I sat in my room puttering around the Net, impatiently waiting for Shannon to finish putting on her make-up in our one and only bathroom.

“Oi! Kid! Hurry up! I still have to dry my hair!”

An exasperated sigh came from the bathroom. “I’m almost done mom.” And in an undertone I hear, “I’m not a kid either.”

I grinned to myself. It’s fun to wind her up. Of course when she stalks out of the bathroom with only one eye done and gives me the death-ray glare as she passes I realize that some mornings I probably shouldn’t do that. She’s not a morning person. At all. In fact, I’m not even sure she’s fully awake until she is actually getting out of the car and heading off to class.

The clock seemed to tick faster and faster and we both scrambled to get through our morning routine and out the door. Clashing scents of gardenias and ylang ylang clouded the air which sent the cat to the kitchen to hide out until it dissipates.

I grabbed my red sports bottle and filled it up with water because I knew if I didn’t have something to drink during the work day I’d feel… well, thirsty. As I poured, I mentally gave thanks to the folks at Brita because I’m too picky about the water I drink.

I debated making some Earl Grey to take along but decided there just wasn’t enough time. Oh well. I grabbed a tea bag and planned to fix some when I got to work.

After a frantic gathering of the “stuff” we called out a quick goodbye to the cat and headed out the door.

The evil neighbours are moving out!

We came home from dinner at the G’s (Mmm steak ‘n stuff!) to find them loading up a truck and from what I could tell, they’re just about done.

Woohoo!!! I feel the need to bang some cupboards!!

As for the shaggers on the other side of us, they must be in a dry spell. Which is fine by me. If they’d just quit smoking, I think I could finally be settled here. Though it is hard to believe it’s been a year since we moved in already. I still have decorating to do.

I came across a sort of meme that asks you to name 5 covers that were better than the originals. I like it so here are my answers.

In a particular order that will only make sense to me:

5. Personal Jesus – Marilyn Manson (Original: Depeche Mode)
– I love me some Depeche Mode. I really do. And I’m not saying their Personal Jesus is bad. But for some inexplicable reason, I love Manson’s version more. Maybe because my best friend Meechie and I used to sing the DM version as ‘Your own… personal… Hay-soos’ because we were young and thought ourselves terribly funny by doing so. So the song became imprinted on my mind that way. I don’t have that problem when I hear Manson’s version.

4. Chocolate Jesus – James Marsters (Original: Tom Waits. I also did not intend to shoot for a Jesus theme. It just worked out that way.)
– Now, some may wish to crucify (ha! Crucify. Pun was so not intentional) me for choosing a version by some actor over legendary Tom Waits. Here’s my thought process on that: I can sing along with James’ version. I love James Marsters as an actor and as a musician and it’s fun as hell to sing along to his version. With Tom’s it’s nice to just listen to him.

3. Running Up That Hill – Placebo (Original: Kate Bush)
– I can’t stand Kate Bush and I never liked Running Up That Hill until I heard it done by my boys. They so totally rocked the song and, in my opinion, surpassed the original. Now, this is only my opinion. Any Kate Bush lovers out there can just keep moving. Nothing to see here.

2. Dancing Barefoot – Echo & the Bunnymen (Original: Patti Smith I think.)
– On XM 44 they play both versions of this song all the time and every time I hear it, I can remember back in the day when the only version I knew about was Echo’s. It wasn’t until I started listening to XM that I even knew Echo was doing a cover of it. I much prefer theirs to Patti’s. The only explanation I have is that Ian McCulloch’s voice is perfect and haunting and sets the most exquisite moody balance for the song. Patti’s is kind of grating and I don’t like it much.

1. Bigmouth Strikes Again – Placebo (Original: The Smiths)
– Yeah I know. Will she ever shut the hell up about Placebo? No, I probably won’t, sorry. I much prefer Placebo’s cover of Bigmouth over Morrissey even though the band did it for a Smiths tribute album. Again, this is not to say I think the Smith’s version is bad or anything. I just like the harder edge Placebo gave it better.

So there you have it. 5 cover tunes I like better than the originals. Got a blog? Answer it yourself. Or leave me a comment. I’m a comment whore and I never get enough of them. 🙂

I hate having to go to bed at a decent hour during the week. It’s now 10:22pm and it feels like I just got home from work a little bit ago. And now I have to go to bed soon because if I don’t, I’ll be a zombie tomorrow. Being tired and having to stare at a computer screen for 8 hours are unmixy things.

I’m a night person. Always preferred staying up til the wee hours. I just like that time. Everything’s so quiet. It’s dark and it just feels different. Some people prefer early mornings. They get up at stupid o’clock and read the paper, maybe go to the gym or for a run or whatever. Point is they have the time for a leisurely morning before the rest of us are even contemplating getting up.

Not me. I’m lucky if I have enough time to gulp breakfast before we’re piling out the door.

Nope, give me the wee hours.

I don’t really know where I was going with this post. When I started I was miffed when I glanced at the time and realized I’m going to have to go to bed in a bit. I’m not tired. I’ll just lay there and think too much. Hate getting up in the mornings. I’m fine once I get in the shower and all that but before that, I’m quite the grotesque imitation of a human being.

Anyway, guess I’d better quit stalling now and go to bed. Grumble grumble.

On the recommendation of quite a few people really, I watched The Descent earlier today. I scared the hell out of my cat who was lazily curled up by my hip as I watched the movie on a laptop with headphones on. The first ‘scare’ made me scream a little. Ok, it made me scream quite loudly and jerk away from the screen.

Spooky was not amused judging by the look she gave me after she scrambled off the chair in a blur of black fuzz and hightailed it out of my room. I laughed, and then the movie freaked me again and even though it’s been several hours since it ended, Spooky has decidedly remained absent from my side. Hehe.

So yeah, The Descent was good for some scares, the kind I’ve been looking for and I appreciate that. Acting wasn’t hokey and the effects, such as they needed for a movie about caving, were fine. I won’t say it’s a movie I’ll add to my collection, but I enjoyed the pulse-pounding moments immensely.

I’m about to watch 28 Days Later though I’m afraid this zombie flick’s going to be more gore than scare. I’ll edit this post afterwards.

…a couple hours later…

It was pretty gory, but not as bad as I thought it might be. Though I have to say that probably the one gore thing I can’t really ‘take’ is vomit. Makes me want to heave. So mix vomit with vomiting blood and yeah, I’ll be in the bathroom.

This one had bloodvomit and my mouth has still got that metallic-y feeling in it that you get when you’re nauseous. But other than that I thought 28 Days Later was really good. For some reason I thought the main character was played by Jim Caveziel when I first saw him. A quick Imdb while I paused the movie to settle the tummy proved me wrong and it’s Cillian Murphy. I only know him from Batman. He’s very Phwoar 🙂 Even covered in blood. But damnit, he and Caveziel do sort of look alike. I think I can be forgiven for the mistake.

Also nice to know what Madeye Moody really looks like. I’d never seen Brendan Gleeson in anything but the Potter flicks. Best of all though was Christopher Eccleston. My favourite Doctor playing a baddie was way cool. (I guess it’s ok to spoil it some since the movie’s been out for 5 years. Fair game and all that. If I pissed you off, I’m sorry.)

Anyway, the movie itself… I read where there are various scenes that are sort of an homage to films like Day of the Triffids, Romero’s Dead trilogy and Omega Man. Well I’ve never seen any of those so I wouldn’t know but nice trivia eh? Another bit of trivia I quite like is while filming the mansion scenes, the crew’s favorite place was The Wooden Spoon in Downton, Wiltshire. They liked it so much that they gave them one of the dead bodies from the execution pile which can still be seen today sitting at a table. – From Imdb I love shit like that 🙂

I like end of the world movies like this. I think this one sort of touched on the philosophical quandaries you might face if you suddenly wake up to find the world’s pretty much fooked and you’re a ‘survivor.’ Granted, the characters had to pretty much just ‘survive’ instead of figure out how to ‘live’ since a plethora of pissed off zombies keep trying to kill them. But I think the best part of the film was when the the four survivors made it to the military barricade in the North. I quite like that they swapped one life-threatening terror for a very different one – psycho soldiers.

In a situation like that you’d think soldiers = safety but in this case it was an interesting twist to have them not be rage zombies but instead they’ve rather gone off the deep-end from having to deal with them and their intentions and motives are just as deadly as the zombies to our intrepid survivors.

Not quite sure if I saw the correct ending since apparently there were a couple of different ones and I didn’t look very closely at the extras or film bio on the disc sleeve but it was a bit weird for me. Rushed maybe and I would have liked to have seen a bit more.

Apparently, there is a sequel. I did not now that. Off to Netflix now.

Can’t believe the week’s nearly over. It feels like it should only be around Tuesday, not almost-Friday-almost-the-weekend. Where did the time go?

Been busy at work untangling a bunch of DNS crap and producing some Newslinks and entertaining visiting Nebraska publishers who wanted to see the studio. Lots of TV to watch which feels weird. Damn new Fall shows. I really haven’t watched much telly this year.

I had a friend once who, when a teacher challenged us to see how long we could go without watching TV, most of us lasted a day or two. She went over three years. She missed the good Cosby years, the silly bint.

Anyway, I’ve mostly preferred to curl up with the old XM (Fred on 44 is my fave channel, tho I have a soft spot for 50s on Five 😉 ) and the intertubes this year. I thought my XM subscription would run out in May since it was a gift a couple of years ago but it’s still working. Don’t know why. But I spent the spring listening to it like crazy before it stopped. Then I just got used to it.

Ugh I just went into a maudlin paragraph of how sad and dull my daily life is until I realised I didn’t want to travel down that road. My life’s not really sad and dull. It’s full of wonderful moments like being completely silly with my daughter until we’re both doubled over with laughter or getting to spend time with my not-so-new-anymore family. Or just today someone brought in to the office a bucket of puppies. Here’s one of the little guys:

Isn’t he just so pokeable? He fit in my hand he’s so ickle.

So it’s little day to day things that make life interesting. Not how many cool things you can cram into a lifetime (altho those have their place 🙂 )

Big day for kid sis today 🙂 Looks like Cross Country Kelly‘s going to be Mrs. The Cat. That sneaky boy had been planning quite an elaborate way to propose involving a hot air balloon, a perfect sunset and a big honkin’ ring 🙂 I’m so happy for them. And me! I get a brother! I could hear them both grinning like eejits when they called to tell us the news 🙂 Of course Kelly got all sniffly, softy that she is.

Anyway, I’m thrilled for them. Way cool! Here’s a pic of them and the Big Honkin’ Ring up in the balloon:

For friends and family who’d like to hear the Big Announcement they made on XM Monday night, I recorded it and, well here ’tis 🙂 (Hit play and you may experience some wait time as it loads. It’s a big file) –

Well, I didn’t ride in a hot air balloon or anything but I did manage to tuck up in my dark bedroom, all the lights off and watched ‘Carnival of Souls’ Friday night. If I never hear organ music again it will be too soon, but other than that the old film did have some good freakout moments, mostly when the zombie guy would appear as if from nowhere. I particularly liked the imagery of the zombies dancing in the pavilion. In fact, I liked the pavilion altogether – abandoned carnival type place like that – I’d love to explore something like that.

I think I’d totally dig doing the urban exploring thing like this guy does. I love his photos. Doing something like that would be a blast. I know my county has some abandoned type places that would be a kick to poke around in. Might look into that. I want a video camera and a decent digicam first though.

I just had so much fun when some of us from the paper “explored” the Grand Theatre here in town. And it’s not even abandoned. We did that for our Halloween edition of our defunct entertainment page/site and I wanted to make it an annual thing but alas… The following year we dinked around ‘Witch’s Bridge’ just outside of town but our new multimedia guy turned it into more of a news ‘investigation’ thing and well, it wasn’t as much fun as just grabbing a cam and wandering around.

But since we no longer have our entertainment section *sniffle* we won’t be doing it again this year. Which sucks.

Wow this post is a linkapalooza for a change 🙂

Anyway, the rest of the weekend was spent doing mundane household-y stuff that is just too boring to put into words so I’ll leave it at that. Time to head for bedfordshire anyway. I’m going to attempt to get a proper night’s sleep for a change.