Late Night Ramble

I'm in the semi-state of boredom right now where I feel tired - that is to say, my eyes feel sleepy; that weak and tingly sensation you get from them when it's probably time to call it a night - but the rest of me feels like doing something. Anything. Watch another movie or flip on the TV. Restless. Yeah that's it. I thought if I came out in the living room and blogged for a bit I'd feel less like heading out into the night for a walk and more like going to sleep. A walk would do me good, sure but it's late at night and I don't like to leave the kid home alone this late.

My fecking computer's being a bitch tonight though so blogging's making me even more restless. I've got who knows how many spy/adware viruses on this thing and not any idea how to get rid of them short of formatting the hard drive. The stupid thing keeps switching to some kind of... invisible window or something right in the middle of typing and it's pissing me off. It's like it's trying to switch to another program that's running only when it does it, nothing is there but the window I'm working in is no longer active and if I'm not looking at the screen when I type, I go on typing until I look up and see that the past 3 or 4 sentences I've typed out aren't there. God it's really pissing me off.

Nothing like frustration and anger to wake you up.

Anyway... It's been Hayden Christiansen evening tonight. For some reason I found his work in Episode III compelling. Very dark, very angry and angst-ridden. Obviously of course, it's the character he's got to portray but I found him very raw and I liked that. I know he got a pretty bad rap for the way he played Anakin Skywalker in Episode II and I can't say I disagree with that. He was very wooden and whiny. But I chalk it up to Lucas being more interested in the effects than in directing his actors.

I rented "Life as a House" and "Shattered Glass" tonight, both starring Hayden and I was pretty impressed. Sure he was angsty and whiny in "Life" but he was supposed to be. It was how I would have liked him to play Anakin and it showed that with the right direction, he could have brought more to that role than he was able to. I'm not going to write a formal review or anything but I will say it's a movie I'd like to own. Apart from the fact that Hayden looked good as a little Mansonite goth boy with piercings everywhere, he showed a lot of range, and I hope there will be more to see from him in the future.

"Shattered Glass" was just as good in that he played the ingratiating suckup deceitful liar to the hilt. Definitely made me hate his character which I think is a sign he got the job done. The movie's about Stephan Glass who was a 'hot' writer for 'The New Republic' in the late 90s until he got caught out for lying and completely inventing over half of his stories. I saw the 60 Minutes interview with the real Stephan Glass and Hayden's portrayal was spot on.

So yeah, I'll be a Hayden fan. But really it's all about the angst. I love angsty stories, the ones that tear at you and almost make you cry out for these characters. Downfalls are especially good. Ultimately there's usually redemption or salvation of some kind and I like that. But I have some perverse interest in watching the decay first. Maybe that's why I love the movie "Thorn Birds" so much despite Rachel Ward's hideous acting. The idea of a fallen priest is compelling. Or a volatile, destructive teen so angry at the world he doesn't know which end is up. Or the tearing down of a man bent on revolutionizing the way the world regards sex simply because the 'normal' views are illogical to him (I rented Kinsey this weekend as well. Loved it.)

I don't know, maybe I'm a freak of some kind but it's the angst that grabs me. Always has.

I still don't feel tired.

Spooky's laying on my foot and it's bugging me. I hate to push her away though, it's kind of cute. But one foot is warm and squished under her while the other's kind of cold. Okay I just moved my foot away and she didn't even budge. That's good. Least someone can sleep.

Meechie called me earlier today. I've been worried about him ever since I got a wild phone call from him back at the end of last year. I don't want to talk about his personal life online because it wouldn't be right, but suffice to say I worried for him. It was probably the oddest call I've ever gotten from anyone. But we spoke today and he sounded so happy he was practically gushing. I was glad to hear the tone of his voice. It sounded so much better. He's found God and even though he was excited about that and couldn't stop himself from sharing his emotions with me in such a rushed, tumbled speech, part of me kept hoping that it wouldn't lead to him trying to 'convert' me. How selfish eh?

I love Meechie more than even he knows I think. He's been my greatest friend since 10th grade. We've been through so much together and have always stayed fairly close even though I live in Nebby and he's still in Monterey. Our lives now couldn't be more different but he'll forever be my best friend and I know he feels the same way. It's just that... well I get so uncomfortable around religious people. Always have. I don't believe. I don't have that kind of faith. I put my faith in my family and friends and it's always been enough for me. I've gone through some tough things in my life but I don't feel like I 'never would have made it if it weren't for my faith in God.' I did make it through them just fine, and pretty strong if I do say so myself. I don't feel like I need a God to believe in. It feels too much like a crutch, or something to assign blame to if things don't go right.

But that's just me.

But I'd never try to dissuade someone from their belief in God. I'm happy Meechie 'got religion' if that's what he feels he needed to get him through his own dark times. I just, I don't know, don't want to be preached at. It makes me uncomfortable. Religion, or lack of it, is too personal of a matter to try and force it on anyone. That kind of decision should be left to individuals to figure out on their own. Er, in my opinion. That's why I don't answer the door when the jehovahs or mormons come calling. Trust me, if I have questions or seek any kind of answers, I will do it in my own way, and my own time. Trying to push me into it will likely just make me shy away that much more.

I just hope I can make Meechie understand that. I don't want to lose him as a friend because that would crush me. I'm happy for him that he's found what he needed though and I'd never laugh at his decision or belittle him for it. If my Meech is happy, truly happy for once in his life, then I'm glad he's got God.

Right enough of that. I think I'm going to try and sleep now.

The Piano Man

A little while back, I was watching Good Morning America as I usually do while getting ready for work and they had a blurb about this guy who was found distressed, wandering on a beach in England, dripping wet and unable to speak.

They don't have a clue who he is and he won't speak so they think he's suffered soem kind of trauma. The only thing he will do is play the piano or draw pictures of one:


The mysterious 'Piano Man'


A very frightened 'Piano Man'


One of the drawings he has done. The only way he seems to be able to communicate right now.

I'm completely intrigued by the story and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I find his image haunting - especially the one where he seems to be cowering :( I just want to give him a hug, poor guy. Or maybe because the circumstances in which he was found are so mysterious. Dripping wet, wandering distressed along a beach, labels removed from every stitch of clothing he had on, won't, can't or refuses to speak...

Very interesting.

The latest update on The Piano Man is that the psychiatric hospital where he is being cared for has received a large number of tips on their hotline and are beginning to try and track them down. But it's been a couple of weeks now and his image has been broadcast all over the world - surely someone must recognize him.

This is one I'll be following. Here's a BBC article about him and here's another. You can google 'missing piano man' to find more if you're as intrigued as I am about this man.

Revenge of the Sith

Call me geek, call me nerd, call me whatever you like I don't care. I fecking LOVED this movie. We've seen it twice now and I think we'll hit it one more time in a week or two before we settle in for the long wait for the DVD. I'm just happy to be able to savour the movie on the big screen. I'm a longtime fan though I admit there are more devoted fans than I out there - you know, the ones who dress up for the premieres and subject themselves to ridicule for it from people with no sense of fun.

But it was a great show and it was made even more fun by going to the midnight premiere Wednesday night (or Thursday morning if you're going to be anal about stuff like that.) Wednesday morning Mike from work told me everyone going was going to hang out at Perkins until about 11:15 or 11:30pm chugging coffee and hyping themselves up. However this clashed with my own anal need to make sure we get a good seat and plan to arrive at the theatre by 10-ish.

So I said I'd check the place out then, and if it wasn't a madhouse, the kid and I would meet everyone at Perkins. If it was a madhouse at 10, I'd ring him and tell him everyone needs to forego the coffee and get their asses down there.

Well it was a madhouse. A few die-hards had been at the theatre since 5pm camped out with the folding chairs etc. By the time Shan and I got there it was a zoo. Both shows were sold out. So I called Mike, passed on the info and soon we were in our seats, near the back but it was best we could do with seven of us trying to find a row of seats together.

The atmosphere was crackly and tingling with excitement. The noise level was a dull roar mingled with the odd bellow from the drunk seated one seat over from Shan. He kept shouting at people and being incredibly vulgar with the language. I'm no prude but there were actually people there with their kids - myself included - and it was just not on. I didn't realize he was drinking because yes, I am that stupid. I was therefore amazed when, after management booted him and his drinking buddy out, she proceeded to pull out can after can of Bud Light from under his seat. What an asshole. Anyway he left with his tail between his legs as the entire theatre burst out with appreciate applause when the mall rent-a-cop showed up. So yay!

Up at the front the true geeks were there in their Jedi costumed glory and they flicked their light-up sabres around and posed for pictures. They were having a great time and I envied them for that. I envy anyone who doesn't give a toss what others think about them, because trust me, they were ridiculed plenty.

Anyway, soon the lights dimmed and another loud round of applause burst out. Of course then we had to sit through trailers, but that's ok - some were quite good and there were a few for films I'm looking forward to this summer :)

But the second the loud symphony began playing the opening strains of the Star Wars theme and the logo appeared on screen, the applause became a roar of approval and glee. This was the moment all of us wanted. When the scrolling words of the opening scenario began to roll, we quieted down and settled into our seats for a hell of a ride.

After, there was more applause and we began to file out. Mostly there were sly grins on everyone's face and it didn't take long for the 'What did you think?' questions. Shan and I just sort of grinned as we stumbled to our car. Unable to truly articulate how we felt about the film we just sort of waved at the others and then drove home. The impact needed to be digested.

Both of us were tired having been awake for nearly 21 hours straight and Shan went straight to bed. But I had to write my column, or finish it rather. I ended up writing about my feelings of anticipation before and how I felt afterwards which meant I had to sit down and try and put into words how I felt afterwards. It was difficult but I managed. I then sank into bed and - I'm not kidding - I had a melange of dreams about Star Wars. Nothing I can really recall, but I know when I woke in a panic at 9am because I was supposed to email my column in I had vivid recollections for a while about the dreams. It was cool :)

Anyway, you can read the column here. It appeared in Friday's paper along with Mike and Scott's hilarious and excellent Toy Movie Review Theater. (It's a PDF file, just so you know. I'm not sure but you might also need to register with theindependent.com to view it and I'm sorry about that. The paper went to registration in February. But it's worth it and it's free.) I loved it. Apparently they did the same thing last year for the Spiderman movie and they won some awards for it. Good on them, it was fun.

Shan and I went to see Sith again this morning and the theater was less crowded which was nice. So much detail I missed the first time so it was good to go again and catch more to it.

It's been a fun week.

Aside from the Star Wars week, I had my followup with the doc. I can't remember if I blogged about having to go to the ER a month or so ago because I had a high fever, but anyway, when I was there they checked my blood and discovered I was very very anemic. To the point of them really wanting to admit me to hospital. I wouldn't let them tho so they let me go and prescribed iron pills. They did scare me enough though and I took them faithfully, ate every iron-rich food I could find, and bought over the counter iron pills for when the prescrip ran out.

Then I went to the doc so they could check again and then I had to come back in a week and get the results. I guess my BP was also high so they were checking that too. Anyway, Doc says I'm fine. Iron levels had climbed back up into the normal area and my BP was way down. He was attributing that to the fact that I was nervous about seeing a new doc, and at the ER I was naturally freaked about being in the ER and I was feverish. So my BP is good, my iron is fine, I feel a million times better than I have for a long time, so i guess being so sick was a good thing.

So it's been a good week :)

Ooo and also my Forever Knight DVDs arrived (Thanks Matt!) Yeah, Things are good right now.

Star Wars

Okay I'm a geek. I've never denied it. I'm like a lower-level geek though, because there are higher levels of Geekdom that I know I'll never reach.

I will never be able to write code. I once took a Visual Basic class in college and it just about made me want to drop out because no one wants to feel that stupid and actually pay for the privilege.

I'll never be a regular reader of slashdot. I keep checking it out whenever a true geek mentions it and I go cross-eyed and bored soon after I load the website.

I actually kind of like Bill Gates and Microsoft products.

And I will never be able to tell the difference between an A-Wing starfighter and a B-wing starfighter.

But that doesn't matter because I love Star Wars anyway. And today one of the reporters at work asked me - since a lot of us from the paper are going to the midnight premiere of the final Star Wars coming out next week - if I'd like to write a column about it. If I could have gotten away with shouting "WOULD I???!!!" at him, I would have :)

If I understood him right, they're putting together a little Star Wars section for the paper and some of the other people going to the midnight show are contributing, and so I'm completely over the moon that I get to as well. I don't think Mike has any idea how much I love, and am continually grateful for the chance to write for the paper. So when he asked me it was all I could do to stop myself turning cartwheels out the door when I left for the day.

And so now of course my mind is wigging out and I have to think of an angle. I could do a straight review of Revenge of the Sith I suppose. Sounds kind of dull though. Although it seems to me on my travels around the Net that reviews of fanboy movies like Star Wars by females are few and far between. Maybe that's my angle. Star Wars according to a girl.

Meh. Seems dull as well. I'm taking Shan to the show and she's relatively new to the franchise. I could blather on about her reactions to it. But that doesn't seem like it would fill 15 - 20 inches of column space either.

Well, this weekend we are having a marathon of the other 5 movies. Maybe an idea for an angle will occur to me during that. If any of you reading this have any ideas, let me know :)

What a lovely day

Ok so last year I whinged about having a birthday that went by vastly unnoticed by just about everyone, including the kidlet and while I had already been in a funk at the time, feeling like Samantha from 16 Candles didn't make me feel any better.

Well this year the birthday was smashing. Today was just about perfect and it's so nice to go to bed this evening with just a faint smile on my face. The lovely coworkers were so nice and had cookies and a sign by my desk, my new "Lincoln" family sent a nice card (Thanks Jo!), my sister's wonderful boyfriend out of the blue sent me an Amazon giftcard - I'm also helping him with his website so it's not so weird as it sounds to have someone I've never met send me a giftcard :) - and we had a lovely dinner with the grandparents this evening where we listened to Matt the Cat on my XM thanks to an early bday pressie from Gary, and the night was capped off with a nice long talk with my sister whom I miss very much.

It's been so nice today.

I don't know why I felt so bad last year because frankly when you get older you're not supposed to give a crap about birthdays anymore. So I've been told. But bdays were always special in my family and sometimes a little bit of a fuss made over you is nice.

Anyway, aside from that work today was exciting. Last night we had some very bad weather around here with large hail, high winds and close to 10 inches of rain which wreaked havoc and caused a lot of flooding around GI. The damage was extensive enough to warrant a visit from Governor Heineman, and as you can imagine the newsroom was really busy today out getting stories that will appear in the newspaper tomorrow, and some of which was piped thourhg to our department so they could be put online. Photos came in, some of which I took while I was out doing real estates and got to have them used, some taken by our professional photogs. I got to help get them captioned and online while our web editor busily flitted around adding all of the news items to the website.

It was busy and exciting and fun to watch. I can't explain how much I love working at the paper as opposed to the hospital. I miss my coworkers at the hospital and I miss the site, but it was hard to get new things done for the site, and I'm discovering that the thrill of working on a slew of sites is something I enjoy. I get to keep learning new tricks which is always a bonus.

Anyway, yeah, I'm quite tired now so I'll pop off to bed. Today was just perfect.

Freaky

So I'm perusing the net and on my travels I came across a picture of this guy:


What struck me was his uncanny, freaky, creep-me-out resemblance to this:

The Wizard of Oz monkey.

*shudder*

Just thought I'd share :)

Tornado Time

Well I've just returned from a quick trip to the north end of town to sit in my grandparents' basement. Yes it's that time of year when a beautiful sunny, muggy day can quickly become a wall of ominous black clouds swirling above and showering Grand Island with rain, hail and the odd tornado.

Whenever the weather gets scary my grampa usually calls us and makes us drive up there to be safe down in their basement, so we round up anything we'd like to hang onto, stuff Spooky in a backpack and drive up there.

There's a lot of bad weather happening this evening but oddly, the system sort of split as it hit GI and the two parts ended up skirting completely around us which I find odd. It rained a little and we had some wind and a lovely lightning show but not much else.

So as soon as the all clear was given we came home. Spooky streaked up our stairs and practically banged down the door trying to get in. She's not used to taking road trips you see and I think she was scared. Poor thing also probably did not enjoy being squashed in Shan's backpack full of homework.

Anyway that was our excitement for the evening.

Spent a bit of time today fiddling with the header for this blog. I don't like it but it's better then the generic one from the blogger template. I really should just suck it up and redo the design here but it's such a fiddly pain in the ass with all the blogger code. Meh. I don't hate this template though, apart from the colours and header. The layout and code is quite nice actually so maybe I'll just fiddle with colours.

Sorry, rambling. My contacts are bugging me so I guess I'll put the laptop away now. Night.

Summertime.. and the living isn't easy.

I am not cut out for heat. I've had the AC going since March when the weather began warming up because I can't stand being hot in the slightest. Neither can the kidlet. It's so uncomfortable. Clothes stick to your skin by a thin sheen of sweat and merely walking from the living room to the bedroom requires a stop in the bathroom to splash a bit of cold water on the face. I hate it.

I mention this because our ancient AC has become frozen again as it does from time to time. This means I have to shut it off and let it thaw for several hours. in the meantime the house becomes stifling hot - the kind of hot that makes you long for the deep-freeze of early January even if you do have to scrape the car windows.

So Shan and I are baking and trying not to think about it. Hopefully I can turn it back on before bed because the only thing worse than being awake and uncomfortably hot is trying to sleep while uncomfortably hot.

I hate this apartment.

Anyway, had a nice weekend again, nothing as exciting as a weekend away, but I got to introduce Shan to Gone With the Wind, which she enjoyed. I also was awakened very early Sunday morning by Shan and for a moment I thought she was sick. Fortunately she wasjust coming in with a lovely breakfast she had prepared for Mother's Day :) She dragged herself out of bed at 6:15am on a Sunday to scramble some eggs and cook some toast and brew some Chamonile tea for me.

Awwwwwwwwwww :) She's so cool.

Saturday I'd taken her out to Fonner park to practice her parking skills. We've discovered she isn't very confident parking the car so we're going to work on that until she's got it nailed. We're slowly building up her confidence and her skills so that driver's ed and the big test won't be a huge shock like it was for me.

Oh I'd driven a little bit before I took my test. My dad painstakingly and patiently taught me how to drive in his beloved Honda Accord (a stick I might add) in the empty parking lots around my high school. But that was after I was cruelly tossed behind the wheel in class and told to drive along Highway 1 in Pacific Grove. A road so precarious and scary I'm still afraid of it.

I didn't get a lot of time to become confident behind the wheel, which might explain the 6 attempts I made at parallel parking during my test :)

Anyway, here's my baby behind the wheel *sniffle*

Keyword search terms

The time has come once again to take a look at some of the keyword search terms that bring people to my humble abode here. I do this every now and then because it amuses me to think about the thought process involved in some of these search terms.

In case you're wondering how this works, whenever you type in a search term into google or some other inferior search engine and ukmelia.com pops up and you visit me, my stats thingie records the search words used that led you here.

Mostly the search terms for my site end up being things like 'Kiefer Sutherland screencaps' or 'Ridiculous thoughts video' because well, I have a lot of Kiefer screencaps, and I named this blog after one of my fave Cranberries songs.

But every now and then, I get stuff like this:

"Pointed areolas" - what the hell? What is the fascination with areolas I wonder? They seem to be quite the porn search term. Now, perhaps this person was actually looking up pointy areolas for purely academic purposes.

Somehow I doubt it though. But I am tired of the blog showing up in that particular search. My own fault though because I keep mentioning the word when I make fun of Keyword searches. Ah well.

"a cold shower metaphor" - Now, my first thought here is that this person is in the middle of a netsex session and has used the cold shower metaphor one too many times, so he pops up Google and quickly searches for another way to tell his amour that he's too turned on.

"Ty Pennington is hawt" - well that's a given.

"Ty Pennington's phone number/cell phone number" - Honey if I had that do you think I'd be blogging right now? Umm, no.

"I hate Ty Pennington" - Go away.

"sexiest picture ever" - I'm actually interested in seeing that. *goes off to see what Google comes up with for that one* Hmmm.. a simple search turns up Jesse McCartney, The Berlin Wall (???) and somebody named Derrick. Oh well.

"My parents can't afford braces" - No kidding. Braces are expensive and they suck. I had to have the bloody things for 5 years. Still not sure why iI turned up in this search but there you go.

"What shoe size does Nicole Kidman wear" - Why would someone want to know this? I mean, I can understand being a fan. I mean look at my current Ty Pennington crush - but I could care less what his shoe size is. Well... unless that whole myth thing is true, then I'd be interested :) But I don't think it works for women.

"I have had a cold for a month" - I sympathize. of course I know why I turned up here because I HAVE HAD A FECKING COLD FOR A MONTH and it sucked much and I whinged about it here. Take my advice whomever you are - go to the doctor and stop trying to cure yourself online.

"Massaged his groin" - ok I think I'll just leave that one alone.

"What made hitler so evil?" - I dunno.

That's all for now :)

A blog a day...

Time to spank it into high gear and actually blog like I intended to when I started this thing.

I know I don't often write about interesting things, and this is just some chick's mundane life out there for the web world to see, but damnit it feels good to write. Even if it's mostly shite :) Not like I have a large audience. I envy people like my friend Corey who can think up interesting things to blog about and nearly instantly whip up a bigger audience for it.

So what's going on... let's see. Currently I'm waiting for the kid to come home from the G's so I can get her settled, make sure the homework's done, bath's taken etc. so I can go watch a vid. I've had a craving for the movie 'Backbeat.' I love this movie about the Beatle's early years. Ian Hart is so dead-on as John Lennon it's freaky. And Stephen Dorff is well.. he's fecking gorgeous to look at for a couple hours :)

So that's my night planned. I chatted with 'Gooey' (that just makes me giggle so much) this morning and he's safely back in Montana-land now and trying to get back to normal. No residual aches and pains from the marathon so that's good.

It was mentioned over the weekend that it would be fun for Jo and her crew, and Shan and myself to rent a minivan and head up to Montana to visit which sounds like hella fun to me. Yes I said 'hella.' I don't get vaca though until August which sucks. I've only got minimal PTO time to cover the major holidays and that's not enough for a huge roadtrip. But I've got that idea marked in my Things To Do list.

Ahh I hear the kid now. Toodlepip!

Finally, a great weekend

Man. Was it ever fandamntastic to get the hell out of Grand Island for a couple of days. It's been so long that I'd forgotten what it's like. After a coolant fix and a couple of spanky tires, my car was Interstate-ready once more so the kid and I could make the short trek to Lincoln and watch Gary, his nephew Gunter and best friend Swi run in the Lincoln Marathon yesterday.

Gary and Swi often travel around and run marathons but this was Gunter's first and he ended up beating the 'old guys' :) So well done Gunt :)

Here's Gary running towards us:


Gunter, just about to run out of the shot - he's too fast!:


All in all we had a lovely weekend staying at Jo's (Gary's sister) and just hanging out with everyone. Hannah and her friend Anna stopped by and brought a flick called 'The Station Agent' which was a weird, yet strangely gentle and subdued, mellow film to wind down with Saturday night.

Anyway, the thing is that all of these people are so new to me. Jo, Tom, Hannah, Gunter and his wife... It was sort of surreal to go through your whole life with your family and be at ease, and thoroughly comfortable with them all and their quirks and habits, and then later in life find out you've got a whole 'nother family to learn about and get to know. I'm really grateful that everyone I've met so far has been incredible, funny, friendly and generally lovely which has totally made everything easier. And I hope the fact that it takes me a bit longer to open up doesn't put them off.

It's weird because ever since meeting Gary and getting to know him I've wondered how to fit him in my life, and how I'd fit into his. There's guilt actually because of Dad. Nothing overwhelming, but it's there. When I speak about Gary to people I stumble a bit when I explain my relationship to him. Most of me just wants to say 'my dad' but there's a part of me that says 'whoa wait a sec, your dad was Bob and he was a great guy and fab father. Don't replace him.'

But the sensible part of me says 'Don't be stupid. You're not replacing him and you're incredibly lucky to have met Gary - in fact you're incredibly lucky to get to have 2 Dads in your life so just shut up and enjoy it.'

At which point I decide it's best not to continue carrying on conversations with myself and go on about my day :)

Anyway, at the end of the day, Shan and I had a wonderful time this weekend, and both of us are looking forward to getting together with everyone again.

Good times.