Weekend Update

I hope my American readers had a good Thanksgiving and my international readers had a good time working while we were over-indulging...it's the American way! On Thursday I stopped in at Chris's family's house to say hi and then ate with my parents and my grandma (extended family drama, remember?). On Friday I cleaned; made a pumpkin roll; did laundry; did some other boring, productive things; watched part 2 of Planet Earth; and then went out to Red Lobster with my parents. I don't remember doing much on Saturday, so that must have been the day I spent hours playing Sims 2 *hangs head in shame*. I did, however, make Thanksgiving dinner for me and Chris--Cornish game hens, mashed potatoes, stuffing, brussels sprouts, and the 1 square inch that was left of the pumpkin roll that I made the day before.

On Sunday I went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant and then to IKEA with my mom. I got a bookshelf, a lamp to replace the one that broke, and some other odds and ends. I took Monday off work, so I put the bookshelf together and did some other productive things around the house, then I had class at night.

Which brings us to Tuesday. I went back to work and it was busy as hell. On my way home I got a phone call from Chris. My letter was in the morning paper and someone called our house and threatened to kill me. He said something to the effect of when I die it will be at the hands of a Jewish man. Apparently sarcasm is not taught in the Torah. It's ironic because I am totally fascinated by Judaism and the only group I love more than the Jews are the gays. There was an article in the paper tonight about Hanukkah cooking. I told Chris I was going to write to the paper and register my disgust about it...he didn't find that humorous. Anyway, Chris *69'd the guy and called the cops, but I wasn't part of any of this because Tuesday was Chris's 25th birthday and I was running all over East York trying to find the Futurama movie for him. The officer said we have to decide if we want to file charges or not. I don't; Chris does. I say the guy's a pussy, and if he really wanted to kill me, he would have done it. I called the station and the receptionist said the officer contacted the phone company and that number is disconnected and unavailable and he's supposed to call me when he comes on duty this afternoon. There's never a dull moment. Well, that's not true; there are plenty of dull moments, but the non-dull moments are massive clusterfucks.

So for now, I'm refusing to be afraid in my own home, standing up for the First Amendment, and looking forward to going to the Bears game on Sunday when I get to see my boyfriend Louis Robitaille punch some people.

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!

This and That

I'm getting increasingly excited for The Simpsons movie to come out on July 27. Their website has launched. Here's the trailer:

The Simpsons Movie - final trailer (fdb.blox.pl)
Uploaded by pietruch

As if I didn't want to go to London badly enough, Ricky Gervais and Mackenzie Crook are going to be preforming Free Love Freeway at a concert for Princess Diana on July 1. Here's the clip from the show:



I had a pretty good weekend. I took Friday off and Rusty and I were supposed to go hiking, but I got hives from my meds again (including on the bottom of my feet), so that pretty much ruled out hiking and I had to make a doctor's appointment at 8 AM anyway. I'm all roided up and doing well; this round of hives wasn't one millionth as bad as the last time. I went to the Amish farmer's market with Rusty and her parents in the afternoon and then L., Rusty, and I saw Knocked Up and went out to dinner.

On Saturday we went to a baseball game. York decided it was a good idea to kick people out of their homes and waste taxpayer money to build a stadium; thus the York Revolution was born. We left around 11 PM at the end of the 10th inning and my dad turned on the radio in the car while they were in the bottom of the 12th. Apparently we scored one run to win it at the bottom of the 13th inning. It was a long game.

Sunday was a leisurely day spent reading and relaxing. I finished Keeping the House, the book I was sent for the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. It comes out July 10, and while I wouldn't necessarily pay the $25 list price for it, I would check it out at the library or a used book store. Here's my review:

Keeping the House, Ellen Baker's first novel, intricately weaves the stories of two families, the Mickelsons and the Magnusons, before allowing them to collide. The story takes place over a period of time from the late 19th century until 1950, spanning several generations. Baker has a knack for story-telling and her background in American Studies and as the curator of a World War II museum helps to add authenticity to the story.

When Byron and Dolly Magnuson move to a small town in the mid-west, Dolly has trouble adapting. She admires a grand but dilapidated house on a hill and hears stories from the town gossips about the Michelson family who once inhabited it. She secretly enters the house to fix it up, hoping that her husband will buy it for her, thus solving all of their problems, only to be discovered by one of the family members who gives her a more accurate, if not entirely truthful version of his family's story. It is said that the house puts a curse on one's love life, and Dolly finds her marriage unraveling in a self-fulfilling prophecy as other relationships did before hers.

Some of the characters in this novel are a little wooden, but this could be due in part to the expected submission of women of the time. The story becomes a little soap opera-esque at the end with everything wrapping up in a somewhat unrealistic manner; that said, this novel is a solid first effort by Ms. Baker.

That's pretty much it. I hope everyone had a good weekend. A photo journal of Rusty's and my trip to Centralia will hopefully be up soon!

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.

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!

Weekend Update

I didn't do too much this weekend. In fact, after some of the TV shows I watched, I'm surprised I have enough brain cells left to type. On Friday night L. and I went out for dinner to discuss when we're flying down to see Rusty. We're flying AirTran which is officially my favorite airline because of this. Not that I had a favorite airline or ever gave any thoughts to airlines before talking about flying to see Rusty and then seeing this story.

I didn't do jack on Saturday besides clean and then after dinner I watched I Love New York on VH1. Good lord. Even I'm ashamed of myself, and I usually have no shame. I also watched some of the 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders, but that was awesome. Do you know that song 'We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off?" A man sings that! I had no idea!

It gets worse though. On Sunday I watched The Surreal Life Fame Games, My Super Sweet 16, Underage and Engaged, and 2 1/2 episodes of True Life (one was about being broke, one was about being gay, and one was about street racing.) In my defense, I was doing other things while these shows were on, like laundry, reading the paper, making lunch, etc. Who am I kidding; that doesn't make it any better. I went to Red Lobster for dinner with my parents for my dad's birthday; free meals are always good. Plus my parents were being snarky, which is always fun. It's nice not to be the only cruel bitch at the table.

Because I have absolutely nothing to write about, I leave you with The Office as a thriller.

And, since I came across this while searching for The Office as a thriller, Office Space as a thriller.

Sorry that I have to post links, my computer at work hates me and randomly decides not to let me embed YouTube into my posts.

Weekend Update

On Friday I left from work to go to my friend's house. She lives right outside of Allentown, so I was pretty close to Scranton. I didn't see Jim though :(. We had a glass of wine and then walked around the extremely cute town. They have ordinances that don't allow chains within the town limits so they had a lot of neat restaurants and shops. After that we went to what my friend called a dive bar (that place was like a tie-required place compared to some of the dives I've frequented). I had an excellent meal and even found a beer that I like besides Corona. Of course I have no idea what it's called, but it was raspberry flavored. My friend was sick with a cold and I had a raging headache after my wine, the raspberry beer, a Coronoa, and a Midori sour, so we went home and watched 2 episodes of Entourage before going to bed. It was decent and it gave me a new TV boyfriend, Adrian Grenier (as if I need another one). I had seen him in The Devil Wears Prada, but he looks hotter in Entourage for some reason.

After doing a little bit of shopping Saturday morning, I came home, cleaned up Chris's mess (which wasn't as bad as I expected--thanks!), did laundry, went grocery shopping, then watched Runaway Jury. I wanted to read the book first, but Netflix didn't take that into consideration when it sent me a movie that wasn't on the top of my queue. It was pretty good and I got to see John Cusack. I understand it's a lot different than the book. After dinner I finally finished reading John Irving's the 158-Pound Marriage. It wasn't as good as Garp, but the thing that really bugged me were all the punctuation errors. There was an apostrophe used to make a word plural! How is that acceptable in a novel with editors? I also wonder how it's acceptable to write tripe like The Da Vinci Code and make millions of dollars, but that's another post.

Yesterday I did a bunch of cooking for the week ahead, did a lot of loads of laundry, and did some stuff outside to prepare for the winter like putting the hose away and finally unpotting the cilantro that I planted on Memorial Day weekend that never grew past 1 inch. Chris and I watched Night of Too Many Stars on Comedy Central. It was a benefit for Autism starring people I love like Jon Stewart, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, Will Arnet, David Cross, Paul Rudd, Oscar Nunez, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog as well as some people I had to leave the room for like Martin Short and Jimmy Fallon. "What are you lauging at, boy? If you say Jimmy Fallon, I'll know you're lying!" - Homer Simpson. The highlights of the show for me were Jerry's bit, Ricky Gervais's quote at the end of his set ("Now Steve Carell will come out and do this same bit slightly better and make more money."), Chris Meloni, who came out in an American flag-themed top hat and carrying a puppet, being told he wasn't allowed to perform because he was one star too many ("Stephen Colbert told me you'd do me like this!"), and Triumph's bit. He sang about celebrities with a group of African guys (think of the old Life Savers commercials).

I'm off today because I had some days I needed to use by the end of the year. I'm going to go get some new clothes, which I desperately need. I hope everyone had a good weekend and have fun working today, suckers! :)

Weekend Update

On Saturday morning I got up at 6:30 to go get my oil changed and have breakfast with my dad at Denny's. I learned that my financial situation, namely my credit card balance (which is not at all bad, especially compared to most people my age) is a topic of conversation for my whole family. Gotta love that. I told Rusty I'm tempted to make copies of all my statements and send them out to my family members so everyone can stay abreast of my personal information. After breakfast I went to the grocery store. I couldn't believe how many people were there at 8:30 on a Saturday morning. What the hell?! After that I came home and cleaned, then in the afternoon Chris and I went to the mall to get new cell phones. We were each paying $29.99/month for 250 minutes and that's it. Did I mention that Cingular fucked all of AT&T's old customers up the ass when they bought it? So now we have a family plan which is $59.99/month and we get 550 peak minutes, unlimited nights and weekends and mobile-to-mobile. Plus we got new phones. It's a pretty basic phone but I don't need, nor would I be able to figure out, bells and whistles.

On Sunday morning I ran out to Target to get travel toiletries because I'm going to visit my friend this weekend and I'm 99% sure I'm going to Rusty's place at Thanksgiving. I was so good at Target. I only bought what I planned to buy and I only spent $19! After that I did the normal Sunday stuff like laundry and went out to dinner with my parents for my mom's belated birthday.

I hope everyone had a good weekend!