Picture Day

Play rehearsal was cancelled yesterday, yay! I guess I shouldn't "yay" about it, but ah well.

Yesterday was picture day at school, and the kids could wear anything they wanted (instead of the usual uniforms). I told Jack he could pick his own outfit, so he chose his overalls. They are the engineer kind, and then he chose his royal blue "soccer" shirt with a white collar to go with it. Not a too bad of choice, overall. They didn't clash horribly, blue is a good color for him, and it's only a picture afterall.

Last night was not a good night. I don't know why he is in such turnoil lately, but he has been Mr. Attitude with a capital A. Argh. He even started getting an attitude this morning. One second he is fine, then he isn't. I am thinking it may have to do with having the substitute teacher all last week. Mrs. C is back this week, but last week the kids were really acting up, and I am sure Jack has decided he can act like them too. So, it's time to lay down the law, lol.

As if I am not already on top of things, but oh well. It is not worth the headaches to deal with his fits. So, we need to figure out a way to keep them from happening. Oddly enough, the last few days, Jack has been going on and on about how he is a big boy, he's 5.5 years old, so he can do this and that by him self afterall. I am wondering why he is saying that or where he heard it because I have always tried to be pretty careful about using that sort of logic around him. I don't expect certain behavior from him because he has hit a certain number of years in age. I expect things because he has hit a point where he can understand the difference between right and wrong, and the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.

But anyway. I am sure they aren't as bad as I make them sound to be. One or two bad days doesn't overthrow the rest of the good ones. We got some pumpkins from the orchard on Sunday, even though I hadn't planned on it. And, yes, the squirrels have already eaten most of the one Jack picked out, lol. Dratted squirrels.

My Life, Your Life

There is a distinction.

Don't you love total strangers who think they need to weigh in on your life?

Yeah. Me too.

So anyway, this week has flown by ... sort of. I am not as tired as last week, and that is good. We had play rehearsal three times as usual, and that is going well. The actors with the most lines are already off the script, so it seems like it won't take much effort to get the rest pulled together. The director is a bit worried that some people still haven't shown or have dropped out though. I guess one guy is getting married this weekend, lol. Um, if you are planning and having a wedding, why did you audition for a play right in the middle? ;-)

Oh, Christmas lists. That's right.

For Jack

1. "Finding Nemo" DVD (Santa's helpers informed me that this has been taken care of.)


2. "Monster's Inc" DVD (Amazon, Buy.com)


3. painting supplies - smock, big paper, paints


4. Photo albums for his pictures


5. No activity books, crayons, other craft supplies - he has sooo many. No clothes since we are overflowing with those as well. No computer games because we don't have time for them.

For Me

1. Buffy DVD - Seasons 3(Amazon, Buy.com) or 4(Amazon, Buy.com)


2. Angel DVD - Seasons 1 or 2 (Yay for radio contests!)


3. Firefly - the Complete Series DVD (Amazon, Buy.com)


4. Stephen King's "Wolves of the Calla" (Amazon, Buy.com)


5. Photo Albums

I might have to get more creative because the rest of my ideas are gift certificates to stores so I can work on some house projects, lol. Ack. I am always so bad at these lists.

Site Down ... Again!

This is beyond insolent! No wait, beyond ridiculous! Argh. I made a couple of icons for a contest on LiveJournal. They are on the "Trinkets" page.

That is all for now because I have a 3 o'clock meeting, but I will be getting my Christmas wish list up here soon since it has been requested of me. :-)

The Order of Things

Of course, those songs are not in order of recording any longer. I would have to dig through my piles of stuff to figure that out again. And, it was hard enough just finding the files, so alphabetical it'll have to be.

The audio came out horribly apparently with the interview thing the other day. That kind of bums me out because 1) we probably won't try to reshoot it, and 2) we did the interview straight through in one take, so it went really well. It's hard to do a repeat of that, you know? The room we were in had a loud vent (that we covered with a towel, which helped but it was still amazingly loud on the recording), and the ceilings were pretty high, so you could just tell that you were in a echoey kind of room.

Argh. Ah well.

I am so glad it's the weekend because I am just tired from all the running around we have been doing. This is our first weekend home doing nothing for about 3 weeks now I think. Jack decided he is happy to just hang out at home all day, but we need to go to the store to get a few supplies for school lunches at least. Tomorrow is the kick-off of homecoming week too, so we will probably make an effort to get out to the park where it is going on.

Oh! And in other cool school news, Mrs. C tested Jack in math apparently (I think all of the school was having tests this past week, although Jack couldn't tell me whether or not he'd taken the tests *rolls eyes*). She told me yesterday as we were helping her around the room that he scored at 1.8/1.9 which is the end of first grade level. She'll have all the official results for the parent-teacher conferences coming up sometime soon. She'll be gone all next week though, so it will be interesting to see how the days go with a substitute teacher. Yikes.

The area she said he would have trouble with was working problems backwards. For example, 3 + ___ = 5. What is ___ ? We haven't done those type of problems at home yet, but I showed Jack a few examples last night, and he picked it up pretty quickly. It's basically subtraction disguised as addition. ;-)

Forgetful Me

I never said I was one for remembering things. I always rode my bike across town to a friend's house - promising my mom I would call when I got there so she would know I didn't get run over - and 1 hour later as the phone rings, I exclaim: "I forget to call my mom!" Don't worry though. She was usually on the other end of that ring. ;-)

Here you go Rachel. Ooops. :-)

burgandy.mp3
dont_lets_start.mp3
first_time.mp3
hey_mr_dj.mp3
indie_rockin.mp3
offstage_lines.mp3
savior.mp3
sit_down.mp3
mix.mp3

Right-click and save away!

Rehearsals and other things

We have rehearsals three nights a week. Yuck. I am considering calling tonight to skip because we have a neighborhood meeting, and I have never attended one yet. Plus, tonight is the night where Jack has no parts, and I am just at the market. That is a waste of my gas, I am sorry, but it's true. We're talking over 20 miles of driving to do almost nothing.

The weather has become even more fall like. It is cloudy and chilly today. The leaves are really coming down, and the yard needs a good raking. Obviously though, getting home past 9pm, being at family events every weekend, that leave 2 nights a week for me to take care of the house things. That's not going to happen. I am way too tired by then. Last night I did laundry and vacuumed because the horror of my carpet overwhelmed the tiredness I felt.

So, last night was the first filler episode of Angel this season. Werewolf girl. They didn't mention Oz. They used different make-up and costumes for these wolves. Angel said that vampires can control themselves if they want to. And, something seems to be going on with Spike. I got back on the Beta last night and today, so I have been debating a few speculations out there, but I find it hard to believe the writers would go that way after the way Buffy season 7 was received. We will see, I suppose.

Alias, on the other hand, has been doing great! I am mad that Will is just gone to "witness protection." That's lame in so many ways. I don't really buy Vaughn's new wife just yet, but they have more time to develop that. I remember someone saying she is the daughter of a Senator? Hm, I wonder if they are going to go anywhere with that this season. And for the record, 1) Sloane is in no way good now, and 2) Sark looks good w/ the shaved hair too. ;-)

Okay - I have to get ready for a video thing here at work. The woman who does some of the media programming is interviewing a student about a movie he made. It is about the ghost in the English building on campus. She asked me to be the interviewer. Eep.

Angel - "Just Rewards"

This was a good episode. It had me constantly wondering if Spike was going to double-cross Angel or not. Well done, writers.

There was so muck snarky sarcasm flying around, it was great! Angel apparently kept many secrets about everything that went on down in Sunnydale from the rest of the team, and while some people may say "Well, Spike was dead-dead, why should he tell all?," I say he should've told all because (hello?) it was the end of the world (only not, because of a certain someone).

Next week is a werewolf episode. I find it interesting that they are bringing back the werewolf after so long w/o one. I hope they can pull it off. From the quick shot on the preview, the makeup looked quite different from Oz and Veruca. Hm, hope that means it has improved.

We have rehearsal again tonight. Need to set my VCR for ER. *tired*

Sheesh!

It's finally back online. This is so silly.

Gah! Squirrels!

My site has been down for a day and a half or so. I think it's back up now. Sheesh. Hopefully this time no data was lost. *crosses fingers*

Okay - so what's been happening in life? Well, this weekend we were in Peoria to celebrate Grandma's 75th birthday. That was a lot of fun, actually. We stayed with Aunt Amy, spent some time "touring" Peoria, shopped a little, and had a cookout. The weather was still a little chilly, but it has improved since then. (Today should hit 80F.)

A church near Amy's house was having a garage sale, and since Saturday was the last day, you could buy a grocery sack for $3, and whatever fit in it was yours. I found some cool vintage dresses, a skirt and pair of pants for work, a vintage shirt, and a very nice coat. Mom said it was cashmere, but all I knew was it was in perfect shape, very soft, a nice camel color, full-length, and AFL-CIO approved. ;-) My running line at the sale was you knew the clothes were vintage as most of them were "Made in the USA." Now I have some union-approved work clothes. :-p

Of course, Jack didn't think the sale was that much fun. He was being fairly difficult about running errands, but we know now that it was because he had a fever coming on. He did like sifting through the books. And, Amy found a shirt for him, a worker gave him a sparkling baton (Jack kept telling the man he needed to pay for it, but the man insisted he have it for free, lol.), and I snuck a pair of goggles in my bag w/o Jack seeing. That doesn't count as a toy, right?

Off to Nana's house for the cookout. Delicious german-chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert. Grandma opened her gifts, and everyone had fun trying out her blood-pressure gadget, lol. By the morning, Grandma had read the directions, so we could all stop debating the right way to use it and get proper readings, lol.

Uncle Dave was down for the weekend, and Jack had fun chatting him up. As Jack would say, they were "having conversations." Poor Jack though came down with a fever and lost his appetite/sense of humor by late afternoon. He started running a fever of 101° with no other symptoms. We made a pitstop for some medicine and then called it a night. His fever didn't break until Sunday night. It was basically medicine every 6 hours to keep his fever down. It spiked to 102° on Sunday night, but then Monday morning he was 100% better. Appetite was back and everything. Very odd.

Monday was no school, so I took the day off. We hung out at home, tried to clean things up and out a bit, ran errands, and headed to rehearsals for "A Christmas Carol." We have rehearsals 3 times a week until the first week of December. Then, it's time for the show. I have a feeling this is going to make time fly by.

In the meantime, we have Halloween, Thanksgiving, Craig's birthday, work projects, position shifting at the office (retirement & new people), school being out, MCAD exams, then Christmas and the New Year. I would like to fit a vacation in there, lol! Maybe I should just ask for the two weeks Jack is out of school off right now. Hmmm.

Okay - time to get some more things done. Oh, and the squirrels have managed to eat both ears of Indian corn and 1/3 of our smaller pumpkin already in the 1.5 days they were sitting out. Man, those squirrels are notorious!

*yawn*

I am trying to fight a cold (again). I had the oddest dream last night, and I woke before it could finish. I think the cats were running around crashing into things because there were two crazed kittens in my dream. ;-)

I am still excited about the Angel premiere. I knew I would have lots to scroll at the Barge this morning, and yeah, there were 4 pages to go through, lol.

Why is it so cold already? We have been below 60 (sometimes only hitting 50F) since the last week of September. That is way too early for this cold of weather! Argh.

I actually have a semi-slow day today. It's amazing.

Ahh, the Jossverse Continues

And tonight was the season 5 premiere of Angel. It was good. Quite a few laughs, great arcs being set up, liking the characters (new and old), and of course - they saved the best for last. You realize, Spike has had the best exit *and* entrance for 2 seasons now. Those being, his exit from Buffy Seasons 6 & 7, and his entrance in Buffy Season 7 and now Angel Season 5. What can we say, the guy knows how to make an entrance without "opening both doors everytime he enters a room." Ha!