No one has really asked me this but I like to pretend that you all were weeping beside your computers all this time while there were no post from me and wondering bitterly where I had gone and why I wasn’t posting and were just to timid to ask. Don’t ruin my illusions, people, play along.

Well, the month of November was a bit of a struggle just to keep my head above water what with my usual job, busy eBay AND a little thing call NaNoWriMo that I kicked butt at. Then December came along and kicked my rear more than any month that I can remember in recent history. This was a fetal position weeping, "I just physically cannot work anymore but I cannot stop because I have too much to do!" kind of month and while it was profitable, it really took its toll. December is always the biggest eBay month of the year and to put it in perspective, at one point I had 500 listings going all at once which is a personal record for me.

Unfortunately, the week after Christmas was not as nothing filled as I would like because my in-laws are under the impression that nothing would be more enjoyable for us than to drive back and forth to their house as often as possible. They kept packaging it as "a nice vacation" but we were not fooled as we would prefer to be in the comfort of our own home, darn it. I did, however, manage to squeeze in a few video games and only worked a little (because I am physically incapable of stopping work altogether) and it was nice to try out this leisure time thing that I have heard so much about but seldom experience.

I have several New Years Resolutions this year but one joint one I made with my husband was to work less. This actually can be better put with the old Scrooge McDuck adage, "Work smarter, not harder." Both my husband and I work way more than the average human and we need to stop. I cannot speak for him but I know that there is a lot of what I like to call "time bleed" in my day where I will start obsessing over the look of an email signature, suddenly decide to find out whatever happened to such and such actor on some random show I used to watch and get trapped on IMDB for hours or something equally stupid and somehow waste a lot of time. Basically, I want to figure out how to make the same or more money next year without working myself to death. I think this is reasonable if I cut out the time bleed, but easier said than done, you know?

The sort of unique issue for me is that, unlike in a normal office job where the company pays you the same rate for that hour you were on facebook as the hour you spent writing that project, for me, that facebook generates no income and then I need to just work an extra hour. This is how I end up, like today, working until 2 am. I always feel like I still owe myself hours.

Anyway, I decided to put this into practice right out of the gate and the first two weeks of January tried to do less work. Somehow, my brain rejected this and I had a bit of a "Now, I am not getting enough done!" spaz and this week I dove back in head first with working like a fiend. I am still trying to take breaks though and we have been watching a lot of movies so I think it shows some progress.

It’s totally like there are two of me. One is rational and wants me to take nice breaks and have fun. The other wants to work all the time. They are at odds with each other and I cannot reconcile them.

My possible issues include:

• I am a night person and just work better at night. I suspect this might be something because it always seems like I really get into the swing of things right around when my husband gets home and then I work great until about 3 am when I start to get a little loopy. But I also suspect that if I just got up really early everyday I could force myself into becoming a morning person. Not sure I want to do this, though.
• I have poor time management. I tend to get totally obsessed with one project and want to work on it until it is totally done with I cannot do because I really need to work a little bit on everything each day. "Make yourself a schedule," has been on my To-Do list for about a year now. The odd thing about this though is that I am pretty organized in a lot of other ways so you would think this wouldn’t be so hard.
• I don’t like most things. That is mostly a joke but, honestly, I don’t really like watching TV unless its a specific show (and there is only one that I watch, Lost), I have to be in the right mood to want to watch a movie, play a game or read a book and The Sims always sucks up so much time that I only play it about once a month, if that. So many nights, when faced with my choices for leisure or work, I end up choosing work because nothing really strikes my fancy and if its between wasting a night in front of the TV or getting stuff done and freeing up time later for when I might be in the mood for something I really want to do, I will always pick the latter.

So, I am a whiner, apparently. A whiner who hasn’t blogged in a while.

Anyway, expect several woefully topically outdated posts over the next few weeks. There are a lot of things over the last few months that I wanted to blog about but I was too busy so expect those topics to resurface.

Future entries will include:

• The 50 Book Challenge: Did I make it? Will I do it next year? What did I read? Do you care? Find out either way!
• NaNoWriMo: Done but not dead. I have a lot of undigested thoughts about this that I will definitely be going on about in the near future.
• Reviews, reviews, reviews! I listened to a ton of music this year, read a lot of books and saw a large number of movies, some of which I really liked, some I was totally "eh" about, and some that were total crap (Spiderman 3 dance sequence, anyone?)
• A rant about being "Busy"
• A photograph of my garbage can

That’s all I have for now, folks. Hope you are all well and that you have neither impregnated a Nickelodeon star nor joined a cult about aliens thus far in 2008.

Smooches!

"I’d consider staying blonde, Miss Piggy. Not that you aren’t still a goddess worthy of every note of the love song Charles Grodin so enthusiastically lip-synched at you during a synchronized-swimming themed dream sequence (seriously, The Great Muppet Caper is so good), but it’s just not the same. I like my Jif plentiful, my Top Model bitchy, and my Miss Piggy as drag-queeny as possible." -Go Fug Yourself

Dear god, is The Great Muppet Caper ever good. And she has always looked better as a blonde.

 
This is totally the desktop pattern on my laptop right now, actually, if you were curious.

Shrek: Listen, Artie. Eh, if you think this whole mad scene ain’t dope, I feel you, dude. I mean, I’m not trying to get up in your grill or raise your roof or whatever, but what I am screamin’ is, yo, check out this kazing thazing, bazaby! I mean if it doesn’t groove or what I’m sayin’ ain’t straight trippin’ just say, "Oh, no you di’n't! You know, you’re gettin’ on my last nerve." And then I’ll know it’s… then I’ll – I’ll know it’s wack!
Artie: Somebody help! I’ve been kidnapped by a monster who’s trying to relate to me!

Last summer, I went to see Pirates 3 in the theatres and nothing else. The reviews for just about all the big summer blockbusters were pretty bad but I still wanted to see nearly all of them anyway. So many rentals later, I have finally seen all of them.

I am glad Pirates was the only one I paid money to see. I don’t care what the reviews said, that movie was awesome and was definitely the best of the bunch.

That said, I have mixed feelings about the rest. Spiderman 3 was pretty terrible. I really wanted to like it and it was very hard. I enjoyed the outtakes on the DVD more than the movie.

The Simpson’s Movie and Shrek 3 I am not sure how to rank. The Simpson’s Movie was a better movie plot-wise and I suspect I will find it funnier on further viewing. But while my husband and I did smile at a few parts, we did not laugh out loud at the entire movie. We were very disappointed at this as we had high hopes as Simpson’s fans.

Shrek 3, on the other hand, was pretty bad as movies go but there were a few big belly laugh parts. So I am torn. Does a few funny parts beat out a better movie?

Though not a summer movie, in the department of sleeper hits, I totally didn’t expect Meet the Robinson‘s to be as good as it was. I just rented it for the heck of it and my husband and I not only belly laughed through most of it but we both got teary at the end. It is precious. It’s sort of like Emperor’s New Groove in the pacing, but with an actual plot. Its also really fast paced and my brother attests that it gets funnier the more times you watch it.

In other movies news, we have this card that gets us a free movie every Tuesday night so we went to see Sweeny Todd. As we were walking out of the theatre, the guys in front of us were saying, "I don’t get it. Why was there so much singing? I didn’t get why they were singing." Then his friend was like, "Yeah, dude, there was too much singing. I didn’t get why there was singing either."

People who go to a musical and then are surprised when there is singing in it are beyond me.