st johns wort withdrawal
I took a walk around the office to clear my head and that didn't work. I'm supposed to be writing something that's due in 15 minutes. Think I'll make it?
Monday: long flight. crap movies. watched 3 episodes of CSI and
Bride & Prejudice. those were the best choices. lugged luggage into the filthy apartment. went to work (insert *grumble*). hair stylist forgot my appointment and so some other guy turned my hair this blondy orangy brown thing that everyone says they like but I'm not sold on. went downtown. they
took away the cube on astor place. had
dinner with my friend anisa. went home to a suddenly clean apartment. went to bed.
Tuesday: meeting after meeting. good
lunch with former boss (insert *sigh*). more meetings. got some
drinks after work. good debate about fear and the state of our country and legalizing drugs and GM crops and stuff. went to see
Sin City. I kept nodding off nearer to the end. basically, it made my head explode. I saw way too much of the technical elements to keep me from enjoying it. need to see it again.
Today: meeting after meeting. lunch at the
border. more meetings (insert *growl*). supposed to be working but I'm not. looking forward to dinner.
that's my ramble. I'm still grumpy. and now I have to think about how long I'm going to sit here pretending to work. crap.
nyc
I'm here. I'm jet-lagged. I'm happy. I'm pissed off. I'm just telling you all this so you know where I am on the planet. More later!
more on leaving
So, Lee forced a chill pill down my throat and I feel much better. I still really should leave after August 22 to meet the days required by the IRS, and I just found out from work that if I leave on or after August 25, I get two more vacation days. Well, that pretty much seals the deal in my book. Even if I don't take those days, I'd get paid for them and the alternative is not earning any vacation from working in August (in the UK). I really
really wanted to fly home on the 20th (super-duper birthday weekend), but it just seems to make more sense not to. I'm about 74% sure that I should stay the extra days.
So, now I've got to decide whether to leave on the Thursday, Friday, or weekend and whether to have the big party I was planning in London on my birthday (as planned - Friday the 19th) or move it to the following weekend, which is before a three-day weekend. I dunno. Ideas?
Oh, and Jerrod, we are SO having a Labor day/Birthdays/Home Again party.
ARGH! stoopid taxes
So it turns out that for tax purposes (like, little $200 refund vs. paying $3000 buttload - for THIS year) I need to be abroad for a total of 330 days. Well, guess what? I have to extend my stay to fly on the 28th AND cut my July trip all (and I mean ALL) the way down to fly out Sunday the 3rd and come back on Tuesday the 5th. That gets me to exactly 330 days. All because I have a friggin work trip in August I can’t get out of. It’s to NY but it doesn’t matter because we’ll be offsite the whole damn time in NEW JERSEY. If I’d known, I would have cut the April trip in half, and the tickets are non-refundable. ARGH!
NY=100%
Trip's been approved, tickets have been bought. I get in the afternoon of Monday 25 April and leave during the evening of Sunday May 1. If you need further details, ask, and Lee has a copy of my itinerary, as well, if you can't find me.
BTW, now might be a good time to mention that I'll be in Kent on the afternoon of Friday 22 April to morning of Sunday 24 April.
busy busy busy, and yet, just not busy enough.
how I pick movies
So, Sean and Tim have been annoying the crap out of me (a.k.a. "taking the piss") by insisting that I don't like foreign films (i.e., nothing not made in the states) and won't watch movies with subtitles. This is, of course, crap. I watch movies I'm interested in. I don't care where they're from.
So, I was thinking some more about this. Like, how DO I get interested in something and follow the trail to it? And you know what? It's a complicated Laura-brain thing. But I always pick a movie based on something I know about it, like the actor or director, or if I've seen something about it that interests me, like a tv show talking about how the effects were done. I don't watch things randomly very often. So, here's some foreign films that I watched (and liked or loved) and how I ended up seeing them (alphabetically, of course):
-
Espinazo del diablo, El (The Devil's Backbone, Mexico 2001): Sue and I flipping channels in Barcelona came across this, came back and described it to Sean, who obviously knew what it was and hooked us up.
Review: scary, but not as scary as when we saw it without the subtitles. Gorgeous filming of the ghost. Hooked me on
Del Toro and led to
-
Cronos (Mexico 1993): Saw Devil's Backbone, had to see Cronos. I've now seen all the Del Toro I can get my hands on, although I need to rewatch
Mimic.
Review: Not scary but who cares? It's a vampire/zombie movie and the scene where he licks the blood off the floor is fab.
-
Lashou shentan (Hard Boiled, Hong Kong 1992) &
Die xue shuang xiong (The Killer, Hong Kong 1989): ah, Keith. Keith introduced me to these, gosh, back in high school or early in college? Anyways, spawned an immediate love for
John Woo and
Chow Yun Fat that's made me sit through total crap like
MI II and
Bulletproof Monk &
The Replacement Killers. So apparently I can watch something based on pure recommendation, but it's rare and usually involves someone watching it with me while I'm at their house. Or Jerrod's house.
Review: Love them both, must see the opening shoot-out of Hard Boiled and the ending shoot-out of The Killer. Of the two, I slightly prefer The Killer, which has Chow as the sympathetic bad guy (vs. the brooding good guy in Hard Boiled).
-
Mononoke-hime (Princess Monoke, Japan 1997): saw an interview with Minnie Driver where she was talking about it. Trust me, it wasn't Minnie; it was the animation. It stunned me immediately. That and that it was the highest grossing movie in Japan until Titanic came along. What's funny is that I saw the thing with Minnie and ended up accidently seeing
Spirited Away 'cause it came out right after and I got them confused. Good mistake.
Review: I absolutely adore this movie. It's just wonderful. Wonderful characters and mythology and animation. Spirited Away's great, but Princess Monoke's epic.
-
Triplettes de Belleville, Les (The Triplets of Belleville, France 2003): well, I remember when it was out in NY and Mel saw it and had a mixed review and that it got nominated for an Oscar, but I got interested when I saw clips of it on
Channel 4's top 100 cartoons list. Flatmate-Kevin wanted to see it too so I rented it.
Review: beautiful and sad. Great music. Amazing animation of water. Not for most people.
-
Ying xiong (Hero, Hong Kong 2002): I've adored Jet Li every since
Lethal Weapon 4. The football scene in
Romeo Must Die is priceless and he even made
Kiss of the Dragon watchable. Of course, after
Crouching Tiger, everyone was on the kung fu-wire work-fantasy bandwagon, but what made me want to see Hero was Jet Li standing and waiting for the arrows to hit. One of the few times I've seen a movie based on the damn promos.
Review: I love it. I've seen it twice in the last year. If you haven't, why haven't you?
It's not even close to a complete list but this post is getting huge. It doesn't count British movies (
Boyle - whose name I just found out) or Aussie movies (
Baz) or even Kiwi movies (
Jackson). And, yes, they all tend to be easy to get and not some really random esoteric genre flick. And it doesn't tell you about silly random reasons I've watched movies, like the fact that I watched
Ginger Snaps because
Lucy Lawless has an uncredited part in it. (BTW, in doing the IMDB search for Lucy, I found out she's in
Boogeyman, so now I have to go see it. I mean, who can resist?) But it does say a little about my brain. Here's one I saved for last:
-
Mariachi, El (Mexico 1992): saw it in class my freshman year at NYU. The Spanish made me feel oddly at home, but the movie itself blew me away. I have mixed feelings about
Rodriguez because he butchered
Desperado (except for the blood splatter) and I haven't bothered with
The Faculty (beyond the first little bit - what crap) or
Once Upon a Time in Mexico, which everyone says is crap, or
Spy Kids but I
love El Mariachi and his room in
Four Rooms and
From Dusk Til Dawn. But when I read the article in
Wired talking about
Sin City, I got so excited that it's one of the only things I've been talking about for the last week. White blood!!! I can't wait until June 3 to watch it, so I'm going when I'm back in NY. Period. oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.
Yeah, I'm weird, but so are you.
you know: me
I've been getting flack that I don't talk about myself in my blog and stuff. Well, that's because you're a diverse bunch of people. I don't think my grandma is interested in the same stuff Sean is and vice versa. It makes it hard sometimes and I like being random. However, y'all have a point, so here's an update of the last week or so.
So, I got back from
Milan on the 20th. The following week was mostly about work (of course) but the UK closes on Good Friday and Easter Monday, so I got a nice four-day weekend. Anyways, that week I began to focus on a PR project, which is nice since I never get to work on PR. I also found out that my boss has decided to move back to the UK in June. This puts pressure on me to figure out when I want to go back and whether to fight to stay or just come home like I'm supposed to. I spent most of my long weekend thinking about it in the way I usually meditate on a given problem: lots of couch surfing. Although, I did go out on Friday night with flatmate-Julia for her birthday. Anyways, I thought about it and I don't really have anything keeping me here, even though I like it and the work environment is tons better. And Jerrod will kill me if I don't come home. Plus there's weddings and Susan in Vermont, so I'm not going to push to stay. However, I do think it would be lame if I got less than 11 months here, so I am going to fight to stay until at least August 20. I figure, party on my bday in London Friday night, fly home, party (prolly low-key) Saturday night in NY. That's not firm, but that's what I'm thinking.
Following week, well, more work. But my friend Jasmine had a party to raise money for the uniforms for her cheerleading squad on Wednesday and drinks with another friend on Friday then out to Herne Hill for dinner. Oh, and lunch with Adam on Friday, too. Then more couching surfing, including the new
Dr. Who (second episode WAY better than first). I did go on a cooking kick and cooked my cuban fish and pasta for my flatmates on a couple of nights.
This week, well, nothing's happened yet. My taxes absolutely completely suck. I spent all day on them yesterday and got nowhere. So, I figure I'll shell out the $300 I don't have on H&R Block or something. I just can't get the international crap straight - and that's before I deal with NY state and city. Tonight I'm almost definitely going to see
Lizz Wright (Lee/Mel: remember my bday a couple of years ago?) tonight but probably by myself since no one else seems interested.
That's pretty much it. Hope you all feel nice and updated. Random thoughts, I'm sure, next time.
