1. Consuming massive amounts of sugar upon the breaking of a long fast from sweets
Internet,
According to a co-worker, I have today been engaged in "sugaring." Since I have this week ended my sugar fast, I've gone off the deep end, culminating tonight in eating a dinner of a strawberry shake & two cherry pies from McD's, a bunch of milk chocolate Easter eggs, and some rum flavor lifesavers (I didn't even know they made such things; they are delicious). Every day since Sunday, I have consumed sweets - sometimes vast quantities. I keep thinking to myself, "This will not end well," and although I expect a raging stomachache, none has occurred. But tonight that may change. I have the beginnings of a headache, and while I will tell the world it's work-related, it's probably caused by both the work and the sugar. But at least the sweets are making me care very little that it's after 8 in the evening and I'm still at work.
I'm not sure if it was a really good idea or a really bad one, but on one of my days off of work this week I watched the entire Band of Brothers series. In some ways, bad idea: my life has consisted of work, work, stress, and more work the last few months, and maybe watching something that some might view as traumatic, stressful and (at times) depressing was not the way to go. In many ways, good idea: I love the history of WWII, and eat this stuff up. Further, I'd never seen it and wanted to watch it all back-to-back to get the full experience out of it. Finally, after watching it, just about anyone's life would look pretty darn good and easy.
So, on a cold day in April that involved more snow (and therefore, I had no desire to go outside), I sat down and watched it all. All six discs. One day. I watched all 10 episodes, and went through all the special features. And you know something? I really can't complain. I learned a lot, it was a great series, and my life seems pretty darn easy right now.
xoxo,
Minny LinnEy
p.s. Moving on to Alan Furst'sDark Star, though? Now that might be taking it too far. The Russians with their black souls and fatalism in the late 1930s and during WWII is possibly too much. Maybe I shouldn't have read the first hundred pages the very next day after watching Band of Brothers. And yet, I still think I have it pretty good, and I really can't complain.
Since I really can't take a vacation now (not until session is over), I decided to live vicariously through someone else. Never mind that that someone else is a fictitious character in a movie, but I'll take it. I re-watched Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation last night. Internet, I had forgotten how hilarious I find that movie. And now that I work where I work, several moments take on a whole new meaning for me ("infant delinquents," for instance). (Shame on you, Internet! I didn't mean that the legislators were...well, never mind. I meant that I cover crime issues in my job.) Anyway, watching the movie made me feel better - if that's what vacations are like, I don't want one. Work will be fine, thank you.
(But actually, I do get to take a couple of desperately-needed days off this week because as of 3:00p.m. today, all of my bosses are on Easter/Passover break! Hallelujah! I can't wait to have a bit of time away from this place. Easter coming so late this year has had some side effects - namely, my co-workers' and my mental health, since we are not allowed to take any time off between MLK Day in January and Easter, whenever that comes on the calendar.)
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In other news, apparently there are now coconut M&Ms. I must try these. And I possibly will, once Easter is here and I can eat sugar and dessert and candy again. (This has also affected my mental health. I now dream of work and doughnuts. And then I feel stressed from the work part of my dreams and guilty from the sugar part of my dreams - even though I'm not really working or eating doughnuts! It's just a dream! But that candy "tasted" so real...)
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I unexpectedly bought furniture on Saturday.
[In some ways, I'm not even really sure how to continue with this random thought. It seems so funny and bizarre to "unexpectedly" buy furniture.]
Although I have thought about purchasing living room chairs for a long time (well, basically since I bought the couch five years ago), I randomly woke up on Saturday and decided to do it. One long four-hour shopping trip later, I spent a lot of money and have nothing to show for it. (Yet.) But after those four hours, I definitely have opinions. Lots and lots of them, and they generally involve words like "HATE," "ugh," "Who the heck would BUY this?" and "Someone actually wants to relive the 1970s?!?!" Internet, I have obviously gone into the wrong business. I, too, could design really ugly furniture and apparently make a living at it.
The secretary arrives this week. (For those of you who wonder, no, I did not purchase a person who will do stuff for me; I bought a desk with cool cubbies in it.)
Because of my desire for upholstery that doesn't look like a small dog barfed up peas and squash on shag carpet that was then hastily slapped on a frame, the chairs will take 6-8 weeks to arrive. And maybe in 6-8 weeks, we will be done with session and I can sit in my new chairs. (If I remember where I live, at that point.) But I can assure you I will not be eating any coconut M&Ms (or squash) whilst I sit in the new chairs for fear that I will revisit the ugly upholstery issue.
...to care about work. It's 7:14pm on a Friday. I'm sitting in my office, trying to crank out at least two more documents before I leave for the evening. Obviously, my trying isn't good enough since I'm procrastinating by writing this.
...to not care that we are supposed to get a couple of inches of snow tonight. But since I'm still at work, who cares about a little snow? It's not like I see much daylight or the outside world anyway.
...to care about work. It's 7:16pm on a Friday. I'm sitting in my office, trying to crank out at least two more documents before I leave for the evening. Obviously, my trying isn't good enough since I'm procrastinating by writing this.
OK, now I'm a procrastinator, and I've become a pleonast. *sigh*
I played a series of concerts this weekend. As seems to be my most frequent M.O., I had never played the piece before a couple weeks ago. I figured if I practiced it once before Friday night's rehearsal, and listened to it on YouTube a couple times, I'd be fine. And I was right! (This would be why it's my frequent M.O.)
Please feel free to listen to this lovely piece while I tell you the sad, sad tale (not tail...tale! about a neck) of the weekend.
You can, of course, click through to hear all 12, er, XII, lovely pieces from Mozart's Requiem in D minor. Lacrimosa's my favorite of them all, but I love certain phrases in each of the movements. For your listening AND viewing pleasure, I'd recommend starting with this next one if you're really in the mood to listen to the entire Requiem. Which I did. On Saturday. Twice. 'Cause you know: last minute ear training always works like a charm. Um, or something like that. Anyway, ignore the 1991 hairstyles, but all XII are worth a listen and watch.
Now for the sad tale.
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A Sad Tale
For all of these semi-annual chorale concerts, a very lovely girl named Johanna plays the bass viol in our little ensemble. She does not have her own bass, so she usually borrows one for these concerts. Well, having done so for this series, she left it backstage after last night's concert rather than lug it around with her only to have to bring it back today. Unfortunately, though, this afternoon she discovered that someone had knocked it over and taken out the neck. Like, folded-in-half kind of broken. It was a distressing sight. Especially when someone suggested duct tape...and tried it.
Internet, the moral of this story* is that duct tape cannot fix everything. Indeed, there is something that duct tape cannot fix. I must tell you that it is the bass viol.
So we played the last concert this afternoon without a bass, and Johanna got to sit in the audience and listen to the rest of us have fun with Mozart.
The End**
*Um, besides the obvious ones, like: hardcover cases are best; and, I don't care how big it is, you always take your instrument with you (possible exception: grand piano); and, don't leave your instrument in a high-traffic, low-light area (like backstage in a theater)
**At least this is the end of the story I'm going to tell you. I'm not sure what Johanna and the owner are going to do about the repair of the bass. But it won't involve duct tape, I can assure you.
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And now on to other mixes of Lacrimosa, which, let's be frank, is really the point of this post. Internet, I am now on the hunt for the perfect remix of Lacrimosa to add to my workout playlist. One with sufficient beat (and how could you not turn this into the perfect beat?) that keeps you moving, but still uses real instruments? Is it really that hard? I will have to say yes because so many people seem to get it WRONG. 100%. But here are two remixes that I found not entirely dreadful. Only Evanescence seems to spell it wrong (at least according to my score this weekend) and I've chosen the instrumental version of it. And even then, I'm still not sure I like everything they do. The other remix is just a hair too European techno for my tastes. But neither sounds like they're too extremely fake. I hate remixes that sound like they were produced on a two-octave casio in 1988. These seem to still understand the point of a remix - a beautiful combination of the original with a modern twist.
Internet, if you can point me in the right direction of the perfect mix, I'd be quite happy. In the meantime, I will continue to listen to the classical version. Because, even though the concerts are over, I've discovered I quite like the Requiem, and have high hopes that if I listen enough now, I'll remember the next time that I've actually played this before.
...we've all abandoned ship, and are finding alternate workout options (and also watching the flood waters rise here).
Me? I re-discovered my building's workout facility on Saturday. And then I re-discovered that awful contraption called a "treadmill." Internet, I doubt I've been on a treadmill in years. Maybe even closer to a decade. It's painful and gross. But after surviving a couple miles, at least my ankle didn't hurt (haven't really run since that ol' injury), and I didn't freeze my lungs (we're still in the grip of winter around here; thus, the indoor treadmill part), nor did I slip on any ice (see the "we're still in the grip of winter around here" thing above). Give me back the erging, I tell you! It's far preferable to this running thing.
No, by this blog post title I'm not referring to taking pictures of someone washing chairs (and I refer to the actual inanimate objects - not chairmen...I kind of find it funny that to be more politically correct, many individuals now call people by the word for an inanimate object...and since I'm even talking about this in this venue, I think I'm hanging out at the Capitol too much these days).
On Camera:
Live flood cam of the Mississippi River in downtown St. Paul here (halfway down the page...updates every 30 seconds...if I had more time, I'd probably be mesmerized. Watching floodwaters rise is much more interesting than watching grass grow, I tell you).
On Chairs:
It's BYOC Day at the MN Capitol: lobbyists are carrying their folding chairs around with them as they move from place to place or committee to committee...It's an entertaining sight, to be sure.
On Soap:
Another reason for why I think I'm hanging out at work too much these days - at the cost of less sleep: instead of rinsing and drying my lunch-time apple, I tried to put handsoap on it after rinsing it. I think I need more sleep, and I possibly also have a subconscious need to eradicate germs. Or something like that.
The title of this post is no joke: I am suffering an alarmingly large number of paper cuts at work this session. I don't know why (other than my own carelessness, of course), and some of them are alarmingly close to my right wrist. (Apparently I'm not very coordinated when it comes to those file folders and bills while I'm carrying them.) I'll try to be more careful, mainly because it's really annoying to try to use my mouse and constantly be putting pressure on the paper cuts.
Speaking of mice...We abandon the boat house and the mice have taken over. Spotted last night during a coaching committee meeting: one bold mouse exploring the ballroom on the second floor, searching out higher ground, or something like that. (And once spotted, none of us said a word or did anything, but instead just watched it run through on its way elsewhere. At least it wasn't a rat.)
Alas, Internet, I'm not doing well on my bracketology. But I suppose that's to be expected when I took a mere ten minutes to fill out five of them (yes, 5). And it was only ten minutes because one of the five involved an actual pencil and paper copy of the brackets...otherwise, it would've only been about seven for all five brackets (I can click much faster than spell it out).
Have a great first full day of spring, Internet (never mind we're supposed to get a couple more inches of snow on Wednesday).
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