I'm trying not to whine... but I'm failing!

Well, here it is, No Whining Wednesday again, and I'm home sick in bed. For the fourth consecutive day. Some kind of gross, disgusting head cold-slash-plague that is making me cough so hard I pee a little and making me blow my nose incessantly. My poor, chapped nose. But, in the spirit of the day, the bright side: Today, I watched Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus on the Netflix Instant Watch doohickey, which is possibly the greatest film ever created. (P.S. Dear friend Myysharona has an amazingly funny real-time review of it up on her blog. Read it. You won't regret it.) My favorite parts: the guy who freaks out when he sees the Mega Shark leaping at his plane just before he gets eaten is, I'm pretty sure, the same extra who is running down the stairs behind Electric Youth (I'll never be able to think of her as anything but, Sharon) and the lab coat who's yelling at her in the VERY NEXT SCENE. It's probably a bad production decision to use your actors like that. Lamas's greezy, slicked-back douchetail. The fact that "science" = what it did when I was 5, i.e. pouring colored liquids between fancy-shaped beakers and frowning at them. Oh, and the dialogue. Amazing. I can't even begin to do justice to the dialogue.

And then tonight I got to watch Glee, all the way from the beginning (I have a class on Wednesdays that generally prevents me from catching the first few minutes, but since I'm sick, I skipped out on it). Jane Lynch is freakin' awesome and should be, as I have said elsewhere and repeatedly, in EVERYTHING EVER. Bonus: I also got to catch So You Think You Can Dance for the first time in its new, exciting fall incarnation. Oh, and another bonus to the plague: I haven't worn pants for like a total of an hour over the last four days. Yay! for pantslessness!

So, it's a short one tonight, kids, because I need to go to sleep now so I can get up in the morning and see whether I can make it to work without hacking all over everybody or stay home again and watch some more awefulsomely (TM Barney Stinson) bad movies and hack my brains out in my comfy chair. I hope everyone else's 3-month anniversary of No Whining Wednesday was good, though! (P.S. I tried, Lainey! I really did!)

No Whining Wednesday IS big... It's the pictures that got small!

Ahh, Norma Desmond. How I adore her.

Well, we've reached #NoWhiningWednesday again. (And H/T to Lainey Bobainey for the symbol! Love it!) Had a bit of a rough start due to staying up far too late doing homework, so I got out of bed around a half hour late. I still would have been pretty close to on time for work, though, except for how I got in the car, looked at the gas gauge, and said, "Oh, right, I was supposed to get gas last night." Oops. Well, if being a little late for work is the worst thing that happens to me, then that's all right. (My boss, by the way, is super understanding and doesn't really care if we're late sometimes. She knows shit happens. Very down-to-earth, she is. I hope she's my boss for a good long time.)

So, let's see. This is the first full week of class, so Film as a Medium was Monday and tonight I have Films & Literature. I have got to use the next couple of nights to get caught up (or, better still, a little ahead) on the reading and homework! That way the rest of my free time can be spent watching movies from my Netflix queues. Oh, Netflix! The most fantastic invention of my life. This past weekend, before I got crazy busy, I watched two more movies on Instant, and one of the actual DVDs (that was I Love You, Man, which I liked. I love Rudd and Segel together). But they were actual good movies, this time! I watched Teeth again, which I love. Then I watched a documentary about Andy Goldsworthy called Rivers and Tides. If you don't know, Goldsworthy is a sculptor who works only with natural elements (i.e. sticks, rocks, leaves, ice) and makes transitory art (the film's subtitle is Working With Time). His work is beautiful, as is the doc; I highly recommend it. It's a very quiet film, for the most part, just kind of following him and letting him do what he does and sometimes talk about it. Sometimes his pieces work, and sometimes they don't. And the film is done so well, I think it was as devastating to me as it was to him when some of them didn't. I had seen part of it (possibly on Discovery?), and was dying to see the whole thing, so yay Netflix! Hopefully they have some more of the docs about him, because he's awesome. They have an amazing selection of documentaries, which I love. Also on my queue: Helvetica. Can you guess what that one's about? Or whether I'm a nerd? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Oh! I just remembered something else that made me happy *technically* yesterday, but then I thought of it and it made me happy again: My friend Sharon, who has a most awesome blog, wrote a most hilarious real-time review of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. I now need to see this more than ever, and guess what? Netflix to the rescue! Netflix makes the whole world better.

Also, I had decided to take a personal day on Friday to take my car in for her 15-month/18.5k mile physical. It's great because the reason I took Friday is that I have an engagement party to go to Saturday at 3 p.m., and I didn't know how long it was going to take. As it turns out, that's not going to take long at all, so I have a day off! So very exciting. Plus, again with the awesome boss: I asked her Monday, and she said "Sure!" and then I started to explain why, and she said, "It doesn't matter. You have the time, take it!" Did I mention awesome? Also, one of the gifts the engaged couple registered for : A Jolly Roger doormat. Can you guess who they're getting that from? (Also the chip-'n'-dip server, because every time I go over there, we're eating chips out of the bag, and my fingers get greasy. Ulterior motives in every gift I give, people.)

Anyway, I suppose I should go eat my lunch (co-worker is sharing her vegetable barley soup with me, on the day somebody brought in many fine breads! Bread and soup are so very lovely together). Yum! I hope everybody has a great No Whining Wednesday. See you next week!

Wednesday. Has there ever been a greater day? (Probably. Just go with it.)

No Whining Wednesday again! I did not write a post last week, which apparently led some people to believe that I was tied up in someone's basement (aw, thanks for being concerned, gp, sugar!) or possibly causing havoc and mayhem, but I was not. I just didn't get around to it. But here I am, posting away, ready for another edition of No Whining Wednesday!

Tonight is the first night of my second class for the semester, Film as a Medium. It sounds essentially the same as Intro to Cinema, which I already took, but hey... who doesn't want to have an easy class that I already know everything for? Besides, I can always use a refresher, what with my holey old brain, and ... well, it's a film class, for crying out loud! Delightful. Can't wait to get a gander at the syllabus. I hope there's not as much group work as the other class has, though I'll make the best of it. It's what I do. The other class, by the way, began last Wednesday. Seems like it'll be a good time (other than the group work, which is always kind of iffy, but there's a few girls I chatted with that seem to have heads on their shoulders, relatively speaking). Anyhoodle, Films and Literature is going to be a comparison of interpretation, if I was paying attention. So we'll be reading 5 books and comparing them to the movie versions thereof, looking closely at how interpretation affects the story. We're starting with Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now, which is good because I've already read the story and seen... well, some of the movie. I've had it on DVD for years, but it's one of those things I have to be in a particular mood for, so I haven't actually watched the whole thing. I do love the story, though. So, yay for classes! I love school. Have I mentioned I'm kind of a dork?

(My only sadness about classes is that since they're on Mondays and Wednesdays, I'm going to miss some of my favorite programs! But, that's why God invented the Internet. Or Al Gore. Or whoever. And DVR, which I don't have, but my sister does, and we watch many of the same programs (or at least, the ones I'm sad I'll be missing). So yay! for sisters with DVR who don't mind me coming over to watch m'stories with them!)

What else, what else... Oh! I finally joined the rest of the world in 1997 and signed up with Netflix on Sunday. Between Sunday night and Monday, I managed to get around 40 movies on my queue, and probably total a dozen and a half on my Instant queue. I watched five of the Instant ones. Good grief, this is going to be bad for me... I may never leave my TV again! Especially now that I figured out how to use the Xbox to watch them on the good TV! Also, I made myself a little Xbox character person. (Mr. Pseudo-Husband said she looks like Tina Fey. Which I could see, if Tina Fey was quite a bit chunkier.) Anyway, I can finally catch up on all these movies I've been wanting to say, but hate going to the video store for! Hooray! Netflix is, like, the most amazing invention ever. Seriously. Printing press my ass. Also, this is going to make for some fun posts if I keep watching movies like Powder Blue and Shrooms, which, naturally, I will. That's just who I am.

Well, I suppose I ought to get to work. Silly work, they expect me to work for the paycheck they're giving me! I guess I can't really blame them there. I hope everyone's Wednesday is Wonderful and doesn't inspire any Whining!