vacation-ing

Sorry that it has been a while since I last rapped at ya. I've been preparing for my big vacation, which means I'm taking 4 whole days off of work. I'm now on day 2 of my vacation. I'm visiting some family, resting, relaxing, and recuperating. I will also be heading to a friend's wedding on Saturday. I'm not sure what to expect from this wedding, but I am friends with both the bride and the groom, so I'm very happy to see them getting hitched. I will update you as the weekend progresses, but for now, I did not want to leave you hanging.

500 Days of Summer

Similar to a lot of my previous boyfriends, I had known about 500 Days of Summer for a while and didn't pay much attention to it until I got really, really bored. It was initially on the bill for the Atlanta Film Fest back in the Spring, but the film description didn't really catch my eye. I saw several major summer blockbusters before this movie even crossed my mind.

Literally, today I thought "I haven't seen a move in a while. Wow, this has really good user reviews." I will check it out.

Damn, it was a great movie. It was a movie that was in love with love, and I can't stand in the way of something that sincere. I loved the quirky touches, the awkward moments, and the karaoke. It was interesting to see things from the guy's perspective as well, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a really decent job of portraying all the emotional stages that his character experiences.

It has its cutesy moments, like the unbelievable tough-talking 11 year old sister and the goofy friends, but sometimes I'm willing to let some cheap gimmicks further along the plot if it helps with the pacing of the film.

But then again, I also really liked My Life in Ruins, so it may be fair to say I'm in that wierd girly place where I'm just into romcoms at the mom(ent). For those who have an aversion to girl-trap movies - go see 500 days, don't go see Ruins. Trust me, I know what I'm rappin' about here.

Hot Tubbin'!

In spite of this fantastic piece of art by Ashkon, I'm not a huge fan of hot tubbin'. I can do it for short periods of time, usually after skiing or swimming, but ultimately, you're sitting in a small pool of re-used, over-heated water. The water always smells a little suspect too. . . kind of like feet. That always drives me over the edge. Well, Ashkon seems to enjoy it, even if he does have to hop the fence at a Motel 6 to get things hopping after escaping from a totally boring sausage party.

Ashkon- Hot Tubbin'

zzzzzzzzz aid

Due to a lot of recent job stress, I have not been sleeping very well. I will lie awake in bed for hours, without being able to fall asleep. I will wake up with a start in the middle of the night. It really sucks. My sister recommended that I try melatonin pills. I also understand that I will need to address the underlying stress issues (which is why I am saving up my go-to-hell money), but in the short term, I need to get some sleep.

One night during grad school, I took a few Tylenol PM to try to get to sleep, and then every time I started to fall asleep, one of my legs would jerk and wake me back up. This ultimately left me even more exhausted and frustrated. Similarly, when I returned from Europe with a case of the German measles and a nasty cough that kept me up for 24 hours straight, I did what any normal person would do. I downed some Nyquil in order to knock my ass out so I could get some much needed rest. I then proceeded to wake myself up by coughing every 15 minutes and had wierd fever dreams in between.

I think what I'm saying is that my body is too strong for the sleep aid. Let's hope that the melatonin will work, or I will have to get serious and get a prescription for non-habit forming Ambien.

Traffic Court, yo.

So, I had my first personal experience in traffic court this week.

A few weeks ago, I was pulled over and told that my tags had expired, which was a surprise to me. The officer said, "You know, I'm supposed to impound your car...but I'm not going to." So, let me digress a little here and say that it's the little touches that make normal law-abiding folks hate cops. I understand that police officers have very stressful jobs. They deal with the scum of the earth on a daily basis. However, police officers need to differentiate between treating potential scum like scum and treating everybody like scum. If you pull somebody over for driving with their running lights on instead of their full headlights in the middle of a well-lit city, and the offender is genuinely surprised, not drunk, and has no prior offenses - perhaps it is best not to threaten to make them go to driving school.

Also, don't threaten to impound somebody's car when you have no friggin' intention of doing so. Did that make you feel better? Will that threat make it more likely that I will get my tags? Probably not more likely than the fact that you already issued me tickets that require me to go to traffic court. I think that the possibility of a large fine and or other penalty is motivation enough to register my car and pay my personal property taxes on my car. But nooooooo, you had to take it an extra step, just so I could thank you for being a dick. "Thank you, officer. I appreciate that," I replied.

"I hope you fall off your bike and get some road-rash on your fat-parts" I thought inside my head.

I'm not saying all cops are bad. It's just the bad ones that give the rest a bad rep.

So, traffic court was pretty straightforward. I went in and registered early. At the beginning of the session, the bailiff explained that the court would be trying cases not in alphabetical order (which really sucks for trinny, as her real name resides at the end of the alphabet, curses!) but in the order in which we registered. Joy, I thought - I registered 2nd, so I'll be out of here in a jif!

Then they began looking at cases alphabetically. Then they stopped to have the newly released jailbirds come in to get officially released on probation. One of the things that jails provide people with upon rejoining the cruel world is a roll of toilet paper - I saw several former inmates holding these in large plastic zip-loc bags. Then they stopped to try any cases where the defendant was being represented by a lawyer. Then the juvenile cases. Then more jail releases.

I wasn't all bad. I felt a lot better about my situation after watching some of the youth offenders go through their whole rigamarole. It's really difficult to sign up for anger management courses, submit a clean drug test, and prove that you are enrolled in school, according to a lot of these kids. It's also difficult to come to court, where you are being judged, in clean, conservative clothing. Tight jeans, baggy jeans, cut-off jeans, garish shirts. They were all there. It wasn't a surprise, really. During the opening spiel, the bailiff informed the court that we needed to spit out any gum before addressing the judge, and I thought "oh, this should be good." Any time you have to inform a group of adults to spit out their gum at a public court hearing - you know you have special people involved.

In the end I pleaded no contest, paid my expired tag fine, and moved on with my life. Now I'm always going to make time to register my car and renew my tags on time.