Wah! The Buffy wild feed's not being transmitted until Tuesday afternoon this week, which means no wild feed summaries, no early bird reviews, no early closed captions posting, no Buffy in a Flash, and Jean has to watch the show this week thoroughly (though not completely) unspoiled. I guess that the fates have determined that I shall be unspoiled the rest of the season after all, despite my tumble from the back of the wagon last week.

In the mean time, try this one on for size: Buffy-The Musical. Well, just for one episode. Is Joss serious? He sure sounds like he is.

Personally, I'm all for it, if it means Singin' Spike and more Singin' Giles. Woo. And I might add, hoo.

I got my Plastic Spike! I'm so happy! Plastic Buffy doesn't have to be lonely anymore.

One complaint (well, okay, two): He's not really very posable, and his hands aren't shaped for holding weapons, which is a shame, because he came with some pretty cool ones, including a tiny little railroad spike. Now how's he supposed to earn his name if he can't grip onto that last one? Also, he doesn't stand very sturdily on his little patch of cemetery grass (okay, so make that three complaints). But the detail is amazing, from the cheekbones and the black nail polish right down the the scar on his eyebrow. He's almost as pretty as the original. Yay! Yay for Plastic Spike!

I miss my Outlook calendar.

It's Friday. You know the drill.

Survivor Haiku's
inspired less sans my muse.
Jerri rants were fun.

Bye Elisabeth!
Say hi to Kentucky Joe.
Jury duty's fun.

Eat and get healthy.
They make good hair vitamins,
I could hook you up.

Cowboy wins again!
If I played against Colby,
I'd just sit and watch.

Aztek's are ugly.
Still, pretty sweet prize. And mom!
Something's in my eye.

"Mommy, it's hard here."
Playing up her sympathies.
Such a momma's boy.

Colby. Tina. Keith.
Now the fun really begins.
Who's it gonna be?

Colby or Tina.
Lest Keith wins immunity,
he's out the next round.

It's nice to see that
someone not evil will win.
Rich and Kelly. Feh.

I've never been much of a Country/Western fan, but I think I'm going to have to buy myself a Kane cd.

(It looks like I'm developing a Christian Kane/Lindsey McDonald crush. Just a little one, though, not enough to rival my James Marsters/Spike crush, but enough that you'll probably be hearing a lot about Christian and/or Lindsey on this site from now on. Just so you know.)

Link pilfered from Bloggin' Buffy

Another entry in Jean's Lame Joke Repertoire:

Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhinoceros?

A: Elephino!

BWA-HA! Except, not really.

Those two non-fanfic stories I mentioned that I was working on? I never got anywhere with them. They were both stories I started some time ago, and I've decided that maybe the reason I either didn't finish them or didn't do anything with them in the first place is because they're just not very good. Neither was working very well for me. Last night, however, I started a brand new story that's not fanfic, and so far I'm pretty pleased with it. It's an idea that's been incubating in my brain for over a year. Actually, last year when Tess and I got it into our heads that we wanted to produce an independent movie (we get silly ideas like that from time to time, and they always seem doable for a while, which is always very exciting, but then either reality or laziness sets in and we don't follow through; our most recent such idea was to open up a sci-fi themed internet café along with one of Tess' co-workers. I think we gave up on this idea 'round about the same time we realized that we wouldn't be able to afford a wait/cashier staff and we'd have to do that sort of work our selves. A prissy little bunch are we.), and this story was going to be our screenplay. I've made different attempts at writing it over the past year, but it wasn't working, but last night something just clicked, and it started coming out in a way that felt right. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that suddenly the narrator sounds (in my head) just like Christian Kane. Except without the evil hand issues.

Night before last I also wrote another story that is fanfic. You can find it here.

Oh, and, in case the fantabulous BuffyBot episode wasn't enough for you, this week's installment of Dancing Lessons is up. I wrote this one. So go read it.

We will bring you the limp and beaten body of Bob Barker!

Heh. Buffy & Angel spoilers ahoy...

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Damn you, Jane Espenson! You didn't just make me tolerate the Buffy Bot, you made me love her! Damn you! Damn you straight to heck!

"It's Spike! And he's wearing the coat!"

I am SO right there with you, BuffyBot.

"Yes, he's evil, but you should see him naked!"

I'm sure that was meant to summate the entire redemptionista/'shipper standpoint. But it's more than that, dammit!

Of course, the vision of a half-naked Spike with curly, messy hair helped to soften me up quite a bit towards this episode.

And Buffy kissed him. Buffy kissed Spike. Buffy forgave Spike. Buffy loves Spike. I'm telling you, she does. Because I say so.

The mystical hokey pokey actually looked a bit like the Time Warp to me. "It's just a jump to the left..." Glory was actually rather menacing in this episode. Willow didn't bug me, Xander's hair didn't bug me, and Tara bugged me a little, but she'll get hers (or so I've heard), so it's all good. And how adorable was Anya running around trying to stake the vampire?

And Spike? Spike is a good guy now. Accept it, deal with it, and move on.

As for Angel, "COPS SUCK!" HA!

I like the new Shiny Happy Angel. He's like Angelus without all of the scary evil. And if they keep giving us all of these sweet little Angel/Cordy moments, they're going to turn me into a Cordy/Angel 'shipper. Actually, the way Cordy looked at Lindsey while he was singing almost turned me into a Cordy/Lindsey 'shipper right then and there. I hope Lindsey comes back. Please come back, Lindsey!

Lindsey sings pretty. The one good argument for Spike moving to Angel next year (not that I believe those rumors any more) is that he'd finally get to sing. Although, Joss Whedon posted on The Bronze today and said he's seriously planning a musical episode of Buffy next year, so we just might get to see Spike sing after all.

Thank you for following up Naked!Sweaty!Spike (um, is that right? Do vampires sweat?) with Half-naked!Lindsey. It was much appreciated.

"I have evil hand issues." HA! That evil hand scene made me laugh so hard I almost fell off my couch. It made up for my disappointment over not seeing an Evil Dead 2 homage scene of Lindsey fighting his own hand to the death.

Once again, great Buffy, even better Angel. If the WB doesn't let UPN have Angel, there's no reason it shouldn't do just fine on it's own. Especially not if they bring back Lindsey.

This weekend, besides being all a-flutter over positive B-bot spoilers, I dragged my friend Tess to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I love that movie. I'm pretty sure I want to be Michelle Yo when I grow up.

Before the movie, we went to the mall, where I bought some new clothes (yay!) and spent the Bath & Body Works gift certificate Tess gave me for my birthday. Got lots of vanilla scented foamy bath & lotiony goodness there. As for the clothes, I got me some Black Leather Pants of Pure Evil! Well, actually, they're more like the Black Pleather Pants of Bad Attitude and No Income, but they still look pretty bitchin' on.

Anyway. It was a night for confrontations and other weirdness, apparantly. When we were shopping, these teenage girls got into it with the sales clerk, accusing her of ratial profiling (the girls were black, and in the sales clerk's defense, so was she, and the girls were really very snotty to her right from the get-go). I was in the back of the store so I didn't actually witness it, but Tess got to be right in the middle of it, as the girls kept pointing at her and asking why the sales clerk didn't keep asking her if she needed help. The funny thing is that Tess actually did need help and was about to ask for it when the blow-up started. Security was called at some point, and the sales associates tried to get Tess to lodge a formal complaint so that they could have the girls banned from the store, but Tess would have none of it.

Then on our way to the movie theater, I turned a corner and the car in front of me just stopped on the corner, with no warning, making me slam on my brakes and not giving me enough room to get completely out of the intersection. I thought she stopped because this teenage boy, who looked to be pretty strung out, was walking across the street and looked like he might walk out in front of her, but instead he walked up to her, she rolled down her window, and they proceeded to chat. So I honked my horn as I pulled around them. As soon as I did so, the boy freaked out and started running after me, flipping me off (a gesture which, I'm ashamed to say, I returned out of sheer reflex) and screaming for me to "f*** off you f***ing motherf***er! F*** you!" all the while chasing my car down the street on foot. Nice vocabulary the boy has there. I guess I'm just glad it didn't occur to him to jump in his friend's car and chase us that way.

You know, there are definite exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, teenagers piss me off. Yes, I know, I'm officially old now, thank you.

I have seen the Buffy wildfeed summary and bits of the closed captioning, and I hereby proclaim that "Intervention" is of the good. Well, mostly. There's a certain cemetery scene that looks like it might mark a new low in embarrassing moments for the show; but other than that, I think I won't hate it, and may actually love certain parts of it. I can finally reconcile myself with the Buffy 'Bot, and I can even forgive Jane Espenson for introducing the concept.

8 weeks of bitching and moaning about the 'bot. That's a lot of crow to have to eat. Let this be a lesson to you, kiddos: Joss Whedon knows what he's doing.

Well, I guess UPN has figured out how they're going to fill the void after "Voyager" goes off the air. Now I wonder what are the chances they'll keep on it Tuesdays at 7 so I can still have my back-to-back two hours of happy each week.

'Buffy' Moves To UPN

There was no Survivor haiku, because I had to do homework. Sorry. And it was a very haiku-worthy episode, too. Darn higher education.

R.I.P., Joey Ramone.

Buffy & Angel spoilers ahoy!

This was me during Buffy: "Aww, Spike loved Joyce. Shut up, Xander! Spike misses his mom! He needs a hug. Oh, look, there's Angel. Hi, Angel. Hey, there's the Buffy & Angel Love Theme. How nice. Oh, um, please don't kiss Buffy. Oh look, he's kissing Buffy. Damn. Can you two say, 'co-dependent?' Go home, Angel. Aww, Spike loves all of the Summers ladies. I love Spike. Isn't Joel Grey adoreable? Doc is creepy, but he rocks. Look at Spike! Look at Spike bitch-slap the big scary puppet! Look at Spike protect Dawn! Look at Spike take a puppet injury for her! Go Spike! He's a hero! He's all cool again! Yay Spike! I'm so happy! Aww, Buffy's crying. Um, I have something in my eye. But Spike's all cool again and stuff, so yay!"

This was me during the next episode preview: "Jane Espenson, you SUCK! This robot business is all your fault! How could you! How could you make Spike stoop so low? And just as he was getting to be all cool again! I despise you. No, really. I do."

This was me during Angel: "BWA-HAHA!" And also, "Why is Angel so much cuter on his own show than he was on Buffy? Is it because there they actually allow him to have a personality? " And, "Hey, look at that, they actually referred to Phantom Dennis! He hasn't been exorcized!"

Happy birthday to Pete.

After about a week and a half of acclimating to the idea, I've decided that being 28 is really not so bad. Except, you know, when you run into elderly relatives who pity you because they think you've passed your spouse-gettin' prime, and they feel it necessary to tell you so. But whatever. Other than that, it's all good.

New episodes tonight! New episodes tonight! Oh, but doesn't it feel just like a holiday? Subsequently, don't try to talk to me tonight between 7 and 9 Central, because I'll just ignore you, and if you persist, there will be definite rudeness, and possibly shouting. Nobody interupts my weekly two hours of happy and walks away unscathed.

I'm actually looking forward to Angel more than Buffy. The latter will be sad, and also, if I had to go the rest of my life without ever seeing another Very Special Moment between Buffy & Angel, I would be just fine. At least last year when he paid a visit to Sunnydale we got to see him kick Riley's hinder, and that was fun. Anyway, I'm just hoping for some good Spike & Dawn interaction to balance it out - and that said interaction does not lead to Spike being even more pathetic, or Pure Evil. On the other hand, Harmony's going to be on Angel, and it's going to be a Harm & Cordy fun fest! Whee!

On a slightly related note, watch for Episode 7 of Dancing Lessons to go up a bit later today. And, um, any vague similarities between it and tonight's television episode (such as a certain tall, dark and broody vampire dropping by to visit) are entirely coincidental. Really. At least in our version, Spike is still cool.

You know, Michael from Roswell and Xander from Buffy really should get together and start a club for WB guys who are WAY past due for a haircut. They could be co-presidents. Dawson should probably also sign up, as well as that guy from 7th Heaven. And Michael had better bring Kyle along with him. Ben the Transgendered Hellgod Intern might oughta stop in for a meeting, too. At their first meeting they could have Lindsey from Angel lecture on the virtues of finally breaking down and getting a non-skanky haircut. Then they could all go out for haircuts and pie.

Sometimes, you wouldn't believe the extent to which I crack myself up. And only myself, I'm sure.

No Buffy spoilage today. I've decided to avoid spoilers for the rest of the season, and I'm not going to tempt myself by looking them up just for you. All of my detailed spoiler sources are linked in the Elsewhere section (Buffy In a Flash already has the closed captioning for tomorrow night's ep posted, so if you really want to be spoiled you can just go read the whole episode), if you really just can't wait another day.

Speaking of Buffy, Fandomshop went out of business without ever sending me my free Spike figure. So feh on them. I received the other Series 2 figures, which I ordered for no other reason than that I had to order something to get the Spike figure, and I figured he might as well have company on the shelf. Plastic Oz is cool, of course. Plastic Giles is all right, but it bugs me that they didn't give him glasses. Plastic Buffy really only looks like Buffy in the face from certain angles, and she looks pissed off. And you can't pose her to do a high kick. And she doesn't hold onto her weapons very well. That would be okay, because she was just supposed to be a companion for Plastic Spike, but there is no Plastic Spike. Instead there's just a sad little empty space on the shelf beside Plastic Buffy, and it's depressing me, because I wonder if it's an omen about the rest of the season. My 'shipper hopes can't even be realized through action figures.

To everyone who has wished me well on my job hunt: Um, job hunt? What job hunt? Seriously, my comment the other day about beginning a job hunt was just as serious as the phony JLA job opening link that it accompanied. No, I haven't hit the wall of desperation that will compell me to get out and find a real day job yet, and I hope I never do. I just got my US tax refund today (confession: I didn't do my state taxes until last night. Procrastination, thy name is Jean), and my savings haven't been entirely drained yet, so I'm not even feeling enough of a crunch yet to compell me to go sign up at the temp agency. I expect that to come sometime next week.

This week I'm going to write, and pretend that that is actually my job. Which it is, even though so far it's not making me any money to speak of. I've got four stories in the works, two of which I'm going to try to sell (the other two are fanfic. Won't be making any money off of those, but I've already committed myself, and besides, I enjoy writing them, and people seem to like them). I'm hoping that by the end of the week I'll have them both ready to submit. I'm not sure yet where I'll submit them to, and it may take me the weekend to figure that out, but hopefully come Monday I can begin the joyous task of waiting for rejection letters (and hoping for paychecks, instead). It'll make me feel like a real writer again.

I'd planned to include some interesting, or comical, or just zany links with these entries, but I haven't been surfing much lately, and as such I haven't found anything interesting, comical, or zany to which to link. My web travels of late have pretty much been limited to what's on my links page, and I haven't even been able to completely make the rounds to all of those lately. So no links for you. Not that I've ever been that good with the linkage, anyway; hence, why I stopped calling this a web log.

New episodes of Roswell start back up tonight, and I'm trying to rewatch the rest of this season of Buffy so far before the new episodes start. I watched Checkpoint last night, though I confess I only really paid attention to the Spike scenes. I still need to watch "Bloodties," "Crush," and "The Body," though I'm not sure I want to watch that last one again. The funeral ep will be hard enough to get through as it is. I probably won't watch that robot episode, because I'm still pissed off at it, and still somewhat in denial that it ever happened. Vampires and robots just don't mix, dude.

Why? Because it's wrong.

Happy Easter!

Check me out. I've finished converting everything. I even wrote a new bio. Go me.

My pinky hurts. My pinky on my right hand is all crooked. Seriously, it looks arthritic, and it hurts like a bitca. I'm sure it's a computer related injury. It only hurts like this after prolonged periods of coding. I need to get some ergonomic accessories, I guess; wristpads, and the like. Didn't need that sort of thing with the laptop.

I haven't named the new PC yet (that's right, I name my computers. My laptop was Opus. After the penguin, natch, but also because it was supposed to help me create my grand opus; it is what I used to write my novel, so I guess it lived up to its name). We're still in the Getting to Know You stage.

I'm downloading songs from the Dancing Lessons soundtrack, so I can make some CD's to take as party favors to BuffyCon. That's right, I'm going to a BuffyCon. Details on that later. I still don't have any recordable CD's. I guess I'll pick some up when I go get those ergonomic accessories. No hurry, seeing as how it's taking at least 30 minutes per mp3 to download. One thing that didn't get included in the upgrade was a faster modem. So bah. Work Computer (who was always known as Work Computer, by the way. I thought it best to keep a certain sense of detachment, since he wasn't really mine), how I miss thee.

Yesterday was my aunt's funeral. It was a really simple graveside service. The minister said some nice things about her, and then a few people who knew her a lot better than I ever did stood up and said some nice things about her, all of which amounted to that she was dependable, a hard worker, a caring mother, and a great friend. I guess that's not a bad impression to leave. Even so, I remember thinking, how terrible if this was it, if there was no such thing as eternity and all your entire life amounted to in the end was some people standing around and saying kind things about you. What a depressing thought. Without trying to start a controversy, I ask, those of you who don't believe in the afterlife, how does this sort of thing not depress you? For you, what's the point? Or is it like Angel's epiphany: "If nothing you do matters, then the only thing that matter is what you do?"

Another disturbing thought I had was that this week is Joyce Summers' funeral, and I bet it will make me cry. My aunt's funeral didn't make me cry, but a fictional TV character's funeral is going to make me blubber like a baby. Something is definitley messed up with that.

Anyway. Two of my remaining aunts, both of whom I'm considerably closer to than the one who died, ganged up on me after the funeral, remembering that I am, apparantly, the only unmarried person over 20 in the entire family. There's a happy thought. Aunt Lela waved a dismissive hand and said that she's given up on me. There's another happy thought. Aunt Roma, though, took my hand and told me not to worry, that there is somebody special out there for me, and that I shouldn't give up looking, and I shouldn't settle for just anyone who comes along, because you know, children, 28 is the age where if you haven't yet found that certain someone it's time to grab the first not-too-terribly offensive man who comes along, or else resign yourself to a lifetime spent in the company of cats.

That said, I'll be getting a new kitten soon. My little sister's cat is preggers, and I really think my bitch-kitty could use a playmate. Hopefully it will keep her from being so terribly jealous of Fizzgigg, and pouncing on him every time he tries to walk through the room. Of course, I do realize that what will probably happen is she'll teach the kitten to pounce on him, and then they'll gang up on him. Poor little guy. It's sad, but at the same time it's pretty comical. Much like my life.

I should get that on a tee-shirt.

It's been a weird week. I've spent most of it writing, though all I have to show for that are some new pieces of fanfic. Tuesday I was supposed to go down to the temp agency, and have lunch with the people I used to have lunch with every day before they moved away from downtown, but Monday I got so busy with homework that I forgot to call and make an appointment. Regardless, I kept the lunch date, and I'm glad, because it was fun. Those are my only offline Buffy fan friends (besides Terrence), and it was nice to be able to gab about the show and spoilers and such with no typing involved. Not that that's all we talked about.

That afternoon my baby sis came over bearing belated birthday presents (speaking of which, thanks Eleni!), and then she, our mom and I all went to visit my aunt in the hospital. She was there to have surgery for pancreatic cancer. She's one of my dad's many sisters, and I really never knew her that well. I was sad for her, but to be brutally honest, when I saw how bad she looked, I felt relieved that I wasn't close to her. Even so, I was happy to see her.

After the hospital we went out to eat, and after that we stopped off at Wal-Mart and I picked myself up an HP Pavilion something or other with twice as much memory as my laptop and a CD burner. Happy birthday to me, indeed. So far, I couldn't be more pleased with it; but I forgot to pick up a pack of recordable CD's, so I haven't had a chance to play with that particular feature yet.

Yesterday, my aunt died. As such, I'm very glad we went to see her the other night. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, because she really didn't look good; but it was still a shock. We knew she didn't have much time left, short of a miracle, but we were counting in weeks, not in hours. The funeral is this Saturday. This will mark the fifth Cousins family funeral I'll have been to in 7 years. Something ain't right with that picture, folks.

Anyway. I still have to convert the rest of the site to the new design, and that will probably take me a few days, so just be patient. Not that any of you ever look at anything but this page anyway. I know how you are. I can see you, you know.

New template. Isn't it pretty? Bear with me while I work out the bugs and convert the rest of the site.

And the job search commenceth.

Damn, I don't qualify. They got me on that eye-beam thing.

job recommendation courtesy of Terrence

Hey, Eleni! In the touring production of J&H, they took out "Good & Evil" and put "Bring On the Men" back in. Just in case you were wondering.

I, too, will be overhauling the entire web site sometime in the very near future. I was going to start on it today, in fact, but then I remembered that I have a story I'm scrambling to finish parts of, plus I should probably do some homework, considering the current unit is due in two days and I haven't even read the chapter yet.

Last night I saw Along Came a Spider. It was really very good. I can't really say much more than that without spoiling it for you, but I highly recommend it. There was one part, though, where Morgan Freeman had to run all over town on foot, and I had flashbacks to his Jogger skits on The Electric Company, and it cracked me up and caused me to giggle at an inappropriate moment, but I don't think anybody heard me, so it was cool.

Seeing as how I'm no longer stuck behind a desk all day every day, and my surfing, which wasn't very extensive to begin with, has been cut way down, I'm probably going to change to more of a one entry per day, journal type format. Hopefully, I'll find it in me to say things that are perhaps a little bit deeper, and a little more personal, and hopefully even a little more entertaining than the random fluff I usually fill this page with. I'm sure there will still be bits of random fluff floating about here and there that I'll have to put down once in a while, because my life is full of random fluff; but I'm going to try to pull this site together and make it more about me, about my writing, and my career pursuits, and who I am, and less about Buffy* and Survivor** and X-Files and comic books and whatnot. Ritalin Junkie is about to grow up just a bit. So consider yourselves warned.

*Don't worry, there will still be weekly new episode commentary and spoiler links, at least during weeks that actually have new episodes.
**There will still be Survivor Haiku, too.

Buffy gets Greased

I got a giant-sized case of insomnia for my birthday! Happy birthday to me! But the nice thing is, it's not like I have to get up and go to work in a few hours. Since I'm up, I think I'll write some Survivor Haiku:

So long, farewell, Nick.
I think you wanted to go.
Eat. Drink. Shave. Enjoy.

Amber missed Jerri.
Well, it's nice that someone did.
Too bad, so sad. Not!

The Rice Man Cometh.
Know what would make good TV?
Cannabalize Jeff!

That's all I've got. I'm going back to bed.

5 words, Pete: Meal-on-the-go bars. Milk chocolate peanut and chocolate cookie dough. Them's the stuff. All of the other flavors, and every single one of the shakes, are, in a word, nasty; but I can live off of those two candy bars for weeks at a time and be perfectly happy. They have a chocolate fudge one that's pretty good, too, but the store's usually out of that one.

There's an Interactive Gizmo (from Gremlins) sitting on my desk. Except, currently, he's not very interactive.

I bought him a few months ago, swayed by the promise of "The Authentic Voice of Gizmo from the Movie!" printed on the box. Because, you know, Gizmo's voice (as performed by Howie Mandel) is about 75% of what's so cute about him. How great would it be to have my own little Gizmo to sit around and say cute things like "light bright!" and... and other Gizmoisms (been a while since I've seen the movie), and maybe sing that cute little Mogwai song, and I wouldn't even have to worry about getting him wet or feeding him after midnight and unleashing a horrible evil upon the earth. I got him home, fought with the restraints that held him in the box, put batteries in him, and got him to start talking.

Folks, Gizmo is a Furby, plain and simple. He has a Furby voice, which is most definitely not provided by Howie Mandel, and he says Furby things, none of which are lines from the movie.

I read the instructions, and found out how to put him in a coma. He's been in one ever since.

I finally got my Ritalin refilled today, and so I've been cleaning. I was on a pretty good roll, but I got hungry so I sat down a little while ago to eat a Slim Fast (tm) bar and check my e-mail before going to change the cat box and start a load of laundry, but it seems that once I sat down my motor shut down. Now I can't seem to get back out of this chair. And apparantly just watching me clean wore my dog out (I really don't do heavy-duty housework very often, folks, and for some reason it made him all nervous), because he just got in my lap and passed out. Now he's snoring. Even if I felt like getting up, I can't now, because I just don't have a heart to wake him. Poor little guy.

An invitation to my high school reunion came in the mail today. As if it's not bad enough that I'm going to be 28(!) in two days, I had to get that nice little reminder that I'm officially at the beginning of that wonderful little journey called Getting Old.

Of course, I'm not going. You may have noticed, if you've kept up with this little blog for very long, that I harbor a certain amount of bitterness towards the majority of my high school class. It was made up of an inordinate amount of cruel bastards, and on the odd occasion when I run into any of them in public, I have yet to see any evidence that any of them have changed much. There were a few exceptions, but I'm already in touch with most of those, so there's no need to go subject myself to a night of reliving painful memories with people who went out of their way to let me know they hated me.

If you recall, back in October I blogged that one of my classmates died of an aneurysm. They're going to have a memorial ceremony for him at the reunion. Apparantly they're going to lay a brick with his name inscribed on it in one of the new buildings on the schoolgrounds. It's a nice gesture. But somehow I don't think it makes up for the fact that if he were alive and he attended the reunion, nobody would give him the time of day. This guy was even lower in the pecking order than I was, and folks, I was pretty low. I suppose everyone who mistreated him--which was pretty much everyone--had an attack of concience after hearing that he died. Maybe this brick thing will help them sleep better at night. I really don't want to be a part of helping a bunch of hypocrites ease their guilt. It was well-earned guilt. I realize that's not a very Christian attitude for me to have, but damn it, they just shouldn't get off that easy.

{SIGH}

On a happier note, I'm going to put orange streaks in my hair. I don't know how well they'll show up, but the color I bought looks like a much brighter orange than my natural light auburn, so I'm hoping it'll be enough of a contrast. I also bought a lot of girly hair accessories, and I think I've decided not to cut my hair short, but to let it grow long again. For one thing, I can't afford to maintain a short haircut. And, like I said, I'm starting to get old, and there won't be that many years left that I can wear my hair long and still look good, so I might as well enjoy it while I can.

New Buffy in two weeks! Yay! Except, according to the preview, it looks like we'll get to grieve over Joyce some more, and it will probably be another tear-jerker. And, oh yay, Angel's going to guest star to bring a little comfort to his ex. Bleah. I'm so over Buffy & Angel as a couple, and I wish the rest of the world would hurry up and catch up with me.

If you don't want to wait two weeks for a taste of new Buffy, then head over to Dancing Lessons, where I've posted part 5 of the main story, and also posted two new installments of one of the individual fics in the Extra section. I didn't write any of it, but it's good stuff. Go read it. Sign my guestbook while you're there, too. I love the feedback.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: It's better than anime! What an awesome movie. I wasn't prepared for it to be so sad, though.

Of course, it was even more enjoyable for me because my obsessed little one track mind saw all kinds of parallels for Buffy & Faith.

I saw it with Terrence, natch. Since we haven't actually seen each other in person since before the holidays, we had our own belated little Christmas. He got me this, this, and one of these. I kind of feel bad because all I got him was this, but when he saw it he hopped around and said "HEE!" so I'm pretty sure he liked it.

Our conversation before the movie was interesting, in that it went pretty much like this:

Him: How was your family get together?

Me: I said pretty much everything I have to say about it on my blog already.

Him: I read something about the X-Men movie that I wanted to tell you--

Me: Yeah, Dark Pheonix. I saw it on your blog.

Him: Oh yeah. Oh, hey, there was something else I blogged a while back that I wanted to be sure you knew about... oh yeah. They're going to re-release Akira in the theaters!

Me: You didn't blog that, I did.

Him: Oh yeah.

...

Me: Are we just sad, or what?

Him: A little, yeah.

Me: I'm going to have to blog this conversation, though.

Him: Of course.

...

Me: Hey, you wanna hear some Buffy spoilers?

Him: Yeah!

Now, Terrence is my only 3D friend who also blogs, so I don't really know. Is this typical of when bloggers get together in person, or are we really just sad?

We had a little family reunion at my house on Saturday. My mom's uncle came up (or down, or over... I actually have no idea where he came from), and so my aunt, uncle, a bunch of cousins, and all of my siblings and their spouses and offspring all showed up to see him. One of my cousins brought her seven month old son, whom I'd never seen, despite being constantly told that I simply had to see the baby. So I finally got to meet the kid. He's cute, but my God, is that a big kid. He already weighs 25 pounds, and at least a third of that must be in his head, because let me tell you, that kid's melon is HUGE! It's a look that works for him, though.

My mom's side of the family holds a lot of musicians. Her uncle brought his little traveling keyboard, along with various stringed instruments, my aunt and uncle both had various stringed instruments, as did one of my cousins, and they all hung out in the back room and jammed all day. It was fun. That sort of thing used to go on all the time when I was growing up. My grandpa never came to visit without his fiddle, for example. But it stopped happening regularly after my grandpa died, so it was nice. Wasn't the same without grandpa's fiddle, though.

I wish I could say that the whole thing was constantly entertaining, but truthfully, I ran out of Ritalin on Friday, and I don't do well at get-togethers unmedicated. It was fun for about an hour at a time, at which point I'd start to experience sensory overload and have to run upstairs and hide four a couple of hours of quiet time, during which I managed to convert my entire fan fic site over to frames, which hopefully will make it a lot easier to maintain.

So. My first official day of unemployment, and so far, so good. I managed to get up at a decent time of morning and get dressed, and I finished some edits to a short story. I was going to spend today cleaning, but I'm still waiting for my dr. to renew my scrip, and when it comes to household chores I'm pretty useless without my Ritalin. So that'll have to wait for tomorrow. After lunch I'm going to check and see if I can't find some gigs to apply for on Guru, then I have some udates to make to the fan fic site. Because if I stay productive then I won't feel like a bum.

Tonight I'm going to (finally!) see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with Terrence. At least, that was the plan as of Friday. I'm supposed to call him, but the phone's all the way downstairs. I'll be heading down there soon for some lunch.

I had some unpleasant dreams last night about my dad, who was not at all happy about my decision to temp and not to get up this morning and go pound the pavement until I found another full time job. When I woke up I had to remind myself, as I do on occasion, that I'm living my life for me, and not for him, and besides, he's dead, so he really doesn't get a say in these things anymore. At any rate, it made for some tossing and turning. I much prefer the dream I had the other night, in which I was Willow, but I was straight, and I was guest starring on Lois and Clark along with Jimmy Bond and Marc Blucas, and I kept getting pissed at Lois for cheating on Clark with Marc, and there was a disaster and Marc became Riley and tried to save the day, and I was upset because nobody was calling Superman, but then he finally showed up, and they all worked out their differences, and then Oz showed up and he and I got back together (because I was Willow, you see), and all was right with the world. I'm still not sure what Jimmy Bond had to do with anything other than stand around and look cute. And I was a little disappointed that Spike never showed up, but still, that was a lot of eye candy for a single dream. So, brain? I'll have more like that from now on, thanks.