Scarlett Letters

Health
I am sick. It appears to be the head cold that everyone else in the office has had. I suppose the silver lining is that I have it now rather than coming down with it during the week, when I'm supposed to be traveling. The sooner it's out of my system, the better. Wow, my head hurts.

Oscars
Missed the first half hour of the Oscars. My thoughts about it are disjointed so I will present them in a bulleted list to provide if not order then at least ease of ingestion.
--I still don't know who Seth McFarlane is, why I should care, or why he was chosen to host the show.
--Halle Barry's dress was awesome, possibly my favorite of the evening, though Anne Hathaway was, as usual, channeling Audrey Hepburn in the best way, and Naomi Watts' shoulder cutout was unique. Amanda Seyfried's dress was lovely, too.
--Happy for Anne Hathaway having won Best Supporting Actress, but I wish it had gone to Sally Field. I thought she gave a fierce, fearless performance.
--Delighted that Ang Lee won for best director for Life of Pi. It was a stunning achievement.
--Adele is pretty great, but her performance seemed tame to me, especially in the shadow of Jennifer Hudson's vocal pyrotechnics.
--Anyone who bitches about Catherine Zeta-Jones lip-synching "All That Jazz" has never tried to sing while bending herself in half and dancing across a stage. Trust me when I say that unless you're doing it on Broadway every day, you're not doing yourself or your performance any favors by trying.
--I'm OK with "Paperman" winning for best animated short, but I really think it should have gone to "Head Over Heels."
--Why does anyone anywhere think that they should put Kristin Stewart on a stage? I know it's for the younger viewers, but I've never seen her be anything but sullen and suck the energy right out of a theater. She doesn't like being in front of people, she looked like a mess tonight (why didn't someone give her a hairbrush?) and is kind of a brat about it. Daniel Radcliffe is a complete and utter professional and has more presence than it seems like he has any right to. He makes her look like what she is, a spoiled child.
--They brought out the Avengers--all of them except the woman. Talk about perpetuating stereotypes. Where was Scarlett Johansson?
--It's always great to see Barbra Streisand perform. Fun to see Shirley Bassey, even if she sounded a little rusty around the edges to me.
--I loved that the First Lady gave the Oscar for Best Picture--what a wonderful surprise! That she gave it to a film about service to our country made it seem that much more appropriate.

Politics
Someone on my Facebook feed tonight declared with complete certainty that President Obama has signed more executive orders than any president in the history of this country. When people do this sort of thing, it sends me right into research mode because someone is wrong on the internet! Truth is, for anyone who's interested, the record holder is Franklin D. Roosevelt, at 3,500. Obama hasn't even signed 200, which is less than, among others, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan individually, and he's done it because Congress can't get their thumbs out of their asses and get things done that need doing.

The Coming Week, Writing, and Existential Angst
I'm sick. I'm supposed to be going to Rainforest Writers Village on Wednesday. I'm wondering if I'm even a writer anymore. I still don't know what I'm going to do about having a car or not. Tomorrow is a pretty wretched anniversary. I'm not sure what the point of, well, anything is right now. I'm sure I'll be over most of this by the time I wake up in the morning. I'm just venting. I think what I need is to take some Nyquil and go to bed. ::sigh::

. . . but probably won't:

Restaurant Bathrooms: Why are restaurant bathrooms invariably cold? It's the one place in a restaurant where you will remove clothing to function. It's like you're being penalized for being human. And then the water from the faucet for handwashing is also, invariably, cold. Why? In the dead of winter, WHY?

Living with a Young Cat: I spent so many years living with geriatric cats that I forgot what it's like to live with a kitty who wants to play and interact. I love being with Sophie, and I love playing with her. She is athletic, imaginative, and inventive. At the same time, every now and then I just want to sit and read or sit and work. As much as we'd all prefer it, not every minute can be playtime. There's nothing so plaintive (or occasionally so grating) as a cat who keeps asking why, why, why aren't we playing now, now, now? And yet she is hard to resist.

I had a Tough Food Week: A week ago today, my goal was to have a good food week--and I did, but not in the way I meant. I ate out a lot--some wonderful meals--had a meringue cookie binge, and didn't track my food well. Consequently, I chose not to weigh in at Weight Watchers last night. I start this week with the same goal as last week: eat on program, track my food, and be active. Next Tuesday, I weigh in, come hell or high water, and hope for the best.

I can't count how many friends have posted either here or on Facebook about the enormously expensive/extremely heavy/unusually shaped/other modified adjective piece of meat acquired for Christmas day dinner. Either it's a thing this year or I just never noticed it before. Funny.

I had a perfectly lovely evening with three friends tonight, but for some reason I was feeling prickly, short-tempered, and poked at, and I'm afraid I snapped a couple of times when I shouldn't have. Not very holiday spirited of me and I feel bad about that. I'm going to write apology notes before I go to bed. Seems like the right thing to do.

We saw True Grit this evening. If Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld aren't nominated for Academy Awards, then they wuz robbed. Bet they will be nominated, though, both of them. Excellent movie. Just excellent. Bridges' Rooster Cogburn is an awesome character, and I believed his respect for Steinfeld's Mattie in a way I never quite did with Wayne and Darby. And if Steinfeld continues to act and not get drawn into stupid teen comedies, she'll be a force to be reckoned with.

I hope Spanky is in a better mood tomorrow. He's been as snappish all day as I was tonight.

::grumble::

I was so sad and upset yesterday that I actually included my name in a post on LJ. I never do that. I've remedied the situation. On the one hand, it's not like no one who reads this knows who I am. On the other hand, it's been a thing for me to not connect my name too much with this journal so...take that for what you will.

I've medicated Spanky with his pills and liquids this morning--no problem, as expected. Today at lunch time I go to the pharmacy to pick up his Epogen so I can give him his injection later today, probably while he's sleeping, and then give him a treat of some kind. I'm feeling better this morning, and not quite dreading it so much. It must be done and there's no one to do it but me. Thank you, everyone, for your support.

Finished up a lot of holiday chores yesterday. More to be done today and tomorrow morning before the weekend festivities begin. I'm desperate for time off to just relax; I'm sick of sitting at the computer all day.

I've downloaded my LJ into BookSmart and am starting to lay out one volume for each year I've kept a Live Journal. The problem with relying on the cloud, as users of De.licio.us learned yesterday, is that the owners of cloud applications can discontinue them any time they want. We've had doubts about LJ before so a back-up isn't a bad idea. Besides, a hard copy of my journal would be nice to have. And someday, when I'm famous and dead, it'll be primary source material. ::wry grin::

And now, on to work. Thank God it's Friday.

Mark Twain sealed his autobiography until 100 years after his death. Time's up (with thanks to the_monkey_king).

Photographer Philippe Halsman believed that people reveal their true natures when they jump. To see those natures, he asked the good and great (including the likes of Salvador Dali, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Nixon, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, among others) to leap before his camera. An exhibit of the resulting photographs is going on in NYC. You can read about it at the New York Times and/or go directly to the exhibitors' Web site and see these marvelous black-and-white photographs. (Scroll down the gallery page to see the pix.)

Religion Dispatches has discovered Doctor Who and is completely smitten. They're running a thoughtful and occasionally downright fannish series of articles on the philosophical themes of the new series and the current season. Read part one and part two. Good stuff.

The Yankees are banning iPads from Yankee Stadium. On the one hand, I get it--it could prove a distraction to other game attendees, like a smartphone in a movie theater; on the other hand, how...odd. (Thanks to frankwu.)

Saturday night, when I went to bed, I heard the oddest percussion on the air. I thought maybe it was wind or some muffled music from a neighbor's yard. It turns out that the sound was fireworks from a private party in Ballard. Hey, ironymaiden, invite me to the party next time, will ya? :-)

What I learned from having a manicure:

1. Paraffin treatments are awesome.

2. If you're unused to wearing nail polish, it takes time to see it as pretty. It did for me, anyway. My nails were an unnatural pink; I couldn't get used to it. It took until the day I first chipped them to really see them as pretty.

3. If you're not used to wearing nail polish, your fingernails--dead, nerveless tissue--will feel weirdly smothered for quite some time after the polish dries. And your fingertips will be extremely cold for days.

4. Nail polish is a rich girl's evidence of leisure: The longer your nails look perfect and pretty, the more evidence you have of a cushy life. My nails began to show chipping three or four days after the manicure. I still have polish on all of them, but some nails are showing significant wear and polish loss.

5. Nail polish helps you gauge how quickly your nails grow.

6. Nail polish keeps you from indulging in your bad nail habits.

7. Chipped nails make one want to get another manicure to get everything looking clean, pretty, and polished again.

Oh dear....

It's been three days since I last posted. I've had no focus, no concentration, and when asked for same, I seem unable to produce it. I don't know if this is because travel or overstimulation discombobulated my emotional and mental equilibrium or because I haven't been getting enough sleep or what. But today's the first day in more than a week that I'm feeling like myself--not stressed, fairly well rested, able to pull back to find an objective perspective as needed, and able to find the humor in things. For days, everything has felt just a bit off kilter.

Of course, last night was the first time in more than a week I've gone to bed close to my usual bedtime at home with the cats and slept without disturbance (i.e., bad dreams, windstorms, generalized and nonspecific anxiety). That makes a difference.

I still have a list of stuff I want to write about here. This list has been revised since I first posted it four or five days ago. If anyone has interest in any particular subject, let me know, otherwise I'll post about stuff willy-nilly just to get it all done.

* Doctor Who: The End of Time Part II
* Demons, a new supernatural series on BBCA
* The new part-time job
* When they're interviewing you, you're interviewing them
* Book review/report on Ken Scholes' novel Lamentation
* kijjohnson's surprise party
* Upcoming travel
* Missing the ghosts of early American history
* The new season of Big Love
* Book review/report on Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

jackwilliambell is off to Shanghai on business for 12 days, so I'll be seeking entertainment, distraction, and fine conversation as time is available for same, though with the commencement of MW's visit in the company of her two sons on Friday, I'll be kept pretty busy over the weekend if all her plans come to fruition.

It's cold--24 degrees F, to be precise. It's sunny and clear. But it's freakin' cold.

Just because you meow, Sophie, does not mean I must be immediately attentive. Sometimes it just means you're spoiled and need to be ignored.

Apparently Senators Inhofe, Barrasso, and Rep. Wicker think it's good for America to travel to Copenhagen specifically to undermine the President of the United States. Some would call this bad form. Like, for example, me. I'd call it other things, too, but this is a family show.

Chanukah begins this Friday night. There will be candles. On Saturday, there may even be latkes.

Just because you speak English doesn't mean you can write fiction. I will continue to point this out. I may not be heard. It may be a lost cause, ultimately. But I will continue to point this out. I may even bang a shoe on a table.

It's cold. Did I mention that?

Clients from Hell: Designers share comments received from clients. Having spent lots of time with graphic designers trying not to sound like this, I cringed as I read and promised myself to continue to be vigilant and not say things like, "The unicorn doesn't look realistic."

Help! I'm bored!: You know, if you're feeling bored (snurched from gnomi--and if you don't know who Alessandro Moreschi is, scroll right to the bottom of the page and find out--especially those of you who are musically inclined).

Proof once again that the folks at NORAD have too much time on their hands: They're at it again, preparing to track a world-marauding, mass-driving shapeshifter and his trained herd of magical rangifer tarandi across the globe.

Seattle's forecast for the next five days is remarkably, depressingly consistent.

Seattle's mayor-elect doesn't have a transition team, he has a "team of ambassadors." I voted for the guy mainly because the other guy couldn't really speak knowledgeably on almost any of the issues that really press the city right now. But McGinn made me nervous with his "Buses and bicycles will save the city" rhetoric at a time when one of our main thoroughfares could collapse in the next big earthquake and when buses and bicycles really didn't help during last year's Snowpocalypse. I'm willing to wait and see what McGinn can achieve, but I admit to a healthy skepticism, too.

Today's another gray, overcast Seattle day.

Today's another "Stay at home and don't spend money" day.

Today's another "How many job listings can I look at without finding a match for my skills?" day.

Today's another "Sophie is the goddam cutest cat in the world" day.

Today's another "Who the hell can I possibly choose to vote for Seattle mayor?" day, because really, we're all screwed no matter what. Your thoughts on that one?

Today's another "What exactly is it I'm doing with my life?" day.

I'd like a new day, please, fresh and shiny and full of novelty. Just sayin'.

And what kind of a day is it for you?