Ups and downs, and some possible changes

Yesterday was not exactly the best day I’ve ever had — not the worst overall, but certain moments may have some fairly large impact on days to come.

I’ll start with the good stuff, though. First off, my bowling continues to improve, which is cool. After last week’s run I brought my average up to 113, then surprised myself by managing to pull off my best series yet — 142/168/140! Not just my best series so far, but that 168 is my best score so far…I’m hoping to be able to get at least one game where I break 200 before I stop bowling.

Secondly, I got a chance to swing by Suncoast and picked up Love’s Labours Lost, and watched that after I got home from bowling last night. It turned out to be a really fun film, though it takes a little getting used to at first. Since Branagh combined Shakespeare with a 40’s style musical for this production, it opens with a ‘newsreel’ to give you some background information, then moves into some expository Shakespearian dialogue…then breaks into “I’d Rather Charleston”. Really caught me off guard at first, but after one or two numbers you just get caught up in the spirit of the experiment, and it just becomes a whole lot of fun. The only real downside I found was Alicia Silverstone trying not just to act, but to sing — luckily, she only gets a few verses completely on her own. I found her character to be this film’s eqivalent to Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing — an essential character who is unfortunately really badly miscast. Aside from lil’ miss Clueless, though, it’s a wonderful little romp, once you get past the initial shock.

Unfortunately, those were the highlights of the day. Not that they were bad highlights…just that the rest of the day kind of overshadows them.

Did my taxes — I owe $146. Bleah.

The big thing, however — if I’d had any more money in the bank than I do, I would have walked out of my job at TimeFrame yesterday. This is a really major thing for me — one way or another, I’ve always had an almost overdevolped sense of responsibility to whatever job I’m working, and will stick out some really uncomfortable situations when I deem it worth it, and I’d been doing my best to deal with all the little things at TimeFrame that bug me for a while now, as I didn’t want to either lose the paycheck or throw away the four and a half years I’ve got there just a few months before I leave state. However….

It just isn’t worth the headache anymore. While it’s not the job itself that bugs me, and I still enjoy the actual work I do, the work environment is so screwball that I’ve finally reached my breaking point. So, today I’ve called in to take a personal leave day, and I plan on running around to some of the temp agencies in town to take their placement/skills tests and see if I can find anything upwards of $10/hr for the next few months. I figure if I can find some data entry position — the kind of thing that often pays $12-$15 an hour because nobody wants to deal with it (usually a night position, shoved in a hole somewhere typing numbers in for hours on end), then as soon as I’m confirmed there, I can turn in my notice at TimeFrame and lose a fair amount of the stress in my life at the moment.

It’s really kind of bizarre for me to have gotten to this point — I’m still kind of amazed at myself for being willing to do something like take a day off to go job hunting. But, things have been going steadily downhill for me in regards to my job there, and there’s really only so much that I can take. So, today begins something of a grand adventure, in seeing if I can find something else to do for the next few months until I can afford to bail state. Should be interesting.

Of course, what’s going to be really interesting is if someone from TimeFrame actually ever stops by and checks my site and reads this….

Shadow of the Vampire

Went out to see Shadow of the Vampire last night after I got off work. Not bad at all, though not quite as good as I’d hoped it would be. The previews had made it out to be a little more creepy than it ended up being — while it wasn’t strictly played for laughs, it wasn’t as much of a ‘horror’ film as I thought it might be. Definitely worth seeing at some point, though — Willem DaFoe just seems to relish has part as Max Schreck. They also occasionally do an incredible job of taking film stock from today and altering it to look as if it had been filmed on the equipment of the day for certain scenes.

One of the few downsides of the movie for me was actually Carey Elwes. Even though I’ve been a fan of The Princess Bride for years, and think that Carey did a great job as ‘The Man in Black/Wesley’, almost nothing I’ve seen him in since then has impressed me in the least, and I’m afraid this is another one. My main curiosity with his character for most of his screen time was actually just what sort of accent he was supposed to have…it certainly didn’t come across as German to me. Ah, well — a good matinee flick, but I can’t quite recommend a full-price show, and it won’t be a keeper once it hits video.

In other news, I just got a call from Suncoast that a movie I’d ordered has come in — Kenneth Branagh‘s Love’s Labours Lost. I’m all sorts of excited to see this one…I think that Branagh consistantly creates some of the best screen adaptations of Shakespeare, and when he decides to present this one as an almost Busby Berkely-style musical, complete with 40’s style dance numbers, I’ve just gotta see it. Besides…I’m still working on building up my collection of Shakespeare adaptations. Ones I know I’m missing that are on DVD at the moment are the recent stylized Romeo + Juliet, and the production of Othello with Laurence Fishburne. If only Branagh’s full 4-hour long version of Hamlet would come out!