This would be that "career" thing I've heard so much about...

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Thursday?

Is it just me, or did this week go by super-fast? I have so many things to do in the next 24 hours. I went to sleep at 1:00 AM last night and the cat still tried to get me up this morning at 6:00 AM. At one point she just stood on my head. That was a new one for me. I was so tired I didn't care. James finally booted her out of the room and closed the door so she couldn't return. Then we got up with all of 5 glorious minutes to dress and brush our teeth and stuff like that before we had to rush off to work. Not my favorite way to spend the morning, but what can you do? And is every one in the world in a bad mood today? Maybe I'm just projecting.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

AHHHHRGH!!!

Sorry, I just learned there's going to be preview screenings of Serenity on May 5 all across the country and as far as I can tell, they all sold out in the first 24 hours since the announcement.

I am only slightly mollified by the fact that there was no screening announced for LA.

But mostly I just want to see this movie.

You can go here to see the trailer (and I recommend doing so. You know, if you like Sci-Fi):

Serenity: The Official Movie Website

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Giddy With Anticipation

Sorry, this is another Serenity entry... Just. Can't. Wait.


WonderCon Clip 128k.mov


They all seem so chummy!

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Grill Master

I'm in the middle of this crazy-writing-week, trying to get a draft done by Saturday, and JB has been taking care of the cooking. We generally share this duty, or at least take turns, but I am very grateful to JB for taking care of it while I spend literally every moment that is not working or sleeping with my lap top and a pile of notes.

Let me just say, it took him 2 whole days, but he has mastered The Grill. He made us some chicken on Day 1 that was... well, you remember that scene from "Three Amigos" where they're eating fire-crisped bats for their dinner?

On day 2, however, not to be daunted, not to crawl away defeated, JB made MORE chicken on The Grill. This chicken, people, wow. Perfect. Flavorful. Juicy. And no carbon-scoring, either.

Yeah, it brings a tear to my eye. I even took a break from writing to eat it at the table like a civilized person. Thank you, JB! You rock!

Monday, April 18, 2005

What's New In The Land Of Luna

Luna has learned a few new things in the past couple of weeks.

As you may or may not know, Luna likes to eat. She likes to have her breakfast anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour before I like to get out of bed. She has always walked on us in the morning to try to get us up. She used to try crunching on the plants we had in the bedroom, but now those plants live on the patio, so Luna has expanded her bag o' tricks.

For the past week or so, Luna has started kneading and then gnawing on my hair. You know how cats knead something before lying down? Imagine this, but with claws, at 6:00 in the morning, and the kneading continues until 1) Luna gets bored and starts chewing on my hair or 2) I get crazy and put a pillow over my head.

Once again, James is spared this torment. Instead, Luna decides to cuddle with him at night in front of the TV when we're all awake and she's not in the mood to shred anything with her claws.

Luna has also recently discovered that if she runs out the front door and into the heavily fortified and largely inescapable patio, James and I might let her explore for a few minutes. We let her hang out there with us for about ten minutes yesterday. This made her SO HAPPY. She got to sniff things to her heart's content. I don't know about the rest of your cats, but when Luna sniffs something, she moves her whole head up and down with each breath - she looks like a stuffed-up octogenarian.

The upshot of this whole "letting Luna explore the patio" deal is that now, when we're on the patio and she's inside, she gets EXTREMELY PISSED OFF, howls with frustration, and - when we come inside to try to comfort her, shrugs us off, seething with anger. Apparently we are no longer allowed to sit in the patio without her. The patio is just another part of Luna's domain, to which she will not be denied.

I think we've created a monster.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Happy Thursday

I just couldn't catch up to myself this week. I feel about 4 days behind. Too much to do, too much I wanted to get done, and ye olde day job sucking out 45 good hours of my "awake time."

What I really want to do right now is just get in a car and go driving. Drive out of LA, maybe up the coast, maybe to Oregon, see the red woods, just chill, eat at little diners... basically "run away" but that gets a whole lot more complicated past the age of 18. Not that I'm advocating running away. Or anything.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

I'm Sorry. I Thought You Were Some Kind Of Computer Program.

Dear Enigma America,

You invited me to "Submit your blog to blogtemps.com and get your opinion seen or discuss issues in our blogosphere forum. http://www.blogtemps.com".

And I callously replied "I do not believe you truly care, enigma america. I think you are playing with my affections. I will not fall for your vanity-stroking ways. Blog crawl along, enigma america. My issues are not for discussing."

I honestly believed you were a web-crawling program sent out to drop obscure invitations on a wide variety of blogs.

I had no idea you were a person. I think part of my confusion came from my investigation of www.blogtemps.com which was - and still is - a page that reads ""BlogTemps.Com is currently experiencing a server failure due to unknown reasons. Please check back later. Thank you, BlogTemps Staff". Part of my confusion came from clicking on your name, enigma america, and finding a list of 3 blogs, the first two of which had no entries. I apologize for not checking the 3rd blog. At that point, I just felt duped. A little like the kid who looks down when her "fun" uncle says "shoe's untied!" and then when she looks down he bops her in the nose.

Hence the sarcastic refusal of your invitation.

Imagine my surprise and chagrin when I received your last comment "I don't give a damn. You bloggers are a little testy, huh?"

Either, I realized with a jolt, enigma america is an actual flesh-and-blood person who I have inadvertently offended, or a REALLY sophisticated web-crawling, invitation-dropping program. In either event, I feel an apology is in order.

I'm sorry. Human being or sophisticated program, I want this blog to be a warm and friendly place, a place where all sorts of people - sorry! - where all sorts of entities are welcome to come and post comments.

If it makes you feel better, I seriously fretted about this all morning. All I can say is: oops.

Have a nice day.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Puppies

Let's say a person was required to watch 4 hours of a not-terribly-well-received sci-fi show. And that show had a SUPER CUTE little puppy on it. Is it possible that the stress of watching lots of extremely mediocre TV would somehow condition the test subject to bond with the puppy in the absence of any emotionally compelling characters? And that the sudden raging desire to have a little puppy (yes, and then a dog, I'm a believer that when you adopt a pet it becomes part of your family for-ev-er) will fade with time?

If not, Luna is going to be very, very unhappy with me.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Noonsies

I just went into the kitchen and there were, like, 10 of my co-workers sitting around the TV watching baseball.

Apparently I am totally out of the loop, because it's the first day or something of the Boston something's training or possibly season? Wait, I just heard all this. It's the something day. It has a title. "SOMETHING DAY". "Day One"? I think they were from Boston. Is that right? "B" something. Does this have anything to do with the Red Socks? (Just kidding, I know it's Red Sox. Or is it Red Soxx? Redd Sox? Redd Soxx?) Not "Training Day" - that was a movie with Denzel Washington. "Opening Day" sounds closer. Is that right? And there was a team name and I think it had a "B" in it. The "B---s". The "B---s". Nope. It's not coming.

Does anyone know what's going on?

Monday, April 04, 2005

The Green Thumb Experiment

It's been a whole week without rain (knock on wood) so I'm trying out this whole "container garden" thing.

Possibly because I've been working out on the patio more often, Luna has gotten very good at streaking out the front door and into our little patio area. While I'm glad she's not taking off down the street, I do kind of wish she wouldn't make a mad dash for freedom every time we open the front door.

We have a little "kitty halter/leash" for Luna to wear. Cats don't belong on leashes. They don't understand leashes. They resent leashes. And yet it's the only way Luna gets to go outside so she TOLERATES the leash.

While "gardening" yesterday (with Luna sulking resentfully at the end of her kitty leash on the patio), I met one of the neighborhood kids. A very nice boy, maybe 11 years old, who decided yesterday was the day to tell me his life story. I didn't want to be rude, so I stopped gardening to listen politely to what I thought would be a 30 second "hi, I'm a neighbor, your cat is pretty, goodbye I have to go play video games" conversation. I misjudged the boy. Intermingled with his life story, he had a lot of questions about cats:

Boy: "Why do cats like to chase birds?"
Me: "Probably 'cause they're small and twitchy and they move fast. And they have feathers. Cats seem to go wild for feathers."
Boy: "Does Luna like to eat birds?"
Me: "I'm sure she'd love to chase and catch and toy with birds. She'd probably eat them, yeah." (Didn't want to say she'd most likely "play" with them until they were limp and bloody and then promptly lose interest, leaving the bird to die of it's internal injuries hopeless and alone.)
Boy: "Why do you think dogs like to chase cats?"
Me: "Cats like to run away from dogs? Dogs like to chase things that run away from them?" (Maybe because cats have that whole curiosity problem. You know, always asking questions...)

Then I got to hear about all the pets that live in our 37 unit complex, including dogs and cats that USED to live here but then moved away with their owners. After 10 or 15 minutes of smiling and nodding while potting soil crusted on my hands, the boy left. Luna had had enough of the leash by this point and so I took advantage of the sudden silence and took her back inside. And a good thing too, because 30 seconds later the boy was back with his two cockatiels sitting on his shoulder.

Luna may have been on a leash, but I'm betting if she'd still been on that patio, we'd have found out the answer to the age-old question: "How long would it take a small orange cat to Houdini it out of a kitty halter, jump onto the shoulders of an 11 year old boy, and incapacitate / mortally wound two cockatiels?"