I’d like to go back to the time of the 19^th Century pianists who supposedly had the girls screaming and swooning over them like they do today over actors who portray sparkly vampires. Or see Elvis Presley in his prime.

A while back one of my friends posted a movie meme I was going to swipe but never got around to doing.

1. List 10 movies that you're (almost) too embarrassed to love (and would never admit to having watched multiple times).

2. Include a still from the movie and an explanation as to why you like it.

3. Tag people (or not).

I’ve had a strange day and don’t know what else to write, so I’ll just do one of these. The movie is Pathfinder, and it happens to be playing on FX right now. It’s cheesy as hell, but with this screencap, do I really need to explain why I like it?

I am in the midst of a couple days off, and I’m not entirely sure what to do with myself. We are dealing with the remnants of a tropical storm, so it’s been raining steadily for the past couple days. I see puddles where there usually aren’t, so I can only imagine the usual places are even worse. Not much enticement to go out and do something fun! On the other hand … I have a couple little work things I need to do, and there is always something that needs to be done on the domestic front, but I don’t really want to fritter away chunks of time in mundane activity either. I know: there’s no satisfying me! One thing I do know is that I could use some lunch pretty soon.

Ouch! I tend to listen to CDs over and over again, but to choose only ONE for the rest of my life? I don’t think so. Some of the ones in the heavier rotation are: Born to Run, Absolution, Trisha Yearwood’s Songbook, and the Return of the King soundtrack. I have all of those in my car, along with several others, and I also like to throw in an outlier from time to time. Inside I have many more CDs as well. Really, I can’t imagine listening to only one CD for the rest of my life. It would make storage much easier, though!

Tomorrow is a holiday. Thursday and Friday I am taking leave days, because I can and because I need them. I was hoping that these first two days of the week would be a little chance to catch my breath and get a few little nagging tasks done, but no. I forgot about some lame but mandatory operational testing on a new computer system thing that has been forced on us. Oh well. It’s always something! I’ve puttered around here on the comp too much to have time for a shower, so my co-workers will just have to put up with me this way today!

Over the weekend I added three more country artists to my concert list, which is the “treat” I had planned for myself that I mentioned. While I will save my actual “review” of the show for last.fm, it got me to thinking about some of the acts I have seen over the past few years and those I would like to see again or even for the first time.

If my memory serves, the first non-classical concert I ever attended (aside from no-name bands playing at my high school and the like) was a country act. It was Roy Clark at the Oklahoma State Fair, and I ended up having to quit my crappy waitress job so I could go with my family as planned. Well, that restaurant isn’t even there anymore, so I think I made the better choice. But I digress. Otherwise, it’s been more recent experience and more current artists.

These are the ones I’ve seen and would see again.

• Trace Adkins – the freaking Angel of Death!
• Little Big Town – great harmonies and camaraderie
• Martina McBride – so tiny but such a big voice
• Montgomery Gentry – liked them even more than I expected to
• Keith Urban – yummy!
• Phil Vassar – I expected to be impressed and I was
• Lee Ann Womack – another powerful voice

These are the ones I’ve seen and don’t care one way or the other.

• Rodney Atkins – seems likeable enough but nothing special to me
• Alan Jackson – sue me! I was disappointed
• James Otto – also nothing exceptional there

These are the ones I want to see. (There are more I would not turn down an opportunity to see, but these are the ones that merit particular effort.)

• Garth Brooks – THE MAN
• Neko Case – gotta throw in some of the alt
• Locash Cowboys – I know someone who’s connected with them
• Brad Paisley – hilarious novelty songs and sweet songs that will make you bawl
• Rascal Flatts – Gary’s voice is sweet as honey
• Trisha Yearwood – with or without her hubby

Okay, now myspouse can come home any time, so we can go eat dinner and watch football. I'm taking along a big fat book too!

You’re kidding, right? I pretty much live for the weekend, so I can sleep and chill and do stuff around the house and maybe do some fun things. That Sunday afternoon/evening dread of Monday morning is a deeply ingrained habit for me. This week it’s tempered – but only to a point – by a fun weekend and the expectation of a short week. We got through our exceptionally busy time, but things will still be pretty hectic for the foreseeable future. For the most part, I do like my co-workers, so I look forward to seeing them again and hearing about their weekends.

In the last two months, my office gave to me: 12 schedule changes, 11 cranky emails, 10 copier jams, 9 interpreters, 8 boring meetings, 7 country cables, 6 slideshow revisions, 5 seminar days, 4 resident courses, 3 "down-range" events, 2 conferences, and a new Dean in a pear tree.

I’ve seen stories on Animal Planet about dog-friendly workplaces. They’re not just pet-focused businesses but a variety of organizations. For years I have wished I could take my cat to work. My office-mate even said something to that effect out of the blue a few weeks ago. I do miss her when I leave, and it would be quite stress-relieving to pick her up and snuggle her when the day starts getting to me. Well, I guess there is a little issue with getting the princess there and what to do with her that 25% of the time she’s not napping, plus the hyper-allergic co-worker that seems to exist in just about every office. Still, I would love to have her company. Especially lately, it’s been particularly hectic, and now I need to get ready and goooooo.

After nine long years, balance is restored to the universe. The Yankees won their 27^th championship last night. It took me a while to get to sleep, and my mind is still going in a dozen different directions. There is so very much I could say about this, but I’m way late for work and another long day ahead. I’m delighted that they got this done last night and did not take to a seventh game. By the way, if you don’t like baseball or don’t like the Yankees, please keep your comments to yourself.

I thought maybe I should have a particular goal to track for the month. By the beginning of December, I will have a clean desk top (furniture, not computer monitor). Sometimes I make my goals so broad and overwhelming that I don’t get anything done at all, but this is something specific and feasible that will nonetheless have a positive effect on my daily life. The whole place is actually somewhat out of order, but this will be a start. I will have to remind myself, though, that just moving the crap somewhere else does not count.

I never did see anything on LJ this year about either NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo, but I’m going to try to do the latter anyway. That is, a month of posting every day. My life is pretty hectic at the moment, so I think a little bit of writing every day might be a good way to keep myself grounded. Today I am writing in between watching football, making bookmarks, and mopping the kitchen floor. Have I mentioned that I sometimes get carried away with multitasking?

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Then in the middle of everything, there was one of our stupid power hiccups. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough to require a full reboot and upset the delicate balance of what I was doing. It’s now completely dark outside, and (hopefully) at any moment myspouse will call to tell me where to meet him for dinner. Another weekend come and gone!

This year, inspired by what I do every day in the office, I decided to dress up as a cat herder. That translated to a western shirt, boots, simple skirt, and lots of cat jewelry. I could have borrowed someone’s cowboy hat too, but instead I asked a co-worker to braid my hair, and it looked too cool not to be seen. If I really wanted to get carried away, I suppose I could find a holster and load it up with band-aids and Pounce treats.

Okay, I know internet friendship can be a mercurial affair, but even so dumping people is stupid. Why would you send me a friend request, completely out of the blue, only to ditch me a few months down the road? If you don’t want to be my “friend” now, why did you want to earlier? It’s easy enough to let the relationship sit there and never do anything, but changing it is a conscious activity. It makes no sense to me. In one case, however, I’m a bit relieved. The messages started to get ... strange, and I think I will leave it at that.

By the way, I have started to hear rumblings about NaNoWriMo but not from the LJ people. I hope they still plan to promote it? Recent practice notwithstanding, I plan to try the “lite” version of that again this year and post every day for a month.

Not any more tonight, though – there’s a game to watch! 

Assuming of course that I am healthy enough for travel, I would go as many places as I possibly could in those six months left to me. Though I don’t have a bona fide “bucket list,” visiting all seven continents is on my short list of things I’d like to do before I die.

I’d also like to swim with dolphins, start a cat sanctuary, attend the CMA Fest in Nashville, and learn to play piano. Most of all, I want to watch a World Series game in person in Yankee Stadium – preferably the one in which they clinch the championship.

In this country summer unofficially starts the last Friday in May, which kicks off Memorial Day weekend. On that day I was stuck far too long in an airport waiting to come home from a business trip. Once that was resolved, the rest of that weekend was lovely, but then June was rather stinky all around. July and August were somewhat better, and for the most part I had a pretty pleasant Labor Day weekend to close out the season. (It did, however, end on a vaguely sour note that I will have to detail in another post.) While the actual equinox is still several days away, for all intents and purposes summer is now OVER. Once the pool has closed and everyone has returned to work or school, it’s back to reality. We are so there now.