los compas...

Today I bought this purse at Target because it was $5 and I think it's cute and shut up. I may also have purchased the first season of Psych. Because I'm awesome.

Also today, I thoroughly coddled my cat by letting my freshly laundered sheets get all wrinkled so I wouldn't have to wake her up from the nap she was taking on my mattress. She then thanked me for my generosity by waking up out of a sound sleep to poke her wee nose into the dollop of sour cream I was dipping my quesadilla into.

Fireworks were not legal in Anaheim - though Disneyland was allowed to have huge fireworks spectaculars every night during the summer - so when I was little, my family always spent the Fourth of July at my grandparents' house in Garden Grove. We'd have dinner and, while waiting desperately for it to get dark, lit some snakes in the gutter to stave off the excitement.

There was this guy a few doors down who had a remote-controlled car, and while it was still light out, he'd put a lit firework on it and race it down the street. That'd garner a few chuckles and, "Look, that car has a firework on it" comments.

But then he'd do it like four or five more times before darkness fell, and even as a kid I was always like, "ALL RIGHT ALREADY. YOU HAVE A REMOTE-CONTROLLED CAR. THAT IS NOT IMPRESSIVE AND THIS HAS CEASED TO BE HILARIOUS."

Maybe not in those exact words, but the sentiment was there. Anyway, this basically went down every single Fourth of July of my entire childhood. I guess I had a lot of pre-adolescent rage.

Anyway, I hope that guy still has his stupid little car and is busy pissing off a whole new generation of little kids.

After a mini marathon of Dirty Jobs, I almost wanted to say that I'd like to marry Mike Rowe. But then I checked his FAQ on the Discovery website, and it looks like a lot of people want to marry him. In fact, reading between the lines, it seems that a lot of people ask him to marry them, and then invite him to their private homes for a meeting. Since that's creepy beyond belief, I think I'd like to distance myself from them.

But I will say that he's super hot. Even when he's gutting a shark or artificially inseminating a sow.

Today I accomplished my major goal, which was to not sleep in.

These days, waking up at 11 am is not sleeping in.

My life is incredibly sad.

poisonivory: http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w195/Spiegelmaid/Piccie%20stuff/jli.jpg
poisonivory: http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w195/Spiegelmaid/Piccie%20stuff/boostle.jpg
poisonivory: I love that they're both described as each other's best friends and partners.
poisonivory: Also, hell-O there Tedcrotch!
mizzmarvel: I love that Booster is always called by his full name.
mizzmarvel: I like to think that his mother called him Michael Jon. Like David Michael and Emily Michelle.
poisonivory: I was gonna say, maybe he's got a David Michael thing going on
mizzmarvel: Was Michelle's middle name Joan or Jean or Jane?
poisonivory: I like Jean, myself
poisonivory: As far as I know she had no canonical one
mizzmarvel: Then it should be Jean.
mizzmarvel: Strapping blonde children with double names. Wondrous.
poisonivory: I like to imagine their mother dressed them in futuristic sailor suits
mizzmarvel: And kept Michael's hair long because he had such lovely curls?
poisonivory: AHAHA YES
poisonivory: But excuse me, his name is Michael Jon.
poisonivory: Perhaps it is the name of the young hero of a mournful children's ballad somewhere between our time and theirs
mizzmarvel: Oh, so sorry.
poisonivory: "Oh young Michael Jon he went a-walking/ Out in the forest green..."
poisonivory: And then the fair folk spirit him away or something
mizzmarvel: He's spirited away by a mystical animal called a polar bear, which no longer exists in Michael Jon's time. And taken to an ancient land called USSR.
poisonivory: Ahahaha
poisonivory: Serenaded by the mystical sounds of hophip, gaily dressed in polyester!

housematehorror
Horror stories from the world of shared living spaces. EEK!

Books read in the month of June:

Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder by Ann Rule: Wasn't as good as the last one I read by her. True crime, but one of the stories just didn't fit in at all in that regard (it's hard to explain how without a spoiler). I was not overwhelmed in general.

American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth Century Popular Culture by Ilana Nash: This took me a little while to get into, but it was really interesting. It's definitely made me look differently at how teenage girls are depicted in the media.

She's No Princess by Laura Lee Guhrke: Romance novel. I can barely even remember what it was about, so I can't really recommend it. The sex scenes were subpar.

Kristy and the Missing Fortune by Ann M. Martin: A BSC mystery that leans more toward the ridiculous side, all while being not terribly interesting. I love how in children's books, it's always assumed that found treasure = yours to keep!

Kristy and the Middle School Mystery by Ann M. Martin: Another BSC mystery, and though the later ones often got pretty over the top, I liked this one. Set firmly in their school, it was more on their level, and I love Cary, who is appropriately sneery of the baby-sitters.

Mr. Impossible by Loretta Chase: Another romance novel, and this one I can't recommend enough. Egypt! Hieroglyphs! Actually smart heroine! One of the best heroes ever! It was funny and exciting and awesome and I loved it so much forever. Hooray.

dwseason4
A journal where the alternative fourth season of the TV show Doctor Who is being written.

lol_comics
Keep youself smiling at the little things with some funny comics.

bikes
A community for everyone who loves bicycles, motorbikes, and more.

On the bright side: I haven't gotten a migraine since I lost my job!

On the down side: the non-migraine headache I have right now is still really annoying. Admittedly, eating candy at midnight is probably not helping.

The first panel of this Calvin and Hobbes comic pretty much encapsulates my mood tonight.

I was going to illustrate my mood by uploading a song, but iTunes is being weird, which only annoyed me more. So I went to YouTube to see if I could find a decent video, but in one a girl made a stupid "I'm introducing my video on YouTube, isn't it awkward? Hee hee!" face, and I was basically, "THAT'S IT, I'M DONE FOR TONIGHT."

And there we are.

First, a meme stolen from pre_emptive:

Reply to this post, and I will write one thing I love about you. Maybe more than one. Then (if you want) repost to your own journal and spread the love.

Secondly, a rec! quirkytaverna has written a wonderful Byron/Jeff fic, A Perfectly Good Memory Ruined By Air Supply. (I'd love the title even if I hadn't read the fic.) Like, seriously, I didn't even have to get more than halfway through to realize that it had already become one of my top five favorite B/J fics of all time. Jeff's voice is done wonderfully, she has a different spin on Byron than one normally sees, and their banter is really awesome. A++

Also, we saw Wanted today, since being unemployed means lots of spare time to go see movies. It was a lot of fun to watch, even if the "twist" was kind of obvious from about two seconds in. I recommend it if you're into smart, witty action movies. Very violent, of course, so maybe avoid if you mind seeing a lot of blood.

1. I submitted three job applications, one of which I have irrational good feelings about.
2. I wrote three paragraphs of Blue before I got upset with an online quiz and lost my groove. (Clearly I was working very hard.)
3. I went on three errands, one of which involved buying exactly three items.

SO PRODUCTIVE. FOR REALS.

We saw Get Smart today, because unemployment = a lot of time to go to movies you're only vaguely interested in. I loved Get Smart the TV show when it was on Nick at Nite (or early TVLand - I can't remember) when I was about ten or so, though I haven't seen it since, and I pretty much like the entire cast and find them generally charming, so what the hey! We gave it a shot.

It was...ehhhh. It wasn't bad, but it was generally not laugh-out-loud hilarious, though. I pretty much enjoyed Bruce and Lloyd (Masi Oka and Nate Torrence) more than anyone else, and otherwise I thought some of the biggest laughs came from Alan Arkin. (But I might be prejudiced, as I've pretty much been slightly in heart with Alan Arkin since I read The Lemming Condition when I was a child.)

Anyway, ultimately my verdict is: wait until it comes out on DVD. Or better yet, rent the original Get Smart series, which is apparently out in its entirety.

Today I got BSC Mystery #19 Kristy and the Missing Fortune and #25 Kristy and the Middle School Vandal, marking the completion of my Baby-Sitters Club collection. To blame for this:

1. My fifth grade teacher, Mr. Covington, who had several volumes stocked in his classroom library.
2. My father, for throwing away most of my books when we moved one time, leading to a freak out.
3. My mother, for instilling in me the urge to collect things.

These books are still my comfort reading. Sometimes it's imperative to my mental health that I can crack open a thin fifteen-chapter volume and go, "Kristy (or Claudia, Stacey, Mary Anne, Dawn, Abby, Jessi, Mallory, or occasionally even Shannon or Logan), take me away!"

And then all the characters can be horrible or moronic or both, and I'll want to shoot them all (other than Byron and Jeff, whom I never want to shoot even a little bit), and I feel much better about life in general.