HEY so I went to Detroit today! David & I went to the Star Trek exhibit at the science center, and it was supergood! (The pics of us as Chekov and Sulu are tagged under my name on facebook.) Then there was Trek in IMAX! I am still not caught up to scifigirl I don't think, but I still have time. :p And then I met denajane for dinner! All in all, a pretty damn good day. :)

Finished up Leverage season 1! It is my completely-unfounded fanon belief that ( this might be a spoiler? ) I would give my left arm to figure out how to write that fic.

I am fairly certain that my reaction of "I LOVE THE DUTCH EVEN HARDER NOW WHEN CAN I MOVE THERE?!" is not the one that Fox News was going for. :p

I went to Old Navy and bought a swimsuit today! And even though it is mid-July I managed to find two pieces that matched. :)

I know that this doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment, and I know that I really am relatively functional--I even managed to have a nice conversation with the checkout girl at Goodwill yesterday--but every time I go someplace new to do something I need to do, I have that moment of (somehow) panic and complacency, where I think to myself, "Oh, I can just go home now and go do this thing some other time" although of course if I say that every time I never will. That I make it places at all is sort of a miracle sometimes.

Hey, so I just found was linked to the Stargate Universe character promo videos. I would like to be excited for this show, but I am finding I can't quite muster it. I have yet to find anything particularly compelling. Should that worry me?

Also, "SyFy" is still the stupidest-looking channel name.

I...seem to have accidentally assembled something like a Nurse Chapel costume. If I can find skin-colored leggings sometime between now and October, I will probably wear it to work for Halloween; for now, if David is serious about wearing Starfleet gear to Detroit this weekend, I will wear it with tan shorts and we will be the supercoolest. *facepalmx1000*

Can I open with a "FUCK YEAH CANADA!!"? Because it feels totally appropriate. :D

Mary & I arrived in Columbus around 6:30. The man selling parking passes asked if we were there to see El Salvador. "Uhhh?" I replied astutely, and he waved me on through, possibly rolling his eyes.

Our seats were about six rows up and really awesome. We sat in front of a sage man with a vaguely African accent who was filling in his American friend on Soccer Things. Down the row from us were several boisterous Jamaica fans, one of whom had an amazing yellow and green fedora-esque hat.

The first game was Jamaica v. Costa Rica. Mary decided that Costa Rica were her people, so I got to cheer for Jamaica. This might have been okay, except Jamaica were shit at finishing (like, seriously, worse than Arsenal in front of the goal) and also ended up one man down partway through the first half when one of them did something I didn't see to a Costan Rican that left him rolling around on the field clutching his neck. :/ They hesitated too much and didn't play much like a team--this is probably why they lost to Costa Rica 1-0.

At halftime, Mary purchased us some beers. YAAAAAAAY BEER.

Since I bought my tickets through the Crew, there was a sort of liaison there who called me personally to follow up on the ticket order. (I love that the MLS is still sort of small enough to do something like that.) Anyway, the liaison dude, Matt, came to our seats tonight and introduced himself and we chatted for a bit. He informed us that we could expect more El Salvadoreans to keep arriving--they had been trickling in throughout the first game, and their ever-increasing presence combined with the cryptic remarks from the man in the parking lot had started to concern or possibily excite us. There seemed to be an almost overwhelming amount of them compared to any of the other groups of fans.

This was indeed the case! About fifteen minutes before the end of the first game, I got up to make a phone call--Mary couldn't remember Claudio Reyna's name; all I could come up with was Pablo Mastroeni and all she could think of was Carlos Baerga--and when I came back all the vacant seats around us were filled with El Salvadoreans. o_O Apparently they had tried to take my seat as well, but Mary had smacked them down.

And despite being surrounded by a sea of blue jerseys, ahead of the El Salvador v. Canada game Mary and I decided we were going to cheer for Canada. And being slightly inebriated, it was of course a little more than just cheering, more like yelling until our throats hurt. I was pretty sure that we were going to get mugged. But it was great fun! The Canadians were just so outnumbered! There was a group of thirty or so down in one end, and they had banners reading SUPER CANUCKS and ALLEZ LES ROUGES. I loved them to death the minute I saw them.

AND then Canada went up 1-0 in the first half. I am unsure who scored the goal, but I hope that it was #10 WILL JOHNSON, because he is sort of dreamy. The Gold Cup website says he is about half a year younger than I am and plays for Real Salt Lake. I...may need to see one of these matches. *eyedart*

Canada were the better team, probably, although the Sage African Man behind us insisted to his friend that the teams seemed about equal in skill, it was just that Canada were attacking better or something. It seemed to me that Canada were better put-together, that they played as a team better. They seemed to communicate well or something? IDK, it is difficult to explain. :/

However, around the sixty minute mark, Canada started to look really tired. El Salvador didn't really look like they hit the same level of exhausted until about the eighty minute mark, but Canada had managed to hold them that far and the last little bit was mostly a piece of cake. :)

My favorite moment was between two Canadian players. It came when #15 (Simpson) tried to pass up the field to #3 (Klukowski), or at least to where Klukowski probably would have been if he hadn't been looking pretty damn exhausted and hadn't decided to drop back instead. The El Salvadoreans intercepted the ball, obviously, and Simpson shot Klukowski a really exasperated look. It was not the sort of thing you see when they show games on tv, or even if you are sitting much farther away from the sideline. ♥

I think I will have to get back to Columbus for more games sometime. Mary & I do have our tickets to the Crew v. Toronto game at the end of the month, so there's that! :)

ALSO: Mostly unrelated to tonight's games, but! I wish Bob Bradley would wear a suit. I don't know why I can't take him seriously without one, but there it is.

I saw a hybrid Prius pulling out of Whole Foods last night that had the licence plate DARFUR. It was like the perfect storm of Concerned Suburban Soccer Mom.

I am on Leverage 1x08, The Mile-High Job. Hardison is hacking airline tickets for Nate & Sophie and asks them what fake IDs they have on them. Nate has Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, and Tom Baker, while Sophie has a Sarah Jane Baker. WHAT. I WHAT. THIS SHOW. ♥

Guys, I am fairly certain I am going to end up watching nine episodes of Leverage tonight if someone doesn't stop me. I am already partway through my third one. The original plan was to get them all on DVD from Netflix before the second season started, but someone had the bright idea not to release the first season on DVD until the day before the second season began airing. BOOOOOOO. At least I have found other legal ways to watch it; hulu only has episode 10 linked, but I've managed to find 2 through 9 linked elsewhere. :D


Also, why can't I find an icon of Parker that I like? I will admit that I didn't look farther than "communities that came up on the first page of results when I searched for the interest 'leverage'" but still. She's so adorable, there ought to be eight million and I have found exactly zero that weren't dark, overtextured crap. :(

Antiques Roadshow has had their first $1M find

I know that lupus is a real (and apparently painful) disase, but my problem is that my only answer the government's Could I Have Lupus website is IT'S NEVER LUPUS. :/

I like how Apple keeps using inappropriate background music in their tech commercials. The lyrics on the song in the new iPhone commercial start "Oh Mr. Pitiful, who let you down?" :p


I haven't ever actually watched Leverage before, but what I assume is a rerun is on TNT right now, and I'm really only watching because it was on after a rerun of Bones, which I also don't really watch, but you know, it's Bones, but. LEVERAGE. This show is delightful. I have had a nudgy little crush on the lady who used to be Jane on Coupling for forever, and I think I am also a little in love with the prickly blonde with no social skills. ♥

aaaaaand now I know that (at least some of) it is on hulu. There goes the rest of my time for the next few weeks. *eyedart*

Just bought tickets to the Gold Cup games in Columbus for Mary & me! Even though I have no personal stake in any of the four teams playing in the double-header--Jamaica, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Canada--I am super-psyched. I imagine that we will each pick an opposing team at the beginning of the match and scream our heads off. :D

Argh, I need to remember that purchases I make on the internet do, in fact, cost real money. After coveting this shirt (in blue) for weird reasons for several weeks now, I broke down and just bought the damn thing today. Hooray self-control! :p

Made it to Wizards at War. Nita just said "I'm a wizard, not an engineer!" and I fell off the couch laughing. Yes, I know it can be an innocently-constructed phrase, but really. ♥♥♥ XD

edit: also, I just checked the copyright date for this book (2005) and love DD so much more for this passage from Dairine earlier in the novel:

(someone says to Dairine) "What do your people usually wear when meeting your leaders?"

"If we've got any guts at all, a real annoyed expression," Dairine said.

Took a personal day off work yesterday. I'm pretty sure it was necessary and really I wouldn't have traded it for anything, but in some ways I feel more crap. :/

Also, speaking of crap, what the hell happened with Transformers 2?!

So a few weeks back I looked at the library for the first volume of the X-Wing comic books. Several of you suggested I try the reference librarian, who could order it for me or get it on inter-library loan. I did just that the next time I went to the library, and got an email today that my book had come in! Joy of joys!

...except I pick it up today and it's actually Volume 2. I knew that reference librarian had seemed a bit clueless. D:

I...I think that one of the passing facts in my dream last night was that Arsene Wenger was a wizard. Oh, fandoms, never stop getting mixed up in my brain. :D