The Heart of London

I was going to blog about something else, but then I was distracted, and eventually I ended up watching the opening ceremony for this year's Olympics, and how could I not blog about that?

First off, I just want to say I'm pissed I was an extra hour behind because I live in the Mountain Time Zone. Central Time isn't delayed compared to Eastern. Why do Mountain and Pacific have to suffer?

Anyway, this was the first opening ceremony I ever watched, and I was very impressed. From what I hear, there was no matching the display of Beijing's ceremony from 2008, but I'd like to think London had something Beijing didn't. What I saw tonight was a strong and inspiring national pride. In the opening ceremonies, I felt like I was seeing into the heart of London and of the United Kingdom.

Probably the first thing I was really excited about was seeing Kenneth Branagh read the quote from The Tempest. I'm a big fan of Branagh so I thought it was neat to see him be such an important part of something as huge as the Olympics, but also the guy just looked delighted. The grin on his face seemed to reveal his own personal joy at having the games return to his home country.

I also really enjoyed the illustration of the Industrial Revolution. Aside from being a pleasure to watch, this demonstration really highlighted Britain's history and really spoke to me as London's way of saying, "This is who we are." This was followed by the beautiful "Second to the Right and Straight on 'Til Morning" which highlighted numerous themes and characters of British literature. I mean, literature. You know I had to love that.

Later, Paul McCartney performs "Hey, Jude" and there is a slight hiccup somewhere in the first lines. I thought maybe he was laughing at something, but I couldn't imagine what. Then later someone mentioned he had choked up. What? Paul McCartney? But then it wasn't really all that hard to believe, because I was almost in tears myself.

Overall, I thought London did a great job. So they're not Beijing. So what? Their ceremony had incredible heart, and the lighting of the flame was incredible to watch. I'll be watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics for many years, and I think I'll always have to compare future performances to what I saw London do tonight.

I'm Not Feeling It

Surprise, surprise. It's five minutes to midnight and I haven't even attempted to post a blog entry for today. True, part of that is because my computer died and I was too lazy to carry it up to room and plug it in. It's also because I just don't feel like blogging today.

To be honest, I don't feel like doing much of anything. I didn't have a bad day. I went to work; I made delicious coffee and smoothies; I made a second attempt to introduce myself to my new co-worker, the manager's daughter, and I think I did a much better job of that today; I had another delicious sandwich from the sandwich shop upstairs, this time with amazing grilled onions; but then I got home and just became lazy. Took a double nap. Ate the rest of the leftover guacamole. Played with the apps on my phone. Watched old episodes of Top Chef Masters, whatever that is.

I think I'm just lonely? My sister is gone, I'm sad about Zach being fired, I didn't spend a lot of time with my parents after they got home tonight.

Being lazy makes me feel awful. Tomorrow I think I'll do something. Don't ask me what.

Tacos and Pie

Shirley: Shut up, Leonard; I found your YouTube page. What's the point of reviewing frozen pizza?
Leonard: You're talking about it.
Shirley: That is true... 


I'm using the above quote from Community to argue that the following entry is not entirely irrelevant. You can decide for yourself whether or not the argument works.

Sometimes I don't feel like going upstairs for a sandwich during my lunch break, and I won't eat from anywhere in the food court other than the sandwich place, so I just skip lunch or grab a pretzel from next door. Yesterday was one of those days. I ate my free pepperoni pretzel and then told myself I'd go across the street after work for some tacos. Del Taco has a 3 for $1 deal on Tuesdays, and tacos always sound good to me. I texted my boyfriend saying I'd bring him lunch too.

As it turned out, the deal is a "Taco Nights" deal. I panicked for a second, but at Del Taco it seems night starts at 3, which is luckily when I get off work. I noticed that the "regular tacos" were 3 for $.99 and the "classic tacos" were 3 for $1.99. The only difference is tomato. I don't know why Taco Bell and Del Taco charge extra for tomato (but the Taco Supreme at Taco Bell has sour cream too, right?) but I bought three of the classic tacos for my boyfriend because unlike me, he likes tomato. I still got six tacos for $3.19 total, so I don't really care. That's a deal even if their sauce is a little spicy for my taste.

Then at home we had chicken fajitas for dinner. Tacos and the recipe we use for chicken fajitas are two of the few Mexican meals I actually enjoy, so it was a good day. I ate the leftover fajita chicken while watching MasterChef. That show makes me hungry for some weird reason. As if it's about food or something....

Tonight I worked the closing shift which ends at about 9. I told my boyfriend I wanted to try to get out of there as soon as possible and make it to Pie Rush at Village Inn. If you have a Perkins in your town, you probably don't know what a Village Inn is, because they have a hard time existing in the same area. Same basic place though. Breakfast and pie. Village Inn does this thing where you can get a free slice of pie every Wednesday between 10 and 10, but it's only good for their fruit pies and the featured pie of the month. This being the last Wednesday of the month, I wanted to try the Peach Supreme before it was gone. It was a good idea, but they were out by the time we made it. I had Lemon Supreme instead. The one failure of this pie is the whipped cream on top. You give me lemon pie, I want meringue. Enough said.

To sum up, I really like food. I also had a delicious grilled Italian Sub today from the sandwich place in the food court. The girl whose name I don't know makes the best sandwiches.

That's all I have for today. I hope you like food too.

The Darkness Rises

I'm not the kind of person to complain about the violence of video games and movies or to associate that violence with the real violence that happens in the world around me, but a few nights ago some guy walked into a theater and killed some people, and I couldn't help but see the connection.

You've all heard about it by now. It was the premier of the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, and this guy just started shooting during the film. Lots of confusion. People thought it was part of the movie or something. The whole thing reminds me of the opening scene of Scream 2, when that lady gets stabbed to death during the film, and the audience thinks it's some gimmick, and the killer is dressed exactly like so many other moviegoers.

It also reminds me of a character in the previous Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Anyone remember Heath Ledger as The Joker? He had no real motives. His game was chaos for the sake of chaos, crime for the sake of crime, murder and death for the sake of murder and death. The character was so disturbed, Ledger had problems getting to sleep at night.

I don't know much about what went down at that theater in Aurora or what the authorities have determined as far as motive, but I did hear the guy didn't even resist arrest. He didn't turn the gun on himself like so many other crazed shooters we hear about on the news. And that's why I think his motive was exactly this: He thinks he is The Joker. He wanted only chaos. There was no more rhyme or reason beyond this.

This is just my opinion. I'm not saying movies should never have violence or even that this movie was entirely responsible for the recent tragedy in Aurora. All I'm saying is I believe this was not at random, that this occurred at that specific movie for a reason, and that the violence in a movie filmed years ago has a direct and deep connection to an act of violence at the movies just the other night.

Challenge Accepted

Hello again. I've been away for quite a while, and I do have some good excuses and some poor ones, but I don't see any reason to list those. The point is I was gone and now I'm back and I'm jumping back in with another challenge. My friend at 13:13 blog decided to do a 30-day challenge, and he asked if I wanted to join him. Of course I couldn't turn him down. So for the next 30 days I will find something and anything to say, long or short, profound or insignificant (but mostly insignificant) once every day. I hope it's fun for everyone involved.

Thanks for reading!

I perform brain surgery

As most of you probably know, my precious 120 GB Zune tragically crashed several weeks ago. Has it been a month by now? Time goes by so fast when I'm here.

Last Thursday, I purchased a new hard drive and a tool kit online from gadgetmenders.com. Their site had a nifty repair video, and I thought, "I can do this! I don't need to send it in."

I received the package today and almost immediately realized the process of repairing the device would be much more simple than the video made it look. Here, I should post the video in case you want to see it. I'll refer to it enough times anyway.

So there's a little blue tool they use to take the device apart. They included three in the repair tool kit I ordered, which puzzled me at first. Why would I ever need more than one? Well, maybe because the space is so tight I shredded off a good deal of the plastic on those things just trying to wedge them in there? Maybe there's another reason for it, but personally I'm glad I had three to partially destroy instead of just one. 

After spending a good twenty minutes prying the case apart, I finally was able to get a look inside the device.  I peeled the tape off the hard drive as instructed, but I didn't understand the concept of lifting the small black latch. The guy says to "lift it upwards in the vertical direction." I thought that sounded redundant, because up is a vertical direction. So as I struggled with that, I popped the stupid latch right off.

I fumbled with it, called my uncle for help (what could he have told me?), cried, and then kept on going. It would be ridiculous to have to replace the hard drive cable too, but the old hard drive just wouldn't let got of it. I ended up just mutilating the white piece with a screwdriver until the cable came loose. No harm in breaking a broken piece of equipment, right? Now, how would I get the cable attached to the new hard drive if I couldn't figure out how to get it loose from the old one?

That was actually a lot easier. The guy in the video says to restore the latch to "its horizontal position." Oh! So flip up to release, flip down to secure. The difference between the terms "direction" and "position" was crucial here, for me. Now the whole latch idea made much more sense. I managed not to break the latch on the new hard drive.

I snapped the device back together, which was almost as difficult as taking it apart. Then I plugged the device into my computer to prepare for the software update. The screen lit up.

I was so excited to see this again. She was alive, right?

Nope, this image popped up next. The original error message. But I refused to be defeated. I took apart the device again (much easier once it was loosened, and once I knew what the heck I was doing), and saw that the hard drive cable looked a little askew. I flipped up the latch, pushed the cable in again, flipped down the latch, praying the whole time it had just been inserted wrong, and I hadn't damaged the cable somehow in this stressful process. Popped the device together again. Turned it on. 

It just gave me an error message (3 or 4, I don't remember. It's possible both showed up at different times.) Another error, really? What more did I have to do? Not too much: soon the screen displayed Error 2, which is lack of the proper software. Finally, my baby lived again!

It took some time to get the software on my computer to recognize that I connected a new device, and then installing the software onto the new Zune and syncing all my files seemed to take forever, but now she works just as well as before the crash. Except I don't have the default Zune photos anymore. I don't know what happened with that, but now I'm just using one of my personal photos as a background image. It will serve as a constant reminder that my Zunebug contains new hardware, and I don't know yet how I feel about that.

And that's the story of my day as a brain surgeon. Don't ever call on me to perform a brain transplant again, on technology or on a living thing. I'm pretty sure this was a one-time deal.

The Shadow

There once was a land filled with light, and this land knew no darkness. The ground was bare and even, smooth as steel, and no creatures populated the area. A cloud had never appeared in the sky of this realm. All was pure and true, but the land was bare of texture and of life, and this was lonely.

Then one day an event occurred in this land. and the ground became inhabitable, and plants sprouted from it, and to support these plants there had to be rain. And when the rain came, there were clouds. For the first time, the land knew darkness. but the clouds cleared, and all was light again. For a short time.

The sprouts from the ground became trees and bushes, and all varieties of flowers, and animals came to inhabit the area, and soon a small lake appeared as well. And again, the land knew darkness. For the light came from the sky, and could not penetrate the mighty trees or the smallest insects. And some days it would rain again, and there would be no light in sight. And even on days when the light shone bright, the trees and bushes, birds and flowers, and every living thing cast its shadow. And all these creations were beautiful. but there was darkness in the shadows, and darkness in the depths of the lake, and darkness on the cloudiest days.

The land now was full of life, and no longer so lonely and barren as before. But with life came this darkness, and the land was no longer pure and true. The plants and the creatures and the lake made the land beautiful, but ugliness crept in the shadows and the darkness. and there was nothing to be done about this, for where there was life, there must be shadows.