Typical The-Day-Daylight-Savings-Time-Ends conversation:

Jon: hey did we drop an hour today?
Kristin: we did!
Jon: hmm
Kristin: hah! I thought I'd slept till 11, but it's only 10!
Kristin: I feel so much more productive and all I've done so far is throw on the same clothes as yesterday

So I've given up on being invited to a Halloween party, but that's ok. I'm going to rent either The Lady in White and/or Something Wicked This Way Comes, and I have Army of Darkness on VHS ... and make a night of it. Popcorn, a few friends, wine and I'll even turn on the heater so they don't all freeze to death (which would be a horror in itself).

Anyone want to come over? My popcorn is artery-hardening good!

More than a little surreal (and long!): Shingo [via Jon]

My blog is worth $8,468.10.
How much is your blog worth?

Yowza.

[via Reecie]

If you're wondering what's wrong with me, so am I.

So like the sun this last week before daylight savings time ends, my patience, my personality, and my desire to be with people have also gone into hiding.

Usually, I'm all about being with others. Given the choice, I always choose to be with someone rather than be alone, even if I really have stuff to do or need the alone time. And I was alone for about two weeks there, and ye gods, it was boring. I didn't go out, I didn't spend time with friends. I just worked, came home, exercised, made dinner, watched movies, and was very ... electronic when it came to communicating with people, since I can't be bothered with the phone. I was ready for it to end at any cost.

Then last week happened. I was out every single night, ran out of clean clothes 'cause I couldn't do laundry, travelled over the Bay Bridge 4 times over the course of the weekend, until Monday, when I came home from work and just went to bed at 5 p.m.

Now I'm getting wedding shower invitations for people I don't know*, people are calling me at work, at home, and on my cell phone and not leaving messages**, and with few exceptions, I don't really want to talk to or see anyone***.

Thing is, it's a phase, and it'll be over soon, and then all will be sunny and well. Or as sunny as it can be as we are still headed towards midwinter. In the meantime, I'm feeling rather cold, both inside and out. Damn my apartment gets frigid during winter!!

Oh, and? Yay for the first rain of the season! Sweater weather is back!

* I think I may have met the bride-to-be once, months and months ago, but the groom-to-be isn't mentioned on the invitation, so I'm not sure it's really her ... and who the hell invites someone they don't know to their wedding shower? Isn't that for the bride and her friends? This girl has never come out, or let her fiance come out, with us the entire time they've been together. If I'm thinking of the same girl, that is.

** I'm on the do-not-call list, so I don't think it's telemarketers, but just so's you know, even if I know who you are and you don't leave a message? I'm not going to call you back. I figure if it was important, you'd let me know in so many words.

*** It's not that bad. And I even have plans to go out this week. And it would be nice to be invited to a Halloween party on Saturday ... but it won't crush me at all to stay at home and knit till November.

This BSB Video is almost as good as this one. [via Jon, as usual]

The Red Elvises were *awesome* last night. This is rare, as I usually find a band I know nothing about simply "interesting" or "good", but not great, since I can't sing along and don't know the tempo changes, so I look like a dork while dancing. But these guys? AWESOME. I will be acquiring as much of their music as possible in the near future so that I can sing along next time.

NOTE: they were preceeded by possibly the worst band I've ever seen live (which is saying quite a bit), but I'm pretty sure the RE would still have rocked even if they didn't have the contrast.

So Bon Jovi is coming to town in February. Want to go with me? Let me know real soon and I'll get the tickets.

Jon is my sender of good links today:

e-closure and Girls of Geekdom (mostly work safe)

So I didn't spend $250 on a new-to-me camera today, so I'm feeling rather proud of myself. I figured I already have 3 (count 'em *3*!) batteries for my current camera, and the same number (count 'em SAME NUMBER!) of compact flash cards, so I couldn't justify the expense of the camera + the expense of gearing it up like my current setup.

Mind you, I'm pretty much resigned to having to change batteries when I finally do upgrade, but the CF cards ... I'd like to be able to use those some more. They're pretty good. And big. Not really big, 'cause I don't want to lose *everything* when they finally crap out, but big enough to take lots of baby pictures and still have room for kittens and flowers. 'Cause you know that's what I'm all about.

So that's my news today: I didn't spend $250. Yay me.

When in doubt, blog your IM conversations:

Jessa: in a 4 day training class, and trainer dude is READING US THE TRAINING HANDBOOK. Dude, give me the book and let me go read it on my own, outside somewhere... :)
Booboolina: ha! dork.
Jessa: yes, rather. ;/
Booboolina: I bet he gets paid *big bucks* to do this, too.
Jessa: no kidding
Booboolina: at least he could pick something more interesting, like the harry potter book that's coming out in the theater next month
Jessa: hahahahaha
Jessa: yes!
Booboolina: I found out today that Ralph Fiennes is going to be Voldemort.
Jessa: hahahhaah! AWESOME!
Jessa: he broods better than anyone
Booboolina: I saw Constant Gardener yesterday, good movie.
Booboolina: he has such pretty eyes.
Jessa: well, they're probably going to be red in this one
Jessa: and probably serious makeup, too
Booboolina: damn. I forgot about that.
Jessa: I mean, he's been dead and all
Booboolina: doh!

Holy god. I have worked in a few office environments in my working career, but I don't think I've ever worked anywhere that had as much renovation done during my tenure. Or certainly not WHILE WE'RE TRYING TO WORK!

In other news, the bodice fit better the second day and Fred Willard interviewed my friends and the Ren Faire was great! Not the best we've attended, but it was by far the most painless, and that counts for a great deal. Pictures posted to Flickr, as per usual.

Jessa and I are going to a Renaissance Faire tomorrow. Just today, we realized that neither of us have donned a bodice in about 2 years. I don't believe that she has anything to worry about, but given that I'm having a tough time fitting into clothes I bought for last Christmas' holiday season, I'm doubtful that tomorrow is going to be a restful or easy-breathing sort of day.

Also, although I no longer say things like "I'm never having kids", at the rate my love life is going, it's not likely that I will ever have any offspring (hence my delight in my brother's kids). And I'm ok with that. Like any other intelligent decision, I'm aware of what I'm giving up and what I'm gaining by my lifestyle. To make it easier, somewhere along the line, my biological clock broke, so I don't need to procreate. Also, my family doesn't nag me to have kids either. Yes, I'm aware of how lucky I am.

There are moments, however, when I can physically feel what I'm missing out on, and one of them was reading the last part of this post. You need to read the rest of it for the full impact, but it's worth it.

I hate peas. I always have. When I was 4, my second cousin taught me to shovel a few peas in my mouth and then follow them with either 1) a huge gulp of milk that would just slide those puppies through without my having to really "deal" with them or 2) lots and lots of ketchup to hide the taste/texture, to my mother's eternal humiliation.

Family holidays now resound with the teasing refrain "What are we having for dinner? Peas! Kristin loves peas!" It's all very funny. Dinah sent this along, and it immediately resounded with me, for obvious reasons:

... the last dish I cooked to eat was pretty crass, just some microwaved hot water that I threw frozen peas into and when the peas were hot I ate those with a slotted spoon. I figured the peas had nutrition but I looked them up on Google and peas ain't got zick-dack for my dang endoplasmic reticulum to pass around. My endoplasmic reticulum is like "why did you eat peas." Like it is kind of bored and does not look up from its newspaper.
roast beef

Flickrdate Why the hell not!

If you live on the right side of the San Francisco Bay, but you like to party on the left side, please be aware that CalTrans is shutting down the Bay Bridge Eastbound altogether from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. this weekend. They think to make up for this inconvenience by having BART run all night, which is great and all, but gosh. I guess it's a good thing I'm not going into the City this weekend, 'cause I don't want to go through this or this again.

I ate a bit more today:

2 million cups of tea
1 bagel
1 Advil Cold and Sinus
1 Vitamin C
4 tsp Robitussin CF (divided)
1 salmon steak
2 glasses of water

I'm hoping that the fact that my cough isn't 'too bad' is because it really isn't too bad, and not because I haven't spoken to anyone since 5 p.m. on Sunday. I guess we'll find out tomorrow when I go to work for the first time this week.

Hoping also that the life content of this site will get more interesting. In the meantime, I posted pictures from my weekend on Flickr.

Today's diet:

5 million cups of tea
1 bagel

Being sick. It sucks, but at least I'm not overeating.

Mike sent this along: SinceSlicedBread.com - whoever sends in the common-sense idea that will most improve the day-to-day lives of everyday Americans gets $10,000.

I think making everyone use their turn signal would be the best way to improve everyone's life. Don't you? If not, submit your own.

Security: a large mug of hot water, the baggiest clothes I own, Keene and 80's music.

So as it happened, traffic trying to escape the City pretty much sucked all weekend. Saturday night I didn't even try the Bay Bridge, and instead drove all the way to the San Mateo bridge to get home. Let me draw you a picture of how far out of my way that is:

Direct route: 13.3 miles

Way the fuck out of my way route: 23.5 miles, then another 30.6 miles

But you know what? I had a lovely time each time I ventured into SF, so it almost makes up for the traffic hell.

In other news, the weather is changing, it keeps getting darker earlier and my walking companions have become very busy, so I've been circling the Lake on my own. Last night I ambled, I strolled, I walked with no purpose or stride, mostly because I've been driving too much and sleeping too little lately and I felt like I was going 110 miles an hour in my head and needed to slow down. It was lovely, with the sun setting, the clouds turned pink, birds roosting on the light strands hung on the poles surrounding the lake. And by the time I got home, my headache was gone, as was the nervous tense feeling I've been carrying around for a few days. I need to take my camera out tonight and see what happens.

So let me tell you about my evening.

I met up with Suzan and Kevin around 8, and we had a lovely dinner at some place I'll remember the name of later. Then we went to see Serenity after all and wow. Remember X Files? Remember every other movie based on a tv show? Remember how they were just 2 hour episodes that they could have just showed on a "special" night on your local cable station and then you wouldn't have to pay to see it in a theater? I think with Serenity they managed to actually make a real movie, complete with plot, characters and excitement ... anyway, I really liked it. Then the group split up and I was left to walk 4 blocks of Mission St. by myself at 1:30 a.m. to get back to my car. Which was ok. Put on your bitch face and people leave you alone.

Notice the timestamp of this post. I just got home. That's right. Someone decided it would be a good idea to shut down a part of the Bay Bridge on a FRIDAY NIGHT. Not just the all-but-one-lane deal they usually go for, but the WHOLE DAMN THING. I got on the freeway, and then had to get off, and then was routed through every detour known to man before I could get back on again. I spent 2.25 hours alternating between 0 - 1 miles per hour. Mostly at 0, many times long enough that I just turned the car off and grooved while waiting to see brake lights flashing in front of me. The last 15 minutes was the time it took me once I got on the bridge to get home, turn on the computer, take off my shoes, go to the bathroom and start writing this post.

And I never saw a single CalTrans person/car/light/nada. What's more, I'm too amped up to go to bed. Yee haw.