Chuck has officially been renewed for 13 episodes! They've gotta cut back on the budget, too, but hey! At least it's back!

The Gods of TV are benevolent today.

I spent this morning at work moving our shop equipment from bay 3 (that both Servicing and Maintenance have been working out of since there were German contractors refinishing the floors in bays 1 & 2) back into bay 1, which is our work area. Then at almost lunch time we had to get started on some minor maintenance that was waiting for us. I am the only one of the 3 Sgts on Days that has red X orders (meaning I can sign off serious maintenance actions) so I was tasked to look over a brake handle on a light cart. Should have been an easy, five minute check that the brakes worked properly, then about 15 mins to clear the job out of the computer.

But oh no. It wasn't to be so easy. I don't know if the wrong brake handle came in or if they grabbed the wrong one, but when I tried to adjust the damn thing so that the brakes would actually HOLD the unit I ended up with the stupid thing in about 20 pieces only to discover that there was NO WAY the damn thing would ever work properly. So I erased the corrective action and ordered a new brake handle. That 20 min job took me an hour and a half. During which I got SUNBURNED. I now have a stupid farmer's tan sunburn. Grrr. And ouch.

Some brilliant soul on the flightline decided that shutting a heater down properly was too much work, and killed the thing before it could cool itself down from 200+ degrees, which caused the heat exchanger to warp just about every flat surface inside of it. However, it wasn't cracked and it still worked, so who cares? I rolled the bitch back out.

I was also working on another heater that wouldn't start, which is kinda funny. They have a pull start, so that if the battery dies you can still start it, rather like a lawn mower. This one wasn't charging the battery though, which I ran out of time before I could swap out the battery to see if it was the problem. I left it for swing shift.

And that is my day. Tomorrow, there isn't an episode of House to look forward to (boo!!) but there is Chuck and a bonus episode of Bones! Whee!!! Chuck!Chuck!Chuck!

Oh, almost forgot. This weekend was the Spring Bazaar on base, which is where local (and not so local Englishmen) come on base to sell us stuff. I bought the wine glass and carafe set we gave Mom and Don for their wedding at the last Spring Bazaar. That's also where we infamously spend and ASS LOAD of money on some Wegewood china that while beautifil, is also AN ASS LOAD OF MONEY. So what did we do this time? Yep, we are buying more. *sigh* We are two months away from paying off the service for four (which includes silverware, btw) and as soon as that's done we start paying off serving dishes, two more sets of dishes and silverware, and a box to store the silverware in. We figure that by next Spring (or Fall) bazaar we might be able to get those last two sets of dishes to get us up to service for eight. Whee. In case you forgot, here's what our pretty china will look like--

ChuckChuckChuckChuckChuckChuck!!!

With Scott Bakula and Chevy Chase!

Whee!!!


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hey all, I'm not dead... again. I just worked 8 12 hr shifts in a row last week and this weekend, so I haven't had time to update.

Last week while walking across the ramp to work, I bit it hard when I slipped on some ice. My flight chief, who I was walking with, said "all I saw was legs!" I told Ian that later, and he said I should have replied with "that's because I am all legs." Goofball. Anyway, a few days later I went to take a picture with my camera, which had been in my backpack/purse when I fell, and discovered it was broken. The lens won't open and the screen is canted in the case, which is dented along the top. That poor camera has been through so much, and I finally killed the poor thing. I will probably buy a new camera soon, but until then I'm carrying Ian's around, since he never takes his anywhere. On the bright side, I didn't spill my tea or break my travel mug.

Fasching (sp?) starts on Thursday. For those who don't know (which included me until a couple weeks ago) it's the German version of Mardi Gras or Carnivale. Thursday is Ladies' Night, where women will take over city hall, and cut off the ties of any guy they feel like they'd like to spend more time with. ;) There will be a parade on Sunday which we hope to go to. Other than that, it's a lot of drinking. Like most German celebrations. :D

While I was working this weekend (and still recovering from my fall) I managed to have a light cart towbar fall on my foot--and miss the steel toe. It landed across the top/side of my right foot, just barely missing the ankle bone. It hurts.

I guess that's about all the news that's fit to print. Although if you haven't seen the newest episode of Chuck, Chuck vs. the Suburbs, you should go watch it. NOW.

I'd like to find aaalll those idiot reviewers who said that Madagascar 2 was "even better than the first one" and choke them with my copy of the DVD. I have never watched a more ridiculous piece of recycled crap in my life! I think maybe ten minutes of that dreck was original, the rest was in-jokes referencing the first movie.

If you haven't yet made my mistake and were thinking of buying this movie, go get The Wild instead. It may be a lot like Finding Nemo & Madagascar 1, but at least it has Eddie Izzard as a power mad koala and William Shatner as a choreography mad wildebeest!

Pushing Daisies got the axe. Add ABC to the list of networks that crushed my hopes for a brighter TV future. Bryan Fuller says he'll clear up the CLIFFHANGER ending in comic books--but I've never been a comic-book fan. I probably couldn't get them over here anyway. He also said he's hoping to squeeze a movie out of it too, sometime down the line, but we'll see how that goes.

So. Very. Angry.

Now over to weather! Some of the two inches we already had managed to melt, then yesterday we got hit with even more snow--the powdery kind that blows everywhere and compacts into ice way too easily. One of the higher-ups at work brought his son by and had the three of us trying to clear the FOD checkpoints leading to work up enough that people could actually stop their cars and get out without falling on their asses or having their car slide down the hill without them. Like anyone could see any rocks or debris in their tires anyway, and the planes weren't going anywhere because 1) it was the weekend and no one was working in fighterland and 2) they hadn't ploughed the taxiways yet, so they couldn't taxi by anyway. Ah well. I got snow and ice frozen in my hair, which was a new experience for me. Yes, I have a nice, warn knit cap--which was sitting at my house. I'll start taking it in to work with me, even though it's not the right color for my ABU's. I will also be taking my Gore-Tex to work as well, even though it is for BDU's as well.

Speaking of ABU's, the coveralls they issued to us in the pixelated Army pattern (same colors as ABU) are no longer authorized to be worn. Want to know why? Because they're FLAMMABLE! There's a great thing to learn a year after they started issuing them! So I'm down from three pairs of wearable coveralls to one pair, and they're not as warm as the ABU are. Also the blue coveralls don't have openings so you can get into your uniform pants like the ABU pairs do. It's very inconvenient.

So it totally slipped my mind that it's November, and therefore NaNoWriMo has officially kicked off. I'm still stumped on the vampire story, so I might do a different story that technically doesn't qualify, as I've already written one and a half pages of it. I dunno. I'm off Tues, Wed and Thurs (and only work 8 hrs tomorrow vs the 12's I worked all weekend) so I can hopefully catch up. Or, ya know, get started.

A friend who hasn't posted in a month finally posted something to his LJ but it's locked for comments, and the content makes me wonder what's wrong. Guess I'll have to try to get a hold of him.

Um. I guess that's about all. Life is boring when you spend all day at work.

Well, I've hit the first snag with the new computer (which runs Vista, although I'm not sure that's the problem.) I can't download the pictures on my camera using picture project. It recognizes the camera but when the download screen pops up it says "not connected" and therefore won't download the pictures. So it will be a while until pictures can be shared. Yeah, I could just use the old computer, but where's the fun in that? ;)

I'm off work for the next three days, then work three 12 hr shifts and one 8 hr shift between Fri and Mon. Normally it'd be one 8 hr then two 12 hr then one 8 hr but as I've previously mentioned it's a goal day Friday so everyone else is off work, giving them a three day weekend.

I'm thinking that since I have three days of spare time, I might just try NaNoWriMo after all. It's not like there's a whole lot of TV to watch--we've watched everything that we want to watch on DVD (I have to save SOMETHING for any future TDY's) and we're mostly caught up on downloaded shows, so I'll have a bit of spare time on my hands. The only problem with NaNo is that I really only have one story that truly qualifies for it (meaning I've never tried to write it before) and I'm not sure where I'm going to go with it. Alas, the Kryptonite of me writing anything... I get these great scenes in my head, but they don't come with plots! That little problem has pretty much killed every story I've ever tried to write.

There is one other story idea poking around in my head (based on a dream I had a few months ago, oddly enough) but technically I wrote a couple of pages of that story already, so it's right out. Too bad that's the only one where I actually HAD a plot...

I just perused iTunes to listen to a sample of Weird Al's new song, when what do I see on the home page?

TOP GEAR!!! It's now on iTunes! And I DON'T HAVE $15!!!!


GAAAH!!!!

Although I really wish I had looked up the lines for the movie.  Ian and I guesstimate that we forgot about half the lines from the show, and of those I remembered about 10% weren't the same as the lines yelled by other people.  I did get several laughs from the Tacoma Lincoln Center version of the lines (for instance, the "same room, different lighting, cheap movie" when Brad and Janet are shown to their rooms) and there was a guy behind us who also couldn't remember many of the lines, but what he did know corresponded to what I knew, which made me wonder if he was from somewhere near our part of the States.  He left too fast so I couldn't ask him, which kinda sucked, but what are ya gonna do?

I took a few pictures, which I'll post either here or on MySpace.  We brought two virgins along, which made the cast/helpers happy.  I feel confident in saying that there were more virgins there than non-virgins.  And I think some of the people who didn't get up to be de-virginized hadn't actually been to see RHPS but had just seen the movie on TV or something.  Much fun was had anyway.  One of my virgins had to pole dance, the other had to fake an orgasm.  They're both guys, which makes them that much more embarrassed.  :D

My throat's a little sore from yelling, but all in all it was a good time.  The nice people at Ramstein even provided prop bags with noisemakers, hats, newspaper, water pistols, small bags of rice, a couple sheets of toilet paper, a small flashlight, a playing card and a rubber glove.  We brought more rice, a deck of cards, a roll of toilet paper and a newspaper.  Unfortunately when Ian tossed the roll of TP it didn't unfurl majestically.  Dang it.

I guess that's about all.  If anyone has a written record of the Tacoma version of the RHPS lines, could you forward them my way?  Thanks!