It's too far to walk, but you don't have to run; you'll get there in time
OK I AM DOING AN ENTRY BECAUSE STUFF IS HAPPENING IN MY LIFE AND I HAVEN'T DONE ONE IN A WHILE.
... I think that uses up my caps quota for the time being.
Last weekend
Last weekend we (being my co-workers and I) had a celebratory dinner at a restaurant for our head librarian and one of our reference librarians, who are both retiring. These kinds of occasions usually make me sad, but for some reason, this time it wasn't there. It may be because, well, they're just retiring. They won't be at work all the time any more, but I'm sure they'll be around.
Since I had to go all the way out to the restaurant anyway, I decided to stop by a used DVD/CD/game shop nearby that I don't often get to. I was quite pleased to find two Escaflowne OSTs (OST 1 and Lovers Only) on sale there and promptly snapped them up. I don't know any way to tell if they're legit or bootleg, but they look right and work right (and the price was right) and it's ESCAFLOWNE! so yes, I was quite pleased.
There was one other purchase that weekend, and it has to do with my finally getting further in Xenosaga. See, before I got my Wii, I was redoing the start of Xenosaga, because I'd gotten stuck three years ago (and consequently did not remember much of the plot or battle system). And when the Wii came, I had just come up to the exact same spot I'd gotten stuck the first time around. So while I was quite happy to play Tales of KOR (despite JYB's terrible, I-haven't-hit-puberty-yet-right? voice), Xenosaga was stuck at the back of my mind. And I didn't want to be stuck in that same spot for another three years, so after putting a decent number of hours on KOR, I decided to go back to Xenosaga for a spell. And I made it through that spot. And now I'm almost done with the game!
Where is this going?
Well. Progressing in Xenosaga has reminded me of how much I enjoy the series. I may still hate Shion, but I love the other characters (*especially* Jr. and Momo) enough that she doesn't matter, and the plot and world are pretty expansive and fascinating. So naturally, I want to play all the games and see what happens. I got Xenosaga II way back (and have played through most of it). But Xenosaga III ... well, it's a whole lot more rare than the first two (which are readily available for cheap pretty much anywhere). I'd seen it in one GameStop used for $30, and I was tempted to get it then -- online, copies go for more than that, and that's used and often discs only. But alas, I didn't have enough money with me, and the next time I stopped by, it was gone. I started keeping my eye on GameStop's website, which shows which locations games are available at. So when a copy showed up nearby, with the used price down to $20, I went so far as to *call* the location (and I hate phones ...) before I went there so they could hold it for me ^^; As I checked out, I commented to the guy at the counter that I was really glad to find the game (with coverart and instructions at that), and he was like, "Oh, yeah, but you can probably still find it online for cheap." NO. NO, YOU CAN'T, OR I WOULDN'T BE BUYING IT AT GAMESTOP. (Unless he thinks $35 for a used game is cheap? I don't know.) So yeah, now I have Xenosaga III, in perfect condition, ready for whenever I ... finish the first one. (I haven't decided yet if I'll play through the second one again. I probably should, since I don't remember any of it. But I'll go back to KOR first.)
So moving on ...
Creepy story #1
I was playing Xenosaga I in the basement on Saturday night when ... there was a noise. Looking back, I'm not actually sure if I first noticed the noise or my cat Shelby's reaction to the noise. She went from sleepy to unusually attentive. She pays attention to noises, but not *that* much attention. So I listened too, and I heard ... a skittering, scrabbling noise coming from the laundry room (our basement is divided into two by a wall; the larger portion is finished with a couch, TV, etc. The smaller portion is unfinished, with the laundry room and cellar). I don't know how else to explain it. At first I ignored it. Our house has its squeaks, and the pipes make noises and the freezer makes noises, and they'd never before made a noise quite like this, but well, it was just a noise.
But it continued.
And I was home alone and feeling a bit paranoid. It could be something wrong with the furnace, or it could be just a mouse rustling around. We've never had mice in our house, though, and while I am not afraid of mice, if that's what it was, I wanted to *know* for sure. But I was nervous, so I waited a while. Once the noise subsided, I grabbed a heavy flashlight from upstairs and went into the laundry room to investigate, with my cat following. Besides the washing machine, freezer and furnace, we have the water heater, several huge filing cabinets and some boxes and junk. There are plenty of places for something small to hide, and even leaving that aside, about half the room is not very well lit, thanks to some of the lights being above the filing cabinets and thus difficult to replace. I didn't find anything. (At least I knew there wasn't a person messing around in there, though if I had found a person ... no clue what I would've done then.)
So I returned to the couch, shutting the door to the laundry just in case there was some big, rabid rat hiding behind the washer. Just ... you know.
The scrabbling noise came and subsided again a few times during the course of the evening, with no discernible pattern. I told my mom about it when she called to say hi, but she couldn't think of anything it might be either. There was the chimney, but most of the connections to the furnace were sealed when we got a new one recently. She didn't think anything could get in.
The next day, the fire alarm went off at about noon. It turned off before I reached it (and I wasn't cooking anything), so I could only sort of shrug and wonder if it was malfunctioning.
That afternoon and evening I was in the basement again. And again, the noise ... the skittering and scrabbling, now with the addition of a sound like ... a thud against sheet metal, or something like that. I was getting pretty agitated at this point; I checked the laundry room a few times but saw nothing. The best I could do for pinpointing the noise was that it came from the vicinity of the furnace and water heater, which are next to each other. I worried about mechanical failure, but at the same time, it really did not sound mechanical, and that made me just as nervous. The unknown can drive you crazy.
My parents finally got back at about 10:30 at night, which is pretty late for them. My dad went right to bed, and though my mom looked around the laundry room a bit, there was no noise, so she couldn't do much. (It also made me feel a bit like a crazy person, since you know, now that there was someone else there, there was no noise. But my cat heard it! Though cats seem to hear things people don't sometimes ...)
Eventually, the noise returned, so I rushed into the laundry room (up til then, I hadn't had the guts to go in while the noise was happening). It sounded to me to be coming from inside the water heater. I called my mom down and told her what I thought. She heard the noise too, but thought it was maybe coming from the furnace, because how could anything get in the water heater? She pulled out the furnace's filter (the only part of it we could open) but didn't see anything. We let it be again.
My mom got up in the middle of the night. She had some bug bites and has said it helps to put them under running hot water for as long as she can stand. But that night the water would not go hot. So obviously, something was wrong with the water heater. She tried to open it up, but it was stuck, so she decided to leave it until my dad woke up the next morning. He couldn't get it at first either, but when he did ...
... there was a dead bird inside. A chimney swift, a small dark bird, that somehow got down the chimney, through the ducts, and into the water heater (not into the water itself, but the part outside it). The poor thing had been in there at least 36 hours; my mom says the fumes probably killed it, though it was still making noise when she tried to open the water heater the night before. We both wish we could've gotten it out in time ... the noise I heard was it scratching and fluttering and throwing its body against the wall of the water heater, trying to get out. For the next two days, its tiny, motionless body lay on a paper towel on our washing machine (finally my mom buried it). It looked fake, like it had never been alive. Ugh. It makes me sad.
Creepy story #2
This story shouldn't be as long.
This past Thursday was a big church rummage sale that we go to every year. They always have a ton of stuff for very good prices (a quarter a pair for shoes? You cannot beat that). Anyway, it's closer to our cottage than our house, so my mom suggested we spend Wednesday night out there instead. Despite my misgivings, I agreed.
These are my misgivings: I never seem to sleep well at Cedar Lake. In the nine or ten years that my family has owned that house, I've slept there maybe a dozen times, if that. I am fine during the day there -- it is peaceful and quiet -- but at night, the quiet just unsettles me. There are no sounds of cars and trucks swishing along the road in front of my house, no train whistles blowing in the night. I hate that the windows are all blank and black (no streetlights like I can see from any window in my house, and no curtains to pull shut either). And my room has no windows -- just a skylight. It feels closed in. It's the farthest away from the other bedrooms. It -- both the room and the house -- feels cut off from the rest of the world. It's creepy.
But I need to get used to it one of these days, so ...
We got there kind of late (maybe around 9:30?) and I felt tired pretty quickly -- by 11 I was ready for bed, which is very unusual for me. The light in my closet was burned out, so my mom changed it for me (I cannot reach it ... *too short*) since I wanted to leave it on during the night. It's not that I need a night light exactly, but ... my room at home is not pitch black with the lights off like that room is. So I tried to sleep. But I couldn't manage to get past that half-wake, half-dreaming, completely unrestful state. I tossed and turned. I needed to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to get out of bed to walk past those blank windows.
And then at around 1 a.m., the closet light went out.
It was so sudden that I opened my eyes to the darkness, then quickly shut them again. I tried to just fall asleep. I opened my eyes again. The room was just too creepy with no lights. It was just ... oppressive. So I flew out of bed, first tried the closet light again to no avail, then switched on the overhead. The light in the closet was probably just a bad bulb, I figured, and I wasn't about to wake my mom to change it again. Still creepy.
I went to the bathroom (no point denying it any longer) then returned to my bedroom. I didn't want to sleep in pitch black. I couldn't sleep with the overhead light on. The room still felt creepy, and I felt disoriented on top of that. Anyway, my waterbed, which had felt pleasant enough when I got in it, now felt cold. My mom warned me it might be cold because they had left the heater off, but since I felt OK before, I thought it would be fine. Not. My room was just all wrong. I was not about to sleep in the living room (which has huge windows that are lovely when facing the lake in daytime, not so lovely when black and blank at night), so I moved to my brother's room, which is closer to my parent's room. (My brother wasn't staying over that night anyway; it was just my mom and me.) I stayed there the rest of the night with his closet light on. I still didn't sleep very well, but I made it til morning.
When I returned to my room the next day, I tried the closet light again. Now it worked.
Can I just say that, despite this being a simple thing as it was, it seriously freaked me out?
I told my mom about it (without panicking) and thankfully she is a rational person. She said the fixture was the type that might shut off a light when it gets too hot, so it probably needs a special bulb.
This did a lot to calm me, though my general feeling toward sleeping in that house is still DO NOT WANT. (It also bothers me a bit that my brother's light, which I believe is the same type and was on a lot longer than mine, was fine. But his may have a special bulb.) I think it would help to have my cat with -- and a nice, working lamp to leave on.
Job offer?
I got a call last week from my parents' friend, a guy who edits a local paper that is mostly advertising but is moving toward having more news stories (because of the kind of paper it is, I feel weird calling him the "editor," but I guess that's what he would be). He said he might have a project for me, but didn't really give details, so I had to go in to meet with him on Friday morning. This came completely out of the blue for me, so I was pretty nervous and confused. The basic are such: As I said, his paper is moving toward more news stories. So, he wants someone else to write a few stories a week. He knows from my parents that I am a "writer." I am really grateful that he thought of me and would trust me with this, but ... argh. Reporting -- that is to say, going out and finding a story, finding and talking to sources about it, and making it an article -- is one of those things in life that the very thought of viciously twists my stomach into knots. I tried it for a while in high school, because I am a "writer," and my friend was on the paper. I couldn't stand it. It made me extremely anxious, to say the least. It was really amazing to me that I ended up joining the paper in college, because I didn't think it was something I would ever do again. But that was as a copy editor, which is a totally different capacity.
I was half thinking of saying yes despite how uncomfortable the proposition is to me, until I got another whiff of an offer that evening.
I hung out with two of my high school friends (and one girl's boyfriend) at Coldstone Creamery. Haven't seen them since March, so it was nice to talk with them. Now the other has a boyfriend too ... oy. I told them this makes me feel threatened XD I'm the only one in the group now who has never had a serious boyfriend. They don't bother me about it or anything, but ... *sigh* When will I find love? *starry eyes* /melodrama
OH RIGHT. The job bit. My friend who lives downtown says there's probably going to be an opening at her work. It's a secretarial/administrative position. It would start part time but turn into full time with good benefits. She told me to send her my resume, so she could pass it on.
The thought of working downtown is a little nerve-wracking (I would have to take the train everyday, which means learning my way around the city, paying for fare and getting up very early in the morning), but also holds a lot of appeal. I can't stand the thought of another summer working at the library. It makes me want to scream. My parents say I should try to get more hours, push to be hired on full time (not likely to happen; not something I want to do anyway). What I really need to push toward is getting a different job. Obviously this job possibility is not even close to final. I'm not even being looked into yet. But just the hope of it makes me a little wild-eyed. I am desperate to move forward, and this seems like an opportunity.
Phew. This entry is going on forever. Um. I've seen some movies and read some books since the last real entry. Rushmore, The Craft, Marie Antoinette, Memories, American Psycho, The Princess and the Frog ... I don't feel much like reviewing anything right now.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day -- so I wish a happy one to you all. I will be going over to my parents' friends' house for a cookout and possibly swimming, assuming this thunderstorm over us now passes and leaves nice weather. We shall see.
Did I forget anything?
... I think that uses up my caps quota for the time being.
Last weekend
Last weekend we (being my co-workers and I) had a celebratory dinner at a restaurant for our head librarian and one of our reference librarians, who are both retiring. These kinds of occasions usually make me sad, but for some reason, this time it wasn't there. It may be because, well, they're just retiring. They won't be at work all the time any more, but I'm sure they'll be around.
Since I had to go all the way out to the restaurant anyway, I decided to stop by a used DVD/CD/game shop nearby that I don't often get to. I was quite pleased to find two Escaflowne OSTs (OST 1 and Lovers Only) on sale there and promptly snapped them up. I don't know any way to tell if they're legit or bootleg, but they look right and work right (and the price was right) and it's ESCAFLOWNE! so yes, I was quite pleased.
There was one other purchase that weekend, and it has to do with my finally getting further in Xenosaga. See, before I got my Wii, I was redoing the start of Xenosaga, because I'd gotten stuck three years ago (and consequently did not remember much of the plot or battle system). And when the Wii came, I had just come up to the exact same spot I'd gotten stuck the first time around. So while I was quite happy to play Tales of KOR (despite JYB's terrible, I-haven't-hit-puberty-yet-right? voice), Xenosaga was stuck at the back of my mind. And I didn't want to be stuck in that same spot for another three years, so after putting a decent number of hours on KOR, I decided to go back to Xenosaga for a spell. And I made it through that spot. And now I'm almost done with the game!
Where is this going?
Well. Progressing in Xenosaga has reminded me of how much I enjoy the series. I may still hate Shion, but I love the other characters (*especially* Jr. and Momo) enough that she doesn't matter, and the plot and world are pretty expansive and fascinating. So naturally, I want to play all the games and see what happens. I got Xenosaga II way back (and have played through most of it). But Xenosaga III ... well, it's a whole lot more rare than the first two (which are readily available for cheap pretty much anywhere). I'd seen it in one GameStop used for $30, and I was tempted to get it then -- online, copies go for more than that, and that's used and often discs only. But alas, I didn't have enough money with me, and the next time I stopped by, it was gone. I started keeping my eye on GameStop's website, which shows which locations games are available at. So when a copy showed up nearby, with the used price down to $20, I went so far as to *call* the location (and I hate phones ...) before I went there so they could hold it for me ^^; As I checked out, I commented to the guy at the counter that I was really glad to find the game (with coverart and instructions at that), and he was like, "Oh, yeah, but you can probably still find it online for cheap." NO. NO, YOU CAN'T, OR I WOULDN'T BE BUYING IT AT GAMESTOP. (Unless he thinks $35 for a used game is cheap? I don't know.) So yeah, now I have Xenosaga III, in perfect condition, ready for whenever I ... finish the first one. (I haven't decided yet if I'll play through the second one again. I probably should, since I don't remember any of it. But I'll go back to KOR first.)
So moving on ...
Creepy story #1
I was playing Xenosaga I in the basement on Saturday night when ... there was a noise. Looking back, I'm not actually sure if I first noticed the noise or my cat Shelby's reaction to the noise. She went from sleepy to unusually attentive. She pays attention to noises, but not *that* much attention. So I listened too, and I heard ... a skittering, scrabbling noise coming from the laundry room (our basement is divided into two by a wall; the larger portion is finished with a couch, TV, etc. The smaller portion is unfinished, with the laundry room and cellar). I don't know how else to explain it. At first I ignored it. Our house has its squeaks, and the pipes make noises and the freezer makes noises, and they'd never before made a noise quite like this, but well, it was just a noise.
But it continued.
And I was home alone and feeling a bit paranoid. It could be something wrong with the furnace, or it could be just a mouse rustling around. We've never had mice in our house, though, and while I am not afraid of mice, if that's what it was, I wanted to *know* for sure. But I was nervous, so I waited a while. Once the noise subsided, I grabbed a heavy flashlight from upstairs and went into the laundry room to investigate, with my cat following. Besides the washing machine, freezer and furnace, we have the water heater, several huge filing cabinets and some boxes and junk. There are plenty of places for something small to hide, and even leaving that aside, about half the room is not very well lit, thanks to some of the lights being above the filing cabinets and thus difficult to replace. I didn't find anything. (At least I knew there wasn't a person messing around in there, though if I had found a person ... no clue what I would've done then.)
So I returned to the couch, shutting the door to the laundry just in case there was some big, rabid rat hiding behind the washer. Just ... you know.
The scrabbling noise came and subsided again a few times during the course of the evening, with no discernible pattern. I told my mom about it when she called to say hi, but she couldn't think of anything it might be either. There was the chimney, but most of the connections to the furnace were sealed when we got a new one recently. She didn't think anything could get in.
The next day, the fire alarm went off at about noon. It turned off before I reached it (and I wasn't cooking anything), so I could only sort of shrug and wonder if it was malfunctioning.
That afternoon and evening I was in the basement again. And again, the noise ... the skittering and scrabbling, now with the addition of a sound like ... a thud against sheet metal, or something like that. I was getting pretty agitated at this point; I checked the laundry room a few times but saw nothing. The best I could do for pinpointing the noise was that it came from the vicinity of the furnace and water heater, which are next to each other. I worried about mechanical failure, but at the same time, it really did not sound mechanical, and that made me just as nervous. The unknown can drive you crazy.
My parents finally got back at about 10:30 at night, which is pretty late for them. My dad went right to bed, and though my mom looked around the laundry room a bit, there was no noise, so she couldn't do much. (It also made me feel a bit like a crazy person, since you know, now that there was someone else there, there was no noise. But my cat heard it! Though cats seem to hear things people don't sometimes ...)
Eventually, the noise returned, so I rushed into the laundry room (up til then, I hadn't had the guts to go in while the noise was happening). It sounded to me to be coming from inside the water heater. I called my mom down and told her what I thought. She heard the noise too, but thought it was maybe coming from the furnace, because how could anything get in the water heater? She pulled out the furnace's filter (the only part of it we could open) but didn't see anything. We let it be again.
My mom got up in the middle of the night. She had some bug bites and has said it helps to put them under running hot water for as long as she can stand. But that night the water would not go hot. So obviously, something was wrong with the water heater. She tried to open it up, but it was stuck, so she decided to leave it until my dad woke up the next morning. He couldn't get it at first either, but when he did ...
... there was a dead bird inside. A chimney swift, a small dark bird, that somehow got down the chimney, through the ducts, and into the water heater (not into the water itself, but the part outside it). The poor thing had been in there at least 36 hours; my mom says the fumes probably killed it, though it was still making noise when she tried to open the water heater the night before. We both wish we could've gotten it out in time ... the noise I heard was it scratching and fluttering and throwing its body against the wall of the water heater, trying to get out. For the next two days, its tiny, motionless body lay on a paper towel on our washing machine (finally my mom buried it). It looked fake, like it had never been alive. Ugh. It makes me sad.
Creepy story #2
This story shouldn't be as long.
This past Thursday was a big church rummage sale that we go to every year. They always have a ton of stuff for very good prices (a quarter a pair for shoes? You cannot beat that). Anyway, it's closer to our cottage than our house, so my mom suggested we spend Wednesday night out there instead. Despite my misgivings, I agreed.
These are my misgivings: I never seem to sleep well at Cedar Lake. In the nine or ten years that my family has owned that house, I've slept there maybe a dozen times, if that. I am fine during the day there -- it is peaceful and quiet -- but at night, the quiet just unsettles me. There are no sounds of cars and trucks swishing along the road in front of my house, no train whistles blowing in the night. I hate that the windows are all blank and black (no streetlights like I can see from any window in my house, and no curtains to pull shut either). And my room has no windows -- just a skylight. It feels closed in. It's the farthest away from the other bedrooms. It -- both the room and the house -- feels cut off from the rest of the world. It's creepy.
But I need to get used to it one of these days, so ...
We got there kind of late (maybe around 9:30?) and I felt tired pretty quickly -- by 11 I was ready for bed, which is very unusual for me. The light in my closet was burned out, so my mom changed it for me (I cannot reach it ... *too short*) since I wanted to leave it on during the night. It's not that I need a night light exactly, but ... my room at home is not pitch black with the lights off like that room is. So I tried to sleep. But I couldn't manage to get past that half-wake, half-dreaming, completely unrestful state. I tossed and turned. I needed to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to get out of bed to walk past those blank windows.
And then at around 1 a.m., the closet light went out.
It was so sudden that I opened my eyes to the darkness, then quickly shut them again. I tried to just fall asleep. I opened my eyes again. The room was just too creepy with no lights. It was just ... oppressive. So I flew out of bed, first tried the closet light again to no avail, then switched on the overhead. The light in the closet was probably just a bad bulb, I figured, and I wasn't about to wake my mom to change it again. Still creepy.
I went to the bathroom (no point denying it any longer) then returned to my bedroom. I didn't want to sleep in pitch black. I couldn't sleep with the overhead light on. The room still felt creepy, and I felt disoriented on top of that. Anyway, my waterbed, which had felt pleasant enough when I got in it, now felt cold. My mom warned me it might be cold because they had left the heater off, but since I felt OK before, I thought it would be fine. Not. My room was just all wrong. I was not about to sleep in the living room (which has huge windows that are lovely when facing the lake in daytime, not so lovely when black and blank at night), so I moved to my brother's room, which is closer to my parent's room. (My brother wasn't staying over that night anyway; it was just my mom and me.) I stayed there the rest of the night with his closet light on. I still didn't sleep very well, but I made it til morning.
When I returned to my room the next day, I tried the closet light again. Now it worked.
Can I just say that, despite this being a simple thing as it was, it seriously freaked me out?
I told my mom about it (without panicking) and thankfully she is a rational person. She said the fixture was the type that might shut off a light when it gets too hot, so it probably needs a special bulb.
This did a lot to calm me, though my general feeling toward sleeping in that house is still DO NOT WANT. (It also bothers me a bit that my brother's light, which I believe is the same type and was on a lot longer than mine, was fine. But his may have a special bulb.) I think it would help to have my cat with -- and a nice, working lamp to leave on.
Job offer?
I got a call last week from my parents' friend, a guy who edits a local paper that is mostly advertising but is moving toward having more news stories (because of the kind of paper it is, I feel weird calling him the "editor," but I guess that's what he would be). He said he might have a project for me, but didn't really give details, so I had to go in to meet with him on Friday morning. This came completely out of the blue for me, so I was pretty nervous and confused. The basic are such: As I said, his paper is moving toward more news stories. So, he wants someone else to write a few stories a week. He knows from my parents that I am a "writer." I am really grateful that he thought of me and would trust me with this, but ... argh. Reporting -- that is to say, going out and finding a story, finding and talking to sources about it, and making it an article -- is one of those things in life that the very thought of viciously twists my stomach into knots. I tried it for a while in high school, because I am a "writer," and my friend was on the paper. I couldn't stand it. It made me extremely anxious, to say the least. It was really amazing to me that I ended up joining the paper in college, because I didn't think it was something I would ever do again. But that was as a copy editor, which is a totally different capacity.
I was half thinking of saying yes despite how uncomfortable the proposition is to me, until I got another whiff of an offer that evening.
I hung out with two of my high school friends (and one girl's boyfriend) at Coldstone Creamery. Haven't seen them since March, so it was nice to talk with them. Now the other has a boyfriend too ... oy. I told them this makes me feel threatened XD I'm the only one in the group now who has never had a serious boyfriend. They don't bother me about it or anything, but ... *sigh* When will I find love? *starry eyes* /melodrama
OH RIGHT. The job bit. My friend who lives downtown says there's probably going to be an opening at her work. It's a secretarial/administrative position. It would start part time but turn into full time with good benefits. She told me to send her my resume, so she could pass it on.
The thought of working downtown is a little nerve-wracking (I would have to take the train everyday, which means learning my way around the city, paying for fare and getting up very early in the morning), but also holds a lot of appeal. I can't stand the thought of another summer working at the library. It makes me want to scream. My parents say I should try to get more hours, push to be hired on full time (not likely to happen; not something I want to do anyway). What I really need to push toward is getting a different job. Obviously this job possibility is not even close to final. I'm not even being looked into yet. But just the hope of it makes me a little wild-eyed. I am desperate to move forward, and this seems like an opportunity.
Phew. This entry is going on forever. Um. I've seen some movies and read some books since the last real entry. Rushmore, The Craft, Marie Antoinette, Memories, American Psycho, The Princess and the Frog ... I don't feel much like reviewing anything right now.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day -- so I wish a happy one to you all. I will be going over to my parents' friends' house for a cookout and possibly swimming, assuming this thunderstorm over us now passes and leaves nice weather. We shall see.
Did I forget anything?