I need ideas for cars. What should I buy? Where should I go?

I want a coupe with a V6 engine. I don't care about power windows/locks, or air bags. I'd prefer not to have a digital display on the dash. I can't afford brand new, my best bet would be something about four years old. I want something that's not tied to a dealership through monetary, digital or mechanical means. I want something that looks nice, but nobody would think about stealing. I don't want to spend over 10k.

Dammit. I want MY car with less milage and all parts fully functional.

Better yet, my own personal mechanic. With a garage.

As forwarded from my miniatures list:

The way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you've started.
"So I looked around the house to see all the things I started and hadn't finished....and, before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of red wine, a bottle of white wine, the Bailey's, Kahlua and Wild Turkey, the Prozac, some valium, some cheesecake and a box of chocolates. You have no idea how freakin' good I feel...."

Obviously I'm in the wrong house.

Got sucked under again into the blackness. Combine that with the ortho adding four more bands around my very back molars and you can understand that life has been most unpleasant. I've mostly been following mom around like a stray, too unnerved to stand being alone.

July sucked. I have no hope for August. My teeth are killing me, and I'm starving. My car is making very bad thunking noises. I'm going to have to get rid of it soon, spending 300 a month on various repairs is not worth it.

TypeNow.net - The Web's BIGGEST Typography Resource

I like fonts.

Hasn't been updated since early 2003, but who cares?

There is a spare video capture card in the storage room. There is an unused version of Adobe Premiere 5.5. There is a 931 mhz machine sitting in my room, mostly complete, doing nothing except waiting for information to be extracted and the hard drive reformatted.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Book Review: Fool Moon, by Jim Butcher

I had Jim Butcher's series, The Dresden Files series recommended to me, so thought I'd try it over the weekend. Naturally, the library didn't have the first book, so I had to skip to the second.

The series is about a wizard, one Harry Dresden, in a typical alternate reality where magic and monsters exist. He hires himself out, does work for the police, and tries to scrape out a living. He also gets beat up a LOT. It's pretty typical for the genre.

I had a hard time caring about the characters. He was very descriptive about their physical appearance when they were introduced, but beyond that they seemed very one-dimensional. You wondered why in the world Dresden associated with them. His girlfriend was a bland tabloid writer. Another associate worked with the police in the supernatural division, but she was constantly beating him up and arresting him. He had a familiar named Bob. I have no comments about Bob except he was there as comic relief. I liked one of the bad guys - a mob boss named Marcone.

I also felt the plot was a bit disjointed, as if he had written it without a specific direction in mind. He's acting as a detective, but the story wasn't dropping the usual hints for the reader to pick up on. I'll have to read a bit more in the series before passing a final judgement on his writing style.

Dresden himself has been well fleshed out. He's a brooding, cynical, paranoid, guilt-ridden wizard. Being of the magical sort, he has a terrible time with modern technology. As in, stuff tends to blow up and malfunction just by his being there. I rather liked that touch.

Jim Butcher's very rough on all of his characters. So is Laurell K. Hamilton, for that matter, but she also has mind games that intersperse between the fights. Dresden rolls from one fight to another.

I'll still check out the rest of the series. I hear it's being made into a tv show of some sort in the near future.

Hello!

I appear to have emerged from the murky, drowning, hellish nightmare I've been in for the past two weeks. Everything suddenly seems a lot quieter and brighter now. I'm hesitant to say or do anything major for fear I'll go under again. It's a horrible, horrible place. I feel like somebody took a dark bag off of my head and shooed away whatever demons were beating and hissing at me. The worst part is, it's all me. Dark, dreary, depressing. It's just normally tucked well away.

I remember going through this a few years ago. I had hoped that it had resolved itself and wouldn't be back, but I probably brought this episode on myself with those new pills. (stupid hormones.) I'll have to see what can be done about it. I really, REALLY don't want to go through that again.

I'm sure there's a lot of people around me that agree. And Annie, too. Sorry, puppy.

I better enjoy it while it lasts.

Here. The Dancing Penguins. Just thought I'd give them an audience of some sort. Let them entertain you for a while.

Once again, the backup power source has proven its worth.

10 minutes after I arrived at work this morning, the power went out. just our building. (personally, I blame the lawn maintenance people.) I decided to make my way downstairs and see how much I could get done in the dark.

Strangely enough, the lights in the editing room worked. There is a very old gas powered generator that always managed to kick on and chug away when we have power outages. There are several power outlets in the basement that are connected to it, so fortunately the fans and the router worked as well. I was able to finish nearly everything and go back upstairs, where I used my laptop (on batteries) and dialed out using the previous weekend's free AOL cd to check email.

I was hoping to use the lack of light as an excuse to go home and sleep, but they came back on about two hours later.

No more coke for me. ever. ok? send me reminders once in a while. Stick with water. Water is good. You don't need that nasty sugar and caffeine. nope. It just makes you moody and jittery and keeps you wide awake at night, thinking unpleasant thoughts.

*curses insomnia*

I finally got my mini vacation/quiet weekend in the country.

Erin and Andrew went to a pig roast in Pittsburg, so I offered to stay with the cats.
I brought a whole bunch of junk with me to keep me occupied, and it's been so very nice and quiet. The noisiest thing in the house has been the mantle clock, which plays chimes every 15 minutes.

That and the cats. They sure are strange. Clara will sit and STARE at the ceiling as if she's watching something. Anna likes to burrow under everything. They both love chasing an LED pen light, they will come running whenever they hear the light jingle. (it's on a keychain.) They chase each other around the house, try to kill each other, then zonk out for hours at a time. They have incredibly loud purrs. My sister had a stuffed cat once, that had some sort of rock thing in its head that sounded like it was purring. They sound just like that stuffed cat.

I brought my work laptop, and I'm on dialup (free aol cds do come in handy once in a while) and haven't noticed that much of a difference, save when I'm downloading email. I've done absolutely nothing, which is normal for me, but for once I'm doing it somewhere else.

I don't want to go home.

Slashdot's weekly poll had a mouse theme to it. However, the list didn't include half the mice I (and other people) could think of. I thought I'd make a list.

Jerry (Tom & Jerry)
Mighty Mouse
Three Blind Mice
Pinky
The Brain
GusGus (from Cinderella)
Jacques (from Cinderella)
Stuart Little
Martin (From Redwall)
Mrs Frisby (The Secret of NIMH)
Mickey
Minnie
Timothy Q. Mouse(from Dumbo)
Bernard & Bianca (The Rescuers)
Basil (The Great Mouse Detective)
DangerMouse
Chuck E. Cheese (sure, why not?)
Dixie & Pixie
Ralph S. Mouse (kinda like Stuart Little, by Beverly Cleary)
Roquefort (the aristocats)
Speedy Gonzales
Tutter (bear in the big blue house)
Fievel (An American tale)
Templeton (ok, he's a rat, but still famous from Charlotte's Web)
Gadget (Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers)
Monterey Jack (Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers)

If you think of any more, leave them in the comments section.

I solved my problem with the smtp server. I'm not sure if it's the right solution, but I chose to go through port 2525 instead of 25 and it worked. *blames Cox*

I've been playing with the mozilla email features and I like it a lot. Particularly the junk mail options. OE doesn't have anything like it. Mark that an incoming email is junk, it will remember that and move it to a junk mail folder or delete it. It also imports my address books from other email programs. I only use the address book at work, but now I feel safer knowing that it's in Mozilla. I probably shouldn't.

I can't deal anymore.

I find myself alone all the time. Even at work, I'm generally the only person in the office now. My mother spends most of her time at my grandmothers, or else she's on the phone or sewing. Dad's been working out in the side yard, or he holes himself up in his office. Erin's long since moved out, and since she got her cats, hasn't even come to spend the night. My friends are always busy, sick, antisocial, or live hundreds of miles away.

My entire life has been like this. I remember being the only student in a ballet class. Being unable to participate in anything in high school because no one was home to give me a ride. Struggling to keep my college schedule as condensed and simple as possible and then spending all day there to minimize the number of rides I'd need. I didn't get my driver's license til I was 20 because no one could ever find the time to teach me. I'm always sitting and waiting for someone to get off the phone so I can talk to them - even if we had been talking before the phone rang. I attended a church that consisted mainly of my family. 8 people at the most. I could probably go for days without talking to anyone, in spite of people being around me.

Every time I try to break out of this isolated existence, I find myself pushed right back in. Everyone tells me I need to get out more, but when I try to go somewhere they throw a fit about me going alone. Naturally THEY don't have the time to go, but I have to go with SOMEONE. Someone else. Not them. They're busy. Tired. Old. Whatever. Go away, Elaine. We're busy. You bother us. Go crawl back in your hole. Don't make us think about you.

I hate this. It's getting unbearable. I'm so tired. I'm bored. I'm depressed. I feel completely helpless, useless and unwanted.

So here I sit at my computer, drawing pictures, watching movies, altering my web site, reading, doing whatever I can to distract my mind for a few hours. Taking up space and air. Trying to put into words what misery I'm feeling. It seems to extend in all directions. I find myself envious of people who get to go on long vacations (or even short weekend ones), buy new furniture, new pets, promotions, called for jury duty . . .
I don't think I'm a horrible person. I'm really very handy to have around. I know how to do lots of things, and I'm a fast learner. I do most of my bitching on my blog, and I don't talk about people behind their backs. I enjoy being busy, it doesn't matter if it's work related or fun. Boredom and loneliness just totally melt your brains til there's no desire or interest left in anything. I want to have some sort of purpose. I want to be USEFUL. Wanted.

I don't stay where I'm not wanted. It just feels like the whole world doesn't want me.

GAME ON | Chasm

QOTD: My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it's gone.

INDUSTORIOUS CLOCK ||| MONO*CRAFTS

Somewhat fascinating, almost like the human clock.

Just when I was nearly back to an almost-normal diet.

The ortho put the spacers back in. Yes, those awful little blue rubber bands, shoved between my back teeth. I hate them. It hurts to chew. Apparently I get more fun stuff installed in my mouth in a week or so.

Two more years. Two more years.

New PC is blissfully quiet, except for the DVD-ROM, which sounds like it's choking when it starts up. I've gotten some of the important stuff up and running, network connection, Mozilla, AVG antivirus, adaware, Realm, Trillian . . .

But for the life of me I can't get my email going. Receive, yes, send, no. It won't connect to the smtp server, which is the same as the incoming mail server. There's really not a whole lot of options here. What am I missing? I should know how to do this. It's not difficult. really, it's not.

It . . . just . . . won't . . . work.

GAAHAHHHHH!!!!!

Dad found Armands and brought some home for dinner.
It's given me a stomachache. I remember it doing the same when I had it last time I was in DC.

*sigh* Oh well. Something I can't eat often. But I have great memories of trips to DC!

Movie Review: Peter Pan

One of my favorite books. The have never captured it properly on film. I keep hoping one day they will. It's a difficult challenge. There are so many different elements and levels to the novel, and while each version manages to capture something of it, I imagine it will impossible to get all of it. So go read the book by James M. Barrie. The full thing. Many times.

For this movie, I'm grateful they finally used a boy to play the part of Peter. Not the best actor, but he fit the look. I was incredibly disappointed with Captain Hook. Sure, he looked piratey, but he was just NOT the distinguished, fastidious villian that Hook was. Dustin Hoffman played him to perfection, and I will always picture him that way. I think Alan Rickman might be good at him, too. I'd have to consider this a bit more.

The movie featured several interesting elements about The Never Land, particularly the way the place responds to Peter's presence and moods. The colors are wild, as if they were in a rainbow. (For my part, I've always assumed that The Never Land is located where the directional compass is on maps. I'm not sure where I got that idea.) I'm glad I finally go to see it, but I don't know that it'll be one I plan to purchase.

Hook is still my favorite of the Peter Pan films. I also liked the cartoon TV series a lot. I wonder if it will ever come out on DVD? The story is set up well for a series, there are a lot of details about the island and the characters in the story, and so many adventures that could be created. The Never Land is a place that exists purely for fantasy and adventure - the perfect setup.

And I got stung again today. One moment I'm leaning over the porch railing, talking to dad, the next I'm surrounded by bees. They had some sort of nest under the railing.

Now, really, I'm not going out of my way to irritate anybody. Had I known they were there I wouldn't have disturbed them. Just ask the spider with the beautiful web attached to the chair out on the back deck! No need to sting me, just a warning, or at least an obvious nest, will do.

Inspired by the graphics link I posted earlier, I spent a few hours drawing this. Usually I draw on paper and scan it in, but this is the first time I've successfully drawn something completely by hand on my computer. (I think I've gotten my money's worth out of that drawing tablet!) This is a drawing of one of my Realm characters. I'm having a terrible time exporting it to a gif file without losing a lot of detail, but I plan to keep trying til it works. So far I can get it to look ok if the file is really really big, which makes it hard to display. It was a fun challenge, and I feel I'm learning more with every picture I complete.

While at my aunt and uncle's the other night, Bud showed me a web site that listed all the 'best deals' on the web for the day. They had several special offers for Dell computers.

*wriggles uncomfortably*

I came home, took a better look at the offers. Next thing I knew, I was playing around with the customization features.

And then . . . and then . . . I purchased one.

I haven't bought a new computer since 1997. I've always taken geekish pride in my ability to build computers and keep them going. I've been putting off upgrading for months, indecisive about what to upgrade to, and struggling hard against trying to do something creative. Or spending a LOT of money trying to build a 'quiet' PC. However, I found it very difficult to pass up this deal. I generally spend around 4 hundred dollars an upgrade, give or take a bit. To get a whole new system for that amount was too good to pass up.

I'm afraid to turn off this one. Last time I did I had to reboot it to get it to load Windows properly. I don't have the disc so I can't reinstall XP. I'm hoping my trackball problem, my browser and my outlook express problems are all related to whatever's going wrong.

Oh well. I already know I'll be fine tuning and adding things to it. When it gets here. Next week.

It'll be the only friend I've got.

Metal and Magic



Check out this site - particularly the tutorial section. What
fantastic artwork! I think I'm going to have to play with some
new sections of Photoshop . . .

Could it possibly be starting again?



Farragut North Metro Ceiling Collapses.


Last night, I dreamt I was in a metro station, and the ceiling had
collapsed. I hadn't heard a thing about this happening until mom
mentioned it at dinner. But if it happened yesterday evening, perhaps I
heard about it but wasn't paying attention? I don't believe so - I
didn't read local news, watch tv or listen to the radio last night. I
don't know. Years ago I would have these clairvoyant type dreams. I
have ancestors noted for it, too. They haven't happened for a while,
but maybe they're back?

I've gotten so tired of being harassed about my weight. I've finally decided to attempt to do something about it. Teetering on 102 pounds really doesn't sound very healthy to me.

My choices were:

a. Start eating dinner at Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins, fast food places, vending machines . . . However, too much sugar makes me really moody. Or gives me the hiccups. Or keeps me awake all night. Too much dairy does unpleasant things to my stomach.
b. walk into a Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers Center and say loudly, "Hi, This is a weight management center, right? Can you help me GAIN weight?" (I still like this one. I have such a sadistic streak in me.) Problem is, I don't think I could afford it.
c. Start exercising and doing strength training. Muscle weighs more than fat anyway, doesn't it?

Once upon a time I had a membership to Gold's Gym. I had to give it up in order to pay for my cell phone. Which was really pointless, I had to get the cell phone when I got the car, and I got the car so I could actually GO to the gym. No one ever had time to take me there or pick me up. I really don't want to attend a ritzy gym. For one thing, I'm getting enough dirty looks as it is from middle aged women . . .

My mother made a comment about all the gym equipment my aunt had, so I called her and asked if I could come over and borrow it. She got really excited about the whole idea. (she likes working out with other people - it encourages her to keep going.) She has a few friends who are professional trainers, one of whom has the same weight problem I do. They offered a few ideas, and Karen's trying to arrange a meeting with them to set up a workout routine and possibly the proper diet for each of us.

Of course, she invites me over the other night to work out, then have dinner. A half our Denise Austin video vs. fried chicken, mashed potatos, gravy, biscuits and corn . . . it completely defeated the purpose of whatever one of us was trying to accomplish. (I have no idea why she's so popular, she's such a raspy flake on the screen.)

So hopefully this will help. I, for one, look forward to being able to walk into a revolving door and actually get through without hurting myself. (doors should NOT be that heavy!)

I'm back. Beware.

I really do like my web host. I think. They shut my site down yesterday claiming that the domain name registration had expired. I had to go dig up last year's receipt that showed I had purchased a two year registration. Fortunately, I rarely delete work emails I download at home. They apologized and fixed it. Of course, I was too impatient to wait til I got home to look for the email and ordered another two year registration. Now I need to do something about THAT.

My computer keeps booting up with the message: "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this." This sounds somewhat bad, but it will load when I select the boot normally option. I think I need to fix it. I'm wishing I could fix it by upgrading the processor and motherboard . . . I figure it's just trying to compete with the malfunctioning trackball.

I'm also finding myself looking at laptops again. I know, I have one at work now, but it's heavy and I don't like lugging it back and forth. One at home would fit beautifully on my antique desk, don't you think?

Someone removed the mini-DV camera from the storage room at work. Now I have to go track THAT down. Either the network hub or the cat 5 cable died on Jan's PC. I think it was the cable, it seems to be working ok with the other one at the moment. That evil volunteer kid was in yesterday (his mother just left him here while she went to the library in spite of my polite but firm "we have nothing for him to do here. The next volunteer opportunity is Thursday evening on the Town Green.") He managed to mangle Harvey's computer. (he was absolutely convinced that it connected through AOL dialup). Although that's probably the one piece of equipment that I would like to see crash and burn.

Speaking of which, Office Depot is having an equipment recycling program through Labor Day. One piece of old equipment per day, taken to the store, to be recycled by them for free. Have I got parts for them! This is probably the only good news I have for the week. Admire it, and put it to good use.

I've been abandoned at work.

Jan has worn herself down to a nub and has been trying to quit for some time. She wanted to step down from her position as executive director. She was planning to recommend me as a replacement and at the most come in a couple of times a month to do the accounting. Nice, simple, easy for a middle aged woman trying to look after her parents, kids, and grandkids. She's barely been in the office for months, and when she is she's generally been too stressed to be very useful. It made it frustrating for me and for people who called in needing to talk to the executive director. She finally went to talk to Dave, but he talked her into taking a sabbatical instead. Which, essentially, means that no one is still doing Jan's job, and I get to run the office in her absence. It's not exactly the kind of job you can take a sabbatical from. We're a year-round operation here, technically on the air 24-7. Three part time people are in the office. I seem to be the only one working.
I have no authority to make executive decisions, spend money, or handle people. I'm not exactly trained for her job. I'm no longer even sure of WHAT she does - I've been doing my own thing for ages. I'm certainly not getting paid to do any of her work.
In spite of it all, I love this damned job. There's so much variety going on, so many levels you have to work on, and I do get quite a bit of freedom in what I can do. There's also a lot that can go wrong, and very little money with which to correct problems.
So essentially, I'm stuck. I haven't had any kind of extended vacation in 2 years. I come in on Monday holidays. Jan was in Dallas last week, came in once this week, and will be in Cape May next week. I'm tired. My only consolation is my wonderful intern, who has been working with all the people wanting to do shows. (and getting them done!) I don't know what I'm going to do when he leaves. Well, after screaming and pulling my hair out, that is . . .

This was impressive. Check it out! Lego Spiderman - the movie!

and I just encountered Moonlight Sonata again! This time on the Highlander DVD - Season 2, disc 1. A rather bizarre combination of Queen and piano.

Today's post has been brought to you today by the letter M, the letter V, and the num . . . er, the other letter A. (well, I tried, anyway)

M is for muppets. (that's good enough for me!) slashdot had a very fun poll on your favorite Sesame Street character. I haven't voted yet. I couldn't decide. Do I vote for the one who made me laugh the most? The one my cynical attitude most matched? The one who made me think the most? The one with the chocolate chips? What defines a 'favorite' anyway?

V is for vacations, which I never seem to get to go on. The closest I generally get is planning one out, which is sort of a vacation, but you don't actually go anywhere and not nearly as interesting. For a few minutes, though, you forget where you are, and your mind is in some interesting place, looking to see where you can eat, and how to get to this shop or that theater . . .

A is for Armand's Pizza. I just found out there's one in Centreville. Growing up, one of the most exciting things my sister and I got to do was go to Dad's office on a Saturday. We were always allowed to walk around the giant metal mountain in the lobby, and peer up the huge staircases. Then we got to have Armand's pizza for lunch, in the break room, where a moosehead hung on the wall. For an 8 year old, eating a piece of pizza bigger than your head was a BIG deal. Of course, for us, eating OUT was a big deal. I suppose I learned to associate Armand's with adventure and a rare treat. I got to eat there back in April (I think) when I went to the miniatures museum. It wasn't QUITE as fun, but I still associate it with DC trips. I may have to go find it out in Centreville now . . .

Bah. Erin changed her mind about going away for the weekend. So much for my quiet house-sitting mini-vacation in the country.

Now, if only I could figure out how to get to Michigan in August for the Realm Gathering . . .

Movie Review: Jakob the Liar

It tried hard. It really did. It was very sweet, very sad, very sensitive. It just . . . wasn't enough.

For starters, the plot was more along the lines of something you'd see in a television sitcom. A simple misunderstanding leads to a lot of rumors and, of course, trouble. The characters were developed, somewhat, but not enough to really grab your attention. They were sort of stereotypical characters. There was Jakob, the narrator, a widower who used to own a restaurant. There was his friend the suicidal barber. A young couple in love. A lost little girl. The wise doctor. Some overprotective but supportive parents. They were all in there, but representing . . . what? They didn't DO anything to make the plot move. The plot wasn't complex enough to move, I suppose. Everyone thinks Jakob has a forbidden radio in a WWII jewish ghetto. It sort of brings them hope, but it sort of brings them trouble. There were expectations, but none met.

Y'know, I've had dreams like this. And conversations that ran along the same lines. I need help.

I came very close to murder today.

I remember now why I don't like kids after they learn how to talk. It's been a while since I've been around one who abuses the priveledge. He was rude, he was mean, he was arrogant, he was obnoxious, and he was only 4'11". He pissed off Harvey and Gilbert. Do you KNOW how much it takes to annoy these two?

He also wanted to volunteer. Fortunately, I have nothing for him to do in the office. (There are some days I don't have anything for ME to do in the office. which leads to trouble - more on that in a minute). Somehow, I don't think he'll last long with us. Particularly if he doesn't follow direction. Teamwork's incredibly important in a taping, and so is following orders. So is not messing with equipment. He wasn't in the office two minutes before he was messing with our internet streaming server. And his mother did nearly nothing. Do all kids turn out this way? Is it the way they're raised? What makes them like this? I think I'm going to go get my tubes tied now . . .

Speaking of trouble - I finally managed to fake my way into the web server and update the signup page. Mike the webmaster hasn't had time to do it in ages, and my pleas for updates or access have gotten me nowhere. All I had was that evil Macromedia Contribute program, which basically only lets you update text. I needed to update forms! I have a terrible time creating them, but they're easy to update if everything else is there (and works.) I tested it, it seems to work ok. I feel loads better and very geeky. It made up for the network hub dying on me . . .

There's something wrong with my trackball. The left button won't work properly. I either have to click on something multiple times to get it to work, or else I click once and I end up with five windows opening up.

Could it be due to the fact that I've knocked it off the table too many times?

Or maybe it's the blogger site. I notice the problem the most here. More than once I've managed to post the same post five or six times because nothing would happen when I clicked the publish button. I do have a lot of issues with this site. (I suppose I'm getting what I've paid for.) It loads a fancy little graphic that will count down til the post is 100% published. If it runs slow, it repeats, and then proceeds to load every other graphic on the page over and over. It just looks bad. Then there's the comments section, which insists that you need to be a member in order to leave a comment, but you don't. You can post as anonymous. (which I don't particularly like, either, but oh well!) The internal settings are a pain, too. The View Blog link for this blog isn't directed properly - it points to somewhere within the blogger.com web site that doesn't exist. However, it does work in my Realm site. The settings are the same. Then there's the archive feature. I can tell it where to save the archive files. It doesn't. I can delete and tell it again. It doesn't. I can create the folder it thinks it's pointing to, and yet it somehow doesn't save anything there, either. I can alter - to an extent - the files so that the links work, but I'd have to go and fix it every month when it archives again. I keep wondering if creating a new blog would help, but somehow I doubt it. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything better out there. It's a bit of a surprise, too. I mean, really, this is owned by Google! Aren't they supposed to be wonderful/fantastic/etc . . .? I hope they get their glitches sorted out soon.

Did you ever get the feeling that you were being . . . avoided? You know that feeling. There's no answer when you attempt to contact them, the claims of being 'sick' or 'busy' every time you do manage to find them. It's an uneasy feeling.
It's generally rapidly followed by lots of internal questions, starting with: Why this change in attitude? What did I do to offend them? How can I correct it if they won't tell me what the issue is? Are their excuses actually valid or are they just lying to get rid of me? If they're lying now, did they lie before? About everything? Were those claims of friendship just shows? Are they actually one of those lying rat bastards who delight in leading people on, using them, then tossing them aside when they've served their purpose?

*cough* You know, you're not paranoid if they actually ARE out to get you.

It's . . . finished. The history show. Done. After a year of work.

Most of it not mine, in the end. Claire started research for it last summer, then contacted me. Then there was all the mess in getting permission to use the historic photos. Then there was the realization that narration wouldn't be enough and we should do interviews. It kept altering itself.

Then my summer intern arrived just as we finished the last interview, and I dumped the whole project on him. (fantastic timing!) He did a great job with what we gave him. It's now a half hour show (originally planned for an hour) with about 6 interviews on various topics of Herndon. I had a completely different idea in mind. But this show works. And it's done. And I didn't have to do much more than direct and supervise.

The show will start airing next week. We have enough material left over to probably do two more shows on Fred Washington and Col. Mosby. Plus we have ideas for more. I'd like to see a regular history series done. I may have to get in touch with the historical society and see what ideas they can come up with.

It's SO nice to have an in-house editor. I'll miss him when he leaves in September.

QOTD: "Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer, for you never know who will turn on you first."

As much as I wish my grandfather had his health and memory back, he sure can be useful to me at times . . .

My mother threw a baby shower for my cousin Tara. Well, technically, she's my grandmother's cousin's daughter, but plain old 'cousin' can sure simplify things. I had no desire to be here, so I offered to stay with my grandfather so my grandmother could go. Worked out well. My cousin Chris (just a regular cousin!) was there, too, attempting to upgrade my grandmother's computer. We couldn't get the damned thing to cooperate, and I didn't have the patience or the resources to troubleshoot, so we ended up simply adding more RAM to the original computer. Perhaps later we can try again.

Movie Review: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Inappropriately named. It should have been called "The Mad Sheriff of Nottingham." Alan Rickman has an incredible talent, and unintentionally or not, stole every scene he was in. Humorous antagonists are rarely seen in movies. They're supposed to be evil, you're not supposed to laugh at them, right? Er, or think like them? (loved the dungeon scene.)

I recognized people from all over. Guy of Gisbourne played Rochefort in The Three Musketeers. (hello again, Cyclops!) I wonder if his voice really is like that . . . Little John would have been an excellent Hagrid. (I thought it was Hagrid for a few minutes.) Maid Marian looked like Katherine Hepburn. For being such a competent fighter in the beginning of the movie, she sure turned into a screaming helpless female at the end. I could also see John Rhys-Davies playing Friar Tuck. Wasn't him, naturally, but it might have been a good part for him. Then there was Sean Connery turning up for the last minute of the movie. Sean Connery does that a lot. Sometimes I think he just sneaks onto movie sets, steals a costume, and jumps in front of the camera.

As for the plot . . . quite a different take. I grew up watching the Erroll Flynn version, and reading the stories. This version left out Prince John completely, as well as the famous archery competition. It gave Robin a Moorish sidekick and turned Will Scarlett into a very complex character instead of a foppish poet. Once you get past the changes, it's quite all right.

Oh, and loved the music, naturally. I've been hearing the music for years, just never saw the movie. I thought it interesting that at one point in the movie I heard Moonlight Sonata being played - one of the few pieces I can play on the piano.

So my aunt calls me yesterday. This always heralds something interesting. She's gotten a new job, running events for an upperclass neighborhood community. She gets a budget. (she's very, VERY happy about this.) They plan to have a halloween party at their rec center, and want to do a haunted house for adults in the upstairs ballroom. Since I had experience with haunted houses, did I have ideas/resources/interest?

Oh, there's lots of possibilities. I knew of a few sites online that I sent her:

Halloween-Online

HauntGuide

HauntedHouse.com">

Howl2000's Member site list

The problem is, the places I worked at were in a completely different setting. They were basically large dark mazes people went through, with actors doing their best to make them wet their pants. (The ultimate coup for any haunted house actor!) These places had a lot of wooden walls and props that required time and money to build and set up. A second story ballroom isn't suited for that. I suggested at first a murder dinner theater, but since the kids will be downstairs, people probably will most likely not want to stay long. It'll take some thinking.

Another issue is, just how scary should it be? My aunt prefers cutesy halloween decorations with nothing scarier than a hairy spider. I prefer darker, more gothic themes. She does, however, like the Addams Family, perhaps we can build some sort of theme around that.

Of course, give people enough sugar and stick them in a dark room on Halloween, and they'll scare themselves without any encouragement.