Don't Panic

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A post

I do in fact still remember how to use blogger. It's easy. *facepalm*

A much better movie.

Just got home from seeing Moon. I'm very glad that I got to see it. The movie is an awesome example of what science fiction can be at its best. The acting is great, the effects are awesome, and the story itself is stellar. Go see this movie.

Tranformers 2- just as bad as everyone said.

It was awful. And this is going to be full of spoilers. Full. So stop reading if you don't want to read them.

It wasn't that it was hard to follow the plot, it's just that it was leading to somewhere that no sane person would want to go. Some of this might not be in the order it happened in the movie because, really, it doesn't matter and I'm not going to bother trying to get the timeline exactly right.

The movie opens in like 7 gazillion B.C. Transformers were here a long time ago! Really! And this guy with the neck frill is important!

And back to modern day! Sam's mom is crying and his dad is hurridly packing. Sam wants to go to college and leave his super hot girlfriend and awesome transforming car behind. Sam's an idiot. He and Mikaela haven't said "I love you" yet. That's her main conflict in the movie. It shouldn't be because they've been together for two years and are going to try to make a cross continental long distance relationship work. If neither of them can manage three simple words then they are totally boned and should just give up.

Oh, and the government has been working with the autobots to hunt down decepticons except this random weiner with the president's ear wants to shut them down and he brilliantly broadcasts the locations of Megatron and the shard of All Spark that the government is "protecting." The quotes are there becaue the decepticons can break in to any government facility anytime and take whatever they want, so why did they wait till the information was broadcasted? Why not go in and steal the info? No reason. We just wanted another officious weiner to mock in the movie. Isn't mocking officious weiners fun?

And there are like six autobots and two of them are twins, and they're stupid and annoying and the less said about them the better. These six autobots are Earth's only reliable defence against all eight million decepticons.

Sam finds a piece of the All Spark in his hoodie while he's packing. It imprints some shit in his mind then burns through the floor and brings the household appliances to life. Bumblebee takes care of them, then gets yelled at for messing up the house like a large unruly puppy. Sam gives Mikaela the shard without bothering to tell her what it is. Then he leaves the state. One of the baby decepticons escaped the destruction, tells the space decepticon he's tracking the shard, and follows. How can the baby automatically contact their space relay guy? Who knows!

The decepticons steal the All Spark bit and bring Megatron back to life with it. But didn't shoving the All Spark into his chest kill him in the first place? Well....

Anyway! Sam gets to college and his mom eats a pot brownie and his roomates arranged for all the hot girls to be in their dorm and all of this is a waste of time in very bloated movie. Sam has weird seizures where he has to write down weird symbols and he remembers that he left the shard with Mikaela and warns her and she captures the baby decepticon and decides to fly to Sam's side with the decipticon IN HER LUGGAGE. A terminator decepticon shows up and tries to seduce Sam and he can't manage to tell her off for following him around even though she's pushy and creepy and really has no personality. Except she likes cars because of course all hot chicks like cars. Mikaela walks in on them kissing and gets mad and leaves, but comes back when Sam starts screaming like a little girl. Anyway, when did decepticons become terminators? But it doesn't matter because they escape and she never shows up again.

Sam's idiot roommate who shouldn't be in the damn movie at all gets pulled along with them. Megatron captures them and tortures Sam all Matrix style with wierd little bug decepticons that crawl around in Sam's body. Then they escape and there's a big fight and Optimus Prime gets killed.

Yeah. That's what I said.

Anyway, they can't bring him back using the shard because... well... acutally, it seems like no one thought of it. So Sam's roommate takes them to some other guy who runs an alien conspiracy website who turns out to be the officious idiot from the first movie! Hey, we love officious idiots. He kind of helps. Maybe. Anyway, he's around for the rest of the movie. Since the autobots are illiterate, they ask the baby decepticon what the symbols mean, but he can't read either, so they find this reformed decepticon who's been living on Earth forever.

He's in a museum and getting to him involves a truly stupid plan that should not work. They use the All Spark shard to wake him up. Apparantly the decepticons want to turn the sun into fuel so they can have babies. Actually, Neck Frill is called "The Fallen" because he wanted to blow up the sun when they showed up a million years ago, but they wouldn't let him because they're not supposed to blow up suns with life floating around them. But he hated people so much that he was going to ignore that rule. Wait, why does he hate people? Becuse he's EVIL!

The old reformed decepticon helps them find this tomb where Optimus's ancestors sacrificed themselves to fight neck frill guy. He didn't manage to find it before because he's an idiot. (But he has a cane! He's OLD! Isn't that funny?) Really, at this point we should be grateful that he can read. He teleports them all to Egypt. Yeah. I should mention that he transforms into a plane. But teleporting is just... cooler? I guess.

The symbols are a clue that Sam figures out because at the beginning of the movie he read an entire astronomy book while having a seizure. They have to get through customs to get to the temple. Why not teleport? Well, because then we couldn't do this midget joke and show how much everyone in the world loves New York. They love it so much that they'll let you into their country without a passport.

Sam got some magic leadership dust from the tomb they found, and the army defies orders to bring him Optimus' body. On the way they trick the officious weiner to pull his parachute and get sucked out of the plane! He ends up in the middle of nowhere! Isn't that funny? And he never shows up again.

The 11 billion decepticon are between our heroes and the army, so Sam and Mikaela have to run on foot for two miles through the fight. His parents show up because the devious decepticons kidnapped them! How clever! And his dad is the one who doesn't want to let him go on and save everything! Reversal! Crazy!

The roommate and last movie's weiner along with the annoying twins fight the biggest deception ever! But then weiner guy calls in a rail gun strike and one shots it.

Sam gets almost to Optimus and then dies. Except Mikaela "I love you"s him back to live and he has a dream with autobot ghosts about how he's earned leadership. Optimus comes back to life, the old robot dies and gives Optimus his skin, and Optimus kicks everyone's ass.

So, that's essentially the movie. I left a few things out, I'm sure, but you get the general idea.

More good news

Someone found my wallet and put it in a mailbox. I got a postage due slip on Wednesday, and Paul and I went to the post office and got it back after waiting in the tax line. They even left the money inside. There are good people all around, after all.

We went to see Rent on Friday night. It was awesome. I got a signed poster and a T-shirt. The show was amazing. Neither of us had seen Rent live before, and I got us good seats.

Paul is gearing up to get us registered for Gen Con events.

Good and bad stuff happens

I lost my wallet this weekend. I am sad. I called to get my credit cards canceled and all that fun stuff. The zoo and the museum are both sending me new cards for no charge. It's very nice of them.

Good news--I sold a story. More details on my writing blog.

Taxes, the finale

The district manager called me today, just as he said he would. He had someone look over my taxes again, and he looked over the bill. He is mailing me a check for $150 because he found something that they really only needed to charge me for once.

I'm glad to be getting something back. It makes the whole frustrating experience of calling to complain feel like it was worth my time. He told me that he really wanted our business in the future, and that I could call him to recommend an experienced tax professional next year. I hate to disappoint him, especially after he was the only person that I talked to who didn't treat me like crap, but I have a feeling we're going to be doing our own taxes in the future.

Tax Update

I got a call from H&R Block today. The woman on the phone said that my story didn't match the one she got from the office where they did my taxes, and insinuated that I was lying. Since my taxes looked okay, there was nothing she could do. She did give me the numbers for the district managers.

Apparently, we could have just left without paying after they told us how much they were charging. I did not get that impression at all. I talked to the district manager, told him my story, got pretty damn upset, and he told me he'd look into it and get back to me by next Tuesday.

The whole thing makes me want to scream, cry, and hit things. I like being called a liar even less than I like being pushed around and taken advantage of.

The Taxes

I just got off the phone from filing my first official complaint about anything ever.

Paul and I made an appointment at H&R Block last night. The woman we requested had over 30 years experience and looked like she'd be able to handle the complications of me being an independent contractor and the stuff from the trust.

When we got there, they told us that she didn't even work there anymore. The guy we ended up with was painfully incompetent. He seemed nice enough, which is probably why we didn't complain last night. We spent more time helping him find the right places to enter things than he spent entering things. Eventually he called his supervisor over, and while she was better, I still had to point various mistakes out multiple times to get her to fix them. Then, she preformed their much advertised "second look" in about 90 seconds. (Can it even count as a second look if she'd filled out half of the forms?)

Eventually we were done.

And then they told us we owed them $500.

The supervisor must have seen the shocked looks on our faces, so she offered us a $15 coupon. I'd like to mention here that they didn't warn us that our return was going to cost us almost more than our taxes until they pulled up the total. We were totally blindsided. I almost wanted to cry.

Still in shock, we paid them and went home.

Today, I called to complain. Their website doesn't have anything remotely like a feedback area, so I had to phone their customer service line, which also didn't have an option for feedback. I had to wait after the computer voice asked me where I wanted to make my appointment four times before I was put on hold to talk to someone. Then, when I said I'd like to file a complaint, they hung up on me. I tried again, and this time actually talked to someone and got a reference number to track my grievance.

I did actually use the phrase "I felt like we were serviced by two incompetents, then charged $500 for the privilege."

My biggest issue is that they didn't give us any indication of how expensive it would be. If they'd told us, we would have walked out right then and figured out the taxes ourselves, and I'd be fine with that. Watching them do it made me pretty confident that we could have done them since we practically WERE doing them.

Last night, I felt stupid and ashamed of myself about the whole thing. Today, I feel angry. I'm hoping that they follow through, call me back, and refund at least a portion of the money we paid them. But who knows what will happen.

Going to Gen Con!

Paul and I have been really worried about paying for a Gen Con hotel. I couldn't find a good deal, and we're really poor right now.

But William Shatner has proven once again that he is a god among men. Priceline finally came through for us, and I got us a hotel about a mile away from the convention center for $56.00 a night.

I'm super excited. I wasn't letting myself get excited before because I really didn't think we'd be able to go... but now we can! The hotel will end up costing us less than $200 because our friend Ben is coming with us and helping pay toward the room.

We're running games at the convention again, so we don't have to pay for badges. I need to start planning my games. I'm running two games of Best Friends, a GURPS game inspired by John Wayne westerns, and I don't even remember the fourth game because I wasn't letting myself think about it. Paul will have to remind me so I can plan for it. I'm not sure what all he's running either. He's doing mostly super hero games, I think.

So excited!

My eyes hurt.

Because the movie My Girl makes me cry. It's a very well done movie. I haven't seen it in a long time, and Paul and I just watched in from our instant Netflix queue.

My brother Matt came to visit yesterday. We had a nice time. Went out for Thai food and played some xbox. Drank tea.

Today, it was freezing at work, so I got my blanket. I've had it there for a few weeks now. I was worried that someone might say something at first, but everyone seemed okay with it, till this morning. My boss came over to me to tell me that my blanket was unprofessional and if I was cold I should wear long johns.

I think they should turn the fucking heat up. But I didn't tell him that. I just smiled and nodded and folded my blanket up. And froze my fucking ass off for the rest of the day. I was really pissed. I'm still pretty pissed about it. I can see where he's coming from--like I said, I was worried about it at first. But the way he went about it wasn't cool. He was smiling in my face and pretending to be nice while actually treating me like shit and saying some pretty mean things. Ugh. Then, later, he wanted me to come to his office to "meet his sister-in-law." That's code for "come give my sister-in-law a massage, bitch," but overlaid with all kinds of fake nice. He always asks me if I have time to do a massage. I feel like it's some sort of test or trap every time he does that. I'm paid to be there to do massage. It's WHY I'M FUCKING THERE. I never don't have time. It's not an inconvenience. It's my fucking job.

While I'm ranting, I want to mention that there's exactly one person that I work with there who treats me like an actual human being. I do appreciate that at least one person does. I'm trying to get to the point where I'm okay with the fact that none of the people I work with are going to become actual friends. It's sort of a relief to stop caring about it--to just treat them like they treat me and not give a fuck what they think.

Also, it pisses me off when people ask if I had training. Of course I had fucking training. There's a fucking diploma on the fucking wall. I have over 1000 hours of training. Some days, I'd like to print out a little list of things for people to read so I don't have to answer the same stupid questions. "Yes, I went to school." "Yes, I can feel how tight your shoulders are." (How could I not?? My sense of touch works. My hands are not numb. Ugh.) "No, you're not the most tense person I've ever worked on." "Actually, most people are pretty stressed." "No, no one has actually fallen asleep in the chair." "Yes, massage is relaxing."

O_o

I know, I know. There's a lot of great things about my job. I'm done at 12:30 (but that good is, I feel, more than balanced out by bad of having to be there at 7:30) and I can sit and read if there's no one to massage. I usually get to watch Ellen. Some of the clients are nice. Sometimes people tip. I'm not quitting anytime soon. But sometimes the place drives me nuts.

Also, note to self--never give out blog info to coworkers. Don't know how the temptation would ever come up, but just in case.

Using the crap out of my museum membership

Paul and I got a chance to go to a preview of the new exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. It's called "The Horse." It's very cool, and anyone who likes horses and is interested in them or in their shared history with humanity should check it out.

We also got to attend a lecture by author Susan Williams. She did a lot of research on the domestication of horses for her book, Wind Rider. The lecture was cool, and after I bought her book and she signed it. She was great--she chatted with everyone getting a book signed, and even did drawings. My little horse is AWESOME.

We walked to the museum, and on the way we stopped at Giant Eagle and I tried their Aztec hot cocoa. It's awesome. I've been wanting to try it out for a long time, and I'm glad I finally did.

Triangulation editing was canceled today because Pete's sick, so Paul and I had some time to unwind before we met his parents and brother for dinner at Outback Steakhouse. We had a nice time. Paul and I both had steaks. His was teriyaki marinated, and mine was covered in a lobster mushroom sauce. Then we stopped by Goodwill to look for clothes for Paul. We left with jeans for me and a pile of books.

My first xbox live experience!

Savannah and I played DDR! It was awesome! Rob helped us get it set up, then the two of us played. Lots of fun! I can't wait to do it again!

Bla Thursday!

Thursdays are my least favorite day of the week because I've been through four days of getting up at six am, but I still have one left to go. At least today I'm not grumpy--I'm just tired. I had a very busy day at work, so I took a nap when I got home. I don't feel too much better, but at least I tried and it was nice to just let myself not worry about stuff I should be doing.

Paul and I went out for National Pancake Day on Tuesday. That was fun. We failed to find the IHOP--Paul looked at the directions enough to figure out it was at Robinson, and from there he figured we'd wing it. We winged our way to Denny's. I've still never been to IHOP. But Denny's is nice. I approve of their Nannerpuss commercial, and a grand slam for $5.99 is pretty awesome. I ate half of it and had the rest for lunch on Wednesday.

I've been pretty good about working out. I'm just playing DDR, but it's at least getting me moving for a while every day. Today Bill and I are getting back to jogging because it's finally not freezing. I'm both looking forward to it, and NOT. It's been too long since we last went and I'm back out of the habit of running. It doesn't take long. I don't want to go too fast today.

Yesterday I got to go get a NMT massage at the school. That was pretty cool. It was a long massage, and the student who worked on me was very nice and gave me an excellent massage. I missed the first half of Lost, but Paul filled me in when I got home. ^_^ I was supposed to get my normal massage from Marie tomorrow, but her grandmother is having health problems so she has to go back to State College tomorrow. I hope everything works out okay.

Paul has a job interview next week! Exciting!

Fuckin' RIGHT!

I just unlocked not one, but two songs on DDR for the xbox 360! I had been failing to manage it a lot. And now I've done it.

Awesome.

I also have orange guava juice.

I win.

Valentine's Day

Paul and I went to the Carnegie Science Center for Valentine's Day. It was actually pretty busy. We spent a lot of time just tooling around the exhibits, learning about bat wings and fluid dynamics and fish, but we also saw the omnimax movie "Under the Sea," which was awesome. It had sea dragons. It got a little preachy with the "stop global warming" message at the end, but it was still an enjoyable experience. Then we went to see "The Stars Over Pittsburgh," which was actually pretty informative. I might be able to add a couple new constellations to the few I can already spot. The last show we watched was at their science kitchen. It was about brains. We ended by eating jello brains. Yum.

For lunch, we ate at the cafe at the science center. The place was packed, so we retreated to the only open tables--out on the balcony overlooking the river. It was snowing, so we had the outside to ourselves. The metal chair was really damn cold, but it was nice to eat and look out over the water and watch the snow fall. Really romantic, actually.

For dinner, we walked to The People's Indian, which is always a good choice. It's a great place to eat. Then, we had fondue for dessert. Warm chocolate, with pound cake, bannanas, strawberries, blueberries, and caramel vanilla marshmallows. We watched Young at Heart with Dorris Day and Frank Sinatra.

Overall, it was a very good day.

Oscar nominated original songs

So, I downloaded the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack because I really enjoyed the music, and between that and the Wall-E soundtrack (which I downloaded for the same reason) I have all of the songs nominated for best original song in 2008 on my computer.

That's pretty cool.

Slumdog Millionaire

Paul and I went out for a date tonight. We went to Applebees and then went to go see Slumdog Millionaire.

The movie was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. And the way they did the credits is just about the best thing ever.

Go see it.

Nazi Zombies

I saw a story about this on the news, and Savannah emailed me another story. Check out this video.

Anyone who doesn't think this is funny and is seriously worried about public safety issues because of it needs to remove the stick from their ass. Seriously. It made my day. I will be very sad if they catch and punish the people that did it.

Check it!

My Nemu Nemu Christmas art!