Do you remember that episode of the Office called "Drug Testing" (season 2)? In it, Michael Scott says "I hate drugs, I hate them." Okay, so that's a really short thing to remember, but I've seen that episode like 15 times. ANYway, I feel that way about computer viruses. I just hate them.
To back up, last night little Quinn got attacked by some kind of stupid virus thing. It completely confunded avast!, slowed things down and kept my Internet from working, even after a boot scan took care of a few files. I wound up doing a system restore and so far that seems to have fixed the problem. But it is so so so annoying to me that instead of working on the things I planned to do last night I had to instead do a bunch of scans and restarts and fussing, all because some girl with a lip ring (see the aforementioned episode) made this stupid virus.
Anyway. This vexes me, but in the interest of ending on a positive note, here's a gif.
Okay, so maybe I aged a year, but I would rather just stick to the day version. At any rate, I just had my birthday. I had been very much looking forward to it because I was aware that Drewbles had been plotting and planning for some months. Plus it didn't hurt that there was a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie opening on my very birthday, just for me (more on that later). So, it was a Pirates-y kind of birthday, just for me.
The night before we stopped at the store to get a few things for my cake. I've been wanting to make a red velvet cake for months, and I thought my birthday was a good opportunity. Unfortunately the store did not have red food coloring of all things so we didn't get cake stuff after all. Instead we decided to get my birthday cereal of choice, chocolate Marshmallow Mateys (there's that pirate theme again). But alas, they had none of those either. So we went home because it was late and I didn't want to go to another store.
Well, the next morning I woke up and stretched about in my bed and lo, there was season 2 of Veronica Mars under my pillow! Well done, birthday fairy Drewbles. I traipsed off to get ready for work and then finally wandered into the kitchen to have some (*sigh*) non-birthday cereal when LO, there were the chocolate Marshmallow Mateys on the shelf! Drew went racing off to a different store while I was in the shower! How delightfully tricksy.
So off I went to work. I was only working a half day so I didn't take a lunch, which means I didn't touch my bag for a few hours. When I did finally open it, what did I find but season 3 of Veronica Mars! My first reaction was puzzlement, as I tried to remember when I put it in there before realizing what had happened. I hooped and hollered (inwardly) as now my collection was complete.
Drew came to pick me up from work and surprised me with a shaved face. He's had a beard since January and while I am very fond of the beard, I had been missing his face lately so it was a nice surprise. We ate lunch and watched some Project Runway, then I settled down to finish a collage of my Pirates socks (a collage Drew did most of the work for already). I then read my book for a little while and then played with the Wii until Drew came home a little after 5. I very much enjoyed wasting some time.
We had dinner plans at Bombay House but first we played a little game of hot and cold. The clues led me to our Tesco reusable bag in the kitchen where I found a Pirates fun pack--the new Lego game for the Wii, the latest soundtrack, a little Lego Jack figure and two tickets to the movie! At this point I was feeling *quite* spoiled. I put my Lego guy together and then off we went to Bombay House for MORE spoiling.
The food was delicious and we headed to the movie. Let me just say here that I love the first three movies to a perhaps ridiculous degree. I could talk about this for a while but I will summarize and say I love them and Dead Man's Chest is my favorite and I quote it often and I watched them all this week for the first time in ages and I just love them. Phew. Anyway, so when they announced a fourth was being made, I was skeptical because 1) it's totally unnecessary, after the neat wrapping up in the 3rd 2) No Will and Elizabeth 3) Worse, Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane. BUT I was still cautiously optimistic because hey, it's more Pirates and my love for it is not dependent on Will and Elizabeth by any means.
SO. We watched it, and about halfway through I turned to Drewbles and told him it was making me sad. Part of me wanted to leave, a little part of me wanted to cry and a very small part of me was occasionally amused. *sigh* And now I will summarize my grievances briefly: Ian McShane=BOMB, too much Jack being in the lead, not enough piracy, too much swinging from palm trees, too little chemistry, too much innuendo (compared to the first three). Anyway, I will give it another whirl at some point, I have been known to change my mind, but I did feel a little burned after.
So we headed home, dissecting the movie all the while, and as we were walking back inside, Drew said he left something in the trunk. Say, maybe I should go get it? Well, it turns out someone had left a large wrapped box in there. How weird! We went inside and I opened it up and found something I have been talking about for several months.Isn't it the prettiest and cutest little netbook you have ever seen? Originally I planned to name it Chabo, but when I saw it in its purple tinyness I knew what name she needed.
Quinn! And everytime she makes a fuss (which I hope is not often) I intend to say "Gee, Quinn." Unfortunately Quinn had a loose mouse button so we actually had to exchange her in the morning, haha. But now she is up and running, and I have great plans for us. Vera doesn't seem too jealous. In fact, she is probably relieved because this alternative will lead to much less of me shaking my fist at her and her aged, fussy ways.
To top of the day, we played a little Lego Pirates and watched the season finale of the Office. I also chatted with my Mama and Papa, heard a cute message from my brother and his family (who called during the movie), and did a little MSN chatting with my sister. So, almost everyone.
In the end, it was a truly delightful birthday. Many thanks to my lovely Drewbles for all of his surprises. He does spoil me so! But I'm not going to complain.
There's an artist on dA that does some funny things. One funny thing she did recently is this:
It was a big hit and led to some altered versions by others. This is my favorite, for obvious reasons:
Hah! Everything is better with dinosaurs. Unfortunately I can't tell you who did this one, but whoever you are, I tip my hat to you, sir/madam/mademoiselle.
On a completely unrelated note, little Vera has just been a basket case for well over six months now. I thought it was because she picked up not one but two viruses in a pretty short amount of time last spring. And, yeah, that probably didn't help but months later she was still taking a ridiculous amount of time to boot up/shut down/open Firefox/open anything. Finally last week I had a little suspicion that maybe my antivirus software was the culprit. So Friday night it was in with the new (avast) and out with the old (symantec) and Vera has perked right up to her old delightful self. I would say symantec served me well, but remember those two viruses? Anyway, it's nice to see Vera happy again and it's nice to not be waiting half an hour for her to do anything. Huzzah.
I am vexed by my current inability to resize scans and make them look good. I don't know if this is more a problem of the scanner or the lack of programs, though it is probably both. Grr. I keep thinking I will try turning on the Yumyum again, just to see what happens. But then, as if on cue, I will have a dream where turning it on does nothing. So then I don't but I guess I should just turn it on and see what happens.
On the upside, I played with tracing paper today and I almost bought a notebook since I can't use Word in my room anymore. I need some nail polish that is more pink.
I started rereading The Prestige again last night. It is good. I think it's cool how the movie kept the same kind of story but tweaked it into something different. I also read a truly abysmal Star Wars novel last week and it was so wretched that it's put me off the genre. I was also unfortunate enough to read another by the same author and it wasn't very good either. So, clearly, the man needs to go back to writing fanfix. If he does this, he should not use the word 'genuflect' so often just because most people probably do not know what that means.
I was thinking about writing a fanfiction the other day. I was thinking of this as an alternative to coloring arts, since I can't do that now, but then I remembered that I typically write things on my computer. It's been so long since I've had to share computer space that thinking about it makes me paranoid or something. I am thinking this is probably an irrational reaction on my part.
I watched the Best of Masterpiece Theater today and was kind of surprised at the top 12. I guess I expected more recent ones to come up, but probably just because I haven't seen any earlier than 1980 and any before 1995 are pretty rare. I was glad to see Bleak House come in so highly. And Guppy won for best scene stealer! Woo hoo for Guppy! I already have plans to, whenever I should get it, name my next laptop Mr. Guppy. It has a nice ring to it. I keep thinking I should name my mouse too, because it seems like it would like one. It may be jealous of the iPadlet having a name (Harvey).
The point is that I have still not seen Blade Runner but I remain thoroughly intrigued.
