Smurf the smurfing smurfers.

So given the new job (and my absolute lack of any banking industry experience), I've been taking a lot of training classes. Today, I had to take a course on money laundering. At which I learned about smurfing. This is beautiful. They actually smurfing named the crime smurfing. Smurfing awesome.

Gradually Ruining That Woman

TACO & WIFEZILLA: [watch 30 Rock]

TACO: What the hell? Kenneth is over 40?

WIFEZILLA: He'll never look any older. He's like Michael J. Fox.

TACO: So he'll just gradually get more and more blurry?

WIFEZILLA: Was that a Parkinson's joke?

TACO: Yeah.

WIFEZILLA: Meep meep.

TACO: Hellbus?

WIFEZILLA: Yep.

TACO: God, you're awesome.

She talks in her sleep.

A couple times a week, wifezilla is already sacking zees when I get to bed. She frequently talks in her sleep, and when she does, she's often nearly coherent, so that I have a hard time at first figuring out whether she's making fun of me, or just unconscious. They can be some of the most wonderfully bizarre conversations I ever have.

Every time it happens, I promise myself I'll remember it. Then I fall asleep and the next morning, all I can remember is that the conversation was weird.

So tonight I ran downstairs to blog it while I remember it.

WIFEZILLA: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

TACO: [gets into bed]

WIFEZILLA: Why is your bra on my head?

TACO: What?

WIFEZILLA: Why is your bra on my head?

TACO: My what?

WIFEZILLA: Your bra. Why is it on my head?

TACO: I don't have a bra.

WIFEZILLA: Well, you do now, Bra-Head.

TACO: Wait, why am I Bra-Head if the bra is on your head?

WIFEZILLA: Quit it.

TACO: Quit what?

WIFEZILLA: Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

For Yay Miitard Use Only

This subscription that Coyote got me may be the greatest gift I've ever gotten. It just keeps getting more entertaining month after month.

With Apologies to my Christian Friends

I got bored at Barnes & Noble so I put some bibles in the science fiction & fantasy section.

Long Day is Long

Cliff's Notes on Taco's Day:

6:00a - Get up, start getting ready, start pouring coffee down gullet.

7:00a - Drive to work.

7:45a - Get to work.

10:00a - Guy asks for help with some Java work he's doing. Start trying to untangle his mess.

11:00a - 30 minute meeting w/ guys in London developing a piece of the product for us.

1:15p - "30 minute" meeting ends. Meeting was very productive, though. Possibly the most useful meeting I've ever had.

1:30p - Go downstairs to deli for a quick bite. Sammich was ok but not for $7.

4:00p - Hand teammate untangled mess. Explain what I did. Attempt to correct his tendency to abandon standard, mature APIs that don't immediately work in favor of self-rolled code (that fails in boundary cases). Probably won't stick. Hold off on screaming fit over utter lack of knowledge of Java standard practices for a rainy day. Start working on incorporating latest info into my portion of our project.

4:15 - Realize dude has wiped out my test tables. Start recreating test data. Keep names of new test tables secret. Promise to invoke hoodoo curses at next opportunity. Reluctantly admit I should have predicted we'd step on each other's data. Still plan on hoodoo. Google price of sacrificial goats.

4:30p - Boss asks if I can have my portion of the project (including latest info & changes) ready to hand off to architect tomorrow. Tell him I'll do my best, but spent the bulk of the day force feeding best practices to a contractor. Offer to stay late to get it done, ask what time tomorrow it's needed to avoid delay. Boss says don't stay late, if it won't make it, just let us know asap. Refuse to delay release on my first project.

5:30p - Leave office to meet family for dinner. Find every moron on road between office and restaurant. Food is delicious. Fun evening. Wish father-in-law safe trip back home.

7:30p - Back at office. Dude I Secretly Suspect Is a Gay British Time Traveler From the 19th Century is still there. Make note to find out his name. Set coffee machine on high test. Begin swilling.

7:31p - Wonder if Gay British is redundant.

8:00p - First of many trips to bathroom in accordance with my elaborate coffee tag & release program. Find $8 on floor outside a conference room. Wonder if it belongs to gay British time traveler. Look for him to ask, but fail to find him. Reason that if it's his money, he'll just go back in time and pick it up before I find it. Pocket it.

8:30p - Trade text messages, PMs with Blue. Plot on folks 'n' rascals. Rack up impressive list of text messages. Give up and call. Chat about books, her recovery, and more plottin'. Okay, maybe not the plottin'. But she's got a PM about the plottin'. Did I mention plottin'? Plottin'.

11:00p - Finish vast majority of work due by tomorrow. Exhausted. Leave, grabbing one last mug of high octane coffee for the road.

11:10p - Radio station plays 1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer. Almost makes it worth working late. Holler along. Badly. Mostly mumbling until the title line. Don't care. Holler louder.

11:20p - Pull in driveway. Get mail. Come inside. Dog is waiting on me at the door, hops up to get pet. Dog is awesome.

11:30 - Sit down with slice of cold pizza, can of beer. Start writing this.

My Holiday Movie Binge

I already had quite a backlog. I've been on a DVD-watching dry spell for a while. Partly because it's a fun way to drive Coyote insane (no, I'll never watch Hot Fuzz). But the pile finally started to call to me. And the post-Christmas DVD sale at Target netted me some sweet sets. I succumbed.

District 9. I wanted to watch this so bad when it was in the theater, but work was insane at the time, and I never managed it. Really fantastic film. Though I do have to wonder why the aliens went through the trouble of developing weaponry that would only respond to their genetic code.

9. Ditto on this one. Was desperate to see it in the theater, but damn work. Advice if you haven't bought it yet: don't buy it at the same time as District 9 like I did. All those 9s confused the register monkey, and she double charged me for this title. I had to go stand in line at customer service to get my money back. The lady at customer service was a bitch. Fucking Best Buy.

I heard pretty ambivalent things about this one. Most of the reviews I saw said it was visually fantastic, but had a weak story. I quite enjoyed the story. And I did find the visuals quite amazing. Learning of the stitchpunks' origins does seem to take a bit of the awe and magic out of the world, but I still loved it. Then again, I'm a sucker for a post-apocalyptic setting.

Paranormal Activity. Holy fucking hell. Our household is divided on the ending (wifezilla prefers the alternate ending, while I found the theatrical ending to be far more hair-raising). We're pretty much united on the "it's goddamn scary" front, though.

True Blood. I knew basically nothing about the show, but a couple people I know have said good things about it. Been thinking about picking it up on Netflix. Target only wanted $17 for season 1 after Christmas, though, so I figured it was can't-lose... if I didn't like it, I could get most of my money back at the used bookstore down the street.

How little I knew of the show was quickly apparent: Didn't realize Anna Paquin was in the show. If I'd known, I probably wouldn't have bought the DVDs. I hated her in the X-Men movies. Fairly impressed with her in this show so far, though. Also, if I'd known it was based on the Charlaine Harris books, I probably wouldn't have checked it out. For some reason, I instinctively hate those books. In truth, I know jack shit about them, so I don't have any rational reason. I just saw them on the shelf and hated them. I'm enjoying the show (though wifezilla informs me there's a lot more sex & violence in the show than the books, so maybe my bookhate/showlove is well-advised... vamps and sex & violence go together like... uh... vamps and sex & violence).

So we'll see. I'm only two eps in. Liking it so far though.

Buffy. More vamps. The binge continues. Half way through season 3. Yay. Love this show. Should've given it a fair shake all those years ago when it was on TV. Who knew it didn't suck like the movie? Gonna have to get Angel when I finish this run.

Big Bang Theory. Love the show, but I'm bad at TV so I miss it all the time. Got seasons 1 and 2, so I can finally catch up on all the episodes I miss. I'm not Sheldon.

Castle. Cap'n Mal. Stana Katic. Yummy.

Stargate SG-1. Yeah, I'm a latecomer to the show. Saw a few episodes during the late, great Sci-fi Friday (why the hell did they dismantle that?) and discovered I really liked it. I got a late birthday card with a gift cert to my favorite used bookstore tucked inside. Promptly ran over to pick up some SG-1, found season 1, got distracted... and accidentally bought season 5. Sigh. At least I have plenty of other stuff to watch.

Tropic Thunder. I've had it from Netflix long enough to have set a new Taco record for sitting on my counter. And if you know me, you know how impressive that is. Almost watched it the other night. But we forgot.

Hot Fuzz. Nevar! (But only because it drives Coyote insane.)