Thursday, January 31, 2008

Bad Hair Day

I've spent this past week fighting a nasty bug that's been going around the office. This is problematical since, as a new employee, I have a grand total of 2 sick days.
I used one Tuesday, but have decided to save the other in case of sudden appendectomy.

Last night I was trying to sleep, but I was so congested, I couldn't sleep until I had built all my pillows into a little chair/pyramid, so I could sleep half sitting up.

The good news, I finally slept, but I had psycho dreams and when I woke up, my head had fallen between two pillows at a weird angle, and I could no longer look to the left.
This led to more shifting and rearranging, and finally I managed to about half an hour quality sleep before my alarm went off.

So you can imagine I wasn't my best self when I went into work. My eyes burned and felt grimy, I felt sick, and my hair had gone into full Medusa mode, so you can imagine my joy when I found out that I was getting all my official work photos today.

No lie. I had no suit. I'm sick. And my hair's insane. In fact, it took two people to try and calm it down, and finally even the photographer came over and tried to get the worst "devil horns" tucked away behind my ears. It was so embarrresing. And these are the pictures that will be used for the rest of my career. Lovely.

On an up note, Lost is replaying the Season Finale, with a helpful bar at the bottom that explains EVERYTHING. Who these people are, their motivations, insider knowledge from past seasons. The whole kablooey.

It's the only way to watch the show. Hopefully they'll keep it up all season, and we can finally find out what's up with the shadow monster.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Shout out to Fergie

Animusic

I can't quite get into anime, but I can do animusic.

Random Food Note

Just FYI: Tomato soup made with fat free milk tastes funky. It's possible that the "healthy choice" tomato soup may have had something to do with that too. Like eating a flavorless red paste with a hint of tomato.


But how excited are we for Super Bowl Sunday?!

I don't even know who's playing, but who cares? The Super Bowl is a great excuse to eat a lot of junk.

Pizza.
Wings.
Brownies.
Cookies.
Chips and Salsa.
5 layer dip.

HMMMMMmmmmm, happy days.

I realize that most people enjoy 7 layer dip. Our house-dip only has 5 layers, in keeping with the great Olive-Chive Peace Accords of '06.

And then there's the commercials. In fact, it was the Superbowl that introduced me to the awesomeness that is the Trunk Monkey. I laughed so hard I fell off the couch. (Obviously, this was before I developed my mad ninja skills. Now I ninja roll of the couch with cat-like grace.)

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Tuesday AMV

What is this? A post during the day?

This can only mean one thing. I have finally succumbed to the dreaded virus currently decimating the office.

Bleh.

Take it away, Nelly Furtado.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Monday AMV-postponed

Sad news out of Salt Lake today. So no video. I'm spending the day feeling a little sad inside.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

The Gauntlet Drops

All right DFL. You're on.

Although I may be at a SLIGHT disadvantage when it comes to a music trivia duel.

Let's start off with a band that can sing about something besides California.
Evanescence, for example, likes to sing about insanity.



Or perhaps I should stick to my strengths. No matter how fab your rock star power, I can geek it up.

So here's Dani California with a little help from Cowboy Bebop.



Ah, much better with guns and swords.

Saturday Morning Pain

Man I'm beat. We were doing drills today. Drills and drills and drills. Then, when we finally got to put the pads away, everyone was moving pretty slow. So the instructor says, "Tired? Okay, let's have a rest period. Jumping Jacks."

So we started continuous jumping jacks. Then crunches. Then leg lifts. In the leg lifts he kept telling us to keep our feet 6 feet off the deck, and I thought, "Aha. I bet you anything he's a Marine." Finally we ended with jump squats.

I haven't had a beat down like that since I left the Navy.

But then we got to do choke hold drills. And I met a cute guy. So it all worked out.

Man I'm tired though.

I also wore an army shirt my brother gave me. A couple of guys asked me where I was stationed. I totally look like an Army girl. :)

I like wearing the shirt to Krav, because it's that great slick exercise fabric. So not only does it transfer heat efficiently, it makes me really hard to grab in drills.

Friday, January 25, 2008

The History of Rock and Roll

Courtesy the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I challenge you to a duel!

Friday Funny!!!

Dude! This is like, so totally awesome! Dude. Dude dude dude.




It's still Jane Austen related. :)

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Bwa ha ha ha!!

Dude, who needs to write like Jane Austen when I could just post this...


This sweet, sweet tribute to Mr. Darcy.

Walk, Don't Run--Austen Style

While perusing the always delightful Tv in Japan, I happened across this amusing piece of philosophical pondering.

Does a would a world class Walk Race champion run if in mortal danger? Watch and see what happens as this poor man is set upon by roaming Samurai.




One can't help but think of the delightful Cary Grant movie based on walk racing. Which, interestingly enough, is also set in Japan.



I would just like to point out that it's much harder to sit here and scrawl out compound-complex than I thought it would be. Looks like I picked the wrong week to cut back on caffeine.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Its Austen Time!

I don't know why, but PBS has gone all Austen all the time this week. Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, multiple versions of P&P, Emma. Even Mansfield Park.

The Corcoran is holding a Jane Austen lecture on the 31st, and BSA DFL and I have tickets. So I have decided to join in the Jane Austen fun and blog Austen style for as long as it takes for me to get bored with it.

Unfortunately the highlight of bowling night was a conversation that Miss Austen could never have imagined in her wildest Victorian dreams. A conversation that I can't type on my PG rated blog much less set in 18th century England.

So dear friends, remember to be careful when you ask for clarification. Because you never know what might be lurking behind the simple words, "Wait, what kind of dance?"

Monday, January 21, 2008

Monday AMV

Guess who has today off?

This AMV is from Hellsing. Which I liked. I really did. It's an anime that has everything.
Vampires. Nazis. Vampires fighting Nazis. Catholic conspiracies. BFGs. English Snobbery. Everything.

But my goodness was it bloody.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Painful, yet Hilarious

You know, DFL always said she'd teach me more about the fabulous world of rock and roll, but she never said it would be so painful! Here's "Starship Trooper" with clips from the movie added in, to act as a balm against the 80s glitter.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

For TA: I Lost my Heart to a Starship Trooper

Can I just say, "It hurts, make it stop!"

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Golden Compass Rant

Since I no longer have as much time for reading, I’ve started getting books on CD to listen to on my commute. My latest book was The Golden Compass.

I tried to read this years ago when it first came out. I didn’t finish it, because I just couldn’t stand Lyra. I felt like I was wading through page after page of her long meandering lies, and finally I just gave up.

However, it’s now the book for my book club, so I got the CDs. The down side to CDs, is that you can’t skim the boring parts, and that, for whatever reason, on this book instead of the narrator doing all the voices, they have an entire cast of voice actors reading all the parts. Normally this would be okay, except the girl read Lyra was naturally whiny, and bursting with passion for her part. So her lines sounded like something like this:

Lyra: *Gasp!* but PAN, I was HIDING in the RETIRING closet, *Gasp!* EVEN though I’M a GIRL! *Gasp!* and NOW we HAVE to WARN Lord AZ-RE-AL!!

It was really annoying. Although I did appreciate her dedication to pronouncing every syllable of Lord Azrael’s name.

So, I hate Lyra when I read her, and now I hate her in Audio. I should see the movie just so I can complete the Trifecta of intense character dislike.

The other hard part came later, when you met the Queen of the Witches, Serfina-Pickapeckapickledpeppers or whatever her ridiculous name was. She had these long boring conversations with the aeronaut about free will vs. destiny.

Normally I’m all for philosophical discussion, except that one side was being voiced by a British man attempting a Texas drawl, and the other side was being voiced by a British woman who was going for what I think was an Imperial Russian accent, but sounded more Swedish until she finally gave up and settled for sounding like Mary Poppins.

I would be driving, cringing as they went on and on and on, and I would be like, I’ll just skip to the next track, I mean nothing too exciting could happen in the next three minutes right?

*Skip*
*Blah blah money blah blah Texas blah choice blah blah*
* Blah blah witch witch witchey blah destiny blah*
*Skip*
“Blah blah balloon blah blah choice blah?”’
“blah blah witch destiny blah blah”
Skip
“Blah blah choice blah!”
CURSE YOU PULLMAN!! IT”S FREAKING SIX IN THE MORNING! GET TO THE POINT ALL READY!!!

My other big issue, beside the whole “dust is the original sin”’ macguffin which made No Sense, was the fact that everyone kept brining up how Lyra found the bear’s armour.

They go North, they have to hire the bear, he says “Only if you find my armour.” Lyra walks off, asks her magic 8 ball, golden compass, and then walks back and tells the bear where it is. He goes gets it. The End.

From that point on, How Lyra Found the Armour is mentioned by someone every 15 minutes, as if it’s the greatest feat since Hercules defeated the Hydra.
Seriously, why is this her major accomplishment? I mean, I used my GPS to get to the Kennedy Center, but I’m not about to list it on my resume. Then to make it even more annoying, shortly after this rather minor episode Lyra engineers a mass jail break, burning the facility down behind her. And even after that everyone’s like “Lyra, she found the bear’s armor!”

If I was her, I’d be mad.

The best parts of the book happened whenever Mrs. Coulter (or possibly, Mrs. Gooter?) was around. In my mind, she always looks like Nicole Kidman (Thank you previews!) and she was a pretty awesome bad guy.

Phew. All right. Now that I have that all out I can sit back and enjoy the try outs for American Idol.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Monday AMV

Since Kristen enjoyed our last Full Metal Alchemist AMV so much, I thought I'd post another one.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Evil Quiz

I wanted to play too, but it gave me the same answer. TA's (my bad kids, practice good OPSEC) more eviler then me. I don't know if I feel like the winner or the loser.

You Are 22% Evil
A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well.In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Random Quiz

In a Past Life...

You Were: A Diseased Spice Trader.

Where You Lived: Australia.

How You Died: Consumption.


What the? It only asks one question!!

Pshhaw--these are randomly generated. This is what I got for the exact same answer the second time:




In a Past Life...



You Were: An Insane Monk.



Where You Lived: Poland.



How You Died: Dysentery.



All right, here's a fun one:

You Are 40% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well.
In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

King Cake Monday

Monday, my team decided to celebrate Spanish heritage and Three Kings Day. I don't know if you guys ever celebrated this, but it's to celelbrate hen the Three wise men, or kings found the baby Jesus (it took them a while to get there, that's why it's 12 days later, or the 12 days of Christmas)
When I was small, my grandparents had three cakes, and you dipped the pieces in chocolate and ate it, and one of the cakes had a baby baked inside. If you find the baby you have good luck for the rest of the year.

I was happily eating my cake when I found myself chewing on a little rubber pig (I guess they couldn't find a baby) so then I had good luck for as long as I could keep my jealous cousins from stealing it.

We decided to celebrate this momentous holiday at work, because then we could talk the Spanish girl on our team into bringing Paella for all of us. But it became a huge party. We ordered a King Cake from New Orleans, and it came with beads, a parchment telling the King Cake story, and Mardi Gras coins. It had green, gold, and purple dyed sugar on it. The beads were also green, gold, and purple.

Green for faith, purple for justice, and gold for power. Guess which color of beads I chose.


First thing in the morning we cut into the cake. We decided that we wouldn't email the rest of our coworkers about it until after someone on our team had found the baby.

I took a small slice with yellow sugar on top. It was really early, so I wasn't ready for a big piece yet. "Don't take that one. We know the baby isn't in that one. It's too narrow!" (Everyone was trying to find the baby by looking at the side of the slices.) I took my piece back to my desk, cut into it with my spoon (we couldn't find any forks) and a little tiny baby head fell out of my cake.

Fortunately, it was still attached to the body, which was still buried in the cake. I started laughing, and now I have a creepy 1 inch plastic baby (they poked tiny little pupils in his eyes, and he's anatomically correct) hanging out by my computer.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Why WW should watch American Gladiators

He's just your type!

The Blehs

There's something going around the office. Fortunately, I haven't developed the full auto-puke nastiness, but I am definitely feeling crappy.

So now I'm watching Medium, which has the greatest opening credits since Mission Impossible (it's so Hitchcock!) and this episode features creepy clowns.

Man I hate creepy clowns. I love the Buffy episode where Xander decks his personal creepy clown nightmare.

I'm going to see if I can find the Medium opening on Youtube.

Awesome! Here's a madTV parody. They nail Patricia Arquette's highly obnoxious voice!



"Every Week, I have a dream that helps you solve crime? Every week."

Monday, January 07, 2008

Monday AMV

I didn't really like Full Metal Panic: 1st season, but their FOMUFFU episodes were pretty funny.



On a random note, do you think Wolf on the New American Gladiators regrets making his schtick howling everytime they say his name? He's starting to sound a little hoarse, not to mention the dirty look he shot at the announcer.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Avatar 313

Enjoy! Although I can't say how long it will be before they get pulled.





Saturday, January 05, 2008

Saturday Fun!

Have you seen the previews for the Second Narnia movie?



It has trebuchets!!!

So exciting. I love summer blockbuster movie season. So, to tide us over until then, here are bloopers from the first Narnia movie, LWTW, or however it's abbreviated.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Krav!!

Yesterday I went to the first class at my new Krav school. I was a little worried, because the people in the class before mine weren't even sweating. The thing I liked best about Krav was that it provides such a great workout, so I was concerned.

About halfway through my class, during a flurry of hammerfists, not only was I sweating, but I started feeling like I was going to puke. "Ah ha!" I thought, "It's not the school, they're just LAZY!"

It also hurts when I sneeze, so I'm pretty sure that all my muscles got a good workout.

Anyway, I got to learn a takedown. My first. My sparring partner got to go first. She had her hand on my face, and pushed backward, but I didn't fall, I just stepped back. (I wasn't about to throw myself down. That doesn't help anybody.)

The instructor came over. "You're doing it wrong" he told her helpfully, "do it like this." He put his hand on my face, gave a slight push, and suddenly I was folding backwards like a cheap church chair. The instructor was nice enough to catch me before I hit the floor, and that's how I found myself in a full fledged dip.

I haven't been dipped since Utah State, where I was into ballroom. So suddenly finding myself in a dip struck me as funny, and I started laughing.

The instructor probably thinks I'm nuts. "I just knocked her down, and she's laughing about it."

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Man, Where am I?

Sorry for the light posting. I've had to go into exile, to suffer from the humiliation of getting booed off stage during my grand debut as a rock star.

Actually, I was playing the rock star game at a New Year's Eve party. I was bass. I was awful.

So then I tried to be the charismatic front man. My fatal mistake was choosing a song by The Killers. Their lyrics make no sense whatsoever. And I simply cannot read words like that without some kind of running commentary and/or grammar corrections. It's just the way I roll. That's when I get booed off stage.

I went back to bass, which I finally managed to get ok at by 1:00. Everyone at the party was addicted to that game though. We played it, turned it off for 10 minutes to watch the ball fall, and then we put the game back on. I stayed until 1, but I had an hour drive home so I resisted the urge to rock out one last time.

Thank You Fredericksburg!!!! YOU ROCK!!!