:: Venting Insanity ::

:: Saturday, July 12, 2003 ::

movie review
I watched Spy Kids 2, with Antonio Banderas and Ricardo Montalban, tonight. The Cortez family is a family of spies, being instrumental in the start up of a junior spy division after discovering their kids are just as good at being spies as the parents are. Apparently it runs in the family, because we get to see the maternal grandparents in this one, too.

Anyway, it turns out that even new organizations have their corruption, starting with the teleprompter in front of the President changing halfway through his speech to announce the new head of OSS. While it should have been Gregorio Cortez, it gets changed. The Giggles family becomes the new head family, with the children gaining Level One access and the coveted Ukata Mission. After an incident at the spy banquet, Juni is "fired" under accusations that he lost the powerful Transmookle device. Carmen does a little hacking into OSS computers, reinstates Juni and switches missions so the Giggles end up in the Gobi Desert while she and her brother go to the Island of Lost Dreams on the Ukata Mission.

While all the high tech gadgetry gets a little crazy, there's a strange dampening field around the island that prevents anything electrical from being used, which takes that out of the picture. If you're going to watch this, you really have to keep in mind that it's made for kids.

On the otherhand, once you're in the right mindset, you can sit back and enjoy the corny jokes and cool special effects. It's a fun movie with some really funny stuff and some pretty recognizable people. There's no huge plot twist, as the bad guy becomes pretty obvious early on, but I had fun watching it anyway.

:: Friday, July 11, 2003 ::

sigh
Well, things got screwed up, and I wasn't able to make it to the meeting today. Linouse said she'd call back sometime next week to reschedule.

other meetings
I have a meeting coming up for the health info portal. Rob said it's going to be sometime during the next two weeks. Hopefully, the two meetings won't end up on the same night. I missed the last one... {{sigh}}

can you rev it any louder??
And if Steve in 18 revs that damn motorcycle again tonight, Mom's gonna go out there and kill him. He was revving the engine, and all his motorcycle buddies were yelling and cheering. Meanwhile, it's after midknight and Mom has to get up at 5 am for work. She's not happy. She asked Dad to go over and ask him to stop revving, which he went. The revving has stopped, but Dad hasn't come back, yet. He probably got roped into a conversation. {{shrugs}}

confusion
As for those of you who were confused on my last post... Well, I can't explain it much better. The office is on Seventh Avenue and the cross street just uptown is either 27^th Street or 28^th Street, but Linouse wasn't sure which. Does that help? I just get nervous when the people giving the directions don't sound too sure of the directions they're giving.

hmm
And glancing through other people's blogs... it makes me wonder if I'm the only one other than Robyn who posts everyday...

:: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 ::

strange call
So I'm out getting one of Mom's prescriptions for her when I get a call on my cell phone. It's someone named Linouse Joseph asking to meet with me. Apparently, this person had been introduced to Dad through a guy at EES and Dad had mentioned I was looking for a job.

Networking in action. Heh... ^^;;

Anyway, so I agree to meet this person. It's tomorrow at 7 pm in Manhattan. The place is on the 8^th floor of a building on 7^th near 27^th Street. Linouse said, "Either 28^th or 27^th, I'm not sure which one is above us." I'm thinking, that doesn't sound very convincing...

Oh well. It's an odd time, too. I hope that doesn't mean they're looking for people to work nights. No can do with my school schedule come September.

movie review
Today, I watched Hiyao Miazaki's Spirited Away. It's a story about a 10-year-old girl, Chihiro, who's moving to a new town. She's rather depressed, having left her best friend behind, and doesn't like the idea of having to face an entirely new school. She's also a bit of a baby about things, whining when she doesn't get her way, afraid of anything that looks weird, stuff like that. Her father takes a wrong turn on their trip towards their new home and they end up lost in an old abandoned amusement park. When a strange spell leaves piles of enchanted food out to eat, her parents, who partake in the food, are turned into pigs. Chihiro finds herself dragged unwillingly into the spirit realm, and has to find a way to save them before they're eaten by the spirits.

Once you get past the whining from the girl, it's not a bad movie. Some parts are extremely strange, and the drawing style is extremely similar to Kiki's Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke. There's plenty of odd looking characters, including the Radish Spirit, who looks like a sumo wrestler that needs a bra. The storyline gets a bit odd at times, but that may be because of cultural differences. There's a lot of ancient Japanese culture in this movie, and it will definitely be hard for children unfamiliar with it to understand.

On the upside, I did enjoy the animation and, despite some of their strangeness, most of the characters were pretty likable. Even Chihiro begins to grow on you as her temperament changes through the movie. She definitely goes through a period of personal growth in this movie, spending approximately a week without her parents to guide her and support her, doing hard bath house drudgery work, and still trying to find a way to rescue her parents without the domineering bath house owner figuring out what she's doing.

While I'm glad I didn't spend the money to see it in theatres, I'm glad I did see it after all. It wasn't a waste of my time.

herumph
So, I stopped by the Sprint PCS store in Riverhead today. Apparently, I'm going to have to get a brand new phone since mine's too old to upgrade anymore. Maybe it's a ploy, who knows, but he wouldn't upgrade it for me, which means I'm going to keep getting a crappy signal, missed calls, and late voice mails. There was another phone there that was about the same price as the one I have now after the 2 year agreement discount. Maybe I'll pick it up next month or something, depending on money situations.

boring day
I hung out with Johnny and Estelle, tonight. It was easy going. It was almost the baby's bedtime anyway, so, after he was in bed, Estelle and I grabbed some ice cream from 7-11. Then, we played a game of Phase 10. Nothing major, just some relaxing around.

Of course, it was really annoying today to have to keep resetting the clocks. Apparently, LIPA was working on the lines today, which kept making everything blink on and off. It was really annoying. I wish I had known sooner. I wouldn't have bothered running around and resetting all the clocks, then.

Luckily, it didn't happen seriously enough early this morning when I was watching the Spirited Away DVD. I would have been really annoyed then.

tired
I was so tired today. Like I said earlier, I was up earlier than usual. I was so tired at one point, that I just wandered around the house aimlessly. I was restless, but too tired to really do anything. I ended up taking a nap.

snapple "real fact" # 123
Beavers were once the size of bears.

:: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 ::

wow
I watched Hamtaro today. Yikes. I was actually up early enough to see it. I'm kind of ticked off they took Rurouni Kenshin off the air. I was really starting to like that show. Now they've got this new one called Cyborg 009, which I didn't watch, yet. Last night was the first episode, but I was with Mom at the hospital visiting Nana. I also watched Zoids. I'm starting to take a liking to that, too.

Of course, now I have the stupid theme song to Hamtaro in my head...

Maia, Daughter of Atlas, Run baby run.


What Lesser known Goddess are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

:: Monday, July 07, 2003 ::

addtional updates
In addition to the bronchitis, my grandmother has congenitive heart failure? I think... I didn't hear Mom very clearly, but she said they caught everything in time before it becoming pneumonia. That's a good thing. The hospital still has to run some tests (which they screwed up somehow... {{shrugs}}) and then she'll be out soon.



We visited her today in the hospital. She looks pretty good. They've got her on some kind of steroid again, which will probably swell her legs up like it did last time, but it helps her breathing. She complains everytime they put her on it, but there's nothing else that works for her to help her breathe. Either way, she's still coughing up a lot, but she looked pretty good. Mom said it was a major improvement from Saturday.

be vewy vewy quiet... i'm huntin' for jobs
Today was a day of job hunt related errands. I e-mailed a few things out this morning while I was printing up my résumés. Then, I hit NBTY, the vet's office, and this place in Riverhead called Kaps-all.

They build automation machines for bottling plants. Anything that gets put in a bottle can be bottled by their machines, apparently. The guy I talked to was very happy to tell me all about the place, the people, and what they do there. He even showed me the manufacturing area where all the machines are put together. There was another person that had come in to fill out an application at the same time as me, but they didn't ask her to wait and see if the guy could talk to her, so I guess that might be a good sign.

Anyway, I ran a few more errands while I was out, too, before getting home and heading over to the hospital.

moneymoneymoney mo--ney.... money!
Apparently, I was qualified for the earned income credit from the government. I filled out my tax form and sent it in manually this year. After I got my refund, they sent me another form about the EIC. So I filled that out and sent it back, too. Whatever I did this past year was good enough for them because they sent me a nice check in the mail that I got today.

Hey, I'm not complaining. Any money from the government is good. Heck, it's technically our money to begin with, anyway. Heh. ^^;; I already know which bill it's going to pay... {{sigh}}

snapple "real fact" #155
In 1926, the first outdoor mini-golf courses were built on rooftops in NYC.

updates
I found out why Nana's in the hospital. She has bronchitis again. At least it wasn't another false alarm.

day at the beach
I went with Estelle, Erin, Jason, and the baby to the beach today. It's been ages since I've been to a beach. We had a lot of fun. The baby wouldn't go in the water, but let Jason take him over to the playground to play. Estelle, Erin, and I just hung out in the water for a while. A friend of hers from work was there with her 10-year-old son, so he came swimming with us for a while, too.

It was really relaxing to float in the water and watch the sunset. The rocks on the shore sucked, but it was fun anyway.

Afterwards, I stopped back at my house and changed before heading back over to Estelle's. We played the Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone game. Johnny had come home at that point, so he played the game, too. He won... and, like always, we went on to see who got second. I got second. It might have taken too long after that to figure anyone else out, so we called it quits. Usually we figure out second place with board games like that. Monopoly doesn't work as well because it's an elimination game.

Then, we just hung out and talked for a while before heading home. I have a few things to do tomorrow as far as job searching and that StoresOnline stuff. Erin had a ton of homework for her summer classes in addition to laundry to do. So, we headed out after a while.

job searching
I'm emailing Google about those Program Coordinator jobs. One is weblog specific while the other is a more general type of position. I also got a couple leads out of the Suffolk Life newspaper. I also want to hit Newsday tomorrow and see if I find anything in their classifieds.

snapple "real fact" #126
A pigeon's feathers are heavier than it's bones.

:: Sunday, July 06, 2003 ::

birthdayness
So, we were supposed to go out to dinner for Dad's birthday today. Mom had a doctor's appointment this morning, followed by a hair appointment. However, when she still wasn't home around 5 pm, I began to wonder what the phone call earlier that afternoon had been.

Mom got home two hours later and started to apologize to Dad. We ended up not going out. Turns out Nana's in the hospital again. I don't know what it is this time.

So, we had hotdogs and tater tots, followed by Mom's brownies for desert.

comic progress?
I actually started to get some ideas for my web comic, believe it or not. I've almost got the first page finished. Just need to add some details to the pictures and get my parents' scanner working right again. Right now, all that works is the copy utility. I can't scan something in as an image to save on the computer right now. It kind of sucks.

blah
And I still feel like crap. My sleeping schedule is totally off again. I don't get it. {{sigh}}

hackers make you worry? not me...
Hacker Challenge for July 6^th

I'm not that big of a site. However, if I were hosted on a free site like GeoCities or Tripod, I'd probably worry. If I had a bigger site worth hitting, I'd probably worry, too.

Either way, I'm not too worried about it. Besides, I have my entire site saved on my personal computer anyway. Nothing bad's going to happen that I can fix by uploading the right files again.