dianaschnuth

Aaron’s just as good at keeping birthday secrets as I am. Don’t worry, whoever you are (and I have an idea, maybe, but I’m not saying): we’ll be here at 4pm on Saturday.

I don’t want to know what’s up. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Just knowing that somebody didn’t forget my birthday is pretty cool.

As for birthday present tallies so far: Amy got me a Lomo Oktomat and a DVD of Drawn Together (which I’ve heard is damn funny, but I haven’t watched yet) for Christmas and birthday. I’m pretty sure Aaron got me some DVDs, although I’m not sure which ones. I’m guessing that at least one of them is intended to fill out the Diana’s Favorite Movies Collection. Previous movies in this set include Victor/Victoria, The Goonies, The Princess Bride, Young Sherlock Holmes, The Dark Crystal, The Last Unicorn, Labyrinth, and probably a few others that I’m not thinking of right now. (We already had the Director’s Cut editions of all the Star Trek movies, so those were covered.)

If you’d like to get me something for my birthday, and I know this is a little late, but you can feel free to peruse my Amazon wishlist. I actually set the thing up so I can remember stuff I’d like to buy when I have money burning a hole in my pocket… but I’m not above pimping my wishlist on my birthday.

Were I not sick, I would scoff at the idea of heading up to bed before 10pm. Tonight, though, I’m seriously considering it. Head upstairs, lay down, read, play some solitaire on my Palm IIIc, and be asleep *well before* 11pm.

I suppose I need the rest. Hopefully I’ll be able to convince myself to get up when I wake up in the morning — which will most certainly be long before my alarm wakes me up. I’ll do my showering and assembly of lunch and snackies then.

Man, this cold is kicking my ass.

I hadn’t planned on posting this to my blog, but since I’ve already posted my results in the comments of three different LiveJournals, maybe I should just go for it. For reference, I originally saw this on  sheryls‘ LJ, but it’s run rampant since, so I guess I’ve snicked this from pretty much the entire internets.

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birth day (excluding the year). List three neat facts, two births and one death in your journal, including the year. [My 30th birthday is coming up on April 22nd, in a couple of weeks.]

Events:
1509 – Henry VIII ascends the throne of England after the death of his father.
1970 – First Earth Day celebrated.
1993 – The web browser Mosaic version 1.0 is released.

Birthdays:
1937 – Jack Nicholson, American actor
1950 – Peter Frampton, British musician

Death:
1996 – Erma Bombeck, American humorist and writer (b. 1927)

Good things are happening.

I’m feeling more fit. I’m doing something a little different at work, and the future is looking positive on that front. I’m paring down my hobbies and interests.

Paring down my hobbies, you ask? Yes, this is a good thing. This makes me happy.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve pretty much written off musicianship for now. I enjoy picking up the guitar every now and then, or singing along with the CD in the car, but I’m not likely to record a cover album to share with the internets.

I’m also in preparations to turn over the Saginaires / Northern Aurora alumni site — yes, the very first site I ever created — to someone who will take good care of it. I will shortly be posting a “job opening” to the alumni Yahoo Group, and the donor of the webhosting will be joining me in interviewing the candidates to choose who gets to take over the webmaster position. Ten years is long enough for me, and it’s not fair of me to hoard the site to myself when I haven’t touched it in probably a year.

I need to pare down some other things, too. I’m undecided as to the future of my podcast, although the more I think about it, I don’t want to give it up quite yet. My photography isn’t necessarily something I’ll be doing every day, but it’s damn nice to have good equipment and above-average skills for when I get the inkling to take some artsy pictures. And web design… well, I can’t see me going out for any freelance gigs anytime soon (especially with me actually using the techie part of my brain at work, finally), but I’ll probably do some minor tweaks on my blog, and maybe overhaul my portfolio one of these days. But I won’t feel bad if I don’t get to it right away.

As for things I do want to focus on… I want to get back into writing, as my long-neglected NaNo is calling to me. Gardening season is nearly upon us, so I definitely want to have time for that. And I’ve been being better to my body, exercising regularly, and that’s become something I want to continue. I definitely need to focus more on my LSM duties, as well. Oh, yeah, and do some chores around the house, too.

I’m afraid that, if I don’t take control of my hobbies and such now, I’ll feel guilty for neglecting everything under the sun. I’m still going to have more hobbies than the average joe, but I’m OK with that.

Priorities are good. Spreading myself too thin is not.

I have a laundry list of topics to write about. Anime Punch, last week’s diet and fitness update, my new swimsuit (!!), my poor dying hollyhock seedlings. Not to mention working on my poor neglected NaNoWriMo novellette, or Podcast #10.

But, damn, I am so fucking tired today.

It was a Herculean effort to make myself do my PUSH workout today, but I did it. And I’m getting better at it, too. Still, though, all I want to do is curl up on the couch and veg.

I’m gonna chalk this up to The Monday After The Time Change, and not worry about being slackeriffic today. Maybe I’ll manage to crank out a decent blog entry later tonight. If not, though, I figure I’ll at least get some decent Civ IV action going on.