with the priest's birthmark?"

Slacking

"Uh, I need a pitcher of Bud Light."
Drunk Guy (fifteen minutes after I ordered a pitcher for him and he disappeared before I could deliver it)

This week was the first of having my 2,500 words a week goal. My grand total: 830 or so. Great start, eh? My problem is not knowing where to start the chapter I'm working on right now. I'm thinking I should just skip ahead in the chapter to the part where I know what I want to do. I can always go back and change/fix the beginning once I get a clearer picture of exactly what is going to happen in the rest.

Book Review: Sweetness in the Belly, by Camilla Gibb. The main character, Lilly, is the child of English parents who spent the end of their lives wandering the world. When they die, she is raised by a Muslim religious leader in Ethiopia. The book exists in two parts-one in Ethiopia, one later in London. Going back and forth between the two is interesting and the structure works pretty well. The writing is good and the cultural deatails are excellent. Overall, a good read, but not spectacular.

Book Review: Human, Smithsonian. Every now and again I find something nifty at the library, like this book. It's got gorgeous illustrations and more information that anyone can possibly absorb in one sitting. The book has great anthropological info on an impressively large number of peoples, my main reason for checking it out. Also, there's a lot of talk about biology, evolution, and the future of the world. I love the pictures, like the information, and was only a little disappointed at things the book does not address-such as female circumcision in the section on rites of passage.

Movie Review: The Man Without a Face. I was pleasantly surprised with this one. The gist of the story is that Justine McLeoud (Mel Gibson), a man with a burn damaged face, tutors and befriends the young Chuck Nordstadt (Nick Stahl) who's trying to pass an exam that will get him into a military academy and away from his estrogen riddled home. When I read the blurb on Netflix, I expected the bonding between the two, but not the sinister turn toward the end nor the humor.

McLeod: The problem is one of water.
Chuck Norstadt: Water?
McLeod: Water. Women have, on average, about 5% more of it than do men, making them subject to different forces of gravity. Oh don't take my word for it, you can look it up in Newton. It's there.
Chuck Norstadt: Couldn't they be drained? [McLeod laughs]
Chuck Norstadt: I'm serious!
McLeod: Well, I believe they're waiting for us to drink more fluids.

Jewelry Joy

I have way too many necklaces at home because I like to make them but there are only so many a person needs, yet I still like the zen of making them. Thus, I have a plan to sell some of them on a site, etsy.com, so I can make room for more. The problem, is that in order to sell them, I need to be able to produce good quality images of them.

First, I tried my scanner. While it's good for flat pictures, it sucks at anything vaguely 3-D. Then my guy lent me his digital camera. No dice on that one either because it's designed for general picture taking, not close ups. Then I looked at some jewelry images I made while I still lived with mom and dad, and their scanner works beautifully for necklaces. Thus, today while I renewed my FAFSA, I also scanned a few necklaces. I feel like I've been very productive.

Dichroic glass pendant with crystals and silver

Howlite, "Indian Glass" and silver

Sodalite, ocean jasper, and silver

Movie Review: Cool World. Talk about a weird flick. Think Who Framed Roger Rabbit, except it's all about sex. Brad Pitt plays the tough cop, Kim Basinger is the "doodle" broad making trouble, and Gabriel Byrne is the cartoonist she plans to seduce. The only problem is that once a doodle and a "noid" have sex, things start to go wonky. It goes from comical to cheesy and back again. Though I give the movie big points for the funky cardboard cut-out "scenery" which is featured when a noid is in Cool World.

Cool

“May peace find you tonight
Like a breeze through your window
And sit by your light
And let it warm by your fire
And laugh with delight”
Reckless Kelly, “May Peace Find You Tonight”

Today I sent an e-mail out to the Writer’s Group e-mail list to announce my July goal: write at least 2,500 words each week. Hell, if I can do that in a day, a week so be manageable, right? Yesterday I buckled down and started a new chapter. I struggled trying to decide how to start it, but then told myself just to start someplace, and I can always fix it later. That helped, and I ended up with eight hundred words and change.

A while back I found a country band called Bering Strait made up of Russians-weird, huh? They’re rather good, and the gal who does lead vocals has a great voice. Today I decided to see what other albums they had, only to find out they’re now defunct. The self-titled album is apparently their only one.

Alas, I have no movie review today as all I watched last night was Angel. I’m at the end of season four now, and Gina Torres has officially made her entrance. She’s wonderful as Jasmine.

Connor: “Where are those people?”
Jasmine [smiling]: “I ate them.”
Connor: “Cool.”
Angel, “The Magic Bullet”

June Meeting & Movies

New Guy: “When can I submit?”
Jayne: “Next meeting, but it better not suck.”

Granted, Jayne’s comment might seem a bit rude out of context, but last night everyone was rather entertained by it. The new guy is, I'm guessing, about seventeen-ish and a bit of a punk, so he took her comment in stride. I was looking forward to the Writer’s Group meeting for a while. It’s always nice to go to the meetings, but especially to go to dinner afterward. Almost inevitably, it comes down to Jayne, Sean, Debra, and I after the others have gone home.

Besides gossip, we also talk shop-like how Debra met Jayne’s three rejection slip challenge, or how Jayne’s working on a short story collection. Jayne’s challenge, by the way, was that each person in the group should submit their work to magazines, agents, etc. Everyone who gets at least three rejection slips within the year wins baked goods. The idea isn’t that rejection is what we strive for, but rather to get our stuff out in the world. A rejection slip at least proves that you submitted something. Of course, any acceptance counts as two rejections.

My status in the challenge is as a slacker, I did my first submission and have yet to get moving on others. First, though, I’d best get my financial aid paperwork in order because no student loan means having to drop a class for fall so tuition’s not so expensive, and I really don’t want to do that.

Movie Review: Pulp Fiction. It’s a pretty famous/infamous movie so I decided it was time for me to watch it. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this flick surpassed it. Let me preface by saying I haven’t been overly impressed with other Quentin Tarantino work I’ve seen, so to watch the snappy dialogue and clever plotting of Pulp Fiction impressed me. I like the knot-work of it, all the separate threads meeting up together, and it was very well done with respect to not getting confusing. My only criticism is that the story titles did nothing for the movie.

Movie Review: Perfect Blue. My pen pal recommended this one to me a while back and, after being on hold in my Netflix queue for quite a long time, it finally arrived in my mail box. Now, it’s Anime and generally, I’m not too interested in the genre. However, I thought this one was pretty good. Granted, most of the gore is cheesy and superfluous, but the suspense worked well. The story gets a little muddled toward the end, and the twist didn’t satisfy all of the questions that crop up about the main character’s perception of reality. So, while it was pretty good with some elements, others left me hanging.

Movie Review: Bettie Page: Dark Angel. I came across an article about the other movie, The Notorious Bettie Page, and thought I’d look at this one while I waited on the other. Oh boy, I should have saved myself the trouble. The script is poorly written, the lighting and camera angles make it look like a home video and the “videos” of Page doing her thing are much more boring than “risqué.” Sure, a minute or two of “Whip Dance” might have been interesting as a look into the life, but when it goes on and on for ten minutes of nothing but her shuffling about with a whip it gets really tedious really fast. There were two good points in the movie though, the costumes and the music. Even so, I found myself skipping ahead a great deal, trying to find the interesting part. Sadly, there was none.

Super Girls

Giles: [inspecting an axe] “In addition to being ancient, it's clearly mystical.”
Buffy: “Yeah, I figured that one out when I King Arthured it out of the stone.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "End of Days"

The other day, I finished watching Buffy. The last episode (dum dum dum) and all that. It was strange because on one hand, it was all done very well, but on the other I didn’t have much emotional reaction to it. I think it boils down to the fact that after seven seasons, the main characters were too familiar to me. I already knew what they were going to do and so the suspense of it all was gone. Still, the grand finale was very fitting to the show’s mission and themes. Lots and lots of feminism, big scary monsters and comedy sprinkled all over it.

My big deal of the past few days though, is that I got my butt in gear and as of today (two days before the meeting) I’ve got my submission for the Writer’s Group all ready to go. Considering my more normal pattern of printing my submissions out the day of, and about an hour before, the meetings, this is an accomplishment. More importantly, since I just came off of my wonderfully time consuming class I was figuring this month’s submission might be a bit thin. Well, yesterday I spent a lot of time on the computer and added over 3,000 words all together to what I had up to then. Today I spent some more time on the computer and added another 1,000. Grand total: 5,300 words for this month. Considering most of my submissions average around 4,000 words, the fact that I beat my average this time, and did it in about two days, makes me very pleased with myself.

Cry Baby

"The only gossip I'm interested in is things from the Weekly World News - 'Woman's bra bursts, 11 injured.' That kind of thing." Johnny Depp, from imbd.com

Yesterday, I did no writing because I was a tired bum. Today I got about 700 words typed up and I’m going to do some more when I get home. First I have to go to the financial aid office and see what they can tell me about paying fall tuition. It is a meeting I am not looking forward to because it’ll be a lot of waiting around and/or them telling me I have to fill out paperwork. Oh joy of joys.

Movie Review: Cry Baby. This is one of Johnny Depp’s earliest movies and it’s interesting to note how similar he looks between now and then. There is something disturbing about how he doesn’t really seem to age. For the movie itself, I have to say that when Neflix describes the director as “the king of kitsch” the description applies to the film pretty well. It’s a musical with a high cheese factor. Think Grease with fat girls and horrible makeup. I have to admit, the weird and dorky in this movie is a bit charming, when I wasn’t too distracted by the intentionally gross teeth many of the actors sported. Unlike Pirates of the Caribbean, Depp wasn’t one of them. So, in the end the big hokey music numbers, oozing melodrama, and stereotype hyperbole are fun, but I don’t think I’d watch this movie twice.

Money and Glass

“I wanna be consequence free, I wanna be where nothing needs to matter, I wanna be consequence free, just sing Na Na Na Na Na Ne Na Na Na.” Great Big Sea, Consequence Free

I’m feeling a bit depressed today, because yesterday I went to the bank and almost completely wiped out my savings so I could pay my credit card bill. On this month’s statement was summer tuition, an airplane ticket to Pennsylvania, the down payment for my car, and a list of regular expenses like groceries and gas. One month’s total was more than the previous two, or possibly three, years combined.

Three years ago I spent the summer in Arkansas running my own office for a company I then worked for. While I won’t say anything bad about the company, I will admit that summer was a disaster for me. Between office rent, receptionist payroll, and personal expenses, I ran out of money. I ended the summer $4,000 in debt with thirteen dollars cash to my name. I got to the point, during those months, where five dollars was a week’s worth of groceries, and where spending a couple of bucks on a matinee ticket to see Pirates of the Caribbean was a big splurge. In short, by the time I got back to Colorado, I was a wreck and I had money issues.

When I got back I took out my first student loan to pay for my third semester of college and put almost every cent I earned working at a dry cleaners toward paying off the $4,000. Since clearing that debt, I’ve developed a habit of saving compulsively. It paid off and I grew a comfortable amount of money in my savings, still not enough to pay off my growing student loan, but student loans are common and I didn’t worry. Now that savings has been severely dented and it’s got me nervous. Add to that, my summer class conflicted with the job that was my primary income, and so I don’t have that job any more. I didn’t like it much, granted, but losing the money from it makes me antsy. While that job has somewhat been replaced by working as the Writing Project Assistant, the pay is less and it’s only a sporadic job-I won’t be needed for most of July and August.

Right, the point is I’m feeling more financially vulnerable than I have in a while and it’s bringing on unpleasant memories. The fact that paying tuition for fall semester will effectively clean out the rest of my savings doesn’t reassure me either, because then I’ll have nothing left for spring semester, not to mention any personal emergencies. Time to talk to the financial aid office about more student loans.

Not helping my money anxiety is the fact that I didn’t go to bed until almost two o’clock last night, so I'm tired and a little grumpy. No, I wasn’t partying or anything like that. I was reading a book. I’ve been a book worm since I learned how to read and when I want to, I can get through a lot of pages pretty quickly. Every now and again I go on a reading binge, and yesterday was a mini one. After I got off work and finished watching the last three episodes of Buffy, I started a book I got from the library. When I went to bed, I had read it completely. That leads me to talking about it.

Book Review: In the Company of the Courtesan, by Sarah Dunant. I found it coincidental that after just having watched Dangerous Beauty, the book I picked up a few days ago happens to take place also in Venice, about twenty years earlier than the film and works on the same theme of prostitution. Aside from one chapter, which I still don’t know why it’s in third person, the novel is narrated by Bucino who is a dwarf and a pimp. When Rome is sacked, they run to Venice to escape and have the challenge of rebuilding their business from scratch. Overall, the historical details were interesting and the story was pretty good. Yet, when a significant character died, I didn’t worry too much about it. So, the emotional dig wasn’t quite there for me. Still, it was an interesting enough read to keep me up late.

All this talk of Venice makes me think of when I was there the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school. We only stopped there for an afternoon, but the glass… I wish I had bought more. I only have one strand’s worth of beads from Venice, and that’s really depressing since there’s no time in the near future I’ll get a chance to go back.

"Never fall in love with a woman who sells herself."

“Please tell me you're not one of Toulouse's oh so talented, charmingly bohemian, tragically impoverished writers?” Satine, Moulin Rouge

I did it. I got my butt in gear yesterday and did some writing. Mostly I transcribed from my notebook, but then I added a bit more and ended up with a word count of 627. Nothing awe-inspiring, I admit, but a heck of a lot better than nothing at all. I’ve got about 3,500 more words to go by this weekend so that I can turn in a decent submission for the Writer’s Group so Jayne doesn’t get mad at me. She said she would have a submission this month, too. I hope she doesn’t wimp out on me, then I’d have to give her a lot of grief.

Speaking of Jayne…Jayne (not my friend) is a character from the show Firefly. He’s an uncouth mercenary type who is designed to always do the wrong/inappropriate thing and who people immediately love because of it.

Jayne: "Well I don't like the idea of someone hearing what I'm thinking."

Inara: "No one likes the idea of hearing what you're thinking."

Last night my guy called me and said that on the game GuildWars there is a special baddie named Jayne who drops a unique item, a hammer named Vera. How do ya like that, Browncoats?

Movie Review: This post definitely has a prostitution theme. I promise, it wasn’t intentional. Adding to it, the movie I watched yesterday, Dangerous Beauty. It’s about a courtesan named Veronica Franco (played by Catherine McCormack), a real woman who lived in Venice from 1546-1591. The plot starts with introducing the love interest, a senator named Marco Venier (Rufus Sewell). She’s not rich enough to marry him, so her mom suggests another way of having him. The setting is gorgeous, the costuming well-done, the acting is good, and there are wonderful lines, like when Maffio Venier (Oliver Platt) says to Veronica, “It must be interesting to be in a room full of men, most of whom you've seen with their pants down.” The big climax gets a bit cheesy, but they earned a bit of melodrama there. The historical details are interesting, as are the bits of Franco’s poetry they use as voiceover.