One of those mornings…

Mr. B’s alarm clock went off around 6:50 this morning cause he was getting up early to go to a car show.  For whatever reason, my mind forgot that it was Sunday, so when I heard the alarm and looked over, I thought we had both overslept.  See, he normally gets up at 4:30ish, and my alarm usually goes off about 6:40.  A much worse situation for him than for me since he’d have already been quite late for work.  He stopped the alarm, looked at the clock, and I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t freaking out as well.  That’s when it hit that it was actually Sunday, and I was very glad to go back to sleep.  Just wish it had been Saturday still.

Be vewy, vewy qwiet. I’m hunting wabbits.

OK, so I’m not hunting rabbits, but I’ve been very quiet lately. There are multiple reasons for this, but since there are people out there that I know love lists so well, I figure I might as well put this in list form.

• I’ve been trying to spend more time getting the house cleaned up and less time procrastinating by doing things like blogging, not that that’s necessarily working.
• I’ve been spending more time reading books (if you couldn’t tell from the “On the Bookshelf” posts continuing even while I’ve been quiet otherwise) instead of being online.
• The things I want to say aren’t really appropriate to be posted in public, and I don’t really feel the need to write a blog post that can’t be seen. Even if I did, you’d still think I was being quiet.
• I haven’t kept up on the “I Want…Friday” posts because they started seeming a bit repetitive. There’s only so many posts related to wanting a new job, being worn out from my job, etc. that I can post. So, I was going with my second choice, but the job-related ones were so pressing, it was hard to come up with something else. And that also somewhat defeated the purpose of them.
• Lately, I’ve been really busy, stressed out, and extremely frustrated at work. That’s made me really tired and extremely unmotivated, so I haven’t even felt like blogging. Then again, this falls back into the not appropriate to be posted in public and repetitive, and so on…Well, you get the idea.
• There hasn’t really been anything else on my mind, so I’ve struggled with finding anything else to say…

Now, does this mean I’ll be blogging again? Not sure. I don’t think this really means anything except I felt the need to explain my absence. But, I’m hoping to come out of this funk. Debra has been a great help in getting my workload under control. And I had a pretty good and long talk with my supervisor yesterday, so maybe some things will start changing. One can hope…

I was mentioning to Josh the other day that I need to take a sabbatical. I am in desperate need of a vacation. Though sometimes vacations make things worse. Things got all messed up when Josh wasn’t around for Thurs. and Fri. last week. And when I took Mon. off, a different set of things went out of control. It’s almost sometimes worse to go on vacation cause of what you get to come back to. But it’s not bad enough to give up vacation. There was an e-mail going around that they’re offering unpaid leaves of 1-2 weeks if someone wants to. I can’t tell you how tempting that is. But it’s dependent upon supervisor discretion and work load, and considering I was just drafted into a pretty involved project, I don’t think I’d be able to do it. But it’s nice to dream…

On the Bookshelf #23

The Younger Gods, by David & Leigh Eddings

Book 4 of The Dreamers series. The conclusion of a story by one of my favorite authors. I got started reading David Eddings back in high school. I think his books were one of the first I started reading in sci-fi. I started off by tearing through The Belgariad and then The Mallorean series. I then moved on to all his other books. He remains one of the few authors that I’ll read anything he writes just because I see his name on it. Just a few years ago, his wife was added as an author cause he said that he collaborates with her on all the stories.

I enjoyed the rest of the series, but for some reason this last one left me lacking. I don’t know if it’s been too long since I read the previous books or what. I just didn’t quite get the same level of involvement in the characters and I was really disappointed in the ending. It just seemed too…contrived I guess. It just didn’t seem to fit suddenly. It just seemed like all the tone/rules (whatever is the appropriate word here) was thrown out the window and it just suddenly changed. Just left me with a bad feeling right at the very end.

That being said, I’ll still pick up any book with David and Leigh Eddings names on it.

On the Bookshelf #22

Danse Macabre, by Laurell K. Hamilton

Book 14 in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. Again, very behind. I’ve actually been done with this book for a couple weeks and have read another book in its entirety already. Again, I was a bit disappointed in this story. I got very used to these books having a good detective story coupled with a good romance. As the series progressed, it became less about romance and even the detective story, and more about the sex. Josh consistently calls it my vampire pr0n, and at first I disagreed with him cause it was still about the story.

But, this last book really didn’t have much plot, yet again. It had all the makings of a good story. It had a good back-story, a further character development, a little bit of romance. Then, it turned to sex, pushed it into the forefront, and blew off everything else of substance that made me enjoy the other books so much. It was like the little bit of plot that existed was there to support the increased amount of sex instead of the sex in support of the plot. Just when the plot started moving, it was over. I don’t know if it was meant to be a cliffhanger or I’m just never going to know what happened. One of the earlier books was left with a minor cliffhanger, but after, I don’t know, 5 or 6 books, that hasn’t been addressed, so I’m wondering if this is going to be another situation like that. Maybe another 10 books down the line, we’ll come back to it? I suppose it’s possible, since the way the book list reads on Laurell K. Hamilton’s website, there are going to be 22 books total. That gives plenty of books to come back to this storyline.

Will I be reading them? Well, probably the next one at least. I still want to get resolution to some of the romance portion. And I still want resolution to some of the stories that have been left hanging. So I’m still going to give it a bit more time, but I’m not sure I’m going to get any resolution.  And, there’s the part of me that knows these stories could be great, so now I’m waiting for that to come back.  We’ll see how much longer I last.  I’ve been known to put up with a lot of crap before giving up on something I once really enjoyed…

I’m Seeing Fours

Four jobs I’ve held:

1. Math Tutor in WIU’s math help center – Where I learned I could never be a teacher
2. Graduate Assistant at WIU’s Rural Economic Technical Assistance Center – Spent a lot of time loading databases, creating reports, and stuffing envelopes
   
3. Fashions/Jewelry department at Kmart – Bad hours, bad pay, not much in the way of fun
   
4. IT Analyst – Probably already summed up in this blog somewhere

Four movies I can (and do) watch over and over again:

1. Anything with Orlando Bloom in it – What can I say? He’s hot!
2. Dirty Dancing – Not so much anymore, but I watched it at least 13 times in one year when it first came out
3. Serenity – I don’t really set out to watch this one most times, but if it happens to be on, I can’t not watch it, and I try to grab it frequently for road trips
4. Whole bunches of movies so long as they’re on TV – what can I say, I always have the TV on in the background and there’s a TON of movies I’ll watch cause they’re on. Most recently this has included The Day After Tomorrow, I, Robot, Van Helsing, and The Breakfast Club

Four places I have lived: (A small selection of the 14 houses/apartments/dorms spanning 9 cities in 5 states)

1. Madison, WI – Born, but not raised
2. Davenport, IA – I was pretty young, but two main memories: our car flooded when the creek overflowed and our van was vandalized
3. Coon Rapids, MN – Where soccer was big and remains the only sport I’ve ever really played and enjoyed
4. Versailles, KY – Horse country, though I never rode a horse the entire time there

Four TV shows I watch:

1. Heroes – Can’t wait for the new season to start on Sept. 24! Reruns start next Mon leading up to the new season!!! Season 1 DVD out on Aug 28!!!!!! (Paid programming sponsored by…well, unfortunately, no one associated with the show. )
2. Eureka – Extreme science gone awry
3. Rock of Love and The Two Coreys – Two guilty pleasures that I just can’t help right now, both a train wreck situation
4. Just about every car show on TV, whether I want to watch it or not.

Four places I’ve been on vacation:

1. Black Hills, South Dakota – Our first camping trip and the reason my parents decided to buy their own pop-up camper and drag us all over the place to go camping.
2. Toronto, Canada – It was a high school band trip, but it was a great way to celebrate a 16th birthday
3. Daytona Beach, Florida – The first real vacation I took since I started working
4. Gatlinburg, Tennessee – First vacation with a group of friends

Four favorite foods:

1. Popcorn
2. Cheesecake – oddly, I couldn’t stand cheesecake until about 5 years ago
3. Applebee’s Cinnamon Apple Crisp – Unfortunately, it’s been discontinued for a couple years now, but it was the best apple crisp ever
4. My mom’s beef stew

Four websites I visit:

1. Google Reader for blogs, Flickr, and online comics
2. IMDB
3. I Can Has Cheezburger? – Totally addicted
4. Apple Movie Trailers

Four people I’m tagging: (Most people have already been tagged…)

1. Rachel – though she hasn’t blogged in FOREVER
2. Sam
3. Korey
4. You- yes, you. You know who you are. (OK, so it’s a cop out. I’m not even sure if the people already listed are reading my blog, much less other people.)

On the Bookshelf #15 – 21

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

(Note: This is a spoiler-free post.)

As previously stated, I went back and re-read all the previous Harry Potter books in preparation for the new one. I was trying to do several things here:

1. Remember what came before, especially that not covered so far in movies since they sometimes differ quite a bit
2. Refresh my memory on the little details that enhance the story
3. Try to see if I could catch any little details that would be important to attempt to guess the ending
4. Try to find justification for my theories of what would happen in the last book

Did any of that happen? The first two – sure. The second two – not a chance. I had no clue what was going to happen in the last book. Everything I thought was an important detail, didn’t turn out to be one. Things that were important, I probably still missed if they were present. Oh well…I at least remembered the story that came before and enjoyed the last book immensely, though I will admit there were a few things I was unhappy with.

My main complaint now is that it’s all over. Previously, I always had the next book to look forward to. Like with any of my favorite series that have ended, I’m now suffering from the “sadness that comes with The End of Something” as Josh described it best.