Routine Disruption

Once upon a time, I was very very involved in a television show. You remember this, right?

Somewhere during the fourth season, which ended in May, I stopped watching. Not for lack of interest; for lack of sleep and time, I simply set the DVR and recorded the episodes. Then I was getting ready to go to Sweden, then I went to Sweden, then I came home, and OMG, we're at the middle of July and I have 9 episodes of Supernatural to catch up on.

That is, I need to park my butt in front of the television for 9 hours. Nuh-uh, ain't happenin. Not while the sun is shining, the days are long, and the garden needs tending.

While I still love the show, and still like Jensen Ackles a whole lot, I've managed to stay away from most of fandom for more than a year. It is a little like high school; I've kept in touch with the fandom friends, but I don't feel the need to visit the boards and spend time obsessing over it all.

This is a good thing.

Stealing Borrowing Posting Ideas

Mrs. G on Derfwad Manor posts a recipe from a guest blogger on Thursdays.  She asks a few questions of the guest blogger, one of which always is, "Who is your secret boyfriend?"  The answers are always entertaining.  Y'all know about secret boyfriends, yes?  Also known as TV boyfriends.  So I suppose that if I'm going to be more honest, this is actually just an excuse to write about fandom, Supernatural, and Jensen Ackles.  Again.  You have been warned, and you may stop reading now if you had enough of this from me last year.

Once upon a time.......

On a struggling TV network mostly dedicated to teen soap operas, there is a little television show called Supernatural.  The network, as Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "don't give no respect" to the show, sticking it in a terrible time slot, on Thursdays at 9 PM, where it is up against Grey's Anatomy (bleh) and the original CSI (I'll give that one a meh).  The cast and crew do far more to support the show than the network does; I see commercials for the appalling One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, and the new 90210 at the rate of about 4 to one with Supernatural commercials.  Don't get me started on CEO Dawn Ostroff.  Creator Eric Kripke at the two leads, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, along with writers, producers, and directors, attend fan conventions at what must be an exhausting rate, pushing the show every chance they get.

So for four seasons, the show has chugged along, pulling an average of 4 million viewers each week.  The writer's strike last year nearly killed the show.  Four million, in TV numbers, in case you're unaware of these things as I was in the days before SN, is paltry at best, and cancellation-worthy at worst.  The fan base, those 4 million (mostly women) people, have a fandom all unto themselves that encompasses a stunning array of in-jokes, turns of phrase, fiction, forum boards, and even art.  It is easy, perhaps frighteningly so, to lose yourself in that world, where a network of fans feel just as strongly as you do about the show, the characters, the mytharc.  Easy to become connected to a world-wide group, exchange IMs with fans around the globe, sometimes to the exclusion of reality.

I spent a lot of time in fandom when I was unemployed last year.  I miss it, often, now that I'm too busy to be as involved as I was.  I made some wonderful connections, new friends from all over the place, cool and interesting people that I would have never met were it not for a television show.  That fact still boggles my mind.  Without a TV show ffs, re-read that sentence.  Especially since as a kid, I wasn't really allowed to watch TV, I could have never imagined that I'd be this into a television show.  TV was for the hoi-polloi.  TV was for people who couldn't read.  TV was dumb.

Mostly, I still think that.  Whenever I go to work somewhere new, I have to explain to people, yet again, that I don't watch TV, no, I didn't see Greys or Scrubs last night, don't care what's happening on any given sitcom.  Those canned laugh tracks, ugh, how can anyone watch that?  It really annoys me.

Escapism, still, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, that's the appeal in the end.  When I became a big fan of the show, my life wasn't so fantastic.  I could pretend that wasn't happening while playing in fandom.  Now that things are better, I feel less of a need to escape, but wish I had the time to.

Oh, yes, I did say that this was an excuse to talk about Jensen, didn't I?  Instead, I'll just post a pic, and you can make that determination for yourself.

Ah yes.  So very, very pretty.  But aside from that, his work is amazing.  His portrayal of the badly damaged Dean is something I think needs to be seen to be appreciated.  Thursdays, 9PM, on (I cringe to admit I watch this channel) The CW.

If I don't understand it myself, how can I explain it to you?

"So," says a friend on the telephone yesterday, "How was Lily Dale?"

"Really interesting,"I tell her. "It is a very strange little place."

And then I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to explain how I felt while I was there. There are places on this earth that have a certain feel to them, I can't explain it any other way. When I was a kid, we would spend summers in a small place in the Manistee National Forest, in Michigan. A cottage, a lake, a sailboat, a motorboat, a rowboat, and not much else was there. We would swim, sail, waterski, lounge about in the sun, have evening bonfires where we would make s'mores, and rarely did we leave the cottage. It was as if the place cast a spell on you, that once there, you didn't want to leave. When our time there was up, at the end of every summer, there would be tears as we took our leave of the place. Returning the following year always felt like coming home, even though it never was home, never could be occupied in the winter; the place had little insulation and no furnace, so you'd freeze to death.

Lily Dale felt a bit like that to me, as if it was a place I'd come 'home' to. I spent a lot of time sitting on the porch of the Maplewood Hotel in a rocking chair and reading, time walking around the unusual settlement, some small amount of time taking pictures with my real-film camera. I found it soothing. Very soothing. I spent time in contemplation, took a class on meditation, participated in a Native American sweat lodge ceremony. (Which was awesome.) I did not want to leave. Places like our summer retreat and Lily Dale make me feel like the rest of the world, outside of those communities, does not exist. As if the whole wide world is comprised of this spot, and this spot alone.

Lily Dale is a Spiritualist community. Spiritualism is a religion, widely practiced in the late 1800s. Like other fads, its popularity faded, and Spiritualist communities these days tend to be small. But these folks believe hard. From Lily Dale's website, here's a definition of a Spiritualist.
One who believes, as the basis of his or her religion, in the continuity of life and in individual responsibility. Some, but not all, Spiritualists are Mediums and/or Healers. Spiritualists endeavor to find the truth in all things and to live their lives in accordance therewith. Sounds all right, not too kooky. I mean, yeah, Mediums, all right, not so sure about that part, but religions outside of my own Catholic experience fascinate me.

There are several books about Lily Dale, I picked up Lily Dale; the True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead at my local bookstore before I went there. Many Mediums are Christian, but identify primarily as Spiritualist. Lily Dale has daily free "readings" twice a day, given by both members of the community and visiting Mediums, as well as student Mediums from time to time. Curiosity is either one of my greatest strengths or one of my big weaknesses, depending on what I allow it to lead me to, so I went to two of the daily readings just to see what it was like.

And it was weird. The Mediums either identify a particular person in the crowd and ask them, "May I come to you?" for which the proper response is NOT a head nod, but a spoken, "Thank you." Or they begin to describe a person that they "see" and wait for someone in the crowd to identify that spirit as someone they knew, who has passed on. Could be mother, aunt, cousin, whatever.

I have a belief in the supernatural, (obviously, witness the fangirl stuff) in that which is beyond our daily perception. Ghosts? Possible. Telepathy? Maybe. Telekinesis? I wish! Teleportation? Wouldn't that be cool! Vampires, ghouls, all of that, as Sam and Dean point out each week, every culture in the world has some lore for each creature. Do I truly think it is all real? Not really. I tend to believe that which is tangible, that which I can touch, see, smell, and hear all on my own. But I do believe that there are folks who have psychic abilities. I don't really count myself among their number, but things do happen to me that I can't explain.

So watching these public sessions with the mediums was both hilarious and hair-raising, by turns. In general, the Mediums who approach a particular person and begin telling them things that the Medium could never just "know" were far more credible to my mind than those who stood at the front of the crowd and began random descriptions.

One of those random descriptions went like this, (I took notes, of course) verbatim.

"I'm seeing a woman in a hospital bed, long illness that she died from. Long time in hospital, in hospice. Older."

And from that very, very vague description, a woman directly in front of me began waving her hand wildly. "That's MY mother!" she nearly shouted. "She had cancer."

The Medium's face lit up and she said, I shit you not, "Oh, wonderful. Lots of love from her to you."

It was all I could do to not crack up. If YOUR dearly departed mother was to appear to a Medium, wouldn't love be the first thing she expressed? The Medium went on to say that the mother was no longer hurting, no longer in pain, she was out of that hospital bed and dancing. Now, isn't that precisely what you would WANT to hear about your mother who died of cancer after suffering for a long time? It seemed to me that so many people were so desperate to be comforted, to believe, that they took the most vague things and turned them in to meaningful messages.

You can also sign yourself up to visit any one of the town's 45 or so "registered" Mediums, a private session, for a fee. I resisted the temptation. I have been to see a psychic, once, about 6/7 years ago, and she scared the shit out of me. She used ordinary playing cards to tell me all kinds of things that I have no idea how she could have known any of. I refused to tell her my name, I refused to tell her how old I was, any identifying details. I left there shaken, and frightened. She knew things that I never, ever, ever talk about, that I've never told anyone. She wrote notes, I still have them. They're a bit rambling, but most of it? She was dead on. It happened. One thing that she was 100% right about? She told me that I should start writing. That I had it in me to be a writer. I did not begin writing until several years after I saw her, but I remembered her prediction with a jolt when I was accepted to write for FitFare.

If I go back to Lily Dale, and I think I will, I might sign up to see one of them. But my natural skepticism just might prevent me from taking any of it as anything more than entertainment and bull.

Season finale thoughts

can be seen over on MySpace.

Music On My Mind

I've written before that Supernatural brought me back to the classic rock genre. And I'm grateful to the show for that, because I'd forgotten how much I love classic rock. Not all classic rock, but Zepplin, the Doors, Def Leppard, and Rush were soundtracks of my life in my late teens, and more recent rock acts that I'd forgotten about have been featured on the show, Screaming Trees, Queensryche, Alice in Chains. I've got my whole Supernatural playlist listed in the sidebar right now under my listmaking mania header, if you're interested in the types of things that I'm talking about.

I like all music, though, there isn't much that I won't listen to, including alt-country, (Wilco, Rascal Flatts, Ryan Adams) hip-hop, (Kelis, Mary J, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy) soul, (Amy Winehouse and Joss Stone) and R&B (Alica Keys & Alyiah), classical, even opera. (Madame Butterfly is a personal favorite.) If you took possesion of my iPod and scrolled through the artist list, you'd find such diverse things as Jason Mraz and Natasha Beddingfield, along with Bat for Lashes, Gorillaz, Jimmy Buffet alongside Tommy Lee. Setting the iPod to random shuffle is always entertaining and an adventure, because often something will pop up that I've completely forgotten is there.

I spent several hours last weekend cruising around iTunes, finding all kinds of things. Listening to 30 second blurbs of all manner of music, hopping from one list of all of an artist's songs to another. Is there anything that isn't on iTunes? I think not. I also spent some time trying to clean out the things on the iPod that I haven't listened to since uploading my music collection in January, because my iPod is a Nano and it holds about a thousand songs and I need to have stuff on there that I actually listen to, rather than stuff that clutters it up.

Music is something so visceral, so primal, so vital, even spiritual, sacred. You need only sit in on a drum circle and feel the stirrings in your soul of ancient memory to know this is true. Surprisingly, Celtic music fosters that same feeling in me, of coming 'home', of hearing something that maybe I don't remember personally, but my soul seems to. Cutting yourself off from music is about as easy as cutting off an appendage. There's rhythm in everything, from the mundanity of a changing traffic light to the clacking of the keyboard when you type. There's harmony in everything, from the wind in the trees to the patterns of overheard conversations.

I go nowhere without my iPod. It is on in the car when NPR news isn't on. It is on in my office when I don't have visitors. (Which means it is on most of the time.) It is on when I'm on the computer at home in the evenings. I have the headphones on in the grocery store, while I'm cleaning my house, and of course at the gym. All of which is either a statement about how we interact less and less with society in general (encapsulated in my own little world syndrome) or about how we expect to be entertained all the time, I'm not sure which.

That's not to say that I won't take it off to talk to someone, because I will. Most of the music I listen to makes me happy, and I really enjoy the fact that I am able to carry it around with me, accessible to me at all times. When I am able to sing along with the music, that makes me happy too. I get so much positivity from my music.

But there are songs that make me sad too, that evoke particular memories and can bring tears. It seems so strange to me that music connects so much to our emotional cores, evoking both joy and pain. For a long time after moving home from Europe, stupidly and strangely enough, Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" really bothered me, reminding me of a group of guy friends that I was afraid I'd never see again. My fears were fairly well founded, I have not seen any of them since 1992. But I hate to admit to having such taste in music!! Another one that can also make me cry is extraordinarily cringe-worthy, Jimmy Buffet's "Someday I Will" which is about hopes and dreams. Every single time I've heard that song done live (and we go see Buffet EVERY SINGLE SUMMER, y'all, DH is a big Parrothead) I've been standing in the crowd sobbing, because I find it that moving.

Van Halen's "Right Now" was released when I was living in Europe, I remember the video on MTV Europe, and you will remember it too when I remind you that it was one of the first videos that had text on the screen that you needed to read. I found that really moving too, both then and now.

Punk music makes me want to jump around and scream a lot. Techno still makes me want to dance, even though I can recognize how horrible it is now. RiotGrrl stuff makes me want to spring into action to make my voice heard. Opera makes me wish I'd kept studying voice. Chick singers like Tori, Sarah, Sheryl, make me want to sing at the top of my lungs. Classic rock makes me want to watch Sam and Dean. Especially the shirtless Dean we saw in What Is and What Should Never Be last week. Hee. Couldn't resist squeezing them in there, you know I had to fit that in if I was going to mention SN, right?

I know I haven't written anything at all about the therapy sessions which I mentioned in a Tuesday post a few weeks ago, but that is because my first appointment with the head-shrinker is tomorrow. Today I feel more upbeat, but I don't know if that's because I think we're making progress at my giant suck of a job, if the meds are kicking in and making me feel better, if the weather's better or if I'm just finally really feeling better. I'm not going to have much time to write about the session because I am leaving on Thursday to go visit babysis in Cal-if-or-ny-i-a. YAY, sibling goodness.

(And yes, we're flying though LAX, and yes, I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for a highly unlikely Jensen sighting. Just thought I'd mention that.)

I will probably be mostly offline while in California, because babysis really does live on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and they have a very slow satellite-relayed to dial-up connection to the interweb. Plus, I can go scuba diving, sailing, ocean kayaking, hiking and snorkeling there, so I'm guessing that I won't have much time to be checking in. I'll update when I can. I still want to write a post about the French elections, but until I can, check out Petite's eloquent post on the matter.

Listening to: Random iTunes mix

Rolling Stone? Where have you been all my life?

Somehow, I have acquired a subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. When it first showed up in my mailbox, I was annoyed. "WTF, where did this come from?" was my first thought. So then it became a quest to figure out how I ended up with the subscription, because as far as I know, I've never paid for it. Best I can figure, when I bought DAVE tickets last year, the mag subscription came along for the ride.

And then instead of tossing it aside when it showed up, I started to read it. RS shares most of my political leanings, so of course I love it. The latest edition is one of three 40th anniversary publications, and is full of interviews with people like Bob Dylan. The editors have a huge "Letter FROM the editors" section, and when I read it, something stood out on the page that made me stop and think.

I must admit that I have no idea who wrote this piece, if it is a collaborative effort, or if it is typical of the voices of the editors. So we'll go with 'theds' as the name, the eds...anyway, theds talk about the Sixties, capitalized like that, Sixties, through the letter. You can almost taste the emphasis they're putting on Sixties. I also have to admit that I'm not sure what proper usage is, if the decades should be capitalized or not, because I usually just use the numbers, 60s, 70s. And I'm too lazy to look it up.

All through the editorial, they're drawing parallels to the political situation back then and the political situation now. They've never made any secret of the fact that they despise President Idiot, and the call to action in this editorial has motivated me. Course, they don't have my wonderful turn of phrase, calling him Bush instead of by his proper name.

I have not yet had time to read the entire magazine, but the interview with Bob Dylan was riveting stuff. There are interviews with Tom Wolfe, Martin Scorsese, and Michael Moore that I am excited to get to. I'll probably have more to say about each of them after I've had a chance to sit down and read it all.

Last night's SN episode was one of my all time favorites. I posted an extraordinarily long set of my impressions over on MySpace, if you're interested. All I'll say here is WOWOWOW!

Mind The Gap

In a fairly stupid chick lit book, I read a great bit of wisdom. It went something like this...

If you could dump all your problems out on the floor in a big room full of people doing the same, you'd scurry to pick yours back up when you saw what everyone else's problems were like.

I was watching a TV show about transgendered teens and thinking that when I think my life is very fucked up, I've got nothing on these kids.

Many of these kids seem to know, from a very early age, that something's wrong, that they're trapped, somehow, in the wrong gender. And they self-mutilate, or become addicted to abusive substances, or try to commit suicide in attempts to escape where they feel 'trapped'.

I have no "right" to be depressed. None. I grew up in a very supportive, loving family, went to 'good' schools, have a university degree, am employed, happily married, have a home, friends, siblings, parents. No great tragedy, except the death of my cousin in 2005, has ever been visited upon me. I feel incredibly guilty for feeling so despondent. I'm alive, after all, am I not?

The fact that I feel like my head is going to explode, or that I am at a crossroads ("should I stay or should I go now" ~ The Clash) or that I have a lot of trouble getting out of bed is unchanged for all that feeling that I ought not to be depressed. I think that the anti-depressants that I'm taking are helping, because I'm not actively suicidal, but that's not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it?

Some days are better than others. It seems to make no difference at all when I take the meds, timewise, but I think one of the reasons I was so down on Sunday is that I might have forgotten to take the pill that day. I can't really remember, and that's pretty darn scary. DH and I went to breakfast, and then came home and I laid around a lot and moped. I'd gotten up in a black, foul, miserable mood. I hardly stirred off the couch most of the day.

The new week started at work on Monday, and I've felt somewhat better this week. This marks week #3 on the meds, and Dr. Hottie suggested that after two weeks I'd 'feel better.' And I do, sort of. My first appointment with the therapist is next week, two days after a big meeting at work.

It is work that is most of the problem, I think. I'm pretty sure that the job is threatening my mental health. But that uncertainty, that I'm just not sure, is awful to carry around every day.

What I was struck by, watching that TV show, is the enormous disparity between the transgendered kids and me. How yeah, they've got issues, and I'm just not HAPPY. Whaaaaaa. Whaaaaa. Whaaa.

If I could just flip a switch, make it right, I would. If only there was a magic wand. Only my experience with other family members being depressed assures me that I will come out of this, that it will get better, that one day, in the hopefully not too distant future, I'll see a sunrise and smile again.

In much more positive news, a new episode of Supernatural airs tonight, episode 2.20, What Is and What Should Never Be. I'm looking forward to what looks like a very Dean-centric episode. I'll probably post any fangirl squeeing that I intend to do over on MySpace.

Proof that watching even one TV show is one too many

There's only one television program that I watch. That's it. I've never been a fan of TV, and the addiction to Supernatural is quite enough, thank you.

But even that one hour of television a week is too much. Last week was "TV Turn-off" week, and I didn't even know it until Thursday, and since that's the day Supernatural airs, I certainly wasn't going to not watch. Heaven forbid.

Television is all around us. There are too many TV screens to even count at my gym, mounted on the walls surrounding the cardio studio. The treadmills and steppers and elliptical machines and stationary bikes all can each see at least three screens at any given time. There are about half a dozen treadmills with their own built-in TV screens, and about an equal number of elliptical trainers with their own televisions in addition to all those wall-mounted TVs. It is in every restaurant I go to, a distraction that is unneeded when I'm dining out with friends and family. So hard to tear your attention away from, even when what matters are the people in front of you.

So it is inescapable, and I end up seeing more of it than I care to. I'm more plugged in to the pop culture loop than I care to admit, and sometimes when people ask me if I've seen a particular commercial, I have seen it, and can talk about it. There's a Verizon commercial running right now that has subtitles and is about text-message speak that is really funny, I stop what I'm doing to watch it when it comes on. Advertising is such an interesting thing, trying to persuade you to do things or buy things that you might not otherwise buy or do. I'm not going to change mobile phone providers based on that commercial, but it certainly generates buzz.

And then there's good old Chuck. There are several commercials from Charles Schwab running in heavy rotation on seemingly every single channel right now. They irritate the shit out of me. I'm not sure why. They're "normal people" in everyday situations, a backyard barbecue, sitting around a table in a restaurant, standing outside a chi-chi coffee shop, to name a few. The people are talking about how they're unhappy with their stockbroker, or they were unhappy until they switched to Charles Schwab. All that is fine, normal advertising schtick so far. But the people have been cartoonized, for lack of a better term, much like some of the effects that you can do in Photoshop. Even MGI Photovista, the photo-editing software I use, has a cartoon effects filter. You overlay the picture with this effect, and it makes your picture look like a cartoon. You can do a similar thing to make your picture look like a painting. Very easy, a 3rd grader could do it with the right software.

For some reason, the cartoon effect in those Schwab ads bother me a lot. Is it because it is such a low-budget effect, or because looking at the people, you can kind of envision what they ought to look like, and it causes some disconnect in your brain? I don't know. They just bug me.

I hate even admitting that I know about and can quote television commercials. I'd love to toss a "Damn You, Kripke!" out there, and blame this on my SN addiction, but that wouldn't be precisely correct or fair. (Kripke's one of the producers of SN, and that is really a compliment, or a catchphrase, depending on you POV.) I watched bits and pieces of television before Supernatural, and when it goes off the air (god forbid that be anytime soon!!) I'm sure there will be other times that I watch bits and pieces again.

Such an ingrained part of our culture; I wonder if it would be possible to truly disconnect from all of it.

Really Weird Dreams

Sleeping is such a problem. I want to lie in bed and do nothing, but I'd also love to get more than a few hours sleep, and it just isn't happening.

Last night I climbed into bed around 12:30, after watching Supernatural (twice). I spent from 10 pm until just after midnight talking online to other SN fanatics. Yes, a new episode of Supernatural aired last night, and yes, it was wonderful. I'm resisting the urge to write a complete rehash of the whole episode. I do have this one thing to share...Jensen's character had several lines that made me laugh out loud, but the best one has to be when he's being interrogated and someone asks him "You think you're REAL cute, don't ya?" and he responds with a mile-wide grin, "I think I'm adorable!" Yes, yes, you are. And that sound you heard? Was about 30,000 fangirls screaming their agreement.

Moving on. I'm going to talk about sleep today. Really.

I am still taking Ambien, and it gets me to fall asleep very quickly, but it seems to level out at about 4 hours of sleep, because without fail, unless I climb into bed after 1 am, I wake between 4:17 and 4:38 every day. I get up at 5, and waking thirty minutes or so before when I am going to really get up irritates me. I'm not sure why, other than perhaps I feel that I'm being robbed of a precious few minutes of sleep.

Sometimes I am able to fall back asleep for those precious few minutes. Sometimes not. I have vivid dreams in that short space of time when I do manage to fall back asleep. I am able to "lucid dream," something I've been able to do almost as far back as I can remember. Sometimes I'm even able to control the dreams. Not all the time.

This most recent one that bothered me was one that I wasn't in control, nor was I lucid. It involved a dinner at a restaurant, with a table for about 12. I can tell you what the table looked like, the chairs, the decor of the restaurant, even what the dishes and glasses looked like. Very, very crisp, vivid detail. I can't tell you who all was around that table for twelve, but one person was one of my ex's, and another was a parent of an old friend, a third was a high school classmate that I haven't spoken to in a while. The parent was asking how on earth I could be friends with the ex when I'm married to someone else. I tried in vain to explain it, finally coming up with the lame non-explanation "Because we're friends." (real life answer isn't all that much more clear: he's a good guy, and we're both grownups enough to be able to be nice to one another. We share a political viewpoint, I like his wife, and we're not interested in ever getting back together...this is a friendship, not an opportunity, fer gawd's sake.)

My classmate and I left the restaurant, shaking our heads over the inability of some people to recognize that men and women can actually BE FRIENDS, walking down a set of concrete steps, and we ran right in to another ex-boyfriend of mine. In the waking world, I haven't seen this particular guy for a very long time, and in the dream, he of course looked exactly the same as he did when I was 15/16. I'm not sure I'd be able to pick him out of a crowd today, like many of my schoolmates, he remains forever 17 in my memory.

He persuaded me to come back into the restaurant with him, after spending several minutes kissing me in the parking lot. Um? WTF? Hadn't I just finished explaining in the dream a few minutes ago that I was married to someone else? And in real life, I am very happily married to someone else. Dreams like this bother me so much. Not only did I go back into the restaurant with this ex, holding his hand, but also introducing him around the table as "my ex-boyfriend Joe" and then kissing him again in full sight of everyone, who gave me jaws-on-the-floor-shocked glares. I woke up a minute or so later, gasping for breath, convinced I'd done something wrong. I was very disoriented to discover myself in my own bed, DH asleep beside me, instead of where I'd expected to be, standing in a restaurant surrounded by accusing glares and angry words.

Sometimes dreams mean something. Sometimes they're just dreams. I attach no particular significance to this dream, it isn't allegorical or a statement about my life, but man, it made me squirm. I don't have dreams quite like this when I'm not taking the Ambien. Never as vivid with the detail, and hardly ever traumatic. The level of weirdness knows no bounds.

Random News Notes

Two completely disjointed things that I want to talk about, and this will be a comparatively short, for me anyway, post.

First is this news about Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who said yesterday that The Most Meaningless War Ever (tm) has been lost. The White House shot back that they thought his comments were 'disturbing'. I'm chuckling because I agree with the White House, but not in the way they mean. I find Senator Reid's remarks very disturbing because HE'S RIGHT! Did we tell President Idiot over and over and over that an escalation of troops wouldn't work? We did. Did he listen? He did not. Is it a catastrophe? Yep. Are we surprised? Nope.

Next, I was up much, much too late last night talking online about the new episode of Supernatural that aired yesterday FINALLY, after a month-long hiatus. After the episode aired and I did my traditional re-watch of the tape of it (since I miss bits of dialog, being deaf) I had on Headline News as background noise.

I glanced up from the laptop, where I was busily typing away to a cadre of other hard-core nuts, oh, I mean fangirls, to find a clip of Neil Patrick Harris on the Ellen Show at one point. He came out. First, Neil, GOOD FOR YOU, I love that the culture here in the States is becoming more and more accepting of homosexuality and that you feel comfortable enough to take that step. Next, duh, 'cause I knew that.

But the bubble-head on Headline News just had to make some dumb ass remark about "Wow, and he plays such a ladies' man on How I Met Your Mother." IT IS CALLED ACTING HONEY, EVER HEARD OF IT? You're an entertainment reporter. Yeesh. NPH is one of the good ones. I don't watch his current show, but he's been in a bunch of things that I liked, and he's good at what he does. Is it so unfathomable that a gay man could play a ladies' man? Herregud!

Speaking of TV watching, I would like to squee endlessly about last night's SN episode, but since I am a complete freak about this show, there are a few details that bugged me. (I lied, there are three things to talk about today.) For the other fangirls who check my website, because the rest of you? Are going to be real lost in about ten seconds and for most of the rest of the post....

I get really annoyed when they stray from the mytharc for a whole episode. Less than one sentence's mention of Heart, nothing at all about the YED...and a few other things about the episode that bothered me. It would take Sam 6 HOURS of watching dailies to figure out that the Latinating was for real? Have we forgotten that he was up for a full ride law school scholarship at Stanford? Law school, Latin...and the fact that BDW tutored them in this stuff from the time Sam was 6 months old on. Anyway. My point is: Continuity of the storyline!!!! Argh! Sam is supposed to be super-smart. And psychic.

Dean and the food, again. Haven't we beat that horse to a bloody, gruesome death yet? Not that I ever get tired of looking at Jensen's lips, but enough with the food already.

Metallicar was missing from this episode, and I felt its absence keenly. A late-model, bright yellow Mustang convertible did not make up for the lack of Metallicar, although it did help a little.

A thing or two that really made me laugh...Jared's non-verbals at the mention of Gilmore Girls, OMG that was funny. His facial expressions when he figures out just what Dean's been up to with Tara/Wendy, priceless. Priceless, I tell you. Dean, getting the girl, love that. Never enough of that in any of the episodes. Dean, getting dressed as he comes out of the trailer at the end of the episode and his hair's a big mess. (Resisting the urge to suggest that there should be a lot fewer layers of clothing...resisting...) I like that Dean wasn't all angst-y and tortured in this episode. I suppose I want it both ways, mytharc, which equals angst, and Dean-the-pickup-artist. That's a pretty tall order, but I expect fantastic things from the show. And when it works? It really works. The fact that they "salted & burned" in this episode, yay!!! There hasn't been near enough of that or shooting things in the face with rock salt this season. That rocked. Oh, and Dean's a total fanboy when it comes to horror movies, that, THAT is fantastically funny. The in-jokes about acting, the film and television industry were cute, too. I caught a whole bunch of them, but I'm sure I didn't see them all, having not ever really worked in TV. The ones I did pick up on were howlers. Which is why I can't wait until TWoP posts the recap, I'm sure that they'll catch a bunch more of them. TWoP's recapper for SN is hysterical.


All right, all right, enough already. Two paragraphs about politics/news, more or less, and too much ranting about my hopeless addiction. Must. Stop. Now. I'm not crazy. Really. I am a serious political blogger. I AM!!!


(Lucy, dear, if you have to tell the good people that...well, it is a little like declaring, "I'm a classy broad!" or asking how much something costs...if you have to ask, you can't afford it. If you have to TELL them that you're a serious politico....) ~.~

Random stupid thoughts with large amounts of bitching and gnashing of teeth

Things to bitch about
Have I mentioned that the CW television network is killing me by having another Supernatural hiatus until April 19th? Really, CW, you're killing me. The withdrawal may, indeed, be the death of me.

I feel fat.

My job sucks.

I miss my sisters.

I'm out of inspiration and things to post about, too lazy today to even check the news wires for ideas.

When did MTV stop playing MUSIC VIDEOS and instead start playing only really lame reality shows?

Things that are making me laugh

The entire Television Without Pity website. Reviews of TV shows that I don't even watch (and the one that I do) make me laugh out loud when remembered at inappropriate moments. And not that I need another forum to be addicted to, but the forum on that site rocks too.

The tulips I planted last fall are sprouting. I have not the slightest green thumb, killing any plant under my care quickly and easily. But bulbs? Bulbs are the easiest thing going. Put them in the ground, and if the goddam deer don't eat the bulbs, in the spring you have pretty, pretty flowers.

A commercial for a vibrating razor. WTF, dude? Why would you want your razor to be a vibrator or your vibrator to be a razor? I'm confused.

This Celebrity Obsession? Has. Got. To. STOP.

So I'm chatting online with the sister who lives in NYC and she casually mentions that she's changed her view of my avatar, which is of course a picture of Jensen Ackles.

"Awwww," I responded, "Don't you like my cute actor? What did you change it to?"

"Some pic of you from xmas," she says. "I don't like looking at the little boy."

And I feel a completely irrational stab of, not anger, no, but rejection. I type a response full of teen angst that says he isn't a little boy (he is around the same age as this sister) and he's cute (this is my avatar pic on Google Chat, and helloooo, that's hot!) and blah blah blah blah, but I don't get a chance to send it because before I can, she sends me a link to Social Explorer and I'm off to geek around the maps for about an hour. A.D.D.? Me? No, why do you ask? Ooo, look, something shiny.

When I came back and read at our conversation again, I felt a little twinge of irritation at myself, and I realized that this obsession of mine has perhaps become a bit silly. I've made a few new friends online over the whole thing, and I'm really happy about that. New friends are great, and the longer you're out of University, the harder they are to come by. So that is to be treasured. I've been having a lot of fun in the CW forums, and Sunday, believe it or not, actually had a conversation about liberal vs. conservative politics with the kids in my favorite thread on the CW board. Really! I know, I was surprised too. The main forum that I've been participating in, JRA Unlimited, has some really great women on it from all over the world. One of the admins is in Brazil, other members are in England, Australia, Germany, Canada, Spain and Portugul...and besides being free to be completely ridiculous fangirls there, we talk about lots of other things.

I wonder where the line between fan and nutjob is. How close am I to treading it?

I guess I'm trying to reassure myself that I'm not crazy by all this angsty ranting, and my rationale goes something like this..."If I was nuts, I wouldn't be worried about it. Therefore, since I am worried about it, I'm not nuts."

There's a trivia game on the Anything But Ordinary board that took up a big chunk of time for me on Sunday, searching for a line from a particular episode. I watched parts of two different episodes looking for "who said that line?" and then I watched another complete episode to find a line of my own that would be hard enough for others to guess. Now that, that is silly. I'll freely admit to it. Sillier still, probably, is that I was thinking about starting a thread just like it on JRAU. So I can play the game on TWO sites, y'all.

Maybe I need a version of a 12-step program..."Hi, I'm Lucy, and I'm addicted to all things Jensen Ackles, I've been an addict for about 2 months." Oh, wait, I there's a forum for that, and I joined it. Yeah. Oy! Sigh.

Someone help me.

Please?

Soon!

Brain-Dumping Day Again

So as I have designated Tuesdays as official brain-dumping day, today I'm going to write about another old job.

By "brain-dump," I mean that I'm dumping a bunch of random thoughts in my head out on to the computer screen and seeing what comes of it. Perfecting my storytelling skills, as the quote from David Mamet says above. There's a funny line in a song by Tommy Lee, of Motley Crue fame, on the "Tommyland, The Ride" album (yes, I will admit to owning that, with a slight cringe), in the song Good Times where he says "All the trash in my head, gotta throw it away". I like that line. Wish that I could, sometimes, ya know?

I dearly wish that there was such a thing as a Pensieve, as JK Rowling writes about in the Harry Potter books. Pensieves allow you to remove thoughts and ideas from your head and store them for later reflection or because you don't want to think about them. I could get rid of quite a bit of my own trash that way!

Back to the old jobs, then, I'm really not going to write about Supernatural, Jensen Ackles or Dean Winchester today, really. That is, of course, some of what stomps through my brain on a daily basis, but I'm trying to remember that I live in the real world. (Oh, go on then. You've never had a crush on a celebrity? Riiiight.) No, I'm not going to post any of the pictures I found, or links to the episode recaps on Television Without Pity, which made me howl with laughter. No. I'm not. Really. And I'm not going to bitch, at all, about the fact that the show is on a month-long hiatus. The next new episode doesn't air until March 15th. The Ides of March?!? CW television network, you're killing me. Yeah, OK, all right, I'm a liar. Here. Take note, please of the pretty.

Where was I? Ah yes, old jobs. I wrote here about working for the cash vault of a large Midwestern bank, and said that the next job I had at the bank would have to be a story for another day. I graduated from University in 1998, and the bank began making vague noises that they were going to outsource the vault's operations to an armoured carrier service, in a cost-cutting effort. My co-workers, who were really nice women, but not well educated, couldn't see the writing on the wall, and kept telling me that there was "no way that the corporation would be able to do what we do by outsourcing."

They were 1000% wrong, as it turns out, and I quietly began looking for another position within the bank that required my degree. When I had been trying to leave the first branch of the bank that I worked for, with the Evil Hag, I had applied for a job in the bank's Trust department, but I hadn't gotten it because I didn't have a degree at that time. Now I did, and so I applied again and got the job. The department had many various names, but I'm going to refer to it strictly as the Trust department because it amuses me....bank...trust....big evil corporations....hee.

I went to work for a really nice guy, who happens to be a lawyer. Cue the lawyer jokes...and I've got a ton of 'em...but he was really a nice person, and a great example of how I'd like to be as a boss. Since he's still working for the big o'l bank, and I respect the hell out of him, we'll just call him Mr. Lawyer. Mr. Lawyer and I were a department of two, working on accounts of clients who had passed away. Perhaps it is no real surprise that I ended up working in such a morbid field...I've had a lifelong fascination with the paranormal and odd occurrences, a few brushes with the occult as a young teenager, and was a bit of a hippy child/goth girl in college. My baby sis was about 13 or 14 when I went to work with Mr. Lawyer, and when she saw my business card for the first time with the word "Estates" under my title, she suggested that we add the line "We see dead people" on the card. *snerk* The bank has NO sense of humor, however, so I never suggested it.

Most of the clients that we had were really, really old folks, and it never bothered me to be working on the estate of someone who had kicked it of heart failure at 87. We had the occasional younger person, but mostly these were folks who had lived long, healthy lives, and who were very wealthy, had wanted for nothing. Their heirs were a whole 'nother story. I can't tell you how many phone calls I had from nieces, nephews, cousins, and much more distant relations wanting to know where their money was even before Aunt Edna was in the ground.

Many of the stories I have from that time are things that I certainly shouldn't be telling on teh internets, as it would be a breach of confidentiality. At least, I think it would if I was still working for ye olde evile bank, and if I gave enough detail for you to figure out who these people were/are, but since I have not worked for the big ol bank in 3 years, I don't think it is illegal. I think it would be completely unethical to give away enough detail to allow even RL friends to be able to identify them. SOOOO, I'll have to tread very carefully here.

One of my favorite heirs was the daughter of a dead guy, and best illustrates the old axiom, "The wealthy aren't strange, they're eccentric." She showed up to our first meeting after her father's death wearing a sundress, a long sleeved t-shirt under the dress; socks, and Birkenstock sandals. It was January. In Ohio. There were 3 inches of snow on the ground. And she complained about being cold. She was one of the very few who wasn't a money-grubbing brat, however, and I'm being honest when I say that she was one of my favorite heirs.

The two heirs that I disliked almost the most of all of them had to be a pair of sisters who despised one another. The estate I worked on was their mother's, their father having passed on years ago. This was one of the larger estates I worked on...and to put that into perspective, a short government/history lesson is required.

At the time I was doing this work, the bank wouldn't take on an estate unless they could get a fee of about $100,000. Now I never saw a dime of that, and neither did Mr. Lawyer. The bank sure did, though. In the state of Ohio, the fees are based on the amount of the gross estate. So the bank could charge 1% of the first $100,000 ($10,000), 3% of the next $300,000 ($30,000) and I can't even remember what the balance was. Maybe 3% on the balance of the gross estate. So the bank could charge $40,000 on $400,000 worth of assets, and if the whole estate was worth $1 mil, then the fee would be in the $90,000 range. The ones I worked on were big estates. Small estates for Mr. Lawyer and I were in the $800,000 range. Big ones were over $10 million.

These two heirs I'm going to kvetch about were the sole beneficiaries of a BIG estate. Money, money, money, honey. And they hated each other with a passion and ferocity that you rarely see except in the most bitter of divorces. They were sisters, close in age. The assets were huge, real estate, cars, stocks....and these two morons were fighting over the sheets and towels in mom's linen closet. They fought over the holiday decorations and family pictures too, but I get that. My great-aunt had most of my great-grandmother's 1950s era Christmas tree decorations, and I would have loved to have them; they went to other family members, and given the chance, I would have fought for them. Sheets and towels? Um, not so much.

One of my favorite parts of that job was going into the houses of the decedents and doing an inventory of every item in the house. Which I will freely admit is morbid and creepy. Yes, we spent time in houses were people had actually died. Mr. Lawyer and I usually did that sort of thing ourselves, and there were strict rules about staying in sight of one another at all times. Not because of superstition, but because the bank took a pretty dim view of theft on the job. When we were in the dead person's house, we would be looking specifically for tax records, bank statements, statements from investment accounts, other important papers, but also we'd be on the lookout for artwork, antique furniture, clues about other assets the person had. I liked doing that because it got us out of the office. But also I liked it because it taught me a few things about human nature, and because I'm a nosy busybody.

We almost always found cash in the freezer. And under the mattress. People think they're so clever when it comes to hiding money, but they're so predictable. Human beings are creatures of habit. Mr. Lawyer even had one where he found stacks of cash on the steel i-beams in the basement...unfortunately, that was one he did before I went to work with him, but he always checked the i-beams in every house we went into, because you never knew what you were going to find. We found cash stuffed in filing cabinets, behind old framed cross-stitch samplers, in the medicine cabinet.

I must note that we did house inventories only when there wasn't a surviving spouse or other family member who lived with the decedent. So there were never family members hovering around when we did this. It was far too distressing for a family member to witness complete strangers going through Uncle Ernie's bottom drawers. And we did. We went through every single drawer, every single shelf, in every single room. We cleaned out the refrigerator, we gathered up the mail, took care of a myriad of details. We had a checklist that ran to 17 pages full of stuff that needed done pretty quickly after someone passed away.

I worked with Mr. Lawyer for 5 years, spending almost more time with him than with my spouse. We had a really great working relationship. Get your mind out of the gutter, there was none of that. He wasn't my type, and he is the same age as my dad, so ick. He was a great example of how to treat your staff; when I made mistakes, he would say things like, "You ought to be more careful" or "Slow down and take your time." He was gentle, extremely patient, nice, generally a good guy. I think we made a good team because I'm abrasive, bitchy, and impatient. We often did the good cop/bad cop thing when we needed to on various cases, even once switching roles so that he was the bad guy. Which was really hard for him to pull off...when he gets really pissed off, he says things like, "Jiminy Christmas" and "Gosh Darn it". When *I* get really pissed off, I say things like "Kiss my ass, motherfucker."

By the time I moved on from that job, I'd had more than enough of the bank's politics, policies, and the general garbage I had to do each day. Like somehow it had become my responsibility to sort the department's mail, and don't even get me started about the department's coffee service and how it became the responsibilities of the assistants to clean up the coffee area when everyone drank it. Stuff like that just burns me up. So I left with few regrets. Just about the only one is that I don't have the opportunity to bounce ideas, thoughts, and theories off of Mr. Lawyer on a daily basis anymore; his opinions tended to be rational, reasonable, well thought out. I miss a few other co-workers as well. But I really miss my free daily copy of The Wall Street Journal...

Winter Wonderland

Skiing is one of the joys of life for me. I don't get to do it very often, but when I do, it makes me happy to be alive.

I had a perfect day on the slopes. Perfect weather...in the 20s, sunny, very little wind. Near-perfect conditions...groomed trails means that there has been snow recently, and the resort has taken some giant machines and driven them over the snow, making it uniform in depth. It is rare, in this region of the country, to be able to ski on fresh powder, the glory, be-all end-all of skiing conditions. At least, it is for me, because I don't live close enough to a ski resort to head for the hills as soon as fresh snow falls.

Every year, the first time I go skiing has the same emotions attached to it. A little bit of trepidation...what if I've forgotten the skills I've learned over the past 23 years that I've been a skier? A little bit of worry...what if I fall? (I am compelled to note here that I rarely fall. I'm too cautious of a skier, I don't take unnecessary risks, I rarely ski so fast that I can't stop myself. What can I say? I'd rather not be injured.) And a lot of elation, because as the saying goes, even a bad day skiing is better than a good day at the office.

Standing at the top of the hill, I take a deep breath of cold, clean country air. Peek'n Peak's elevation is only 1800 feet, so you can't really call it a mountain. At least not in my book. I have on a pair of goggles, a band around my ears, my iPod, a neck wrap, my ski jacket, ski pants, gloves, and three layers of clothes underneath the ski gear. On my back is a Camelback, a hydration system that I find imperative for a good day on the slopes. It holds about 64 ounces of water, the RDA of 8 eight ounce glasses of water. It has a tube that goes over my right shoulder from the bladder that holds the water. The bladder is held in a backpack, in which I also carry lip balm and tissues. I sip water at need by biting on the tube, not the classiest method going, but it sure beats carrying around bottles of water.

On my feet are new, brand-spanking new ski boots, bought last week. I've never had brand new equipment before, so that's exciting. My skis are Kastle, very old. I have a pair of Scott poles, also very old, but I see no need to replace either. They still work, and I have newer bindings on the skis, so they're fine, safe, and effective. I get occasional guff from other skiers while on the lifts, when they see my skis, asking me just how old the skis are, but with new skis and bindings setting you back about $500....yeah, my old stuff is fine, thanks. I got the Kastles when I was 13 or 14, and they were used when I got them, so a good guess at their age would be between 15 and 20 years old. I've replaced the bindings twice in that time, most recently maybe 5 years ago.

So the air is clean, cold, and crisp, and as I glide off of the chairlift, I look around for a map to remind me of the layout of Peek'n. Yes, that is the main resort that I go to, as it is within 2 hours driving distance, and yes, I go there between 2 and 5 times every winter, but they change things around during the summers, and anyway, I like maps. I stand in front of a map the size of a highway billboard, and ponder my routes for the next several hours. I don't like to start out with a run that might overtax my abilities, so I plan carefully.

The sound of the snow under the runners of the skis brings back floods of memories. Racing my sister at 11, 12 years old and again as adults, and she beats me every single time. My dad, encouraging me to enter my first NASTAR race, an amateur ski competition that I first tried around 11 years old. Getting stuck on the chairlift with a family friend at Peek'n, for over two hours in the late 80s, freezing my butt off. J-bars, T-lifts, rope tows. Skiing in Breckenridge with K and E, in the mid-90s. It isn't quite a crunching sound, more like when you rub two pieces of plastic up against one another. Not a grinding, either. Movie sound effects people use cornflakes and cornstarch encased in cotton sheets to simulate the sound of snow under skis...and that's a pretty good facsimile of the sound. Parallel skiing throws small bits of snow away from the skier, and the sssscuuuscchhh of the snow flying this way and that behind other skiers is soothing, right, exhilarating.

Having the iPod while skiing was a new thing for me. When my parents would take us skiing when we were kids, they disapproved of us listening to the Walkman while skiing...dangerous, they said. So it is. At the volume my 14-year-old self would have listened to it, very dangerous. Not that their edict of "No music on the slopes" stopped me from having it, but it was bulky, hard to hide, and cumbersome to carry. My old ski jackets always had inside pockets, but by the end of the day, I would be looking for someplace else to stash the Walkman, rather than carrying it on my person. The iPod, on the other hand, has an armband that I carry it around on, and it is no thicker than 3 credit cards stacked one on top of the other. So not bulky, not heavy, and I wear it on my arm every day at the gym, so nothing out of the ordinary.

I started the day on the hill listening to my "Supernatural" playlist, which is a bunch of classic rock tunes used on the television show. "Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas. "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult. "Rock of Ages" and "Pyromania" by Def Leppard. "Working Man" by Rush. "Wayward Son" is something I like to run to on the treadmill, and I can now report that it works well for flying downhill on skis too. I've got about 45 minutes of music on the SN playlist, so when I heard "Reaper" for the second time, I stopped skiing for a minute to change over to something else. Since I didn't organize a playlist specifically for the ski trip (which would have been smart), I just told the iPod to play the 25 most played songs, which is a pretty eclectic mix of Prince, U2, Def Leppard, Red Wanting Blue, The Format, and Dave Matthews Band.

Listening to Prince (old school Prince, mostly from the Purple Rain soundtrack) while traveling somewhere around 30 miles an hour on a ski slope is a pretty surreal experience. I have a remix of "Let's Go Crazy", probably my favorite Prince tune ever, that runs almost 8 minutes long, and I heard it about 3 times. That song is going to be stuck in my head for a week, I swear.

I think I've written before about how difficult it is for me to NOT sing at the top of my lungs whenever I have the iPod on. I was a singer all through school, trained with a private opera coach from 13 to about 17, entered contests, the whole bit. I tell you that not to brag, but to tell you that I'm a decent singer. I don't sing in public (meaning on stage) anymore, but I've never been able to resist the urge to sing in the car, in the shower, and yes, while skiing. When Red Wanting Blue came on, I was alone on the chairlift, and I gave in to the urge to belt out the chorus of "Audition". Fortunately, if anyone noticed, I didn't see them.

I skied all alone this time, having been unable to convince anyone to play hooky along with me. And while that's a bit of a shame, it isn't the end of the world. I crave solitude, it is an essential part of my nature. There are days that if I had a personal motto it would be "LEAVE ME ALONE!", so I didn't feel lonely while out there. There is, of course, a crucial difference between being alone and being lonely, and I was alone. I didn't lack for company...since it was President's Day in the US (Perhaps our most useless holiday? Discuss amongst yourselves...) all government offices, schools, and banks were closed, there were a bunch of other nuts out there on the hills with me. I talked to tons of people while the chairlifts took us to the top of the hills. Mostly other Ohioans, which entertained me a lot, as Peek'n is located in Clymer, New York.

I rode the chairlift early in the day with a fella named Jeff who did his darnedest to convince me to come back to his ski condo at the end of the day to party with a bunch of his friends. I haven't been hit on in a really long time, so it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on. I'd been feeling very mischievous when I got on the chairlift, though, so when he asked my name, instead of giving my real name, I told him "Lucy." Thank goodness for that intuition, because the further up the hill that chairlift got, the more uncomfortable this guy made me. I've introduced myself as Lucy before, last year when I was writing food articles, I interviewed a couple of different people, and always identified myself initially with the pen name. I always told the interviewees that Lucy is a pen name, however, not wanting to be dishonest. This idiot on the chairlift got no more than "Lucy" and the name of the big city in my area out of me, and he'll have a right difficult time tracking me down with just those two things, fortunately. Men. We love ya, but honestly, you're all dorks.

I'll be out on the slopes again on Sunday, the 25th, with a few members of my family. I know that most of the rest of the Northern hemisphere is wishing for spring, but I'm hoping winter holds on for a few more weeks, at least, so I can get a few more runs in before the snow melts for another year.

Technology? So Rocks.

Egad, I sound like I'm 13.

I've been working on the book all day, doing laundry, watching my television show (which yes, I did buy the whole season on iTunes so now I can watch it on demand, whenever I please, cue music that indicates drooling) and randomly surfing the internet.

What did we do before the internet when we wanted to know what the population of Peoria, Illinois, is? Or what streets cross Ventura Boulevard in Los Angles? We had the library as the only source for information like that. And it would have taken hours, hours I tell you, to find some of the more obscure information that is readily available online.

I posted a message on one of the fan forums talking about trouble I was having with teh internet yesterday, and realized, after I posted, that many of the other members of the board are high school students. (Yeah. Don't tell me about my lack-of-maturity when it concerns the fan forums. I know. I know! At least I'm not spending all of my waking hours reading/writing fan fic. Not yet, anyway.) Kids who will graduate high school in 2007 were most likely born in 1990. I turned 16 in 1990....therefore, I could reasonably be a parent to most of these kids. Yikes.

I didn't have an e-mail address in high school...teh internet was something that government contractors were still playing with back then. Now I have at least 5...Lucy's, one in my real name, 2 for work, one on Juno (my very first ever...you didn't even need an isp for Juno back then, you just dialed up, downloaded your e-mail, and hung up....keee-rist, I'm old), plus the Yahoo e-mail that I use when I buy things online.....


I think about my grandfathers, both of whom are no longer with us, when I think about the strides that technology has made in my lifetime. Grandpa S, who despised computers, he would hate, hate cell phones. I can only imagine what he'd have to say about them. He often quoted the "garbage in, garbage out" theory about computers, and I can't even fathom what he would think of my cell phone (I have a Motorola Razr, which has the capability to do pictures, video, be a personal digital assistant, and make phone calls). He would be annoyed by it, mostly, I think. Especially all the ringtones that I've added to the phone.

Grandpa B, I wonder what on earth he'd think of the internet. Grandma B is still around, and she does not have a computer. I was in serious withdrawal when I went to see her last year. I talked to her about the amazing things that you can do online, but she has a busy and active social life, and claims to not have 'time' for the internet. *ponders her own life sans internet for a second...shudders....*

I had a third "grandpa", a surrogate Grandpa L, and when he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, he asked me to research experimental treatments for him. Which I did, online, and forwarded the most promising to his daughter's e-mail address. I remember the telephone conversation I had with him about that...he was surprised that I'd been able to do everything I had done without ever leaving the chair I was sitting in when he called me.

I am continually astonished and amazed at what can be done from your computer. And I say this often about other areas of my life...I'm excited about the possibilities, the promise of what's to come tomorrow.

N O W

With apologies to Mother Me, who I told I would be writing about Scooter Libby today. Maybe tomorrow. This will be another brain dump post.

This morning, I was at the gym as usual, listening to the iPod as usual, and I put the playlist that I've made of music from my TV show on, and a song I had forgotten that I added popped up. It isn't part of the show's list of songs; they play a TON of classic rock on this show. Rush, Journey, Def Leppard, among others. Anyway, they've used "Working Man" by Rush, but I like a few other Rush tunes, and since it is still in keeping with the tone of the show, I added "Freewill" "Tom Sawyer" and "Time Stand Still". When "Time Stand Still" came on today, I stopped what I was doing to listen.

Once upon a time, this was my favorite song in the whole wide world. Rush released the double album Chronicles in 1990, and "Tom Sawyer" and "Subdivisions" were popular at my high school, but I wasn't all that into them. When I was in Sweden, though, an expatriot friend had the album and taped it for me when I said I liked "Tom Sawyer" but didn't know much else that they'd done. I had a Sony Walkman, a lot like this one that I listened to on trains and busses as I traveled around Sweden, and Chronicles was often among the tapes I carried. I listened to "Time Stand Still" over and over and over again, the chorus had meaning for me then. I'm not going to reprint the entirety of the lyrics here, see the link above if you're curious. But in part, they say

Time stand still
I'm not looking back
But I want to look around me now
Time stand still
See more of the people and places that surround me now
Time stand still

Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each sensation a little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away
Time stand still

Almost every time I listened to it, it made me emotional. It described, exactly, how I felt about the year that I spent living in Sweden. I wanted to stop time, to never return to America, to spend some time looking around. Each time the calendar turned to a new month, it brought panic to me, the time I had (precious little) in Sweden was slipping away from me, faster and faster every day.

When I came back to the States in August of 1992, the Grunge movement was in full swing, and I was into "Alternative" music, the Pixies, the Pouges, punk, the Grateful Dead....and my classic rock collection fell by the wayside. I never stopped listening to Def Leppard, but the rest of it became something I felt was cringe-worthy, not worth listening to. I'm glad that I've rediscovered the classic rock. I feel obligated to point out that this stuff was all classic rock before I started listening to it, I'm not THAT old.

But Time Stand Still reminded me again today that I've always had trouble living in the NOW, living for the present moment, taking a look around and appreciating what I've got. There's a few other songs on the iPod that talk about this...Def Leppard has one called "Now"...Buffett has one called "Breathe in, breathe out, move on" and I'm hoping that by listening to them more often, I'll remember to take that moment, to look around and appreciate what I've got now.

Dreams and goals are important, don't get me wrong. I've got plans for the future. Kinda nebulous, sure, but they're plans. But living in the now is important too. So thanks, Rush, for reminding me of that.

Fanatic.

Fandom. Fangirl. Both internet word creations, from 'fanatic', defined by the dictionary as "marked by excessive enthusiasm for and intense devotion to a cause or idea; 'rabid isolationist'." I never, in a million years, would have called myself a fanatic about much of anything, until recently. Fan? Yes. I'm a fan of women's rights. I'm a fan of a good curry. A fan of jazz, swing, the blues, even a few contemporary artists like Dave Matthews Band & Def Leppard, plus one or a thousand others. But fanatic? No. Not so much.

I've never understood the rabid craziness that develops over certain TV shows; to wit, Survivor, Fear Factor, American Idol....I'm often left wondering who the heck watches this stuff. And I shake my head in amazement that someone, lots of someones, actually, get paid to produce such dreck. I have always been proud of the fact that I've never obsessively followed any television show...most of the time, I'd rather read, knit, cook, whatever, than watch TV.

A large part of that is because of the way I was raised. I did NOT have a television in my bedroom growing up, in fact the very idea was pretty horrifying to my parents. (I wasn't allowed a phone in my room either. At the time, I thought I was such an underprivileged child. Now, I get it.) There was no television in the living room. If my sisters and I wanted to watch TV, it was in the basement rec room, at a very low volume, under pretty strict guidelines.

1. All homework must be completed, in such a state that either parent could review it and see that it was done. Nothing half-assed. They never put it that way, of course, but they always asked to see it, and frequently sent us back to do it over, do it more neatly, do it right.
2. Stations we were permitted to watch were limited. Not that the 'rents thought that MTV and VH1 were the devil incarnate, far from it, I did watch MTV, but we weren't allowed to watch things like Dynasty, Dallas, LA Law, thirtysomething, et cetera.
3. We were allowed to watch Unsolved Mysteries with both parents, once a week. Thursdays, I think.
4. On Fridays, when the parents had their weekly date night (and I must have been 12, 13, 14 by then) we were allowed to choose what we wanted to watch, as long as it was still appropriate for my baby sister, who at 9 years younger than me would have been 3 when I was 12. So we watched A LOT of PBS miniseries, like Anne of Green Gables, The Little Princess, and for a brief while, a show on network TV, Beauty and the Beast, which starred Linda Hamilton. (I admit to it only under duress. My excuse is that I was 13.)
   

So I never ever watched Alf, Cheers, or things like that during the late 80s, and by the time the 90s rolled around and things like Friends and Seinfeld were popular, I no longer cared. Comedies on TV have only every irritated me. I might be the only person in America that's never seen a whole episode of Friends or Seinfeld. Sitcoms especially, I think are awful. The format of 1/2 hour, with a live studio audience, laugh track....ugh. I'm smarter than that. I hate laugh tracks with a passion.

A funny aside, OT for a minute, when I lived in Sweden, I saw "Tool Time" (starring Tim Allen) for the very first time. The Swedes called the show "All Thumbs". Channel surfing one day at the host parent's house, I stumbled across it on a satellite station, and at first, honestly thought that this show was produced entirely in the same manner as Saturday night live skits. I truly believed that this show was just making fun of American TV, until I asked another ex-patriot, who informed me that "Tool Time" was in fact one of the most popular shows on American TV. Perhaps you knew it as "Home Improvement"? Yeah. I knew that.


I'm not completely out of the pop-culture loop, but if you want to beat me at useless trivia, start asking questions about sitcoms. I'll be lost.

So a few years ago when DH got into "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", I was endlessly entertained that he could honestly give a damn about what was happening on the show. Then, because he watched it, I started watching it. Good writing. I liked it. We ended up taping the last 3 seasons because it ran on a night when we had other obligations. I wasn't too worried if I missed an episode. I felt the same way about the Buffy spinoff, "Angel". Liked it, definitely liked looking at David Borneaz, but again, if I missed it, no big. After both of those shows went by the wayside, DH found other things to watch (including Firefly, Dark Angel, One Tree Hill, NCIS....I could go on. He's a much bigger TV addict than I'll ever be.), but I didn't. Until 2005's new crop of shows came out, and I noticed one called "Supernatural" in TV Guide, which I had purchased for DH, someone he likes was on the cover. Don't remember who. But I read the articles about the new programs, and thought, 'huh. I might want to watch that one. Looks interesting.'

I have a pretty short attention span and limited short term memory when it comes to what's on TV, so of course I missed the pilot, the second show, and finally caught an episode on the third try, one called "Dead in the Water", which aired in September of 2005. Scary, at turns funny, and the guest star had been a regular on Angel, so I watched and wow. Loved it. But life gets in the way of television viewing in my world, and I didn't see another episode until I asked for the whole season for Christmas in 2006. I'd seen the news that the CW picked it up for a second season and thought, good, maybe I'll have a chance to see it now.

Since I'm a pretty spoiled brat, and I get almost everything that I want, I got the first season of the show for Christmas as requested, and watched it over about 3 days. I was completely blown away. The production values...it looks more like a movie that a TV show. The writing....every episode has moments that make me laugh, startle me, sometimes terrify me, always make me think. The acting.....the two male leads have the characters nailed, besides the fact that they're two really good looking men. Really, really good looking men. I read an interview somewhere with the series creator, a fella named Erick Kripke, and the interviewer told him that fans would probably be happy to just watch Jensen Ackles (who plays Dean Winchester) and Jared Padalecki (who plays Sam Winchester) read the telephone book to one another for 40 minutes each week. True! I would. But they do so much more than that. The acting is fantastic.

Never in my life have I ever felt this way about a television show. Ever, ever, ever. I had a bumper sticker in college that said, "Kill your television" . In my mid 20s, I worked with a group of women in a small enclosed space (read that a vault. Yes, I worked in a vault. A cash vault, at the big ol' bank. Stories for another day.) and they watched "Everybody Loves Raymond", "The King of Queens" and something else that I thought was horrible just from listening to them talk about it, but can't remember what it was called. I was in my last year at Uni then, working full time and going to school 4 nights a week until nearly 10pm. They got offended when I told them that unless it was on A&E, Discovery, or TLC, chances were that 1. I wasn't watching it and 2. I never would. Plus I might have mentioned to them more than once that I think sitcoms are stupid and an extreme waste of time. I wasn't the most tactful woman back then. I have learned over the years to be lots less abrasive when talking with people about TV....now I just usually smile and say, "I watch a lot of movies, but not very much television, sorry."

I've never followed the antics of any TV characters. Celebrity gossip, yeah, I'm down with that. I read Hot Gossip on MSN, and can't let a day go by without my fix of the Go Fug Yourself girls. Antics of celebrities make my life seem so normal in comparison. But to know what Susie did on last week's episode of Comedy XYZ, no way. Dear God, never ever been one to watch the soap operas. Shoot me.

But not only am I interested to see how the story goes with this show, I'm also fascinated with Jensen Ackles. This is dumb. I'm a happily married woman who lives in the middle of the red states, fer gawd's sake, not the girl who had posters of Joe Elliott (Def Lep's lead singer, sigh.) or Chad Allen (who is out and proud these days) wallpapering her room that I used to be. I'm just a few years beyond that.

I'm an adult, with a stable job, a great house, a loving husband. I live in the real world, and I know that is it unlikely in the extreme that I'm ever going to meet this actor. I know better. I'm not a schoolgirl anymore. Even if I did by some strange chance meet him, WTF would I do then? Besides act like a moron. DH thinks it is funny, thank goodness. Wouldn't want a jealous husband added to the insanity that is my life. Plus now when DH teases me about how he has a girlfriend, (which he does to yank my chain) I can tease right back about my boyfriend in Vancouver.

Here's why I'm into it, though. My work? Sucks right now. I don't talk about my work on the interweb, so let's leave it at that. It sucks. The weather here in Oh-hi-ia? Sucks right now. Local schools have been closed since Thursday due to extreme cold. I like the cold, but this is a bit much. Wind chills today are in the -20 F range. I don't normally wear a coat, but today I have on long johns, lined wool trousers, a long sleeved knit shirt, and a (lined) jacket that matches the trousers, along with two pairs of socks. Plus I wore my heaviest winter coat, even have a scarf, gloves, and a hat. The weight loss program? Sucks right now. I'm down a reasonable amount, and the hot doctor I see convinced me that I just need to be patient, take some time, and be content that I am at least losing and not gaining. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to be done with the whole losing thing and on to maintaining my target weight and appreciating my gorgeous self. So that sucks. Anything I've picked up to read lately? Sucks. I read that novel by Christopher Paolini over the holidays and didn't like it much. Nothing I've picked up to read in Sci-Fi/Fantasy has been any good lately. My hair? Boring. My wardrobe? Uninspired. Not that my life is terrible, far from it. It is just...ordinary.

Supernatural? Doesn't suck. Not even a little. Rocks my world, frankly.

And if being obsessive over a television show is what it takes to get me through this winter, so be it. But Jensen? Honey? If I was single....

Literary (blonde) Ambitions

I've decided to write a book. God, it took me almost ten minutes to type that sentence. Why? Well, saying it out loud seems so.....so....real.

Writing for Well Fed last year made me realize that yes, I can write, write decently, clearly, and I enjoy it a whole lot. I thought, when I started writing for Well Fed, that writing non-fiction would be all the further I'd ever take it, but all of a sudden it seems important to me to write down some of the stories that I make up all the time. I've an overactive imagination, always have, and I have I think a knack for telling a story. Often, when I'm people watching, I'll make up stories about the people I see, because it is fun. And I think imagination is like muscle tissue; use it or lose it.

The imagination has gotten me into trouble a time or two....most recently, I got the first season of Supernatural for Christmas, and watched it in about 3 days. Some of the TV show is scary, but mostly who doesn't want to watch those two hot boys? Mmmmmmmmmmmm. But I digress. One of the episodes about a soul-sucking witch has me wanting to leave the lights on at night, actually each episode has a moment or two that scares me. I don't usually watch horror movies because they scare me too much, nor do I read many things like Stephen King or Robin Cook because they scare the bejeeebus out of me. Dean Koontz's "House of Thunder" scared me so badly that I slept with the lights on for six months, and while it wasn't the last thing I've read of his, I did think it was the most terrifying.

What I'm writing may not ever be published; hell, who knows at this point if I'll even be able to finish it. At the moment I'm calling it chick lit, but it may evolve into something with a paranormal bent because I like that kind of thing. But the writing is a great release, and I can't tell you how much fun I've been having with it. Is it even publishable? Who knows. Maybe it is another dumb blonde idea of mine; and perhaps this is just something for me to do, but I've written about 30 pages so far and have been having a blast doing it. You never know!