(no subject)

Yesterday was a long, long day in many ways (the most concrete being at the office until 8:15, but I actually succeeded at what I needed to do). Came home, watched "Finding Neverland", crashed.

Work: Saying goodbye over and over again is hard. I actually went into the Escalation Manager's office and opened the conversation with, "I'm so sorry" (to which his answer was, "Sorry for what?" - and that of course is the correct answer to an unnecessary statement, but this is one of the guys who interviewed me 5 years ago - I didn't know what to say, but it didn't seem like I should just ignore it and go straight to work). Steve (the escalations engineer for my group) left for vacation, which meant that I had to say an actual goodbye to him - despite working with him pretty much every workday for the last few years, I may never see him again. That's a really strange feeling.

House: Finding a house painter may be a case of choosing one who actually called back and praying that it works out okay. I'm still worried about the paint dust, but since no one else seems to be, I'm just going to hope that I'm overdoing it.

New! job: My father desperately wants to buy me Perl and PHP books. I know I can get some paid for by my workplace when I start, but this will make him very happy. Besides Learning Perl and the other O'Reilly Perl books, any suggestions? I'll be doing some research, but I'd rather get feedback from people I know.

Other:
Listening to Rent can be dangerous (but hopefully in a good way).

Quotes, underline, and bold all in the same post - so exciting! :)

Movie recommendation: Girl with a Pearl Earring

I'm not so great at writing reviews (I hated writing book reviews in grade school and just don't feel I do the things I'd be reviewing justice now), but I'd at least like to recommend the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring. I watched it tonight thinking that it might not be very good and I could discard it afterwards to make space for another dvd, but instead, I found it to be excellent - a gorgeous period fairy tale of sorts in the style of Ever After (that is, without magic or fairies). The movie follows a (late-teenaged?) girl [Scarlet Johanssen, from Lost in Translation, which I also highly recommend] who becomes a maid at the house of the Dutch painter Vermeer.

Beautiful cinematography (and they supposedly were highly authentic to the 17th century time period in their filming, from the house design, to the costumes, to the exterior shots of Delft). Very nice soundtrack. Excellent -subtle- acting. I highly enjoyed it.

(Note that I have not read the book on which the movie was based, so I can't say whether or not it is faithful to the text.)