gypsygirl

So, I ordered Unbreakable from Netflix, and when it came, the disc was broken. I had a giggle over the irony in that.

Well, I survived the week in CA, but I was glad I was only there for a week. The place was hectic. Ten people and two dogs, and then the last couple of days, one additional person. Two people had colds when I arrived, and by the time I left, they’d traded them with two others - myself and my mother. So, I was glad I’d asked for the rest of last week off. It gave me time to get better before having to come back to work. With so many of us sick, it was interesting to see how each of us reacted to the same virus - one had really bad chest congestion; another had horrible post-nasal drip and cough; mine was all in the sinuses; mum’s had just started when I left, so I don’t know what hers was like.

I got a great new lap quilt from mum for Christmas. I’d told her how cold it gets in my office, so she made me one that folds up into a pillow to keep at work. I’d been a bit worried about the gift I got for Andy - a physics kit (like a chemistry set but with gears and wires and things), but apparently his parents found him playing with it when they went to bed Christmas Eve (an hour or so after he’d said he was going to sleep).

MB and Sherry and I got to have a couple of SKVE meetings while Sherry was here for her holiday. We went to see P.S. I Love You one day and met for coffee another day. I’m not a great fan of Hillary Swank, but I enjoyed the movie ok. Sherry hadn’t heard anything about it before going, so she was disappointed that Gerard Butler dies; but then relieved that he comes back in flash-backs and hallucinations. She just likes to look at him. I made them each a short scarf with a slit in one end that you can tuck the other end into. MB opened hers while Sherry and I were waiting for our coffees, and we watched her trying to figure it out. She kept looking at the length of it, then opening the slit, then folding it back up. When she heard us giggling at her she asked me what it was, “It’s too short to be a scarf, and it has this opening thing only on one end…” Once she figured it out, she liked it. Sherry, having spent some time in a colder climate now, knew exactly what it was and how to use it.

I’m off to my first programming conference this week. It’s a three day conference on XSLT. It’s the first conference I’ve gone to for Baylor. I need to do a bit of research on Austin (which is where it’s going to be), so I can visit stuff after hours.

I’ve started a new project on LibriVox to work on in conjunction with The Elusive Pimpernel. I started Anne of Avonlea last night. I had a sudden craving for some more Anne. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to get done on these two projects this coming month (while Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is in rehearsals), but I’ll always have weekends.

I got the job!!!

Yes, yes, I know I usually agree with PTerry on multiple exclamation points, but this is a special occasion.

They finally called me Wednesdy evening to offer me the job. The HR lady who likes me had told me to expect the call, and to pretend to be surprised. So I pretended, and needless to say, I accepted! I’ll be starting Monday week, but I still don’t really know what it’s going to involve… other than some amount of programming. I suppose they’ll get to that eventually.

I went to see HP5 Tuesday night with some friends from the theatre. MB bought the tickets ahead of time, and at the last minute a couple of people had dropped out, so I invited Eileen to come along with us. It was pretty good, considering it was the shortest movie so far - and based on the second longest book. They left out ridiculous amounts of stuff, but what was there was good.

In other news, I’m going to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) at the Hippodrome this Saturday. It’ll be the first time I get to see the Cachinnator act; Don Boscoe is also going to be in it, plus a third guy I don’t know. I’m going with MB… Sherry was up for it, but was going to be out of town that day. Also, we’re finally going to have our Music Man intervention this coming Tuesday. Huzzah!

For a job, that is. I haven’t had a whole lot of luck, but I did have an interview here in the library Friday before last. They said that they hoped to have the rest of the interviews done by last Friday and make their decision some time this week. It’s now Thursday and I have yet to hear anything, so I’m starting to lose hope. Still, fingers crossed until I know for certain.

I finally finished Tales from Shakespeare on LibriVox, which I’d been working on since March. I didn’t remember them being so dry and dull. The only way I got through was by bribing myself with reading a chapter in a new project every time I managed to finish one of the Tales. The two projects I bribed myself with were What Katy Did at School, which I’ve since finished, and Anne of Green Gables, which I’m about two thirds of the way through. I’m planning on doing another of the Scarlet Pimpernel books next; I’m leaning toward El Dorado, the one where they rescue the Dauphin.

We had a SKVE meeting on Monday and watched How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. So now we have several new quotes on our SKVE board. And let me just say that Peter O’Toole was hot back then! We still need to have our SKVE Music Man intervention with Regan and Melissa, because we never did get our schedules worked out during Mattress, and they can’t keep going through life without having seen Music Man!

I found out last night that Regan has never seen The Music Man! It came about because, when Lise was blocking Swamps of Home she was trying to explain that in a particular section of the song, she wanted us to look a bit like the women doing the Grecian Urns (one Grecian urn… two Grecian urns… and a fountain, trickle, trickle, trickle), and Regan didn’t have a clue what she was talking about!

This from a… well, ok, she was never a music major, just an undecided music enthusiast, but she took lots of music classes, you’d think somewhere, someone would have introduced her to The Music Man! Well, if no one else will do it, I will. We’re having a movie night someday soon (just need to get our schedules sorted) so she can watch it.

If Mary Beth and Sherry can make it too, we’ll make a SKVE night of it. We’ve been talking about asking Regan to join the SKVEs and this would be a good trial run, to see if she’s up to our particular brand of movie-watching. The last person we invited, Kelita, couldn’t seem to understand why we found it so amusing to MST3K our way through Pride and Prejudice (”look, I have a sword!”, “are you sure those are period sheep?”).

Yeah, I’ve been watching Eddie Izzard again lately (”I’ve got legs. D’you like… bread? I’ve got a french loaf! WHACK Bye! I love you!”). I can’t help myself, the man’s a comic genius! I’m very proud of the fact that I’ve converted several of my friends to the Izzard… let’s call it cult, shall we?

And speaking of friends, we’re going to get together in a couple of weeks (as soon as we all have a free evening, all at the same time) and have a Jane Austen night. Considering the number of Jane Austen films that have come out lately, it’ll probably be the first in a series of Jane Austen nights. Yay!

I went to see Firewall yesterday… with one of my classes… and the professor paid. Now that’s what I call a field trip! The class is cyberwarfare, and basically, we went to see the movie so we could criticize… uh, critique it and the various technologies they use in it. It was fun, but it wasn’t really realistic… not that we expected it to be… it is a Harrison Ford movie, after all.

I saw the teaser for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe this weekend. Before then I hadn’t known that they were making a new set of films based on the Chronicles of Narnia. The teaser really looked promising. I’m all excited now because the Chronicles of Narnia were some of my favourite books growing up. I can’t believe I have to wait till December to see it! I just hope that I’m not so wired by then that it ends up being disappointing.

In other news, the semester is officially over for me. I took my one and only final on Thursday. Woot. I’d definitely be more excited if I were still a teacher or a full time student and actually were getting any sort of a real break this summer… or even between this semester and the summer term. It’s at this time of year that I think most seriously of actually, really going back into teaching. Possibly at a community college, in a non-tenure track position so I could just get on with teaching and not have to spend half my time doing research or publishing papers. Yeah, that would be good.

So, I got the orginal Star Wars trilogy on DVD last week. Yes, it’s official, I’m a nerd. Still, I hadn’t watched it in a couple of years, so I guess I’m not as far gone as some other people I know. Shut up! I’m not!

I did make my dad watch it with me, though, and that was an interesting experience as he’s a psychologist and is never off-duty (claims he loves his work) so everything gets psychoanalyzed. That’s fun to watch with Star Wars (LOL).

Also, I hadn’t seen the additional scenes in eps. 5 & 6 because I only went to see ep. 4 at the theatre when they were re-released in ‘97, so that was fun.

Now I’m just waiting for ep. 3 to come out next year. Not to say I’m looking forward to it, because I’m sort of dreading it, if it’s going to be like the last two, but at least that’ll be the end of it. We’ll know the whole story and have closure and be able to enjoy the DVD’s of the original three.