Watching The Stand with whats'-his-face-who's-always-on-the-scifi-channel. Stephen King needs to not do parts in his own movies. This is pretty bad, but for some reason I can't stop watching.

And I just realized I go back to work next week -- to start it off, there's a planning meeting Monday morning, yay.

Things are going really well, though; got all my Latin textbooks for less than half price, found a bunch of DVDs at Vulcan I'd been looking for to rent (especially Sherlock Hound), and have today off to not do much of anything. Except finishing my thank-you cards; I got mosst of them done in one fell swoop, and I've been kind of slacking since then. Boo me.

School starts on the 16th! My very first class is at 8am. Whooooo.

Saddam and Storm Warnings

Doing laundry is actually less fun when it's raining with lightning outside. Poo.

I'm taking a break from cleaning my place to watch CNN's coverage of Saddam's pending execution. I'm torn between following the story (it is news in the making) and switching over to Cartoon Network because I'm so squicked by the whole affair (I fully accept that he's a murdering dictator, but the thought of hanging turns my stomach).

EDIT: CNN is running a "tour" of the chamber where Saddam will be hung, complete with a play-by-play of what will probably happen -- complete with model skeleton to show how his spinal cord will be severed.

"The next thing is the compression of the major vessels that supply blood to the brain [. . .] At three minutes, the brain will be dead from lack of oxygen [. . .] When the brain runs out of oxygen, the person will be declared dead, although the heart may continue to beat."

WHY?

Update

Turns out, Borders.com is having a huge sale. With my $25 gift card, I got

The Beauty Myth

The Working Woman's Legal Survival Guide

Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of Our Children's Teachers

Grand total, I have $23 left in gift cards to spend. Yay!

Also, my grandfather got the complete Mission Impossible (TV show) boxed set for Christmas. It's pretty great.

Weekend fun

Today was fun -- went to breakfast and out shopping with the family; I even got to distract my brother while mom and dad got his gift!

The weekend challenge on the Puzzle Pirates forum is to caption a few "cartoons" drawn by other PP members. I've submitted two, but this one's my favorite (ignore the typo; we're not allowed to edit it once submitted):

Oops.

Did I say "I'll update soon?" Because by "soon" I must have meant the obscure Middle English meaning "much, much later."

Anywhich, almost as soon as I got back from the house things got busy, so now it's time for a nice long update. Yay for me. It will be in list form, viz.:

Things I've Done in the Past Week:

1. Latin tutoring - I met with the girl on Sunday, and am pleased to announce that she's doing pretty well for having been a whole year behind on the language not too long ago. All my doing, of course :-P
2. Taught kinder kids about the Solar System. Last week and next week's theme is Astronomy; I'm still debating whether or not to include Pluto, given that the poster we're using lists it.
3. Bought a book of crosswords. To make it even more interesting (I stink at crosswords), it's a book of Latin crosswords. I'm five in at the moment and haven't managed to complete a full one without looking at the answer key at least once. Fun, though.
4. Watched Doctor Who. The Satan Pit was on last night, and it was teh greatness. Because only The Doctor can be five feet away from Satan and not notice right away.
5. Watched Van Helsing. I'm actually currently watching it right now. Dad was right. It blows. Even the dramatic rescue swing from the rafters is done in horiffic CG.
6. Started my most final of final papers I have to write this semester. That's right, after this one (due Tues.), I have no more papers to write until next semester. This one is, of course, a three-page proposal on how I would design a project to study the effects of the Peloponnesian War on Athenian art.
7. Decided on my Halloween costume for next year.

Kiwi

Alright, you all know I love kiwis. So, when I saw the YouTube video named "Kiwi!," I had to watch it.

And, yeah. It's AWESOME. Go see.

Afterwards (it contains spoilers), you can go see the interview with the creator.

Free Comics!

Man, Thursday and Friday went by reeeally slowly, and then the weekend just whizzed on by. Typical.

Thursday we had the Halloween Festival for the residents at work. It added an extra hour and a half to my work hours, but I had a lot of fun. I did face painting with a woman from one of the other centers, and halfway through the Festival we had a line of kids literally out the door. Awesome. The other woman wound up doing all the "girly" designs, like hearts and flowers and rainbows, but I got the fun designs: skull and crossbones, dragons, ghosts, and for some reason broken hearts.

The party was awesome - Ivy brought Evil Dead II and an Italian zombie movie, and my brother brought Army of Darkness. I have polaroid photos tacked around the door to my bathroom, and I may just leave them up until the next party -- I'm planning something for before Christmas next month. Fun theme ideas, anyone?

Links to see:

Hellboy comics free on the web!

Tense(s)

So, take this passage:

The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this subject is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-traveling forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from a standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.
Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of this book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs. (1)

Got it?

Ok, now pretend it's in a foreign language, and that you have an exam over these tenses on Monday.

And that is how my Spanish class went today.



(1) From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

PhotoPost

I must record the following exchange:

Drunken "magician": Pick a card.
Niki: *picks card*
*pause*
Niki: IT'S THE SEVEN OF DIAMONDS!!
Sarah: *chokes on noodles*
Sarah: Eating is just not safe around you.