Another month, another roommate gone.

I have had so much trouble keeping a roommate here for longer than 3 months since Annie left.  Since she moved up to the city 9 months ago, there was the subletter, Xinyi, the restaurant manager, Jane (also moved up to the city), and fuel cell engineer Nina (returned to Germany).  It's like I'm running a halfway house for women.

Nina left this really sweet little German secretary desk for me.  It looks like a miniature upright piano.  I luuuuuurve it, but I want to do something with it (like paint it black).

Aubrey moves in next week.  She's single, sporty, and very nice/cute (guys, I'll take applications now.  HAH!).  I hope she stays longer than 3 months.

UPDATE:  HAPPY BASTILLE DAY, ONE AND ALL!

Just when I thought there was nothing better...

...than the A&E version of Pride & Prejudice, here comes another adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's classic Jane Eyre, from Masterpiece Theater.  This two-disc film has been floating among the 500 or so movies on my Netflix queue for months now, but I finally decided to move it up the queue and watch it.

I haven't even watched the whole thing yet--have to wait three days for part 2--but man!  I mean, I love Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy as much as the next girl, but there's something about the brooding, sensual, gruff and charismatic Mr. Rochester that is just so much more interesting (even if Toby Stephens is a bit too handsome for the role).  Ruth Wilson makes for a satisfying Jane; no matter how plain the character was supposed to be in the book, you still want Jane to be alluring in her own way, and Wilson is cute as a button.

The film itself is dark, real, gothic, and utterly romantic.  Lushly shot.  And there is such an electric passion between the two leads that you can cut the sexual tension with a knife.  Altogether, a delicious find.  I'm probably going to buy the DVD now so I can re-watch all the good parts.

"You may think the world doesn't need another adaptation of Jane Eyre--but you're wrong...this production brings all of the novel's juice and passion to the fore, emphasizing the characters' sensual experience while staying true to the restrictions and mores of the period. All in all, exceptional." --Bret Fetzer

Labor of love.

My roommate is moving back to Germany in 3 days.  She leaves behind her new boyfriend, with whom she was friends for five years before they both interned here in the US, and their friendship blossomed into luuuurve. 

Her boyfriend won't be done with his internship for another four months.  To help him count down the days until they will see each other again, she made this amazing garland of brightly wrapped Hershey's Kisses, one kiss per day, to last until he reunites with her in Germany.

It took her something like twelve hours to make, from collecting the materials, to wrapping the kisses, to cutting out and writing a tag for each day (128 in all), to stringing them all together.  I'm a little flabbergasted at her patience, and the enormity of the gesture.  I also love that it's all in German (probably not such a novelty for them).  ". . . noch 2 Tage!"

Google announces www.lively.com

I don't know quite what to make of it, but it seems to me one of the most far-fetched ideas to come out of Google Labs (Street View being another, but that turned out to be pretty freaking awesome, and useful too).  I never really understood why people took other 3-D web ventures like Second Life so seriously (even after I tried it--but that's another blog post).  I wonder if Niniane, the engineer who dreamed this up as a 20% project, knows something the rest of us don't.

Anyway, fat chance getting to play around with it, as it crashed my Acer, and I couldn't figure out how to customize my avatar, and I couldn't figure out how to even control where I was looking or where I was walking in the "Goth Island" room I somehow found myself in.  If I ever get it working again, it might be fun to use it to practice my home decorating skillz in building a room.

As another user put it: "It seems to be a bad copy of Second Life. Somehow all the rooms are crowded, and porn has made its way in there already."

Posterous is on AdWords!

Only running right now on branded keywords, but expect keyword expansions soon.  Hurrah!

UPDATE: If you are curious and want to see the ad in action, please don't arbitrarily search on the keyword 'posterous' unless you are going to click on the ad.  All those impressions are killing the quality score, yo.