i just melt inside your eyes

I had actually vowed not to watch the 'Lord of the Rings'/'Hungry Eyes' video tonight - but I'm not so good with vows or self-discipline. But, I was lured into it - I checked my friend Alaska Matt's blog, and he gave me a shout-out for leading him to an awesome YouTube video. I had to click to see which one it was...I was expecting it to be the Michael Cera/Alexander Hamilton video, but it turned out that he's more awesome than that and had picked up on the 'Hungry Eyes' video instead. And once I had clicked on it, I had to watch the whole thing. I really am perfectly suited to live in my parents' basement and 'write novels' while slowly making my way through the entire Netflix library. Great.

I had meetings straight from 7:30am to 5pm, with a quick break from 12:30-1 to put together slides for my 1pm meeting. But, I've started a countdown to my leave of absence on my corporate instant messenger status - today, my status just said 'seventeen', which my manager called 'hurtful' when it was referenced in a meeting today. Seventeen days, right now, seems like a lifetime, but it's going to go by so fast...and there's a teeny tiny part of me that regrets asking for a leave because I can't imagine life without my job. But then again, that's the problem, right? The fact that I'm so dependent on my job to give me an identity and a sense of purpose is really upsetting (not to mention what it's done to my social life, although I do have a lot of friends in the office), and so I'm exceedingly happy to be taking time for myself. I just wonder what I'm going to do when I wake up the first week after my leave starts and have to fend for myself.

But enough of that. I came home tonight, made a delicious salad with spinach, gorgonzola cheese, walnuts, dried cranberries, and balsamic vinaigrette, and ate it while watching tivo'd episodes of Craig Ferguson. One of the episodes from just before Worldwide Pants signed a deal with the writers' guild was Craig's first episode as a guest host when CBS was attempting to replace Craig Kilborn. It was really interesting - Craig was clearly not completely comfortable to be hosting, his hair was shorter and more professional, his monologue was the standard late-night length (rather than the ten-minute tours-de-force that he regularly puts out now), and he spent much more time interviewing his guests. However, his irrepressible, cheeky grin still broke through occasionally. The other episode I watched was from Friday night, and included Dominic Monaghan (who played Merry in 'Lord of the Rings', to bring it all full circle). For some rather inexplicable reason, Dominic Monaghan brought a bunch of snakes, geckos, and Madagascar hissing cockroaches with him, and proceeded to do some sort of Jack Hanna-like exhibition of his animals. Apparently he really likes animals - which is a good thing, since he may need a new career since he was killed off on 'Lost'. I had managed to forget that piece of trivia, since I haven't finished watching Season 3 yet - but if you, like me, were hoping to avoid all knowledge of the last half of Season 3, I just ruined it for you too!

Okay, enough of my ramblings, it's time for bed!