Will make a proper update eventually.

In short:
-Went to Canada for the weekend. Hung out with Adam and Kathleen, bought a stellar top at H&M, got some cute jackets and skirts from the newly be-slimmed Kathleen.
-Feeling kind of meh about LEGO Batman. I liked LEGO Star Wars (both sets) and Indiana Jones. Am possibly not in a videogaming mood, honestly.
-Been trying to run a bit! Hope I can keep it up when the weather gets bad, but my apartment complex has a gym, so I am low on excuses.
-Going to be in San Francisco from October 22-26! V. exciting.
-Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

(It was awesome and funny and I'm so glad I went. I should get around to seeing Ratatouille since I like him so much.)

Also I guess it looks like Adam and I will be in San Francisco from October 22nd to 26th. We're going to two Mountain Goats shows, one at the Wonder Ballroom in Portland and one at the Fillmore West in San Francisco with Jon and I guess Kate?

Things are good! I'm taking a three day weekend because I can (and for the show, though I could have taken a half day), and taking more time off in a couple of weeks, and then that week in October. I hope I don't run too low on FTO (my accrued time off) when gift sub season starts, because I may need some sanity breaks then, too, but good god it feels great to take some time off.

I must confess, I have been ignoring livejournal in favor of posting in my blog thread on allcaps. Not that anything particularly interesting has been happening. I've spent the last month either working or helping out at my parents' house, because there was a furious and desperate cleaning and remodeling going on. See, my parents went to California this summer, and stopped in Berkeley to visit my mom's old college housemates (who are married). They decided to stop in this week on their way to visit their son who is attending Evergreen State College in Washington, and my parents are determined to hide the fact that their house is in disrepair. Seriously, it's awful. It was annoying for me (but I cant complain too much, since a lot of what I did were things I should have dealt with long ago, like giving away a lot of my clothes I don't wear and other stuff I've hoarded since childhood) but also satisfying to see my parents come at least close to finishing a project for once.

This weekend was my first obligation-free weekend in a month. I mostly have spent it lying in bed or playing videogames. I have no regrets on this score. I also bought some books, including volume ten of Fables. I really love that series.

Future plans include going to see Patton Oswalt (but I am waiting to see if Andrew gets back to me so I know if he wants to go or not. I'm tempted to just buy two tickets anyway, but I don't want to be stuck with one if Andrew can't go, and Martha can't go) and planning a trip in October with Adam. The plan is seeing the Mountain Goats possibly twice (Seattle, then Portland) and then spending the rest of the week either in San Fransicso or New York with Dumbrella/Allcaps people. The coast has not yet been determined. I guess Adam and I should talk about that more so tickets and things can be arranged.

And I was supposed to have an interview for another team at work last Thursday, but it got rescheduled for THIS Thursday. My big secret hope is to get on a day shift. What I really want is for them to do another "everybody gets their ideal shift" thing before new hires start this fall so I can work weekdays, which emphasis on the DAY part.

Anyway. Back to videogames for the night, I think. It's been ages and ages since I played Destroy All Humans 2 (before this week) and I've since beat a portion that was stalling me out the last time I played.

INDIAN MOVIES ARE FUCKING AWESOME (RIDICULOUS, OVER THE TOP, THEY SO DON'T EVEN CARE.)

SERIOUSLY.

CAPSLOCK.

(I'm watching Om Shanti Om. It's insane. Insanely wonderful.)

I actually don't care about this tooooooo much, because I'm not that sentimental about my high school years, it would appear that damp got into the walls behind one of the bookshelves and all of my yearbooks from junior high and high school are probably ruined. My senior yearbook (where there is a terribly written article about me because I had a unique extra-curricular activity in dog shows) is almost definitely ruined. There's black mold growing on the bottom of it. It still kind of sucks, though. It's also not signed or anything, because at our school, you had to come back the next year to pick up the book, you didn't have it around graduation.

Luckily, my high school diploma (and my dad's, which was also on that shelf) came out unscathed, because I do care about it. I stuck it in the glass-fronted display case (ironically in a storage room no one goes into) with my cool stuff from Japan and my B.A. from U of Oregon in it. My mom has plans to move my dresser into the back room, move the computer where the dresser is, and then move the cabinet to where the computer is (where the TV will go is a mystery for now), which makes me happy. I have these expensive dolls, one of which I paid like $300 for (in retrospect - oh my god, why did I do that) and two of which were gifts from the owners of the doll factory we toured. If I'd known we were getting them, I wouldn't have bought the expensive one, honestly, but it's very, very pretty. It's a girl in a kimono, a formal one, I think. The others are the Emperor and Empress. Do a GIS for "Hina dolls" and you'll see the sort I have, just the two for the top tier. Idle googling just now taught me that most Hina dolls are made in the prefecture I visited when I was 15, so that makes sense.

I bought the original version of Hairspray (which I love so fucking much) and the 1982 Scarlet Pimpernel with Ian McKellan and Jane Seymour (which I also fucking love) on DVD from Amazon, and got them today. I was gonna watch Hairspray, but I might watch Pimpernel instead. (I've watched them both dozens of times on VHS in my life already.)

Hmmm, decisions!

So I just had the scare of my fucking life. I had this computer (the old iMac) hooked up to my new computer (the new iMac, just purchased today... I have not yet christened him, and never named the old one because it is not mine) for several hours, and I think maybe it came close to overheating this, because when I was done, I tried to restart this one and oh god it couldn't find the hard drive for like half an hour. Frantically inserting install discs to try to diagnose didn't quite work either, and when I was trying to insert the TechTools Deluxe disc, it started working normally again.

Fingers crossed, here.

But! I did indeed buy a brand new 20" iMac (was thinking about the 24", but seeing it in the store, I don't need that much monitor space) and because it was bought on education discount, a free 8GB iPod touch and a free printer.

Here is a wacky photo taken with photobooth for your enjoyment.

So hey, I finally got around to watching Batman Begins. Yeah, I know, but I figured I should finally watch it so I can see Dark Knight in theaters, maybe.

Anyway, I hope it's okay for me to tell you that I think the actor who played Dr. Crane is pretty hot, internet. Because I kind of think he is. (Christian Bale does not do it for me.) Also, I think I knew when this movie was coming out that Scarecrow was going to be the villain, but I forgot, and I'm slightly proud that I have enough geek cred/knowledge to connect the dots before he pulled the mask out for the first time and start going "Ohshitohshitohshit SCARECROW." (This is mostly because of Sandman, I will admit, and the thing with the ruby and whatshisname, Dee.)

WHEEE SUPERHERO MOVIES.

(I'm sorry. It's three in the morning and I'm a bit silly. I'd also blame alcohol but there's no way I've had enough to justify this much absurdity. I'm just hyper and up too late.)

Yesterday I watched Patton Oswalt: Werewolves and Lollipops (I really love Patton Oswalt's stand up) and today I watched the end of In Bruges, having started it a couple of nights ago.

It was good, I agree with Liz's assessment that Colin Farrell looks hot in glasses, and Jim was a pretty amusing character.

HOWEVER:

( spoilercutz )

I wish it weren't already 2 in the morning. I kind of want to watch the Patton Oswalt one again, but I stayed up until three last night, watching it and listening to the thunderstorm.

I haven't updated in a long time!

Uhh, DVDs:

I've watched two "sets" of 4th Doctor (Doctor Who), Robot and The Ark In Space. 4th Doctor is awesome. More Torchwood, more 10th Doctor. Watched.... Bullitt (such a dude movie), Death at a Funeral (meh, but there was some scatological humor that seriously ruined it for me), Indiscreet (not bad, but not great), The Riches (didn't enjoy), MST3K: Hamlet (pretty funny), Black Books Series 2 (it makes me giggle that there's a tech at work who looks like Manny... and that's about it. My most fervent enjoyment has come from the Doctor Who and Torchwood stuff.

Life continues apace. Getting ready to move (so ill-prepared) and working. In about a week, I've also got to help my grandmother mind the farm while my parents take a vacation.

The good thing is that once I've got the apartment, I'll finally be able to have people come visit, hooray!

I guess I'm moving next month. Wheee.*

*I'm actually pretty excited. I gushed a bit about it to the coworker who made me cookies on my birthday while we were waiting for a meeting to start today. Gonna live about a mile from work, but since I work nights, walking is out of the question :(

So, I'm sitting here listening to music and I started playing "Lola" because it was in a Rick Emerson top five (songs about transvestites) today and I hadn't listened to it in a long time. So I'm singing along, and I start stumbling with the lyrics and I realize... my brain is unconsciously substituting the lyrics for the Weird Al version. Gah.

But since I drew this between 2 and 3 in the morning last night, I figured I might as well ink and scan it. And they're kind of fascinating to look at.

(origins - I saw it on Rene Engstrom's journal first.)

( So you don't have to see two pretty big images unless you want to )

Oh what fun to work the phones of an internet company when a very particular sort of server goes down! I came back from lunch (after weathering a relatively minor website issue earlier in the day) to watch the call queue jump from 0... to 60... to 130... ultimately dancing around 215 or so for a while, until the engineers managed to slap the internet equivalent of a hastily scrawled Out of Order sign on that part of the site, and it finally started to die down.

Also, my pancreas is curled into a ball and weeping after two candy bars (I felt self indulgent with a website meltdown, but I guess the IW* team got the batshit reactions) and a left over Krispy Kreme one of the IW guys gave me and Michael, another CS rep.

*IW is tech. I am CS, Customer Service.

Gonna watch Confessions of a Dangerous Mind now and revel in fake 1960s and Sam Rockwell.

You perhaps would not expect a movie starring a Real Doll to be really sweet and really sad and really charming, but then you would be wrong.

Torchwood's a bit naughty, isn't it! I'm not a Captain Jack fangirl, but he is fairly delightfully sassy. Also, he just used the word techonobabble, good work, Jack.

Also, Flight of the Conchords is adorable.

Plan to watch very soon: Lars & The Real Girl.

[Ellen is has a spiral notebook of graph paper in front of her. So far it's mostly been used to design a crochet blanket, but right now she's playing a variant of Conway's Life to kill time.]*

Nathan: ... Are you doing math for fun?
Ellen: No, I'm playing a game.
Nathan: You are. You're doing math for fun.
Ellen: No, no, it's like... it's like solitaire. The most math I have to do is counting the dots. It only looks like math because it's covered in numbers.
[Skeptical look]
Ellen: Okay, so it was invented by a mathematician.
Nathan: Yeah. You're doing math for fun.

*Normally, when I play Life (or as I learned it in elementary school, Population), I play standard version until it peters out or hits a repeating pattern. I looked up the rules to refresh myself on Wikipedia and discovered "Immigration," played with two colors. That way I can play until one color overwhelms the other. Neat. I also like a variant called "Seeds."

So, my mom and I are hanging out in the living room, petting the dogs and talking about the Pope (as one does.)

NPR: ...blah blah blah, no longer allow pedophiles in the church...
Me & Mom: *snort* [random conversation about the Pope's visit]
Mom [to Bobby, lying on his back and getting tummy rubs, in a talking-to-dogs-voice]: What a good boy... I'm a corgiphile.

...
...

But in a good way, you know, like an anglophile.
Me: [uncontrollable laughter]

I haven't been watching much lately. For someone who has to listen to people bitch about how long it takes for new releases to become available every day for a living, I've taken my sweet time watching No Country For Old Men. I've been sitting on it for about two weeks now, in fact.

So I watched that tonight, and it was good. I've also recently watched a bunch of extremely old Doctor Who, all the way back to the first Doctor and the origin of the Daleks. Daleks are awesome, the first companion is irritating as hell (it seems like all she ever says is "Grandfather!") and the first Doctor is weird. Not good weird. Apparently senile old man weird. I'm gonna check out some Tom Baker stuff, too. I've got to finish a Trek recap that I've started, and I have Flight of the Conchords to watch still.

FUN THING I LEARNED TONIGHT: Somehow I managed to IMDb and wiki my way to learning that Woody Harrelson's father was a contract killer. Whoa.

Also, my taxes have been done for weeks, I just keep forgetting to write the checks (stupid increased income!) and actually mail them.

Long time no see. Well, long time no see for me posting on LJ, anyway.

What is new for me?
-I shall soon have a new phone and a new phone number!
-I am arranging to go to Sasquatch with Adam and Kathleen, which is fantastic and I am very much looking forward to seeing them again.
-I started running on the treadmill 3x a week, which is hard because I'm out of shape.
-I bought Heretic Pride by the Mountain Goats on Monday and have not stopped listening to it since.
-I started looking at apartments in Hillsboro. I want to move out. I think I'm going to ask Martha if she's interested in sharing a place with me because I don't make all that much money, frankly.