commas and ampersands

2008 in memes:


(But first, a look back at the year-end roundup for 2007.)

( One of the more popular year-end memes )


( Looking forward to 2009 )

( The first sentence of each month, according to my lj )

Happy New Year!

Well, I'm back. It's been a pretty long day--that's what I get for flying out at 7:20 AM, which meant getting up at 5:30 (which is really 4:30 AM in California time). Actually, it was supposed to mean getting up at 4:45 Calgary time, but when Colin knocked on my door at 5:30 to see if I was ready to leave, I'd somehow turned off my alarm in my sleep. We were out the door by 5:40, though, which was pretty impressive.

(I randomly feel like documenting my life in Facebook status updates)

Alida is showing an inappropriate amount of cleavage right now.

Alida didn't take any pictures with Colin (or anyone else) this weekend.

Alida hasn't even begun to unpack yet.

Alida's eyes are stinging from the smoke.

Alida has to send a book back to Calgary so that Colin can return it for her.

Alida wishes that the conversation in the Dragonfly didn't die off so early in the evening.

Alida and Colin are embarking on one of the longer long-distance stretch of the year. 9 weeks, which isn't all that bad, but it's one of the few times we actually go over two months.

Alida would much rather be singing in Colin's choir's Christmas cantata than her own.

Alida got too many emails today and wanted to hide from the world for a few more days.

Alida never did make it to Wendy's. She ate popcorn and canned peaches instead. Healthy, no?

Alida is creating random Facebook status updates rather than doing her reading for tomorrow morning.

Alida didn't vote today, but she isn't even sure if she'd have been allowed to vote in two separate federal elections at the same time anyway.

Alida needs to take her contacts out.

Alida wants to win the lottery.

Alida and Colin have signed up for the 2009 Weekend to End Breast Cancer.

(end Facebook updates)

I'm tired, but now that I've got my computer open and am doing the little online things that I haven't done all day, I'm less ready to fall asleep than I was about half an hour ago, when I was leaning on Colin's shoulder and in grave danger of falling asleep standing up in the kitchen.

I'm settling into the routine at Starbucks... it's not that different, aside from readjusting to being on my feet and figuring out where things in the store are kept. Other than that, it's all pretty much the same old, same old. It seems like it works best for Colin and I to drive to work together, and then I get off work somewhere between half an hour and an hour before he does (depending on how long the close takes), so I go sit either in the 24-hour diner on the bottom floor of his building or in the car until he's off. The past few nights, I've just gone and sat in the car--tonight, I pulled a sleeping bag out of the trunk, curled up in the passenger seat, and fell asleep. It seemed to me to be an acceptable solution.

We're mostly ready for the walk. I think we're going to try and get out for one last training walk tomorrow--hopefully we'll be able to do a long-ish one, but we'll see how the day goes. I think we've bought all the necessary stuff, though... socks, a new bladder for Colin's camel pack, moleskin and other assorted foot care products, pink hair dye, and so on.

Friday morning, we're going to dye hair. I'm doing pink streaks again, and Colin's going to dye his beard pink. Or his stubble. He hasn't been growing it long enough for it to be a full beard (thank goodness), but he'll do the longish stubble. Devin and Lori's wedding is 2 weeks after the walk, and he didn't want to risk still having pink in his hair for that, especially since his hair is so light and the color will stay longer. Mine won't be such a big deal--on my darker hair, the streaks (especially after that long) will likely look more like red streaks, and if they are still pink, they won't be as bright. And if it's really bad, I'll just dye over it.

I need to either get to my parents' house or get a list to my mom sometime in the next few days. There are a few things that I didn't bring with me when I brought a load of clothes and other miscellaneous junk to Colin's parents' house, like my big duffel bag (for the overnight part of the walk), pink nail polish, and... oh, I can't remember now. Hopefully it'll all come to me in time.

It's so tempting just to stay here. It saves so much gas not to be driving back and forth to the farm every day--even if we're already saving gas by driving to work together. The guest room here is basically my room, and I've got about half of my clothes here. Really, it doesn't make much difference in terms of comfort levels. Whether I stay at my parents' place or Colin's parents' place, I'm sleeping in a guest room and I'm not in my own place, and I'm equally comfortable in either house, so the deciding factor tends to be the fact that a) I don't want to drive an extra half hour home when we get home from work at 1 AM, and b) I don't want to use the gas to drive the extra half hour home when I'm just going to turn around and drive the half hour back in the morning.

And finally, before I go to sleep, I think I need to post some pictures:


( Family and wedding pictures )

Well, the freeway was open this morning, so my drive to school only took the normal 25 minutes, instead of Saturday's 3 hours or yesterday's hour and a half. Yay! I'm so tired, though. Last night, I worked a closing shift at work (which is basically all I'm working right now), and I had to do a load of laundry when I got home, so I didn't get to bed until sometime around 2:30.

Funny laundry-related story: Yesterday afternoon, I was getting dressed to go to work, and I realized that all my black work shirts were dirty, so I had to wear a white shirt. However, all my white bras were dirty, so I had to wear a black bra. Oh, I'm so brilliant. I ended up wearing a white tank top under my white shirt, so with two layers, the black bra wasn't visible. It was amusing, though. And today, I'm wearing a sports bra, because nothing else was dry this morning. I have a black shirt for work, though, so it doesn't matter.

Anyway, I'm closing all week, which is fine, but I've started the week on a no-sleep note (especially since I got up early this morning to check traffic and see whether I needed to leave hours early for class, if the 5 was still closed), so now I'm just waiting for Wednesday. My play analysis class is cancelled, so I have no reason to be on campus. Sleeeeeeeep. Yay. And then laundry, house-cleaning, and starting on at least one paper, if not two. It'll still be a productive day, but I'm not going to set an alarm clock in the morning, and I'm most likely going to stay in my pyjamas until it's time to go to choir in the evening.

I got some new icons, too, including a couple of new Canada icons. I really need to go through and clean out some of the icons that I don't use anymore. Even 105 icons just doesn't seem like enough! Greedy much? Hee. If I'd had the money, I would have gone for the permanent account when they were on sale, but as it is, I'll just hope that they do the holiday sale again, with the bonus icons for gift accounts, and find someone to trade with. I just hate getting rid of (or renaming) icons, because then when I go through my archives, the default icon shows up instead, and I feel like a dork for not having used an appropriate icon for the entry, even though I totally did.

Anyway, I'm "working" in the box office right now. It's really slow today, but that means that I'm getting paid to be on here and to do reading for Thursday's class. Whee. I'm out of here at 3, and then I'm hanging around until I work at 8:15. I really, really want to take a nap in the middle of there somewhere.

I feel boring today. I guess that's what happens on a Monday.

I'm having issues posting on Saturdays this month, apparently. Or Tuesdays, for that matter. Heh. I'm such a dork, especially given the fact that I haven't actually been concerned with posting every single day, like I used to be.

Hmmm. What's new? Jakob broke his elbow, poor kid, and has to have surgery on it in a week or so. He slipped coming down the ladder to a bunk bed, his arm got caught in the rung, and it twisted as he fell. Ah, he's such a little boy. It was funny, though--I was talking to Kat this evening, and she put Jake on the phone, and he told me about what happened and that he had to go to the doctor because his arm was broken, and then, "Uncle Colin? Can I talk to him?" Hee. I totally know where I stand with him! :) I'll have to get Colin to give him a call--he'd appreciate that.

He's getting so articulate. Jakob, that is, not Colin. It's so cool to listen to him tell a story now, because he's putting his information together in full sentences and answering questions and actually telling details. It makes it a lot easier to talk to him on the phone, too, when I can't read his body language.

Other than that, life is pretty uneventful. Really, life is just life, no matter where you live, and even living somewhere "fun" is still living. That sounds depressing, but I don't really mean it that way. I mean, you choose where you live based on many criteria, but when you get there, you still just live your life. So even though it's L.A., and people can tend to be all, "Oh, that's so cool!" (just like they did when I lived in New York), that doesn't eliminate bad days and boredom and tedious work and PMS and everything else that makes life just life, regardless of the fact that I'm still slightly awestruck at the palm trees out my window.

I did connect with the choir director at church today, so I'll go to rehearsal on Wednesday night. I think that'll be good for me--it'll be good to connect beyond just sitting in church on a Sunday morning.

Good morning. 'Tis early. Of course, it was even earlier at 4:00 this morning when the cat woke me up. Urgh. And that was after I'd woken up at 2 and not fallen asleep until 12. Oh well--at least I got to talk to samirant last night, and I haven't talked to her in ages (and she is someone that one of these days, I must meet)!

Yesterday turned out to be wonderfully relaxing. Actually, both Sunday and yesterday were nice that way.

Sunday, we went to church in the morning, then the choir sang at a wedding in the afternoon, then we helped my dad do some work on my car before we sell it to Esther and Justin (well, Colin helped; I sat there and looked pretty), and then we watched a couple of movies--Mozart and the Whale, which was a cute, The Other Sister-type movie, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which means that I'm now (finally) caught up enough to go see the latest movie. I'm still not ready to read book 7, but I'm getting there.

Yesterday, I slept in until 10:30 (and Colin slept in until 12:30, I think), and then we eventually made our way down to Prince's Island Park for the afternoon. There were some Heritage Day events going on, but we didn't really do anything specific; we just had a picnic and played cards with Colin's friend Carl, his wife Kelsey, and his sister Rachel. Devin and Lori were there for a while, but we literally passed them crossing the bridge into the park as they were on their way out, so we didn't overlap with them at all.

"As You Like It" was playing at Shakespeare in the Park last night, so we hung around the park in the evening and watched that, and then went back to my house (or, at least, the house where I'm housesitting) and watched one more episode of Battlestar. I seriously wonder if we'll even finish the first season in time to give it back to Scott and Heather before we leave.

Yeah, it's nice to have a long weekend that actually kind of felt like a long weekend. Yesterday felt like a holiday, believe it or not, and we so needed that.

Today, we've got an appointment at the bank to discuss a car loan and see what kind of financing we can get from the bank, as opposed to the dealership, and then we should be able to make the final decisions and finish up with that today or tomorrow. Exciting! And then, once we get the car, we'll sell mine to Esther and Justin, and I'll drive Colin's until we leave. I get the new car without sharing it for the next however-many months, so he can have it for the next few weeks. That, and if he's driving it, it's not going to be on my parents' awful gravel roads every day.

Gah. So tired. Just beat.

Mom and Dad's party was yesterday, and it was a big success. I'll post pictures (from my new camera--yay!!) tonight, but I haven't uploaded them yet.

This temp assignment is the 6:30-3 job, and I was so late this morning... I didn't get here until 6:50. Great first impression, hey? I get off at 3 and Colin starts work at 4, so we'll grab an hour together in between, and that's what the week (next two weeks, actually, until he's back on his regular schedule) looks like. My evenings are filling up, though--I've got tons of people that I want to have coffee with, and it's the perfect time to do it, when I won't have any evening plans with Colin anyway.

Today is looooong. Mostly because I'm shadowing. Tomorrow I start taking over the desk, and then I'm mostly doing it myself for the rest of the week, while the regular receptionist is getting other work done, and then she's gone for the next 3 weeks. I also don't have lunch until 12:30, which is when I like to take it when I start work at 8, but when I start at 6:30, it makes a really long morning. However, it means I only have two hours after lunch.

My greatest productivity thus far today? I set up coffee for next week with my high school French teacher, whom I haven't seen in over a year, and who I've been meaning to get in touch with for at least a few months. At least now I'll get to see her before I move.

At least this office has a nice view: 35th floor, straight west to the mountains. Pretty.

Maybe a short walk after work (4 km or so) will wake me up a bit. I'm not doing long walks this week, because the walk is this weekend, but I'll do my downtown-to-zoo walk most days, since that's pretty normal for me, and it's nothing out of my ordinary routine.

Noon, and I'm still needing coffee. Sigh.

Ah, sigh. The wedding was very nice--really pretty. I didn't know the bride or groom (the groom was a childhood friend of Colin's), but they knew some of my good friends, so it turned out that I knew a few people there--aside from Colin, Devin, and Lori, that is. We had fun. Good times. A few comments to the effect of, "So, are you two getting married any time soon?", but not too many.

Their placecards were cute--they had just simple little name cards, but since we were there as a couple, our names were both on one card. The colors were kind of an apple green and brown, and each card was leaning up against a piece of fruit as part of the centrepiece--an apple if it was a single name, and a pear if it was a couple. Get it? We're a "pear." Heh. We all had a good laugh over it, and decided that the point was to make it easier to figure out who was worth pursuing to become part of that whatever-it-is percentage of people who meet someone at a wedding.

Anyway, I've got pictures, but Lori took them, so I'll have to wait for her to email them to us before I can post anything.

What else? I'm not sure. I should be asleep right now, but I fell asleep this afternoon between the ceremony and reception. That wasn't supposed to happen, but we were at Colin's, picking something up, and in the time that it took for him to go to the bathroom, I'd lay down on his bed and was completely out--I ended up sleeping for a good hour and a half. In a semi-formal dress. I must have been tired. Of course, if I don't go to sleep now, I'll just perpetuate the cycle for tomorrow, and then I'll be screwed on Monday morning.

I feel like I've been so out of the loop around here for the past few weeks. I just haven't been online much at all. Hopefully this next placement will have more time to be online (and maybe even give me time to pop into the GGMM and HMM during the day!)... I won't know until I get there on Monday, though.

Oh, and Colin's vacation time was approved for the week after Labor Day, which means that I'll be able to move for Sept 1, rather than sometime around Aug 25. It'll make things a lot easier, so I'm really, really glad that they were able to switch that all around. It also means that Colin will still be down there for his birthday, and we'll be able to celebrate then, instead of celebrating early, before he flies back to Calgary.

And for now, that's it. I'm going to bed. 'Night, all.

Still around, but barely. LJ blocked at work, busy evenings, crazy weekend ahead. Good times, though. Drama team showcase last night, hunting for a dress tonight. More shopping tomorrow, since today was unsuccessful (after 4 hours in the mall). I usually don't power-shop like that. Tomorrow, I shop alone. We may be more successful if we divide and conquer: he goes after the wedding present; I go after the wedding outfit. Maybe that'll work.

Gah. Must go to sleep. Can't catch up tonight... maybe someday. Sigh.

I'm at Starbucks, ostensibly working on the program and script synopses for the showcase next Tuesday, but I keep distracting myself.

So, in the meantime, some random observations.

• I'm wearing a pair of pants today that I haven't worn in ages. They're a size 8, and they're still slightly snug, especially in the waist. Much better than they were a few months ago, absolutely, but if I was in the store, I wouldn't quite be buying an 8 yet. Which is a little bit problematic, because my size 10 jeans are getting kind of loose (although more in the waist than the thighs), so it's almost time to go down a size, but I'm not quite at a comfortable 8 yet, so I'm waiting a little longer. Maybe by the time I actually do the breast cancer walk (2 months), I'll be there, and I can get some new jeans and capris then. I'm getting there, though.


• Colin and I saw Shrek the Third last night, which was cute, but my one thought through the whole thing was, ( Not really anything spoilery, but I'll cut it just in case )


• I'm totally not getting any work done right now.


• I've still got an hour and a half before I have to go back to Colin's office and meet him, though, so I can keep telling myself that I'll get it done before then.


• Kat's home from the hospital today... still sore, still not feeling great, and she can't lift or drive for 4 weeks, but she's glad to be home. We went to visit her last night, and I think she was pleasantly surprised by that and glad to see us.

Anyway. I think that's it for a public post. Anything else will be flocked, and it'll probably be lots of rambling and stream-of-consciousness writing.

That nap yesterday? Needed to be about three hours longer than it was. But at least I got a nap yesterday.

( Weekend )

I'm so far behind on my TV shows. I finally watched last week's Gilmore Girls last night, and I still haven't watched last week's Heroes--I'm hoping to get a chance to watch it tonight, whenever I get home, so I can download and watch tonight's episode tomorrow. I'm also two episodes behind on Ugly Betty, four behind on How I Met Your Mother, and at least six behind on Scrubs, and new Veronica Mars starts tomorrow. I just have to say, I'm so thankful I can download the shows, because I'm never, ever home when they actually air, and without having cable, I can't even tape half of them (well, that, and my VCR is on the fritz).

I should just bring my laptop with me, now that I've got the new one, but I don't have a bag for it yet, and I'm hesitant to just have it in the car with me, sitting on the seat. There are often times when I have half an hour or 45 minutes free, though, and that would be enough time to watch an episode of something here or there.

This week, we've got something on every evening. And this is "slow." Tonight is the Easter production team debrief; tomorrow, we're going out with Devin and Lori; Wednesday is choir; Thursday, he's got choir and I've got a practice for the weekend sketch in the service; Friday, we're going to see Waco T. 1953 at Fire Exit with Janna and Chelsea; Saturday, Colin has another concert; Sunday, we've got a double date with Kat and Aaron. Lots of fun, though. I don't think there's anything in there that I'm not looking forward to, and it's kind of nice to have the evenings that used to be rehearsal time free to spend with people.

Ahhhhh.....

The concert is over. Breathe a big sigh of relief.

Not that it was bad or that I wasn't looking forward to it, because I totally was, and it went really well, but because this means that the biggest time commitments are finished now. Colin has two more choir concerts (that he's just singing in, not directing or planning)--one this Saturday and one next Saturday--and I've got two more drama team meetings and the showcase on June 5, but compared to the last few weeks/months, that's practically nothing.

Well, that laundry that I've been needing to do for the past four days (and was planning to do today) isn't being done. Still. The plan was to go back out to the farm last night, sleep in this morning, and then do laundry and paperwork all day today, until it was time to meet beauty_awake and Chelsea for dinner.

That plan got slightly sidelined last night by two things: ( Scheduling and busyness and talk of laundry )

Ha. I love how random my posts get when I'm relaxed like this.

Whee! It's Friday afternoon, and I've actually got a free-ish Saturday ahead of me. Nice. Of course, it'll be spent doing laundry, paperwork, and other such exciting things, but at least I still get to sleep in.

My hands are absolutely freezing. So cold. The rest of me is fine, but my hands... freezing. Typical, though.

My VCR seems to be broken. When I went to watch this week's GG (the first thing I've actually taped and tried to watch in ages), there was no sound, and when I tried to watch TV through the VCR, there was just static. That sucks. I'll just have to rely on downloading for the rest of the season. That's what I was planning to do for most stuff anyway (mumbles something incoherent about Canadian networks that don't carry all the shows I watch and living in a house with no cable), but now I'll just have to do that for everything I can't watch live (which is... oh, right. Nothing.).

Heh. I'm not even cranky, but that paragraph definitely sounded like I am. Fun times.

I'm going to an art show and sale tonight. I know it'll make me want to spend lots more money than I have, but I'm kind of hoping I can find something relatively inexpensive. It's a student show, so things won't be outrageously priced... I hope, at least. I'll try and post pictures if I get anything exciting. Or anything at all, for that matter.

And I'm out. The weekend is officially here!

Oh, and something else? In the past week or so, I've had at least five different people comment on how much weight I've lost recently, and I got something like three comments on it yesterday.

Cool. I haven't particularly been trying--I mean, I'm doing little things with more common sense, like walking more, ordering salad instead of fries as a side with fast food, and stuff like that, but I'm not following any specific plan.

I'm excited that I'm already starting to lose weight, though, and I haven't even really started training for the breast cancer walk yet. Hopefully a side benefit of that will be that I'll lose at least one size--it would be nice to be back down to a consistent 8. Right now, I hover around a 10, which isn't bad, and I know I'm not dangerously overweight, but it would still be nice to be back in better shape.

Oh, and ironically, the Calgary offices for The Weekend to End Breast Cancer are in the building I work in now.

Ah, the calm before the storm. Sort of. A lazy weekend. Ish.

Right now, I'm sitting in Kat's living room with the kids, watching Superman with Jakes while Kayla plays on the floor.

But for the weekend in general, I actually had a bit of a chance to just relax. Yesterday, I still had class and rehearsal, but the rehearsal was actually a vocal rehearsal and costume fitting, so I was just there in case they needed any decisions made, and to approve everything (particularly the costumes), and I didn't have much work to do, which was kind of nice. Then, I even had time for a nap in the afternoon, before I went over to Colin's, which was just as relaxing--we just hung out with his brother and his girlfriend and watched Love Actually.

Today, the choir sang in the second service, so I didn't have to be at church until 10:20, and then we had a potluck lunch, then Colin and I went to the mall to find a birthday present for my sister, and now I'm at Kat's, and once the kids have eaten and are in their jammies, we're going to actually get to go out for dinner, just the two of us, and have a girls' night! Unbelievable!!

Easter's coming quickly, though, and things are only going to get busier before they get slower, so it's nice to have a day (or a weekend, actually) to relax a little and get geared up for the next little while.

And I'll attempt to do the music meme, minus the uploading, but I only have about half my music library accessible right now (since I'm still without a laptop).

F: "Fools In Love," by Inara George.
U: "Unsingable Name," by Mike Doughty.
L: "Lullabye," by Ben Folds Five. Also, "Lullabye," by Josh Groban.
F: "Forgiven," by Deb Talan.
I: "It's Beginning to Get to Me," by Snow Patrol.
L: "Lily Dreams On," by Cotton Mather.
L: "Living in Twilight," by The Weepies.
E: "Espresso My Love," by Divers.
D: "Dice," by Finlay Quay.

Wow, I've got a lot of F's and L's in my name. And I'd post links and explanations, but I can't do that right now, so maybe later. Let me know if anyone wants any of these songs, so I know if I should even bother uploading them. If no one wants them, I won't worry about it.

Oy. What a weekend. Not in a bad way; it's just been busy.

My daytimer is filling up to the beginning of May, and it feels like next week, not a month and a half from now. The next four weeks are all mushed into one week in my head... everything from now until Easter is just one block of time in my mind.

But anyway, this weekend feels like it's been about 5 days long. You know how sometimes, the beginning of the day is so different from the end of that day that when you look back at what you did in the morning, it feels like it was another day altogether? Yeah, both yesterday and today felt like that.

Short version, because I'm tired and need sleep:

Saturday: 7:30, Class in the morning; 1:00, rehearsal; 3:30, coffee with Becky, my old Quiznos boss; 7:00, my brother's choir concert.

Sunday: 8:30, church at Colin's church, where the choir sang; 10:45, regular church service (no involvement this week) at my church; 1:00, lunch with my parents; 3:00, errands; 5:30, dinner with Colin's parents; 7:00, a hymn-sing that Colin's other choir (not the one he directs that I sing in) was performing at.

That was lots of fun, actually--most of the people there were over 65, and the evening alternated between singing hymns requested by the congregation, and then a performance by the choir, alternating a few songs of each. Lots of fun, and lots of old hymns that I grew up with and haven't sung in quite a while. My parents came to that, too--they've gone to this particular event in the past (actually, my brother's choir sang at it a couple of months ago), and when they found out that I was going because Colin was singing in it, they decided to come along. Or, rather, to meet us there, because we went separately from them.

Anyway. That was the day. Or something.

Augh. I'm seriously about to fall asleep on my keyboard. More tomorrow.

Ha. I'm such a dork. Yesterday afternoon, after work, I drove up to Heather's house, parked the car, put my keys in my pocket, and then went around to the other door, grabbed my backpack and some books, switched coats, and locked the car. Yeah. My keys were in the pocket of the first coat, which I left in the car.

Usually, I carry a spare key in my purse, but Colin still has it, so I didn't even have that. Next thing would be to call AMA (AAA) and get them to open it, but Heather and I had to leave for Rosebud right away, and there wasn't time to call, so I just had to leave it. I was planning to spend the night at Scott and Heather's anyway, so I didn't really have to worry about it then, but there was still the problem of getting to work this morning.

Fortunately, Heather wasn't planning to go anywhere today, so I took her car this morning, and I'm going to go over to Colin's office at lunch and get my spare key from him, and then I'll go back to Heather and Scott's after work and switch vehicles.

Then, I'm spending the night at Kat's. Yeah... I haven't been home since Wednesday morning. I'll be there Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights, and then I'm kicked out on Tuesday and Wednesday next week (because my mom arranged to have some billets for a choir stay there, before I moved back in). At least I've got places to stay! At Kat's, I just let myself in, and my blankets are always kept on the couch in the basement where I always sleep, so I just set my own bed up and clean up after myself in the morning.

I'm such a transient. Heh.

Man, it's such a Monday. I'm still sleepy, and everything feels like it's moving extra slowly. Especially TWoP. I can't believe how slow it is this morning. Both the boards themselves and the conversation.

Anyway...

I didn't watch the Oscars last night. I'd been half-planning to go to beauty_awake's party, but by yesterday afternoon, when Colin and I were actually making plans about what we were going to do, neither one of us really felt like going (not least because we hadn't seen most of the nominated movies), so we figured that we'd watch an Oscar-nominated movie instead, so that we could feel at least semi-intelligent in the discussions afterwards.

So, after family lunch yesterday afternoon, I went over to Colin's and helped him paint his room for a while, then we went to see Pan's Labyrinth, which I'd heard so many amazing things about, and really, it didn't disappoint.

( Pan's Labyrinth )

(Side note: Seriously! TWoP is unbelievably slow!!)

Hmmm. I feel like finding more icons. Maybe that's what I should do today, since TWoP doesn't want me to play. Is anyone over at the Dragonfly, or is TWoP only being this dumb for me?

Sigh. I repeat, it's such a Monday.

Wow, I've got to get 2007 into gear. I love persnicketiervm's New Year's resolutions, and it's inspiring me to actually make a list, something concrete that I can look back on this time next year and see what I succeeded at, what's still that important to me, what I have to keep working at.

Also, pixelarious was talking about posting 365 photos, one for every day. I'm obviously not getting anything up until Jan 4 now, but I'd like to take a picture each day and post it--not just post the "regular" pictures that I take, but take something new and indicitive of the day. That's a really cool idea, I think.

So, apparently my New Year will start on January 4.

I took down the Christmas decorations this evening, and I'm not online as much as I want to be, because my job assignment right now is a 3-day filing job. Literally, that's all I'm doing. Filing. Fortunately, it's only for three days; any longer, and I think I'd be going crazy. Tomorrow, I'll try to make my mental lists and compose my New Year's entry in my head, and write down bits and pieces when I get the chance.

I hate tedious work like that. It's numbing, and I struggle with checking out and coasting enough as it is; I don't need a job like that to help me along. I don't mind that kind of work--I love keeping my own files (both paper and on the computer) organized, but when it comes to filing for 8 hours straight, with no Dorothy-break, that's enough to make me want to pull out my hair.

The other two people in the office (the department that I'm working in, at least) were commenting on how quiet I am; how I just popped in my iPod and worked on my own. Really, though, a job like that isn't conducive to pointless conversation. If I was doing it with a friend, I'm sure the 8 hours would go much faster, because we'd talk and have fun. It's why cataloguing all the church's costumes with Heather will be a much more fun job, even though there are countless pieces that will all have to be inventoried.

In any case, I need to try and find a book to download, and then put on my iPod, and then I need to go to bed. Good night!