Stuff

I’m in a bit of a lull right now of New and Exciting things going on, gearing up for a busy October. My biggest decision of the month involved dropping the massive cable package I had because other than watching Project Runway, I was not watching television at all. Shannon was, but everything she was watching was on the lower channels. I finally decided it was ridiculous to pay for all that but not use it. So I’m now the proud owner of basic cable and everything I’m missing (like Project Runway on Bravo) can be downloaded online. Sometimes for just a small fee (like on iTunes.)

I did just finish watching all four seasons of Doogie Howser, M.D. on Hulu 🙂 That was a fun trip back to the late 80s/early 90s. Also funny to see a little, wiry Dr. Horrible 🙂

Anyway where was I… Oh yes, October. My baby sister is getting married. I can’t believe it’s nearly time. We’re flying out to Monterey for a cliffside wedding with the Big Blue Pacific Ocean in the background out at Big Sur. Here’s the spot they’ll get hitched:

Freaking gorgeous eh? Can’t wait. And a pre-wedding reception at the fabulous Gianni’s Pizza (a local legendary eatery) and several days hanging out with old friends and family. After the wedding I plan to spend a lot of time at the beach and soak up beachy atmo before coming back here to Landlockistan.

And THEN, on Halloween, my cousin is marrying his longtime girlfriend in Omaha and my sister and brother-in-law (squee!) are coming back for that. And we get to stay at the beautiful Cornerstone Mansion. It’s going to be lovely.

So, I need to warm up the camera, buy some bigger mem cards, get wedding pressies, and somehow hope I have enough dosh to make it through being in one of the most expensive places in the country for 6 days. Cross your fingers! 🙂

Anyway, running late for work now. Big meeting today with Omaha’s web guy to talk about the direction we want to go with our website. Wheeee!

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No credit

I just read a blurb on Lifehacker about a family that went “cash only” and saved money.

Well duh.

I don’t have credit cards. The last time I had a credit card was ten years ago when i lived in England, and Barclay bank just handed me one with my new account. I felt giddy. I promptly got all spendy and pretty much blew through my 500 pound limit on it.

No I use my debit card. If I don’t have the money in my account I can’t buy it. Plain and simple. Sucks when I want something shiny and gadget-like, but that gives me incentive to save for it, which is something I’m only now beginning to be able to do. The debit card works *like* a credit card of course, and I can do anything I need to with it that I would with a credit card (ie, shop online.) So why bother with a credit card that’s going to be impossible for someone in my income bracket to ever pay off (especially if I used it to pay a large debt, like a car repair or something impossible to pay for outright.)

Admittedly, the credit card *would* have been handy with the old $900 fuel pump replacement I had to do. But years of single parent-dom has taught me to be resourceful.

But aside from the freak occurrences, I’ve never needed a credit card. And I know myself, I’m dangerous with them. best to just avoid them altogether and live within my means. If it means I can’t jump on a plane and head to Europe whenever I want and worry about paying for it later, so be it. I’d rather be relatively debt-free than burdened and stressed over things I can’t afford.

I don’t carry cash either and that is something I probably should do. Even in this day and age, there are some things you just need Real Money to pay for. But I can’t remember the last time I had any cash on me. So maybe it’s not exactly vital.

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Congratulations Jack!

My friend and coworker, Jack, has been training for the past three months to run in his first marathon, the Bill Seymour Half, which was this morning. He blogged his trials and tribulations for the paper and had a lot of people rooting for him, myself included. If you get a minute, check his blog out – he’s a great and funny writer. I don’t read many running blogs apart from my dad’s and Jack’s but Jack turned his into an irreverent look at what it’s like to be a novice runner preparing for your first Big Run.

Anyway, here he is at the finish. Way to go Jack, you made it! 🙂

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Gadget Slave

I admit it. I’m a sucker for gadgets. I cannot resist them. I. Am Geek.

Got a new cell phone this weekend. It’s pretty shiny too. Got a proper keyboard on it because even though I am Geek, I cannot text very well. The qwerty keyboard definitely helps with that and I love it. Yes, I would like an iPhone. Hell, I would LOVE an iPhone. I, however, can’t justify getting an iPhone. Not on my budget.

So I’m happy with my Kyocera Wild Card.

Shannon brought home portable speakers for her iPod that seem pretty cool. I was whinging about how long it takes to charge my iPod when it’s USB’d to the computer and she told me they make smaller iHomes now that would fit my nano. I looked at her and told her I think I might be gadgeted out for the moment. I didn’t think it was possible, but for now, I think I’m set for gadgets.

So I’ve had a lovely weekend of playing with new phone, adding obnoxious ringtones guaranteed to piss off coworkers (Spam Song FTW!), learning that I can txt internationally (woot!), I can tweet faster, and I can record little audio clips to send along with picture texts. I think there might be a corkscrew and salt and pepper shaker in this phone too. It rocks.

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She’s a Brick

When I was in high school, I took a creative writing class with a wonderful teacher who nurtured his students and took the time to help them write their best stuff. One day, he asked the class to write a short story using as many clichés as they could. He would select the best stories and read them out loud to the class.

I made many attempts with tired clichés, but I couldn’t make anything work as a cohesive story. Until I thought about writing a story about a detective, like one of those old movies. At that time I’d never heard the term noir. I just remembered movies like Casablanca and Maltese Falcon and the atmosphere in those films. So I wrote my little detective story, used every clichéd scrap of language I could make up or remember, and turned it in.

The day came when he was reading out the stories, and I remember feeling slightly disappointed mine didn’t make it. Towards the end of class, he shut the lights off and turned the projector on in the back so it made a makeshift spotlight up front. Then he left the room. We were all quite puzzled and fidgety. When he came back in, he was wearing a fedora, a trenchcoat over a rumpled suit, and a lit cigarette. He walked to his desk at the front, leaned back in his chair and put his feet up.

Then he began to read my story. He read it while the smoke from his cig curled up around him. He spoke like Bogey. It was the most awesome moment in my high school career, and to this day, remains one of my best memories from those days, and began my appreciation for noir.

So when I saw the movie “Brick” I was blown away.

I absolutely loved this movie. The anachronistic use of noir-speak in a modern setting of high school was incredible. A loner kid tries to help his tragic ex-girlfriend who’s in trouble. He still loves her you see. Then she ends up dead and it becomes his mission to solve her murder. The movie’s got gangsters, thugs, dangerous dames, and beautiful tragedy. It was dark, it was funny, it was highly detailed and intricate.

See this movie. It’s fantastic.

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MacArthur Park goes Disco

This is a general complaint about the 70s on 7 on XM radio. Not that anyone will care much, but I just want it out there in cyberspace (does anyone use that term anymore?)

For the past few months, I’ve been enjoying time with the decade channels on my XM. I was on 50s for several weeks before switching to 60s, got way too tired of Chicken Man and Motormouth making his listeners proclaim their love for his show and really they should just call it the Beatles channel for as much as they focus on the Beatles there. (Not that they aren’t worthy mind you, I lo-o-o-ove the Beatles.)

And now I’m on the 70s, after much resistance. I’ve mentioned my aversion to the 70s before. The clothes, the music… My perception of the decade I was born in is not good, and so I associate 70s stuff with unpleasant memories. Until we started doing Music Madness when I discovered that a great many songs that I love actually came out in the 70s. Go freaking figure. Songs like ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Lights’ and ‘Don’t Bring me Down’ by ELO. I loved those songs and similar ones as well. Listening to the 70s channel has lengthened the list of songs I need to grab on iTunes from that decade. The problem is, the 70s channel neglects whole chunks of the music scene in that decade in favour of the more popular and expected disco shite and Foghat-type stuff.

Oh sure they play the occasional Bowie or Marc Bolan. But just the popular tunes. Bowie has his whole glam era in there that they ignore. Most Glam is ignored on the whole. Also the late 70s brought the birth of punk. Completely ignored. I realise that the channel is playing to your average person’s perception of the 70s (mine included really. Will the 70s ever NOT be associated with disco?) but I believe that if you’re going to tout yourself as a decade channel, you need to play all genres from that decade. Not just the popular stuff.

It doesn’t need to be sprinkled in throughout the day. It would just be weird to go from The Carpenters to The Sex Pistols. But you could totally put together a show dedicated to specific genres. Look how hugely popular Matt the Cat’s Harlem show is. A show dedicated to rhythm and soul music of the 50s. You won’t hear Buddy Holly in there. Why not have a show dedicated to some big music movements from the 70s? Glam and Punk? It wasn’t all about doing lines at 54 back then you know.

/end rant

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BBtL info

Woke up this morning with a pounding headache. Haven’t had one of these in a while. I thought I was over the caffeine headache thing (that’s what this feels like) but maybe not. I blame the deliciousness that is vanilla chai tea. That stuff is bloody ambrosia. But maybe it’s loaded with caffeine.

I don’t know. i’m babbling now. All I do know is my head hurts and when I feel like this I don’t have any desire to, you know, move. No matter. Shannon took the car to work today, so I’m stuck home anyway.

Ugh. I do have other things to talk about, honestly, but the headache is distracting. Anyway, the second season of Buffy Between the Lines begins today. Very exciting! For those of you who know me, My little scene will be in the 4th episode which I don’t think will be coming out until some time in October (they release the episode, and the next week the release that episode’s commentary, then there’s a 2 week break while everyone except me gets to go to Dragon*Con, then they resume.) I got a chance to hear the scene and it was cute. I’m not saying much about it though because I think Tabz (The Joss) would, you know, kill me and stuff 🙂

So yeah, I’m just on the actor side of the show the one time. But I’ve worked on every episode doing a lot of editing, so if you’ve got an extra 40 minutes-ish ever couple of weeks, throw it on the old iPod and listen to the audio drama 🙂 BBtL 2 takes place between seasons 2 and 3 of Buffy. She has taken off to LA to deal with her grief at having to kill Angel, and the gang is left in Sunnydale to take up the vamp-killin’ slack. Also if you check out the commentaries, yours truly hosted the commentary for episode three.

In other news, My lovely co-writer and I finished our script for the first episode of Angel Between the Lines and we released it into the wild (well, we gave it to the beta readers anyway.) I’m very nervous. I’ve never written a script before and it was definitely a challenge. But it was a lot of fun too. Now the betas will fine-tooth comb it and give it back to us, we’ll make changes, and then it’s out of our hands for good. It will be so cool to hear it acted out though. I’m very excited about.

All right, I’m going to stop for now and go lie down.

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