Worst day EVER

Today is Friday. Normally I would be like, "yeah Friday woo hoo, we get to watch a new stargate atlantis!" But not today. Today I have to go into Atlanta to measure an actor for the Snow Queen. I have the same actor playing both the crow and the reindeer = terribly convenient. I'm not entirely sure what is changing in the script to allow this as both the reindeer and the crow are in the same room at one point, but we shall see. One fun factoid I found out about...It is illegal to purchase and part of a migratory bird. So when I tried to google crow feathers to see if I could buy actual crow feathers, I found all these pages telling me how illegal it is. Sadness. I did however find some very nice looking rooster feathers that have already been dyed, so they should do rather well. And talking about puppets is making me feel better...irony of life.
I go out to my car to drop off BJ's paperwork and see the state of my vehicle. One problem with the way people are around this building, they like to drive their cars, on the grass, so they can unload groceries in front of the door instead of in the parking lot which is only 15 feet away. There are children who like to run and play kickball and throw dirt at each other. Thus all the grass is dead and the red georgia clay has turned into a fine layer of dusty dirt and completely coated my car. I have thought, many times, of washing my car, but knew it would be just as dirty in a matter of hours parked at my apartment. So, you can imagine my dismay, when some of the aforementioned children decided to DRAW in the dirt on my hood. No they did not draw rainbows, or flowers, or happy faces, or even the typical "wash me" that seems to befall many many vehicles. They drew words. Word like Fu** and A** and bicth. Yes, they spelled it bicth. Thus I know it was children. Plus the handwriting was indicative of a young child. While this was both hurtful and upsetting, I also know it was nothing personal. The a**hole little children are unsupervised by overworked parents and probably did it for the great fun they had. The only problem with children being children, is when you draw in the dirt on someone's car, there are very fine little pieces of rock in the dirt on someone's car. You might as well just key the damn car and be done with it. So, I took a napkin, knowing that these obscenities were already scratched into my hood, and rubbed over them. I would rather have a squigly mess than swear words. I took my car to a car wash, and had it cleaned. I can still see the swear words, because I know where they were I can pick them out, but it's definitely going to stay a part of my car until I have it traded, or repainted.
And then...oh yes, there's more...I went to Duluth and dropped of BJ's paperwork. I had a quarter tank of gas left and decided on my way toward home, I would stop and fill up. I preceeded to drive around, with the help of my handy GPS looking for gas, to more than 15 different gas stations. They were all bone dry. At least some of them would take down the price numbers, because then you could tell from the road that they were out of gas. Some of them left their numbers up and put brightly colored bags over their pumps. Some of them said they were out of gas on small pieces of paper taped to the pumps, and one said they were out of premium and mid grade. It turns out that station was also out of regular. After driving for more than an hour and a half, from Duluth into Norcross, I found a station flooded with cars and got in line. I finally got to a pump that only had regular, which my car will be angry about because she requires mid grade at minimum, and saw a nice little paper sign, NO CREDIT, CASH ONLY. Thank God I had $30 in my wallet. Otherwise I would have had to push my car home. So now, I'm home, I'm cranky, I have obscenities scratched into the hood of my car, and it's not even 2:30pm. Maybe I should go back to talking about the snow queen...Hopefully this will be my only post of the day, because if I post again, I may just have to kill something...

The Snow Queen!

My apologies at my recent lack of posting and stuff. I got a call a couple of days ago asking if I might be interested in designing and building the PUPPETS for the Snow Queen to be put on by a theatre here in Atlanta. My response...OH YEAH!!! So I have been feverishly doodling and watching youtube videos and googling research. I love it. I am building a very realistic crow, 4 pigeons, and 1 reindeer head piece that will be kind of like a sculpture. You know what this means, right? My blog will be consumed by all things puppety and snow queenie and stuff! I am very excited and very happy to be doing this project. Stay tuned for process shots. I still have to be buying materials, but as soon as I get them, WATCH OUT! Cause there will be puppets invading your movie screen. WOO!!!

Watch it, love it, have a Coke!

Today is, Thursday. The youtube video of the day can be found by going to icanhascheezburger.com and looking for the video of ninjacat. Seriously, it made me laugh. I just wish they could have added sound, then it would have been awesome! I determined recently that, since my friend is learning Japanese I will also learn Japanese and we can help each other. I am currently playing with the Pimsleur system, and it's pretty cool. I'm talking in Japanese and asking my computer how it's doing. : )

Tuesday Movie Madness Extravaganza Thing!

Today is Tuesday...bombombom!!! BJ and I have been kicked back watching movies allllllllllllll day, except for that one episode of Lois and Clark we watched with breakfast this morning. We watched some scary movies, some creepy movies, some funny movies, and a lousy movie that was suppossed to be really scarey. I wanted to blog and tell you about the ones that I liked, and even the one that I didn't. Please exscuse the vocabulary and sentence structure, my brain feels a little squishy after watching the tv all day.

Batman: The Dark Knight : Very good flick. Very LONG flick. Although it felt like they were not in a rush to tell the story, it was definitely one of "those" movies where you could tell the passage of time. Don't get me wrong. I am a big LOTR fan of those movies. They always had the unique ability to absorb my full attention so that I didn't even know I had just sat there for 3 and a 1/2 hours straight. All in all, good film, but the pacing felt a wee bit off.

Open Water : Based on a true story about a couple who was left behind in the ocean. You can believe I am never going scuba diving after watching this one. I might consider snorkeling given the appropriate stimulii, but with my intense fear of sharks, I would be better off just going to the aquarium. Very well made movie on the shoestring of a budget. I have no idea how they did some of the very complicated filming and I am highly impressed. And never going scuba diving...ever. (at least not without a waterproof sattelite phone, a bottle of water, and a compass.)

Be Kind Rewind : Suprisingly fun and engaging. Not a whole lot of emphasis on Jack Black in this one, so his tendency to act "Jack Black" is somewhat diluted with the other folks in the film. Check it out, it's really cute. And it made me mad at Sigourney Weaver. After seeing her in baby mama it's got me wondering where she'll pop up next. Kudos to her working in big films again, but she was always my favorite in the aliens movie facing down the queen.

Day of the Dead : A remake of the Romero original, which I have not seen, but I am cool with. I just can't seem to find a zombie movie as poignant or strikingly terrifying as Dawn of the Dead. Of course the 28 days later and 28 weeks later rank incredibly high on list of fav. zombie films. End result, watch it if you feel like getting creeped out by zombies doing the "zombie thing," but don't get your hopes up for superb quality of zombie lore.

Seed : This one got two thumbs, and two big toes, DOWN! Anytime I feel like rolling over and going to sleep during a horror movie, there is something seriously wrong. I mean seriously! The logic the good guys were using made absolutely no sense. There was a lot of blood and gore, but effects don't always carry the movie when you introduce a confusing rag tag team of characters who plotted against the serial killer, get me confused as to who exactly is being killed because I know I have seen that character but I just can't recall who he is, and making very little linear sense. BLECH!!!

Some flicks we watched yesterday or very recently...

Mr Brooks : Oh this movie was just beautiful. It was funny, there was death involved. Kevin Costner was positively brilliant. Gotta say, the daughter was completely transparent to me, and I am not always swift on the uptake. I had sneaking suspicions about her that were confirmed waaaaaaaay into the movie. If you feel like watching a guy kill people who hates himself for doing it but just can't bring himself to stop, check this one out, it was sweet. I wasn't sold on Demi Moore's character struggle, but I don't think they developed it enough. It ended up feeling like to conflicting plotlines uncomfortably squeezed into the same space. You know, like construction where the lane narrows and you're stuck behind a slow driver, sandwiched uncomfortably between a semi and a concrete barrier. That being said, Kevin Costner and William Hurt were impeccable.

3:10 to Yuma : A little slow starting out. I felt the awkwardness between the characters and felt it settle as their relationships developed. It was just beautiful at the end. 500 points for this one!

There were others that we watched, but none of them were exciting enough to win a place in this blog. To Nim's Island, Kung Fu Panda, and the others, don't hate me, you were just fine. Seed was just bad enough to get in here so I could talk about how bad it was. Ta ta for now! I think we are going to watch Stargate Continuum. Maybe...

Japanese Candy, Adsense, and Assasin's Creed

What do these three things have in common? ME!!! BJ and I took his younger siblings over to Super H Mart to check out the hello kitty fun stuff, and I decided to try a new and exciting Japanese Candy. Ta DAH! I have no idea what it is called, but it is very tasty. Creamy strawberry taste on top with a nice chocolate layer on the bottom. There are a couple of them in front of the box right there. Off to the left you may see those peppermints hanging out, they are normal size, so that should give you some sense of scale.
Adsense is this nifty program I use that puts those little ads you see on the right side of the page. By clicking on them, adsense gives me a very small amount of money each time. So click those ads people! If you don't mind. : ) They are safe, according to google, and I had to promise not to click on my own ads, because that is cheating.
Assasin's creed is this awesome game I've been eyeballing at Gamestop since it was released. Well, I got it, and it's awesome. BJ is a little disappointed because his processor doesn't meet the minimum requirements, while mine totally does. He may be experiencing a little computer envy, but don't tell him I said so. Love you honey! (He reads my blog too.) So the idea of this game is you are delving into the genetic memory of this old school assasin's decendent. There are Templar Knights running around, and we all know that they were kind of jerks. The people who developed the memory machine are trying to find something. I don't know what yet, but they are convinced it can be found by tapping into the stored memories and it's pretty sweet. So, now you know what my day has been like. And I am kind of avoiding the whole foreign language debate until I get a clearer idea of what I want. I know I want to be a polygot (person who speaks multiple languages) but the question is where to start. Ah well, back to my game, and looking sady at my empty candy box.

Oh, Indecision, release me from thy bonds!

Dramatic posting title, I know! But I am feeling dramatic, so I feel it suits my purposes. I love foreign languages. I love english, I love books. I love to read. The thought of reading books in other languages, especially the really poetic ones, makes me tremble with barely suppressed delight. Here then is the problem.
I used to be good at Spanish. I mean really really good. I could walk by hispanic people at the store and completely understand what they were talking about. This was at least 4 or so years ago. Now I don't know that I can really put together much of a sentence.
I love German. I lived in Germany as a little girl for four years with my parents, and when I hear German spoken to me, a lot of the time I can kind of figure out what is being said. I really liked a lot of the trips we took in Germany and would someday like to go back. The classes I took in German longsword were amazing, and mostly taken from the really really old GERMAN texts by the swordmasters.
I really like Japanese. I love manga and watching anime, and the fact that I could get japanese manga and understand what is going on is just mind boggling. One of my best gal pals is currently teaching herself Japanese, so how convenient would it be to try and learn at the same time, bouncing things off one another? I want to be able to write kanji in a notebook because I think they are beautiful, and should I get the option to learn Japanese calligraphy, that would just be sweet.
I love opera. The sweeping arias, the throaty baritones, the music filling the space in my head and heart as romantic tragedies befall our heroes. Many operas are written in Italian. One of my favorite foreign films, Life is Beautiful, in Italian. Do you see where I am going with this?
So the question becomes...do I relearn Spanish? What do I learn after that? Can I handle knowing multiple languages? Am I just wasting time? Will I ever get a nintendo ds lite in electric blue...*sigh
I think the game systems that UBIsoft is coming out with are brilliant. My spanish coach, my japanese coach, my word coach, my sat coach (not that I need that particular one.) I want a ds, bad. I want some of these awesome coach games but they don't have a lot of selection yet. The titles currently or soon to be available cover, English, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, and French. I keep hoping they will make German and Italian coaches, but I still have that quandry of what to learn first. HELP!!! Comment on what you think! German, Spanish, Japanese, Italian?

Hair on TRIAL!!!!

Today I had the fun adventure of going to a hair trial. I am going to try really really hard not to make this a post about how the wedding industry is ripping off brides at what should be one of the happiest times of their lives. Really. My hair came out very pretty, but I didn't get a hold of my camera until about six hours after the fact. A lot of the curls have stretched a bit, but a lot of them are also still holding their shape. Behold the pretty pictures!!
Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go talk to someone else about the fact that I had to pay someone $60 to do this very simple style, and how she was the most reasonable.

Just Blowing Hot Air

I have decently long hair. It's nothing overly strenuous for me to deal with my hair. I wash it, I let it dry, I put it in a ponytail and we are both happy until the next shampoo. Unfortunately, my hair looks really really good when I blow dry it. You may wonder why that is unfortunate? It takes at least 30 minutes to do it right, and as someone who doesn't feel like putting products in my hair or on my face every single day, that is a long time. Plus, I get sweaty when I blow dry my hair. Maybe it's just the passage of hot air and the fact that I just got out of the shower, but I just feel a little unclean, which totally defeats the purpose of the shower I JUST TOOK. *Sigh If my hair only looked, eh, when I dried it, this wouldn't be much of an issue. But I got one of those whopdedo ionizing hair dryers and my hair comes out nice and straight with a little body but not too much. You try getting used to dealing with your hair down when 90% of the time it's in a ponytail. I'm thinking that after the wedding, I may be due for a trim. After all, if I can find a nice, not so long hair style then it wouldn't take so long to dry, and I might actually like drying my hair. Or I may just fall back into the viscious cycle of putting it in a ponytail.

New type of book...food memoir?

So I have become a little over interested in Japanese food, and bento, and sticky rice, and onigiri, and if I had a deep frier, I would have tried to make egg rolls by now too. I want to make myself bento style luches, and I thought if I get good at it, I can make them for future children. But then I was thinking, how is a kid going to feel about a japanese packed lunch when they are totally not Japanese? I got this book from the library. It's considered a food memoir. I have never read a food memoir before, unless Chocolat counts, but I am pretty sure that it does not. This girl is explaining her childhood mostly by the impact of food and eating habits. It's pretty darn cool. At the end of each chapter, it provides a recipe for some food dish that played a major role in that chapter; just what I need to try some new things out!! Bento Box in the Heartland My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America by Linda Furiya. It's pretty cool. Check it out, but be warned, it will make you HUNGRY!

Curses on Nickelodeon too!

I've been watching this show, Avatar the last airbender. It's on Nickelodeon and I'm not entirely sure if Nickelodeon makes it or if they bought it from an anime company. The episodes are on Nickelodeon, and it's a really freaking good show! SPOILER ALERT! So Apa, the flying byson, gets separated from Ang, the avatar. I'm feeling for the avatar who has lost his companion pet, and it made me really freaking sad. Then they had an episode of what happened to Apa while they were apart was really intense. I teared up, I know I'm a sap when it comes to sad stuff, but I just couldn't help it. The older I get the more sentimental I become about sad things. I used to not cry at all. I watched Lion King in movie theaters as a kid, not even a sniffle when Mufasa died. Myabe it's because the older I get the more experiences I can relate to personally. No, I have never had a flying bison get kidnapped by sand bandits, but who can't relate to the loss of a pet, or a loved one for that matter. This is a very poignant show, especially for a cartoon. I miss having pets, but pets just aren't all that suited to apartment life. Oh well, back to more Avatar. Eventually they'll find Apa, I'm sure of it. How many tissues I'll burn through in the meantime is another matter completely.

Please Sir, May I have some ice cream?

I think the hardest part of being sick is what you are not allowed to eat. I am totally a dairy girl. I love milk, cheese, yogurt, you get the picture. Unfortunately when you are sick, dairy = phlegm. And really, no one wants to encourage the growth of that nasty stuff. Plus I must applaud the use of a humidifier. I definitely think it helped with the vicks vapomist added in. Although, buyer beware, when it stops running about 4am, I tend to wake up due to the lack of sound. However, that might just be solved by getting a larger capacity humidifier, or I could just learn to accept it. I think it's early onset maternal instincts developing. My mom once told me she always knew when we were doing something bad, because it would get so quiet. : ) I don't care if you think it looks silly, I love this awesome little unit that looks like a dragon...kinda. Isn't it just the cutest little humidifier ever?! I just might have to get one of these. You know, when I have time for fun and frivolous things. Ta ta for now! I've got stuff to do!!

Curses upon ye pitiful exscuses for antibodies

It's official. I have caught BJ's cold. I feel icky. We borrowed a humidifier from BJ's mom and ran it last night. It does not last 10-14 hours like it claimed; more like 7. But, it is very effective when you add in the Vick's Vaposteam. Tonight we'll be putting it to work again. Please excuse me. I must go find a tissue...*AchOO