Jana says: Don't want to interrupt but must warn you: Shoot 'Em Up is the worst movie I have ever seen!

Jen Star says: Nooo!
Jen Star says: Really?
Jana says: Yesssssssss.
Jen Star says: How come?
Jana says: We just came out of it.
Jana says: Laughably awful, inconsistent, offensive, violent, clueless, pointless, plotless.
Jana says: We NEARLY left.
Jana says: But stuck it out.
Jen Star says: But . . . Clive!
Jana says: Oh it's awful!
Jana says: I know!!!!!
Jana says: Clive!
Jen Star says: But. . . .
Jana says: Two or three great close up shots of him.
Jen Star says: Is this the one he was doing in Toronto?
Jana says: Yes.
Jana says: Lots of shots of Toronto.
Jen Star says: But . . .
Jen Star says: But, Clive.
Jana says: Including one of Clive walking under the Gardiner—same shot as our [name redacted] image!
Jana says: Had to warn you.
Jana says: Save your $10.
Jana says: OR . . . go in pre-warned.
Jen Star says: So it's like Derailed and that one he did with Angelina all over again?
Jana says: Worse.
Jen Star says: Thanks for the warning! It really feels like he'll do anything for the right $$, eh?
Jana says: Seems so.
Jana says: I mean, the script is awful too!
Jen Star says: Not campy?
Jen Star says: Intentionally, that is?
Jana says: Yes it is.
Jana says: But not effectively.
Jana says: Supposed to be cartoonish fun.
Jana says: But it's not fun.
Jen Star says: How disappointing.
Jana says: It's not just mindless fun.
Jana says: It's mindless awfulness.
Jen Star says: Thank God he's so ridiculously hot.
Jana says: lol
Jen Star says: Or there might be trouble in that career of his.

A bit of a chill filtered down from the north today as we enjoyed a taste of the eight-month horror we know as fall-winter-spring. It's under 20 at the peak of the day (gasp!) for the first time since probably May and is cloudy with scattered misty showers, and it's really harshing my buzz, man. Of course, this could be from the letter I got from the government this afternoon asking me to submit evidence of the transit passes I claimed on my last tax return, or even just the fact that I'm spending the day tomorrow saying goodbye to my boss, who passed away last week. What does one wear to a funeral in the summer?

I've been busy since I got home from B.C. getting reacquainted with my old friend Adam Carolla. I stopped listening to him on a regular basis when he got his own show, so this has been a welcome reunion. That said, it's given me next to no time for reading or even listening to music. Which also makes me sad, because I like to read books and listen to music. But Adam's crazy funny, so what's a girl to do?

My brain hurts.

I need to eat.

Yes, I know I just got back from Scotland a month and a half ago, but vacations wait for no woman and I am heading back on the road to visit my Jalapeno and her new little one in B.C.

I bought about 10 dozen books while I was in Scotland, as trade paperbacks are the same price there as pocket, so even with the exchange we're looking at $15 as opposed to $25. Plus, they were buy two get one free so it was more like $10 a trade! Sweet!

My neighbour C has been showing up with chicklit books the past couple weeks, and I plan to take each one she gave me with me to B.C. there is nothing better than reading an entire book on a flight, and chicklits are wonderful for that. I will be taking Swapping Lives by Jane Green, The Bachelorette Party by Karen McCullough Lutz and Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. The latter is the only one I've ever heard of, so I'm not sure what to expect.

I will also bring Sebastian Faulks' The Girl at the Lion D'or, a book I've been dying to read for years but have never been able to find on this side of the pond. Bless British bookstores for stocking British authors.

I am currently reading my first man-authored book since GGK's Ysabel: Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. It's sci-fi, which I read only rarely (okay, just Douglas Adams), but it comes highly recommended and so far is pretty intriguing. Plus, hopefully I'll get a new GGK convert in the recommendation bargain. And I'm guessing Jalapeno's hubby is going to dig this one too, so I'll lend it his way once I'm done. It's like I'm arriving bearing gifts (beyond the yummy essential oil soap I picked up for my girl on Skye, that is)!

It's been an upgradey few days for me. On Friday, my old work Dell (256 MB of RAM to run Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Flash at once, yummy!) finally found itself a new home as a bigger, newer model stopped by. My IT guy said it should take two hours to transfer all the files off my C drive (we have network storage for everything except personal/music files). He was back five and a half hours later. He was astonished that I had a massive 10 GB of music on my computer; I was rather surprised that it was only 10 GB. Perspective, I suppose.

My dad upgraded his laptop this week and I was next on the list for a replacement, so I got his one-year-old Inspiron. It is about 100 lb. lighter than my old HP, and has about 1000 times more power, so I'm hoping for Great Moments of Creative Productivity over the next while.

Surprise of surprises, it has Vista on it. He's finally decided to give the new OS a chance, and it appears he's taking me along for the ride. He told me that I can go back to XP if I want, but there's something so fun about having no idea how to turn off Autoplay or how to find your My Computer. It a rare moment when I know more about computers than my dad (I've been able to teach him a few tricks with iPods, and of course HTML, but he's been building the things since '82 and trains cable companies on how to improve broadband connectivity, or something, for a living), but I was able to figure a few things out before him.

Everything went well with the software installs, but when I got home and tried to connect to my remote storage, things took a dramatic step backward. Netgear doesn't support Vista. 160 GB, all my photos, music files and documents, are completely inaccessible to me. So I did some searching around and discovered (amongst the complaints that my particular device likes to overheat and sometimes erase all its files—how do I back up 160 GB without going insane?) that there's a new beta version of the software needed to connect the device to Vista.

And that's what I'm up to today. Cross your fingers for me that this beta won't cause me to lose everything, and that my printers and tablet are not as difficult to troubleshoot.

Update: Success! Now onto the printers!
Update 2: Anyone need a Samsung laser printer? Works great with XP!
Update 3: Scratch that. It was the print server that was causing the trouble. The printer works fine with a little third-party software and a direct connection to the computer.

"Holy shit, is your Dan a ginger?"

(Part of a conversation between three woman in the office reading the Outlander series for the first time, in response to one's statement that she'd tried to get her boyfriend to grow out his hair and sport a kilt.)