Tomorrow is another day at the convention center.

Today I got to swing by ComicCon since it’s right next door. I bought some manga from the TokyoPop booth, so that was cool. There were lots of scantily clad gals posing with brooding boys in trench coats. All in all, quite interesting. Since I have a pass for the weekend, I might stop by again tomorrow if I’m not utterly exhausted beyond reason once I finish with my convention work-day.

To add some fun, tomorrow afternoon marks the beginning of a winter storm warning, so I may be driving home alongside hundreds of morons who freak out when it starts snowing.

I got some Chinese food on my way home (@ 3:00) and my fortune cookie said, “Your life is a kaleidoscope.”

Jotting it down so I don’t forget it. I can think about what that statement is trying to say/imply later. Sometimes, I think fortune cookie manufacturers just have a phrase generator and assume that any combination of “Your life is _______” or “_______ is around you” words and phrases yield a perfectly OK “fortune”, despite not making any sense.

Perhaps they think everyone will assume they’re Zen koans or statements with a much deeper meaning… or something.

I think I’m just too tired to make sense. And my back hurts. And my feet hurt. And I’m tired of smiling.

Andamonnagosleepnow. Zzzzzzz.

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This was in the Wall Street Journal ‘Marketplace’ section earlier this week: “Fairy-Tale Wedding? Disney Can Supply the Gown”

Yup. You read that right. All emphases to follow are mine.

The new wedding gowns, which will go on sale made-to-order at bridal boutiques in North America in June, are an effort by Disney to extend its line of princess paraphernalia to older consumers. Created in 2001 when the company’s consumer-products division started packaging its female characters, Disney Princess has grown into a craze among little girls that is fast approaching annual sales of $3.5 billion from costumes, dolls, bedroom furniture and other regalia.

In thinking of ways it could reach outside the core princess crowd of 3- to 6-year-olds, Disney honed in on women who had grown up with the characters. Brides seemed an obvious target.

“Most brides, even the cynical ones, want to be a princess on their wedding day and see their husband-to-be as Prince Charming,” Ms. Kelly said recently at her bridal boutique in the upscale Brentwood district of Los Angeles.

This is slightly more disturbing.

To maintain a luxurious look at lower prices, the 38-year-old designer found a Chinese factory three hours outside Guangzhou that was experienced at making wedding dresses.

She used cheaper materials in parts of the dress that don’t meet the eye. The Snow White-inspired dresses, for instance, combine silks on the surface with polyester fabrics underneath.

Disney + poorly paid labor in third-world conditions = DREAM WEDDING!!!!!!!

Throw in a diamond ring that was acquired for the low, low price of the life of someone in Sierra Leone, and you’re totally set to feel like a REAL princess (or countess or other female nobility/royalty, as long as she’s the kind that bathes in the blood of virgins, etc.)

I am filled with disgust.

I’m also incredibly tired and have to be at the convention center tomorrow morning, so I’d best get my clean clothes out of the dryer and go to sleep.

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There were some train issues in NJ today resulting from derailed trains this morning. My train home was delayed by half an hour, so I got home after 8 tonight. I sat down at my computer to check email and work on some freelance stuff and… bam. It’s 10:30 already.

I’ve been so exhausted lately. Being busy at work is nice and exhilirating - I enjoy having something to do all the time. But it’s the old situation where I run-run-run-run-run all day and the moment I sit down on the train or in the car or wherever, I feel so run down so quickly, it’s like someone pulled out the stopper on my flask of energy.

And there are crap movies on TV and I sent back four Netflix today and won’t have anything fun and new until the weekend or Monday. That’s still pretty fast considering that tomorrow is Thursday and that I won’t have time to watch anything tomorrow night anyway… but it’s nice to know I’ll have stuff to enjoy when I get home over the weekend.

Underrated drink of the day: Nantucket Nectars Grapeade. It doesn’t contain any high fructose corn syrup, which I found pleasing.

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This three-day weekend was a nice touch since I’ll be working the next 11 days straight (4-day work week plus 2 days working convention plus 5-day work week). I’m hoping that I can take a comp day somewhere in there for a wee bit of rest.

If not, though, that weekend that’s two weeks away is going to be full of me doing absolufrigginlutely nothing.

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I am tired. It was a very long long long day.
I am hungry. There was nothing at-hand and ready to eat when I got home at 7:30 so I just resigned myself to a night without dinner.
I am cold. The heating wasn’t on when I got home and it’s take three hours to get to a temperature that allows me to sit without my coat, scarf and gloves on.
I am cranky. My eye is still watering and since I ended up getting home later than I planned, I didn’t make it to the doctor’s office. Also, a hungry Polka (female version of Polak, not the dance) is a cranky Polka.

Speaking of Poland and food, Amazon.com showed Polish as one of its available ethnic cuisines in their gourmet food selections. I went to that page and discovered something a little bothersome. You can link to the full glory here, but I’ve also provided a screen shot.

I don’t think I need to comment very much at all. Just think back to the last time you had Italian sausage and then think back to the last time you had Polish kielbasa (even the b.s. Hillshire Farm kind).

I think all self-respecting Italians would agree with me that there is no reason the item displayed above should appear under the Polish cuisine listings.

Weepy eye is really bugging me now. Instead of dabbing at my eye, I’m rubbing my eyes like I’m five years old and up past my bedtime. This means I need to go to bed.

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Tomorrow marks an entire week that my left eye has been watering/tearing/crying non-stop. It’s red, it’s raw, and the delicate skin in the eye area hurts from constant salt water irritation. I haven’t been able to go to the doctor this week (between occupational therapy and snow events) so I’m planning a trip on Friday night (extended office hours).

It’s incredibly annoying and a terrible, irritating nuisance.

Here’s some cool shit I found, thanks to the multitude of feeds I subscribe to*:

• Wheel of Food! - a mashup of local eateries, etc. Type in the ZIP of where you’d like to eat and spin the wheel of food; it’ll choose today’s eating establishment for you. For fun, I should try ZIP codes like 90210 and 20505 (belongs exclusively to the CIA or something - population of that ZIP is ZERO) and see where it recommends I eat.

• Hollowed out books - “Part of an ongoing project to combine hollowed out books with interesting contents similar to the fluxus movement or Joseph Cornell.” It could pain me, but I see it as another form of art - though it’s something I could never do, except to perhaps a Reader’s Digest Condensed Fiction book I picked up at a library sale for $0.25 or something. That I could hollow out. Sorry, Sidney Sheldon (RIP).

• A book that’s not even on Amazon yet - but I want eet! “This May, Klutz… will publish Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, the newest title in the Building Cards line. The books in the series… contain a deck of illustrated leaves that can be broken into cards of different shapes, which can then be used to build structures. The Hogwarts set is based on the castle seen in the Harry Potter movies and has 90 perforated leaves that break into more than 350 cards.”

• Via Lifehacker, (video tutorial showing) the superior way to wrap your headphones around your iPod: “keeps the headphones secured to your MP3 player, but also enables quick, tangle-free release. Plus, it keeps the cord from being wrapped too tightly…”

• And to keep things light, a piece on what would happen if our sun went out (from Mental_floss, the best magazine ever).

* Yes, I know. It should read “…thanks to the multitude of feeds to which I subscribe…” I got lazy.

Nothin’ tops off a crap-holiday like some campy film noir - “Mildred Pierce“, baby! If you haven’t seen it, DO.

Veda: With this money I can get away from you. From you and your chickens and your pies and your kitchens and everything that smells of grease. I can get away from this shack with its cheap furniture. And this town and its dollar days, and its women that wear uniforms and its men that wear overalls.
Mildred: Veda, I think I’m really seeing you for the first time in my life and you’re cheap and horrible.

Then later, the mother says to the daughter, “Get out - get out before I kill you.” Since the mother is played by Joan Crawford… well… it’s scary and campy and a joy to watch.

P.S. There was snow and ice. Not enough to keep me home, but the rest of my family stayed put. It was fine. Cold, windy and painful when the ice flew at my face and pelted me, but OK. Nothing big and fluffy like I’d like my winter to contain. Oh, well.

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It’s snowing - at long last. This morning through afternoon, they were predicting 6-10″. Now they’ve downgraded to 3-7″ and an icy coating with most of the heavy snowfall taking place tomorrow. This complicates things since it means I’ll probably be able to get TO work, but getting home (driving up a hill) might suck… not because the car won’t be able to make it, but because twice already this relatively snow-free winter, the police have set up road blocks in front of my hilly neighborhood and turned people away, telling them they can’t drive up the road. My response was, “But I live here. I don’t have anywhere to ‘go back’ to.” At which point, the officer said, “Fine, but you’re taking the risk.”

Hey, thanks!

My eye is still watering. My neck is stiff and crunchy.

It’s amazing how certain songs can evoke a sense of place or time or a person in your life. For example, whenever I hear “It’s Oh So Quiet,” I think of my friend Michelle’s wedding and how she and my friend Theresa cut a rug together to that song. Whenever I hear a particular Blink 182 song (”Miss You” which, thank goodness, is not often heard these days) I start laughing because I think of my sister and I making fun of the lead singer’s first line in the song since his voice just shatters the mood.

The memories evoked by the songs often have nothing to do with the lyrics or subject of the actual song. On one level, this bothers me because it means that the words are weak and I’m a huge supporter of words and listen to song lyrics - as compared to my brother who listens to bass lines or drums and doesn’t comprehend the lyrics.

For example, he was singing along to “Mack the Knife.”

I commented, “It’s a jazzy tune for a song about a serial killer, huh?”

Blank stare - “What?”

“The song ‘Mack the Knife’ is about a serial killer… ‘…on the sidewalk, sunny mornin’, lies a body just oozin’ life’ - how else can you interpret that?”

“Oh - I never listen to words.”

It’s also good to know that a memory can override a previous interpretation of a song and leave you with a very different taste in your mouth.

This goes for any type of experience, though, really. If you saw a movie with someone who you then had a falling out with and continued to remember that movie as “the movie I saw with that asshole” or whatever, chances are you won’t want to watch that movie since it will be linked with an unpleasant memory. HOWEVER, if you take the time to re-watch it with someone who will make it into a positive experience for you, you can exorcise the old shit and create a new connotation. Easier said than done, but possible. I know this. I’ve done it.

OK - my eye can’t take this. I just changed my Firefox and Thunderbird themes to be dark so there’s less strain on my eyes, and also changed my desktop background to do the same… but the Movable Type blog entry screen is white-white-white and this monitor is bright-bright-bright. I can’t take it!

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It’s not 110 inches like our friends in upstate New York, but it’s still something for me to enjoy on Wednesday.

I need a footrest or ottoman of some sort. I’ll have to check out some DIY sites for cool ideas. I can appropriate an Amazon.com box in the interim.

I finally took some time to read through several hundred RSS feeds and learned about three new “children’s” books I will be getting when they are published/when I place my next Amazon order. We have “InterWorld” a new book by Neil Gaiman, “Un Lun Dun” by China Mieville, and “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick.

Oooh-oooh. Must pause. It’s the part in Pride & Prejudice where Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth) proposed to and is DE-NIED by Elizabeth Bennett (Jennifer Ehle).

And I’m back. My eye is still watery and swollen, but less so than yesterday. A steady regimen of constant eye-wash (with sterile solution from Bausch and Lomb specifically for that purpose) and allergy eye drops and hand-washing seems to have made things a bit better. And tomorrow is the beginning of another work week. Which would be fine if I didn’t look like I was constantly weeping.

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Yesterday I had my second migraine ever. That was a fun treat, accompanied by dizziness and vertigo. Since all OTC migraine pills have caffeine and I am highly sensitive to caffeine, I had a soda along with 4 Motrin to chase it away. It worked enough to let me fall asleep.

My left eye (only) has been tearing and watery since Tuesday and today it has been so bad that my left eye is swollen almost shut. It’s not burning, it’s not itching… it’s just sort from having wiped away the tears or dabbed with a tissue since 7:30 this morning. It hurts when I blink because it’s so sore. I’ve been using moisturizing eyedrops and allergy eyedrops in case it’s something allergy-related (I also have a runny nose and the beginning of a cough).

And today my right hand (the non-diseased one) started going numb in the pinky and ring finger for NO reason whatsoever. That basically rules out carpal tunnel since that affects the main fingers (thumb, index and middle) while the ulnar nerve takes care of the ring finger and pinky. It could be a pinched nerve, but I really hope it’s nothing serious. I’ve had enough medical crap in the past few months, thanks.

I look like shit. I feel like shit. I am supposed to go for blood tests tomorrow, but if my eye is swollen almost shut, there’s no way I can drive my ass anywhere.

Things could be much worse; I’m aware of that. And I’m going to close my eyes and hope that a few hours of shut-eye will help me. And I hope I can open my eye in the morning.

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