Finally, it's here!

Today's the big day! Movie Madness finally launched and it's exceeding expectations so far.



It's just past 12:30pm and we've hit 157 votes (to put that in perspective, our normal weekly poll only gets about 20-25 votes per week) and people are talking. Mike went on KSYZ and promoted it, we got a couple of prime real estate columns on A-1 as well as the IndyKnow section itself and page 2 - house ads, web promos, flyers in pizza boxes - it's huge!

So check it out - getindyknow.com - and this beast runs all through April so go back often and cast your vote :)

Stormy Weather

I spent my lunch hour parked near a park watching the onset of a good old-fashioned thunderstorm rommling this way.

It was heaven.

So I took a few shots of the clouds because for some reason I like to do that. This was the best of the lot.

Thank you drive through.

Didn't feel like cooking tonight.

Shhhhh...

I went to the Devil today. Don't tell anyone.



It's funny that telling people you shopped at Wally World has become something of a Don't Ask, Don't Tell thing.

Bauer Power Hour

It's the jack Bauer Power Hour again. Hurrah. I accidentally took a nighttime cold capsule and could barely keep my eyes open much less do my recap after. Hate colds.

More Smallville

Yeah I know, lots of Smallville pics. This is not because I am obsessed with the show. This is because I don't have any good pics from the day and we got started on Season three today :)

Exciting weekend

Copping out a little. I didn't do much this weekend because I think I'm coming down with something. I feel icky. It better not become pneumonia again is all i have to say.

I did make a vat of stew this weekend and I think it was my best batch yet. It's goooood. Mmmm stew.

Anyway I ordered season two and three of Smallville so we pretty much devoured season two today.

Brackets are my life.

Today I built 64 web pages. Granted it was a mainly a lot of cutting and pasting but my mouse clicky finger is a little sore right now :)

Movie Madness launches next Friday and I'm so looking forward to it. It's amazing how one nugget of an idea cooked up by two guys in the newsroom has become this huge beast involving 3 advertising sponsors, possible showings at The Grand, 2 columnists going head to head over the picks recorded for posterity, 64 movie breakdowns, and 64 little web pages.

It's going to be so much fun.

I love this book

I've always loved Stephen King books. I'm more of a fan of his earlier stuff - he kind of lost me after Tommyknockers. But he's such a wonderful storyteller, especially when he strays from the horror genre. Don't get me wrong, The Stand is one of my personal faves, but I really like it when he writes something like Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me.

Eyes of the Dragon is one that's always stuck with me and the kid reminded me that we actually have it amongst all our books (I almost bought it the other day.) It's a cool little fantasy story and I'm hoping I can get Shan to read it when I'm done with it :)

Snow angel

Well if anyone at the paper is wondering where the full body imprint came from outside the employee entrance,



That's where it came from.

Cozy?

What should have been a cozy day cooped in the house due to massive snow drifts and buried cars turned into a restless day full of boredom. I hate feeling like this. Nothing is appealing - not movies, not TV, not the Internet, not my book. It was mainly a day of waiting for 9:00pm when I could crawl in bed and not feel too elderly for going to bed early. I hate this feeling. Can't wait to get back to work tomorrow. How often does one say that?

I did take some more pix of the snow. Here's one of Spooky trying to get away from the kid who wanted to chuck her into the 2 foot pile of fluffy snow on our balcony :)

Snow day

But not for me. The downside to living in town not far from work is you pretty much have to come in when the weather's bad :) Hopefully the people who plow our parking area will scoop my parking space instead of dump all the snow from the lot into my space like they did last time and I'll have a place to park tonight.

Weather's supposed to dump another 9 inches or so on us this afternoon. Should be an exciting day!

Holy Snow Man!

Crikey we got dumped on today.



The school actually called tonight to let us know it's a snow day tomorrow because apparently there's more coming.

Hope I can dig my little car out :(

Somebody Save Me

Ok. I've become hooked on Smallville. The show's in its 5th season and I'm just now getting around to checking it out. Ah well such is the way with me. My best friend is totally hooked on it and has been wanting me to watch it. So I threw it in my NF queue and the first 2 discs arrived ummm, Wednesday I think.

Well today I had to go out and buy the first season because I'll be damned if I have the patience to wait for the next two :) Netflix is hawesome (TM Wil Wheaton) but there are some instances of immediacy where I have to hit Blockbuster to rent or buy a movie I love.

Anyway Smallville is a lot of fun and I'm totally digging on Lex Luthor.



Of course, Clark's not too bad either. I just wanna... lick that S off.

:)

Hapy Oirish Day

I thought I'd put up a pic from my travels over in Norn Iron :) This is just a signpost giving directions to various destinations near Belfast. I took pics like this a lot when I was there because even now I still can't believe I got to go.

I really miss it.



I spent most of my time there in and around Belfast with my ex-boyfriend, Andy. That was one of the best times I've ever had :) I've got most of my journal online and you can read it here.

The Happy Ass Program

The office supply store just brought in a plethora of spanky new chairs for a bunch of people in the newsroom. My coworker Tonya was one of the ones who got one much to her surprise :)

But she had her old chair for the past six years. Saying goodbye wasn't easy:



But I think she got over it ;)

It's official

My daughter is a nerd. And that's a good thing :)

Shannon takes long baths. Long, long baths. She disappears into the bathroom with a book and sometimes a cup of tea and I don't see her until I have to pound on the door because we are, after all, a one bathroom family.

However, tonight she took the fastest bath of her life - and this is including the times when she was a baby and didn't really like the whole "get clean" thing. Why did she hurry through her ablutions?

Because it was 6:30pm and Star Trek TNG was coming on at 7.



Oh she's seen the show before and might have joined me on occasion to listen to Data wax poetic about Spot. But her vacation last week and the lack of anything else to watch made a full nerd out of her. She has to watch it every night.

I'm so proud :)

Brackets brackets everywhere

Man oh man I'm drowning in brackets! :)



But these movie brackets are fun. Okay okay basketball brackets are fun too especially since I plunked my 3 bucks down on the NCAA tournament. I asked Corey to help me on it though because I end up picking my teams based on things like, "Ooo George Mason was on 24. I'll go with that team."

But we're doing movie brackets for Indyknow in a couple of weeks and everyone's having a blast with them. Good idea Mike :) I'd thank Jack too but he doesn't read this :)

Cleaning house

I think 24 is cleaning house. Another major character on the show bit the dust tonight which either means they're gearing up to finally off Jack or their clearing house to make room for a new batch of costars for him. Sad though. I'll miss Tony. his death was a good one.

I post a cap of my 24 blog because after the show I write a sort of recap column. I'm pleasantly surprised to find people on the interwebs actually read it. Tonight though I am still up trying to get the bloody thing to post properly. I'm going to be so tired tomorrow.

Moonlight Mile

I watched this today. Hadn't see it and I wanted to see what else Jake Gyllenhal had been in. Ended up enjoying it in as much as you can enjoy a movie about dealing with grief. Not something I'd watch again but it was also not something I regret seeing.

Crushed

Basketball's over now. I'm not sports fan. I don't know a press from a 1-3-1 but I decided to watch the championship game today that our columnist was covering - mainly to see if I could spot him or our photog but I ended up absorbing the game.

The team we were covering lost in an upset and I was actually a little teary-eyed myself as I watched these boys accept their runner-up medals and hugs from their coach as they cried. It was very moving.

This pic was taken by Lane Hickenbottom after the game. Doesn't it make you feel awful for them?

New shoes

I have lovely lovely new shoes :)



I know. So exciting. Well it is for me :)

According to the kid though I got strange looks from the clerk for whipping out my phone and snapping this shot quickly. I wasn't paying attention to the clerk really so I wouldn't know.

Mmm Root Beer

I took my daughter out to a lovely lunch today. Lovely to take her out. Chicken Coop more because it's close to the office than for its fine dining but they do have wonderful root beer. They should, my cousin makes it :) So if you're ever at the Coop and have the root beer enjoy it because he maes excellent stuff.

Anyway it was very nice. It's funny when Shan and I go out these days. The waitress almost always asks if it's separate checks - because they assume we're friends going out for lunch. When I tell them she's my daughter they freak out. It's a hoot.

I'm currently awaiting scores from the 9pm games. If the AP is as slow as it's been this evening I should get to bed around 1am. *sigh* Me sleepy.

Podcasting time again

I'm getting quicker at building Indyknow podcasts. Last time it took me a couple of days or so. This time just and afternoon and part of the evening. They're fun to do but I wish I had better recording equipment.

Goblet of Fire

Yay GoF is out today :)



I needed such a break away from the computer today. It was just not a good today. In fact, today sucked like a two dollar hooker.

But Having Harry and hanging out with the kid helped :)

RIP Edgar

Last night Edgar bought it on "24." The second coolest disfunctional geek on telly and he died while THE coolest disfunctional geek, Chloe, looked on in horror from a sealed room as he sank to the floor overcome by deadly nerve gas. It was sad. And "24" is the best thing on TV. "Lost" is a close second, but "24" is consistently on its game this year.

So farewell dear geek.

Catinabox

I know I said I'd ease up on the Spooky pix (or maybe I didn't. Oh well :) but we have been giggling at the silly thing all day because of all of the places Spooky has chosen to nap, this one has to be the most uncomfortable looking.



It may be hard to tell from the photo, but this box is the one my replacement cell phone came in. So that may be an indicator of the small size of the box. My cat weighs about 14 pounds. She's a lot of kitty. (I could have gone for the vulgar joke there, but I didn't think I could pull it off :)

She's been folded into this box all afternoon. I imagine it's like contorting yourself into some sort of origami figurine and shoving your body into a shoebox.

Weirdo.

More Basketball

I'm still mostly looking after b-ball again and I really haven't had time (or even thought about) taking photos :) So here's a trippy picture. Focus on the plus sign and see if you see a green splotch circling around. Then look at the pink splotches. The green one disappears. Spiff. You'll have to open the bigger image tho for it to work.



Oh and I've had a hell of a time with my net connex today. After a temper tantrum and a few fits, I got it working again. No idea what I did but oh well. Better get back to the games.

Go team go

B-ball again today. I think I've finally hit a stride with all the updates.

Alt-tab whore

What a crazy delicious day. State basketball for girls began today and I had to handle the online coverage for George as you know (and if you don't then just scroll down a bit.)

This required both my monitors, 3 FTP's open for photos, podcasts and score updates, monitoring the live chat, uploading You've Been Spotted pix, watching the AP wire for scores from the games we *weren't* covering all while dealing with the day to day stuff like users with registration issues, photo reprints and forum stuff.

And it's 8:45pm-ish and I'm awaiting the next round as George logs on to the chat for 9:00 game.

And then it all starts again tomorrow :) Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee *thunk*

Big project

So this has been my life the past few days:



It's State Basketball time in Nebbyland and this is my first year helping out George with online coverage. It's been a good time considering I'm not sports fan :)