Memorial Day Weekend

Well, Memorial Weekend was uneventful. Worked Saturday. Whooppee. Watched many movies. *twirls finger* Ate lots of junk food. Tortured the dog. Went to a family cook out. Watched NASCAR.

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Jimmie Johnson won! Yay Jimmie! And he didn't sweat either, which is a miracle considering he led 500 of 600 miles. Pretty boy. *snuggles boy*

Coincidentally, plum_evil has posted some pictures from the race. The last one would be of geeky me and the giant picture of Jimmie Johnson.

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As far as the movies I watched this weekend, rewatched Steel Magnolias for the umpteenth time. Love. That. Movie. With a passion. *sigh*

Rented three previously unseen movies: Big Fish, Miracle, and Love Actually.

Big Fish rocked. Hard. I cried like an insane fool at the end. It was so wonderfully southern and random. My only quibble was Ewan's southern accent, which started out with major issues.

Miracle worked wonderfully for me for several reasons. First off, it's a sports underdog story. Hello. This is me, queen of loving the sports underdog stories. I can't help it. I'm a sucker. Second, it has Kurt Russell. Although I was a bit scared when I realized he's starting to look like my Great Uncle Ray. Frightening. Third, seeing as I was a mere 3 years old at the time, I don't remember any of the Miracle on Ice story (other than, you know, the fact that the US *beat* Russia). So I was on the edge of my seat.

Love Actually was good, but I have one big quibble that I kind of remember from reviews when it came out: too many stories going on. They could have cut out a few of them and been fine, because some of the stories were just...boring. Cutting down to three or four is far preferrable. I have to say, just because I didn't really dig Hugh Grant in the role of Prime Minister, I would have switched Hugh and Colin Firth. I did enjoy Colin in his role though. I just think Colin would have been a better fit for the role of Prime Minister, and Hugh being Hugh could have pulled off the writer whose wife cheated on him. I wanted more of the porno couple though, cause they amused me, and I was strangely let down by the conclusion to the Laura Linney portion of the story.

For my brain is weird

I latch on to weird things on TV shows through the years. I don't know why. I just do.

What's bizarre is when those weird things suddenly click in my brain and suddenly make me giggle.

Case in point: an old L&C episode.

I saw all of L&C first run (well, except part of that last season). I've seen only a few reruns on cable while on vacation in the past. That means since 1996 I've seen very, very little L&C. And never a rerun of the ep I suddenly remembered this morning.

The ep where Lois and Clark were doing some undercover thing that involved a little guy who was in prison. And they dressed up as "badass" as Hollywood could seem to be at that time (shiny pleather *snickers*).

And their undercover names were Angel and Spike. Lord have mercy, that just cracks me up now.

Song Rec

Song rec here for the new one by Brad Paisley and Allison Kraus. This one is possibly even more mournful and haunting than "Let Me Touch You For Awhile", which is saying a lot.


( Whiskey Lullaby Lyrics )

*bouncy bouncy*

Oh hell.

Supposing Chloe lives. Supposing Gabe dies.

Chloe has to live somewhere.

(And I'm not going to go the route that the Kents take her in, that Mr. Ross takes her in, that Lana returns the favor by having Henry or Nell take her in, or that for some inexplicable reason, Lex takes her in even though his father is the one that killed her daddy, which would thereby put her in dangerous proximity to dangerous people...)

Chloe's mother. The one that ran off when she was five.

Gah! The possibilities!

Work Rant Post

This isn't so much a work rant as one of those big heaving sighs. Because vacation mellowed me.

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Definitions

Account Executive: Person in charge of an account (i.e. ABC Brewery). They are responsible for coordinating amongst various people working on a project.

Art Director: Responsible for the creative execution and production of presentations/ads/brochures/whatever the client desires. Answers to the account executive.

Proofreader: Responsible for looking over everything - from creative output to memos - that is going to the client. Answers to the account executive.

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In an ideal world, or on a tightly run ship, the account executive is in charge and delegates responsibilities accordingly to what needs to be done.

In an ideal world, remember.

Our VP is overwhelmed with work right now due to another account executive having left and a lack of a replacement for that account executive, even though interviews have been done.

So VP is account executive on a small presentation for tomorrow. Small presenation. I have seen this presentation. Okay, so it's about 40 slides, but reading the text? It's comparitively small.

The art director is preparing the presentation. I'm the proofreader. As noted in the definitions above, we report to the account executive.

Except the AE leaves for another meeting, and somehow I supposedly became the AE on something I know nothing about. I just proofread. Suddenly I'm supposed to be coordinating for practice meetings and binding in odd manners, and all of this with five different people asking me questions that I don't know the answer to.

To compound it all, as many may know, PowerPoint/Keynote can be a bitch. Formatting is nigh on impossible. Hours after the art director has started, when she's almost done, she's told that "oh, that presentation you've been working on will be the print version and then we'll create a shorter presentation version". The look on her face when she was telling me this was scary (because this was one of those things I wasn't told about). Seems she could have done the print version in Quark and had it done in a third of the time and been able to move on quicker to the presentation version.

Coincidentally, she's still working on the presentation version.

Then the AE, who has to proof everything twice herself, goes into a meeting. That she's still in. Right now. At 5:35. I've proofed this sucker twice myself. The changes have been checked. Everything is kosher.

So I take my last changes to the art director for the print version. Four changes, one of which is removing a space, another is adding a period...things like that. I told her if she made them right quick, I would walk *into* the meeting and put it in front of the AE and ask for it to be proofed right then.

The art director wants to get done with the presentation version first. Even though she's halfway through and it will have to be proofed also, thereby meaning the AE will have to stay late, as will I. *bangs head on desk* Never mind an efficient use of time. If we're both proofing there at the last minute, then the art director can't do anything until we're done. Meaning she'll be sitting and waiting.

And I still have to drop a stupid FedEx off.