Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - Night Falls Heavily Like A Curtain Over Collinwood...

and a woman sits down at a desk, typing frantically about any and all subjects, trying to make sense of the madness that has befallen recently...

If you are now throughly confused, please allow mw to explain. For the last 5 days I have been watching the 1960's tv series Dark Shadows on DVD, and it's rather insinuating itself into my mind after having viewed some 25 episodes.

I watched the series for a while during college, but at one point I stopped watching for about a month, and when I came back it seemed as though all the actors were playing different characters and I was very confused. So I'm watching it straight through now from the beginning of the DVD collections (which is *not* the beginning of the series - go figure - but the point in the series where the vampire Barnabas Collins is introduced - which from the summary of the series to that point seems to have been the right thing for them to do; it was just awful). Ah, it's fun, and Netflix can send me the discs a little faster than I can watch them, so it's all good.

Ironwolf came home safely from China. It looks like we will not be moving to Hong Kong after all from the indications that he has received. So be it; it's off the plate now. I haven't even had the opportunity to look at the photos yet. Ironwolf was home just long enough to not quite get over the jet lag and to catch a bad cold from us before leaving for Boston today. Booo....

Yes, we are sick, sick, sick. *sigh* I've had a head cold for a week, but last night I couldn't sleep and it just knocked me flat on my ass today. I was just laid out on the couch all afternoon. Zipper has hade a cold too, but tonight he also vomited twice. Poor baby! I think he's ok though. I know that I need my rest but the chances of getting much sleep are reduced by this afternoon's long nap. I don't dare take a Sominex because my kid might need me tonight. I suppose I'll just have to use a little alcohol for medishunal poiporses. *hic*

Tomorrow I have my tae kwon do belt test for my green stripe belt. I know everything just fine, but I am probably going to be dragging myself around tomorrow. Well, I suppose a nasal decongestant and a little caffeine will make things easier, but maybe I'll ask to leave after my testing is done because I don'w want to give this to other students.

Looking at my post history I noticed that a lot of my January posts are self-dated 2004. Oops.

Oh, I was so embarassed yesterday. I dropped Rascal off at preschool and went off to run several errands. I didn't have a timepiece with me, so I was relying on my own time sense and the radio to provide me with the approximate time. Mistake - I should have known better than to trust my lack of intuition! Instead of arriving about 10 minutes early, like I thought I was, I was 20 minutes late. I think they were not happy with me. Ummm...we won't let that happen again.

BTW, my good friend Random's birthday was yesterday. Excellent party, as always, sir!

On Monday I and the boys met my sis-in-law and her two kids at the mall to get photos done. The appointment ahead of us was running a little overtime. That, my friends, is the understatement of the year. It was a family of about 20 members getting all kinds of shots done in various groups. They ran an hour past their scheduled time. They must have spent at least $500-600 on pictures. And here we are, with four kids, ages 5, 3, 2, and 3 months getting very antsy. But in truth the kids were good and we did manage to get in there and get a few good shots in before the baby had a meltdown. After finding out what happened the manager of the studio gave us a discount, so I guess it was worth the inconvenience. But I'll never know how they got 20 people into that little room for a group photo!

On Sunday I was part of this big hymn festival concert with about 100 choir members from some 10 or so area congregations plus instrumentalists and readers. It was all great fun, and we might even have had more people in the audience than participants. (But everyone knows it's more fun to participate). The only unfortunate little bit (and forgive me for sounding childish, because it's *really* *not* a big deal) is that I was supposed to have a solo, and it was taken away from me a few days before because the organizer (not the director, mind you) decided it would be best to split the solos as evenly as possible between the different churches involved. So I got bumped. And of course I had to stand directly behind the gentleman who *did* get my solo. Ppptthhh!!!! Really, it's ok, I understand completely, but let me have my 60 seconds of divaesque bitching, all right?

One of the reasons that I was having trouble sleeping last night is that one of my friends from tae kwon do and I were having a religious discussion and she asked me if I believed in hell and in the Devil (I do not). She didn't ask me to defend my views, but I laid in bed needing to justify it to myself, and mentally went off on this tangent regarding free will vs. determinism and its relationship to the nature of evil. Yes, this is the kind of stuff I think about when I can't sleep. *chuckle*

I won't thrust my philosophical ramblings upon you this evening, but maybe I will sometime if I can't sleep or if I'm just feeling a little sadistic (bwah ha ha ha!). Or, of course, droves of you request it. Like that's going to happen. I've never had droves reading this blog and I expect my readership is way down right now. This post has gotten extremely long anyway, and I need to get to my "medicine" soon so I can get a little rest. Sayonara!