a renewed spring in my step...

the one day at a time reunion will air on feb. 22 on cbs!

oh schneider, many have tried but no one has been as greasy or as creepy of a super as you...

But I don't like spam and eggs...

How do I prevent comment spamming?

since I'm prolifically posting about nothing...

These are the places I've been



create your own personalized map of the USA

I have a little more work to do in this department:


create your own visited country map

links via tuxedokamen

Give and Receive

Since I had nothing to say, Freddie suggested a meme that's been floating about lately.

I give myself permission to not like even a little bit (some of these are ripped precisely from Freddie):

• shoes that don't fit
• jazz music
• MTV
• fake banana flavor
• bananas
• anything that makes me break out in hives
• carrots
• work email
• voice mail
• apple ear buds
• people who apologize incessantly without reason
• process
• club scenes
• kenny g
• dog poo
• sand
• cut flowers
• especially carnations
• classes that run long
• political theory
• acrylic yarn
• chalk
• fast melting medicines
• crutches
• dirty dishes
• take-offs
• landings
• the smell of coffee and fuel together (found on airplanes and mcdonald's drive-thrus)
• group projects
• casual dates
• mariah carey
• bad drivers
• impatient drivers
• dirt
• mold
• honk and holler opening soon
• unflushed public toilets
• lack of toilet seat covers
• people who take themselves too seriously
• being P.C.
• people who assume that I can just do their jobs too
• people who assume I'm working while in school to occupy my time and I can just take off unlimited hours for their convenience
• coughing all night long
• letting the dog out at 2 am in the snow when it's below zero
• being tired
• smelliness
• lavender
• houseplants
• when cats rub up against you
• bubba, the cat upstairs from mara (he's either a cat or a horse. it's unclear. what's clear is he sucks)
• unnecessary (imo) barking
• monkey misusers
• grease
• hospital hand soap

Ask the Internet

When you have nothing to post about is it better to:

1. Post nothing
2. Post about how you have nothing to post about
3. Design a silly survey asking whether it's better to post or not

(I actually was just tired of having the green snot posting at the top)

what sounds like barry white and is leaking green snot?

It's ME!!! With a fever of 102, so it's a sinus infection and not a cold!!!

Yay!

nice to meet you!

You are Maureen Dowd! You like to give people silly
nicknames and write in really short, non
sequitur paragraphs. You're the most playful of
the columnists and a rock-ribbed liberal, but
are often accused of being too flamboyant and
frivolous. You tend to focus on style over
substance, personality over politics. But your
heart is in the right place. Plus, you are a
total fox.


Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

link via particleman

I'm tired of not enjoying my weekends

Well, I enjoyed some of it... I think, because there are moments that I just don't remember (not because of anything I did to not make me remember, but because I can't find them in the crappy things that happened in my memory)

Friday I worked. Friday night???

Saturday, LONG Russian class in a classroom that was too hot. Then a trip to the vet for Ernie's vaccinations and to check out that little lump on his right front leg that started out the size of a pea, but is now about lima bean sized. Well to biopsy and to remove it are the same thing at this point because of the size. It's any number of things from fatty deposit, nerve sheath tumor, to cancer. (Yeah, laugh at me for having pet health insurance NOW why don't you?) Although the insurance will cover a good portion of it and I purchased the double cancer benefits when I first got the policy 5 years ago, I do have to pay up front and wait for the insurance to reimburse part of it later. And it'll be around $550 up front from the full-time student who works full time JUST to cover rent. Saturday night, went to a school social and was witness to much intoxicated drama, shouting and tears from one of my best friends.

Sunday, I started running a fever with chills and hot spells, cough and sore throat. Bought a dress that I don't love for the work party I've been planning (don't love it, but I could afford it and didn't feel well enough to keep looking), studied at a coffee house and saw Sideways. It started at 930 which was late since I didn't feel well but I really wanted to see it. And it was the LONGEST, SLOWEST movie since anything by Oliver Stone. It had really funny moments, and one scene was directed pretty well, but did not like the cinematography or the writing. There were points where I thought that "METAPHOR" should have been flashing across the screen because they were so blatant and so awkward. So I went home and fell in bed and slept straight through to my alarm (Thanks to Ernie who decided NOT to wake me up at 2 for a little jaunt to the facilities).

Now I'm slightly grumpy because of all that.

WAIT! I went for a good Italian dinner at Lechuga's on Friday night with Timmy because I just found out that I live in Little Italy! It was good but not stellar (and I think my manicotti's better) but they have REALLY inexpensive food and beer. Then I knitted some and went to bed early... Friday was good! Yay!

hey mr. dj, I thought you said we had a deal.

So last night I did something decidedly unHeatherish. I went to The Church to see Paul Oakenfold. It was unHeatherish for me to:

1. Go to a club.
2. Pay a cover. A $25 cover at that.
3. On a weeknight.

It was not unHeatherish for me to:

1. REALLY want to see Paul Oakenfold.
2. Dance.
3. Be Designated Driver.
4. Wish I brought ear plugs.
5. Freak out and have a panic attack at the sheer number of people I didn't know shoved up against me and spend most of the night on the outdoor patio upstairs listening to him DJ on the speakers from downstairs.

Geez, though, I am getting old. But I love Paul Oakenfold... I don't even really do trance, but I think it's a testament to how good he is that I like him. The thing about trance is that it just musically stagnates for like, freakin-ever... but he still gets the trance aspects with musical momentum. Current favorite song? "The Silence 2000 (DJ TiestoRemix)" f/Sarah McLachlan.

unrelated: as a full-time student who works 30 hours a week and needs about another 30 hours a week to do homework and reading and stuff, if I'm in a class project group with you, don't ask if I can take some time off of work to meet and plan so that IT DOESN'T INTERFERE WITH YOUR FOOTBALL WATCHING ON SUNDAY.

travis women knitting lessons

not many people know that it is semaphoria's mom that taught me to gnit about 12 years ago. it was a cold, snowy day in park city, ut, i was on spring break and visiting the illustrious fred (semaphoria/james the chick) who had moved there, and some unspecified winterish dance was approaching. as the fredster was NOT on spring break, and I had spent a day at school with her already, i was hanging out with her mom and her doggers, and her mom started to knit a chunky black shawl for said dance. and to keep me off the streets or whatever, she taught me how to knit. we covered knit, purl, stockinette, and garter stitches, casting on and binding off. from time to time i would bust out the needles.

on monday, i decided to do more than just that, and started cable knitting. and i had another moment of education from the women in the travis (mcnamara/keller) family. i was having the darndest time keeping track of my cable needle (house messy, falling between the couch cushions, etc.). and i had a quick memory of fred learning to cable knit. and remembered that she would stick the needle in her cleavage to keep it handy and out of the way of her cats. particularly when wearing those shelf bra tank tops, this is handy. so stick it in my cleavage i did. although the needle did not rest atop the ladies, but rather between. no picture forthcoming.

help wanted

who can tell me why my pictures when posted on this site work for a while and then just stop?

better yet, can you tell me how to make them work all the time please?

pretty please?

to see it in the meantime, click here.

knitters update

okay, i haven't had the best of luck with posting pictures on this site, so i might just up and change it to a link. anyhow, it turns out that 10" of my sister's birthday scarf was the optimism of memory, and not actual... it's actually closer to 4 inches:



it will benefit from some blocking when it's done (i got a LOT of flack for working on it at school yesterday - it's like students of international politics have never seen anyone do anything at school that is non-school related) and i put 3 more inches on it last night from how it looks in this picture, so hopefully 'twill be finished before the end of the month!

(yes, i'm using a row counter so as to save my sanity when doing cables of different sizes)

news bulletins: international politics link-o-rama

From CNN.com:

• The Eastern Catholic Archbishop who was kidnapped on Monday, was released unharmed today. However, in the same article it was illuminated that 8 Chinese construction workers were kidnapped. (fyi, the Archbishop belongs to the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church that accepts the pope as Supreme Pontiff, but uses the smells and bells.)
• The Danish Prime Minister is calling for elections to be held 9 months early due to sweeping reforms of local governments scheduled to be completed in June.
• Iran says to US: You invade us, we'll fight back!

From New York Times.com (free subscription):

• Rice tries to get confirmed (and not in the Christian sense). She went to my school. As we NEVER cease to hear. I took a class with her PhD advisor - that's kind of fun to bandy about!
• China doesn't want us to pay much attention to the death of Zhao Ziyang, former Communist Party chief who said, "okay guys, not so much with the violence on the democracy proponents!" (maybe I paraphrased a bit)
• Sharon is on some people's bad lists for current tensions of Israeli residents of Sederot (which is in Israel) for not cracking down on the missiles that regularly fly into the town compliments of Hamas and "other Palestinian militant groups." They prefer to NOT have those missiles land on 17 year old girls who throw themselves over their brothers to protect them. True dat.

From The Moscow Times:

• A 21-year old Chechen Woman was sentenced to 9 years on terrror charges after recruiting 2 suicide bombers to blow up a Russian mall and getting them the blowupables to do so.
• The U.S. has granted political asylum to a survivor of the 1999 apartment bombings in Russia for fear of reprisals since she assisted investigations.
• The Russian Communist Party has called for the government to resign (yes, the WHOLE GOVERNMENT) due to the replacement of pension benefits with monetary compensation. In response, ol' Vlad Putin has placed blame (strangely not on himself, but on his Cabinet) to illuminate his non-involvment in this process and has said, I'll DOUBLE pension benefits!

From Le Monde (all links to articles in French):

• The French debut a REALLY BIG PLANE! It can seat 555 people, and cost 10.7m euros - as much as the Chunnel. So they're throwing a party for 5,000 people.
• From the other side of the cnn story, Iran is the newest target in the American war on terror. (please note, I didn't capitalize those on purpose)
• The French are tired of "social worries."

From Al-Jazeera.net:

• A car bomb in Baghdad targeting Shias goes off, killing 4, injuring 8. Do NOT become immune to bombing stories.
• Spain is being protested for holding in solitary an Al-Jazeera journalist with reported ties to al-Qaeda although his health is failing, some say due to prison conditions. People will investigate the conditions.
• Algerian fuel is expensive. The Algerians don't care much for this development.

No energy to crawl through Ha'aretz now... But thanks to Particleman, we have a new link to www.patentlysilly.com where my favorite is a joke embedded in the smart alarm system.

it tastes like burning

I didn't get to say last night that when I had a bite of my pasta last night, I bit into a red chile. Now I am no spicy sissy, but it was like having a tiny glimpse of hell....

knitting - might bore you until the cheese incident at the end.

i decided to go to a new lys today.

so up at colfax and pierce is showers of flowers. it is HUGE, with more yarn than you can shake a stick (or a bryspun needle) at. and i went with the purpose of getting some smaller dpns because, in case i don't have millions of schoolwork during the quarter, i want to start seeing if i can do trickier things like mittens and kitchener stitches (they both have me daunted because of kitchener stitches being difficult and tricky). and i found some worsted weight plymouth encore yarn that i'll make some mittens with (color 389), toyed with trying bryspun needles (they didn't have the right size though so i went with bamboo), and saw some goregeous rowan polar wool/alpaca blend that i really needed to buy. truly, i'm waiting for the rest of the yarn i need for my sister's poncho to come in, so i decided to branch out into cables as well...

and now i'm also knitting michelle a scarf in the polar smirk, with cables... i don't have a pattern, and it's going to get a tad tiring visually (it's got a 6 st border, 6p, 4 st cable, 6p, 6 st cable 6 p, 4 st cable, 6p, and back to the border) but it's really soft, i finally sat down and figured out the single needle, double cast on - never really thought about it, but tired of the floppy end, i had to see if there was a better way, and there was. so far, i've done about 10" of the scarf, it's looking pretty good (except for the forecasting of the boringness of it) but my sister will love the color and the texture, and it is her birthday on wednesday (unlikely to be finished and shipped to california by then, however).

so that is my story of today - i didn't read the reading for my thursday class i was scheduled to to, but whatever. i got home and i made some capellini with shrimp and artichoke hearts in white wine, and a touch of red peppers for pizzazz... and decided to throw some parmesan on top, as well. not the good kind, but the crap kind in the shaky shaky can. it all was wonderful until the dog ran into me with barking, and happened to look up and get an eyeful of cheese. did he mind? yes, he did. because he had cheese in his eye? no. because he had cheese in his eye that he couldn't put on the INSIDE part of his face.

he's so weird.

Happy Birthday Mary Katherina!

(let's pretend I posted this on time, shall we?)

Happy birthday Mary! Hope your day was wonderful, chilly, safe, and happy!

I'll take you out if you drive through Denver on your way back to CA!

Love you,
heatherfeather

less...

...aggravated overall today.

But I have to buy a dress for my work dinner party thing, so the annoyance might return.

strangeness...

Saturday? Nooooo, the story starts on Friday night.

Friday night, I went to the Crazy Asian Cafe (with Crazy Mara, no less) then to Starbucks to study. Then, we went to Crazy Mara's to hang out with Amy K, Timmy, and Timmy's friend Hollis from Chicago. All in all we had goodfuntimes - and I slept until 1:30 this afternoon.

When I awoke I was ravenous. So I called Pei Lo Mein and we went to Bennigan's for lunch. Whilst at Bennigan's, Timmy called. Since I was eating I didn't answer, and decided to call him later. But he LEFT A MESSAGE - Timmy does not leave messages. So I called him and PLM, Timmy, and Chicago Hollis and I wound up going to the National Western Stock Show. We looked at cattle (cows, calves, and bulls). Tim declared he wanted to buy a cow to keep in his living room. We saw a calf auction - who decides why one is worth $5500 and another is worth $8000? - but Timmy refrained. Juylnn texted me and said - "oooooh! that one looks delicious!" It was complete with the auctioneers you hear on TV and in movies, real life cowboys, cowgirls, and cowkids. We ate a terrrrrible dinner at the Stockyard Inn and decided not to stick around the stockyards for 3 hours to catch a rodeo.

Then we went to Timmy's, where we met up with Timmy's other friend Brett from western Colorado. And that's where it all went downhill. By and large it was okay, but Mara was coming over, and I could tell that they wouldn't meld. He kept on making rude comments about how long it was taking her to get there, and it wasn't convenient for him, blah blah blah...I'm a REALLY patient and tolerant person, but Mara, in some ways enviably, doesn't put up with a whole lot. But she got there, and we all left. I was going to drop some people off at a Dodgeball party (somehow, there's a dodgeball team in the Graduate School for International Studies. I'm unclear as to whom they will play), maybe visit a little, and then go home. So Timmy asked me to stop at a store to buy some beer to bring with them.

And we got back on the road and BRETT OPENED THE BEER.

And I got all of the "I can't believe you're so uptight that you won't let me drink this in the car, blah blah blah blah." And I nearly kicked him out of the car not once, but TWICE. I am 27 years old, and people are still trying that, "you're not cool enough to let me do this?" crap?! Now, some people might not care that I have a SPOTLESS criminal and driving record, and need to keep it that way for probably the rest of my life to do what I want to do. But it REALLY matters to me. I'm not spending all this money on grad school to get a job in a car wash. So eventually, we got rid of the open container, and I kept following Pei Lo Mein to this house where the party was. Annoyed, but dealing, we kept on our way. She went WAY past where the street at which we should have turned, so I called her to tell her she passed it.

And HE BEGAN YELLING AT ME THAT IT WAS WARPED TO THINK USING A PHONE WAS FINE WHILE DRIVING BUT NOT LETTING HIS PASSENGER DRINK WASN'T.

At which point I pulled the car over, turned around and told him to get out of my car. (I might not have said it that nicely) Timmy stepped in, defused the situation, we were almost there, we kept going, we parked, we all walked in, and I said hi, then I told everyone that I was going home.

Now I'm REALLY annoyed, I have a migraine, and I just want to go to bed. So goodnight.

Dude, save some for the fish!

Ah... drinking fountain jokes... I never get to use those anymore.

Anyhow, here is some catch up from yesterday and topics I've neglected to discuss:

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind... Ah.... What an amazing movie. I like it when movies move in somewhat non-linear fashions because it makes it just that much more challenging watch, and also understand (not that brainless cheese doesn't have its good points, too)... And on the dvd, (which in my head is always referred to as "David, hold the vowels") the Lacuna commercial is great....
• Harry Potter...Azkaban: After months and months of Harry Potter and Hogwarts following me wherever I went, I finally saw it. And it is indeed better than the first (never saw the second - I was annoyed by the first's use of the novel as a script and the TERRIBLE cgi) and I think the change in director was WELCOME! But it really felt like a Tim Burton movie. I thought it was just because of the Danny Elfman-esque score (nope, it was John Williams), but all of the scenes where the camera pushed through the clocks, etc. were really reminiscent of Edward Scissorhands. It was really good, but not the best movie ever, though.
• Totally in the mood to watch Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with Tim Roth and Gary Oldman... which comes out on DVD in March! This is probably seriously interrelated to the addition of "Alice's Restaurant" to my iTunes/iPod. See if you can make THAT connection!
• Which is also related to my annoyance with myself for remembering someone's birthday and my desire to send this person a gift even though they've been an AWFUL friend. Worry not, I have people preventing this from happening.
• I went home from work early yesterday with the nauseous migraine complete with photophobia, visual auras, and hyperacusis and took my last ditch effort (pill form)with my last ditch beverage went to sleep for 2 hours, got up for my 6 pm class, and went to school a little bit high on migraine meds. Today I'm still hung over from the meds and the migraine remnants.
• And for those of you who click links and may have been startled by one of the headlines of the articles linked in the last bullet point, yes indeedy, women who suffer migraines with auras are 10 times as likely to suffer a stroke to those who suffer migraines without auras.
• In the pregnant blog world right now, there's a lot of talk about what not to say to people who are infertile, have suffered a miscarriage, a late-term miscarriage, or recently lost a child. While this is not as much related to pregnancy, I'll never forget being 13 years old, sitting in the doctor's office with my 4th migraine in a month, and having him tell me,
  
  "If nothing else, the migraines should stop when you hit menopause."

ugh...

Short day at work...mercifully. It's a sinus headache atop a migraine atop about 300 pages of reading for tonight's class that I didn't have time to do because I was busy finishing my book report for my class tonight. I don't think I'll get much of it done in this state however. Not the state of Colorado, but state of dueling headaches. And because I have a migraine in the mix, the computer screen is tricky to focus on, AND I have a hard time looking at men (in conversation, not man-hunting) wearing pinstripes, striped shirts, ties, suspenders, etc. because of my visual auras.

Dismiss Grumpy McStinky.

The thing I love about Denver in the winter: snow melts. Yesterday's horrible, wet, slurpy snow that caused SUCH havoc in the morning had mostly melted by the afternoon, and black ice was pretty much limited to side streets last night. And what with my proclivity for falling down what made last night really nice was that I DIDN'T FALL ON THE ICE!!! (I've fallen 4 times rather hard and humiliatingly in the past 2 weeks)

And yesterday I went to the food tasting for the dinner party I'm planning and throwing for work. Which meant I got a $60 dinner for lunch yesterday for free. Wanna know what it was?

Appetizers:

• Petite Chile Relleno with Tomatillo Salsa
• Cold Tomato and Smoked Mozzarella Bruschetta
  Presented on a grilled Parmesan Crostini
• Petite Colorado Lamb Chops with Tarragon Aioli
• Brie en Bouche with Toasted Almond and Raspberry Sauce

Salad:

• Classic Caesar Salad

Entree:

• Entrée
  Tenderloin and Portobello Stack
  Tenderloin rubbed with fresh thyme resting atop a thick marinated Portobello mushroom
  Resting in Creamy Polenta
  Made with Marscapone Cheese and Truffle Oil
• topped with Shrimp Scampi
  Delicately sautéed rock shrimp with fresh roma tomatoes, chopped garlic, fresh basil, Italian parsley and green onions and white wine infused cream sauce. Presented spilling over your entrée
• Haricots Verts with Julienne Red Pepper and almonds in shallot butter

Dessert:

• Chocolate Espresso Torte Cake
  Rich, Flourless cake presented on a painted plate
  With seasonal fresh berries

It was PHENOMENAL. And I'll get to have it again in 2 weeks at the dinner itself.

Flashing back 15 years

I got a new 80 gb external hard drive, so as to fill up my iPod... Although at 1300+ songs, I'm at about 23 gb, and I know that Freddie has around 6,000 on her 40gb, so I guess I listen to big songs? Anyhow, I've been getting into filling the 'Pod with older stuff I don't listen to the most anymore. And the group I learned I've been missing?

Oingo Boingo.

Which brings me back to Oceanside, CA, having a conversation with Freddie in 1990 saying I didn't like them because they were too loud. (I even remember precisely where we were when I uttered those fateful words.) One of many cases of me eating my words later. But in particular, the Boingo Alive album has been groovin' on in my daily drives to work, to school, to fun places.

Unrelated note:

The snow today BLOWS! It's the wet mushy stuff that my rear-wheel drive car without ABS loathes. Getting to work involved a lot of fishtailing, not cresting hills from a complete stop, and sliding through red lights into intersections even though I started to brake 1,000 car lengths from the line.

Update: I fixed the bad link to Freddie's page.

Well...

I feel like I've had things that I've wanted to post over the past few days, but haven't had time, and now I forgot what they were... So here's a non-organized free association type of thingie.

• School RULES!
• Cats aren't as bad as I thought, but they still make me break out in hives.
• I might be on the Fox News Channel... either that or the Denver affiliate's newscast - I'll keep you updated. (They're doing a piece on DU's Homeland Security program - available either as a certificate or a specialty concentration in the MA in Int'l. Security program - and they filmed my Intelligence class as B-roll footage... I assume it's B-roll, the prof. was just going over the syllabus - a boring thing to listen to when it applies to you, not to mention when it doesn't)
• I'm adding a few more news sources to my sidebar just for more perspectives.
• I have to buy a cocktail dress for my $40,000 party I've been planning for 5 months... With a budget like that you'd think that a dress would be included, but we're kissing our budget...
• Bush announced his choice for Homeland Security head... I don't know anything about him yet, so I don't have a real opinion... But he sorta looks like Sidney the psychiatrist from M*A*S*H.
• Of all the people with babies born or en route, I know, very, very few of them who had difficult or miscarried pregnancies. My fredhead's little bob is healthy and swimming and dancing on her organs lightly, but her friend Sarah has suddenly become a high-risk pregnancy with a partial placental abruption - her little boy is still healthy, but now she's on bed rest with a 2 year old and a husband away with the military, so she's got a little more on her plate than she'd planned. So keep your prayers and happy thoughts going out to her, and to all expectant mothers... we forget how tenuous and miraculous pregnancy and childbirth are in this medically advanced age.

I see (по-Русский) = Я вижу (Ya veezhOO)

Don't like roses, don't like champagne...

It's been an odd couple of days... Still feeling icky off and on, but now have a sore throat... went to a potluck last night and I brought a Rip-and-Dip Cheese and Pepperoni ring with dipping sauce (its description on the packet was "stuffed meat ring with tomato sauce for dipping"). I bought the last $410 worth of my $530 worth of books for this QUARTER (that comes out to $53/week for me to learn on top of the $9k a quarter for my education). I had my Russian class again- I learned how to say "I See!" in Russian. Right now I have a bit of an oversleeping migraine - if I catch it now it may be okay in a little... And I have hundreds and hundreds of pages of reading to do. So I have to run. Bye.

BTW

I love my iPod because it may be the only place on the planet that you can hear Kristen Hersh followed by Beyonce followed by Mozart...

And there is obviously something awry with me - here's an excerpt of an email from me to Julynn re: lunch:

hey good lookin’, you wanna grab some monkeys food?

Bizzariosity

Had int'l terrorism class last night. We were divided into groups to do a 45 minute briefing on one of 5 terrorist methods; I am in the Suicide Bombing group. When the professor was checking the distribution of groups, she asked, "Now, who are my suicides? Suicide Bombers, please raise your hands again!" I NEVER want to have to raise my hand following that instruction ever ever again. I have to also do a book report next week. A book report? On Terrorism? Shall I make a coinciding diorama, too?

Slipped and fell on the black ice, landed straight down on my (good) knee, neck is killing me today.

Hung out with Mara, Timmy, Fritzie and some people I don't know well last night after class.

Would currently rather be sleeping than ANYTHING else in the world.

Listening to Sheryl Crow sing "Mother Nature's Son."

Seriously enamoured of Joan Baez/Indigo Girls' cover of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice" these days.

Alias

*If you didn't see Alias and don't want to read a spoiler, don't read this post!*

Finally, a new Alias aired last night - the first since May. After last season blowing (except for 2 or 3 REALLY good episodes) in writing, cast changes, story lines, etc., I had actually put most of the finale for season 3 out of my mind - the fact that Sydney was reading top secret documents signed by her father, and they had another Ican'tbelieveyoudidthistomeI'llneverforgiveyounever moment wasn't really on my mind in the past 7 months.

So after the requisite Jennifer Garner in lingerie scene, flashing back to 72 hours earlier, we see Sydney being demoted, and then quitting. We also see Vaughn fighting a punching bag, hear from Weiss that V. burned his house down and has been in psych eval for a while for burning his house down and deciding to quit. Then Vaughn handles my favorite moment of the episode, saying:

"Last year sucked."

JJ Abrams knew it sucked - he would frequently go on Kevin and Bean and talk about the fans' reactions to the season (hated it, hated Lauren, hated the story lines, hated all the torture scenes), so that was his concession to the freakiness and crap that was last season.

So, basically, Sydney, Vaughn, Jack, and Dixon have quit the CIA, and find out they've been recruited to a black-ops division of the CIA... going back to what worked in the first 2 seasons. Furthermore, it's headed by Sloan. It's called APO (for Authorized Personnel Only). Their first mission is to get this isotope from these bad guys. They get it, it's a close call, Vaughn and Sydney realize they love each other. Blah blah blah.

This is taking too long, so very quickly:

• Sydney and Vaughn back together
• Almost no mention of Rambaldi
• Nadia, the secret sister recruited into APO
• The big secret was Jack received authorization for and indeed executed Irina (thus eliminating the need to try to bring Lena Olin back again)
• The bad guy they're following turns out to know Sydney because he had a contract out on her life, but didn't ever follow thru because Irina had the contract and she was executed right before Sydney, so he didn't have motivation to get her as a freebie.
• Marshall is recruited into APO, Weiss is not, so Sydney still has a friend to lie to about her job.
• Nadia vows to kill whomever killed Irina (her and Sydney's momma)

The missing elements: Sark (in custody), The Covenant, Rambaldi.

I'm writing these off to holding off on them for a while and ultimately bringing them back later - these writers have more restraint than anyone except maybe David Foster Wallace. Sloan's motivation is unclear. So there's places to go. Already it's better than last season. If we can hold it up for the season I'll be a happier Alias fan...

shameless rippage...

...from semaphoria's post:

• mayfly project: born, eat, shag, die.
• Things learned in 2004

Best quote from bad movie of last night:

"If you break her heart, I'll tear you to pieces with my bare hands. Or my ferocious rhetoric."

Interesting, Dumb, and Frozen

Last night I had a REALLY interesting class. It was the first of my Defense Analysis Methods, and we did a brief overview of arms control and proliferation in the past century. I've never really thought I'd be interested in Arms and Weaponry (on the mass destruction scale), what with my general pacifism and all, but it was FASCINATING. And the professor is fabulous to boot. All in all, I was happy to have braved the snow.

After class, Crazy Mara and I went to Blockbuster, got a movie, and ordered a pizza from Angelo's. And watched Win a Date With Tad Hamilton. The pizza was great, the movie blew (shocker, I know). In fact it was the worst movie I'd seen since seeing Jersey Girl last week.

And it's been snowing and cold... This morning it was 2 degrees, with a -8 windchill, and the snow, and the fishtailing when driving around corner, oy vey... It's a frozen nose hair morning. And a sleepygirl morning.

Ugh...

I've been running a fever since Saturday. At its lowest (on 800 mg of Advil) it's around 99.3 deg. Its average is around 100.8. Its highest has been 102.4 degrees... I work IN a hospital. I work in the department of the hospital that deals directly with doctors. I interact with, on average 4 doctors per day.

I've been told that since I have a fever I need to not be at work. But since I'm not employed by the hospital per se (that's a WHOLE different posting) but rather by a temp agency, I get ZERO sick time... I can take all the time off I want and not get paid.

I've paid the student health center fee at school, and can use that doctor for free. My boss wants me to go see the doctor next door to whom I would have to pay a co-pay. I'd rather see the doc for free at school - who is a friend of my boss', but a mortal enemy of my aunt's. So her opinion is, if I see the free doctor at school, I should take him an invitation to the big expensive party I've been planning since August to make sure he goes there.

So basically, I'm sick, I work in a hospital, can't work when I'm this sick, so won't be paid for not working because they've told me I can't work, and if I go to the doctor I want to see, I have to do things that I'd ordinarily do at work, but not be paid because I'm not allowed to work when I'm this sick.

This makes me GRUMPY!

2 days, 10 hours....

...until the premiere of the fourth season of Alias.

I hear Sydney's entering another black-ops division of the CIA... you'd think she'd have learned by now... And as long as this season is so much more like the first and second seasons, I'll be excited.

Today

Today is the first day of the Winter Quarter. Have I really had 6 weeks off? The thing that I DON'T necessarily look forward to is how little I like my job when school's in session. It just reminds me of the cool jobs I have coming and how the one I'm doing is NOTHING like that. Anyhow... This quarter I'm taking (I may have posted a class list before, but I've changed it 30 million times since November 1, and only one of the classes I've originally signed up for is the same): Strategic Intelligence Data Collection and Analysis, Defense Analysis Methods, Russian, and International Terrorism. I'm taking ALL security classes, and NOT taking International Political Theory (yay!) because silly me, I didn't read course requirements closely enough and instead of Theory I can take International Political Economics. While IPE doesn't sound fun per se, I understand economics and doesn't make me feel moronic, tuned-out, and vapid like theory does.

Here comes the big question: will my knitting suffer again once I'm in school? Now that Michellie's poncho reached the halfway mark (no small feat for something that is so far 2.5 feet x 2 feet...), I'd really like to finish it before the heat of Southern California will render the woollen, warm, tightly knit, nearly windproof creation obsolete until December 2005...

If wishes were horses, I suppose...

Strategic Intelligence this afternoon.

Hmmm...

Just got back from seeing House of Flying Daggers at the Esquire.

There were some lovely monochromatic scenes, a goregeously choreographed dance/martial arts/percussion scene, incredible overall cinematography, a visually stunning scene with some good Chinese pole artists, and really interesting uses of foley as music.

However, there was also a deplorably 2-dimensional story, a character named Leo (seriously, Leo?), the translators making the characters say things like "Are you for real?" in a movie set in the late 9th century, a love theme that sounds just like the theme from The Godfather, and (forgive me for noticing) a very visibly Japanese (albeit goregeous) actor playing a Chinese police captain. All that, and for a movie clocking in UNDER two hours, it seemed SO LONG.

I hear that Hero was much better than this, as was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (although CTHD was not as good as Hero), it was fine. I could have waited for DVD for this one, but seeing a movie tonight was about as much as I was up to.

Party like a crunchy old lady

Yesterday, New Year's Eve day, I did the following:

• Ate at Pete's Kitchen for lunch with Timmy and Crazy Mara.
• Restrung a string on Timmy's electric guitar.
• Tuned his other guitar.
• Went to Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison with T and CM. Wherupon, we looked at Mangrove fossils, saw big footprints, and I climbed a pretty significant hill to see sissy dinosaur footprints that weren't so interesting considering I climbed the significant hill in a skirt and mary janes with a purse.
• Had peppermint hot chocolate.
• Went to Super Target bought some tank tops on clearance, a new watch, a scrub brush, and an ionic blow dryer.
• Knitted some of Michelle's poncho.
• And went to bed around 9:30.