This week is starting off badly. La Coquette can commiserate. It starts with one thing that makes you feel like crap, making a chink in the armor that allows each subsequent slight and all the little bits of bad news and every failure to really seep in. And now I’m wide awake at 4am. I just want to bundle up in a Selk’Bag to keep the rest of the world at bay. Well, that, and this old house is hella cold and drafty. But that won’t be an issue for J much longer. He found an apartment yesterday. And signed a lease. And will be moving out in just a few weeks.

Moving right along…don’t dwell on that, look over here! I’m still fun, honest! Just look at all these distractions!

• Controlling a Synthesizer with a Wiimote
• Oh, and remember MacSaber? That code has now been adapted to work with the Wiimote.
• Opening Black Boxes - workshops geared towards ripping open household gadgets to see how they work. At the Science Museum. Toy scavenging sounds like fun.
• The Six-Word Memoir Contest - presented by Smith & Twitter.
• Whooping it Up in the Uncanny Valley - looks like a good read.
• The adventures of Vlog Santa continue.
• The “30 days of Threadless” sale ends Thursday. I ordered a couple of gems for the little man.

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have…sorry. Somehow that wound up stuck in my head. But I’ve had a bit of both lately.

The bad:

• General stress, sleep deprivation, frustration and some socially awkward situations.
• Five visits to the Apple store in one week, at a mall during holiday shopping season, in an attempt to get my powerbook’s optical drive replaced.
• The Har Mar movie theater is now closed. Truly the end of an era. So maybe it wasn’t the best theater around, but it had sentimental value for me. I remember seeing the first Star Wars movies there with my family, as well as Back to the Future and other 80s classics. And hello, coolest bathrooms around. Sigh.
• Too many events happening at the same time and having to pick and choose which to attend (I missed out on a friend’s vegan potluck, The Dears at the Fine Line, and a rollergirls bout).
• The little man’s renewed interest in Legos. Stepping on them barefoot is a killer.
• I need a haircut. Badly.
• Some more specifics that I won’t go into, but can be dumped into the first bucket (see: general stress). Yeah.

The good:

• I love Clockwork. This year’s rumpus was a seriously good time. Big ups to my coworkers for making it happen, and to my friends for joining us.
• Seeing The Ex at the Triple Rock.
• The little man’s renewed interest in Legos. It really is fun (until someone gets hurt) and I do take his art direction well.
• Low’s annual Christmas show. Yes, I’ve seen them a million times but it was another opportunity to hear some of the new stuff (which I heard a bit of a few months ago) before the new release comes out in March.
• After getting everything straightened out and dropping off the powerbook, the Apple store had it fixed and ready to go in under 12 hours.
• It’ll be totally ridiculous but fun if I start hooping with friends (at our YWCA).
• Friday night’s BSG episode was so good it made me cry.

After dinner last night the little man wanted to play some more games on the Wii, of course, but I had to play the hardass. Which I hate. I insisted that he do his homework first. The homework is simple stuff. Busywork, really. The lad just needs someone to sit next to him, to help him keep his focus (often I need that too). Last night J went downstairs to assist. And that made me sad. Listening to them go over math problems together was oddly heartbreaking. Part of me had hoped that things would work out, that J would always be with us…to be a crucial part of our little patched-together family. But it’s not to be. He’ll likely be moving out by the end of the month.

After the little man’s bedtime I made things worse…by staying up too late listening to old episodes of This American Life. That show always makes me weepy. And two segments had me all out sobbing. Even so, or maybe because of it, I’d like to get a hold of Stories of Hope and Fear - their latest “greatest hits” collection. And an extra box of tissues.

Bonus: Intrigued by Ninth Street Chronicles (via Fabulist) - a short film about “…a feisty girl who survives a[sic] eye-opening, bittersweet summer with her dignity intact.”
Plus: I’ve only just discovered Doc Misterio. So far so good even though he is not, apparently, a Minotaur.
And: I’m a long-time Decemberists fan, but their latest offering isn’t grabbing me as much as past releases. Still, I can’t get The Perfect Crime 2 out of my head. It entices with its early Talking Heads vibe.

Yesterday was fairly strange. For one thing, my folks swore up and down that my doppelganger appeared on The Price is Right in the morning. Huh? At work there were some birthday related shenanigans for this cat. At home I received some excellent mail. From my dear friend Maria (thanks!), a little something from FluffyCo, and two gorgeous prints for the newly green living room from The Black Apple. Now to get those framed. And hung. Speaking of decorations…the little man and I brought a Christmas tree home last night. For the second year in a row we wound up with one taller than I’d intended. And once I hauled it back to the house the tree stand was nowhere to be found (J grudgingly located it). Then upon opening the box of decorations I was dismayed to find the little man’s favorite had broken. I couldn’t figure out why everything was thrown together so haphazardly (I may be generally disorganized, but my OCD comes into play when putting away fragile items). And then it hit me. Like a punch to the gut. I didn’t put these things away after the holidays last year. I had just gotten home from the hospital and was laying in bed, knocking back the last of my percocet, when my in-laws came over to help J clean the house and take down the tree (so it was nice of them to help, but the glass ornaments weren’t wrapped up or protected in any way and it’s a wonder more of them didn’t shatter). Needless to say, decorating the tree last night became a bittersweet event for me. My mind was focused too much on where our lives were a year ago and not enough on the now.

Bonus: Idea: A building shaped like Godzilla? Brilliant!
Plus: Tony vs. Paul. On the awesomenousity meter, it’s off the scale.
And: The last several days I’ve eaten way to much fried mock meat. While it may taste good, it’s probably not very good for me…

My son is a strange and fascinating creature. Yesterday, when the guys took a brief break from playing the Wii, I overheard the following exchange.

J (perplexed): Shaggy doughnut? What does that mean?
Little man: It means nothing. Say it.
*pause*
Little man: If you say it, I will tickle you.

A little while later, the lad was playing alone. I heard him happily shouting in the other room.

Little man: This is so awesome!
Me: What is honey?
Little man: I fell on my head.
Me: uhh…
Little man: And it didn’t hurt!

Bonus: If you haven’t seen Galacticast yet, hightail it over there. Now.
Plus: The Wii is cheap, fun and easy.
And: I’ve been saying my next tattoo should be an octopus. And this video seals the deal.

Well, I won’t be quitting my day job to become a house painter. The living room is done. It is flawed, but it is done. At least it was a labor of love. And taking Thursday off to finish it was a stroke of genius. I kept myself motivated with music, as I often do. I kicked the morning off with Kasabian. Post-lunch I kept myself going with some Mclusky. The evening was mellower, winding things down with Manitoba (pre-Caribou). All day Friday I was achey and sore, from all that up and down ladder action. I found myself longing for the hot tub at the Y, which triggered some half-forgotten memory of an SNL skit that my brother and I had thought was hilarious in the 80s. Naturally it’s on YouTube. And it’s still pretty funny. Also on YouTube…41 minutes of one of my all-time favorite hardcore bands, Botch, playing at one of my all-time favorite venues, the Fireside Bowl in Chicago. Speaking of bowling alleys and music, I went to Memory Lanes on Friday night to see three bands play. Good times were had.

Today J is in a very fine mood. Or he was, before he went back to bed. The man scored himself a Wii this morning. He got up before 6am to go wait in the cold outside a Super Target. I’ve only seen him get up that early a few other times. And those involved one of us having surgery. But he and his friend managed to get in line before 7am. His friend joked that he was in line ahead of J, so if it came down to the wire, he would be getting his Wii first. The friend was 14th in line (so J was 15th). An hour before the store opened staff came out and announced there were only 14 units available. Lucky for J his friend flipped him for it and J won.

Bonus: There’s a new-ish Neil Gaiman interview up on City Pages. My favorite quote? “…like watching the cast of Tron doing bad Shakespeare.”
Plus: I feel like I’m about to be steamrolled by the holidays, and I’m totally unprepared for it. And every year I’m bummed when I miss The Santaland Diaries at the Bryant Lake Bowl. I have a feeling this year will be no different. Sigh.
And: I nearly didn’t believe it, when a friend told me there was a sequel being made to 28 Days Later…called 28 Weeks Later. I adore Robert Carlyle and all, but it looks pretty bad. In better movie news, His Dark Materials is going to be amazing. Just one more year.
And another thing: I’ve already mentioned bowling alleys several times in this post. I’m taking this as a sign that I really really need to take the little man bowling. And soon.