This month has been pretty annoying.

First there was the whole crazy 60+ hour weeks at the start of the month. Let's not speak of it when I've already whined enough. During that, I lost my DVD remote. Losing a remote temporarily isn't that unusual for me, since there are (stops to count) six for all the electronics in the place. Usually they reappear after a day or two; I figure they just wander off to take a nap. But this time it hasn't reappeared, and it vanished during a bit of "this is the last chance I'll have to clean for two weeks, so I'd better make it good" panic, so... well, I fear it may have fallen off the coffee table and into a bag of trash without my noticing.

Wouldn't be that big a deal, except, of course, I have to have a really obscure brand of DVD player. So all those "universal" remotes don't work. I found one that is supposed to work with my brand... but not my model. I gave it a shot, and it kinda sorta works. In very silly ways. Like, I can turn the DVD player on and off by pressing the "Info" button. Seriously, it's all like that. So it's a workable temporary solution, but I think I need to contact the manufacturer and see if they'll take pity on me and sell me a new remote. Although now that I've got the hang of it, I kinda like having a remote that only I know how to use. Like, if people broke into my place and wanted to watch a DVD, they'd be thwarted because they wouldn't be able to use the remote! That would teach them.

Okay, so it's not likely to happen. Spoil my fun.

I also dropped a grand on car repairs in July, and then my car failed the emissions test, so I need to spend more money on it. But I need to take it to the shop anyway because the one thing I specifically wanted to get fixed (the windshield washer spray-thing, stupidly enough) still isn't working, and plus now it's developed a few new twitches. The "door open" and "trunk open" lights come on sometimes. While I'm driving, so I'm pretty sure nobody's opening the doors and the trunk without me noticing. I've heard enough stories about old Hondas to take it in stride, but it's annoying. Plus, the radio is also acting funky, so I suspect it's actually a chip somewhere that's trying to get attention. I'm just grateful that the door locks haven't taken to firing off at random; my former boss' car used to do that, so she'd unlock the door and it would immediately re-lock itself before she could open it. See, it's all a matter of perspective.

And then last weekend... well, my computer got infected with whatever rebellious streak is going around in my electronics. On Saturday, I was online. I disconnected to do some other stuff. And then I couldn't reconnect, and the error messages said things that didn't make sense, especially when, seriously, nothing had changed. I hadn't even turned the computer off. I fussed with it for a while. By Sunday, I'd decided that the thing to do was reinstall a few applications. Which I'd done a while ago when I'd had a problem, so I knew how to do that carefully. Except not. Because I'm a fucking moron. Last time I'd done it very, very carefully, because I was terrified at the thought of deleting old files I wanted. This time I was overconfident because everything had gone fine last time. So, yeah, I deleted old files I wanted. Mostly email. Lots and lots of email. I can't stand thinking about it, honestly. I'm planning to devote a good chunk of this weekend to seeing if I can recover anything, and I'm cautiously hopeful, but I'm also alternating between mourning and denial and rationalizations and self-hatred. The mourning actually adds some variety to my usual routine, so I guess it's not that bad. (But I kid.) (Maybe.) (Sigh.)

The point of all this is: if you emailed me in the past week or so, and you think I should maybe write you back, it's possible I haven't written because I don't have your address anymore. Or because I don't remember what I was supposed to reply to, or I had a draft started and then didn't send it, but I thought I did. Or some other combination of factors. So you should probably get in touch.

I did fix my toilet last weekend. Go me. There aren't microchips in toilets yet (outside Japan), so they don't hate me.

And: this is my totally random product endorsement for the year. Have you ever seen the infomercial for "Smart Nails"? (Er, this is likely to only be of interest to the chicks, by the way.) That whole nail-buffing-polishing thing actually works. Seriously. Mind you, I wouldn't pay $30 for it, which seems to be what they're asking. But I was at Big Lots and saw a stack of the kits for $3, and I thought I deserved a stupid impulse buy. So I tried it, and damned if it doesn't work. If my fingernails weren't shredded little stubs, you would be totally dazzled by their shiny luster. I bought it because I thought that, if it works at all, it might motivate me to avoid tearing my nails off. I'm not a patient person. And it does in fact work, in that my pathetic little stubs of nails look like they've got clear polish on them. So if that's something you care about, you might want to check it out. But not for $30. Unless you're really, really into your nails, I guess.

Next update will be about media-stuff again, I promise. I have so many DVDs to talk about! And the most amazingly terrible movie! But let's wait till I'm slightly less whiny to talk about that.

Sunday is link day! Sometimes.

This just seems silly. It's mostly hype for a book, of course, but feh. According to their quiz, I am a "quirkyalone." I'm sticking with misanthrope for my preferred designation. I don't understand this need people have to form tribes for every part of their lives. You can't just enjoy something, or be something, or live in a certain way; it's got to be a demographic with a catchy name. Of course, I probably just dislike being grouped that way because I'm a member of Gen X. Sigh.

I'm almost done with Planetarium; I'll find out how I did at the end of this week. It's a fun puzzle/game/story, but you do have to be willing to devote some time to do it because there are twelve chapters, and you can only access one new chapter each week. Each chapter has three puzzles, and then there's a big puzzle at the end. I'm still stumped by two of them, which means I don't think I'm going to get the overall puzzle solved before the answers are revealed. I had fun, though.

Paul Riddell is still lurking about. Check out the Esoteric Science Resource Center for, well, esoteric science resources. I've had to make a separate folder in my bookmarks just for the things he finds.

The Post had another one of it's highly irregular series of articles in which musicians name their ten favorite songs and ramble on about them. This time it's Weird Al.

And Stephen Hunter goes on and on and on about, well, who can tell? Something do with Schwarzenegger, supposedly. I really need to get the Hunter quote-list back online.

I saw Pirates of the Caribbean! Finally. It was so much fun! Frankly, they should have titled it "Ghost Pirates, With Guns and a Monkey." This is why we go to the movies! And the fights were so good! Okay, a teeny bit long, but I don't think I could see cutting more than 10 minutes from it, and that would have been 30-second chunks here and there; there weren't any scenes where I thought, "Okay, get on with it already."

That said, I don't get the Orlando Bloom thing. I mean, he's fine. And he's fine. But yeah, I didn't see Lord of the Rings, so whatever magic spell he's woven over everyone with ovaries has passed me by.

Johnny Depp, on the other hand. Well. You know. And seriously, how great is he? The movie probably would have been okay with someone else, but he added so much. So much weirdness. And it worked! It was completely insane, but it more than worked! And he was all dirty and unkempt. How unfair is it that guys can look that awful and that great at the same time? I mean, you don't hear guys saying, "Did you see how she was coated with sweat and grime, and her hair had never ever been combed? That was hot!" I guess it's possible they do... but I'm skeptical. It's not fair, I tell you! But yeah. Johnny Depp should get an Oscar. I'm serious! Eh, okay, 60% serious. But come on: who else would have done... whatever he was doing? And how great was it? Not to mention, how funny would it be to get an award for that movie? So I say, give him an Oscar! You know you want to. I'll stop talking about Johnny Depp now. With great difficulty.

I was sad that Jonathan Pryce didn't have more to do. I think he should have gotten to actually fight in the final battle. If you're going to bother getting Jonathan Pryce, he should have more than five minutes of screen time. I did like that neither he nor the Commodore ended up being totally weaselly characters, which I half-expected. Because that's so dull, and I kept half-expecting it to happen because that's the formula.

I will mention my concern that the monkey was affected by the curse. Because, hey, it's just a monkey! Is it really morally responsible for what its owner does? Doesn't seem fair. On the other hand, I don't like monkeys, so I'm not that concerned.

Oh, and it made me terribly happy that Geoffrey Rush did say "Arrrr" at one point. It was only once, but it was enough. It wouldn't have been completely satisfying without someone saying "Arrr."

And the language! "Craven" and "scalawags" and, well, pirate words! Man, that was a good movie. Not "changing cinematic storytelling" good, but I'd say it's just a notch below Raiders, which is a perfectly fine place to be.

This is probably going to be more of a status report than anything mediariffic.

I figured out how to fix the "permalinks," so they should work now if you want to link to or bookmark a particular item for some reason I can't imagine. I say "figured out" like it was a big deal, but it didn't take long, I just haven't had time to fuss with it. And external links should work now -- I haven't gone back through old entries yet, but anything in the July entries should be okay.

Lest you think I've been slacking, since the July 4th weekend there has been one day when I didn't go to work. Sometimes it was "only" for a couple of hours, but still. One. I'm tired just thinking about it. And the past two weeks have been chock full o' 12+ hour days. It's been nuts. The amazing thing is that I haven't caught a cold. I hardly ever get sick, except for when there's a horrible crisis and I can't take time off just because I'm sniffly. So far that hasn't happened this time, possibly because I was taking every possible preventative step to avoid that problem. Anyway, while next week will still be busy, I think I'm on the downhill side now. Plus, now I have a ton of comp time to use, so that's something to look forward to. At least the work crush didn't happen while I had to do recaps. I'd have died. Well, realistically, I'd have palmed the recaps off on someone else, but that would have made me sad because I'm all possessive and stuff.

Incidentally, this is the sort of thing that I plan to move into a discrete part of the site that will be slightly more journal-y (and therefore, much less infrequently updated). Sometimes I do want to ramble on about life, but I'd rather keep that separated because honestly, it's not all that interesting. Just mentioning that in case you came here hoping to hear about a neat book and found me whining instead.

On that note... I have been reading a little lately, in the ten minutes before I realize that I'm SO DAMN TIRED and turn the light off. I've been slowly working my way through Max Beerbohm's And Even Now & A Christmas Garland. This was the book I got a while ago after the Post's Michael Dirda went on about Beerbohm. I still don't really get the A Christmas Garland pieces, because I haven't read the authors they're parodying. But the essays from And Even Now are fun. The first one is a bit dull, which discouraged me, but the more of it the read the more I enjoy it. They're essays from around WW1, about books, about society, about going for a walk, about literary heroes... The more I read, the more I like him.

And I watched Crash, which I'd vaguely meant to see, and finally rented after reading Joe Bob's book. James Spader is so neat. I don't find him all that amazingly attractive (I mean, he's not unattractive, lord knows, but he doesn't appeal to me that way) but I really love how he seems to seek out bizarre movies and oddball characters. Anyhow, I have no great insights to offer, but I enjoyed the movie. Also, I really liked the soundtrack. The ending is pretty screwed up, and I knew about it in advance.

In terribly sad news, I think I've lost my DVD remote. I went on a cleaning-frenzy before I was swamped with work, and I think it may have fallen into one of the many, many bags o' trash. I keep hoping it'll turn up, but the odds of that decrease each day. I guess I have to find a universal remote that will work with it. Which I wouldn't be against, except my DVD player is weird so it may take effort. Effort is so... effortful.

Speaking of effort, I think it's time for me to go to bed.