How TV Night works

TV Night, originally uploaded by alachia.

Every Thursday was our tv night last fall. We were keeping up on a weekly schedule with the latest episodes that season. Our line up was Glee, SGU, Lie to Me, V, and Grey's Anatomy.

I used to be the one who would pick which one we would watch first but then they all started to debate on which shows were better starters and which were better finishers. There's nothing worse than ending tv night on a bad episode after all. :)

So I devised the good old fashion method of the blind draw. I made little paper notes of each show and folded them up and stuck them in an old plastic cup. Everyone but me would then get a chance to draw at random the show we would watch. It was all diplomatic and stuff.

It didn't really get rid of the flaw of having bad show enders but it at least took out the blame game for sour episode picks. The new tv season doesn't really pick up again until April so we might have to change our line up if we want to continue tv nights this spring.

Bread, Butter, and Jam Slam

Last night after Avatar IMAX I was a starvin’ marvin! I was so hungry during the film because I didn’t get to eat lunch and was expecting to eat an early dinner.

Sahd and I stopped by Kerbey Lane for dinner on the way back from the movie which is one of those awesome 24/7 joints in Austin. I love the place a lot because it really fits the Austin vibe and did I mention it was 24/7?

Flipmax and I usually hit that joint for late night meals. Pretty cool joint where the manager comes out wearing a black hoodie, has two tatoo sleeves down his arm, and a nose piercing. He came to our table in front of our waiter and says, “Hi, I am the manager. I wanted to tell you how sorry we are that we are out of Portabella mushrooms. Would you like to substitute for something else?” Heh. even in the fanciest restaurants here, you’ll see people with tats, piercings, sandals, and shorts. And for some reason it’s not trashy but hippie chic or something.

Anyhow, I digress. I was so hungry. I ordered a diet coke and an appetizer of queso, chips, and salsa to begin with. I ate pretty much half of that before my meal came out. I had ordered a Denver omelet with egg beater substitute and a short stack of blueberry pancakes served with sugar-free syrup.

I ate half of the omlet and half of the pancakes and was plenty full by then. However, I noticed Sahd didn’t touch his spanish rice so I gobbled a couple of spoonfuls of that. By this time, I had drank three glasses of diet coke refills and was at my threshold for intake.

However I did not stop there. I saw Sahd wasn’t going to eat his Texas toast so I snagged that. I love toast. I usually order the toast and rice combo instead of the pancakes but they usually give you cold shitty butter to go with the toast which is a pain to spread and usually tears up your toast. With the pancakes, they give you that nice awesome whipped soft butter. I used that on his toast and spread strawberry jam over it and it was glorious!!! I LOVE toast with butter and jam on it.

UNFORTUNATELY, my body is not accustomed to eating that much food so this morning, I woke up with the worst heartburn ever. This used to happen to me a lot when I would cook spaghetti. I loved it so much I would binge on it and get painful heartburn all night and morning. The worst part about it all is that I am craving a diet coke and toast now but can’t allow myself anything but water until the pain goes away.

Sod’s Law

Bitchfest warning**** Okay, the warning has been given. I had one of those awful days that just drain every particle of energy out of you. My work is a constant stress ball for me. People always give me grief for working at home. They think it’s a cake walk. I’ve talked about it before. The benefits are great but when you’re coordinating with a home office 300 miles away, it can be crazy sometimes.

Miscommunication happens a lot and I’m often out of the loop. Technology is also lagging quite a bit so I tend to have a lot of network issues. Today was no exception. My connection to the SonicWall VPN went tits ups as the British would say.

I called the main office for help but aside from a billion reboots and a few re-installs there wasn’t much that could be done. Of course this all goes down during crunch week. We have a major deadline this week and I can’t access the network. And just for kicks, it happens yesterday evening!!

Yesterday evening was the one weeknight in forever we had all planned to do something together. We were supposed to meet up at 5pm and go out to eat before hitting up IMAX3D Avatar. I even had Sahd leave work early to come pick me up so we could be early for dinner.

Well I was stuck on the phone with 15 minute windows reboots between re-installs until almost 6pm. I had to miss dinner and barely made it to the theater. The VPN still doesn’t work at this point. I’m not sure what I’m going to do besides mail off my laptop to the main office. The crazy thing is that my exact words to the guys on Friday was, “We should go see the Friday night showing of Avatar on the IMAX.” And they were like, “it’s too late, why not wait till Monday evening like we planned?” And I said, “We should go see it now. You never know. Shit might come up Monday.”

Sure enough shit has exploded all over the place. And the worst part about it all is that I was really looking forward to the eating out part all day. I have already seen Avatar so that wasn’t a big deal to see it again. We were only going to see it because Tivi hasn’t seen it yet and we thought we’d try the IMAX this time.

On top of that, I got a call from my friend with some RL shit that went down that wasn’t too good. It’s a pretty disappointing situation. Oh yeah, also found out this weekend my favorite teacher from HS died from cancer. Gunk and Funk, this week is going to be amazing. It can only go up from here right?

Passion

My mother is extremely even tempered. Even when she’s really mad or annoyed, she tends to not raise her voice or enrage. I take after my father who always sounds like he’s arguing because he raises the pitch of his voice during every discussion. I wish I was more like my mother.

I like the character of women who are refined and have beautiful personalities. They are so gracious and loving in how they present themselves. Sometimes they get pegged as brainless or mindless. After all, anyone who can’t express passion for something is probably a drone right? I don’t think so.

I think there is a way you can train yourself to behave and act in a certain way and yet still feel strongly about things. I have not mastered this art yet. I get so heated by the slightest things. As soon as I am attached to an idea or ideal it shoots through my veins and becomes uncontrollable. My voice goes up and my words stumble all over each other and I often sound like a totally crude man in a bar when I’m invested in what I’m talking about.

Sometimes I am able to control my tone but the majority of the time I’m cursing like a sailor and blurting out like a rabid animal. It’s not pretty. This year I’m going to try and re-work my behavior patterns and see if I can’t behave a little more refined.. at least some of the time.

Dust Collector

Bleh, I’m in my reclusive state again. I hate being like this but it’s sort of my way of protecting people around me from my disease of utter apathy. Studies say that your mood can greatly effect the mood of people around you. This is why they say you should surround yourself around optimistic pleasant folks. heh. Also, I fucking can’t stand it when people see me like this and thoughtlessly say, “cheer up!” GAH!

I’ve just been sinking into this hole of sheer indifference. Everything is meh and I’m uninspired by life at the moment. I keep hoping it will pass and I can return to some semblance of normalcy. More than anything right now, my brain has been in over drive trying to figure out how I find myself in this state of mind. It happens about once or twice a year and seems to last longer and longer each time.

One of the things I kept going over and over again was that maybe I keep putting my life in crazy scopes of perspective. Where am I? Who am I? Should I be here? Is this where I belong? Was this my path? What’s the point? What’s the point? What’s the point?

When I look at my life in the present, I feel like it’s been neatly glassed in and put on a shelf. Sure there are other lovely things on the shelf next to you and you get to see a few things as they pass by the window. In this box, my life is safe, it won’t be broken or tattered or get too dirty. The depressing part though is that in the larger perspective, that’s all my life will ever be… a dust collector.

Have I come to terms with this life? People always say you have a choice but the truth is that at a certain point you have to own up to the fact that life can not remain an infinite stream of possibilities. I guess as you see those possibilities dwindle as an adult, it can be quite depressing. And if you’re me, which sucks, you have such a low outlook on everything that it’s so hard to see the opportunities that are still there. And worst, you don’t care and that’s the part that sucks the most.

If someone were to observe the grief I have over the indifference to my life they’d probably ask, “so what do you want to do? What would make you happy? Maybe you should pursue things in life that will inspire you.” And that’s the scariest freaking part. My answer would be, “I’m not all together sure if anything or any lifestyle or anyone can make me care. I am numb.” What if the numbness consumes me? That freaks me out the most.

Snuffles

I’ve been ill lately. Usually when I get sick (aka allergies/sinus cold) it takes me months to recover. I’ll have moments of clarity where I think I’m over it and then bam, I wake up the next day and I can’t breathe and I go through a box of tissues trying to keep my brain from leaking out of my nose.

If my body stays at a certain blood pressure level, I tend to be okay and can breathe properly with a few sniffles. During sleep time however, my blood pressure plummets and my nose stops functioning correctly.

The really unfortunate side effect of an illness that afflicts the nose is that it’s directly associated with ears and throat. So now I have a sore throat and my inner ears are itchy. It’s a mess and I feel like I want to dive into a sea of nyquil jello.

I am the perpetually sick girl. It sucks. Having these kinds of ailments doesn't mean I get to be sick, lay in bed, and not function till I’m better. It means I have to do normal things and cope with the effects of the illness all day long whenever they hit.

I know there are worse things to complain about but I can’t help but be totally envious of people who never have allergies or sinus issues. The not breathing bit is quite a bitch.

The Sanctuary

Shady Cat, originally uploaded by alachia.

I definitely did not wake up on the "good attitude" side of the bed today. I've been in one of my nihilistic, cynical, wtf is the point to anything moods. BUT instead of dwelling on that, I'll use the mundane task of my new office curtains to help deflect my negativity.

I've been meaning to install curtains in my office since I painted the room and set the projector up. The cellular shades in my office window are light filtering and not light canceling like the ones in the guest bedrooms (you get to sleep till noon here without daylight nuisance as a guest). However, that means I can't use my projector during the day because there's just too much light coming through.

So I set out to Bed Bath and Beyond today to figure out how to handle my light problem. I had bought curtains last week but even with the cellular shades down and the curtain, there was still too much light coming through...damn that death star.

The solution after debating and pacing around the store for like an hour was the dual curtain rod system. This allows you to hang the curtain you like on the outside and put a liner on the inside. Liners are hella expensive though so instead I bought Eclipse Light canceling curtains. I won't know until tomorrow at noon if they work properly. If three layers of blockage doesn't shut out the light, I will brick in my windows. lol.

I also installed my bulletin board next to my desk. I think I'm going to print out pics of friends and tac them to the board. I also thought about making a personalized calendar to hang as well. Yup, these are the things I use to distract myself from myself.

My office is kind of my sanctuary. I'm literally in here like 12-14 hours of the day. Adding little things to it to make it more homey makes me feel better...well that and my space heater. :D