( Carefully neutral X-Files 2 spoiler cut. )

I'm happy now that I saw it.

I am very, very jealous of everyone who has already seen or who is seeing The X-Files movie today. However, I'm seeing it tomorrow morning at 11 and my tickets were only $5, so that's a good thing.

This is going to be a long, long day.

Thanks in advance for spoiler cutting reactions to the movie - I already started bookmarking them to read later.

Hey, would you look at that? Tonight's episode of Law and Order: SVU is brought to you by The X-Files: I Want to Believe. So, in honor of it being X-Files day, a meme.

1. What one thing do you most love about The X-Files?
Mulder and Scully's relationship. It was pretty spectacular.

2. What are your two favorite seasons?
Seasons four and five, I think, with three coming in just behind that. (I love the cancer arc.)

3. What are your three favorite lines?
It's not one line, but Mulder's hallway rant from XF:FTF - "...your goddamn strict rationalism and science saved me a thousand times over! You've kept me honest! Made me a whole person. I owe you everything, Scully, and you owe me nothing. I don't know if I want to do this alone. I don't even know if I can."

From Detour: "I was once told that the best way to regenerate body heat is to crawl naked into a sleeping bag with someone else who is already naked." "Maybe if it rains sleeping bags, you'll get lucky."

Almost any line from Bad Blood, but especially Mulder, really quick, at the very end: "Except for the part about the buckteeth."

4. What are your four favorite fanfic stories?
Oh man. Eight years ago I could've rattled off a ton, but now...
Nobody's Son by Marguerite
12 Degrees/12 Rites by Anne Haynes
Grace Realized by Michaela (it took me forever to figure out that title)
The Sound of Windchimes. (JUST KIDDING.)

5. What are your five favorite episodes?
Bad Blood.
Ice.
Pusher.
Post-Modern Prometheus.
Paper Hearts.
Detour.
Redux 2.
Wetwired.
Milagro.
Demons.
Small Potatoes.

Oh. You said five? Sorry.

So today has been... interesting. I'll post the thing that's interesting in a friends-locked entry later, maybe (Amy, this is why you need a journal... just sayin'.).

But, good news: I got a Wii! I went to Target today and just on a whim looked and they had them so I bought one! Hooray! I went to EB Games yesterday and the kid (yes, he's a kid - looks about 12 but is probably 17) told me that they didn't have any and didn't know when they'd get any in and to "just keep coming back." Um, no. The next item on my agenda is to get the WiiFit, and then Rock Band. *g* That can wait, though.

Hm. I thought I had other good news, too, but maybe that was it.

I finished season two of Oz the other day - ( why did no one tell me... )

Speaking of Meloni, I've been watching SVU like a madwoman. I'm trying to catch the ones with good Benson/Stabler bits - belladonna, girlmitzi, I feel a little mislead by your "OMG, YOU HAVE TO WATCH FAT!" thing, because unless USA made a cut, the locker room scene was just okay. There are others that I like better. You were definitely right in that Fault totally rules, though. One thing that I don't like about SVU is that just when I want to keep watching and see how someone reacts, it's over. I just saw the one called Demons where Elliot goes undercover with a rapist and gets caught by the guy (Robert Patrick, who I love) and at the end he looks all sad, sitting on the hood of the cop car, and all I want is for Olivia to come over and talk to him and the darn episode fades to black. One thing I need to know: is there any episode where he cries? There was one that I saw where he got teary and then stupid Fin ruined the moment, but other than that...

I did find a place to watch episodes online, though, and they seem to have almost every single one - of course, one that they don't have is the one that a guy I went to high school with was on. *g* So that's fun, if you don't mind watching tv with Chinese or Japanese subtitles on the bottom of the screen.

And finally, I defy you to look at these pictures and tell me that Hugh Laurie would not make an awesome star of a Western. Seriously, look. Clean shaven, hair flat... I'm sure it's the white shirt/black vest combo that makes me feel that way, but still. And also, wow, he looks old (but still good) in those pictures. I think I like him more with stubble than without.

If you can ignore the fact that it's Ausiello asking Hugh Laurie these questions, there's a really cute video interview here about season five of House. Mostly about House/Wilson, but a little bit about House/Cuddy. Hugh smirks a bit when Ausiello asks about Huddy, so... yay?

I just saw what I think is my favorite SVU ep thus far - Contagious. Stabler almost went nuts during a case about little girls getting raped, and it's right in the middle of the divorce arc, or so I think. There was one point where he was close to tears talking to Olivia about leaving Kathy after 20 years, and I just... gah. Love it. Thank goodness for USA's million hours a day of SVU.

I worked the Eagles concert last night. Those men are the pickiest rock stars ever, I swear. They delayed opening doors for almost fifteen minutes, allegedly because they wanted all the lights off in the club boxes and suites. I was on the suite level up until the show started helping to turn off all the lights in all 82 suites - and of course the patrons wanted to actually see their food, so they'd turn them back on. During intermission I walked around with a remote and turned off the tv's. People were not pleased. (Okay, that was kind of fun.) But seriously, I understand wanting the lights off, but an hour before the show starts? Seriously?

Also, there was a huge flood in the bathroom of one of the suites - there was about an inch of standing water in the bathroom and it flooded out almost ten feet into the hallway. It was raining on the club level underneath this suite. That was definitely the most crazy plumbing incident yet, and there have been a ton of them this year.

Oh, and it's official: they're closing the Spectrum after the 2008-2009 season. I'm not sad about this - it's a dive, frankly, and when it rains outside it also rains inside, but it does hold a ton of history. Concerts, a Stanley Cup, a Calder Cup, the Sixers team that won the Finals (although they won on the road)...

I'm not thrilled about the idea of a hotel/shopping center literally in the parking lot of the Wachovia Center, but then again, if they put the right things there it could be neat. I'd really like to see them include a small theater to house shows that usually go to the Tower or the Electric Factory (like, um, Clay Aiken, or Christian bands), especially since we'd have to staff it. That would be neat, but probably expensive, ticket-wise. We shall see how this all turns out.

I need to do a few errands now, before the next ep of SVU comes on.

There is seriously way too much SVU/Oz crossover. Ryan O'Reilly on SVU is one thing, but Schillinger as a shrink that Stabler has to talk to? Awesome.

USA's marathons rock.

First off: ( Oz thoughts. Season two only. )

I've watched nine episodes in two days. Thank goodness for Netflix! As soon as I send back discs 1 and 2 of season 2, season 3 will be on its way to me.

I am so insanely tired, but I must say that today's Soul game was pretty exciting. No Bon Jovi, thanks to the concert in Central Park (although I don't see why he couldn't come to the Soul game and then fly to NYC afterwards), but we scored 70 points and just killed the other team. One of our guys hurdled over one of their defensive players - it was unbelievable. I'd show you video of it but I can't find it and it's not on YouTube yet.

I had to work an actual club box today, since some people didn't show up for work, which was fun. It's been a long time since I've done that.

I'm contemplating a midnight showing of the X-Files movie in two weeks but I don't know if I'll be able to stay awake. How sad is that? Plus I'd get home at, like, 2:30 and have to be up for work at 5:30. That would suck. I'll probably do it, though, and then see it again after church on Sunday. I just can't wait until Sunday to see it for the first time.

I just saw my first X-Files: I Want to Believe commercial on tv! During SportsCenter! Eeeeeeeeeee! I'm trying so hard to stay away from spoilers - I didn't read ropo's but I did look at sharinlilbit's... but no more! Spoilers bad.

Speaking of the movie, today my boss left at 12:30 because her horse lost its shoe and she had to go Right Then, and after she left I turned to my co-workers and said "In two weeks, I'm going to have a movie emergency and have to leave before 1." They fell out laughing, because they know how excited I am about the XF movie. *g*

(I seriously am considering it, though - I might see if there's going to be a midnight show, or else I'll see it on Saturday afternoon and then again on Sunday with friends. I shouldn't have told them about it and just called out that day.)

Why did no one tell me how freaking awesome Law and Order: SVU is? I think I'm addicted to the Stabler/Benson dynamic, even though I feel so wrong for shipping a married man. Last night I saw the one where Elliott gets his head slammed through a car window and loses his vision. Awesome.

A while back, NBC Universal offered free Emmy campaign buttons for those who wanted them, and I did, so I ordered them (free!) and forgot about them. Today I got my package in the mail.



All buttons are up for grabs if you want them, except for Hugh, Steve Carrell, and the SVU one. I didn't expect to get all of them, just the Hugh one. Heh.

New House promo! First of the summer. The very last line certainly got me ready for season five... not like I wasn't already excited. (And there's not even any Cuddy in the promo.)



And now I'm going to the driving range.

Hold on. I'm watching SportsCenter and they're talking about the Nathan's hot dog eating contest and apparently Joey Chestnut calls himself "The Clay Aiken of Bacon." Um, what? The SC host stopped and read it again and they were both like, "Let's just move on." Yes, let's.

So tonight I re-watched Milagro, because an episode about a phantom dude trying to rip out Scully's heart is freaking awesome.

About ten minutes in I actually sat up and said "Agent Scully is already in love!" with glee as more details came rushing back to me. (And about thirty seconds after that, I got a yearning to re-read this fic, which I remember absolutely loving at the time. I sort of frantically had to search for it, but it didn't take too long.

I also remember watching Milagro with my parents when it first aired and my dad saying that the killer couldn't rip out Scully's heart because she didn't have one - my parents never forgave Gillian Anderson for not thanking David Duchovny from the stage when she won her Golden Globe.

Can I watch the new movie right now, please?

Two posts in one day and they're both about The X-Files.

I know it's so stupid to want this new XF DVD set, but I really kind of do. It's the Pilot, Beyond the Sea, The Host, Clyde Bruckman's Finale Repose, Memento Mori, Post-Modern Prometheus, Bad Blood, and Milagro. The website says that these episodes are the "perfect grounding" for the new movie, to which I say: could they have seriously picked any episodes that show off the Mulder/Scully romance more? I mean, yes, Pusher, but come on. Memento Mori? PMP? Milagro? LOVE. Beyond the Sea? "If he dies, I'll be the one to throw the switch and gas you out of this life forever, you sorry son of a bitch!" (Or something like that.) Awesome.

The Host is the one that really doesn't make sense to me, though. Aren't there scarier ones that would've worked better?

Oh, and there are really cute pre-episode introductions by Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter. I watched the one for Milagro, which is here and also features Gillian Anderson literally hanging over CC's shoulder interjecting every few seconds.

There's also a new set of trading cards coming out that look amazing. I'll end up with a box of those, too, probably.

I have returned from Florida! We got stuck in horrendous Saturday afternoon traffic south of Washington DC, which was no surprise to me, but which wasn't much fun at all.

The drive down went pretty fast, all things considered. I drove from PA to the tip of Maryland, and then from somewhere in Georgia to just south of Orlando. (On the way back I pounded out all of South and North Carolinas. Rock on. That took five hours.)

Nicole and I got sunburned pretty badly on Sunday, our first day down there, which was spent at the pool. We both used Target brand sunscreen, which shouldn't matter, but that's the only explanation we can think of.

As a result of the sunburns, we only hit the beach twice, but we did go to the pool every day, since there was a little building there with a roof, so we could all sit under there and play games and stuff and still be outside and swim. I played Risk for the first time since college (and I still was the first one out, even though two of the people had never played before, ever!) and Dutch Blitz, which everyone loved, for the first time in a long time. I think I'm going to make a special run up to Lancaster to pick up a few more sets of the game to give to my friends, since they loooooooved it.

There was tons of drama - the guy that we had debated about inviting ended up bringing his PlayStation and playing that almost the entire time we were there, and also fought pretty badly with the friend that we flew in from Texas. (I missed that, because I had gone to sleep.) But hey, I expected things with him to be a little bit rough, but nowhere near this bad.

On the whole, though, it was a good time. Next time we won't invite video game boy and we will do more touristy things.

I do not want to go to work tomorrow, though. Oh, and I didn't even realize that this is the Fourth of July week and I have off on Friday. Still, I don't want to work! Can I go back to Florida? Or to North Carolina, which is coming in August.

I need to go to bed. 5:30 will come very, very early tomorrow morning.

I leave for a week in Florida with five friends tonight, so if anything important happens (like big huge honkin' House spoilers, or anything) please let me know. I will be missing the release of clips from XF2 on Monday, woe! Can you believe that of the six of us, not one has a laptop? Ridiculous, I say.

People at work today were bound to drive me insane, since it was my last day before vacation. One guy called out (and I was not very pleased, as I suspect he was drinking last night, perhaps at the Pearl Jam concert across the river in Jersey, and thus was not actually sick but hungover) and I was snippy with him on the phone. Things were going swimmingly until lunch, when I was trying to sit at my desk and eat and person after person after person had things they needed done Right Now, OMG, Cannot Wait Until Two O'Clock. (So I gave myself a half hour lunch and paid myself for the other half, hah.)

Then the controllers walked up with twenty five certified letters that needed to be written up in our log that gets stamped by the post office, so I had to take them with me to the front desk to write them in while I gave the receptionist her afternoon break.

After the mail was taken to the post office, I tried to do the thirty or so gift card orders that had to be sent out via UPS, but people kept coming in with overnights, so I had to leave them for Jen to do from 4 until 5 - she had to stay an extra hour to cover Jeff's shift.

Let the record show that I am really, really looking forward to this vacation. I don't think I'm looking forward to driving 1200 miles, but once we get there... yes. It will be awesome.

To while away the time on the front desk today, I read a Housefic by an author who seems to be somewhat popular and is terrifyingly prolific. I mean, she's currently writing, like, three fics at once, and two of them are huge multi-chapter things. The thing is, even though people fawn over her stories, the storyline is okay but the writing is just average, and I don't get it. How can you write so much and just not improve at all, ever? But anyway, I reached the end of what she's posted so far and now I'm bored again.

The X-Files episode "Closure" was on SciFi this afternoon and while it's still a dumb resolution to the Samantha story, it wasn't as bad this time around.

Time to finish packing.

I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath, but my softball team lost the championship. We lost the first game by two runs and yesterday's game by one run. We were also totally robbed by the ump (who actually was one of our coaches last year) - we were in extra innings (three extra) and one of our girls hit a home run down the left field line with two outs but she called it foul. Our girl had run all the way around the bases by the time we heard her saying foul. Afterwards, one of the assistant coaches on the other team said that it was indeed fair and the game should have continued.

So we're a little angry about that, but in the end, we came in second place and we didn't get trounced by the other team. The team that won is the team that wins every year and generally goes undefeated in the regular season, so... next year, we're planning on unseating them.

I took pictures and put them up on flickr if anyone wants to see them. (Since I didn't get to play, I figured I'd document the occasion.) My set is here.

We're talking about getting together on Tuesday to play a little game with everyone (just our team, I mean, not another team) and hopefully will practice through the rest of the summer. Some of the girls want to play fall ball, and I wish I could but it definitely wouldn't fit in my plans unless "fall" starts in, like, August and ends in early October. *g*

I am insanely tired today, and I really didn't do anything at all. But hey... in one week I will be in Florida! Yay!

In case you're like me and are in House withdrawl, here's a great little interview with Lisa Edelstein in which she talks about the House/Cuddy relationship, wanting a baby, and the striptease Cuddy did for House in the finale. (She showed it to Hugh first because she was so nervous. Aw.) I love the fact that they embedded a YouTube clip of the dance, too. Funny.

Also awesome is this: Angel in the Post Office. It made me all teary.

I got my promotion at work. Yay, or something. It's not nearly enough money as I should get, I don't think, but eh. Whatever. I'll get another raise in the spring.

I'm loving Euro 2008, even though I haven't gotten to see a whole game yet. I always catch the end of the later game.

Oh, and my softball team is playing for the championship! Game one is tonight and game two is Saturday morning. They announced it at church last night, since we nagged and nagged Pastor Bob about it. :) Time to go get ready.

I can't read my friends list. This is not cool.

Tonight is Flyers Night at the Phillies game, and I was already told that Marty Biron will be on the radio show today. Yay!

And the hits just keep on coming: another guy at work gave his two weeks notice today and we may not fill his position, so where we once had 8 people in the mailroom, we will now have 5.

This is bad. Very, very, very bad.

At least we had fun in the morning - it was Jeff's 21st birthday, so we had gotten him cake, and it was sitting on the counter. We're all there eating and talking and randomly our boss leans on the counter and all of a sudden realizes... holy crap, she's SITTING IN THE CAKE.

Hilarity, I ensure you.

So... Lost.

( Huh. )

I'm ready for next years' tv season now, thanks. (House, I'm really looking at you.)

As I was sitting here texting my friend about the whole Clay Aiken parenthood thing, I got the most insane sense of deja vu, but it was more like I dreamed this situation before. Oh, and I must say: a few months ago someone congratulated him on becoming a father on his myspace, and I dismissed it as a crazy RPG fan getting overzealous, but... huh. I've gathered my thoughts and come up with this: if it is true and if he was going to keep it a secret, then I feel really, really bad for him and Jaymes right now. For all we know, he was just helping a friend who wanted to have a baby with someone she trusted, whose background she knows, and she asked Clay and he accepted. I'm willing to bet that he's devastated by the leak before they were ready to tell.

Hopefully someone official from his camp will make a statement before my head explodes. One can only refresh the ClackHouse for so long.