Another example of how sleep deprivation messes with your mind

I just bought some songs off of iTunes to accompany me on an upcoming business trip. One of them was "Goonies R Good Enough" by Cyndi Lauper.

What have I done?

Bullets of an overworked litigator

• So tired. I cannot convey the tiredness. It's like being drunk. Only not so fun. And it's not a valid excuse to skip work.


• I am so angry. (Surprised?) I was just at the grocery store, and my favorite oatmeal of all-time, which admittedly just came on the market a few months ago, has been discontinued! Noooooooooo! It was marked down 50% off, so I grabbed 4 boxes (because, come on, I have no pantry). So, on the plus-side, my purchase was in keeping with the new frugal me. Still, I wonder if Quaker is stopping production, or if Giant is once again just toying with me.


• Clear and Present Danger is on. Mmmm, Harrison.


• Trying to figure out how, with my lack of sleep and the whole working-round-the-clock thing, I can see Indy at the best movie theater in D.C. Might have to go to a laaaaate show. Oy.


• Molson Canadian is really good. And it's a good accompaniment to juicy peaches. Mmmm, peaches 'n' beer. Sounds like a new lip gloss flavor.


• Oh, and Vindauga? Clooney, hands down. He's been on my Top 5 for more than a decade.


• Thirteen days till Ed Norton freaks me out. I'm so excited!

Williams Weekend

Not the college. The composer.

Despite working more than 24 hours this 3-day weekend, I've managed to see Return of the Jedi, Star Wars, and part of E.T.

And AB spent most of the weekend humming the Indy theme, even though he's never seen any of those movies.

Memorial Weekend is definitely made for John Williams.

Terminated

T.M. Shine has a wonderful and wonderfully funny piece in the Washington Post magazine. It's about being laid off. Sounds hilarious, right? Go read it now. You won't be sorry.

Friday Frivolity: Look how illiterate I am!

As seen at Raising WEG, these are the top 106 books tagged "unread" at LibraryThing (which I haven't used before). This is list as of 7:45am EDT today, May 23, 2008.

Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, I'm just going to underline the ones I've read ('cause the bold is too hard to distinguish), and italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Crime and Punishment
Wuthering Heights
Catch-22
The Silmarillion
Don Quixote
The Odyssey
The Brothers Karamazov
Ulysses
War and Peace
Madame Bovary (I read it in French!)
A Tale of Two Cities
Jane Eyre
The Name of the Rose
Moby Dick
Emma
The Iliad
Vanity Fair
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Blind Assassin
Pride and Prejudice
The Historian: A Novel
The Canterbury Tales
The Kite Runner
Great Expectations
Life of Pi
The Time Traveler's Wife
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Atlas Shrugged
Foucault's Pendulum
Dracula (One of my favorite books when I was in high school)
The Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mrs. Dalloway
Sense and Sensibility
Middlemarch
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
The Count of Monte Cristo (Does Classics Illustrated count?)
The Sound and The Fury
Memoirs of a Geisha
Brave New World
Quicksilver
American Gods
Middlesex
The Poisonwood Bible
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dune
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Worst. Book. Ever.)
The Satanic Verses
Mansfield Park
Gulliver's Travels
The Three Musketeers
The Inferno
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (I fully intend to read this some day)
The Fountainhead
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (bleh)
Oliver Twist
To the Lighthouse
A Clockwork Orange
Robinson Crusoe
Persuasion
The Scarlet Letter (LOVED this book)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Once and Future King
Anansi Boys
Atonement
The God of Small Things
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Cryptonomicon
Dubliners (Now THIS is good Joyce)
Oryx and Crake
Angela's Ashes
Beloved
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
In Cold Blood
Lady Chatterley's Lover
A Confederacy of Dunces
Les Misérables
The Amber Spyglass
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Watership Down
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
The Aeneid (it had more heart than the Odyssey)
A Farewell to Arms
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Sons and Lovers
Possession
The Book Thief
The history of Tom Jones
The Road
Tender is the Night (My least favorite F. Scott, and I am a big fan)
The War of the Worlds

OK. I'll take votes. Other than The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which I have made up my mind to read anyway, which of these should I read in the coming year? Whichever book gets the most votes by the end of the month, I will read before year's end.

Ode to Karen Allen

Oh, how I love Marion. I wanted to be her when I was (almost) six. I still want to be her when I am (almost) thirty-three. And Karen Allen can do no wrong.* I know I am not alone in my worship. But unlike this yutz, who wrote an otherwise excellent article, I know what color Karen's/Marion's eyes are.

Indy 4 was very, very fun. And I am very, very tired (saw it at 12:01 a.m.).

* Although I admit that Boon, more than Katy, was my college role model.

Psychological barrier

For the first time ever, I paid more than $50 to fill up my tank.

It's still less than $4 for regular around here, which is what my car takes. The gas stations are charging over $4 for premium, which makes me glad I didn't purchase the VW Passat back in '03 when I bought my current car. (The dealer said the Passat only takes premium.) But my regular-chugging car only gets about 20 mpg. Of course, it's all stop'n'go city driving because I live close to work. And I've only just 36,000 miles after five-plus years of driving. But still, that 20 mpg really glares like a neon light when gas costs this much.

Life is like a sandbox

Not really, but I'm too tired to post anything of substance. Work has crossed over from "busy" to "insane." So this is all I got: AB burying knights and horses (I think you can make out the top of the horse) in the sandbox.

Best. Mother's Day. Ever.

That is, despite being woken up at 6:30 by ALB and despite the generally crappy weather. This weekend:

• I got a giftcard for Sandwich Place Where I Eat Almost Every Day from my boys, and a Starbucks giftcard from my dad and stepmom.


• Today my mom came over with a cake that read "#1 Mom" for me.


• We did our traditional Mother's Day outing, involving pandas, meerkats, tigers, otters and other fauna in simulated-native habitats. And involving souvenir stores.


• There was much watching of "The Muppet Show."


• Nearby Family came over for a few hours tonight to play with the boys so I could have "alone time," but I had so much fun that I hung out all night with them, too!


• And the piece de resistance: ALB, who is not yet 20 months, peed in the potty TWICE this weekend! (No, I'm not potty-training him, but once yesterday and once today I asked if he wanted to sit on the little potty in the boys' bathroom, and he just sat and peed as if it was the most natural thing to do. Hahahahaha. Watch, he still won't be out of diapers until he's 4 and a half...)

Expired Beanie Weenies

Last week I wrote about hot dogs. Crazy Cat Woman is also making careful food purchasing decisions.

I'm doing my part for my family food budget. I've started scavenging along the very back of our food pantry, making sure we consume canned goods before their expiration date. Or, admittedly, shortly after the expiration date. Case in point, tonight for dinner, I opened up a can of Bush's veggie baked beans (which are totally delicious and microwave-ready in less than 2 minutes) for me and a can of Beanie Weenies for ALB. I knew I'd bought them a while ago (before ALB was born, certainly) -- the Beanie Weenies expired on March 27, supposedly. Tasted fine to me. I'll let you know if ALB ralphs them up later tonight.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Totally random: Raiders of the Lost Ark is on USA right now. I clearly remember watching that in the theater with my dad and knowing, even at that young age, that I wanted to be just like Marion. There I was, not quite six years old, idolizing this young woman who could drink some big guy under the table and bash bad guys over the head during a bar brawl. Marion rules.

Ze job, she makes my ass tweetch

Maybe more on that later. For now, bullet the blog sky:

• I cut my doggie's nails today, but cut one too close to the quick. There was much blood. On my comforter. Poor Small Dog. Anyone have any tips on how NOT to do that? He was so good, didn't even whimper. Poor baby.


• NSAH and I were driving home from the local pizza joint after dinner tonight. Came to a 4-way stop. No one coming on the cross streets. Line of cars facing me. I signal to go left. Gray Car across from me, with his left signal on, got there first. So as I stop, Gray Car goes. As he finishes getting out of the intersection, I start to make my left turn. This PSYCHO GIRL (looked 18-25) who was behind Gray Car, actually kind of veers around him to the right, on the very tiny shoulder and starts PULLING. STRAIGHT. ACROSS. Toward my turning car! I honked and braked. She veered to miss me, and then SHE FUCKING FLIPS ME OFF. She runs a stop sign and FLIPS ME OFF. Seriously? If NSAH hadn't been in the car, I would've probably had full-on road rage and done a mid-intersection 3-point turn and followed her.


• Allergies are killing me right now. I spent most of my life being unaffected, but now I have a permanent itch in the back of my throat. So much coughing during the day. Ugh. And, cough.


• When am I going to find the time to see Iron Man and, later this weekend, Speed Racer? When, I ask you?!


• And I had heard that the X-Files 2 trailer would be shown during Iron Man, but have now been informed by various folks that's not the case. So when can I see the trailer in the theater and scream like a crazed fangirl? When, I ask you?!

Even linebackers need sleep

That green thing on the floor? A tiny Kermit the Frog.

Recession diets and hot dogs

The New York Times and the Washington Post have been writing about folks getting more careful with their grocery purchases, as food (and gas) prices climb.

I've always clipped coupons. I could be a partner in a BigLaw firm and STILL clip coupons. I grew up doing it, and I've always liked it. I actually get excited when I see a coupon for something I actually use.

I now realize I'm going to have to keep clipping coupons. I thought I'd have at least 9 or 10 years before my boys reached those famous ravenous-teenage-boy years. But both AB and ALB can eat two whole hot dogs at dinner and still want more. If NSAH and I also have 2 dogs each, that's a whole pack of hot dogs gone in one meal. I'm not used to that.