Today was a howling wilderness in the threes room. Adults approach Friday with the joy of knowing that the weekend is within our grasp if we can just hold on for a few more hours. Three year olds approach Friday with social exhaustion and behavioral melt-downs. They're tired, cranky, haven't seen their parents in days (seriously, these kids often get picked up, given supper and a bath and put to bed on weeknights) and just can't hold it together anymore. Not even a rare chance to play outside was enough to overcome their utter misery.

The matter was compounded by the fact that a parent volunteer came in this morning to do some pumpkin carving with the class. Because of how many children we have, we split the kids into two groups. One group ate morning snack first and the other group did pumpkin carving first, and then they switched. Only thing is, these kids are little. It's hard for them to understand 'you'll be next'. One little girl in the pumpkin carving group was miserable because she was hungry. One little guy in the snack group was miserable because he thought he didn't get to do the pumpkin activity. By the time we switched, little guy was so disgruntled, he couldn't even participate in the pumpkin carving (not that any of the kids actually participated so much as observed and pulled seeds out of the gunky innards), instead isolating himself in the book corner. It was one of those rare days when we decided we'd better have lunch and nap early, and then also let them sleep almost half an hour later than usual. The afternoon was much better than the morning!

One bright spot - I got to read one of my all-time favorite Halloween stories, Big Pumpkin, to the kids.

Another oasis of joy and wonderment during the day - one of the parents (perhaps sensing something of what was in the air) brought a box o'coffee and a box o'donuts in for the teachers this morning. Truly a wonderful woman!

In other news, yesterday I received an almost last minute invite to a Halloween party, tomorrow. I have no costume, because I wasn't expecting to go to any parties this year. But the kids at work did manage to come up with some excellent suggestions for me, which included but were not limited to: Spider-woman, a king, a princess, and (my personal favorite) a castle. I've decided to attempt a princess in a castle. I'll be sure to photo-document the attempt at creating such a thing.

Things accomplished today:

*one load of laundry (all but the folding and putting away part)

*six hundred words of original fic world-building and conceptualization, while hanging out at a cafe with eve11

*purchase of dvds (season three of Las Vegas and season five of SGA) and a book (The Three Muskeeters)

*read at least half of another book (The Stupidest Angel, by Christopher Moore)

*removed a nasty trojan virus from my laptop - well, spent almost three hours on the phone with a Dell software support person letting him remove the nasty from my laptop (the reason I stopped at six hundred words of world-building and conceptualization, also probably the reason my IE went all freaky on me last week)

The virus thingy sort of hijacked my plans for the day but I did not despair. Instead I went shopping and stocked up on books and dvds in case my computer was down for the count, lol. Of course, once I talked to the guy at Dell and found out that my warranty only covers hardware problems and I'd have to pay through the teeth for the software support, I sort of wished I'd had more self control at Barnes & Noble, but that's okay. It's payday this Friday and I'll just have to be a little more lean in my spendings next month.

So far today:

* Had coffee and a scone at 61c Cafe. Mm, yummy cinnamon scone.

* Got my hair trimmed. I decided at the last minute not to redo the color though. It hasn't faded out all the way yet, there are no roots showing, and I'd rather spend the money on other things.

* Made an appointment for next time - July 4th. I'm on a holiday roll here. Got my hair colored Easter weekend, had my six week trim today, Memorial Day weekend, and now the next six week trim will fall on Independence Day.

* Went to a second viewing of Star Trek. Either my ears were clearer or the sound was better today because I was actually able to understand nearly all the dialog. This helped the movie make a little more sense, not to mention getting more of the self-referencial in-jokes. ( some spoilers )

* Browsed through Barnes & Noble in the hope of seeing some good titles for Book Club. Alas, no such luck. Still, I picked up a book by Jack McDevitt, called Deepsix. I've never heard of this guy before, but the first few pages seem to get off to a decent start, so I'll see where it goes.

* Had lunch at Panera (if a meal eaten at three in the afternoon can technically be called lunch).

* Totally bailed on the grocery store but I did stop at Rite Aid for bread, milk, Quaker Oats and catfood.

Tonight is game three of the Pens-Hurricanes series. I'm attempting to be emotionally prepared for the possibility of a 'Canes win, since it's their first home game of the series, they're down by two and they're going to be desperate for the win. But I'll still be disappointed and pissed if the Pens lose. That's just the way it is.

In the meantime, I think I'll watch a few more of the old Star Trek eps on hulu.

Edited due to an inability to keep two thoughts in line for more than thirty seconds at a time.

I have easily spent the last hour clicking links at ThinkGeek.com. And then I found this. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The full and complete Jane Austen text, only interspersed with "all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action." How awesome!

I've come to realize something about Saturdays. I'm really just going to mostly sleep through them. I did get up and go into Squirrel Hill for a little bit of shopping this morning. I bought a couple of books and then relaxed at Panera eating an early lunch while starting one of the books. But the timing thing with the buses continues to elude me, so I didn't have enough time to go to the grocery store and buy real food, so a quick stop at Rite Aid for kitty litter and milk had to suffice. Back home, I felt so ridiculously sleepy (despite getting what seemed like a decent enough eight and a half or nine hours of sleep) that I ended up taking a two and a half or three hour nap, killing the entire afternoon.

I never used to feel so terribly tired all the time, and I'm not much enjoying it. I was looking at sample interview questions the other day (oddly not on purpose - it was a document I came across while doing archiving at work) and one of the questions was 'tell me about a recent weekend. What did you plan and what did you do?' This was to gauge the applicant's level of energy. I would totally fail that sort of question. I have plenty of energy to do my job during the course of the week, but I lately need a lot of downtime on the weekends. I should probably start taking vitamins or something.

Anyway.

Books. I bought How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets, by Garth Stein. I started reading it while eating lunch and it's making a promising beginning.

I also picked up German Demystified. I've been wanting to relearn German for quite awhile now (German was my foreign language of choice in high school, but that was a long time ago), and now that I've gone and applied for a job in Germany, it seemed like a reasonable time to go ahead and buy a book. But it's more a personal desire for a project than out of any expectation that I'll be needing it in the near future.

I just had a break and yet I feel as though I need another break. *sigh* I made it through three chapters of the computer book from Dullsville, though, so I'm making progress.

I saw the second episode of Robin Hood. Jury's still out, but I couldn't resist getting a Robin icon (although I think I like Much best). I was such a Robin Hood junkie when I was in high school and college. I don't know if I kept any of my various versions of the story when I got rid of most of my books. Kind of a shame. I liked The Outlaws of Sherwood, by Robin McKinley, in a light sort of way. My favorite, though, was Sherwood, by Parke Godwin - a darker, more substantial retelling of the myth, set during the time of William the Conquerer. I'll have to look it up at the library next time I have free time (which will be somewhere around Christmas, I suppose). And then there are all those movies with gorgeous men in tight tights. *grins*

Enough, I think I'll watch some of the Lost episodes I have from Netflix now, before I dive back into the secret life of computers.

Went to the bookstore today. So much fun! I made a swift tour through the scifi section, just long enough to pick up Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I'm about three or four pages in and already loving it muchly.

My other two purchases were prompted by the fear that my brain has suffered permanent damage from lack of use the past ten years working in child care and not stimulating it with anything even vaguely intellectual. So I headed for the non-fiction department and had a lovely browse through the anthropology section (one shelf, approx. six books - it's a smallish bookstore). I was very, very tempted to buy Popol Vuh, but decided to hold off for the moment. It's definitely on my 'want it lots' list, though. Next I found a book called Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and our Common Origins, by Steve Olson. It looks quite fascinating; he uses not only archeological and linguistic but genetic evidence to trace human evolution and migration for the past 150,000 years. I've always been fascinated by the study of human evolution (both cultural and physical) but this is the first time I've encountered someone using genetics to tell us where and when humans lived, how they interacted, etc.

The last book I picked up is Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension, by Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist. Physics is one of those things that made my brain hurt in high school, but that has a beauty about it that appeals to me when it's presented as ideas without the equations and math that I can't do to save my life.

So now I have the dual benefits of several good books to read and the opportunity to stretch my mental muscles a little bit.

I also ordered Buffy season one because, well, just because. *grins*

It's Saturday, I had an easy time of it with both families that I babysat for, there are challenge stories galore at talechal12, and pipspebble has posted a link to some truly drool-worthy piccies of Billy. It's been a good day. *bg*

Gacked from rabidsamfan

Copy this list of 10 authors. Remove the ones not on your bookshelves and replace each of them with ones that are (replaced authors are in bold, make sure to remove the bold if you match me).

1. Terry Pratchett
2. Tom Robbins
3. J.R.R. Tolkien
4. Martha Grimes
5. J.K.Rowling
6. William Shakespeare
7. Mercedes Lackey
8. Carl Sagan
9. Margaret Atwood
10. Anne McCaffrey