sometimes Always

A few months ago I learned that my mother has never been to see a movie on a huge-ass Imax screen, and that she’d never seen a movie in good 3D. As luck would have it, the perfect chance for her to get both came up last weekend with the release of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. We ordered tickets online a few days before the showing so that we’d be sure to get seats, and we would have actually been the first people into our seats if Mom hadn’t had to hit the ladies’ room 2 minutes before they started letting people in.

In a word, the movie was fantastic. It was a visual treat for the viewer, combining all the brightness of Disney’s original animated movie with Tim Burton’s doom and gloom style in a way that just worked beautifully. I loved the story, which is the only things that I’ve heard other people complain about. I think that a LOT of people are going into the theater thinking that the movie is going to be just a live version of the animated one that everyone is familiar with, when it’s got a helluva lot more of a plot to it and reminded me more of the 1985 TV Alice mini-series that I loved when I was little than of the Disney cartoon. I loved that they didn’t exploit the 3D with a shitload of things thrown out at the audience and it merely made the fantasy that much more realistic. In fact, the 3D was so well done that there were a few scenes that actually made us slightly motion sick, they were that realistic.

I did find Johnny Depp switching accents, as well as Anne Hathaway’s “floaty-ness”, to be a bit annoying though.

In other random things, I’m this close to reaching the four mile mark in running. It’s a mental thing, really, and I’m working to overcome the my brain’s “OMG YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS ABOUT RUNNING THAT FAR!” mentality. I’ve also managed to figure out a decent way to get the workout information off of my Garmin Forerunner that doesn’t require me to use trial and error and several reboots to get it to work. The next thing that I need to work on, mentally, is not being constantly worried that I’m going to need to poop while I’m out there. Because the more I go out there with the worried mindset that I’m not going to be able to run far because I might have to poop at some point, the more likely I am to actually need to go and find myself in a messy situation.

On the topic of work… yesterday we had the following conversation with a patient:

Patient: I don’t have a Medicare card. Does that mean they took it away?
Us: Umm… what?
Pt.: My Medicare card. I don’t have one. Did they take it from me?
Us: Did who take it?
Pt: The government!
Us: I doubt that the government went into your house and took your card.

Eventually, we figured out that what she really meant was whether or not her losing her card meant that the government would have taken her benefits away, but for a few minutes there we all thought that this patient was just a little crazier than she normally is. I also had a man come up and ask me if a greeting card was too girly for his grandson, who was turning 16.

Read more

I’m so very happy that it has finally stopped raining for the time being. After a week and a half of not running because I’d managed to twist my ankle a bit and then screw up my back, on top of the Ark-worthy rains we’d had, it was good to go out the other day and get almost 4 miles worth of running. Of course, it was snowing at one point, but that doesn’t matter to me. Snow, I can handle snow. I just hate running in the rain. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be in the 50’s, so I’m going to try for another 4 miles, which will put me at just about a third of the way towards my goal of 13.1.

And right after I post this, I’m going to pour myself a Coke Zero, add something to make it into an adult beverage, and find something to watch on the tube.

Read more

Me [watching that Geico commercial out now that has an executive talking to the gecko about new ad ideas]: Do bees even have knees?

Eddie: [just looks at me with that "Are you high?" look]

Me: And if they do have knees, what makes then so awesome anyway?

Eddie: If I had some poo right now, I’d fling it at you.

Read more

The longest workweeks are those right before and right after a vacation. This week was no exception.

Fortunately, this past week wasn’t so terribly bad. It was a little busy at the beginning, and finished off with a super-slow Friday that resulted in me getting to leave 40 minutes early. I don’t think that we had anyone really messed up enough to write about, although FlakeyTech did tell me that the color of my hair made it look like the back of my head was on fire. We also found out that our district has been pretty much dissolved and new districts have been laid out, so we no longer have our awesome pharmacy district manager. On the plus side, we also lost our terrible loss prevention manager, and the front store is getting rid of their terrible DM.

I’m making a huge effort to run outside when I can. This week I did it twice, both nice three mile runs, one through the back roads and one along the main road. Both were pretty good and neither of them made me feel like I was dying at the end. I’m going to try to do at least 3.5 miles on each run while outside next week. I’m loving my Garmin because I can see how far I’ve gone without needing to try and plan out a route to get to a specific distance. I know that even though I have…. (checking Eddie’s site and its countdown)… nine months and 11 days to work my ass off and be able to run the race in Las Vegas, I also know that I’ve never been one to really push myself. If I don’t push myself, I’ll never make it to five miles, let alone the 13.1 I’ll need to complete the race.

And, speaking (writing?) of Vegas, while it feels awesome to know that I’m registered and the hotel and flight has been booked, I fear that I’m going to be dealing with nine months and 11 days worth of emails from Expedia telling me that something has changed with our flights. Last night I received an email telling me that some had changed, and the entire tone of the email was one of OMG YOU NEED TO CALL OR ELSE SHIT WILL GO DOWN. I called, and after 10 minutes of waiting for someone to pick up, I was told that yes, my original flight from Greene Airport to its layover in Minneapolis was canceled. This would be fine, but that flight had been changed the day after I booked the tickets and had already been switched to a layover in Detroit. So the girl I spoke to put me on hold for another 10 minutes and came back and told me that she’s switched us to a different flight. Unfortunately, my Expedia itinerary won’t reflect this, and I’ve got no confirmation that any of this has gone down except for an emailed itinerary forwarded from the airline’s site.

And, to make matters worse, an hour after this phone call was finished, I received another OMG CALL US NOW OR WE’LL TURN YOUR GRANDMOTHER INTO A VAMPIRE emails. This time Eddie called, and got someone who did the exact same thing, told him that there was no way to “confirm” anything, but gave us a reference number we could use to call back later and just verify things. Yeah, lovely. Just what we want to do is sit on hold for 20 minutes waiting for them to either pick up or confirm things with the airline. I just jumped over to Delta’s site and confirmed everything is fine.

And no, the kitten on the desk has nothing to do with this post at all.

Read more