Updates and randomness

So some of you out there may be wondering how everything is going with my new project.  Not too bad, so far.  On Sunday, I did set myself tasks for the whole week, I made a meal plan (although it’s a little off-track due to going to a baseball game on Tuesday and the fact that Monday’s meal made way, way, way more than anticipated – serves two my ass, if you have to bake it in a 9×13 pan, it feeds sufficiently more than two), and I got some things accomplished.  Of the nine tasks I set for myself for Sunday through Wednesday of this week, I have accomplished six – not perfect, but not too shabby either.  I also had a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday, and although there hadn’t been much progress weight-wise since my last visit, she was still very encouraging, and felt that I was developing good plans and that I was owning what I was doing, rather than placing blame elsewhere.  So here’s hoping I can continue getting my shit together.

In other updates, I have managed to, once again, stupidly injure myself.  One of the cats had thrown up in the basement (I know, gross – you wouldn’t believe how much cat puke is spewed around the house in a single day; I’m starting to wonder if they digest anything).  This particular puke pile happened to be near my old computer desk, which we still need to lug upstairs and either throw out or donate.  The back of the desk is facing out.  It is a corner desk, with a low shelf to house the computer tower.  Anyway, when getting down on the floor to clean up the mess, I first went down on one leg, then sat back.  While there was certainly space between me and the desk, I somehow forgot to account for the fact that the PC shelf is longer and sticks out the back.  I sat right into it, gouging my side, which is now sporting a bit of a bruise.  Honestly, you would think I’m uncoordinated or something.

And finally, yesterday I was reminded once again that I buy entirely to many CDs, a realization I first voiced way back in my very first month of blogging, November 2005.  You see, yesterday I visited Homer’s, a local record store.  Homer’s has a great program, where for every $100 you spend (on non-sale items), you can receive a voucher for $12 off.  So I found a few CDs to buy yesterday, and went to the counter, handing over my Musicard (since I’m old school enough to have an actual card – they don’t give them out anymore, and just look people up in the computer by name).  The clerk scanned the card, looked at the screen, and exclaimed “Oh!  I finally get to meet you!”  I found this slightly puzzling.  She then explained that she’s the one in charge of the program and of sending out the certificates, and she had seen my name show up.  A lot.  She apparently even asked someone if I was an actual person, and they assured her that I was and that I really bought that much music.  All I can say is, don’t blame me if the economy sucks, I’m doing my part, dammit!

The One Where I Hold Myself Accountable

Do you ever feel like you sabotage yourself for no apparent reason, or for a reason you don’t want to admit.  Do you ever consciously mentally go over exactly what you need to do, then do the complete opposite.  Do you ever just find yourself stuck and can’t bother with the effort to get out?  I feel like that has been my life for the past few years.  If you know me, or have been reading here for a while, you are probably already aware that, starting about three years back, I had three miscarriages in the space of a year and a half.  (If you haven’t been reading that long, feel free to scroll through the archives – I ain’t up to linking right now.)  And, understandably, they kind of messed with me.

I was never a tiny girl, but when stressed I go to comfort food.  Combine that with getting out of my exercise routine while recuperating, and I gained some significant weight.  And I just can’t seem to get rid of it, or get rid of my general apathy.  Theoretically, I’ve been trying, but not nearly as hard as I should be, and it hasn’t taken much to get me off track.

After the third miscarriage, which was – wow – almost two years ago, we went to a specialist clinic in Omaha.  We developed a plan.  The plan is ready whenever we want to try again.  But first, I need to get my health in order.  That means eating better.  It means exercising.  It means not spending my Saturdays either plopped on the recliner watching DVDs or slumped in front of the computer playing sudoku.  It means actually cooking instead of getting home, looking around, and just doing what’s easiest – be it making a frozen pizza, microwave popcorn, or other convenience foods.  It also means getting my head together and getting things done around the house.  I’ve been getting little things done here or there, but not as much as I should.

I’ve been going to the clinic regularly, as they are monitoring my health, as well as visiting a dietitian.  And every time, we talk about thing I know, but I just can’t implement.  And I need to, I really do.  Because I’m not getting any younger, and if we’re going to try again, we need to get moving.  But if we try again, I want to be in optimum health; that won’t necessarily mean a miscarriage won’t happen, but it would certainly help the odds a bit.  So why can’t I do it?

My theory?  I’m just not accountable enough.  I can talk a good game, and I feel dutifully ashamed when I show up at the doctor or the dietitian with little or no weight loss (although I have had overall weight loss, just not much).  But when I get home, it’s pretty much just me.  Indie Boy is working nights now, so I only get evenings with him three nights a week.  Those other nights?  In the basement, doing pretty much nothing.  And the nights we are together?  Well, sometimes we get out (we did a nice walk around the neighborhood a couple of weeks ago, and spent four hours traipsing around the zoo last Monday), but we also eat out and sit in the basement watching DVDs.  He loves me for who I am, which is awesome.  But because of that, well, he’s not exactly saying anything when I have a soda or decide I’d rather go out to eat than cook whatever I had originally planned.  (Although that’s probably good, because being the contrarian I am, I would probably just get irritated and act even worse.)

So here’s the thing.  I’m making it public.  I’m making it accountable.  I’m doing what I need to do.

About a month ago, after my last dietitian appointment, I bought this dry erase calendar:

The theory was, I’d write tasks on it every day, and would have to do those tasks.  This would include exercise, as well as just other things around the house that need to get done.  Something to start getting my mind organized and my body doing what it needs to.  Needless to say, other than filling in the dates, I haven’t been using it.  That has to change.

So my proposal is this:  every Sunday, starting tomorrow, I’m going to get up, go downstairs, and my first task will be determining my tasks for the week and filling in the calendar.  My second task will be developing a meal plan for the whole week.  Then I’m posting it here, for all to see.  And on Saturdays, I’m going to report my results for the week.  No sugar coating, no white lies.  If I failed to do something, I’m going to own that failure, for all to see.  And if the thought of failing in public, on the web, captured in posterity forever (or until the implosion of the world wide webiverse) doesn’t motivate me?  Well, shit, I’m out of ideas.

Ridiculous maladies/injuries of which I have been afflicted in the past two months

1.  Giant, pus-filled abscess above my left eye. Thanks to WebMD, I initially misdiagnosed this on a Friday night as pink-eye, despite the absence of, well, pink in my eyes.  It wasn’t until Monday, after waking up with swollen eyelids for two days and noticing that what I had presumed to be a pimple/ingrown hair on my eyebrow had grown into a giant bit of squishy nastiness, that I went to the doctor and got the official diagnosis.  Thank goodness I have bangs.

2.  Sliced open my left index finger with a butter knife while attempting to pry the lid off of a bottle of dishwashing detergent. As Indie Boy noted, if that had been a steak knife, we would have been in the ER.  I had no idea butter knives could actually cause that much damage.

3.  Burned my back with a heating pad. And when I say “burned my back” I don’t mean, “oh, my that was rather warm and uncomfortable, so maybe I should turn it down a notch.”  I mean, “a small section of the heating pad melted, burned a hole through the slipcover, and actually left a burn mark on my back for several weeks.”  Sadly, it was the smell that alerted me to the issue, not the actual burning sensation.

4.  Scuffed eyeball with edge of pillowcase. Yes, while laying on my stomach and shaking my head to some questions from Indie Boy, I got too close to the edge of the pillowcase, which in turn pulled up my eyelid, resulting in me rubbing my actual eyeball along the fabric.  Ouch.

5.  Gouging shin – through a pair of jeans – on the corner of a TV stand. I think the cable company is behind this, since they’re not getting my money anymore.  Weeks later, it is still visible and sensitive to the touch.  Awesome.

I am both a klutz and a magnet for odd maladies and injuries.  These are just the items from the top of my head covering the last few weeks.  I mean, we haven’t even gotten into last year, where I was clawed in the eyelid by a startled cat at four a.m., or the year before, where I sliced open my middle finger on my right hand with a broken glass, necessitating a trip to the emergency room at 1 in the morning, only to have them just rebandage it rather than stitch it – not because it was an inconsequential scratch but because I actually shaved off a big chunk of skin rather than just cutting it, so there wasn’t anything to stitch together.  I still have a raised scar from that.

In other words, be careful around me lest my klutziness wear off onto you.

More conversations with Indie Boy

(Scene:  This afternoon on the way home.)

Indie Boy:  So, is there anywhere else we need to go before we head home?

Me:  I think we need ice cream.

IB:  Ice cream sounds good.  Where shall we go?

Me:  Well, Dairy Queen is probably the most convenient option to where we are.

IB:  That sounds yummy.  I haven’t been to Dairy Queen since, well, last time we were there, like a year ago.

(pause)

Me:  Wait, didn’t you tell me that you went there earlier this week?

IB:  Well, yeah, but not for ice cream.  I got a shake.

Me:  Um, pretty sure there’s ice cream in shakes.

IB:  Right, but, well…it’s different.  (pause)  Stop using facts and logic on me!

Conversation from 4 a.m. Thursday night/Friday morning*

Me:  Did you hear that Malcolm McLeran died today?

Indie Boy:  No, that sucks.  (pause)  I guess that means he won’t be in any more of the Halloween remakes, then.

Me:  What?  No, Malcolm McLeran, not Malcolm McDowell.

IB:  Oh.  Well, McLeran was kind of a douche.

And scene.

In other (completely unrelated) news, the entire Daria TV series is finally being released on DVD!  I.  Am.  So.  Excited!!!  (Even if there is going to be replacement of some of the music due to licensing fees.  Grrr.)  Yes, it has been preordered.  Huzzah!

And finally, I was going to link to the trailer for the ridiculous looking movie, Mega Piranha (man, I just couldn’t have made that up), but it didn’t want to be embedded for some reason, so instead I’m linking to the blog where I saw it.  It looks horrible.

*Because Indie Boy is working nights again, and getting home extraordinarily late.

Things I shouldn’t invest brain power in, but do

I have a secret to share with you all.  You see, I’m not really a chick flick/romantic comedy type of person.  I generally don’t go to them in the theaters, I roll my eyes at the commercials, and really have very little use for them.  Except.  Well.  Sometimes, despite the fact that I know they are horrible, cliche-ridden, semi-insulting movies that recycle the same storylines over and over, I occasionally, kind of, want to see them.  But I still won’t actually spend money going to the theater, nor do I want to rent the DVD.  But if they showed up on cable (while I still had it)*, I would totally watch them.  And now, with the wonder that is Netflix Watch Instantly, I can just watch them on my computer.  Which is how I came to watch The Proposal this afternoon.

How was it, you may ask?  (Or not.)  Well, it was pretty much what I expected.  Boy loathes girl.  Boy and girl end up in zany situations while pretending to be engaged so girl won’t get deported to Canada.  Boy and girl end up falling in love for real.  The end.  It amused me, Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds had some decent chemistry, and Ryan took his shirt off.  All was good.

Except.  Well, let’s just say that the screen writers didn’t spend too much time actually researching how that whole immigration thing works.  Granted, I’m a little more attuned to how it should flow, what with working in that field, but still.  Really?  You couldn’t spend a half-hour with an immigration lawyer (or hell, with Google) to get some things straight?  So here is my list of immigration-related flaws:**

1.  So Sandra’s bosses call her into their office to tell her that her visa application was denied because she briefly left the country while it was being processed.  They then indicate that she is being deported.  Several issues here:

• If the “visa application” being referred to was an immigrant petition, the petitioner would have filed the petition; however, such petitions do not grant an immediate benefit and have nothing to do with status, so if she left the country, it would have no bearing on the visa petition.
• Depending on the classification requested and current visa availability, Sandra would then file the application to adjust status to permanent residence either concurrently with the visa petition or after it was approved.  She would file this herself, not her employer, and thus, they should not be in any position to tell her that her application was denied, as the employer is not an affected party of the application.  USCIS would have notified either Sandra or her attorney, not her employer.
• Presuming that she did have an application to adjust status pending, the application could be considered abandoned if she left the country without permission while it was pending.  However, she could have easily obtained advance parole to leave the U.S. or, if her nonimmigrant status was in either H-1 or L-1 status, she would have been able to leave without advance parole, provided she still had a valid nonimmigrant visa.
• Even if she was not in H-1 or L-1 status and left the U.S. without an advance parole, the underlying application would just be abandoned.  Before she could be deported, she would have to be given a notice to appear, be put in proceedings, and go before an immigration judge.  Oh, and if she had continued to maintain her nonimmigrant status while the application was pending?  There wouldn’t be any reason to deport her.  The simple denial of an application does not mean that you are deported, and there would be a heck of a process to go through before a deportation actually occurred.

2.  When Sandra indicates that she can work from Canada via teleconferencing and whatnot, the employer tells her that it’s illegal for a U.S. company to employ a foreign worker in this way.  Really?  Are you sure?  Because if so, we really should start arresting all of those U.S. companies who outsource their tech support and other various tasks to other countries.  She could totally set up a home office in Canada and work for the U.S. company.  Sheesh!

3.  After Sandra blackmails Ryan into agreeing to marry her to keep her from getting deported (which actually is illegal!), they go straight to the local USCIS office, cut in front of the whole line, and are immediately shown to an officer.  Why?  So they can file a “fiancé” petition.  Except, well, see, the “fiancé” petition is to bring an alien into the United States for the purpose of getting married within 90 days of admission.  A person who is already in the U.S. cannot change status to that of a fiancé.  In fact, if the person is already in the U.S., the couple can just go ahead and get married and then file a spouse petition rather than filing a fiancé petition.  There is absolutely no reason for the filing of a fiancé petition in this scenario.  Plus, the local field offices don’t process fiancé petitions; they have to be filed with either the Vermont or California Service Centers, as clearly indicated in the form instructions.

4.  The immigration officer is apparently very dedicated to his job, as he apparently plans to keep a close eye on both of them, so much so that he travels from New York to Alaska that very weekend in an attempt to catch them in their lie.  Seriously?  Because New York doesn’t have any criminal aliens with felony convictions or human smuggling rings or other items that would be more pressing than the possibility that a fraudulent marriage which may occur in a state thousands of miles a way between a citizen and an alien with no criminal record?  Yeah, that’s realistic.

4.  (Please note that there are SPOILERS in this  bullet point, so if you really don’t want to know the ending and are completely clueless as to how romantic comedies generally turn out, you may want to skip this.)  So after spending the weekend with Ryan’s family (who conveniently suggest that the couple get married that very Sunday, despite only knowing Sandra for a couple of days and being unaware of any engagement prior to that weekend), Sandra just can’t go through with the sham marriage, so while at the altar, in front of all of Ryan’s friends and family – and the well-traveled USCIS officer – Sandra comes clean about the whole plan.  Basically confessing to the USCIS officer that she conspired to commit marriage fraud.  Then she voluntarily leaves with the officer.  Of course, Ryan then realizes that he really loves her and, as grandmother Betty White notes, she must love him or else she would have gone through with the sham.  Therefore, he follows her back to New York (where Sandra was given a whopping 24 hours to collect her things and get the hell back to Canada – which, again, is not realistic) and asks her to marry him for real.  So they show up at the office of the same USCIS agent, indicating that they’re totally getting married for real this time, which he is grudgingly okay with, as long as they know he’s totally going to grill them in the interviews to make sure it’s not a sham this time.  Except, well, USCIS statute (INA 204(c) – no link available) and regulations (8 CFR 204.2(a)(1)(ii)) clearly indicate that anyone who has conspired to enter into a marriage for the purposes of evading immigration laws cannot have a visa petition approved on their behalf.  Since Sandra admitted to the immigration officer that she intended to enter into a sham marriage to keep from being deported, she’s pretty much done.  No petition may be approved on her behalf.  So in real life?  No happy ending.  Sorry folks!

*Did I mention that I got rid of cable at the end of January?  Yeah, I don’t really miss it either.  I did invest in a digital converter box and antenna (which together still cost significantly less than one month of cable) so I can watch local channels, but that’s it.  And I’m totally cool with that.

**Please note that I am not disclosing anything here that is not publicly available information.

Fatty boombalatti

Let me introduce myself.  I’m the fat friend.  I’ve never been a skinny girl, but the last couple of stress-filled years have certainly taken their toll.  I don’t really write about it much on here because, well, I amazingly have other things to talk about.  (The gall!  A fat girl having a life.)  But sometimes I just get fucking pissed at the hate and discrimination.  Ohh, it’s all my fault, and I should be ashamed, and if only I just exercised more, blah, blah, blah.  I’m not denying that eating right and exercising are important, but even in high school – when I was on drill team, took multiple dance classes, worked a restaurant job that kept me on my feet, and was not remotely out of shape – I was not a small girl.  And I get tired of some people thinking that you’re not a person if you’re above X number of pounds, pant size, whatever.

Case in point, you may have heard about Kevin Smith getting booted off of a Southwest Airlines flight a couple of weeks back for being too fat – even though he met the parameters of the airlines policy, and could lower both arms of the seat rest and buckle his belt without an extender.  But hey, no one likes to sit next to fatty, so it was totes justifiable!  I don’t particularly like sitting by the guy who splays his legs out or the gal who immediately puts her seat back and encroaches on my leg space the entire trip or the family that brings a screaming toddler aboard, but I don’t see anyone trying to boot them off.  But what was really disheartening was following a link to Southwest’s “apologies” and reading the comment board.  While plenty were disgusted with Southwest’s inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement of their “hey, fat-ass” policy, just as many were like, “Go Southwest!  We hate fatties!”  And then I read this:

The sad thing here is that we have to put up with these people. Good job Southwest you have declared open season on the people that take up way too much space. They need to just stay home till they have shed the pounds and can join the human race

Wow.  So sorry you have to “put up” with me.  I’ll just hide in my basement, starving myself until I am an emaciated shell of a person who can no longer function in society due to my lack of human contact – but hey, I’ll be skinny, so it’s cool!  Then I can “join the human race” by hanging out with people who judge me completely on what size I wear and not on trivial things like my personality, my actions, my ethics, etc.  Oh, wait, are fat people allowed to have personalities?  I forget.

Cobwebs? Here?

Yeah, I got nothing. Well, I have something, but not necessarily anything I want to publish on the internet. So in lieu of me writing a real post, enjoy some kids singing about scholarship. Fun!

All hail the new regime!!

So, remember a few weeks back when I documented the first blizzard of this winter, and may have spent a tiny paragraph bitching about the administration at our office who steadfastly refused to close the building despite the blizzard warning and the fact that every other federal agency in the area closed down?  Well, our director* retired effective December 31.  And here we are, three days into the work week under the new director, and lo!  There is a winter weather advisory, and a lot of snow coming down, and generally unfavorable conditions.  And the new director – wait for it – closed the building this afternoon!  I know!!  Apparently, she doesn’t want to continue the ridiculous, bull-headed, and downright dangerous policy of making people come in to work when weather conditions are extremely bad. I am all kinds of happy.

I’m sure that, with the weather as it is today, Indie Boy will end staying in Omaha tonight, rather than have to drive back and forth for work.  Which sucks.  But as long as he actually calls and lets me know, well, I won’t have to kill him.

See, on Monday of this week, I had stayed home because a) I wasn’t feeling well and b) the furnace was acting up and I had to stay home for a repairman anyway.  I was still feeling yucky in the evening, and ended up going to bed before 9:30.  Considering that I regularly stay up to 11 or 12, that’s pretty early for me.  Anyway, shortly before I went to bed, the IB called to let me know that he was finally off work and heading home.  He was just going to stop for gas and grab some food, then would be heading to Lincoln.  I’m like, coolio, I’ll probably be in bed.

So then, around 2 a.m., I woke up out of a weird, weird dream (it somehow involved The Breeders and a never-ending department store, along with other stuff that’s kind of fuzzy now) and realized that I was still alone in bed.  Since this was five hours after Indie Boy told me that he was on his way home – and believe me, the drive between Lincoln and Omaha is not five hours – I was a little worried.  So I called him, but just got his voicemail.  So I get up, check the answering machine, check my cell’s voicemail.  Nothing.  A half-hour later, I try calling again.  And an hour later.  And so on.  Naturally, I am freaking the hell out, imaging the worst case scenario.  Is he lying in a snowbank?  In the hospital?  Dead?  Did he get pulled over by a cop who wasn’t amused by his unpaid speeding ticket and hauled him into jail?  (Don’t worry, he paid it last night.)  My mind was just boiling over with bad scenarios, and what if this happened, and what if that happened.  I couldn’t get back to sleep.  At least, not until around 6:30, when my alarm was going off.  Even then, I would just drop into brief sleeps between hitting the snooze, and have intense, horrific, claustrophobic dreams involving my missing Indie Boy.

I try his cell phone one more time around 7, and started leaving a message saying that if I didn’t hear from him by 8, I was going to call his parents to see if they had heard anything and start calling hospitals.  As I’m in the middle of leaving this message, my call waiting beeps, and I see that it’s him.  Apparently, after getting gas, he noted that a) the roads were slick and b) he was getting tired, so he c) decided to stop at a hotel.  While this is sound thinking – driving on slick roads when not really alert is a bad idea – it didn’t occur to him that I may want to know this information, since I thought he was on his way home.  I literally burst into tears when I realized that he was okay, and couldn’t stop crying for the duration of the call.  He was all “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m an ass, etc.”  (As he should have been.)  Still, I’m more than a little miffed that he didn’t think to call me.  Especially since we’ve talked about this before.  *sigh*  My girlfriends all seem to agree that this definitely deserves flowers and/or some other kind of begging, but I’m not necessarily seeing that coming.  I mean, I have yet to get a birthday or Christmas gift this year, so I’m not exactly holding my breath.  But, you know, it would still be nice.  *hint, hint*  And if this happens again?  Well, heads may very well roll.

*God, and did I mention that after everyone was grumbling about the fact that we were the sole federal agency still open on these days, and some people basically having to lose part of their Christmas vacation because they had to burn leave due to the weather, he had the gall to send out a condescending email proclaiming that our mission was too vital to close, and that if we would totally close the weather was bad enough that only emergency vehicles were allowed on the road.  Never mind that, if our mission was so vital, they wouldn’t have a “liberal leave” policy on bad weather days, and that we have very little work that is actually time sensitive.  Also never mind that every newscast I saw said to not go anywhere unless absolutely necessary.  Wanker.

Random notes at year’s end

So here we are at the end of another year.  The first decade of the millennium is almost over, and where has the time gone?  Well, if you’re like me, a lot of it went to watching movies and surfing the internet.  Wow, how exciting.

So last night, as I was home alone since Indie Boy was working late again*, I flipped through the channels and saw that Fox was showing two (count ‘em) episodes of Glee.  I hadn’t watched it previously**, but it’s been getting a lot of good hype, plus I do love my musicals, so I thought I’d give it a go.  The show itself I quite liked – interesting characters (man I love Jane Lynch), the storylines were good – but the one thing I didn’t like?  The musical numbers.  Not because I’m against them breaking into song (see: above, loving musicals) – and heck, as a glee club school music group, it would be weird if they didn’t sing – but because the vocals were so overprocessed and produced.  They didn’t sound like teenagers exuberantly singing.  They sounded like the Pro-Tools robots that have taken over mainstream music.  Slick and tweaked up vocals seem like the antithesis of the spirit of the show, and may end up being a deal breaker for me.  There’s a reason I don’t listen to top-40 radio anymore.

So anyway, back to this end of the year stuff.  I know I’ve neglected this site a little, and will hopefully find the energy and inspiration to write more often.  I’m still a little mad at myself that I never got around to writing a recap of Coachella this year (and this late in the game I’m not going to), but here are some highlights:

Mike Patton and Rahzel covered Ginuwine’s “Pony”***:

Amanda Palmer kicked ass!

My Bloody Valentine tried to deafen everyone in the vicinity:

(Not pictured in this shot?  The eight strings hanging just above the wall of amps, each string holding five microphones.  There is a reason that nobody played the second stage or the large tent at the same time – you wouldn’t have been able to hear anything over MBV.)

At least they were kind enough to supply earplugs to everyone that day.

Other fun items of the year?  We also saw the Pixies in Denver:

That was a really quick Denver trip, but definitely worth it.  On our way back, we saw someone carting a statue in a trailer.

Shosty started deciding that he doesn’t need to use the litter box, which has led to some rather gross discoveries around the house.  Luckily for him, he’s pretty cute.

Delilah thought that she was a Christmas present this year.

Damian just wants to say hi, since the other kitties got their pictures on here already.

I took some silly pictures of Indie Boy:

Oh, and did I mention that it snowed?

So that’s a sliver of 2009.  Let’s hope 2010 turns out to be a good year. Melting all of the snow would be a good start.  That’s a hint, mother nature.

*Seriously, he never gets off work on time.  He’s lucky I’m a trusting girl, or I might think something was going on.

**Part of the reason I hadn’t been watching, is that I am hoping to rid myself of cable, and didn’t want to get hooked on anything new.  My plan is to clean out my DVR (which has six movies and three episodes of the Monty Python documentary that IFC aired a few months back) by January 31.  Once it’s cleaned out, I’m marching over to Time Warner and cancelling.  It was already overpriced, and just went up again, and cable isn’t work $100 a month for me.  So screw it.  I’ll Netflix shows or watch them on the internet.

***When they started playing this, I tugged at Indie Boy, asking, “Oh my god, are they covering “Pony”?  The IB had never even heard of the song before that night.  Granted, it’s the only good song Ginuwine has, and the IB doesn’t really listen to R&B, but still.  Patton and Rahzel also covered Clapton’s “Cocaine” and, in honor (or mockery) of Sir Paul McCartney, playing the main stage at the same time they were performing in their tent, “Ebony and Ivory.”