Tuesday, November 17, 2009

An Unexpected Twipost

As much as I loathe almost any and all things Twilight*, in wake of The Wife's latest blogpost, I have decided to write something short to illustrate just how far the Twi-chotics have gone. (That's a new term I've invented, isn't it great?) I will also say that I will be really glad when this movie comes out. Why, you ask? Because then we will be halfway through one of the greatest cinematic travesties of our time, and then it can begin to be forgotten once and for all.

Visit this link if you dare discover the meaning of this little gem:

I am informed there are grosser things than this being churned out by the foaming fandom. Anything grosser than this is beyond my realm of comprehension. What must Ms. Meyer feel about the hysteria she's inspired?? (Though, from the sound of things, it seems like even she's a little burned out on the whole franchise...)

Seriously, this is becoming an illness.

* Excepting, perhaps, some of those pointed out by The Wife in her latest blog project.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Dam!

(Any excuse to use a euphemism, right?)

A couple weeks ago on Friday night Julie and I loaded up the car with sticky rice and running clothes and headed up to Logan with Elise and Jeff. We met Dad there and after an evening of delicious dinner and homemade apple pie, we rested in preparation for the annual First Dam Run the next day. Jonny and Julia found their way up that morning (seriously, I am ALL about races starting at 10 am... You should consider starting a little later, other 5Ks, and yes, I'm looking at you, Alpine Days...). It wasn't even that terribly cold, I was perfectly comfortable in shorts. Julie suggested quite ambitiously several weeks before that we would try for the 10K this year, and I was definitely up for that, so we spent a few days a week running together training for that. Most of us did the 5K this year, including Jonny, Grandma, and for his first ever, Jeff, and they all did great (Jonny placed third and Jeff placed in the top ten too, and in such a big age group!). Julie and I were absolutely satisfied to have even survived the 10K, which course incidentally actually does go up to the so-named first dam. I had two goals regarding my time for this race: 1) Do 8-minute miles, which was my more realistic ambition, since I had never done a race this long before, and 2) Do the race in under 45 minutes, which is still more than twice my best 5K time. Imagine my surprise, then, when I ran toward that finish line just as the timer passed 44:00! Even better than I had hoped (which makes for a pretty ambitious goal for the next one, I guess...). I placed 2nd in my age group, which is a big deal to me since me placing at all is an unprecedented event, and took 12th place in men, and 17th overall. I admit I was about to die, and also that I was quite frustrated that when I paused my iPod Shuffle at the start of the race to hear the instructions, it never played again for one step of the race (after a while I just gave up on it, even though it sometimes responds after a little rest... it's pretty temperamental these days). Julie came really close to her goal too, so we felt really accomplished after, and really earned that late afternoon nap we took. You did great, sweetheart! A 5K will seem like nothing for us now! Elise, Julia and Dad were excellent athletic supporters, as always.

Recouping

Jeff, Elise, Jonny and Julia headed home after an excellent lunch courtesy of Grandma. Julie, Dad and I stayed one more night, spending time at the house, taking Grandma to see a trippy movie and having leftovers of soup and pie. As always, thanks to Grandma for her hospitality and excellent company.

Julie and Julia having a delightful tea party

Final time: 44:08.4
Miles run: 6.2
Minutes per mile: Approximately 7:06
Number of buckets sweat: 42
Number of songs that played before iPod was unresponsive: 2.4

She's so cute.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

The Incredible iTunes

As much as I loathe almost all things Mac, anyone who knows me well knows how much I love and use iTunes, and how I treasure my iPod above almost all other material possessions. I'm a little bit OCD about how I use iTunes, and I really like to have everything labeled and organized correctly, with the corresponding album artwork appearing while a track is playing. The other day I noticed that for some reason about half of my album artwork had disappeared, much to my vexation. I started going through replacing the ones that were missing. iTunes does have a feature to look up artwork for your albums, and a lot of times, this is quite useful and accurate. Other times, it either can't find any artwork, or it will find artwork for something with a similar title or artist name, random or repetitive as the result might be. Sometimes it's impossible to understand how the program could ever mistake an image that appears as the artwork for the album I was searching, but sometimes it's so amusing, I just have to save a copy of the artwork the program retrieves.

Last night I was looking for the cover art for Linda Eder's 1991 self-titled debut album, and this is what downloaded:

I don't know who this Linda Dian is (and evidently, very few resources online seem to have any information on her), but she really made my night during this tedious, semi-pointless process.

(In case you're curious, the actual artwork I was looking for can be seen here. I know it's not her best look, but it's not her best album either. Don't make fun, I told you it was released in 1991.)

Tuesday, November 10, 2009


How in the world did I live my life and complete my degree and call myself a Disney fan and think about working for Disney without ever knowing about this website??

I have already applied for six positions, and check for more regularly. Doesn't hurt to get some lines in the water, right? The other areas on the site are also rather interesting, especially regarding the officially announced upcoming projects.

On a related note, I heard a preview of the soundtrack for The Princess and the Frog on a Disney podcast and it made me squee like a fangirl. I am so excited for this movie and what it means for the industry. Just a few more weeks!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

"And It's True Too, It's Funny AND True..." *

This offering from yesterday's paper illustrates perfectly the current social climate in my office regarding the you-know-what flu.


Not everything is a symptom, people. And people get sick every year around this time.

* Quote taken from a classic episode of The Simpsons.