Just came in

Reading: 'At the Mountains of Madness' by HP Lovecraft (for more about this novella, see the Wikipedia article)

from picking up a friend from work and running by the store in the middle of the night. I got some Luna bars for breakfast over the next few days (much better than Pop-Tarts) and some food I can take with me for lunch and dinner.

On the one hand, my pants are all loose and I fear they may fall down sometime at the gas station since I keep my wallet on me when I'm there, and that weighs my pocket down. On the other, I had lost 25 lbs but I've gained a little of it back over the last few days, so I need to start making better choices.

I went to physical therapy today between jobs. Last time the therapist did a really deep massage to my elbow to break up the fibres that grow crosswise at the tendon which can cause pain and limit mobility/strength. Despite being a great big wuss-baby when it comes to acute pain (I do pretty well with the chronic kind), I didn't come out of my seat wailing at how much it hurt, but I had to put ice on it later and it's been swollen ever since and really tender. I told them this today and the aide massaged it but it wasn't quite so deep, although apparently the tendon is very tight around my elbow proper (the pain itself is centred about 1-2 inches below the joint). This time they did the massage first, then iced my elbow during the e-stim treatment, and that really helped (although I really liked the heat last time--it was very soothing). Also, last time they gave me a band to wear on my arm that somehow cuts the pain. It really has helped.

Tonight was truck night at the station and we were fortunate to be back to three people rather than two, since there's a new employee that just started this week. We got all the order put up before I left at 9, so that was much better. The last two or three weeks, my co-worker and I have been swamped by customers whilst trying to put everything up. We'd been pretty short-handed.

Tomorrow I'm off from the store. At the hospital, I need to take some children's books to clinic and put them on the cart we have for our early literacy programme, where books are given to children 6 months-5 years old who come in. I also need to clean out my closet and put the remaining books there--I have a small wall of boxes still to be unpacked piled at the end of my cubicle. I also need to download/print off some reports and finalise our journal renewals through our subscription agent. Then there's a need assessment to design, work out some budget details, and schedule a library committee meeting, but that may be for early next week.

Saturday I'm working a little later than usual; I don't have to go in until 11 am, but I get off at 7 pm. Then a friend and I will make a large grocery run, so not as much fun as last week, where I actually got off early enough to go to a matinee of the new Mummy movie. Let me tell you, Evie is really just the deal-breaker on this one; it's just not the same without Rachel Weisz, and the chemistry didn't quite work. But I enjoyed the movie overall and will probably get it on DVD/go to future ones. The girl who played the son's love interest was very good, and the action scenes were well done, althought I thought the special effects were not as good as in the past. Also, no mummies were harmed in the movie because there, well, weren't really any mummies--terracotta warriors, yes, and skeletal remains under the Great Wall, but no actual mummies. Still, it had its moments. And never take a yak on a small plane, or at least if you have to, don't sit next to it. Thanks to M from the game, who gave me a gift card to the Regal theatre for the winter holiday. I like the Regal, although their popcorn is not that good.

Sunday should be fun. We're getting nearer to the climax of Beyond the Mountains of Madness. My character was nearly eaten by a couple of shoggoths last week, all because the most-annoying leader of the expedition, Captain James Starkweather, the Great White Hunter and general all around incompetent prick, had to shoot a giant albino penguin down in the bowels of the city of the Elder Things. Ignoring my pleas to leave (I could hear the distant 'Teke-li-li!'), he started to truss up the penguin, no doubt so he could have it stuffed and mounted. When the shoggoth showed up, he fortunately went temporarily mad and ran out of, rather than deeper into the caverns. Despite being much faster, I couldn't very well leave him behind no matter how much I wanted to (okay, I could, but there are those vows to protect humans from Cthulhoids), and in process, got trapped between two of the creatures, but my companions showed up in time and we exploded one with concentrated use of essence to power the Elder Sign through our swords. Yay for me--my character didn't die because of that idiot. Now the question is where Starkweather has run off to, since we are on oxygen, and whether the shoggoths will start coming up to the surface and attack the camp. This so isn't good--but it is fun. We're at a point in the game that the Lovecraft story on which this was based, 'At the Mountains of Madness', is encouraged by the writers to be read, so I'm doing that now.

Oh, by the way, I finished The Somnambulist. I enjoyed the style quite a bit, it was a good mystery, although the ending was not quite satisfying and more than just a little fantastical and well, bad. Oh, and all the descriptions and reviews that I've read keep calling it a Victorian setting, when it's Edwardian--the Queen was dead, long live the King and all that. Ah, history is not the friend of some.

Well, it's 5 am--I should head back to bed; I had an hour's sleep earlier, but I need more. Thanks for letting me ramble. Good night.

PS One last thing...I know this post is pretty long, and this is going to make it longer, but I thought this was an interesting short film set to Loreena McKennitt's 'The Mask and the Mirror' made by Mirrormask. Judging from the tags, the person is influenced by Neil Gaiman, particularly The Sandman, and certainly the visuals show that is the case.