Now what am I supposed to do with my life?

I have, finally, completed the Harry Potter books... so yeah, you can re-read the title of my post right now! :D

I guess I'll have to go back to Warcraft... lame... I mean, not really, but Warcraft doesn't have the ability to hold my attention SO severely, nor give me tears streaming down my face consistently! Seriously... I cried like, six times while reading the last two books... at least! I had to have a box of kleenex nearby... how amazing is that to say, that you cry while reading a book?

Sadly, I stopped reading in Jr. High, after my age surpassed the Fear Street and Goosebump series. (Well, the main plot with the Fear Street series did clutch my emotions at times, since it involved witch burnings...)

Anyway! Seriously, if you want an easy slide back into reading books, start with HP 1! I found it enjoyable, to read the book, then watch the corresponding movie again... but often I just became too critical of the movies because of the 'true' timelines and information I knew. :P

I cannot tell you how AMAZING this story is! Next step for me is to buy all the first six books, and re-read them, now that I know all the secrets... yayyyy!

And in movie-news, the sixth movie has been pushed from this November, to a release date of July 2009. The last movie will be split into TWO full-length films, the first releasing November 2010, the second May 2011. Um yeah, so again, re-read the title of my post!!! Arg... such a long wait for wonderful gratification! I guess the sixth movie got bumped because of the writers strike... all this info is per Wikipedia! :)

This is tough!

I can't even tell you how hard it is to come back to full-time work, and waking up early in the mornings again, after spending five weeks sleeping-in and doing whatever I like on each day. It's surprisingly harder than I thought it would be!

My body is certainly wasting no time in telling me it doesn't like this new adjustment, either... I feel uncomfortable overall when I'm sleeping in my huge/comfy bed, my stomach isn't being very nice (even though I've been eating super well this week), I've had night-sweats for the past three days, and my jaw has started clicking/cracking again.

I'm hopefull that after this first week, things will get better!

Luckily, I didn't come back to a huge workload... I have a few projects coming in soon, but generally I've been helping other this entire week with their projects. That helps the stress-load a ton! I'd probably be in much worse condition today if I came back to piles of stuff on my desk...

Oh, and speaking of piles on my desk, here's what my co-workers did to my cube while I was out...













You can imagine, from how clean a person I am, what my cube looked like before the mess! :)

Took me about a half an hour to clean it all up and re-flip my stuff... and I literally worked-up a sweat! We're getting more and more creative when people take vacations and their cube needs a good sabotage!

Here's my cube a few months ago, when I took some time off in the summer.





Good times... :)

Sabbatical = Over

Man... I can't even begin to tell you how FAST the past five weeks went by. It feels like I just left work for my one-month sabbatical! I'm excited to go back and see everyone again, but not too excited for the workload. :P

I accomplished a lot though, during my time off. I got my entire list of things-to-do-on-vacation done and I've been gathering materials for my Halloween costume! I'm going to be my Undead Mage character that I play on Warcraft.



I'm going to look so bad-ass!!! I got a dark-green robe/dress from eBay... the online store is called Holy Clothing, and they have a lot of simple Renaissance-style dresses and shirts. My mum helped me make the mask - rivets and all! I'm going to velcro the top pieces to my head so it doesn't mess with my hair. However, the mask won't cover my eyes, as it does on the character... I do have to see where I'm going. :) But I think I'll get fun contacts to wear to make me look more zombie-like!

I bought the staff from the Renaissance Festival here in Minnesota. It's beautiful!



And here's the result of wearing sandals for shoes while spending six hours at the Festival...


Dirty feets!!! :D

Anyway, I'm also feeling much better mentally than I was two months ago. I'm no longer melancholy! That was my main goal for this sabbatical... to get mentally stable again, and so far so good. :)

I Heart Seabiscuit!

I just need to make a quick comment on how much I still LOVE the movie Seabiscuit. I practically grew up at the racetrack, as my dad owned a few race horses when my sister and I were younger, and we'd always go to Canturbury, what seemed like every weekend, to watch our horses run and make bets. And I'd like to gloat a bit and say that I was DAMN good at picking horses! I always played it safe too, betting them to Show, so at least I'd make some money if they got first, second or third. Dad would place the bets for me though, as I was what... all of 12 years old? Hehe!

Anyway, I recall wining like, 50 bucks one day! Or maybe it was 10, and it just seemed like a lot of money to me at the time. Plus, one time when my best bud Margaret came with us to watch our horses run, he ended up wining! What a rush that was... I could barely see over the fence, but me, my sister and Margaret were standing right at the fence on the grounds, cheering on our horse! It was a wonderful feeling to watch him race across the finish line in first place... I can't remember exactly which horse that was (Pip Style, maybe?), but I do remember getting to be in the winner's circle many times for photos. Even though our horses didn't always win, they rather enjoyed when dad would take my sister and I back to the stables to visit... they'd nip at dad all the time, but when Manda and I walked up to them, they'd bow their heads low to check us out.

Ah... memory lane is so much fun to visit! :)

America Has No Talent Anymore

I'll admit that I do watch some reality TV... one show (of two) is called America's Got Talent. I love seeing all the different contestants with their amazing abilities. However, in this third year, as I sit here and watch the top 10 contestants perform after missing a few of the pre-finale shows, I can't help but rush to my computer to blog about my absolute distaste for this year's participants. They passed through the most ridiculous acts, people with no talent, or talent that isn't worthy of having their own contract — nor a million dollars. I can't help but get the feeling that this show has inevitably, and finally, succumbed to the ratings conglomerate.

I was surprised to see who the finalists were after catching a few of the first episodes. Although I highly enjoy watching legitimate people sharing their gifts with this country, I can't stand the banter and pointless commentary of the three pitifully talentless judges, not to mention the useless host. I feel like the judges pass people through because the network pre-determines poor performers just for drama ratings, or people have mimicked other artists that are already out there, changing the style slightly, or they're either too embarrassed to tell little kids 'no' on TV. You can even tell, definitively, when one judge really doesn't like someone, but they were clearly told to pass them through!

Don't get me wrong, there are a couple really amazing people in the finale... but do you think one of them will win? Probably not... it'll either be the Stomp / Blue Man Group rip off, some weird creepy guy who thinks he's great at singing and performing, or the Britney Spears impersonator (he does really look like her, though!).

And if anyone is wondering what the other reality TV show I try to watch is, it's Last Comic Standing. It's like getting a huge, variety-filled comic show for free! :D

Convalescence

Ooohhh, I used a big word in the title of this post... makes me seem smart, eh? Yeah, well, I cheated... it's called a Thesaurus (<-- holy crap, I spelled that word right the first time I typed it! That means I *AM* smart! Woo!).

Anyway, today is the end of day 1 of my sabbatical from work. I must say it was a great day! I slept in, then went to see my Chiro at 10:30 for an early adjustment. I figured if I'm going to start exercising like crazy again, I'd better have exemplary spinal alignment to start! Then I came home and ate healthy soup for lunch and constructed a huge, colorful fruit salad for the week.

I was going to start doing Pilates for Abs again, as part of my exercise routine. However, 5 minutes into the DVD, I remembered how much neck strain is involved, and it's extremely aggravating for my body. So, I put that to bed. I can work my abs in other ways...

Next was power-walking! I haven't done that in awhile, either... I literally dusted off my treadmill, and walked for my usual 45-minute ER episode.

BodyPump was at 5:15, so I bused up to the Y. Supposedly my MetroPass has to be put on hold while I'm on sabbatical, as it's deducted from my paycheck. So either I'll end up paying cash for rides or just biking to the gym when I can physically make it home after my legs become jello from class! :P

Then after dinner, I played WoW for awhile and got my new Druid up to level 15. Now I'm staying up past my normal 10 o'clock bedtime without hesitation! Oh, the agreeable freedom I have again! Love it. :D

You Can't Escape It!

Minnesota Construction Joy...

While trying to drive home last night - a trivial 7 miles - I ran into a rather frustrating experience. I was in Richfield, attending my mom’s Open House. I left their place at 10 pm, which is much later than I had anticipated, but I assumed traffic would be no issue - it being so late on a weeknight.

Well, having multiple 'getting home' options, I decided to take 494 West to the 35W North entrance. That was closed. So I got off on Penn Ave. and whipped around to try the south-facing, northbound entrance. (Someone else driving behind me had the same idea.) But alas, that was also closed. So now that I’m heading East, I figure I can take Hwy 77 north, then 62 west, and use that entrance. I just enter onto 62, when all of a sudden, there’s rush-hour-type traffic! We’re at a dead stop. A sign up ahead says the right lane is closed, so naturally, Minnesotans being ill-equipped to merge properly, it takes a good ten minutes before I’m at the 35W North entrance... BUT IT’S CLOSED! By now it has been a half hour since I left my mom’s place, and I’m getting irritable because it’s getting late.

So I end up heading south on 35W and think that maybe the 66th Street entrance is open. I get to the exit and decide that it most likely isn’t open, since none of them are, so I turn right and head towards France Ave. I now insist that the entrance on 62 east HAS to be open... how could it not? How could they close it all down at once without putting up proper detour signs? So I make it to 62 and start heading eastbound. Whaddya know... that entrance is also closed; but in this case, construction crews had placed cones all along the freeway, preventing anyone from merging onto 35W north. I now saw why they had it all closed down... they were hauling HUGE cement beams, carried by Wide-Load semi trucks. I can’t imagine trying to drive one of those through that bottleneck area at Crosstown! One taxi-cab, a few cars ahead of me, tried to disobey the cones and jump into line with all the Wide-Load assistant vehicles. About a moment later, he realized his decision was quite stupid.

So yet again, I’m heading East, and no closer to home than I was 20 minutes prior. I make my final decision now to get on Hwy 77 north, take that up to Lake Street, and get home five minutes later. It worked, and I opened my door at 11 pm, tired, and having to use the bathroom very badly! :P