It's Monday, I'm Boring

Hello, all, I know it’s been forever and a day since I blogged.  Today has been a blessed day off, I haven’t even changed out of my pajamas all day.  You know, story of my days off.

This morning I watched a British movie with Hugh Laurie in it called Peter’s Friends.  I can’t say that it changed my life, or anything, but it was still pretty good, and Hugh was great in it.  It also had Stephen Fry, Kenneth Brannagh, and Emma Thompson in it, some of my other favorite British people.  I was very happy to hear Hugh sing and play the piano and the guitar.  Not bad for six dollars at Entertainmart.

What can I say?  My life is boring.  I also played with Shadow and watched a couple of episodes of Friends.  I’m really out of information right now, but maybe later on I’ll give you my thoughts on the movie I saw this weekend, V for Vendetta.  It was completely inspired, but I don’t want to blog on it yet because Jess hasn’t seen it.  For this movie, it kind of ruins things if you know every plot twist before hand.  I can say this without giving anything away- the music was awesome.  It was the perfect combination of classical music, brand-new, just breaking musicians (Antony and the Johnsons, Cat Power) and original score.  I was extremely impressed- I didn’t expect that out of a comic book movie.

Anyway, that’s all for now.  I’ll blog more later,

Brianne <><

"You Spin Me..."

So last night was a little scary for us Southwest Missourians.  Saturday afternoon we had some major storms (more on that in a minute) and then last night, we got slammed with the humdinger.  Thankfully for me, the worst of the storms went to the north of Branson, but it’s really unfortunate for the people who live there.  There was major damage in Nixa, which is about twenty or thirty minutes north of where I live, and there are reports of more damage in other small towns in the surrounding area.    It was scary watching the coverage on TV- three storm systems in the area, and they weren’t showing the one that was coming towards Branson, which is where I live.  In fact, they didn’t even mention the storm that was bearing down on Branson until it was virtually right on top of us and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.  Luckily, we weren’t in danger, but there were a few moments when I was watching TV and they were saying that this huge storm was practically right over my house.  They were stressing that we should be seeking cover and all that jazz, and I looked out the front door and all it was doing was raining out there.  I mean, Danielle and I were discussing evacuation plans and everything, and all we ended up getting was a little rain, no hail, and the wind blew some.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that we didn’t get wiped off the face of the earth by a tornado, but the TV weather man got me all scared for no reason.  

Saturday, however, was a different story.  I was at the bookstore, and things had been ominous all day.  At about four o’clock or so, it got really black outside and we heard the Branson tornado sirens go off.  We had had a call earlier from another store manager telling us that we were under a tornado watch, but living in Missouri, we’re used to this sort of thing and didn’t think anything of it.  We also hadn’t gotten a call from the mall office telling us to turn on our radio, so we figured we were just in for a thunderstorm of some sort.  Then the electricity started flickering, and it eventually went off all together.  That still didn’t worry me that much, until I saw what was going on outside.  It was raining so hard that I couldn’t see anything.  There was hail blowing in under our locked door, and my co-worker, Jenn, was inching towards the back room.  The front of our store is all windows, so we took shelter in the bathroom with our one customer, who looked incredibly worried.  It was over almost as fast as it started, so I ventured home, to find that there were no street lights working, there was debris all over the road in several places, there were power lines down and a three-car accident on Gretna road, and when I finally got out to highway 65, there was hail several inches deep still standing on the road.  The ground was white with hail.  It looked like it had snowed.  I have never seen anything like it.  It was a little scary.

Then, this morning, I was reading on the internet, and they mentioned that there was a weak tornado on the ground in Branson, seen on Gretna road.  Which is the road that the mall is on.  I was in a tornado!  Understandably, I nearly “made poopy in my pants” ( to coin a “House-ism”) when I read that.  I’m glad it was just a weak tornado.  It was pretty scary, no matter what it was.  

Anyway, that was my crazy-weather weekend.  It wasn’t terribly severe here, so it was sort of exciting.  I don’t want to forget that there are lots of people in the area who lost loved ones or homes in the storms.  Like I said before, the damage was much more extensive to the north of here, so keep those people in your prayers.    

It's Hard Out There for a Book Sales Girl.

So I’m going to make this short today, because I have to clean out the microwave (it looks like we microwaved a turtle wrapped in aluminum foil in there.)  All I can say is: “It’s hard out there for a pimp.”  I can’t get that freaking song out of my head since watching the Oscars last night.  I am not overly fond of this song.  It’s obnoxious.  I had never heard any of the songs nominated for best original song, but I really liked “In the Deep” from Crash.  It was beautiful.  So I was a little disappointed that it didn’t win, but it wasn’t like I was terribly attached to it.  It wasn’t sung by a hobbit or Hugh Laurie, so I didn’t really care.

I have to confess something that I’m not incredibly proud of.  I checked out the first half of season 1 of The OC from the library and I watched it.  And I liked it.  There.  I said it.  Everyone can laugh now.  In my defense, it’s got great music.  And some of the writing is really clever.  And Adam Brody is very cute and sweet as geeky Seth.  So there.  Let the ridicule begin.

I went to see Daniel in West Side Story yesterday and he was awesome, of course.  West Side Story was the College of the Ozarks musical this year.  My roommate was the musical director and my dear friend Daniel was Tony (uh, yeah, the lead) so I had to go see it.  I was so proud of them, especially Daniel, because that is not an incredibly easy role to play.  The songs he had to sing were really hard, and he did them so well.  The worst thing about the show was that there was a girl sitting next to me all through the first act, talking the entire time.  I felt like turning to her and saying, “Listen.  He’s my best friend.  Can you at least shut up while he’s up there?  Any other time, you can talk.  Thanks.”  I didn’t.  I think she was an aggie.  She probably could have kicked my butt.  Also, to congratulate Daniel I gave him a card with a nun playing poker on it.  He likes poker and nuns are always funny, I don’t care who you are.

Anyway.  I fell asleep before the end of the Oscars last night, so I’m going to go watch the rest of it (even though I know Crash won best picture, I just want to see what Jon Stewart had to say the rest of the night) and yes, I’m going to clean out the ever-loving microwave.  Oh, oh!  I bought the Rent DVD this weekend.  Joy of joys.  I already watched all the special features and the commentary with Chris Columbus, Anthony, and Adam.  (it was hi-larious, as they would say on Firefly.)  Finally, remember to be nice to your friendly neighborhood pimp.  It’s hard out there for him.  Love,

Brianne <><