Stuff

Two good things came out of having our door kicked in: our landlord had a screen door and a deadbolt installed. I have wanted a screen door since we moved in here about 3 1/2 years ago. The weather has been so beautiful here that we haven't needed the AC and I've been able to keep the door open. It might sound like a little thing, but I love fresh air. He didn't have a deadbolt put on the back door, but I got the carpenter's card and he only charges $20 an hour, so I'm going to ask if I can have one put on if I pay for it. It's futile because our doors have windows in them, so all someone would have to do is punch the window out and reach in to unlock the door, but at least you can't kick in a door that's deadbolted.

The kid and his mom were moving out on Saturday (he's actually not a little bastard--he's 19 and has no job and lives with his mom) and I REALLY wanted to go over there, but it's not fair to rip him a new asshole when I have no proof that he did it.

I took one of the civil service exams for a state job on Monday. It was an interesting experience; talk about a motley crew. We were all herded around like cattle and had orders barked at us. One woman didn't know how to use a mouse. Oy vey. The test was pretty easy. It's for an income maintenance case manager at the Department of Public Welfare. The first part was reading over part of the handbook and answering questions that described a household where you had to say whom was eligible for certain benefits based on the text. One of the questions was something like, "Everyone has a right to apply for benefits regardless of eligibility. In this case, 'right' means..." Three of the answers had to do with correctness and one was about something that is guaranteed to you. Are there people who would get that wrong?! There was a math part that was basically calculating benefits and gross income, there was a hilariously cheesy part about interpersonal skills where you had to watch horribly-acted vignettes and say what the person should have done, and then there was a part about grammar. I'm sure I did well, but there's a pretty long wait for these jobs. If I were planning to work for the state and retire I would probably accept it, but my future is so up in the air right now, that I don't know if it would be worth it.

I'm thinking of starting a private blog, but I don't even post on this one so I don't know what makes me think I'd post on a private one. I do feel a little stifled here though, for reasons I don't want to say here. School starts on Monday though, so I should probably hold off.

I hope everyone's enjoying the last few weeks of summer. I'm more of a fall person myself. That's pretty much all that's going on right now unless you want to read more detail about my exciting life of waking up, going to work, coming home, doing inane things in the evening, going to bed, and then starting all over the next day.

Where Have I Been?

March was wondering this the other day; I can only assume it's because he's secretly hankering for more Idol Thoughts. May is usually my busiest month because that's when I come out of hibernation and there are always a lot of birthday dinners for myself and a couple of my friends who share May birthdays. This May has been no exception. As you all know, I've been having nervous breakdowns over cataloging since January. I handed in my final paper in the end of April, then headed off to Mooresville to see Rusty. Two weeks after that, Chris and I went for a long weekend in Washington, D.C. and then right after that, my first summer class started. My second summer class starts June 3; yes, they overlap. And the birthday dinners haven't even started yet! The first one is today, I'm still waiting to hear back from L. (If you're reading this, thanks for ignoring me!! :)) and another friend, there is a breakfast pending with some old co-workers, and an outing to see Sex in the City with a current co-worker coming up. That's a lot for someone who is as adept at sitting on her ass as I am.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. D.C. pics are forthcoming; I don't have too many because the weather was horrible. Steady rains and temperatures 25 degrees below normal sort of marred my big plans, but I had a good time nonetheless. I ended up getting an 88% in Cataloging. I'm usually not happy with a B in a class for which I did so much work, but that was hell and I had D at one point, so I can't complain about a B. Especially since he ripped my paper apart... It's also a little annoying that he considers an 89% an A, so I just missed it. But, as one of my co-workers told me (remember what I said about working with therapists?), I need to let go of the negativity and move on.

I had my first session of my first summer class this past weekend and it was the best class I've had so far. I adore the professor (and I think she really likes me) and only looked at my watch about 3 times, compared to 3,000 times in my other weekend classes. I'm actually considering switching the class I chose in the fall to have her again. On a side note, I just found out that someone else will be teaching cataloging next time it's offered. Arghh!!!!!!! If I had waited, perhaps I could have had a professor who doesn't have such an arbitrary grading system. Sorry; letting go of the negativity... I'm dreading having these two summer classes overlapping (the first one is three weekends and the second is online) because we have to do as much in 5 weeks as we would normally do in 4 months, but by July 3 I'll be 6 credits closer to graduating. By Christmas I'll have 7 out of 12 classes and all I'll have left to take is electives, so I can take things that actually interest me.

There aren't any Idol Thoughts for last week because I worked Tuesday night and my Ti-faux is still out of commission, so I taped it and only watched David Cook's performances. No surprises Wednesday night; Syesha should have gone weeks ago. The Office season finale was Thursday and it was great. Pathetically, I'm glad that I'll have my life back after Wednesday. I rarely watch TV in the summer, and I won't have time to until July anyway. I even bumped my Netflix subscription down to 2 at a time.

Work is still insanely busy, compounded by the fact that I've been off so many days in the past month. I'm off again on Monday, so next week will be crazy again, but I'm hoping that things will calm down after that. Obviously we're closed on Memorial Day, but there's a huge difference in the amount of work required when I'm off on a vacation day compared to a day we're closed. It hasn't helped that they were switching the servers, so our MIS has been down a lot and 95% of what I do requires the ability to use it. The only other thing on the work front is that we got new computers (our old ones were castoffs from the state, so they were probably about 10 years old).
Now it takes less than 2 minutes to open a new window and I have a flat-screen monitor so I have free space on my desk! Woot!

So, with everything that's going on, I'll be posting D. C. pics and Idol Thoughts next week and then probably won't be around too much till July unless something awesome or stupid happens. I expect it'll be the latter. I hope everyone has a good beginning of the summer!

Aqui Esta el Titulo

Yeah, long time, no talk. That's because a.) I've been busy and b.) I have nothing to write about. Most of the things going on in my life aren't really blog-worthy or blog-appropriate.

The receptionist came back today after being off since September 19 for foot surgery (for once I'm living by the axiom "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"), so hopefully work will go a little smoother and my hair will start falling out a little less. BUT, one of my coworkers messaged me on MySpace and said she (the receptionist) is taking Wednesday off. Serenity now...

If you haven't already, head on over to Rusty's blog to check out her two new additions. I hate cats, but these guys are adorable!

School is coming along. I've handed in and gotten back all the papers for the on-site class, so now all I have to do is an online final the week of December 3rd or somewhere around there. I have 28 1/2 pages done on my big-ass paper, and that's without proofreading anything (I can bs an extra page or so during the proofread) and without adding page numbers.

Now that I'm in school, I've noticed I'm much less anal about the house. For example, I usually have to have all the clocks correct to the second (insane, I know) and now they're all off. Although now that I just wrote that, it's starting to bug me...

I'm not voting tomorrow. Feel free to call me a hypocrite or, if you're hot, come spank me.

It's getting to be SAD time again. I can't stand non-daylight saving time.

As far as the holidays go, Halloween was pretty uneventful for me. It's my second favorite holiday, but I wasn't really feeling it this year. I don't have any big plans for Thanksgiving; dinner this year will just be me and my parents because of some drama in the extended family. This will make some people want to bludgeon me to death, but I'm almost finished with my Christmas shopping...I usually have it all done in the summer though. New Year's eve and day are going to be, as always, spent on the couch watching the Twilight Zone marathon. Unfortunately New Year's Eve is on a weekday this year, but I took the afternoon off so I didn't have to miss much of my precious TZ. Wow, I'm lame.

Speaking of Halloween, the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror was on last night. Not the best one ever, but Heck House was definitely the best of the three, although I'm biased because of my love of Flanders. My all-time favorite vignettes are The Raven (even though they didn't do my favorite line--"'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil — prophet still, if bird or devil!'") and the Shinning. The Office hasn't really been doing it for me too much this season. Hopefully the writer's strike won't affect everyone's shows too much.

The Raven:

Weekend Update

Friday night and Saturday were spent sitting in class wondering if anyone has ever actually died of boredom, but the great news is that was my last in-person class till next semester! Woot! Now all I have to do is a methodology section for a theoretical study that we're making up (or, as I was told in an e-mail at which I laughed out loud, we can actually do) and then take an online final during finals week. Right now I have a 93% and the final is pretty much a guaranteed 100%, so I'm not too worried about the methodology section. Plus, I have a massive advantage because as a psych major I actually conducted research and wrote a research report. It seemed like a lot of people in my class had never heard of some of the stuff we were learning before.

Now, for my big announcement: I am finished with my rough draft of my 30 page paper for my online class. Ok, I have 27 pages written, but I can easily bullshit 3 double-spaced pages in Arial. I was a little concerned about making this paper Arial when all my other ones were in Times, but the only specifications he gave were that it had to be 12-point or less, so fuck it. I want to tie up everyone I know and make them read this damn thing because it took me so freaking long to write it. So far Rusty wants to read it (I give her two pages before she stops and I'm taking bets) and the state representative I interviewed wants to read it too; I'll send it to him, but I highly doubt he will.

I've heard some very scary things about the class I'm taking next semester. One person even heard of someone who failed, and when you fail a grad course, guess what? There's $1,000 down the drain. Another girl said it wasn't bad, but I of course choose to believe the people who said it was. Luckily, some of the people I got to know in class are taking it with me next semester, so I won't be going it alone.

I went for a nice long drive today. The weather was gorgeous and the leaves are starting to turn. I found two things to add to my "only in York County" file. The first was when we were detoured onto a one-lane dirt road. I had to pull off the road for 20 times for cars coming in the other direction. The other thing was a sign announcing a shooting competition at the local fire hall. I ended up at Otter Creek; if you're a Live fan you've probably heard of it.

I also went running/walking again. I should do that more often, but laziness usually takes over. Plus, by the time I get home in the late fall/winter, it's only light for about 20 minutes.

That's pretty much all I did today besides laundry and going to get gas. I wasted a lot of time today, but I'm totally fine with that.

I loved the Office on Thursday night! I haven't watched it a second time tonight, but I liked the balance of humor and heart. Jim talking to Dwight was great, and of course the kiss was great. I also loved Darryl and Kelly, the whoever/whomever conversation and Michael telling Toby (paraphrasing), "No one has ever asked you anything, ever." Poor Toby!

Something very weird is going on: I'm happy. I'm not sure what's going on, but I feel pretty weird right now. I'm even listening to bad music...mid-90s top 40 bad. I'm just trying to make the most of things because, as Bjork said, there's more to life than this. We'll see how long it lasts.

My brain is broken; time for bed!

Este y Eso

Noooooooo!!! Noah Wyle is coming back to ER for 4 episodes. I hate Dr. Carter!

I wish I had something interesting to talk about. I'm a little tipsy because I was cooking with wine, and when you cook with wine you have to drink some. It's the law. So I drank half the bottle, and I'm a lightweight. Rusty, I'm totally sober! Ask me anything! I had all sorts of things I wanted to write about, but now I forget them. I even perused CNN.com to find something to write about and couldn't find anything to rant about. I do know I wanted to mention how much the Doobie Brothers started to suck when Michael McDonald joined the band. I was listening to their greatest hits CD while I was making dinner and I was rocking out to "China Grove" and "Long Train Running" and then "Takin' it to the Streets" came on. Shut up, Michael McDonald.

I've been in a really good mood lately and I'm not as stressed out. I'm not sure why, but all I know is that my skin has cleared up since I stopped being stressed. I'm also using tea tree oil, which is the best stuff in the world, and clears breakouts up in about a day. I love the fact that I have zits and I'm getting gray hair. My body can't make up its mind.

I hate that that we missed out on good fall weather. It went from 90 degrees to 50 in one day.

I'm not sure how I stumbled upon this, but it's something Oprah wrote about how she took the month of July off when she found out she had hypothyroidism. It must be difficult for you to take a month off from working, fly to Hawaii, eat only fresh foods, and sleep when you want to. My heart is breaking for you. Shut up, Oprah. Guess what? A lot of people have diseases and have to continue going to work, cooking, taking care of their children... I don't know how people can read this shit and not feel condescended towards.

I was cleaning out my filing cabinet today and I came across a "newspaper" we made in Spanish class our senior year called El Gran Flan. Here's a picture of our class. I'm sitting at the table in the middle and Rusty is on my right. We were so young! I would make a pact with Satan to look like that again. The guy on the far right holding the Spanish dictionary died about two years ago of a brain tumor. He was in the popular clique, but he was the sweetest guy you could ever hope to meet, and I know Rusty agrees with me. I don't believe in an afterlife, but if there is one, he's being rewarded.


I leave you with one of my favorite Stephen Crane poems, since my Stephen Crane sampler was in the same folder as El Gran Flan:

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter--bitter," he answered,
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

Weekend Update and Other Stuff

Chris and I were cat-sitting for his dad from Friday the 18th till this past Saturday. His dad actually has 4 cats, but this one is a senile old geezer and has to take pills twice a day so we had him at our house. He constantly (including all throughout the night) makes this loud noise that sounds like a child yelling "ouch!" I've never wanted to hurt an animal before this one. The only thing that kept me from punting him across the room was the fact that he was old and feeble and I felt bad for him. To add insult to injury, the damn cat sneezed in my face one of the times I picked him up to give him some lovin' in the hopes that he would shut the fuck up. He also spilled some of his food on the floor which caused about 100 ants to come rushing into our kitchen. I know he can't help that, but he's the cause of it. Chris gets up late, so I took the cat home early Saturday morning and it was one of the happiest days of my life. I was so conditioned by him that when I came home from dropping him off, I cringed as I opened the door because he usually started making that horrendous noise the second you walked inside. I definitely enjoyed the silence.

This is me, several years ago, trying to bludgeon him to death because of his annoying noises. We used to call him Red Rum; he sounded just like the kid in The Shining. Now his noise is even more annoying, which I didn't think was possible.



After I took him home I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up the Lexapro script that I had dropped off on Wednesday. I was informed that my insurance is refusing to pay for it and that the pharmacy had called my doctor's office. So why the fuck didn't anyone call me? I've been taking samples for a month, and my next doctor's appointment isn't until next Thursday. I'll run out of meds tomorrow. Nice. Hopefully I won't go through any withdraw. I wanted to take something different anyway. Lexapro just made me not give a shit about anything, which is better than being depressed all the time, but not as good as being happy.

After my pharmacy fiasco I came home and cleaned the house and then sat around sweating because it was about 88 and I'm too cheap to turn the AC on. That night I watched An Inconvenient Truth and felt bitter about the fact that Al Gore "lost" the election and the fact that people like my grandma weren't happy with Bush's first term but voted for him a second time because she felt he should be there to finish what he started.

On Sunday morning I went over to my parents' house and my dad and I washed and waxed my car, which was the atmosphere's signal to rain Sunday evening. I had my dad over in the evening for a cook-out because my mom is in Cincinnati visiting her sister.

Yesterday I went to Target to get the rest of L.'s birthday present and my dad's Father's Day golf balls. He gets golf balls for every occasion from me because I have no idea what else to get him. After that I came home and didn't do jack shit besides make dinner for the rest of the day, and it was awesome.

I've been trying to call the Giant Center box office to get tickets to see the Bears play game 2 of the Calder Cup finals this Saturday night, but I can't get through. I guess everyone else has the same idea. Hopefully this won't make a difference in how they play.

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day! Please remember all the people who have given their lives to serve our country.

I'm Leavin' on a Jetplane...

...but I do know when I'll be back again.

As you may have read on Rusty's blog, L. and I are going to visit her this Saturday through Tuesday. I'm so excited! I have all my clothes packed (after sitting around thinking about how stressed I was about having to pack I decided to get off my ass and do it), my 3-oz. or less bottles of gels and liquids are in their FAA-approved quart-sized baggie, my anal-retentive list of things I need to pack is saved on my computer with the things that have been packed marked off, my confirmation page is lying under my work bag so I can take it to work on Friday and do online check-in, the 10-day weather forecast has been checked (10 degrees warmer than it will be in York--woo hoo!), and I'm pretty much ready to go!

I'm looking forward to getting a tour of the racetrack, riding around in Rusty's new pimp mobile, drinking sweet tea and eating fried pickles and hush puppies (mmm...hush puppies *drool*), meeting Rusty's students, looking at expensive houses that I'll never afford, and going to the movie theater where you put your own unknown liquid referred to inaccurately as butter on your popcorn.

There is one catch though: I have to pick L. up at 5:30 A.M. on Saturday--boo!!!

I hope everyone has a good weekend!

Noooooo!!!!

*Update: The official total was 11.5 inches, but I think it was more.

&#(*^$&!!! And as per usual, PennDot did a bang-up job of plowing. It was in the 70s two days ago.

Approximately 6 inches and still falling

I just shoveled!

Tidbits

Yesterday was the first day in months I was able to have almost every window in the house open and not be cold; the fresh air was awesome. I can feel my winter funk starting to lift. Plus, it's now daylight savings time!!

I upgraded our Netflix subscription to 4 at a time. If you don't have Netflix and you're considering getting it, do it.

Funniest lines from yesterday's Arrested Development watching (both from Tobias): "Allow me to change out of my assistant's skirt and put on my Barbara Streisand in Prince of Tides ass-masking pantsuit." and "I was an analyst and a therapist. The world's first analrapist."

Best transition from a TV show to a commercial: After Sandra Lee finished putting "Caesar" salad on top of a pizza (?!), the show cut to a commercial for Bird's Eye vegetables. Commercial announcer: "You often sacrifice flavor for convenience." Well played, if that was intentional.

Update

I haven't been writing a lot because I haven't had too much to write about, but here's a brief update.

Last Saturday I had some people over for an Office Season 1 marathon. Watching those 6 episodes make me long for the days when the show was less self-aware. Everyone looked bad back then, but in a good way, if that makes sense. When you spend 8 hours a day sitting under fluorescent light you look washed out and your will to live is sucked away. I speak from experience. Now the actors look like actors wearing less make-up. The humor was more subtle back then too. It's hard to notice the difference if you haven't seen those episodes in 2 years, but it's really apparent when you go back through. The last 2 episodes were decent; I probably liked Phyllis's wedding the best. I didn't watch ER either week because it's getting boring and I preferred to read instead.

Last Tuesday I got up and looked out my window and it wasn't snowing at all, but by the time I left the ground had a coating. I did the work I could do for Wednesday and Thursday and left at 1:30. The roads were really bad both ways which left me wondering why I saw PennDot go by our house 3 times the night before we had a dusting of snow a few weeks ago, yet not one truck went by our house to salt the roads Monday night. Fucking PennDot. When I got home from work on Tuesday I had a margarita, ate chips and guacamole, and watched Arrested Development.

I called the office at around 6 AM on Wednesday and heard the most glorious sentence ever, "Our office will be closed on Wednesday, February 14, due to the weather." Wednesday was not fun though. I spent hours trying to dig my car out, which involved getting down on my hands and knees and chipping the ice behind my tires with an ice scraper. I have the bruises on my legs to prove it. My car was stuck for a while but finally Chris came out and had it cleared in about 5 minutes. After our landlord's plow guy finished our parking area it was a lake which ended up freezing into a smooth sheet of ice.

Just a quick note about American Idol: who the hell are the people in the top 24? I know who about 4 of them are and I'm very underwhelmed with the people I've never seen before.

On Thursday morning I woke up with every muscle in my body screaming. My supervisor called me and told me not to come in. I was going to go into the York office, but when I went out to see what the roads were like I slid through a red light. Luckily no one was coming. It was a sunny day so by noon the roads were a little better. I HAD to get out of the house so I went to the grocery store. The rest of the day was spent being a sloth.

Did you hear about the motorists who were stranded for about 20 hours on the interstate and the National Guard had to come in to given them gas, food, and baby supplies? You know, the story about how the onramps to the interstate weren't closed till Thursday even though there were already 50-mile backlogs? That was pretty close to here; in fact, it's on the way to my friend's house. Thanks, PennDot!

On Friday I was determined to go to work even if I had to walk. I love Chris, but 2 days snowed in with him was about to make me put an axe through the door and yell, "Heeeeeeere's Johnny!" My voicemail was more than 80% full and I worked my ass off from the time I walked in the door till the time I left, even through lunch. While I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off the receptionist sat at the front desk reading, paying her bills, and talking on the phone to her family, even though much of the work I was doing was stuff that she should have done on Thursday. So in other words, just a normal day at the office. Only 1 client showed up all day. I left the office at 4:05 and didn't get on 83 (which is about 4 blocks away from work) until 4:43. I didn't get home until about 5:25 and was going to end up hurting myself or others if it had taken any longer.

Yesterday I decided to go to Target and Home Depot to get a pair of boots, windshield washer fluid, and a metal shovel. When I went to leave, the church's plow guy was out with his backhoe so I couldn't get out at the top of my driveway. I asked my neighbor if I'd be able to get out the back way and he said yes because "Dennis goes out that way." I don't know who the hell Dennis is, but he obviously doesn't drive a small car like I do. As I drove back that unplowed lane I heard scraping noises that you really don't want to hear while you're driving. They were so bad that I'm afraid I did some serious, and expensive, damage to my car. Target had no boots, but if I had wanted flip flops I would have had several styles and colors to choose from. They also had no shovels, but they had any gardening implement or outdoors party game I could have possibly wanted. I went to Home Depot and I only saw plastic shovels that were crappier than the shovel I already have. I walked around the store for a bit but I saw neither shovels nor anyone to ask where the shovels were located, so I left.

I don't have any plans for today except to go get gas and pray that the ice didn't scrape some essential part of my car. I hope everyone had a good weekend and that no one has cabin fever too badly. It's supposed to be in the 40s and 50s next week and I couldn't be more excited!

For Rusty

Doesn't this make you want to move back? It's actually a gorgeous, sunny day here but it was so bright I couldn't see the screen and I couldn't fix the blue tint because I don't know how to use the camera.

This is where our recycling bin was sitting.