Everything is Unfinished

I’ve been having all sorts of problems with my contacts since I got them 2 weeks ago. They cloud up within an hour of putting them in, and my eyes get reeeeeeally dry. Part of the problem is that I stare at a computer screen all day, but I also found out that my eyes are allergic to the protein my body produces, so I get all sorts of buildup on my lenses. Wednesday I got new trial lenses and some peroxide solution that is supposed to help, but I’m still struggling to see most of the time at work. Then today the left one was really uncomfortable. Turns out I’d put it in inside-out. After Monday’s little oopsie, I really wasn’t that surprised. I’m beginning to think maybe I should just stick to glasses.

All this cloudiness is making it hard to read all my webcomics. Every day I read User Friendly, Penny Arcade, PvP, Goats, Ctrl-Alt-Delete and now a new one, Elf Only Inn. I just found out about Elf Only Inn yesterday, and I’ve already read all 2 1/2 years of their archives. It’s about an Elves-only roleplaying chat room, where most of the players are neither Elves nor roleplaying. It really took me back to my days of playing StrangeMUD for hours on end. For the non-geeky among you, MUD stands for Multi-User Dungeon, and they are text-based roleplaying games that you telnet into. Think Fable, but without the graphics. You play a character and go on quests, trying to obtain better armor, kill enemies, and find new things. Or at least that’s what people on most MUDs do, on Strange we were a glorified chat room, which is why Elf Only Inn resonates with me. I made a lot of friends and kept in touch with a lot of friends through my MUD, and if you go to the webpage and look at the gatherings, you’ll see I was at all 3 of them. Yes ok, you already knew I was a geek, but I’m just pushing the fact a little harder. :)

Speaking of comics, here are some I’ve been meaning to share:

I feel like this sometimes when I’m watching the show:

It’s a hard-fought battle to get young people out to vote:

I know a few teams who could use this strategy:

Currently Stuck In Head: Chicago, Hard Habit to Break

Well ok, maybe not so manic, but it’s definitely a Monday. I realized when I got to work this morning and still couldn’t see straight that I had put my contacts in the wrong eye.

It’s gonna be a long week.

Andy sent me a link to the best quiz ever, the Which Big Lebowski Character Are You? quiz! I think I got the best possible outcome:

When I took it yesterday, I was Maude. Not sure what I did differently. Go take the quiz and tell me who you are!

When I woke up this morning, I had a song stuck in my head. It’s a cute, catchy tune from They Might Be Giants new album called Stalk of Wheat. I like the song, but I was getting sick of singing it over and over and over in my head so I thought ok, I need to get a new song in my head right now. What does my brain pull out as a good replacement? BROKEN WINGS. Ugh. I couldn’t take Mr. Mister that early in the morning, so I immediately went back to the original tune. It’s still stuck in my head now.

I’ve been lax as of late about posting my WW results. Today though, I’m more than happy to share:

Loss this Week: 1.8 lbs.
Total Loss: 3.8 lbs.
Distance to Target: 68.6lbs.

Last Song iPod Brought Me: Faces, Ooh La La (from the Rushmore soundtrack)

There’s a lot of scary stuff out there. Next up is FYE’s “Rock n Roll Holiday Escape” More like NO Escape: it’s you, trapped on a boat, with Journey, REO Speedwagon and Styx. For a week. There’s golf involved. And for god’s sake, they use the word INTIMATE right on the promotional material!

Currently Stuck In Head: XTC, Bungalow

Since Halloween is coming up, I thought this very scary site would be appropriate: WORLD’S WORST ALBUM COVERS!

My favorite by far is this one.

If you can’t read it, the yellow stripe across the top left corner says, “Hear our message: Say NO to drugs!” If you don’t, you could end up a turntable slave too.

Currently Stuck In Head: Patsy Cline, Crazy

As Halloween approaches, it seems like it’s getting further away. For one thing, trick-or-treating is on Thursday the 28th this year. What the crap? Really the only reason that trick-or-treating should be moved is if Halloween is on a Friday, to avoid high school football games. This has been happening for years, because apparently if trick-or-treating is allowed on the 31st, there will be too many pranksters and vandals out. So now they have 2 days to pull pranks and vandalize things. Also, trick-or-treat night is called Beggar’s Night around here. What the crap? I can only imagine that is to distance your innocent children from the dark, horrible Pagan roots of the holiday. Because a day to remember those that have passed on before us is a pretty scary concept. And of course schools can’t celebrate Halloween anymore, for fear of offending anyone. I guess they get around that by having a Harvest Festival, which is fine unless you don’t believe in farmers. Whatever. I’ll still pass out candy to the few kids that come through our complex. There’s a group that’s been knocking on our door every few days for a week now asking for candy, so they better be on our front porch in 3 weeks!

I did pull out my decorations the other night, and got the house ready. I don’t have nearly as many things as I thought I did, which is good because I’ve seen all sorts of cool stuff that I haven’t bought because I thought I had so much. Now I can go back and buy them! And I did take some stuff to decorate my desk at work:

I got my Frankie garland (yes I know the monster wasn’t named Frankenstein, but “Frankenstein’s Monster Garland” just doesn’t sound right) with purple lights, Witchie-poo sitting on the edge of the desk, and my ghost bowl that had mini Reese’s cups in it for about a day. The door to our suite has a window in it and I’ve gotten lots of nice comments from the other people who work up here. The guys I work with were all pretty impressed too. Mostly with the candy, but they thought it was cool that I actually decorated. They won’t know what hit them in December!

Currently Stuck in Head: Cake, Let Me Go

So there’s a new commercial out for Aquafina water that uses the Carpenters’ song “Top of the World” (Well I’m on/Top of the world, lookin’/Down at creation). The first thing that blurted out of my mouth was “How ironic that Aquafina is using a Carpenters song, since water was about the only thing Karen Carpenter would eat.” Time to cue the guitar player from that Conan sketch: Inappropriate! But c’mon - she was 5′4″ and at one point she only weighed 80lbs! Her death is the reason that eating disorders are even known about and dealt with today. Surely someone at Aquafina thought about this. I can’t be the only sick mind out there.

I don’t like to be anti-social, but there are times when I just need to be alone. This past weekend, at my scrapbooking retreat, things went just how they always do: Friday night everyone’s in a great mood, Saturday morning we get into a groove, Saturday afternoon we play some games, Saturday evening people start getting annoyed with each other, Saturday night things are tense and by Sunday everyone’s bitchy and itching to pack up and go home. That’s just what happens when you get 50 women in a room together for an extended period of time. As usual, the thing that brought about the annoyances was music. No matter how hard you try to accomodate everyone, there are just too many tastes and opinions for communal music. I anticipated this - it was my 4th retreat - and brought headphones for iPod. I felt kind of weird putting them on, since I still wanted to talk to the people near me, but I have to admit it was nice to shut everyone else out. I’m a very easy-going person but I do have my limits, and I didn’t want to lash out at anyone because their taste in music happens to suck. And as it turns out, a lot of other people thought the headphones were a good idea, and I have a feeling there will be a lot more of them in the spring. Although I’m still going to make my Annoyance Tally Sheet for the next retreat. I’ll list all the annoying traits that people have and then keep track of how many times they do those things. The winner will get a punch in the face. Inappropriate!

Speaking of a punch in the face, I’m not going to post anything specific about work here but suffice to say that someone I see daily is in need of the aforementioned punch. Maybe I need those headphones at work too.

Currently Stuck In Head: The Carpenters, Top of the World (surprise, surprise)

After work tonight I leave for a weekend scrapbooking retreat. I am so looking forward to it - I feel like I haven’t scrapped in forever! I’m going to be working on my Chuhuly glass exhibit pictures. They get their own album because I took so many! I’m hoping to get most if not all of them scrapped. I’m also hoping that spending 45 hours with 50 other women won’t make me crazy. I’m taking iPod with me just in case I need to stop listening to them all.

Speaking of iPod, the decorating process is finally getting underway! I found a place that sells Swarovski crystals online, and I’ve chosen a pattern. Now I just need to decide on the colors I want and order them, then severely test my patience by trying to apply them. It will look so cool when it’s done though!