It’s been a weekend full of movies. Again. Not that that’s a bad thing of course 🙂 Thursday night we caught the last half of The Matrix on telly and Shannon was really taken with it. So because I’d never seen the sequels, I thought it would be fun to rent the trilogy and watch them altogether.

I also picked up Sin City while I was at Blockbuster.

Well we finished the trilogy this morning, and I have to say this: “Huh?” What a convoluted mess intersparsed with brilliant cinematography and fantastic fight sequences. I’m talking about the sequels now, and not the original Matrix which is really quite good. But I was disappointed with the sequels and so as Shan. Ah well.

We also popped over to the mall and caught a second viewing of Willy Wonka in a near-empty theatre which was nice. It’s still fun the second time around. We were discussing it afterwards and the subject of the original came up. I mentioned that from what I’ve heard and read, there really is no happy medium between Chocolate Factory friends. You either love Wilder’s and hate Depp’s or you Love Depp’s and and hate Wilder’s. Surely it’s possible people to enjoy both? I mean really now. They’re both approached in completely different ways and I’ve enjoyed both versions.

Anyway, so we’ve watcheed a lot of viddies tis weekend. I’m just waiting for dinner to finished up in the micro and then I’m going to watch Sin City. I’m lookin forward to it even though I’m inexcusably uninformed about anything Frank Miller. I just thought the trailers looked awesome.

Lots going on this week. Get to see Jo again (yay!) even though the circumstances could be different. That part of my family’s going through some rough right now and I feel bad for them.

Work’s going well, I think. Busy. Still plugging away on the entertainment site and I hope to have time this week to wrap it up. We’re launching soon and I don’t think I have any fingernails left for all the biting.

Ahh micro’s done. Off to enjoy some sin 🙂

I’ve just had the most vivid dream and I want to get it down before I forget.

I was an unwilling accomplice to a gruesome murder in some kind of old victorian type house. Very brutal and I think it was the home’s caretaker. Suddenly I found myself holding a black sweater and standing in a line with very unsavoury types in an outdoor place surrounded by disgusting, stinking swampy water. At the head of the line was a sort of ‘processor’ to whom the people/things in line had to answer to for their crimes. The processor was a weird beast of some kind sitting at a table and they didn’t seem to know all the details of your crime, just that you were involved with one.

So what I gathered as I stood bewildered in line was that you had to convince the processor that you had nothing to do with it. If you successfully snowed him/it, you were given a white sweater and sent back to wherever you were.

Evidently I snowed him/it so I got my white sweater and was sent back along this weird, tiled and long hallway. Tile was a mix of weird green and yellow, smallish tiles. Anyway back in the house the evidence of the crime was still there. The caretaker was stuffed in pieces in a large sink and I was trying to stuff him down the drain to hide the evidence. I was really upset, I hadn’t killed the man but for some reason I was made to cover up the crime scene. There was dirt involved but the dream’s getting fuzzy now.

Before I forget it all, the final bit before I woke up was that I suddenly misplaced my white sweater and ran back along that tiled hallway to find it. Only I ended up back in that weird swamp holding the black sweater and the processors were more menacing this time and nothing I said was convincing them that I didn’t kill the caretaker. If you didn’t convince them something terrible happened to you but I’m not sure what – I want to say that you were “sentenced” to an even more disgusting area of this bizarre ‘world.’ Maybe it was supposed to represent hell or something. I don’t know. It was about this time that I woke up.

Sounds nightmareish eh? Well You would think. But I didn’t wake up freaked out. I woke thinking this would make a great story if I could stretch it out. So here I am blogging at 6:45am and now I’m going to be late for work.

Finally a few mentions of the mysterious Piano Man in England have popped up. An article on the 8th of this month says that most of the 200-odd leads they’ve had on the man have turned out to be dead ends, and his caregivers are losing hope of him ever being identified.

They also say that initially he’d been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder but they have since revised the diagnosis and now think he might be an autistic savant. They say that the missing labels in his clothes can be a sign of that.

Anyway, click here for the full article.

Oi I need a day off. A day to myself, to do nothing. No computer *gasp*, no phones, no television – nada. I would like to just stare at the wall for the day and think about nothing.

My brain’s in overdrive right now and I can’t quiet it down. It’s exhausting. So many worries and things coming up and things on my To Do list, and tasks I need to get done at work, and those niggling little worries that nip at the back of your mind. I can’t get to sleep. I can’t concentrate. I just feel like I have so much to do it’s overwhelming you know? I don’t know where to start.

It sucks.

It’s been a quiet weekend. I checked out a couple of movies I’d been wanting to see. Been ages since I’ve been to the video store. Anyway, I watched ‘Alexander’ and ‘Constantine’ and of the two, I liked Constantine more.

Not that Alexander was bad mind you. It was all right. Good acting, big fights etc. I think my problem with it was just that I’m not familiar enough with that part of history and mythology to understand some of the references. A downfall of mine as I do like that sort of thing. I’ve just never made much of an effort to educate myself on it. And so the movie had little meaning for me and I found myself looking at the clock now and then (it’s fairly long.) I think I would have enjoyed it more, ironically, if Stone had focused on A’s bisexuality a little more instead of the same old battle scenes we see in all of these ‘epics.’ I say that’s ironic because I’ve read that he released this director’s cut that didn’t include much of the bisexuality angle due to pressure from ummm. small-minded people. I guess. Something like that anyway.

Constantine though was good. A very cool concept of an embattled and semi-bitter demon hunter trying to get back in God’s good graces by ridding the world of these demons only to find that he’s going to die of cancer soon and will be sent to hell to be amongst the very demons he sent there.

Yes Keanu is the star, and I think he gets unfairly stuck even now with his Bill & Ted past, but he can be good when he wants to be. Speed was good. Much Ado About Nothing was good. And so was this.

So Constantine – good. Alexander – Okay.

The rest of the weekend was spent watching some Firefly to gear up for the release of ‘Serenity’ on September 30th. CanNOT wait for that. Saw a trailer for another movie I’d like to see called ‘Hooligans’ (or I think it’s been renamed to ‘Green Street’ or something. I’m not sure.) Elijah Wood’s in it as a yank who goes to Engerland and gets caught up in football hooliganism.

But I bet it’s a damn Indie film and will never show up in this town 🙁

And now I’m watching Deep Impact on telly which is silly because I have the movie and could enjoy it sans commercials. I do that a lot though. Find some movie on and just let it run in the background while I do other things. Has to do with my weird need to have some noise going all the time. I don’t like the quiet.

Aaaand I’m just rambling now. Always a sign to shutup 🙂

I feel orange.

Good thing I’ve redecorated then. Seriously though I’ve been meaning to redo this place for ages now and since I’ve been making blogs for work (Captain Wow’s Movie Blog of Doom and mine anyway) I figured since I’m on a roll I’d go ahead and do this one while I’m at it.

This is quite a departure for me. I’m sort of a muted, quiet colour person myself (see UKMelia) and so going with the bold orange and retro background was a nailbiter.

But I’m happy with it for now. There may be more tweaking to come as I fine tune it, but anyway, I think it’s fun 🙂

My car’s paid off. WOOHOO!!!!!! I’m so chuffed. What a wonderful feeling.

Shannon’s all registered for her freshman year… It was quite the setup they had to corral parents and their kids and make it as painless as possible. You walk in, she gets her course schedule; turn in health paperwork; run fast past the ‘give us money’ section (hey I’m all for supporting the school but it has to be on my pay schedule, not theirs); sign up for clubs (French Club and Astronomy Club for her); get picture taken; pay for a couple weeks’ worth of lunches by rude a lunch lady who treated me like I was invisible as I stood before her trying to ask a question – I’m not kidding. The witch just carried on writing on some form as I stood there and asked my question, she didn’t answer me, and some other mother came up and she turned to help her and chitchat. I was LIVID. So she got some attitude from me when I forced her to answer my damn question. Grrrr. Finally, I had to give permission for her to be able to get online during the school year.

And now my little girl’s all ready. We bought the usual pens and pencils and paper etc. and she had a good time packing it all neatly in her backpack. I always loved doing that too before school began.

And so in a couple weeks she’ll take her first big steps towards adulthood. I’m both proud and sad.

Well! That was a bit of a break eh? It’s been crazy busy lately in my life, a fact for which I’m actually grateful. I love being busy and feeling like I have a purpose. One of our guys left the department a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been getting to do his stuff along with mine which equates to working late and working at home a little.

It’s refreshing though because although it’s hard work, it’s work I love. I’m so lucky to be able to work in a job I actually *like*. So many people end up stuck and unhappy and I was sure headed that way. Thank Elvis for the Internets 🙂 It saved me.

Sooooo what’s been happening…. Well aside from lots of work, I’m looking forward to tomorrow as I will be making my final car payment (woohoo!) and from then on getting an extra $200 bucks a month back. Plus my insurance rate drops so that’s even more dosh in my pocket. Maybe that will help ease things up and let me get back on track with everything. otherwise I’m starting to think it’s time for a part-time job of some kind.

The kid will also be registering for High School tomorrow *sob* My baby’s growing so fast. She’s totally looking forward to starting whereas I was a nervous wreck. I hated starting a new school year once I got up in my high school years. Probably because I moved so much and frequently had to start in a new school. It was so hard to forge friendships in places where everyone’s known each other since kindergarten.

But I’m happy she’s looking forward to it. The Gs are buying her a computer (Believe me I was utterly gobsmacked when they told us) to start high school with. She’s over the moon about that. She’s taking French (which pleased me no end because I can help herr with that easy. I had it for five years and then lived with french peeople in England.) and drama, symphony orchestra, and the core classes like geometry and english etc. She’s going to have an exciting year.

I’m hoping she takes an interest in journalism because UNL down the road is one of the top journo schools in the country. I think she’d be good at it as well. Plus one of the writers at my paper is also a journo teacher at Senior High and I think it’d be fun for her to be in his class.

Ok so that’s my update for now. Oh, I’ve started a new blog called ‘IVL‘ which will be my blog for the paper which is another reason I’ve been so quiet here. IVL is gong to take a lot of my time. It’s where I get to talk about my experiences as a longtime ‘Netizen and I’ll pass on fun and funky websites I know about, talk about how to get along online, tips, tricks, things like that. So check it out.

/shameless plug