Doxie Proxy

Oof.

Mom and Dad came down this weekend, and bless their heart, they brought a bedroom suit. It was a lovely weekend, and we took the bike out for a short ride on Saturday. I try not to constantly think “spinal cord injury”, but sometimes I lose that battle. We wear helmets, and he drives carefully, but you never know what the next fellow is doing.

Abigail is meandering around the computer room, probably bored out of her (tiny) mind. She’s been walked, watered, fed, snacked, petted and played with, and is just restless. Good Lord, weenie dogs are a handful. Sheesh. I’m off to entertain the dog!

We switched two bedrooms upstairs, changing one from the computer room to the bedroom, and visa versa. In the meantime, the 3rd upstairs room is now packed with stuff that hasn’t found a home in the appropriate room. I am so looking forward to going through all that. Go me.

2:45 A.M.

Well, this weekend was fraught with nothing. We saw movies, ate out, and basically did precious little else (unless you count untold hours of C0H/C0V and W0W). My little hunter is coming along nicely. My third hunter, on my third server, and my first H0rde character. I’ve decided I pretty much dislike h0rde. My good friend is playing one, thus I play one too.

We saw Tristan and Isolde Friday night, and Underworld:Evolution tonight (last night). Both were good, and I’d see both again. I can’t be assed to look up actor names atm, but the woman who played Isolde was lovely, James Franco was surprisingly nice as Tristan, and the fellow who played Lord Marke was enticing, yet a little spooky, as he is wont to be, due to the droopy eye.

My parents may be coming down this next weekend. The cleaning frenzy will ensue, and soon. New bedroom furniture!

I’m placing a group Lush order tomorrow. Myself, several friends from work (men and women), friends from past jobs, the jovial server at the Lebanese restaurant my bookclub went to last night, and a friend of a friend who joined us. Yay for splitting shipping costs!

I have an appointment with the chiropractor Monday afternoon. I’d like to start taking yoga with a couple of friends, and would really like this neck crap to be DONE. The neck pain has eased tremendously, but the headaches I’ve had ever since are just plain sucktastic. It’s like a vice is squeezing the back of my skull, and God, how it hurts. The first and only time I’ve had an adjustment, it didn’t hurt, but I thought my head had snapped right off my shoulders. The sinuses were insta-cleared, and I could smell China from here, but I was scared to move for a moment. Hah!

Argh.

There are a lot of movies coming out in the next year or so. Some of the lesser-known ones we’re looking forward to are: A Scanner Darkly, Silent Hill, Catch and Release, X-Men 3, The Omen, Eragon (with John Malkovich!), Click, Ghost Rider, Lady in the Water, Stranger Than Fiction, Mongol (early life of Genghis Khan), Resident Evil III (Afterlife) and IV, Spiderman 3, Shrek 3 (J.Timberlake joins), Beowulf (screenplay by Neil Gaiman, cast includes Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn and Crispin Glover), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Halo (WETA to create creatures, miniatures and effects).

There are about a thousand other movies, but these are a few of the one we’ll be seeing.

On a rather girly note - I am loving my Lush products. In fact, I think I need more.

Heading out. Abigail is giving me ‘the look’. Such a doll!

Memoirs

We went to see a Memoirs of a Geisha matinee today, and it was a lovely movie. I don’t care that there were Chinese actors playing characters in a movie based in and on Japan, for they did a wonderful job. The cinematography was breathtaking, and Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang have the most incredibly expressive eyes. It was a beautiful story which translated into a beautiful movie. The only thing I would have changed would be the part about the handkerchief at the end.

Spoiler - Highlight to reveal ->In the book, she pulled it from her sleeve
and showed it to the chairman. In the movie

she let it go atop a cliff, and it flew away into the wind. <- End of spoiler.

I need to do some serious organizing. We’re getting a new set of bedroom furniture sometime in the next few months, and I want to switch the computer room with the bedroom. I initially switched them because the fan in the then-bedroom squeaks like mad, and neither I nor Mister know anything about fans, be it installing or fixing them, and neither did/do we care all that much. Now, much to my chagrin, I realize that the new stuff needs to go in the now-computer room, and I want to to use this as an opportunity to do a purge of everything and anything I don’t need or love (see question #9).

Tags: movies

Swan Through the Branches

Swan Through the Branches
Originally uploaded by artofgold.

Beautiful

Tags: photos

Reading

A good book is among the best the world has to offer. I love to get wrapped up in a good series more than anything, and just finished Windfall, book 4 of the Weather Warden series by Rachel Caine. This is an incredible series, based on the premise that there are people gifted with the ability to control weather, earth or fire. The Weather Wardens is a group of, you guessed it, weather wardens, who have teamed up to protect the world from the ravages of weather. This book is amazingly interesting, and I guarantee you’ll learn something. As Jim Butcher said, you’ll never look at the weather channel the same way again.

My two favories serial book sets are both by my favorite author, Laurell K. Hamilton. My favorite series by her is the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter set. These books are based in a world where vampires are known to exist and indeed, are legal citizens with afforded rights. Also in existence are all manner of were-animals, including the ever-popular werewolf, as well as wereleopards, and so on. It’s fascinating reading, and I was hooked, but how, from the minute I started the first book. More’s the pity that I’d only purchased the debut novel, for I had to go directly back to B&N to buy the next 5, and have agonizingly awaited each novel thereafter. The series, in order, is: Guilty Pleasures,The Laughing Corpse, Circus of the Damned, The LunaticCafe, Bloody Bones, The Killing Dance, Burnt Offerings,Blue Moon, Obsidian Butterfly, Narcissus in Chains, Cerulean Sins, and Incubus Dreams. People have grumbled that the series has changed as it’s grown, and while it has, I’m still a diehard fan, and it can do almost no wrong in my eyes. I adore this author, and I’d read her writing, were it posted on a cereal box top.

BloodRayne, among other things…

Oh, doth BloodRayne sucketh, and mightily so.

That movie has to be one of the top 5 worst movies I’ve ever seen, and we see a lot of movies. It was so awful we were cringing all of the way through it, and kept looking at each other in disbelief. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for well over a year, and I am so utterly disappointed, it’s pathetic. Rayne’s costume was ill-fitting and horrible, the acting was plastic (despite supposedly great actors!), the cinematography was iffy, and the editing was, in a word, flawed.

The Mister said certain critics gave the movie a half-star, and I am convinced they were being kind. Michael Madsen was horrible (he had one expression and inflection the entire movie), Michelle Rodriquez delivered her lines in a “I can’t believe I f’ing have to do this” manner, Sir Ben Kingsley was laughably awful, and Kristanna Loken (sp) was predictably horrible.

I’d like those 2 hours of my life back, please.

Bento

It’s been calling to me, materialistic wench that I freely admit I am, and I finally succumbed to the wonder of the Zojirushi Mr. Bento Stainless-Steel lined Lunch Jar. I’m going to start taking lunches to work, (OK, so I’m going to try) and figured I’d be more motivated with a great new lunch box. Whether it’ll be worth the overpriced cost, only time will tell. If it sucks, there’s always Ebay.

TGIF, indeed. I want to see BloodRayne this weekend. The Mister played both of the Bloodrayne games, and as usual, I watched. Nifty stories, but I don’t generally have the patience, or more accurately, the dexterity needed to beat the bad guys, so.. I watch. =)

The neck is much improved. Massage #3 was this morning, and it was loverly. (loverly..)

My heart and prayers go out to the families of those poor miners, as well as the mining company itself. I can’t imagine what that entire community is going through. I can and do imagine, however that the media is slap full of idiots, with a few decent folk tossed in.

WTB LMT

LMT is the acronym for “Licensed Massage Therapist“.

After almost 2 weeks of alternating between

• agonizing neck spasms,
• piercing, burning pains that seemed to shoot from my left ear to my left shoulder
• vise-like headaches that wrapped my head from one ear, around the back of my skull, clear to the other ear,
  

I upped the Ibuprofen dose and frequency, in order to take care of the inflammation, and my wonderful LMT friend suggested a massage. Now, I work with this friend (who shall henceforth be referred to as “LMT”), and I would never ask her for one, because I don’t want to abuse her good will or her talents, but as she offered, I quickly said yes in approximately 14 languages. It was a sitting head, neck and upper back massage, and I remember her saying something about fascia, and about trigger spots, and she mentioned little knots, and also the phrase “kinda like bubble wrap”. Bless her for being instructive, but I could barely remember my name as I felt those wonderfully gentle hands soothe away that awful pain. I was fairly drooling (thank you, Wet-Nap) when she finished, and you have never seen a more grateful person. Remember that movie, “At First Sight“? Amy cries after she gets a massage by Virgil, because it was such an incredible release of tension. I swear, I almost had tears in my eyes after my own massage. Man.. I could go on for hours, and probably already have, but I actually slept well last night, and woke up in a good mood. It is so lovely not to hurt that it was like being snockered. Well, minus the nausea, dizziness and idiotic behavior (for me, anyway).

She gave me another massage this morning, and is going to give one more tomorrow to finish things up. Again, there was talk of fascia, and releasing something, but I honestly lost all sense when those nifty fingers did their magic.

My hat is decidedly off to the LMTs of the world. I have a newfound respect for a profession I knew very little about before, and I am very impressed at the knowledge and training you have to have before becoming one.

So..

WTB LMT!

Coinage

I spent a good portion of day 1 of 2006 sorting and learning about, of all things, coins. Dear uncle H. passed away a few months ago, and my parents have inherited an unsorted collection of coins, comprised mainly of wheat pennies, dollar and half-dollar coins. Today I’ve learned that there are several types of dollar coins, including Eisenhower, Morgan and Peace (among many others), and that mint marks generally indicate which mint manufactured the coin. I know just enough to be dangerous, and my hands, even after 10 washings, still smell faintly of ‘Eau de Olde Money’. We have around 40 baggies with various amounts of coins in them, each marked with the denomination, type, year and mint mark, if any. I know, I know.. I can’t stand it, can you? We are some partyin’ folks, yes indeed.

Tomorrow’s drive back is haunting me already. Argh. Where’s Jeannie when I need her? Wench.