Everything is Unfinished

I’ll write about my weekend tomorrow at work, but tonight I just had to post this awesome new find: Google Maps. Already knew about Google Maps, you say? Well, have you checked out the new hybrid feature? It overlays a street map onto a sattelite map, and it is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Yeah, I’m a geek. Here’s our townhouse: Look at where I live! Google isn’t limiting itself to Earth, though. Look at their map of moon landing sites. And zoom all the way in for a little fun.

One last thing, if you need one of the new TPS Report cover sheets, they’re right here.

I have a daily website routine when I’m at work that I thought I’d share with you. Maybe you’ll find something new that you like, or maybe you can suggest something new to me that I’ll add to the list. I’ve also recently found some new sites that I wanted to let everyone know about.

• First, my home page. Gotta find out how the stocks are doing.

• Astronomy Picture of the Day - just what it sounds like
• Penny Arcade starts my comic-reading for the day
• PVP continues the comics
• Ctrl-Alt-Delete is basically another dose of Penny Arcade
• Baby Blues gives me a peek into what I’m sure will be my future
• More comics if I have some extra time on my hands
• Columbus Scrappers takes up a chunk of time as I catch up on the message board
• My blog to read the daily quotes and to visit all the blogs I have linked over on the left, plus a few others that I need to link
• Thread Bared, which I found thanks to Kerry, and which is hilarious
• Overheard in New York and sister site Overheard in The Office, which I found thanks to Bryan, and which are also hilarious
• Why Cyclists Wear Black Pants - ok so I don’t visit this every day. In fact, I just found it today but I had to share. Yowza.

I’ve been doing a fair amount of scrapping lately. I finished a gift album for a co-worker this weekend and gave it to him yesterday. Here’s what the cover looks like:

I stole the idea of the ribbon on the spine from someone else, but isn’t that how everything’s done anymore? I’m also almost done with another gift album that I’ll post after I give it to the recipient.

Johnny and I are climbing back on the wagon today. At lunchtime we’ll be heading to Weight Watchers to hopefully make some progress. As much as I like to think I have the willpower and motivation to follow the WW program on my own, I just don’t. After I get back, I’ll update the long-ignored ticker up at the top there - I know it’s pretty inaccurate.

In the comments of Johnny’s post about how horrible The Island was, I said that if MST3K was still on the air they wouldn’t even bother with it. Well it turns out they already have, kind of: in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, there’s a little blurb about how similar The Island is to a movie called Parts: The Clonus Horror, which WAS featured on MST3K. I miss that show.

I’ve become a slave to technology. Five years ago, I didn’t even have cable. Now, I would seriously miss DirecTV, Tivo and Netflix if I had to give them up. Netflix especially. I’m up to the mid-point of season 3 of Alias right now, and it’s killing me to wait even 3 days for my next disc. I had heard that season 3 wasn’t that good, but I think it’s all right. What gets me the most about it is how absurdly convenient some of the situations have been. And did they not want to hire any new people? It’s all the same people, over and over. But I suppose I shouldn’t complain about that, because it means more Sark. Holy crap, I just found out he’s younger than my baby brother. I’m getting old.

Speaking of getting old, I turn 30 on Thursday. I have no anxiety about this whatsoever.

I like animals. I am all for protecting endangered species, making sure domesticated animals aren’t abused, and controlling pet populations. That said, I’ve never really liked PETA. I don’t mind them being there, I guess, but their tactics are extreme and they come off a little crazy. I suppose I was right to feel uneasy about them - I found this out today:

The following story is from This is True dated 17 July 2005. It is Copyright 2005 Randy Cassingham, all rights reserved, and reprinted here with permission:

“Ethical” Defined

After more than 100 dead dogs were dumped in a trash dumpster over four weeks, police in Ahoskie, N.C., kept an eye on the trash receptacle behind a supermarket. Sure enough, a van drove up and officers watched the occupants throw in heavy plastic bags. They detained the two people in the van and found 18 dead dogs in plastic bags in the dumpster, including puppies; 13 more dead dogs were still in the van. Police say the van is registered to the headquarters of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the two occupants, Andrew B. Cook, 24, and Adria Joy Hinkle, 27, identified themselves as PETA employees. An autopsy performed on one of the dogs found it was healthy before it was killed. Police say PETA has been picking up the animals — alive — from North
Carolina animal shelters, promising to find them good homes. Cook and Hinkle have been charged with 62 felony counts of animal cruelty. In response to the arrests PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said it’s against the group’s policy for employees to dump animals in the trash, but “that for some animals in North Carolina, there is no kinder option than euthanasia.” (Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald) …Oops, my mistake: that’s “Playing God” defined.

In his author’s notes section, Cassingham had more to say about this story:

The more I learn about PETA, the less I think of them. The story of them killing animals isn’t even unusual. According to PETA’s own filings, in 2004 PETA killed 86.3 percent of the animals entrusted to its care — a number that’s rising, not falling. Meanwhile, the SPCA in PETA’s home town (Norfolk, Va.) was able to find loving homes for 73 percent of the animals put in its care. A shortage of funds? Nope: last year PETA took in $29 million in tax-exempt donations. It simply has other priorities for the funds, like funding terrorism (yes, really). But don’t take my word for it: I got my figures from http://www.PETAkillsAnimals.com — and they have copies of PETA’s state and federal filings to back it up. The bottom line: if you donate money to PETA because you think they care for and about animals, you need to think some more. PETA literally yells and screams about how others “kill animals” but this is how they operate? Pathetic.

And you know what I wonder? PETA’s official count of animals they kill is 86.3 percent. But if they’re going around picking up animals, killing them while they drive around and not even giving them a chance to be adopted, and then destroying the evidence by dumping the bodies in the trash, are those deaths being reported? My guess: no. While 86.3 percent is awful, the actual number is probably much, much higher. How dare they lecture anyone about the “ethical” treatment of animals!

(This is True is a weekly column featuring weird-but-true news
stories from around the world, and has been published since 1994. Click the link for info about free subscriptions.)

…do I have “Every Sperm is Sacred” stuck in my head?!

Saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Monday. Having not seen the original until I was a teenager, I had no problem with the fact that it was being remade. I think that it might be a bit soon, but Hollywood is all about the remakes right now, so whatever. I have not read the book so I’m not sure if this adaptation is more faithful or not, but it was certainly a better movie. It was also one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen, thanks solely to the Oompa Loompas. Or should I say, Oompa Loompa - they were all played by one guy. I assume this was done through digital trickery, like all the Agent Smiths in Matrix Revolutions. Regardless of how it was done, it was hilarious! They danced, they sang, and I laughed my ass off. Danny Elfman’s awesome score helped too. It was great throughout the movie, but the Oompa Loompa songs were shining beacons of absurdity. As for Johnny Depp, he plays Willy Wonka just as creepily as Gene Wilder did, but in a different way. There was some back story to his character this time around, and we get to see his father (as well as his father’s oh-so-Tim-Burton house). This film also gives us an ending with a bit more closure too, rather than just having Wonka and Charlie fly away in the glass elevator.

Wednesday it was Wedding Crashers night. I was looking forward to this one: how could the combination of Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn and Christopher Walken go wrong? It certainly didn’t, in the first 3/4 of the movie anyway. It was such a good idea to just go for the R rating so the swearing and boobs could be freely displayed. Vince and Owen work well together, and Walken was…well, he was Walken. I liked Rachael McAdams although her boyfriend, played by Will from the first two seasons of Alias, was just a bit too comically evil. The best part of the movie was definitely Isla Fisher, playing the slightly crazed nymphomaniac Gloria. The movie as a whole was really funny, and the absurd, sit-com-esque situations worked. Then at the end, it just kind of fizzled out and got predictable. It was nice to see Henry Gibson get a small role though - I have a soft spot for him.

Tonight we’re off to take a chance with The Island. I don’t see how you can go wrong with Scarlett Johannsen AND Ewan McGregor, with Steve Buscemi and Sean Bean (arrowed!) to boot. But it is Michael Bay we’re talking about here, so I’m preparing to lower my IQ before we go in. Actually, I’ve never seen a Michael Bay movie - this is the first one I’ve had even a shred of interest in. We’ll see how it goes before I get too excited about his upcoming live-action Transformers movie.

Tomorrow we’ll probably hit the Drexel, Columbus’s art house theatre, to see Me and You and Everyone We Know. Johnny claims it looks good, but it appears to be typical pretentious indie fare. I’ll try to go into it with an open mind.

Not a movie yet, but I finished Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince yesterday. I unintentionally read a spoiler online before getting the book, but I didn’t know whether or not to believe it so it didn’t detract from my reading experience. I really enjoyed this book, partly because it’s getting really dark and partly because the kids are becoming more real. They’re starting to actually act like teenagers now, even if they are teenagers fighting evil wizards. I won’t give anything away or talk any more in depth than that, but I did cry for about the last 50 pages or so. I may have to go back and re-read all 6 books now, because I hate to leave that world behind.

I love to travel. Discovering new places, and having new pictures to scrap, is great. But what’s even greater than travelling is coming home after travelling! We had a great time in Boston this weekend but it was really nice to sleep in my own bed last night. Well, sleep isn’t a strong enough term really: it was more like I plunged into the depths of darkness like a stone sinking to the bottom of a river. Sometimes you’re just that tired. But anyway, like I said, Boston was cool. We walked the Freedom Trail (which was much more interesting than I thought it would be), took a trolley tour with a CRAZY tour guide (in addition to mumbling to himself on the loudspeaker, he informed us that when “Orientals” started coming to MIT, they would travel in packs), went to the top of a tall building, visited the coolest globe ever, and took a tour of Fenway Park, all in addition to seeing the Red Sox game. Johnny has pictures up and I’m sure he’ll post more in depth about the trip as well.

Meanwhile, I’m back to feeling somewhat queasy. I think it’s because of The Baby. We have not actually conceived said baby as of yet, and for the most part I’m ready to do so. But there are all these questions I have that it seems no one else has ever asked, and I would look stupid doing so. Then I read Mara’s blog today and she has a lot of the same questions I do. The things that give me a little jolt of fear everytime I think them: am I really ready to do this? What if I’m not good enough? Do we have enough money? Should we bring another life into this world? Will I have any free time? What if something goes wrong? I think that last one is the thing that’s worrying me the most. I have a somewhat embarrassing admission to make here, one that I know I need to just get over but that has been with me my entire life. I am TERRIFIED of going to the doctor. Unfortunately, when you’re pregnant you see your doctor an average of 1,396,517 times over the course of 9 months. I’ve gotten pretty good at going when I have a legitimate illness like strep throat or a broken bone, but this will be all new to me and I don’t like the idea of how invasive it all it. That may sound strange seeing as I’ll have another person growing in me, and logically I think it’s great that there’s so much that can be done to monitor and prevent and show how the baby’s doing, but I’d still rather everyone just left me alone. And then at the end of it all, I’m going to have to go to a HOSPITAL. I hated hospitals before the little episode we had back in February, and now I hate them even more. I don’t want an IV, I definitely don’t want a catheter, and the idea of an epidural makes me want to throw up, even knowing the benefits.

You know, I re-read that paragraph and I feel really foolish. I’m almost 30 years old and I sound like I’m 5. I’m consoling myself by remembering that when I actually was 5, it took my mom and 3 nurses to hold me down for my kindergarten booster shots. I’m uncharacteristically brave about shots and having blood drawn now, as long as I look away while they’re doing it. But I still get so nervous that almost every time I go to the doctor they have to retake my blood pressure after I’ve calmed down. The first reading they got on me last time was 190 over 156. Fortunately it went down later. But the point is, no matter how foolish or embarrassed I feel about this, it doesn’t change things. I’m just hoping I don’t freak out too much.

We leave tonight for Boston for the weekend. I’m not sure why, but I’m feeling very uneasy about this. I suspect it may have something to do with the fact that I haven’t been sleeping well (or enough) this week, and it’s just catching up with me. It’s going to be a lot of fun though, so I’m not going to let a queasy stomach get in my way! Maybe some Wheat Thins will help.

The main purpose of the trip is to see the Red Sox/Yankees game on Saturday. You may recall that I got the tickets for Johnny for his birthday back in April. We are fortunate that our friends Tanya and John recently moved from Chicago to Boston, and we get to stay with them and take them to the game with us. It’s a mixed blessing that they don’t live in Columbus anymore: we loved visiting them in Chicago, and will love visiting them in Boston, but they’re one of very few couples that we can hang out with all together. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to find people like that.

Other than the game, which will take up most of the day on Saturday, I have found a lot of stuff I’d like to do. The Freedom Trail, a Trolley Tour with additional harbor cruise (yeah, water!), the requisite visit to Cheers, a walk in the Charles River Park (recommended by my co-worker Mike who went to school in Boston), the Mapparium. Since we’ll only have 2 days to do non-Sox things, there will be a lot of stuff to save for our next visit as well.

For some time now I’ve been feeling really lazy. I’m sure I’ve commented about it here. I marvel at how people do all the things they do - most days, it’s enough for me to get up and go to work. I can’t be expected to cook and clean, or really do anything other than sit mindlessly in front of the TV when I come home! The thing is, I haven’t always been this way, which is why it bothers me. I used to be involved in so many things that I’d have to plan my day in 15 minute increments just to make sure everything got done. In high school, there would be days that I wouldn’t even get home until 10pm.

I’ve been meaning to clean the bathroom for weeks now. Every day I would be at work and think, “tonight when I get home, I’m going to clean the bathroom.” And every night I’d get home, have dinner, think about cleaning the bathroom, and not do it. Of course, it doesn’t help that I hate cleaning the bathroom, but the point is my laziness took over. Then last week, all of a sudden I was busy with things each night. Then Amanda wanted to come over and scrap, so I was forced to plan things out a bit more. Wednesday she was coming at 7, so I told myself that I needed to go home after work and get some things done first. And I did! 2 loads of laundry, and I even (partially) cleaned the damn bathroom! I was kind of surprised at myself, until I realized what I need to do to get more done: do more things.

I know that sounds stupid, especially written like that. But the fact is, I just function better when I have a lot to do. I learned how to adapt when I was busy, and now that I’ve all but cleared my schedule over the past few years I don’t know what to do with myself. The problem is going to be moderation. In high school and college, I would run myself ragged and end up with strep throat or tonsillitus or freakin’ MONO one time. After college I worked 60 hours a week and felt like I never did anything besides work and sleep. While planning my wedding I was working 2 jobs and taking classes and I was waaaay stressed. But it’s obvious that I need to add at least a few more things to my life just so I can get more done!

I’m sick of working. I don’t hate my job, and I certainly don’t have a surplus of money, I just don’t want to work anymore. There are far too many better things I could be doing with my time than sitting in this office feeling my butt grow. Plus my dad just retired so he’s living it up already.

This happens to me every time I visit a lake, I’ve noticed. The weekend before last, Johnny, my parents and I drove up to Port Clinton on Lake Erie. I’ve always been kind of romantically drawn to water, even though we never had a boat or a cabin on the lake, or even camped near the lake. There’s just something different about the touristy towns on the shore, with their seafood restaurants (mostly perch and walleye on Lake Erie), their marinas and their little boutiques filled with nautical-themed crafts and necklaces made of shells. Maybe it’s precisely because I never lived in such a place that draws me in. Regardless, I’m ready to kick back on a screened in porch overlooking the water.