I’ve been preoccupied for the past few weeks so, blogging has been sparse. It’s a good thing though, nothing bad going on, knock on wood.

But a lot has been going on, both at work and at home. Music Madness is keeping me plenty busy, and is so much fun to handle, I’ll miss it when the tournament is over. Sometimes I can’t believe people pay me money to do the things I love to do. Seems too good to be true.

We’re losing our awesome video guy though, which kind of sucks. He’s going to go into the wild and wacky world of bar ownership, which I find odd, but somehow fitting for him. I guess it just seems weird to completely 180 on your career like that. But he seems really excited about it, so I wish him the best. This means the paper is hiring back our other videographer who was laid off recently. Luckily, he’s cool with coming back, and he’s also pretty good so that means we don’t have to spend time training someone new as we head into a busy sports season.

At home, the kid is finally just about done making Kelly’s veil. It’s turning out so pretty. Kelly will look beautiful in it. Also saw some pictures of the spot where they’re getting hitched and my god – it’s freaking gorgeous. It’s on a congressman’s property in Big Sur (he will also officiate) and is just at the edge of a beatiful cliff looking out over the Pacific. It’s stunning.

The wedding is coming up faster than I expected. My poor sister is subconsciously stressed about planning a big wedding on the other side of the country from her (she won’t admit it, but she beat the crap out of her laptop the other night, so I’m thinking, yeah, stress.) so I keep asking her if, as main of honour, I can do anything to help out and make things go smoothly but so far there’s nothing. I’m cracking the whip on the veil though.

Let’s see what else… Ah, my Swedish lessons continue. I’m loving it, but just when I think I’m doing really well, my underbara teacher lets loose with a huge conversational sentence and I just gape at him. Don’t think I’m going to master the language any time soon 🙂 But I can say things like, “Hur mycket kostar det?,” “Jag har gått vilse,”  and “Kittla inte mina fötter,” which will come in handy if I’m ever lost and wondering how much it would cost to have someone stop tickling my feet.

Swedish is interesting to me because when you look at a simple sentence, it looks completely, well, foreign. But sometimes, when you say it out loud, the sounds are very similar to English, as if you’re speaking English with a bizarre accent. I love it. I’m told I’m picking it up pretty quick so that’s good. Love languages and always wanted to learn others apart from French. I know a smattering of Spanish, a titch of German and a few Russian words, but learning/becoming fluent in more languages is on my Do Before You Die list.

For the past 2 days I’ve been listening to the 70s channel on XM. I finally got tired of Fred on 44 which played Bauhaus’ ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ just one time too many and switched to the 50s channel. But other than Matt’s show each night, I’m not fond of the other DJs or their shows. So I switched to 60s which was cool. Listened to that for quite a while before I decided I couldn’t take one more episode of “Chicken Man” and so now I’m the 70s. This one’s a little harder to take. There is a ton of 70s music I could go the rest of my life without ever hearing again. But as I’ve discovered doing Music Madness, there is actually a lot of 70s stuff I always loved but never realized it was from that decade. Go figure. So I’m enjoying it for the most part, and tuning out when something crappy comes on.

Well, totally meant to go to bed early for once, and blew that with a rambling-about-nothing bedtime blog 🙂

Shannon is making Kelly’s wedding veil. At first I worried that perhaps this project would be a bit much for my crafty kid, but I’m delighted to say I am being proved wrong. I really must stop underestimating her talents.

Not the best pic, but then it wasn’t taken with my spiffycool digi 🙂 Will post better ones later.

Hej alla! Varför förmiddag mig handstil i svensk? Därför att jag kan! Och därför att I-förmiddagen lära det språket lite och det har varit rolig.

I’m pretty sure the translator I used butchered what I said there, but that’s ok. So wtf did I say? “Hi everyone! Why am I writing in Swedish? Because I can! I am learning the language and it is fun.” 🙂 Or something. I met someone in Sweden who is teaching me a few words here and there (and is very patient with my horrible pronunciations.) It’s a fun language though! I heart the interwebs!

Other than that I don’t have a whole lot to report. Saw Batman last weekend and loved the ever-loving hell out of it. Heath Ledger’s performance was disturbingly awesome and Christian Bale is just amazing. Thing about him is, I don’t believe he’ll be stuck with a stereotype for playing a superhero in a blockbuster film. He already has an impressive catalogue of quirky movies to his credit (American Psycho, Little Women, Swing Kids, Equilibrium to name a few) and he’ll go on to more like that. He’s doing the new Terminator movie which, yeah, another blockbuster type but man does it look bad-ass.

Anyway, so yeah, saw Batman. What else…. Oh! Got asked to host the episode 3 commentary for the second season of BBtL. Should be fun! And my co-writer and I have finished writing our scenes for the first episode of Angel Between the Lines and all that’s left is to put our halves together and make it flow, do some tweaking, and then hand our baby in. Over a month ahead of the deadline too 🙂 yay us!

Speaking of writing, I seem to have lost the plot a bit on my CherryPop story. And by that I mean, I haven’t wriiten anything in a month apart from one ficlet sequel. I need to focus on that. Watching all these Twitter updates from people at Comic-Con this weekend meeting their favourite authors and thinking that I would love to be someone’s favourite author someday. Won’t happen though if I don’t kick myself in the ass and get into it. I will find a way though.

I’ll skip all of the ‘I know, I haven’t blogged in a while and here’s why’ crap. I don’t have a really good reason other than general busy-ness and lack of a desire to post to this one. I haven’t been Ficleting either which sort of breaks my heart a little. So I’ve sworn to get back to it, and posted another little chapter in the life of CherryPop. It might re-awaken my desire to write again. It’s been slacking.

I’ve been working a big project at work, sort of Movie Madness redux, this time with music. I’ve been on my own as far as figuring out how to power this thing and make it fun and I don’t think I’ve done too badly. It’s drawing over 5-600 pageviews a day so far. Yay! So that’s taken up a lot of time.

Between movies I must see, BBQs, family visiting, and a new addiction to Second Life, Blogging’s just been on the back burner. But no more! I’m looking forward to jumping back in on all of the blogs. So this is a sort of “I’m back” post. More will be coming, for I must review Dr. Horrible and Batman 🙂

I love this song. Lloyd Price’s version. Tonight I learned that the song was based on some historical events back in the 1800s or something (I’ll have to wiki it in a mo) and there have been numerous versions of the song dating back to at least 1923. This is why I love the 50s on 5 channel.

I’m on day 2 of an achy head. This is different from my usual searing pain migraines. It’s a dull ache that’s sitting right up in my forehead and I think I can directly attribute it to the weird fumes the monster copier has been putting out lately. It’s nauseating. I think I might see if I can work down in the dungeon tomorrow.

On top of that I had an infuriating day at work and I can’t talk about it so that’s probably not helping the head either.

Some good news though. Or encouraging, rather. Some of you might know I’ve been doing the whole attempting to lose weight, because well, I want to be healthier. It’s paying off too. I’m getting into clothes I haven’t been able to wear in a long time, and I *feel* better. It’s a good feeling. I stopped drinking soda altogether. Yeah I missed it. I was a Dr. Pepper girl. But as time goes by I find I hardly think about it. Been drinking a LOT of water, which I did anyway. I love water. But Crystal Lite lemonade is awesome, cheap, and satisfies my sweet drink craving. Also been drinking iced and hot tea as well. Some folks have told me they just switched to diet soda. Yuck. I have *always* hated diet sodas of all kinds. I had high hopes for diet Dr. Pepper, but to me, and my weird taste buds (the ones that don’t let me like fish) ALL diet drinks have a weird fake sugar/sweet & low aftertaste that I dislike. Just like ALL seafood has a “fishy” aftertaste to me. Besides, there’s still sugar in diet drinks and sugar is bad for me.

Also gave up fast food. That was always my Achilles heel really. When you’re an overweight person, it’s funny how people assume you’ve got candy bars hidden everywhere and that you eat cake and pies all the time. In actuality, I rarely eat candy, the only time I really have pie is at Thanksgiving, and yeah, cake is good, but the last time I had some cake I think was back in April at my little cousin’s bday party. And even then I ditched the frosting. (Besides, the cake is a lie :))

No, sweets have never been my problem. My problem is fast food. It’s too convenient. And it’s horrible for you. And I was eating it all the time. It’s quicker (duh), fairly cheap, filling, and easier to do than actually cooking. So I cut myself off from it too. Been fast food-free since Easter. And I do not miss it. No really. My friend Tonya has been on a calorie counting kick since New Year’s and when you look at the calories in a quarter-pounder, and consider that a QP meal with fries and soda is pretty much your calorie intake for the entire day, your mind boggles. And they aren’t good calories either. If I think about it like that, it totally helps me stay away. That and the fact that I’m a few weeks away from being able to wear some clothes I haven’t been able to get into in a very long time. I’d be an idiot to break my streak now.

My next hurdle is working on some sort of exercise routine. I need to find something that works for me (well, I know what works and that is swimming, but 10 bucks a pop to go to the pool is kinda pricey). I’ll find something though. My favourite thing right now – and I never thought I’d ever say this – is doing the household chores because I put on my iPod and I have a ‘clean the house’ playlist and basically I dance like a fool while I clean. It’s hella fun. I’m sure I look silly, but I don’t care 🙂 Plus Shannon’s been teaching me her bellydance moves. Those are quite a workout.

Anyway, I feel less grumpy now. Head still hurts tho so I think I’ll head for bed.