Bits and Pieces

I realized today that it's been a while (almost ten days) since I posted anything.  This is not in keeping with my goal of writing more.  Today's entry is kind of scattershot, and slightly tangential.  It may also be kind of, um, nonsensical - I took cold medicine a little while ago and it's starting to work.  I can tell, because the room is slightly wobbly.  Or maybe I'm wobbly.  Possibly both.  This should be fun...

Update on tanning: I'm still going, but I have decided it would be in my best interests to wear my bathing suit while tanning.  This is because I have developed heat rashes in uncomfortable places.  I will say no more on the issue, other than reporting that it's (kind of) working.  The parts of me that normally tan (arms, upper chest, shoulders, face) have color, and my legs look less pale than before (they don't qualify as "tan" yet, but they no longer glow in the dark - progress!).

I have "Where is My Mind?" stuck in my head right now.  Answer: No idea.  None.

It's probably stuck there because I watched a bit of Fight Club the other night.  About two minutes after I started watching, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt go raid a liposuction facility for fat to make soap.  I lasted until the fat bag snagged on the barbed wire fence, then I had to change the channel.  And concentrate on not barfing.  I flipped back a few minutes later, just in time to see Brad Pitt dump lye on Edward Norton's hand.  I decided to skip that movie for now - especially since I already know the "twist" at the end.

I was supposed to go curling at a mid-singles event last week.  I had a presentation the next day though, and I didn't feel entirely prepared for it, so I skipped curling in order to work on the presentation.  Turns out I needn't have bothered - I was over-prepared.  Lame.  Curling would have made a great blog entry.  It's the ice sport kind of like darts, but instead of throwing darts you slide stones down a lane of ice and try to get them to stop in a target.  You are allowed to broom the ice in order to get the stone to slide where you want it.  You can also knock other people's rocks out of the target area.  It could have been really fun.  Stupid presentation :-(

Our ward choir, for which I am the accompanist, performed yesterday in church for Easter.  We did two songs, There is a Green Hill Far Away (the Hymnplicity version) and Long Ago, Within a Garden.  I was slightly loopy from lack of sleep (thanks, cold!), and mixed up two pages of There is a Green Hill.  Thankfully I realized the mix up right at the end of one verse, so the choir sang the next verse a capella while I switched my pages, and then I joined them on the third verse.  You'd almost think we'd planned it that way :-)  The second song went better, until the very last four measures, of which I managed to butcher three.  B the choir director swears up and down that she didn't even notice, so she's sure nobody else did.  I'd have been more embarrassed and annoyed (considering I'd been faithfully practising it for a month and had the ending NAILED the day before), but I was too tired.  I even crapped out on cleaning the temple this morning, after ducking out last Friday to go see The Hunger Games.  But I'm making it up this Friday, presuming I'm not still plague-ridden.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS!! I really liked The Hunger Games, but there were a >couple< of small details I feel they could have added or changed.  The camera work, for one, drove me crazy - I'm over the handheld "technique".  Really, if I wanted shaky camera work, I'd watch my family's old home movies.  God invented tripods and camera stands for a reason - don't disregard them for the sake of "art".  And I think the mutts at the end, which were already CGI'd, should have looked like the dead tributes the way they're described in the book.  There's an element of mental screwing that's missing when they're just giant bulldogs.  Also, anyone else sad that Peeta wasn't so dying that Katniss freaks out when they take him away on the hovercraft?  I think that'd have also sold the whole mind-screwing aspect of the games as well.  Otherwise, though, I loved it and I will be seeing it again when the crowds die down but next time I will sit in the BACK of the theater.  Shaky camera work viewed up close is barf-inducing.

I have wasted far too much of my life on a wonderful little website entitled Reasoning with Vampires.  It's by the lovely Dana, who does a nearly page-by-page analysis of everything that is wrong in the Twilight series.  She goes over grammar, spelling, and punctuation issues; she also points out just how screwed up the characters are, and you know what?  Bella and Edward are loathsome people.  I will confess, I was into Twilight and eagerly read the entire series.  Then came the movies, and seeing them acted out...yeah, Bella and Edward are screwed up - particularly Bella.  I seem to recall a conversation between Becca and me, after seeing New Moon, in which we agreed that Charlie should have had her committed after finding her in the woods when Edward left.  NO BOY is worth going catatonic over, and pursuing dangerous hobbies in order to hear you ex-lover's voice is so monumentally screwed up that I need swear words to accurately describe it, which I won't use because my parents read this.  Anyways, so yeah, Reasoning with Vampires = new favy site. 

Ooh, the basement is almost totally finished!  There's a couch, a TV, a rug, and a fireplace!  The fireplace is one of the fake electric heater kinds, so it's cozy without baking you on one side.  The rug is SUPER CUTE with giant pink, green, orange, and blue flowers.  The couch is a grey sectional that can double as a bed (Gillian, visits?  Maybe?), and we got some cute throw blankets to keep the cats from kneading it to death.  And the TV is a big ol' LCD.  It's a very nice basement.  Now I just need to remember to set the PVR to record shows down there.  Right now all I have are some episodes of The Walking Dead.

I think I'm gonna have to start reading The Walking Dead graphic novels.  I know the show doesn't follow them exactly, or we'd have been rid of Shane long ago, but I am interested in knowing their story.  It'll have to wait, though - I am not committed to purchasing them, and the waiting list at the library is over 50 people long.  Anybody wanna let me borrow theirs?

Okay, I'm done now.  The letters on the screen are starting to wiggle of their own accord.  I think I'll go lie down.