If anyone was wondering how I died and where to send flowers: don't panic, I'm just working 60 hour weeks now. (Sometimes at the end of the day it feels like my eyes are bruised. I'm also fast-tracking my way to carpal tunnel. It's just a matter of time, now.)

The last few months in unorganized lists:

Bad things:

I got roped into doing a thing at work that means I have to go to a two-hour meeting every day where all the managers discuss how everything going kind of terribly badly and sometimes I come out of that meeting sort of wrecked from the stress and the sheer volume of work there is that needs to get done in the next two months, I'm paying for a gym membership I never use because I'm always at work, my washing machine (or dryer) seems to be putting holes in my clothes, I still haven't caught up on my backlog of dirty laundry and it's been piled up in my living room for weeks, I only get one-day weekends now, I've been too tired to read when I get home so I haven't advanced even a page on any of the four books I've been reading, and the windshield wiper fluid sprayer in on my car doesn't work.

Good things:

I got a great haircut, I can fit back into pants I haven't let myself try on since Wisconsin, I finished two hats and a pair of armwarmers, I finally dragged myself to see Slumdog Millionaire, all the overtime is earning me monies that I am then oddly okay with immediately spending on the internet, my dad did my taxes for me and I'm getting serious monies back, I finally got a computer on my desk at work I can stream music to, I've re-discovered my epic love of the NPR show "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me", I bought tickets to a Lily Allen show (!!), I'm going home in April, I'm getting a reputation for being responsible and such at work, Watchmen comes out this weekend!, and I'm going to finally, finally buy a sewing machine this month.

Purchased things:

Batman: The Animated Series Volume 2 (which has Almost Got 'Em on it, zomg!), War Child presents Heroes, Anya Marina - Slow And Steady Seduction Phase II, The BPA - I Think We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat, the new Futurama Movie, a completely random sweater, a completely awesome t-shirt, and an MPR membership.

Sports things:

The ILLINI are RANKED and we didn't even make the tournament last year, there are already spring training games happening so every day the urge to get in my car and drive to Arizona to go watch baseball grows more difficult to ignore, I tried to be reasonable about my tax return and suggest that I buy a washer and dryer and my dad said "how about season tickets to the Rockies instead?" and now I'm trying to figure out which games I'd want to go to, I still don't like skiing, and now that it's warming up I more and more want to get into roller derby.

Personal life things:

Ok, this isn't really a list I'm just announcing that my romantic life is still a clusterfuck of gigantic proportions. So, you know, no changes there.

Pretty shiny things:

Boom de ya da! (Been linked many times by many different people, but it makes me happy every. stupid. time.) Oh, and this music video, which is just made of win.

DIRECTIONS:
- reply to this post and I will pick six of your icons.
- make a post (including this info) and talk about the icons I chose.
- other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
- this will create a never ending cycle of icon glee.

 - Probably my oldest icon, along with that one I have of Justin Timberlake's back.  This is an animation showing the first eight iterations of a fractal tree, as put together by Don West of SUNY Plattsburgh.  I needed something to show my painfully nerdy side, I have a thing for binary branching structures.  It seemed like the thing to do at the time.  (That time being the year 2003.)

 - I harth Darth!  I cannot describe I harth Darth in such a way that conveys how fantastic it actually is, but if you're a Star Wars nerd, you should go there now.  Right now.  And read them all.  This one, in particular, is not actually from the comic, but the author was squeeing about something else, which I then took a screen shot of and made into my happy icon of happiness.  Darth is holding a kitten, by the way, which is difficult to tell out of context, but the important thing to know here is that Darth Vader loves kittens.  Promise.

 - I try to make all my own icons, but this one was awesome beyond the scope of my skills.  It's from the Pegasus Tinies, which are in turn playing off of the Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey. Which is about the most win you can pack into one Stargate icon.

 - This is a still from the music video for the song "Southern California" by the band Wax.  It's one of Spike Jonze's first videos and where I learned that stunt guys get paid by the second for being lit on fire.  They also get the equivalent of a bad sunburn, regardless of how flame-retardant the suits are.  You can't buy this kind of random knowledge. 

 - This is a screen-shot from Futurama and one of about 15 other Futurama freeze-frame jokes I considered making an icon of.  (Runners up include: "cashier has only $10 in checking account" and "Futurama: not based on the novel by James Fenmore Cooper.")  I've had this for a while, but it accidentally became more politically relevant recently.  Who wouldn't have paid money to see Biden and Palin get into a "you mama so fat" contest?

 - Ok, I'm pretty sure the subtitle on this is "sports are really very gay" - which at the point that you've got your ass shoved into another man's crotch is fairly obvious.  But this also doubles up as an icon on my very favorite Cub, Mike Fontenot, who is awesome and tiny and scruffy.

So I was wearing sort of ridiculous high heeled shoes all day, right, and then I took them off and THAT'S WHEN I twisted my ankle. WHAT.

When you see this, post a quote from Stargate Atlantis.

Rodney: Their operating system is a mess. Thank goodness I remember DOS.

*Ronon doesn't react.*

Rodney: Trust me, that was hilarious.

CARLOS ZAMBRANO NO HITTER.

YES.

Me: hold on, lemme give you the similar non-sequiter my mom sent me
"In their zeal to keep the sexes apart, Saudi Arabia is banning the sale of dogs and cats as pets, as well as walking them in public."
from the Chicago Tribune
Denise: .....
all i'm doing is reading about sexual assault in the marines!
i'm overstimulated from all of this combined
Me: apparently there'd be no sexual assault in the marines if they didn't HAVE PETS
Denise: dduuuude
write your local congress..person!
the world must knowwwwww

Seriously, Violators will have their pets confiscated by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the name of the religious police.

re: the new episode of Atlantis:

( One thing... )

GAH. I just had a SPIDER on my BACK.

There was something on my back! I'm IN THE WRONG UNIVERSE.

So Victoria's Secret is stealing design ideas from Battlestar Galactica now? But hey, easy Halloween costume! No sewing whatsoever! DONE.

Yeah. And I'm not mad about anything you're mad about with the Doctor Who finale, because I wasn't mad about anything about the Doctor Who finale, which is most of my opinion. Um, yes.

I am caught up on both BSG and Supernatural, so any conversations anyone wanted to have with me regarding those two subjects could hypothetically resume. Still off limits are: Lost, Torchwood, and Doctor Who. Lost I fully intend on watching on DVD straight through, as I've found (by trial and error, baby, science!) that this is the empirically best way to watch it. The Who franchise I'm saving up for when I live alone and have no friends. I'm sure I'll knock those out my first weekend in Colorado.

Speaking of which, I have a start date and an apartment and no coherent plan about how I'm going to move everything I own. Plus there's the fun part where even when I make it to my (fantastic!) apartment I have no furniture except a microwave stand. Oh, and a desk chair. (Note that I have no desk.) I imagine I'm going to eat meals pretending to have a picnic on my living room floor for a while. Though, with all the empty rooms, I'll have enough free space to practice doing that thing Buffy does where she's lying on her back and then like spin-kicks herself upright. I've always wanted to figure out out she does that.

Re: furniture, what I really want is this desk and this bed and these chairs and this lamp and it's all SO MUCH MONEY. Which I, like I've said before, do not have. I just want nice things! If I can't have nice things while I'm single and childless, I will never get around to having nice things.

Also! The Cubs motherfucking SWEPT the Diamondbacks. That felt GOOD.

I was woken up in the middle of the night last night BY AN EARTHQUAKE.

I just bought shoes for $15 that were marked down from $139. I am awesome! (The shoes are ridiculous, but, dude, fifteen dollars! You say no.)

OMG JOB OFFER.

Wacky opinion of the month: Transformers got robbed. The sound editing made that movie! Grr.

For the record: you can cast Eric Bana and and Jonathan Rhys Meyers all you want, but Henry VII was not actually a very attractive man. I'm pretty sure he only got women because he was, you know, the King of England at the time.

ANYWAY. Under a cut (to preserve the layouts of friends, etc) I have! the first project I've made with lights in the 3D modeling program Maya. ( Look at it and tell me it's pretty. )

I applied today for a job in Texas. This is a sentence I did not think I'd end up saying, you know, ever.