Presumed to be awesome.

Let's talk about ME! *beams*

First, work has been kickin' my butt, but despite the months of 10-12 hour days, I'm still feeling fairly positive about it. Yeah, I don't even know. But I'm having FUN doing my job again and that's pretty awesome.

Second, in case y'all didn't know this, I ROCK! *g* That's true for a lot of reasons, but at the moment I'm referring to me rockin' the Take Better Care of Me Plan that is still going fantastically, if imperfectly, well. Not only have I been eating mindfully and journaling all my food for over 2 1/2 months, but I've also managed to lose 27 pounds. I could definitely be more consistent with the exercise portion of the Take Better Care of Me Plan, but I'm working on it and, more importantly, I'm not beating myself up over the imperfections. So, um, GO ME!!! \o/

Third, I've been making some summer travel plans and other plans for Fun Things To Do this summer, and I'm super excited for what's ahead!

( Summer Fun )

And, here are some other fabulously sparkly tidbits for our Friday:

>> Russell Crowe and his Merry Men singing Beautiful Girls:



This brightened my whole day yesterday! And, to make it even more fantastic, according to his Twitter, they repeated this performance on the Spanish Steps in Rome later that day! *loves and loves* Can we get those damn TOFOG dates now!

>> Photos from the set of Adam Lambert's music video shoot for If I Had You where he invited all of his magical friends to take part in the all night party a la Burning Man video. Cheeks! Cassidy! Alisan! Rahab! And practically all the Zodiac cast! Eeee!!! So many fabulous people! I cannot wait to see this video!

>> Meet Adam and do good! Charity auction of an Adam Lambert concert and meet & greet to benefit City of Hope. I'm SO tempted!

I had a great time in California this past week, but damn it's good to be home. And sleeping in my own bed is THE BEST THING EVER.

_lisalisa_, azewewish, gingerpig, and I spent Saturday at the Getty Center. It was a gorgeous day and I loved the Getty. I'll have pictures to post later.

Then later that night, fortified with lots of alcohol, we braved the SPN convention crowd to see Steve Carlson and Jason Manns play. Man, that is truly an awkward venue for live music -- everyone is sitting in their assigned seats, no one is up dancing, and there is clearly not enough easily accessible alcohol! If I'm uncomfortable, I can't imagine how hard it must be to play to that kind of audience. But we did get up to stand over to the side during Steve's set so that we could dance and enjoy the music and try to pretend that that the awkward sitting crowd wasn't there. For the most part, it worked. *g* And, awkwardness not with standing, it was good to hear them both play, as it had been close to forever since I'd heard either one of them. And, as always, it was damn good times hanging out with my girls!

Since I was unable to sleep last night (even though I was SO tired!) I finally got caught up on Supernatural. I really liked On The Head of a Pin. More Hotass Angel of the Lord is always a good thing. *nods* And I wish I could tell you what I thought about It's a Terrible Life but the damn high def feed that I DVRed was fucked to next week and back and I only really got to see about a fourth of the episode. I am not impressed with this shit, Cox Cable!

I still have a hell of a lot of television that I'm behind on. I haven't watched any of Kings and this makes me very sad. I'm at least two episodes behind on Sarah Connor and Legend of the Seeker. And I haven't seen the finale of Battlestar. Eeek. I need another week off just to catch up on my shows!

Alas, the time off has come to an end. Now it's back to work, back to this damn job search. Grrr.

In happy real life news, though, Opening Day is only 7 days away!!! Baseball!!! I've missed you! *clings*

Road trip!!! All the bags are packed and in the car, there are plenty of snacks for the road, I'm about to go pick up the kiddos and then it's off to California for a long weekend of fun-filled shenanigans! There will be crazy antics at Disneyland, time with my fellow Hookers, and a holiday-flavored Steve Carlson show! Good times!

Everyone have a fabulous weekend and I'll see y'all on Tuesday! *mwah*



Wait! Before I leave...HAPPY BIRTHDAY, wrenlet!!! I hope your day is as wonderful as you are and the year ahead full of all kinds of happy-making things! *throws confetti*

And, while I'm delivering birthday wishes, a belated but heart-felt one goes out to way2busymom. B, baby, I hope your day was a happy one, but, mostly, I hope for you nothing but love and laughter in the year ahead! *blows kisses*

( I am amused! )

Also, an evening spent watching old Betty Boop cartoons with The Elder Niece is made of awesome. :)

Dear gods. This week has dragged on SO slowly. Work is progressing at a good pace and I've been able to get quite a bit done, but for whatever reason this week has seemed so sluggish. I did catch a bit of a break work-wise today by being relieved of duty with regard to a particularly problematic client. Which also means that I get my October back instead of it being consumed by what was going to be a long (at least 3 weeks) and likely horrifying trial.

And despite the slow pace, tomorrow is in fact Thursday, which, importantly in my part of the world, means the start to an awesome baseball weekend!!! \o/ I've got tickets to all four games of the Diamondbacks' series against the Braves and I'm SO looking forward to the time at the ball park! I'm hoping to get done with court and jail visits and the piles of paperwork on my desk early enough tomorrow to make it in time for batting practice.

Other tidbits for this forever-long week include:

- Generation Kill fic is slowly starting to make it's way to my flist. This is exceedingly happy making!!! Possibly my favorite so far: Home, Fick/Colbert (set after the events on the show) by wrenette.

- While football normally doesn't make a significant blip on my sports radar until after October, Sports Center is telling me that Brett Favre has been traded to the Jets. Hrm. That's really all I have to say about that. Hrm.

- Jeffrey Dean Morgan will be playing a closeted gay man in Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock." With Liev Schreiber as a transvestite! And Emile Hirsch! The amount of AWESOMENESS in this one announcement is, well, AWESOME!!!

- Strangely, the venue where Christian Kane (and, apparently, Steve Carlson) will be opening next week for country artist Chris Cagle has stopped selling tickets for the show. The site says only "Sale Stopped." Yesterday when I checked availability they seemed to have plenty of open seats, so I'm not really sure what the "stopped sale" means. I'm telling you, this whole thing is wrought with strangeness. *boggles*

- 20 days until my birthday!!! I'm of the firm belief that one ought to celebrate their own entrance into this world for not just a day but for their entire birth month. *nods* So, I'm officially on Birthday Month Revelry!!! \o/

- The workout with Trainer!Boy today included a good deal of boxing. It was one hell of a workout, but, man, did it ever feel good. Beating the shit outa something is better than therapy! *is fierce*

- NIN offers its new record, The Spin, available for free download. Trent says: thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one's on me.

- Jason Taylor: I'm serious about acting some day.

- We're getting Sprinkles Cupcakes!!! The Phoenix-Scottsdale store opens tomorrow. I'm SO there!

- Steve Carlson's new CD, Stripped Down, is now available for purchase here.

- Finally, a question for any of you that have seen Iron Man. My niece, Rianna, wants me to take her to see it. I, of course, REALLY want to see it. But is it appropriate for a five year old?

ETA: Thank you all for the feedback. There was no talking her into another movie, so, ultimately, I left the decision to her parents, who gave it a green light. And, while she closed her eyes at some of the more violent scenes and probably didn't fully follow the storyline, she stayed with it the entire time, no fidgeting or restlessness. Her assessment at the end: that was awesome!!! I, naturally, FUCKING LOVED IT!!!

The weekend was fabulous!!! I was in L.A. for the Salute to Supernatural convention, a Steve Carlson show, and (mostly) to see my girls wendy and annkiri who were in from Texas, _lisalisa_ and glendaglamazon, and all my L.A. Hookers. We jammed so much into four days, there's no way I can cover it all, but I'll give you the condensed bullety version, along with a few pictures:

( A Very Supernatural Weekend )

I think that's all the bullety recapping I can muster. In sum, the weekend was made of all kinds of awesome!!! Now I'm home and tired and missing my girls and trying not to think about having to get up early for court tomorrow.

I had such a fantastic weekend in L.A. with my girls!!! The drive home, though, was the complete opposite of fantastic. OMG traffic sucked so hard!!! It was a snarly, barely moving mess until I was nearly in Palm Springs and it added over two hours to my drive time. Grrr.

Now that I am finally home though, I'm completely hyped on all the caffeine I drank to keep myself awake thought that mess and I can't sleep! *bounces* So, instead of getting any much needed sleep before work starts kicking me in the ass very early in the morning, I'm going to tell you all about my AWESOME weekend and make y'all insanely jealous of the fact that I got to spend four and a half days with some of the most fabulous women on the planet! \o/

( Is it any wonder I want to move to L.A.??? )

So, my Bah Humbug mood isn't quite as intense as it was earlier in the week. I'm convinced that the improvement in my mood is due mostly to those Candy Cane Joe Joe's. OMG! So delicious! I'll definitely be going back to Trader Joe's for more of those.

I also managed to get my tree up and trimmed. True, it's only a two foot table-top tree. And one of the strings of lights is now refusing to work. *grumbles* But it's definitely an improvement in the holiday decorating front.

I sat down to wrap presents the other day, and I wrapped one then just couldn't do any more. I hate wrapping. If it were up to me, I'd use gift bags for everything. Apparently, though, tearing open the gift wrap is half the fun. *grumbles some more* Anyone want to wrap my presents for me?

See, what I mean? The holiday cheer is very limited around these parts.

But! In a valiant attempt to get into an appropriately cheerful holiday mood, idiosyncratic and I went driving around to see holiday lights last night. The lights were scarce. But we did have hot chocolate to drink and Steve Carlson's Christmas CD playing. And while we only had Steve on Jo's iPod, while the L.A. Hookers had him in person (hope y'all had a great time!), that's still seriously a lot of holiday cheer right there. *g*

Plus we got to see a house decked out with so many gaudy lights that we couldn't help but stare (and laugh) in awe. This house, people, had a coyote howling at the moon and a sky full of blinking stars, on the roof a smiley face, a peace sign, and a Sponge Bob Santa -- all in bright, blinking lights! And the piece de resistance? A disco ball spinning in the entry way! It was brilliant. And, while some of the houses were decorated quite nicely, I was most impressed by whoever decided to decorate an entire portion of South Mountain. Someone decorated the freakin' mountain! It was awesome.

We came home prepared to watch Riley Smith on Criminal Minds only to discover, after we'd watched the entire recorded episode and hadn't seen any sign of Riley, that the network pulled all the first run episodes this week and aired repeats instead. There's apparently no new air date for Riley's show as of yet.

Let's see. What else? Ah, yes. In addition to failing at holiday cheer, I also fail at remembering birthdays this week. *facepalm*

It was thefirespiral's birthday on Monday. Monica is one of my dearest friends. I hope, Monica, that your day was fabulous, and that the year ahead brings all the insight and resolution you need in order to be happy and healthy!

A Belated Happy Birthday to wrenlet as well! Wren, baby, I hope you had a great day! One of the greatest things of 2007 for me has been meeting you and getting to spend time together involving various shenanigans! Mwah!

Man. Why do we even bother with this day? Seriously. Wouldn't the calendar be much more pleasant if we fired Mondays and instead had...oh, I don't know. Some other day that wouldn't involve a full day of work. Maybe a transition day from weekend to work week that involved only a few hours telecommuting in the early afternoon so that you could sleep in and work could be done in your PJs! This type of Modified Monday could work for me. *nods*

Alas. No Modified Monday for me. Instead I was at the office at 6:30 IN THE OMG SO FUCKING EARLY MORNING! *rubs sleep from eyes* Then it was to court. Again. And annoying clients who seem to forget that I was the one who went to law school, while they were the ones who broke the damn law. Therefore, the legal strategies are MINE to make. *grumbles* And, if that wasn't enough to make this Monday completely sucktastic. I somehow managed, while sitting at my desk and not engaging in any obviously dangerous activity, to SLICE MY FINGER OPEN. It bled all over my laptop and my files. And it hurt! Ouch! It's finally stopped bleeding and I have it bandaged, but trying to type with 9 fingers is no fun at all.

So, yeah. If I could, I'd fire this damn day.

But the weekend? The weekend is a keeper! Saturday was spent in a whirlwind of activity getting ready for a surprise 60th birthday party for my aunt. The surprise was a success. As was the party, which involved lots of yummy food, loud music, more alcohol than was probably wise, and about two dozen of assorted family members crammed into my living room watching ASU take Cal and Game 3 of the World Series.

After all the cleaning and cooking for the party and then the party itself with the drinking and the late night, yesterday was purposefully lazy. My brother and my niece came over and we spent endless hours watching sports on television. Unfortunately, my brother does not have the same appreciation for Tom Brady's ass as I do. So, my frequent exclamations over the perfectness of said ass were not well received. My niece, though, will grow up with a much more developed appreciation of both the game and, ahem, the players' talents. I consider it my duty as Aunt. *nods*

Also, kudos to the Boston Red Sox!!! It may not have been much of a series, but Game 4 sure as hell turned into a good game. Speaking of that win, has Papelbon reprised his riverdance yet? Someone needs to point me to that video when it happens. *g*

So, where were we? Monday sucks. Check. The weekend rocked. Check. The week ahead? There's work. But there's always work. The GOOD NEWS for this week is that on Sunday technosage and I are heading to L.A. for some time with the Hookers and to catch Steve Carlson and Jason Manns play!!! YAY!!! \o/ I'm thinking that if we time our drive right we can be in L.A. in time to watch the Patriots/Colts game. Again...YAY!!!

Anything else? Oh, yes. Apparently the weekend involved some wank and some more wank about the wank. *shakes head* It's strangely comforting that fandom will always involve some element of CRAZYCAKES. You know, kinda like that one family member who's on crack or perving on the teenage cousins or who forgot to take his meds and is in the corner talking to his spoon? Absolutely INSANE, but the family just wouldn't be the same without him. Then again, maybe it's just MY FAMILY that has this kind of crazy. *facepalm* Anyway, my point is, I think, that fandom just wouldn't be the same without the CRAZY. *g*