LaughAtlantis

SLOTH
1. What is one thing you're supposed to do daily that you haven't done in a long time? Take vitamins.
2. What is the latest you've ever woken up? Gaw, in college, probably 2 in the afternoon.
3. Name a person you've been meaning to contact, but haven't. Dave. I haven't talked to Dave in way too long, and I genuinely miss his friendship.
4. What is the last lame excuse you made? Erm... I got up this morning and wasn't sure if I was feeling seizure-y or just tired so I called in to work, told them I had an appointment, took a pill, and went back to bed for another hour. When I got up again I felt fine. So maybe that's justifiable.
5. Have you ever watched an infomercial all the way through (one of the long ones...)? Yup. Sad, huh?
6. When was the last time you got a good workout in? At a gym? Probably last June. But I walk a lot.
7. How many times did you hit the snooze button on your alarm clock today? I would guess Rod hit it twice before I got up.

GLUTTONY
1. What is your overpriced yuppie beverage of choice? Diet Caffeine Free Coke and/or Dannon Frusion Drinkable Yogurt in Mixed Berry flavor
2. Meat eaters: white meat or dark meat? White
3. What is the greatest amount of alcohol you've had in one sitting/outing/event? I think I had seventeen Kamikazes one St. Patrick's Day. But even so, I would guess that at some point in college, I drank more than that. Ah, the good old days...
4. Have you ever used a professional diet company? Yes.
5. Do you have an issue with your weight? Well, yes. I lost a bunch of weight last year and have started to put someof it back on again, which bothers me a LOT. I also want to look good in a wedding dress come October, so my weight is of particular concern right now.
6. Do you prefer sweets, salty foods, or spicy foods? Depends on the time of month.
7. Have you ever looked at a small housepet or child and thought, "LUNCH?" Unless the housepet was a barbecued chicken, no.

LUST
1. How many people have you seen naked (not counting movies/family)? No idea. I majored in theatre in college. There is no shame.
2. How many people have seen YOU naked (not counting physicians/family)? See number 1.
3. Have you ever caught yourself staring at the chest/crotch of a member of your gender of choice during a normal conversation? Does saying yes make me a bad person?
4. Have you "done it"? If my older brother or my future mother-in-law is reading this, the answer is no. Otherwise, erm...
5. What is your favorite body part on a person of your gender of choice? I like the line of the jaw. I also like eyes.
6. Have you ever been propositioned by a prostitute? That would be a no.
7. Have you ever had to get tested for an STD or pregnancy? Yes.

GREED
1. How many credit cards do you own? One and a half.
2. What's your guilty pleasure store? Borders, Barnes & Noble, or drool used bookstores
3. If you had $1 million, what would you do with it? Buy a house and then travel a lot. Take courses all over the world in a bunch of different subjects. Just explore different things.
4. Would you rather be rich, or famous? I think it would depend on what I was famous for.
5. Would you accept a boring job if it meant you would make megabucks? No - unless it was for very few hours and I had the luxury to do a lot with my free time.
6. Have you ever stolen anything? Yes.
7. How many MP3s are on your hard drive? roughly 1800 of my own, plus 6000 of Rod's that came with my hard drive

PRIDE
1. What one thing have you done that you're most proud of? It seems like such a little thing, but moving to Boston. It just started a huge new chapter in my life that has been so good for me. Boston has mellowed me and given me a better sense of humor, and I am generally happier and healthier here.
2. What one thing have you done that your parents are most proud of? Probably graduate from college
3. What thing would you like to accomplish in your life? I would like to be married once and have it - and the love that made it happen - last for my whole life.
4. Do you get annoyed by coming in second place? Depending on the competition, yes, yes I do.
5. Have you ever entered a contest of skill, knowing you were of much higher skill than all the other competitors? Yes. And sometimes I lost. Major bummer.
6. Have you ever cheated on something to get a higher score? Yes.
7. What did you do today that you're proud of? It's a stupid little thing, but I remembered to do several things that I forgot to put on my to-do list.

ENVY
1. What item (or person) of your friends would you most want to have for your own? I am insanely jealous of anyone who has a dog.
2. Who would you want to go on "Trading Spaces" with? Once we've moved out of our roommate situation, I'd love to go on with my current roommate.
3. If you could be anyone else in the world, who would you be? I don't know that it's really healthy to want another person's life. You know the old saying about walking a mile in someone else's shoes - you just never know what problems a person has until you experience them for yourself - and hell, at least I know my own problems well enough by now to know I can manage them.
4. Have you ever been cheated on? Yes.
5. Have you ever wished you had a physical feature different from your own? Yes.
6. What inborn trait do you see in others that you wish you had for yourself? Musical talent. I've got some, but I SO wish I had more...
7. Finally, what is your favorite deadly sin? I like sloth. It's not energy-intensive.

I'm at work. I'm going through my day. Everything is completely and utterly normal. Lunch rolls around and I wander down to the cafeteria where my choices are Veal Osso Bucco - from a cafeteria, mind you - or a hamburger. I take the safe option, get myself a cheeseburger and a bag of Fritos and head back up to my cubicle. I'm in the middle of a pretty good book and I figure I can read and eat. I start eating my burger - I notice that it tastes a little different from usual - they're using thicker burgers. I go back and forth between bites of burger, reading, and wandering the weddingchannel message boards.

And then all of a sudden, I'm on the floor. Betsy, the woman from the next cube is kneeling next to me. There's Fritos all over the place and half a burger on the floor. The wall of the cube is pushed way out and I ache, I ache all over. My head hurts and my back is shrieking in pain. I have NO idea why I am on the floor. Betsy has to tell me that I've had a seizure, because I don't automatically know. I repeatedly apologize. A nurse comes in, a security guard, some EMTs... they ask me if I know where I am - I do; they ask me if I want to go home - I do; they ask me for my fiance's phone number - I have no idea what it is. It takes me a moment to remember what my fiance's name is, and that upsets me so much that I start to tear up. One of my co-workers, Cheryl, has to look up Rod's number and track him down.

While all this is going on, I am still sitting on the floor in my cubicle. I'm conscious the whole time, but I'm hazy - time jumps for me and I can't recall it all clearly afterwards. For example, even now, I have no recollection of there being any EMTs or security guards there. I am going off what other people have told me about the event, but I don't know. I don't remember sitting in the lobby afterwards telling the receptionist how my back hurt. I don't remember apologizing so many times that Betsy threatened to punch me. I don't remember banging my head and I don't have any idea what I did to myself during the seizure to make my back still hurt five days later, but it does.

So yeah, a couple entries back, I blogged that "Seizures sorta suck." No. They don't sorta suck. They're awful. They leave you feeling powerless and miserable. They tire you physically and mentally. They make you want to turn your back on the world and go live in a cave so that you don't have to be around people who might potentially see you have one. They sometimes have long-term physical side effects, the likes of which you would never consider possible, and ultimatley, seizures are just plain depressing.

But the thing is this: I put the brave face on in that other entry because I have to live with the seizures. I have learned that having a sense of humor about my life is the best way for me to get through it, so I apply it to all things, including my epilepsy. Ultimately, I can't live my life if I live in constant fear of having seizures or if I am just forever lamenting how awful seizures are. No matter how bad they are, the fact is that in my life they just are. They're a fact of my life that I have come to accept, of necessity.

But as easy as it is for me to brush off the epilepsy, maybe providing a clearer picture is more useful in the end... I don't know. You tell me.

Fable - just reminds me of Aesop. Who the heck WAS Aesop, anyway? I mean, the kind of stories he tells are much like biblical parables or religious tracts, so was Aesop just a really unsuccessful religious leader?

Face - The least interesting member of The A-Team.

Fault - My fault, your fault, San Andreas fault. Whatever.

Fearsome - Okay, this word is used exclusively by hillbillies who don't know the word frightening.

Flight - Birds fly, bees fly.... great. Now I have Flight of the Bumblebees going through my head.

Freedom - Hey, no problem, now I have George Michael in my head instead.

WAIT!!! That wasn't the next word!!!! Choosing random words is VERBOTEN!!!!

Which, translated, is forbidden. Which is the next word. And hell, you can choose whatever words you want, so I don't know what kind of smack I'm talkin'.

Foreign - Soemone asked me if I'm marrying Rod just because of the foreign accent. Yes, yes, that's it. The man is a complete and utter asshole but I'm just a sucker for a brogue.

Fragmented - See, now, this is just a cool word: it's evocative, it sounds neat - but I have nothing to say about fragmentation.

Fuck - I have a lot to say about fuck, but that's just naughty.

Fuzz. Say "fuzzy duck, ducky fuzz, fuzzy duck, ducky fuzz" over and over agian and see what happens.

Lots of little crap to say about F words, but nothing much about any one.
Sigh.

I really didn't want Jack Nicholson to win, not just because I was pretty much nonplussed by About Schmidt, or because he's already got three Best Actor Oscars, but because he didn't take off his damned sunglasses throughout the broadcast. Does he have some sort of vision problem wherein he can't look directly at light? Or does he simply think that he is experiencing the world as his devilish character in The Witches of Eastwick? He's just so freakin' SMUG. Makes me want to hit him.

So, yay! He didn't win. On to the women...

I wanted Julianne Moore to win for SOMETHING. Now she has the dubious distinction of being nominated in two categories and losing in both. She shares this with Sigourney Weaver, who was nominated in 1989 for Gorillas in the Mist and Working Girl, and was frankly robbed as far as the lead actress category. Then again, Glenn Close was robbed the year before when Cher took home the Oscar for Moonstruck while Glenn's performance in Fatal Attraction was overlooked.

Speaking of being ROBBED of Oscar glory (and now I am really going to vent), why doesn't Morgan Freeman have an Oscar, damn it? For something, ANYTHING?? The man's a brilliant actor. The year he was up for Shawshank Redemption, Tom Hanks won it. Did Tom Hanks really NEED to win two years in a row?? I don't think so. Give that man an Oscar. You know he wasn't even NOMINATED for Glory? What is that??

And what about Edward Norton? He's BRILLIANT. You cannot convince me that Roberto "I'm going to jump over all the seats" Benigni deserved to win for Life is Beautiful, not when Edward Norton was so incredible in American History X. And, what's even WORSE, was that in the Best Supporting Actor race in 1997, he got beat out by CUBA GOODING JR., of all people, for shouting "Show me the money!" in Jerry Maguire. Oh, puh-leez. Edward Norton was astoundingly good in Primal Fear. That's just utter crap.

Haley Joel Osment deserved to win Best Supporting Actor in 2000 for Sixth Sense. Actually, he should have been nominated in the Best Actor category, but that's a whole other argument - but it certainly shouldn't have gone to Michael Caine for Cider House Rules.

The 1993 Best Actor award was given to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman, in which he played Foghorn Leghorn. Hoo-wah, boy, I say boy, get me a bourbon, boy. His competition included Robert Downey Jr. for Chaplin and Denzel Washington for Malcolm X. But really, I'm sure that it was because the role deserved great kudos and it wasn't just because the Academy was feeling guilty over having nominated him seven times but never actually giving him a little gold statue. Really.

Kind of like how Whoopi Goldberg got an Oscar for Ghost, which I'm sure wasn't at all about the general Academy guilt over having not given A SINGLE AWARD to The Color Purple.

And, hello, Martin Landau for Ed Wood over Gary Sinise in Forrest Gump AND Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction????

I could keep going, for a long time, but now I'm just all pissy and I need to put that angry energy into actually getting some work done. I leave you with this... why the heck did they have Harrison Ford announce the Best Director Oscar? He's never been a director. Not only that, he's only been nominated for an Oscar once, over fifteen years ago.

I smell a guilt Oscar coming on him too... nah, maybe not, given his recent acting choices. But you wait. He'll get a Lifetime Achievement award way before his time.