No matter.

First up: Happy Birthday, Madison! I hope you enjoy your week of celebration!

A slightly late HB to my girls J, Jaime (miss you, Miss JAG), and the Disco Diva. A slightly early HB to My Internet Bride (hey, I don't make this stuff up) who I miss every day that he's not in Chicago.

Whew. That's a lot of birthdaying in a week!

In other news, I haven't updated in almost a month due to the following:
--working hard in London the rest of the time I was there
--jet lag and work lag and all the lags that make life miserable when you have 3 weeks of work to do in 5 days
--surgery, which went very well and probably deserves it's own page but we'll see if I ever finish my entry on Mame and actually bring it to work to upload
--Hope in town for a long-awaited reunion full of sleep and food (we're both recovering, me from surgery and her from stuff)
--did I mention the workload? It's increased exponentially of late
--shame and annoyance that I haven't updated in a month, so undecided where to begin

It's nice to see I can overcome a few things here and there.

During the downtime of enforced recovery, I saw a slew of movies I enjoyed: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Finding Neverland, Mad Hot Ballroom, Ladies in Lavender.

I cannot stress enough how much you need to see MAD HOT BALLROOM. This movie made me smile for almost 2 hours straight (which ended up being a very painful thing, but I couldn't help it) and is so uplifting and heartwarming in a non-gooey way that everybody, and that includes you Mr. Machopants, should go pay their $9 for a wonderful film. True, nobody dies or blows up or is double-crossed or swears, but it's so. damn. good.

I also saw Madagascar on Friday when I couldn't do anything other than leave the office and try not to cry. Oh good gracious. That's a funny movie if you get past the main characters. I love the penguins and monkeys, and you will too. Why they keep trying to sell these animated films as 'kids movies' is stupid--there are more in-jokes for adults than kid-funny things. But oh, how I loved the parodies.

Hee.

I also finished a few books~~ Mary Robinson's biography Perdita, Bill Bryson's A Short History..., a trading book or two, and revisited a slew of old Cooking Lights and The Idiot Girl's Action Adventure Guide which makes me laugh just as hard as the first time I read it.

So that's it. I'm back, I'm swamped at work, and I'm going back home for the weekend to see my baby* all growed up and graduated from High School.