"Be... Our... Guest! Be our guest"

I need to go on a hike.  I haven't been on one in months.  Hopefully, now that my weekends should open up, I can get Amy out with me one day...

Today, I got to hang with the twins and then came home to an empty house.  I put some junk food in the oven and the curled up on the couch, a cat on each side, a dog at my feet, computer on my lap, and sat back to watch the season 3 premiere of Once Upon a Time... (fair warning, I have quite a lot to say about it)

There's a cat on my ankle... (which has nothing to do with anything else)

Yesterday was a long day.  I woke up at 6 to drive up North for my babysitting and then sent from there to Subway.  And then there was the big dilemma:  the mom for my babysitting decided she only needed me two days, instead of four.  So then, my first thought was to not quit Subway; and then, I found out I was working with Tia since one of the 19-year-olds played their usual "call in sick" card, so I thought "I need to quit this job!"  What I finally decided to do was to work all three jobs and just make sure I have the weekends off to relax and recover.  By the time I finally did head home, I was exhausted, yet knew I could not go to bed until I watched the season premiere of The Big Bang Theory.

Yes! New TV Galore!

So, there was this plan I had for yesterday.  I was going to wake up early and watch Sleepy Hollow and Castle on Hulu before I had to leave to go to the other side of the island (the south other side, not the north one).  But I would not wake up yesterday, and once I did, I would not start moving.  At all.  So the shows had to wait until after I got home from work and then I had to cut out and pick up my friend Amy from the airport.  So, I managed to watch Castle yesterday before dinner, Agents of SHIELD before the airport, New Girl before bed and I just finished watching Sleepy Hollow with my mom.

The order I saw them in:

When Did I Become Like This?

I know people talk about how loyal dogs are and how they run up and greet you and how great it is to have a dog, but cats can be just as welcoming and much more calming.  Take my cat, today for example.  She is very much *my* cat and today I was gone for a fair portion of the day.  When I got back from hanging out at the mall with my friend, she would have come directly to me had the dog not jumped in the way.  Even so, as soon as I was upstairs (where the dog's not allowed) and stopped moving, she wouldn't stop rubbing against my legs and purring non-stop.  A cat's purr is one of the single most calming sensations in the world, between the noise and the vibrations. Yes, I am a cat person.

Moving forward.  Today, I'm going to talk about my two new video games.

Beginning of "The Season"

So in a perfect world, I would have come home yesterday, watched Sleep Hollow and New Girl, wrote about them (while it was all fresh in my mind) and then gone on and done something else enjoyable.  Instead, I was a good friend and woke up to drive my friend to the airport to catch a morning flight to LA, and then worked both jobs back-to-back.  So, I woke up at 5, left my house at 5:30 and didn't get back home until 10.  Since I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, I turned into Zombie Beth around 4 and Crazy Beth around 6.  Apparently, Crazy Beth was fun for customers and co-workers alike and Crazy Beth got quite a bit of money in the tip jar, but she also gave her number to someone she shouldn't have so I think I'll avoid Crazy Beth whenever possible.

Now that that's over: TV!

Ah, Technology, I Name Thee Friend

I've said it before and this will most certainly not be the last time I say this, but I hate Honolulu traffic.  I was watching The Italian Job with my family the other day and during the sequence when they were timing a driving route in LA, all I could think about was this: Please Note #2.  So, to me, this means that Honolulu has some of worst traffic in the country.  And I get to drive that road when I work in Hawaii Kai.  I am not a patient person once I'm at the mercy of traffic; I get frustrated and yell at random drivers and have said more than once "I really like people in general, until they get behind the wheel of a car." Even though I'm not traveling that during rush hour, it's still a long nightmare.  And then I realized that the rare occasions I managed to catch someone on the phone, I barely noticed what was going on traffic-wise.  So I went on amazon (All hail the mighty Amazon!) and priced The Eye of the World audio book.  Apparently, by signing up for a free month-long trial of audible.com, I got a free book, plus another free book for my month of audible.  While I'm going to cancel after the first month and just buy the books instead of paying for a subscription, this is working really well.  I might actually finish The Wheel of Time if I can listen to the books I've already read instead of devoting a few months to reading them.  And this way, I don't mind the drive.  The other day, it was almost an hour and I barely noticed.  In fact, I've been looking for excuses to drive places so I can listen to the book more. So, that's working out well for me.

Today, I had a great trip to Wal-Mart.  I went there to pick up a copy of Star Trek: Into Darkness and then had the oddest compulsion to go down one of the aisles in the grocery department.  Do you know what I found?  Yes, okay, I did find Twinkies, but I was never much of a Twinkies person so, while I did pick up a box for my dad and brother, that was not what got me all excited.  No, it was the Hostess Cupcakes sitting proudly next to the Twinkies.  I snatched a box down and glanced at the bottom of the ingredients: "Contains wheat, eggs, milk and soy". No "May contain traces of peanuts" or "Processed in a facility that processes peanuts".  Unlike the knock-off from Little Debbie or whatever local company, I can still eat Hostess Cupcakes.  So I went, home, put on my new movie and ate a 2-pack of Hostess Cupcakes.

Major spoilers for Star Trek Into Darkness ahead.

Fall

Fall.  One of my favorite times of year.  In most places, there's a cooling in the air, a feeling of change, rest, a flavor to the wind that starts people to thinking about winter and the wonderful comfort of warmth.  Frost is found in the early mornings, football is on TV and long-sleeved shirts are pulled out of wherever they'd been hibernating for the last months.  But not here.  Here, in Hawaii, there is no weather.  And so, instead of enjoying fall for myself, I'm forced to remember seasons past and fantasize about living somewhere with four seasons sometime in the future.

Luckily, even without the change in weather, there are still plenty of things that accompany the "season" of fall, even out here in the middle of no where (seriously, find a place populated by more than crazy scientists and nature lovers that's more geographically isolated than the Hawaiian islands.  I dare you!)  Football is still on, even if it is absurdly early in the day (kick-off at 7 am?  Really?)  Thanksgiving is still approaching and plans start to get made.  And my entertainment gets a new vigour after the end-of-summer movie-drought.

The first of October, a few books come out that I've been half-waiting for and I'll finally be able to read Hero by Alethea Kontis.  The first book in this series, Enchanted, was amazing.  The style and mastery of the writing, the skilful weaving of various fairy tale fragments into a whole... I can't wait for the next book (fingers crossed my hunch about "Beauty and the Beast" is right!).  Actually, I think I may be looking forward to this more than the last Harry Potter book.  Just to put that in perspective, I did the midnight release of the last HP book, went home and then read it until I was done.  Finished it about 10 am or so (with a 2 hour nap at about the half-way point).  I can only hope I'm not still awake when the book is delivered to my kindle or I won't get any sleep and, chances are, I'll have work the next day.

Another sequel I'm looking forward to is Lightning's Return, more for another FF game than anything.  I'm sure I'll get more excited as November approaches and I doubt I'll wait and let someone buy it for me as a Christmas present, but right now, that's pretty low on my list of anticipation. 

And then there's TV.  Next week, I will finally get new episodes and new shows to watch.  First up, Sleepy Hollow on Monday.  I'm really torn about this show, actually.  While I do enjoy watching the way people retell and re-imagine old tales, the last version of Sleepy Hollow I was forced to endure was the Depp monstrosity.  Okay, I know lots of people like Tim Burton and Johnny Depp (or there wouldn't be so many movies) but their particular brand of "dark" I find revolting.  Though my brother might not want to admit it, I do have a skewered sense of taste and the new Sleepy Hollow might not fit it.  It also might be over-done, cheesy and have poor acting or writing.  But I'll try it anyway.

The next premiere on my schedule is New Girl on Tuesday.  Castle and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. premiere the following week on Monday and Tuesday respectively, followed by The Big Bang Theory and Grey's Anatomy on Thursday.  Then, Once Upon a Time returns the following Sunday with it's new spin-off, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland premiering a week and a half later, on a Thursday. 

I'm actually looking forward to those two new series quite a bit.  Okay, so SHIELD seems like a no-brainer to me (I'll take my superheros just about any way I can get them, and I was so upset when they "killed" Coleson in The Avengers), but I'm actually kind of surprised by how much I'm looking forward to Wonderland.  Overall, I'm not a big fan of the "Alice in Wonderland" story.  The old Disney movie used to scare me so much so that I only watched it once every few years.  While I have of course read the book and Through the Looking Glass, I'm not overly fond of the story overall, and the way it's constantly redone makes me even less so.  But when I watched the trailer for it on Hulu, more to get an idea of what I would be watching than anything, I started to get pretty excited.

Alright, so I'm about done.  Partly because I've at least mentioned everything that comes out between now and the end of October and partly because it's after 11 and I'm still suffering the aftereffects of a migraine (yesterday, dinner was a battle) so I need to get some sleep.