Sunbird

@Oversleep Welp. I guess a certain local chain of ice cream shops had better shut down now... They make the ice cream in front of you using liquid nitrogen. XD

@Mistrunner It was a group assignment, and my group was rather large, so we picked a scene from Othello with lots of characters: the one near the beginning where Iago and Roderigo are raising the alarm outside Desdemona's father's house in the middle of the night to tell him his daughter's run away and eloped.

@Mistrunner That's fantastic! I don't think I've ever had a HW assignment that cool. Well, except maybe when I got to perform sock puppet Shakespeare for my Shakespeare final.

I went to a fabulous book signing tonight. Local Utah author C David Belt was celebrating the release of his latest book, The Sweet Sister, and invited attendees to dress in Renaissance Faire garb and come prepared to sing Celtic folk songs. I didn't have any real Ren Faire clothing, so I just got my Mistborn cosplay out of the closet and wore that instead. That wasn't the only thing that made this not your usual signing either. It was held at Mr Belt's house, and in the backyard he had set up a cardboard box as a target for guests to shoot with his crossbow. (He collects Medieval armor and weaponry.) I gave that a go and hit the box 5 times out of 5! Possibly my favorite thing, though, was the folk song singalong. Mr Belt had the lyrics projected onto the wall so everyone could follow along whether they'd heard the song before or not. I knew several of the songs thanks to my love of the band The High Kings, and I particularly enjoyed "The Rocky Road to Dublin" because it's so lively.

I had to play under a band director once who was always shushing us in practice when she thought we weren't playing softly enough. (This was when I was in like 7th or 8th grade, so none of us had been playing more than a couple years.) I asked her once if she intended to shush us onstage during the concert, and you know what she said? "Not if you play quiet enough." And I'm sitting here thinking, we're already playing as softly as we are physically capable of doing. You're going to embarrass everyone because you have expectations for middle schoolers that we can't possibly fulfill?

I love basically Lego anything, especially the Lego Movie, so I am beyond excited for Batman to get his own Lego film! I can tell Robin is going to be a riot. Also Twi this is for you

Thankfully my day got better after I left work. I saw some funny license plates while I was running errands around town and got a new book to read from the library, and then played a bit of Cards Against Humanity with you and Silverblade. A bunch of little things combined to cheer me up significantly.

@Doctor12 "Try not to cringe too much"? Don't be silly; you're quite handsome.

Well, if I'm right about Germany's anthem, one of the lines translates to "German women, German beer"...

Bleh. Today was rough for me. I have a job in the library of my university, and during the summer I usually don't have a problem finding a parking spot pretty close to campus since most of the other students aren't around. Not so today. This week, hordes of non-student invaders have descended on campus for Education Week and are taking up all the parking spots. This morning I spent half an hour after my shift was supposed to have started driving around looking for an empty spot that wouldn't earn me a parking ticket if I used it, with no success. Frustrated to the point of tears, I called my supervisor and asked if she had any suggestions, and she advised me to look for a spot at the far north end of campus next to the football stadium, since the university is running a shuttle service from there to a more central location for the Education Week interlopers. I then spent a further 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot up there before I finally managed to claim one--a very cramped space that was probably only empty because only a tiny car like mine could squeeze into it. So I walked into work an hour and 15 minutes late, which was anything but an auspicious start to my day. Fast-forward to 30 minutes before my shift usually ends. My supervisor asked me to sort the mail, since the person who usually sorts it on Thursdays was not here today. Normally I wouldn't mind at all, but today there was a storming cremton of mail to sort, and I ended up staying more than 90 minutes past the usual end of my shift in order to finish. So I was more than a little miffed that she waited until nearly the end of the day to ask me.

This conversation reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin's dad tells him the bedtime story about The Disembodied Hand That Strangled People. (Click to see strip.)

@Quiver I remember reading somewhere that playing on your phone before bed messes with the body's ability to sleep peacefully, so maybe try avoiding that? I suppose you could talk to your doctor about getting some medication to help you sleep... Just be aware that some of those sleeping pills can have weird side effects. I've heard multiple pharmacy employees tell stories about patients who got up in the middle of the night and cooked whole meals or broke into their neighbors' houses to make PBJ sandwiches once they started taking Ambien--all while asleep!

The Mars moveMent from Holst's "Planets" suite.

@Jondesu and @AliasSheep, I read the first three John Carter books and liked them. (The first one is indeed A Princess of Mars btw.) I enjoyed the movie too.

I'm not entirely sure that this hasn't changed since WWII, but.... 8. Deutschland Uber Alles (Germany)

@Quiver I personally prefer her New 52 costume, mostly because I love the strange cape and boots.

@KnightRadiant Ah, ok. Are you on mobile? I've discovered that my phone pitches a fit if I try to use quotes or spoilers on it.

@KnightRadiant You probably want to put that Vin meme under spoilers with a warning for those who haven't finished the original Mistborn trilogy yet.

Those clickbait "articles" that are just lists of anecdotes like "Fast food employees reveal industry secrets!" or whatever. And each story is divided into like 4 or 5 different pages, with only a few sentences on each page, so you have to click like a million times to get through the list. And because the list is oversaturated with ads, every page is super slow to load. I just wanted a bit of funny; why are you making me jump through all these hoops...

YAAASSSSS Another Sharder is reading the Heartstrikers series!! Julius! I finished NGDGU a few days ago and have been trying to find the time to write a proper in-depth gushing review because Rachel Aaron and her book both deserve it.

LOL yup, those are Mormon missionaries. I appreciate your dad's kindness toward them. It's not everywhere they go that they get such a warm reception.

I got to see my brother today! He's been living in Ohio for the past several months and I'm in Utah, so I was very happy to see him again. Tomorrow he reports to the Missionary Training Center to start his two years as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (AKA the Mormon Church).

On hurricanes vs tornadoes: as you can probably tell from Twi's photos, there is also a HUGE difference in scale. A tornado can comfortably sit on your house, but a hurricane can eclipse the entirety of some of the smaller states.

Thanks, Scott. I feel reassured.

That's such a bizarre sentence: "Jean hasn't really died any more times than a regular X-Man." Only in fiction can dying multiple times be considered normal. XD