You've never once called them by their names, preferring to address them as "mister" or "senor".

Oof. Feel bloated. I know you all really wanted to know that. This is what happens when my father makes lasagna and cheesecake that apparently we're saving for when the Russians take over because it wasn't ready last night. What the hell??? How is a cheesecake not ready???

Sooo, here in the Land of No Life At All, my plan to marry a monarch and not continue with this whole quest for higher education didn't exactly pan out, probably because unless a monarch happened to be in the laundry room or my local Blockbuster (unlikely) there was no way I could have possibly met him, as those are kind of the only two places I went. Which is a little bit sad.

Wait, no. I went ice skating once. And spent more time pulling people down onto the ice with me than actually skating. I don't know what you would call that...

Incredibly long digression aside, I returned to classes this morning with Mary, and have decided that if we could combine logic prof's accent with astronomy guy's, well, I guess the rest of him, Monday would be the highlight of my week. Sadly, logic guy looks like Ron Weasley's rat in one of the Harry Potter movies. Three maybe? Or four? Not sure, but he looks like him. Sad, no?

Tomorrow I have the rest of the classes, journalism, art history, regular history, and then back to art history. Somewhere in there I'll eat a granola bar and die.

I kind of really want those shoes. Except I'm pretty sure I'd have to ransom my not-yet-conceived first born to buy them, as the paltry earnings I make at work probably won't cover them. Aww, hell, I can't afford Target. Really. Now that they have those international lines, out of my league.

Speaking of work and so forth, all hail the gainfully employed Empress!!! Who was hired because she brought something to the table that apprently no one else did---an application. She was hired in six minutes this afternoon after doing no more than turning in an application and saying, "Yeah, I can work weeknights." So snaps for her!!!

Meanwhile, why the hell did I have to go through the freakin' Nuremburg trials to get my job making coffee??? It was hardly a CEO position or a think tank---I'm not even selling the books!!! They made me come in for an interview, and then wait a week because they were interviewing fake people (boo---poor form!!!), and I even had somebody to vouch for me!!! What the hell???

Also speaking of work, I get to move to books!!! Sometime in the very near future. I don't care, I'm excited. Whee!!!

Some costume drama madness here today all, as PBS aired the first part of BBC's Jane Eyre last night. Eh. Not my favorite. I mean, it's by the woman who directed Bleak House, but it's really not that good. They changed a lot of the language, and so as a person who loved the book I was slightly disillusioned.

Also, not quite as romantic as the book was--- I mean, Jane Eyre was like the very first bodice-ripper, and that totally didn't come across.

And will somebody PLEASE hire somebody hot to play Rochester! It's really hard to lose a contest on looks when your closest competitors are Cirian Hinds and William Hurt, but somehow this one (Toby Stephens? Do we know him?) manages to do it. Good Lord, y'all. Somebody needs to get on that.

Also, they released the Becoming Jane trailer link. Um. Yeah. I was really looking forward to this, and was ready to pledge my undying devotion to it, and then I realized that I'd seen it like five times before.

Because rather than actually detailing her life and being original, they kind of...just rewrote Pride and Prejudice (or, the Most Popular Book of All Time. African pygmy tribes know the story). In fact, I'm pretty sure they didn't even really rewrite it. I'm pretty sure they just changed the names a little. Oh well, maybe it will be better than it looks.

Well, blog kitties, as I got up at six o'clock this morning and didn't really sit down until six thirty tonight, and I tragically have to be on a bus at 7:17 tomorrow morning, I'm gonna go relax and watch Studio 60. See y'all later.

Are we having shrimp???

A quick entry, as the Empress has requested use of the computor and I, as a lowely Grand Duchess, cannot refuse her. At least, not if I want to deal with the screaming. Oh- there will be screaming.

Have been in a very 19th century mood lately, and worked my way through the 1996 movie, the 1997 A&E "miniseries" (I'm sorry, but if it's under two hours, you cannot really call it a miniseries.), and part of the 1983 actual miniseries of Jane Eyre (Five hours. Perfectly respectable miniseries.). Sadly, I cannot find the Jude Law SNL skit, which was quite possibly The Funniest Thing Ever Written. Not even on YouTube. Boo.

First, 1997 is crap. Rochester was NOT black Irish, and he was somewhat attractive. Cirian Hinds is, tragically, the former and decidedly not the latter. Also, Samantha Morton is about twenty years too old and way to pretty to be Jane.

It does, however, have the inestimable advantage of having Mrs. Jones/Mrs. Dashwood playing Mrs. Fairfax. We lurve Gemma Jones. I'd like her to be my mom. She could share with Rockford.

Anyhoodles, 1983 has the best story, hands down, just because they have more hours to put into it, and Jane is good, but I'm not buying Timothy Dalton as Rochester. After an hour he started to bug me. *sigh*

Other than the fact that Jane looks a lot like the daughter of a family that I used to play with when I was little (which is creepy when said Jane is ogling her boss), the 1996 version has my favorite Jane/Rochester. Even though William Hurt's greatest contribution to cinema is still that Viggo Mortensen got to kill him in a completely awesome scene in A History of Violence, taking Viggo's hotness factor, which was already pretty damn high, through the roof. I love that movie.

Probably a good thing, as it consisted of rougly 80% of my total Christmas gifts. :D

As long as we're being all old English, I can't leave my Bleak House icons out of it, y'all.

Ordered North and South from the library, supposedly awesome---and it has Anna Maxwell Martin, My Favorite Person On Earth OMG.

Changing topics, I took down the Christmas decorations today, and I now have a scar on my hand, a backache, and am seriously considering converting to Judaism just for the Menorah.

Also, I might have broken the brand new really expensive attic step thingy. Oops.

But the living room is clean now.



Also couldn't forget about Sense and Sensibility. Nothing to do with anything, but look how pretty!!!

ETA: Stairs aren't broken. Happiness.

A thoroughly dry and uninteresting update as my creative muse seems to have taken a New Year's vacation...damn her.

Or, I swear on unborn Baby Ada that I'll update three days later.

I'm on vacation. I've had a lot of nothing to do...what do you want from me?

Sooo...2007 (which, btw, is way prettier in writing than 2006, n'est pas?) is going well. Spent most of Monday watching The Matrix, Into the West, and more Matrix, and have decided that TNT= Teh Loveliness, and Keanu Reeves dodging bullets= Teh Coolness. And then went and ate lots and lots of lasagna and such at Mickey's, and finished the night with some Baileys. Lovely times, really.

Yesterday I sat at home, which can be lovely in it's own way, and I had to work at night, which was very much of the suck but slightly necessary as I have a write a seizure-inducing check to UWM tomorrow and have decided that if Mary and I want to got to the U.K. and Paris next January I'll need to have $3,800 saved as well as money to pay for the trip. This appears to be, if one works a slightly-higher-than-minimum-wage job, an insurmountable task. Hmmm. We'll have to see. I will not be deterred from drinking in a pub in Stratf0rd-Upon-Avon (drinking age is 18 and I'm too young to rent a car---cheers!!!) or walking slowly down the aisle of Westminster Abbey while pretending to look at the architecture but actually pretending I'm marrying Prince William and returning the realm to it's Roman roots...*ahem*

So yeah. Money. Boo.

Today I spent a lovely leisurely morning at home and then went to lunch with Mary. Good times were had by all, until I discovered inadvertantly and through absolutely no fault of my own (and yes, the police report will back that up) that REAL detectives do not, sadly, resemble those on ANY of the CSI's, not even the supposedly "unattractive" ones...*sigh* Will there ever be any wonder left in the world?

Hot Pockets are good...until you realize that you're wasting four hundred calories on fake food that will fill you up for about twenty minutes. Then you mostly feel sad.

Working my way through Jane Eyre movies, trying to find the definitive version. I'm pretty sure it's the 1983 one with James Bond, who is way too pretty but still manages to pull of Rochester.

Just to give you a little glimpse into my twisted psyche, in the book Jane herself actually bugs me a lot (Seriously. Stop being such a wuss. And do something with your damn hair.), but I am very protective of Rochester, as I am weirdly and ridiculously attracted to him. Even when I read it for the first time at twelve I was like, "Okay...I want him. Now."

Sidebar: I have a tendency to fall in love with male characters in books, and hate the women. Hating the women might be strange- and probably only is so because I have met, ooh, about five women in my entire life that I can stand to be around, but I can't belive I'm alone in the guy thing, because no way in hell could Pride and Prejudice have had two hundred years of loyal followers and spawned and entire genre of films without generations of women falling in love with Mr. Darcy. It's good, but as Imladris and I have agreed, it's kind of 19th century chick lit. And yet, it's managed to become quite possibly the most beloved book of all time. After the Bible. Maybe. I know a ton of women who could quote you from our beloved Jane here, but couldn't finish "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and...?" This may actually be a bigger commentary on our society than the enduring power of getting the rich hot guy in the end, but that is another sidebar for another day.

It's also one of those parts I tend to cast in my mind, like Heathcliff and Max DeWinter. I have yet to find a suitable guy for any of these, though, and it bothers me almost as much as my literary baby name crisis. As much as it pains me to say this, Alan would be a PERFECT Rochester, but he's *gags* too old. *tear* Heathcliff---well, Heathcliff is tough. They came close in '94 with Ralph Fiennes, but at the end of the day good ol' Ralph is still a refined British dude that we all love but don't really take seriously as a monster. And Max is easier to get, I guess. You just need rich and hot. Except I wouldn't want anyone to screw with the 1940 version too much, because it is My Favorite Movie Of All Time I Think Maybe If You Take Johnny Depp Out of The Question.

Alas, no one wants my casting ideas. Woe.

Le anyhoodles, to wrap up that incredibly long digression, I'm halfway through the William Hurt/Charlotte Gainsbough, which is good but goes way too fast. Ten minutes in and she was leaving Lowood. It's a travesty.

Continuing with today's theme of Kathleen is a Dork, allow me to share with you, in all their glory my books, courtesy of LibraryThing. com, a lovely website that now has my undying devotion because it allowed me to do what countless notebooks and weekends sitting in my bedroom with Erin Shanley couldn't---catalog my books. All of them, in one place. Well, just the adult ones. I thought the two hundred Nancy Drew and countless Thoroughbred/Saddle Club/Pony Club/Other Outlets For My Childhood Obsessions were slightly unneccessry.

Except that Betsy-Tacy got an honorary spot, as well as Christy, which made me want to be a missionary for about twelve minutes just so I could marry a hot preacher guy, until I realized that I a.) don't like not having a bathroom, b.) don't like people, and c.) am Catholic and if I married a hot preacher of my own religion I'd burn in Hell for all eternity. Sadly, C was not, at thirteen, the most pressing deterrent. I think it was the bathroom. That bathroom was a biggie.

It is now permanently linked on the sidebar as well, in case you need are reading this one day and are struck with the sudden and intense need to know what is overcrowding my shelf.

So. I'm going to go watch Without A Trace with the Empress. Somebody abandoned her baby. Oooh.