Life has been going good recently. School's going well, work's going well, despite the increasing number of sketchy people walking around the Berlin Mall, things in general have been looking up, a big improvement over last year, where at this time, I was angry, depressed and hopeless.
Not to be depressing.
I'm enjoying work; business is picking up as the holiday season approaches. I've been making more sales while out in the kisok, which is a welcome change, as that job is horribly boring. Since we're not allowed to read while on the job, I basically have to amuse myself by walking in circles, straightening out calanders to the micron and bugging every customer if they need help with something. (They never do, they're just looking). I do get the occasional funny occurance, which is diverting. The last amusing thing happened last week: A woman burst into the mall, took about five steps in, looking like she was going somewhere important, dragging two small kids behind her. It was then that she stopped, looked around and turned to me: "Where is Optical Expression?" - the local eye glasses store and clinic. I didn't do anything but point. The store is just a store away from Walden Books. She turned and went in. The old guy sitting next to the kiosk in a wheel chair just laughed and said: "I guess she really needed those glasses." I guess so.
Today, I saw something like ten people that I a) know from school, ) know from school and haven't seen them in ages, c) knew from high school/elementary school, d) from scouts. It was weird.
The rest of the time is devoted to stewing.
I also found a movie that I really need to look into watching - The Iron Giant. I'd heard a bit about it a couple years ago, when a movie called The Incredibles, a fantastic animated film, was released, directed by Brad Bird, who had directed a box office failure called The Iron Giant. Despite it's lax returns, the movie had gained a sort of cult status (What good science fiction film DOESN'T develope a cult status nowadays?) and around the time of The Incredibles release, it was released on DVD. I'd read a couple DVD reviews, but I haven't actually gotten a chance to watch it, until I caught the last half hour or so of it on Cartoon Network this evening.
Man, what a good film - solid animation, fun storyline and likeable characters. It reminded me a lot of Titan AE, one of my favorite animated Science Fiction movies. I need to see the rest of Iron Giant, but I suspect that this will be included on the list. The basic plot is that a giant iron robot falls from the sky and lands near a small town in Maine. While there, he befriends a small boy, while the government comes after them to try and destroy the robot. I definently need to rent this at some point.
And I still need to bring my computer into Computer Services. I've been getting a bunch of popups lately, more than ever, and a lot of random applications that I suspect are spywear. I've run dozens of virus/bot/spyware checks, defragmented and optimized my harddrives, done error tests and am still having minor problems. It's driving me nuts.
And I'll post up my TV Recap sometime tonight. Haven't had a whole lot of time to finish it this week.
EDIT: YES! YES YES YES! Someone posted up the 10.23.06 Carbon Leaf Concert at the Higher Ground, the one that I went to with Keelia, where they sounded awesome - You can download all the songs here, although be warned, they're .Flac files, which are huge and require additional software to decode. You can play the files on Winamp. I'll get them all, and for those of you who know me, will be seeing me and who issued me death threats about attending this, would you like a copy?
