The past couple of days have been pretty uneventful: just work mainly. Oh, and spending way too much time driving around because Durham and Chapel Hill have decided that now would be a good time to do disruptive road construction in as many places as possible simultaneously.
On Wed. I ended up 25 minutes late for a 30 minute hair appointment due to said road construction. Luckily my hairdresser David is a nice guy, didn't give me a hard time about missing the entire appointment, and let me come back that evening when he had a free half hour. Of course that meant another trip to and from Chapel Hill, but this time I took a different route and bypassed the traffic.
We're growing my hair back out again a bit, since it's getting cold, so it doesn't look that different. In fact no one noticed (sniffle) except Shayne who hadn't seen me in months so she hadn't seen it short before. David styled it a new way that looks terrific, but takes a godawful amount of time for daily styling. Normally I sort of pull it straight with my hands while brow-drying, takes about 5 minutes. (Well, if we're being brutally honest, normally I just comb it down and let it air dry. But when I am stying it, that pulling straight thing is what I do.)
But this time he went all over my head, shaping individual little curls with his hands. Then used a diffuser so the blow-dryer didn't muss up the curls, just lightly loosened them. I felt like such a glamor-puss. Although when he was busy coiling up these little curls all over my head, I told him "You know I'm never going to actually do this, right?" He replied that he was just showing me what I could do. The sad thing is, yesterday I went ahead and did it! It took a long time but did turn out nice. As long as I don't end up having to use rollers. That would just be too much. Next thing I'd be going to the supermarket in my housecoat with a hair net over my rollers.
Wed. night was the Angel premiere at Shayne's house. I have high hopes for this season now that Joss only has one TV show (Don't tell me about the Firefly movie, I don't want to hear it!). I'm hopeful that he'll give more attention to this show and it will be really good, and the season premiere this week encouraged my hopes.
I had known that Spike was joining the show, and I have to admit, while I like Spike -- a whole lot more than some Buffy fans apparently -- I don't think he was a good choice of cast member to carry over from Buffy. I just don't see what he adds to the ensemble that isn't already provided by Angel. Let's see... vampire with soul? Check. Was evil, now good? Check. In love with Buffy? Check. Sacrificed all to be a champion of the people? Check.
So, much as I like Spike I didn't welcome the news that he was joining the cast of Angel. It didn't surprise me though. Considering the amount of screen time he got in Buffy's final season compared to original cast members like Giles, Willow and Xander, he was clearly considered a major star of the show. Maybe the major star second to Buffy.
Before seeing the episode I was thinking that Anya would have been my first choice to cross over. (Of course the character is dead, and not mystically dead but really, truly, extremely dead, so that's a somewhat moot point.) But I didn't know they'd be bringing in Harmony, who serves the function that Anya would have in my opinion. Harmony was a pleasant surprise by the way. Unfortunately the surprise came not when her face first appeared on screen, but when I saw her name in the "also featuring" list at the beginning of the show. I should stop reading that list.
So anyway, it was a good premiere. I'm still not totally caught up on who's who and what's what but I'm basically following the story. I made brownies for the evening, which alas didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. Charitably I would call them "cake-like," but uncharitably I would call them "dry." It's been a really long time since I baked anything, and I forgot that for brownies to turn out at all fudgy, they have to be still kinda raw in the middle when you take them out of the oven. I kept baking them until they seemed done, which was way too long. So I took along a bowl of whipped cream to smother the dryness. Lisa and Shayne were very nice about it anyway, and I had a good idea later on to let the rest go even more stale, crumble them up and use them to make a cheesecake crust.
Yesterday I made the rather unpleasant discovery that a container of Damp Rid -- that crystal stuff that sucks moisture out of the air -- had cracked in my closet and leaked all over about half of my clothes. I guess because the water had that damp rid stuff in it, it never dried, just sat on my clothes. Ugh. On the bright side, it was mostly clothes that I was planning to get rid of anyway. In fact I discovered it when I went to take them out, was going to go to Goodwill on my way to a work lunch meeting. But on the downside, that meant I spent the entire day laundering clothes that I don't even like or want anymore. Even the hangers had to be cleaned, they were all sticky with damp rid. So apparently those plastic containers need to be changed once in a while.
Then in the evening I had Stoneline (which I'd had to postpone because of the hair appt. snafu on Wed). Ended up going with them to a political puppet show called "Bread and Puppets Circus." Apparently it's some kind of famous puppet company from Vermont. I wouldn't call it shockingly incisive political satire, but the presentation was fun and even laugh-out-loud funny at times. They did a sketch at the beginning with local media outlets, represented by WXDU, WXYC and the Independant, entertaining people until they're silenced by the FCC and AOL Time Warner. Which was great to see our station's name up there. I "woo"ed as loud as I could when they said our name. I was surprised that they didn't include WUNC or WCPE in the local media outlets. Maybe because WUNC is NPR, so most of their programming isn't local, and WCPE is up in Wake Forest? Or maybe just because they were on a college campus and named the stations that college students would be listening to.
It was interesting to watch political humor with a six year old. Carina had lots of questions like, "what does 'victory over everything' mean?" or "what's 'the economy'?" Her younger sister Jenna limited her commentary to "Bye bye!" every time a sketch ended, and loudly trying to count the people who came on the stage. Since she can only count to two, this was pretty funny actually.
So the puppet show was fun, though I was severely underdressed for the event. It was at an outdoor stage under the trees with stone benches. A beautiful setting, but in the shade it was freezing cold, especially as the sun went down. I'm cold all the time these days, but last night it was really bad. I got a chill that didn't really go away until I got home from Stoneline around 9, had dinner and got under a blanket.
So I think that's all to report. Today it's work, work work.
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