Mad Merry Maudlin

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I feel like I need to clarify something, friends.
When I mentioned in my previous post that I was sitting in the Toy Room, I didn't mean to insinuate that I was lounging around in a ball pit, or hanging out with Floop, or anything like that.
No, it's much more benign.
Some people have Dens.
Other people have Family Rooms.
We... have a Toy Room. I presume it's because it's where we used to keep the toy chest.
Anyway, blame my folks for this one; I have never used the phrase "family room" in my life, and presumably will have my own Toy Room, someday, when I have, you know, a house with rooms of my very own.

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LB and I had to be at the Paper Printing Place at 7am today -- a nightmarish feat, preceded by poor me having to get up at a ridiculously early hour. I'm of the opinion that no human being should have to get up when the number on the alarm clock is smaller than 9. Unless you have already *passed* the numbers 1 through 12, and are cycling back. Then 1 or 2 is perfectly acceptable.
But regardless, 5:40 is really effing early.
On the upside, the roads were empty, and even upsidier, LB brought me coffee. Mmm, coffee. I don't actually enjoy drinking it, but it smells so delicious I love having it sitting next to me. Really, it's the same way I feel about chamomile tea. Smells like yum. Tastes like twigs in a bag.
In other, non-tea news, I spent most of Sunday cleaning up my room, finding two containers of bay leaves, a map of the Louvre, and a random headless Barbie doll. Seeing as the only Barbie doll I own (all the rest were Garage Saled a decade ago) is currently sitting on a shelf next to my long suffering American Girl doll and one of those giant viruses, I'm not quite sure where this one came from.
I'm trying to get everything neat and clean for when Erik the Swede comes to visit.
Thus far, I think I've managed to keep him in the dark about my packrat habits -- I don't want to ruin it now, by leaving out stacks of movie ticket stubs and shiny rocks and troll dolls, and all the other things that seem to collect in corners of my room and along my bookshelves.
Now I'm sprawled in the toy room, listening to one of my last lectures of the software. Thank goodness. My folks have gotten to the point that when they hear my prof's voice echoing eerily off the walls, they clutch their ears and run from the room. Her voice is... what's the word? Ah, yes. Condescending.
Just what I love to listen to for hours at a time.
But I shall sally forth. Just a few more minutes, and I can go to bed....
Oh! And in final, final news, to round out this crazed entry, apparently Baby!Bro just acquired a ukulele.
I believe he hopes it will give him yet another way to woo women.
Good luck and godspeed, Baby!Bro. In time, hopefully you will achieve true mastery.

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Bee just called me, with a rather odd (and loud, and giggly) request.

Bee: "MONICA!"
Me: "...Yes?"
B: "Monica! Monica, I am here with Terry -- say hi Terry!"
"Hi!"
B: "And Jack!"
"Hello."
B: "And I need you to sing the song from The Last Unicorn!"

To be fair, this is not the weirdest thing I've ever been asked to do, but it did sort of come out of nowhere. But to continue.

M: "I'm sorry, what?"
B: "The song! From The Last Unicorn! I know that you know it!"
M: "Of course I know it, but why the hell don't you just YouTube it?"
B: "We don't have a computer! Sing it!"
M: "No. I don't know those people. I'm not singing."
B: "Sing it!"
M: "I don't even sing all that well."
B: "MONICA SO HELP ME GOD YOU ARE GOING TO-"
M: "I'm aliiiiiiiiiiiiive! I'm aliiiiiiii~iiiiiiiiive!"

Yes, friends, let it never be said that my little sister can't bully me into just about anything, even if that anything involves loudly crooning, off-key, into my cell phone, while LB and her family stare at me through the doorway and wonder what the heck is wrong with their houseguest.
In other news, I spent the day feeling like something was wrong.
I just couldn't put my finger on it.
Then I realized my underwear was on backwards.
God, let me get through this week....

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Who gets to go see Great Big Sea with Roomie!Ann?
That's right!
Monica does!
I believe the appropriate phrase for this moment is "Hoo yeah."
No, really, I'm super pumped. I called her and shrieked out a vaguely garbled message which she decoded in record time, because she's Roomie!Ann, and shrieked back that what was I doing talking to her, I should be presaling, which I did, and now we are officially in possession of an email which, when printed, will allow us to claim our tickets at the door. We may camp out for the best seats.
(What? The last concert of theirs that I went to was literally my favorite concert of all time, despite the fact that a) I was suffering from mono, b) we were in the last row of the hall and c) we were in a really dodgy part of town. Loves me some GBS.)

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So apparently, friends, there's a blizzard heading our way.
It was the talk of the office, as people gradually became more and more panicked.
There's a blizzard approaching.
There's a blizzard approaching of heretofore unimagined proportions.
There's a blizzard approaching that will render the streets impassable.
There's a blizzard approaching that will knock out power and maroon us in our homes.
There's a blizzard approaching that's so bad we should leave work immediately to stock up on canned food and survivalist propaganda.
By the end of the day, the Paper Printing Place had released an email saying: Well, it looks like there's going to be some bad weather tomorrow, so we've decided to give you all a jeans day! Show up comfy, but be sure to show up!
Hmm.
They seem to be on to our hole-up-in-a-bunker plans.
Because of the threats of ice and snow, I'm a little nervous about driving to work tomorrow, but I'm hoping my innately slow reaction time will actually help me. I'm not one of those people who goes, "OMFG! AM SLIPPING! ON THE ICE!!" before wrenching the wheel in the opposite direction, fishtailing out, clipping an SUV, and careening into a ditch. I'm much more likely to say, "... oh! I'm... slipping?" and at that point I'll have either gone into the aforementioned ditch, or gotten over the icy patch in one piece.

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Hi friends! Sorry about the lack of posts this weekend. I made a crazy-wild decision and decided to try to have both an academic and a social life on Friday and Saturday. I know. I know. Anyway, it worked out rather less well than expected, so I haven't had as much time as I normally would to update you on the mundane banalities of my day.
To sum up, though:
Friday -- Still flush with excitement after my successful poetry reading the night before, Romance!Reader and Kiker and I went skating (We've been going often enough that the bouncers recognize us! And I don't think it's just because we're the only white girls there!) and then hit up a sleazy hole-in-the-wall pizza place where, whilst horking down a pound of delicious garlic knots, we watched some seventeen-year-old boys snorting Tabasco sauce. Apparently it burns? Who knew!?
Saturday -- n00bie!r00mie and I went to see Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day. Wow, was that a bad movie. Don't get me wrong, I loved every second of it, up to an including the ridiculous Man of the Mountain beards. I just felt like, in trying desperately to placate the original audience, the movie sort of... repeated itself. Almost word for word. If you played the two movies next to each other, I imagine it would be very much like watching She Wolf and He Wolf side by side. They're not exactly identical, but it's not like anything comes as a surprise. Oh, and you find yourself thinking occasionally that this new version is just trying a little too hard.
On the other hand, I do love me hot Irish guys with hot accents and hot guns and... hotness.
Today -- Homework, mostly. Homework, and boyfriend chatting. The former was wretched, the latter may have involved both giggling *and* pet names. I also crashed a Christmas party and ate my weight in monkey bread. Who invented that particular dessert? I would like to shake their hand.
In other news, Mom just came in to suggest than when Erik the Swede is here this winter, he and I go luging. Like... on a luge.
The sad thing is, she's not the first person to suggest this to me.
What is wrong with all of you?!

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Also, how cool is this?
Actors posing for scenes from movies they did way back when.
I'm sort of in love with the Sam Neill one.
(Wait a minute... How old is The Matrix?!?!)

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Well, work was wretched again today, friends, but we won't dwell on it.
That's what old-fashioned, hand-written diaries are for, not blogs.
Instead, let me tell you about my triumph with HTML!
There I was. Staring at my computer screen. Swearing.
Why, you might ask? Because my "code" wouldn't "validate." You'll note I have to put those words in quotes, because we never actually "learned" how to "build a webpage" in my class at Liberry Skool.
It was more along the lines of Here's a webpage with links to different types of code. Enjoy!
Luckily for me, I had a secret weapon.
That's right.
I called Kohai.
Her Boy, more specifically. He seemed like one of those intelligent types who makes their own webpages for fun.
"Boy," I said, "why do I have 9087234 errors when I try to check my code?"
"Monica," he replied, "you're using header tags inappropriately, and you're putting back slashes where they don't belong, and < Ihopeyoudieyoustupidcode > isn't actually valid xhtml formatting. Delete everything fancy you tried to do. Because you fail at it."
Ah.
But now, having deleted said fancy things, it's perfect! It's ugly as hell, and I'm definitely not going to actually show it to anyone, but it'll do!
Thanks Kohai, for letting me borrow your Boy!
Thanks Boy, for letting me borrow your brain!
Next up -- website accessibility....

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Had kind of a crap day at work today, friends.
Tomorrow's looking worse.
Someone reassure me that I'll be able to relax over Christmas break, at least.
...
I will, right?!

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Sign #9283 I've Been Watching Too Much Star Trek:

I was proofing for +bookstore+ and, when looking up the Bible passage Rom. 3:23, I typed "Romulans" instead of "Romans."

Definitely time to cut back on the DVDs and fanfiction.