Ordinary Extraordinary

Random

Last night, I got the best text message ever:

Honky tooooonk badonkadonk...

No context, no follow-up message, nothing. Just a random midnight Trace Adkins tribute.

In Short

Ya know, you'd think that finally purchasing a shiny new computer would give me more opportunities to blog. Alas, no. I bought it on Friday and here it is Tuesday already! I've only a moment to pause and update so (once again) I'll be brief:

I bought the aforementioned computer on Friday night and stayed up way, way too late playing with it. There's a compatability issue between the version of OS X that I have on my PowerBook and the new version on my MacBook, so I couldn't use the migration assistant to transfer any of my sound or music files. I've really been enjoying transferring 13 gigs worth of music over the fire wire connection by hand.

I ran into Joy Nash (of Fant Rant fame) in Hollywood on Sunday and stopped her to tell her how eloquent and fabulous I think her rant is. In the course of conversation we discovered that not only did we go to college together, we worked on several shows together. Further proof that Los Angeles is, at its core, a teeny tiny village.

I also got my car washed on Sunday (yes, I am to blame for yesterday's rain) and ended up tipping the two guys who detailed the Lotus Elise that was parked in front of my car in addition to tipping my own guy. Those two spent 45 minutes detailing that Lotus and the driver didn't tip them at all - they both looked absolutely stunned when he grabbed his keys and drove off without so much as a nod of thanks. Sometimes, I hate people.

I am seriously considering getting a Tivo. There are already two shows on television to which I'm completely addicted (Bones & Dresden Files), but now that I've watched the first two episodes of The Tudors online I'm hooked on that, too! Jonathan Rhys Meyers: *swoon*.

Dr. Geek and I have been playing phone tag (or rather, IM tag) about when next to get together. Possibly Friday. The suckiness of his living 30 miles south of me is compunded by the fact that our schedules are, of course, nearly completely opposite.

Thanks to the wonders of iChat, I got to actually "see" Kerr last night for the first time in a couple of years. He's one of those people with whom I share an incredibly deep and treasured friendship, in spite of the fact that we don't get to talk or see one another very often. It was good to catch up; he makes me smile.

Work is crazy, my house remains in a state of perpetual project, and there just don't seem to be enough hours in the day for anything! But, other than that, I'm fine.

How're you?

Suck

There are few things that suck harder than turning down a last-minute invite from one person (in this case, Dr. Geek) because you already had plans with another person, only to have that other person cancel those plans at the very last minute.

Grr.

I was going to cheer myself up with a trip to the Arclight, but pretty much all the movies I'm interested in seeing are decidedly lacking in chipper content.

Screw it, I'm going home to watch whatever fluff is looping on Cinemax.

A Fat Rant by Joy Nash

What follows is not really a rant at all, but a well-reasoned statement from an eloquent, sassy, beautiful woman:

"Fat" is an adjective that describes a particular body type; it is not an assessment of intelligence, beauty, or worth.

Weekend Stuff

Pardon me for a moment while I shamelessly steal Hilary's format.

This weekend, I:

• Had dinner with my friend B and his 3 year old daughter, who got all hopped up on lemonade and nearly had to be chained to the table to prevent her from running around the restaurant screaming like a bansidhe.
• Did laundry way early in the morning on Saturday and learned an ingenious new way to fold fitted sheets from the guy with whom I was sharing a counter.
• Had a long overdue lunch with Hilary at Granville. Yay for tipsy lemonade!
• Got way behind on my errand-running and completely failed to meet Flyboy for a screening of the movie for which our friend was the Director of Photography.
• Redeemed myself by meeting Flyboy & his boyfriend at Toi for yummy Thai food and much catching up / reminiscing.
• Randomly ran into an old work colleague I hadn't seen in two or three years as I was getting into my car after dinner; stood on the corner of Sunset & Gardner for about half an hour chatting.
• Tried to meet some friends for a St. Patrick's Day drink, got frustrated by all the stupid people in green desperate to get drunk, and ended up going home instead.
• Gut up early again on Sunday to clean my house and run a few more errands before making the trek to Orange County.
• Got a call from my tax guy asking if I could come an hour later to my appointment and happily took that hour for a leisurely shower & some lunch.
• Arrived in Orange only to find that the girl who had sniped my appointment for her ohmygod tax emergency showed up almost 45 minutes late so I still had to wait around. Fortunately, Tax Guy is also a very good friend of mine so I chatted with his finacee and watched TV until he'd finished the entitlement bitch's taxes.
• Got my taxes done, woohoo! Getting a (small) refund, double woohoo!!
• Had a coffee date with a guy (henceforth known as "Dr. Geek") I met on OKCupid. He was tall, cute, well spoken, and gallantly fetched a pile of napkins when I threw my fresh, hot latte all over him 5 minutes into the date. I, meanwhile, found someone who could mop up the floor and tried not to die of embarassment.
• Went to Val's house for dinner, clothes-swapping, and fabulous conversation that lasted far too late into the night.

No wonder I'm tired!

Language Barrier

On Tuesday night I had dinner with my friend C, whom I had not seen since the turn of the century we graduated from college. We had a lovely time catching up over delicious food & drinks at Granville (Hilary: we must go); I'd forgotten how she and I can keep each other laughing for hours. She only made me choke on my drink once, though, when she relayed the story of having a Japanese friend of hers house-sit:

She: ...so, since I had to be out of town for the second half of her visit, she actually ended up housesitting for me.
Me: How'd that go?
She: Pretty well, until the Poster Incident.
Me: Poster Incident?
She: The night before she was supposed to leave, M called me very upset and said C! C! I so sorry; I broke your poster! Since I don't have any posters in my house, I was a bit mystified and asked her to clarify. The poster! The poster in the kitchen! I broke it, I so very sorry. I buy new one for you, good as new. I finally remembered that when we'd moved I'd rolled up a crappy old print of a painting and stuck it in the corner of the kitchen, meaning to throw it out. I assured her that it was trash anyway and that she didn't have to buy me a new one, but M was not comforted No C, not the painting - the poster! Where you post your bread in the morning - I broke it! So sorry, but I buy new one for you.
Me: Oh, she broke the toaster!
She: Exactly, and I was too busy trying not to laugh to get the whole story but I understood that it had something to do with a tortilla. When I got home there was a shiny new toaster sitting on my counter, and next to it the old one with the tortilla draped over it like a shroud. She'd drawn a very detailed diagram to explain what, exactly, she was doing with the toaster at the time of it's untimely demise but I'm still not exactly sure what happened. All I know is that M somehow managed to melt the plastic casing of my toaster with the tortilla and that I got a brand spanking new appliance out of it.

I was laughing so hard by the end of her story that there were tears rolling down my cheeks. We've promised not to let so many years pass before we have dinner again.

The Other Holiday

Ladies, travel back with me if you will to February the 14th...

Remember how your husband/boyfriend/new guy scored the perfect dinner reservations, sent that big vase of flowers to your office, or presented you with the perfect shiny new accessory? Remember how you gushed to all of your friends and co-workers the next day about how perfect Valentine's Day was? Of course you do, you would not shut up about it for a week afterwards.* He spent countless hours agonizing over every detail and the execution of his plan was flawless.

Ladies, that amount of effort doesn't come without a price and it's payback time.

March 14th is Steak & BJ Day - a day for you to show the men in your life how much they mean to you. No elaborate plans are required, no cards or flowers or sunset cruises are - just the two things that make men the happiest: a steak, and a blowjob. Easy!

To quote the ever wise Crickett:

Just one night, throw caution (and TMJ) to the wind. See a cute guy? Ask him out! You don't even have to reveal what you've got in store for him, just get that man a steak, put his meat in your mouth, and maybe the next day you can send him a nice email explaining the occasion and asking for the next date.

Don't let perfectly good men like Pretty Chris sit home alone on March 14th. Haven't you, on the nights that you were alone on that stupid, manufactured Hallmark holiday, wished for the phone or doorbell to ring unexpectedly with a surprising suitor on the other end? We're counting on you, ladies, to suck it up and even the score.

Now get out there, and get to workin' that beef (of both the hot and the rare varieties).

After all the effort that the guys go to on that horrible Hallmark holiday, it's only fair that we pay them back. Right?

-----
*OK, maybe that's just the woman who sits near me.

Open Letters: Work Edition

This afternoon, I received the following email*:

Hi,

I know you bent over backwards to accomodate us doing a shoot at Your Studio next Tuesday, but now we can't do it that day. Can we do it April 12th, right in the middle of your biggiest & nastiest production schedule and two weeks past the date after which the Senior Vice President said we couldn't get into the studio under any circumstances? I know you're going to say no, so I'm copying the SVP in the misguided belief that he'll make you say yes.

kthxbye,
Clueless Moron

Although I sent a properly professional response, I really WANTED to send this one:

Dear Clueless,

So you'd like to cancel your studio time for next week.

The studio time that we didn't want to give you in the first place, but that you insisted was ohmygodabsolutelytheonlypossibletimeever that you could shoot your commercial? The studio time that necessitated my re-scheduling god & everybody in order to accomodate YOUR fire drill? That studio time?

You're canceling it?

Awesome.

Oh, and you'd like to have some time in the middle of our busiest month? You mean the month when all of my regular shows will be in production, two will be moving to new sets & timeslots, and two more will be loading-in / teching / rehearsing for their premieres in April?

Unfortunately, I will be unable to accomodate your request at this time.

Not just NO, not just HELLO NO, but areyoufuckingcrazy? NO and don'tmakemecomeoverthereandbeatyouwithashovel NO.

Yes, the Senior Vice President will tell you exactly the same thing.

Please go die in a fire.

No love,
Me

This is why I'm not allowed to bring a gun to work.

Completely unrelated point: I've been getting a lot of traffic from the Bones forum over at Television Without Pity since someone was nice enough to link to my post about the show. Welcome, fellow Bones fans!

_____
*OK, I may have taken some creative liberties in the translation, but you get the gist of it.

LoL (Literally!)

On average, kindergartners laugh 300 times each day. The typical adult laughs only 17 times each day. What happens to our laughter as we grow older? It seems to disappear amid the serious business of being an adult. I encourage you to recapture the silliness of the five-year-old within you. If the adult in you needs a reason, tell that adult that it’s good for you. -Mary Ellen Halloran

A few things that are currently making me laugh out loud:

• The T-Rex in the trailer for Meet the Robinsons: I have a big head, and little arms!
• The latest commercial for The Wedding Bells wherein Sherri Shepherd explains why brides should never run into each other.
• These bumper stickers.
• Watching my cats loll all over their scratchy box after I sprinkle fresh crack catnip on it.
• This bunny.
• Safe Now!
• Chuzzle - it's a fuzzy, non-stop explosion of adorable matching action!
• Spring! Because how can you not giggle gleefully when it's 75 degrees and sunny with a light breeze?

What's making you chuckle these days?

Bigger Than Y2K And Twice As Stupid

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

Oh, wait, no it's not. We're just moving the clocks ahead three weeks early.

WTF, people?

The Energy Policy Act was passed in July of 2005. Did it not occur to anyone to start planning for it before last week?

When I got into work this morning, our main scheduling program (the one on which ALL of production is reliant) was behind an hour and all of our Outlook calendars were completey out of whack. I'm not exactly sure how an hour time difference moves my Wednesday afternoon appointment from 1:30pm to 4:30pm and then duplicates it to Tuesday & Saturday, but apparently this time change is very powerful. According to our IT department not even an act of god can restore the proper settings - we're destined to be one hour out of sync from March 11th until April 1st.

And we haven't even changed the clocks yet! We're not doing that until Saturday night!

At least Palm sent me a very helpful email explaining in Very Serious Language that I must download a patch for my sync software ohmygodrightnow or risk never being able to sync my Treo again.

I say again: WTF, people? Am I the only one who is completely mystified about the mass hysteria over this relatively small issue?

It could be worse, at least we can still use our exchange server; poor Teece has been told that she may have to print out a MONTH'S worth of calendars because her company has fuxx0red their DST patch so badly.

Guess it's time to start stockpiling canned food and weapons - the apocalypse is nigh. Anyone want to go in on an underground bunker?

20 Questions

I found this meme over at Blogography a while ago and have been meaning to do it ever since. What better time than now?

1. Elaborate on your default icon. It's one of the first pictures that I took of myself when I got my first camphone.
2. What’s your current relationship status? I am in the midst of a very long, tumultuous relationship with my cell phone provider.
3. Ever have a near-death experience? Not the type that comes complete with warm white lights or choirs of angels, but I've been within a hair's breadth of the reaper's blade.
4. Name an obvious quality you have. Brown hair. (Hey, you said obvious!)
5. What’s the name of the song that’s stuck in your head right now? Rage Against the Machine, Geurilla Radio
6. Name a celebrity you would marry. I don't know if there are any I'd marry, but I wouldn't mind having dinner with Christian Bale.
7. Who will cut and paste this first? No idea.
8. Has anyone ever said you look like a celebrity? People always say that I look like Sandra Bullock, but I don't see it.
9. Do you wear a watch? What kind? I have a two-tone Bulova that my mother gave me when I was in college. I once lost it for four months only to have it appear magically on my ottoman one day.
10. Do you have anything pierced? Yes, my ears.
11. Do you have any tattoos? Yes, four or six depending on how you count.
12. Do you like pain? Not especially, no.
13. Do you like to shop? Depends on what I'm shopping for.
14. What was the last thing you paid for with cash? My manicure & pedicure, yesterday.
15. What was the last thing you paid for with your credit card? I hardly ever use my credit card, but I use my ATM/Check card multiple times a day.
16. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? My boss.
17. What is on your desktop background? A macro shot of a rare butterfly that my friend Mike took at the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary.
18. What is the background on your cell phone? Same butterfly.
19. What was the last movie you watched? I watched a History Channel special on the origin of Angels.
20. What was the last book you read? The War of Art.

amandarin, version 1.2

Notice anything different around here?

You don't?

Oh, you're reading via an RSS feed. You wouldn't then, would you?

Well for the rest of you, welcome to amandarin.net version 1.2! It's new. It's shiny. It's not orange!

I've been thinking about overhauling the site for awhile now. Not only is two years is an eternity in website design, but I was also getting sick of the orange. REALLY sick of it. Those of you who have seen my other online encampments will notice that the orange is gone from those places, too - one can only beat a theme into the ground for so long.

Since I am conveniently trapped at work today with very little actual work to do, I took the opportunity to start making some changes. I ditched the playlist that no one one ever scrolled down to read, the links to photo albums no one ever visited, the couple of TypeLists that even I didn't care about, and all the freaking orange.

Did I mention that I was sick of the orange?

There's still a lot of work to be done before version 2.0 is ready to go (though mostly on Val's part as she will be the creative genius behind my new header), but this is a good start.

It's like spring cleaning for my blog - I feel better already!