sometimes Always

Eddie had picked out 3 movies for us to watch with Mom and Brian the other night: Paranormal Activity, Jennifer’s Body, and District 9. I didn’t really think that either of them would be interested in District 9 (although Mom liked it when we did watch it), Brian would enjoy Jennifer’s Body for the nubile girlies but Mom would probably hate it, and we’d only rented Paranormal Activity and Mom really wanted to see it, so that’s what we ended up watching.

I’d heard mixed reviews of it before we watched it. Some people thought it was stupid and didn’t live up to its hype. Some people thought that the hype was well-deserved and that it was the scariest thing ever.

Me? I didn’t think that it was the scariest thing ever. It had its moments where you’d jump a little in your seat, but scary? No. But creepy? Oh hell yes.

I’m one of those people who will replay a movie’s creepiest moments in my head, and things that didn’t seem that bad while sitting in the living room with the lights on are suddenly magnified while I’m laying in bed with the lights off. The strange twin girls with their synchronized walking and the slow-motion tidal wave of blood in The Shining, for example. The woman cooking in the kitchen and the poisoned little girl in The Sixth Sense had me up for the night. While I thought the movie itself was a huge waste of time and money, the mass suicides of The Happening were freaky to me.

In Paranormal Activity, you know when something is going to happen. It’s the fact that you don’t know what’s happening that messes with your head. Plus, like Cloverfield, you don’t actually see anything happen, so your mind fills in the blanks. The little bits of actual action that you do see are so brief and subtle that you wonder if you saw them at all.

Right before Eddie turned off the bedroom light, he rolled over, kissed me, and told me “Now don’t get all freaked out about the movie and stay up all night.” Until that point I hadn’t thought of the movie since Eddie turned it off after watching the alternate (and freakier, he tells me) ending. Naturally, I was up for another hour replaying scenes in my head – the bumps, the flickering lights, the shadows and footfalls in an empty hallway, the standard fodder for horror movies for a century that were suddenly exponentially creepier in the bedroom than they had been a couple of hours earlier.

And I’ll probably watch it again at some point just to get creeped out again.

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Hello, 2010! I’ve got big plans for you!

I don’t do resolutions. I never stick to them, mainly because I set unrealistic goals and then I feel like I’m forcing myself to do something that I don’t need to do. Do I need to make a blog post every single day? No. My 6 loyal readers won’t like me any less if I keep doing my 1-2 posts every week instead of flooding their feeds with a post every day. So here, in no particular order, are the goals I’ve set for myself, all realistic and doable.

1. Keep on running for enjoyment — I started almost a year ago, and I’ve stuck with it much longer than anyone thought that I would. At first I kept it up because no one believed in me, so this year my goal is to stick to it because I believe in myself, and shun the nonbelievers. Shuuuuunnnnnnnn-nuh.
2. Lose more weight — Since February 2009 I’ve lost 45lbs, checking in this morning at 184lbs. I have no set goal weight in mind. I just want to get to a weight where I can be both happy and healthy.
3. Save more money — I have no idea where our money goes, and that sucks. I believe that if we actually take a look at what we’re spending money on, the money will sort itself out. The goals here are a trip in December and laptops for the two of us.
4. Run in the Rock & Roll Half-Marathon in Las Vegas, December 5th 2010 — This is going to require me to actually do a shitload of running between now and December because, hello, it’s a freakin’ half-mary (ZOMG, lookit me, using runner lingo). That’s 13.1 miles. For comparison, my longest run, to date, has been 3.6 and took me around an hour to complete. Additionally, I need to be able to finish the race within 4 hours. Oh yeah, and we need to actually save enough money for me to register, fly out, and stay in Vegas for a few days. As a grand prize to myself, if we do make it out there, Eddie and I will be renewing our vows with Elvis. Apparently that’s what you do in Vegas.

so, what are you doing this year?

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Everyone else is doing it, so I’m going to be a frigging sheep and do it myself. Here’s a damned recap of the last year, and maybe tomorrow I’ll post about what I plan on doing this year.

Winter: I spent most of January sick and sleeping on the couch. This is my typical winter behavior because I think I have small, mucus-secreting aliens that live in my chest during the winter (eventually they leave and spend their summers in the Hamptons). I also went outside my comfort zone and met up with Robin and some other lovelies for a movie, some coffee, and the best damned carrot cake ever.

I decided in February that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life as a fat cow. I found the C25K (Couch to 5k) program online and decided that come spring I was going to give it a shot. Then Mom got an elliptical machine, which I used several times and referred to only as “the machine of death” until she traded it for a treadmill. I started the program on the treadmill, bought some new sneakers, and OMG, I’M A RUNNER.

Spring: March, I spent sick, but I still ran. We also discovered the sheer awesomeness of Doctor Who on BBC America, and watched the last season almost in its entirety before we realized we were watching it in reverse order. Whoops.

In April we had a serious family crisis when Eddie stepped on Pickle. After an overnight stay that cost roughly a week’s stay in a Vegas hotel, we brought her home and she was stuck in a cage for 3 weeks. Later in the month we headed up to Robin and Eric’s house for some adventure.

I started running outside in May. I hated it at first because I sucked at it, but I love it now. I also managed to do my longest run ever, a 20 minute run that I thought I’d never-ever-ever be able to do. My cousin got married, and much fun was had at the wedding. I think I took about 2000 pictures there.

Summer: At some point in the beginning of summer I decided that I really, really liked running, so much so that I would go out in the rain to do it. Around the same time I also decided that I was going to stop playing WoW. And the best part of all was discovered that I’d managed to get myself under 200lbs for the first time in forever. Eddie and I also did another road trip into Massachusetts, this time to meet Avitable when he was visiting.

I changed my domain name, and finished the C25K, and I chopped my hair off.

Fall: I ran my first 5k in September, the CVS Downtown 5k, and had a fucking blast. My pace was so awful that I may as well have been walking, but I finished. I also decided to sign up for the Flames of Hope 5k in October to raise money for the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation, and Eddie joined in, and then Mom and Aunt Jane joined in. We ended up raising a shitload of money, and Mom got to carry a torch in the closing ceremony. The vet diagnosed Pickle with adrenal disease after she lost all of her hair, but some sort of miracle happened and she’s an entirely new ferret.

… And that pretty much brings my year up to date, since the last two months have been nothing but more running, getting the kitten, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

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Oh the joys of Christmas mornings… the wrapping paper tossed on the floor and at the pets, the excitement when you get something that you really wanted, the joy in a family member’s face when they get something they didn’t expect but really love. That’s what Christmas is like in our house.

This year, my mother and Brian got us a Wii and the Wii Fit to go along with it. We hooked it up and plugged in all the cords, set about making our little Miis, then put the Fit cd in the machine. Whereupon it decided to ruin Christmas.

Let me just say that I really, really dislike the little voice of the Wii board. I plug in all my pertinent information, my height, my birthday, step on the board to the go through all the tests, only to have this obnoxiously cheerful machine tell me “That’s obese!” And then it makes my Mii explode, popping out her little CGI tummy with one of those sound effects that you would expect from a movie about a blob – a “BLOOP!” sort of sound – and she looks around, stunned, as though she’s getting ready to scream “WHERE THE FUCK DID MY FEET GO!?”

I did have some fun with the yoga options on the board. Most of them involve standing on the board and holding a pose for 30 seconds or so, trying to keep your center of balance in a specific spot. I made it through a few positions without any problems whatsoever; none of them are incredibly torturous, and the virtual trainer is thorough to the point of annoyance in explaining how to do something. Then I did one pose, and instead of the typical “You did great!” it said, “You seem very unstable.” Five minutes later it told me, “You seem very unbalanced.”

Oh, CGI-trainer, you have no idea.

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