Here ya go...

I've had complaints that I haven't been posting at all. Which is a valid point, cause let's face it, I'm really bad and remembering to post anything. So here I am making a new post.

Here's a summation of my first week back from Christmas break:
1) two days total of work after holidays and the office closing early for holidays,
2) excessive amounts of cold medicine which has worked like a charm,
3) watching seasons 3 and 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer within 3 days (paused briefly to watch the ball drop on New Years - there's no way I was going brave Times Square by myself with all those tourist and the fact that it was snowing that day),
4) a completely quiet and empty apartment all to myself, and
5) sleeping as much and as late as I wanted.


Yeah, that's not the most exciting way to ring in the New Year in the country's largest city, but hey, I had a cold.

Random tidbits from the second week back so far:
1) cold's almost gone, just the residual tired feeling,
2) roommies are back,
3) everyone's back at work, and
4) the two new interns showed up today at work. They seem cool and nice. We'll see how it goes.

There I've posted. Maybe I'll have something interesting to post soon. At least I'll be going to Florida next week so that will be something to talk about.

Elder Wirthlin

So I'm sitting here at work working on a project for Bayer when I get a message from Carol, one of the other LDS employees here at Nielsen, giving some sad news that Elder Wirthlin died this morning.

Click HERE for a link the the Church's Newsroom report.

And the Christmas Season Begins!

This week I officially started listening to Christmas music. (I was able to load some on my computer that Kim had while I'm waiting for Mom to send me my cds - thanks again by the way). Yeah yeah, I know you're not supposed to start listening until AFTER Thanksgiving... I got close enough.

Anyway, one song in particular just really got me in the Christmas Spirit. So here's a video to help you get into that holly, jolly mood featuring my dear friends Ashley Safsten and Lisa (Brooksby when this was filmed) Jones singing the great Mariah Carey christmas hit All I Want For Christmas Is You.

(Please note, that this video was taken during the BYU Fall 06 Finals Week after a semester of excessive lack of boys in our lives and classes that liked to suck out our souls.)

VERY VERY sad day

Today is no longer a good day.

My external hard drive crashed.

I have lost all of my music. ALL OF IT.

The hard drive has locked me out of every file that contained an MP3, M4A, M4P, WAV files... every type of music file has been cut off. And I had a lot. And since every CD I own is currently located in Kentucky, it doesn't look like I'll be able to fix them all any time too soon.

I was luckily able to save all my pictures, but every last music file I had on my computer is lost forever.

I've been having issues with my external hard drive for several weeks now, but I never expected it to get this bad. Hopefully I'll be able to figure something out to fix it. Until then, I'll be sitting here very depressed. :'(

Bernie's Quirks

So the Six Quirks tag is making its rounds through the Barrington clan and it's extended family I see. My dear sister Shannon got me on her's so I'll go ahead and fill it out for myself.

Tag Rules:

Link the person who tagged you

Mention the rules on your blog

Tell about six quirks of yours

Tag six fellow bloggers to do the same

Leave a comment to let them know

Quirk #1: I don't know if it was because my family just never shortened my name when I was growing up or what, but until I was 17 I hated it when I was called "Britt" with only one notable exception of the Menser family. I don't know why I hated it so much, but it just never sat well with me. Truth be told I still don't like being called Britt but I can handle it much better now. But please, call me Brittany, Bernie, Barrington, even Shannon (since that's what I was called a lot during field hockey practice back in the day), just avoid using Britt.

Quirk #2: I'm not a very neat person when it comes to how I keep my room. I live in pretty much controlled chaos. But when it comes to my movies, music, pictures or general file storage on my computer I'm OCD with how they're handled. I create these ridiculous organizational systems to keep them all straight and organized so I can find them when I need them. I will sit and work for hours on getting them just right. When I get a new cd or movie I have to go and put them in their right location in my system. I just bugs me to not have them in their places. At one point my system was so complex that my roommates just couldn't figure out how my movies where kept so I had to rework the system so they could keep them organized if they watched anything.

Quirk #3: I have to wear my watch. I can't stand it when I don't have it on. If I forget to put it back on after a shower or when I get up in the morning and head off for my day, as soon as I realize it's missing I start to get twitchy. I went so far with this that I snuck my watch into every field hockey game I ever played even though any form of jewelery was not allowed. Yay for goalie pads! When my battery died in September I even kept wearing it for two days until I could go get it changed because I couldn't stand not having it one me.

Quirk #4: It's not really a quirk to me, but I can honestly say that I've never said a cuss/curse word in my life, at least to my knowledge. I never went through that rebellious stage where I though it would be cool. Now I know some words can be argued as cuss/curse words, but to me, I've never said anything that is one. It's a rare little thing that I take great joy in.

Quirk #5: I will go on long TV series DVD marathons where I watch a complete series from start to finish. Some times I'll even try to see how quickly I can complete a series. These are all usually at least 6 or 7 seasons long too. That's over 135 episodes each. Since most of what I own are hour long shows, that's over 135 hours or nearly 6 days non stop of TV. Sometimes I'll include all the bonus features in the marathon too just to switch it up a bit. I LOVE IT! I currently own the complete series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, and Xena Warrior Princess. I'm hoping to add Lost and Alias to that eventually too.

Quirk #6: So speaking of Xena. I'm a Xena junkie. It's my favorite show. If you were to give me an episode I can place it's exact location in the series and how it's relavent to the rest of the season and/or series as a whole. I can't even begin to guess how many time's I've seen the show. It just never gets old for me. The show is the main reason I really want to go to New Zealand someday. I will make little references to the show in daily life just for my own enjoyment even when I know no one will get it. I don't even limit my obsession with the show to just the six seasons either. I'll watch other films/tv shows simply because they have actors/producers/whatever from Xena in it. Did you know that there are least three main actors from Xena that make cameos in the Spiderman movie series? That's all because Sam Raimi directed the movies and he was an executive producer on Xena. Yeah, I'm addicted to it and I'm ok with that.

Anyway, there's six quirks of mine. Hope you enjoyed them. If you think I have other fun quirks let me know. I wanna hear what you think of me.

I'm gonna tag Annalisa, Monica, Tess, Tiffany, Caitlin and my dear big brother Jeff just for kicks. (It'll give you something to do when you're online Jeffie).

Happy Halloween

Ok, let's face it people. I'm just plan bad when it comes to posting interesting things on my blog. I try to claim it's because Kim goes through and talks about the interesting things that we do, but in truth I'm just plan lazy. So in hope to remedy that problem, I'm going to double cover this past weekend.

So, my stake had a YSA event on Friday night in honor of Halloween. It was a costume party and dance at the Upper East Side building. Kim and I had been debating since early September what we were going to be. There were ideas of being Viking women, Wendy and Dairy Queen, dead beauty pagent contestants (in homage to Drop Dead Gorgeous), and even Kermit and Miss Piggy. But we just couldn't decide on anything we really wanted to do that we'd both be willing to do. By Friday we still hadn't come up with anything to wear. When we both got home from work we raided our closet and tried to find something to wear.

I ended up going with being a Kentuckian. Louisville hat, wife beater-like tank top, plaid like over shirt. I even had a fake cigarette. Had I had time, I would have gone out and gotten a six-pack of rootbeer to hall around with me. I was aiming for white trash, but it just didn't come off trashy enough. So I settled for saying I was just a regular native Kentuckian... no one really got it until I explained it to them. Oh well I didn't care. I got an excuse to wear one of my favorite hats which made me happy enough.

Kim ended up going in PJs. She used my pajama bottoms, piggie slippers with googly eyes and my blanket in addition to her robe and throwing her hair in pig tails to make her look complete. Her costume worked out much better when it came to people getting it.

We didn't stay that long, but we had a good time. We ended up coming home around 11 and started eating candy and watching Young Frankenstein. You just can't go wrong with a Mel Brooke film.

The Good, The Bad, and the Obnoxious

Today at work was a mixed bag. Some of it was good, some of it wasn't so good, and some was down right annoying.

THE GOOD: I FINALLY got my new monitor at work. I am now the proud user of a 19" LCD flatscreen monitor. It's a beaut. I no longer have to look at a screen that is constantly being all wavy and induces headaches when it is looked at for too long. Lu, that's his name by the way, is a very nice monitor--it looks like the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

THE BAD: When I went out to get lunch today I encountered the nastiness of winter. No, it didn't snow yet, but it was a rather unpleasant rain/drizzle. Autumn has finally shown it's evil head. I could deal with the cooler weather (hoodies are happy things) but I really don't like it with the precipitation kicks in. :'(

THE ANNOYING: Finally, my annoyance of the day. I am in charge of posting the Broadcast Prime Averages and Broadcast Prime Rankings each Monday and Tuesday. Normally it isn't that bad. It'll take a hour or so to post everything for the dayand I can go about my other work. BUT TODAY! Not only did I have to double up on what I was posting because they didn't release yesterday's Averages and Rankings like they were supposed to, but then Vignette (the site I post through) decided it hated me. It took me 5 hours to get all 21 files loaded and displayed on the Nielsen Press Room. If something could go wrong it would. Simply put if Vignette had a neck, I would have been strangling it.

Anyway, that's my two-cents today.