happy facking new year

So New Year's Eve is upon us and I am ashamed to say that not only do I have zero plans but I probably won't even be up to watch the end of an era and the beginnings of an even more annoying one, Regis Philbin hosting the big ball drop with Colin Powell pulling the lever and dropping the bomb...oops I mean ball on a year so shitty that it isn't really worth reminiscing. So what did I learn this year...not much but I'll summarize anyway.
1. For every three friends you make, only one is worth keeping. The other two, barely even worth the metaphorical toilet paper it took to wipe the memories of them away.
2. It is impossible to start anew. I carry too much baggage to ever start with a clean slate.
3. Dogs are still way better than kids. Not only do they annoy me less, but I can leave them alone in the house and in the car and nobody calls the police.
4. Achieving a goal is bittersweet. It feels good to do it but then I'm left wondering...Now what?
5. Magic 8 balls' predictions...don't trust 'em...those little fuckers have been lying to me for years.
6. Trying to save money is pointless...mostly because of iTunes. They sucker you in with their deceptively cheap 99 cent songs and before you know it...BAM thirty dollar charge on your credit card.
7. Single and child-free people of my general age range are impossible to meet. They must all live in another town, far far from the town posing as a thriving metropolis known as Louisville. Of course, that really isn't THAT surprising if you think about it.
8. There are a lot of really decent and interesting people on the internet, blogging away. Corny as it sounds, thanks for filling my otherwise mundane life and slightly obsessive internet viewing habits with good stuff. Happy Near Year and all that jazz...I'm off to get drunk by myself in the middle of the afternoon with the sole intention of getting bombed, clear indications of my alcoholism.

mementos

Lately I've been starting to feel like I am a slave to my stuff. I am consumed with the thought of moving all my crap by myself. My brain hurts from deciding what I should keep and what I should sell, what I should give away and what I should throw out altogether. And I'm not moving for another six months so I can't imagine what I'll be like by May. Today I started to throw out some Christmas things and I went through this box of old Christmas cards I've saved because I am one of those sentimental pack-rats. If you ever want to partake in an excercise of sheer torture then I would suggest trying to throw out old Christmas cards. It's pretty easy to throw out the average "Merry Christmas, Your Friend X________" but it is damn impossible to throw out a card from your aunt who died less than a year ago, knowing that you will never ever get another card from her. Or even cards from grandparents, who are getting so old that you know it won't be long before you won't be getting cards from them either. It is also hard to throw out cards where people send pictures instead of the usual trite Hallmark Christmas tree, it just feels like some bad mojo to toss out pictures of people. I ended up saving cards from a friend long lost to the black hole of memories. These cards were particularly painful because this person had been a friend for ages, we went through young adulthood and some really bad shit together. But as she so brutally put it in one of the letters, "I miss hanging out, but I guess we had to grow up sometime." If letting go of really good friends is a measure of growing-up then I plan to remain ungrown forever. But all in all I did okay I guess, I weeded down an entire box to about ten cards. I don't really feel that great about it though.

perspective

I complain a lot, it is part of my complete lack of charm. But lately I'm starting to feel incredibly shallow whenever I complain about somebody at work or having to shovel snow because frankly I don't know what real tragedy is. Once the dust settles, the thousands upon thousands suffering through this will rebuild the homes that could probably fit inside my kitchen, they'll go back to slaving away for less scraps than I throw in my garbage, they'll go about their lives and complain less about a life that I'm far too spoiled and complacent to manage to survive a month of, much less a lifetime. But even knowing this, I'll still complain about old people on the road and complain when gas gets up to $2.00/gallon, I'll waste precious resources and only feel the tiniest smidge of guilt, I'll wish I earned more money or were impossibly thin with a huge but still perky rack. And I know I'm not the only one. I wonder, when did we let ourselves get like this...so full of our own sense of entitlement that we've lost our perspective?

some good news, some bad news

The good, my messed up tooth isn't abscessed. The bad, it is inflamed which means they won't do anything and I just have to live with it until it gets better or worse, whichever comes first.
The good, I went to this dentist for the first time and he was super nice. The bad, my waiting room magazine snatching has turned into full blown kleptomania. I snagged a Vanity Fair this time, with Johnny Depp on the cover of course.
The good, I got my remote start & keyless entry installed. The bad, it took nine hours.
The good (well good news if you are a glass half-full kind of person, which I'm definitely not), I got to wait around in Circuit City for about 1/3 of that time and managed to watch almost two complete movies. The bad, it was Zoolander and Spiderman 2 and I had to stand and watch them at the display of dvd players for your car.
The good, I got to hang out with my friend B. for the whole afternoon and we had a great time even though we were running errands. The bad, I'm still incredibly immature and laugh at completely inappropriate butt and anus jokes...A LOT.

my body is staging a coup

And it is against me. I don't know when my minor organs decided to get together and use their powers for evil rather than good, but it was sometime Christmas day, I guess they wanted to give the gift that keeps on giving. Something is happening to my nose, I'm not sure what but it is painful. I'm thinking maybe it's a sinus infection but if that's the case, then my nose is playing it really subtely...not trying to give away too much too soon I suppose. That and my face has broken out, I haven't had acne like this since junior high. Plus add on the "women's" pains (which might have something to do with the acne, but I doubt it) and not only am I a physical mess but I'm even bitchier than usual. And to top it all off I have to go to the dentist today. The crack-head dentist that did my crown and root canal totally fucked it up and now I think I have an abscess. So that'll be good news if that's the case, "Well your tooth is bad, we'll have to remove it and then bend over cause the cost of the bridge/dental implant will only be affordable if you decide to sell your eggs on the internet." YAY!

second guessing

Sometimes, do you ever think that a decision you made that you thought was for the best is in fact not? I wonder that a lot, I guess I spend too much time living in the past.
On a side note, I received some awesome Christmas presents. The best one by far was the cool new digital camera. You know what that means? I'll be posting all sorts of crap-ass pictures while I play with my new toy, expect to see tons of new puppy-pics.

winter wonderland

Remember when I complained about the snow the other day. Well compare that picture to this one. The first snowfall was just a tease. Now we have about six-seven inches half of which is actually frozen rain

The view from one of my windows

Another winter shot. Notice the big truck in the background? The people in the truck got stuck in the snow. They were out there for about thirty minutes before they could move again.

Four hours of work and I managed to move my car about fifteen or so feet, talk about waste of productivity. Actually I wouldn't have gotten that far if two of the people that live on my street hadn't come over and helped push my car. You can see by where I shoveled out a walking path how much snow fell. You can also see my family wagon, it took me about half an hour to scrape off all of the ice and snow. FUN!!! I love winter!!!

pick-up artist

I got my car back from the body shop today. I had a vaguely paranoid fantasy that I would get rear-ended on my way home because that is the sick twisted irony that I call my life. Luckily I didn't, although I did have to pay ten bucks for my rental since it was apparently not considered an economy car. I've decided that another one of my world domination rules will be this: anybody who wants to own and drive an SUV must take an IQ test before purchasing it because from what I can tell from driving the twenty miles to the car place and back, intelligence is inversely proportional to the size of your automobile. It boggles my mind that the people who own the vehicles best suited for driving in inclement weather are the worst at it.

willard

I was planning on sleeping in until noon but I just woke up from the worst frikkin dream. In it I was walking through my house and walking into the kitchen and there was shredded paper and rice EVERYWHERE. Then I walk over to the bag that held the rice and there were like twelve rats in it, writhing around in rice eating exctasy. Just writing that is shooting a chill straight up my spine. So once they were caught they ran off into the walls and they had chewed holes everywhere, huge gaping holes where there was barely any wall left and wires were exposed. In the dream I remember thinking "Well that's what Mary gets for not bringing me those mousetraps, thank god its not my house, I hope she doesn't try to keep my deposit." Well no more sleep for me, creepy dreams are not my idea of a good time. And the weather is crap, they say freezing rain all day, which turns the people on the road into complete drooling imbeciles so I don't think I'll head out unless I absolutely have to.

strangers with candy

I keep getting the weirdest people IM-ing me and writing to me via Friendster. The other day some girl wrote to me and invited me to partake in a threesome with her boyfriend (for his birthday apparently), which is by far and away stranger than the guy who wrote to me and asked me to be his dominatrix. Then I get a message on Frienster from a guy and though I would never write back, I did check out his profile. He's some random guy in Florida who had a bunch of pictures with attractive girls who look a lot like strippers. I decided that he is probably one of those people who asks cute girls to take pictures with him. One picture even had a girl showing her boobs with him cradling them. I think I vomited in my mouth a little when I saw that one. I only wish I could see the profile of the person (probably another guy) taking the pictures. He probably has the same pictures with the same girls, maybe even cupping the same boobs. I think I should change my profile, it attracts far too many uncomfortably strange people, although frankly I get to laugh at other people a lot so that's a plus. Also, I think I've figured out what is so attractive about blogging. It's like online voyeurism. I have about twenty blogs that I visit regularly, probably too regularly as I have nothing better to do with my time, and there is something incredibly appealing about reading other people's thoughts, especially when in "real life" they probably wouldn't be as forthcoming.

my solution for world peace

Okay stick with me here. When I rule the world, which is coming soon right after my nap, I am going to implement a policy that will bring peace. Basically my plan is to give every living person two knock-down, bare-knuckle, fisticuff credits per calendar year without fear of punishment other than a 50-50 chance at a beating. Now you might be thinking, "How would violence beget peace?" To which I would say, how dare you question me, week long toilet cleaning duty following our mandatory day long chili-eating marathon as your punishment! Unless I'm feeling generous and then I would explain, in an extremely condescending tone, the plan is simple really. First, if a person knew they had only two legally sanctioned fights per year, they would seriously consider which actions are fight-worthy. The old person cutting you off in their huge monte-carlo...probably not fight worthy, the evil secretary at the doctor's office who makes personal calls while you wait forty minutes past your appointment time...probably not fight worthy. When you realize how most everyday situations are not fight-worthy, you would be more apt to just let the stupid stuff go. Second, you might reconsider pissing other people off with your snarky comments and rude stares. Sure, you wouldn't think twice about leaving the 300 pound linebacker alone but you just never know about the quiet, skinny ones so you would go about your day being a kinder, gentler person. Its a plan of subtle genius, although I don't have all the kinks worked out yet.

ugh

I took my car in to be fixed from the rear-ending it sustained a month ago. I thought for sure I would get a pimp rental car because I could have sworn that somebody once told me that your rental car should be about the same level as your regular car (not that my car is pimp, it is a total family wagon). However, it turns out that person that told me that totally lied. My rental is so ghetto, and NOT as in ghetto fabulous. I'm driving a Pontiac Sunfire and it is a piece-o-crap. It has no amenities, no power anything. I actually had to roll down my window, something I haven't had to do since my dad made the tortuous decision of getting a Yugo as my first car. But the lack of power-anything isn't even the worst part. The radio doesn't cut off when you turn off the engine, you actually have to turn it off yourself. For god's sake, is this 1965? I know at some point I'll forget to turn off the radio and the battery will be dead and then I'll be late for work, which is a BAD BAD thing because I only have a few more tardies before I get canned.

snow days

This is what I woke up to this morning. What is amazing about all this is how nice it was yesterday. You can almost make out the snow flurries if you look hard enough. You can also see Iniki (sans sweater) peeing by the shed

oh yes i did

insert catchy title here

I'm not a big follower of local news, that is until I leave one particular place for another. So I don't really follow what is going on in Louisville, but I do read the headlines for the Honolulu Advertiser and the Seattle Times. The whole governor race in Washington State has really held my attention, mostly because I would like at least ONE person I voted for to frikkin win. There was as article in the Times today that discussed the vote recount. Mostly a blah article, but THIS was my favorite part:
Republicans are now "absolutely convinced that King County is trying to steal this election," said Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance.
"There are Republicans urging us to organize mass protests, to take to the streets," Vance said. "At some point people's patience just runs out."
Am I the only one that finds it just a little ironic that we're now having to take our cues for democracy from the Ukraine? Check your soup Christine, check your soup.

cheese with that whine?

I had a not so good day at work today. I think (in fact I'm 97.4% sure) this one person I work with complained to our supervisor about getting bogged down while doing maintenance and such on one of our analyzers. So then we all got this crotchety message about all the things the rest of us, which basically means me, need to do to make his life easier. For instance, the person on workbench X, which basically means me, now has to answer all of the stupid phone calls, do all of the mundane chores that nobody else wants to do, and at some point start wiping workbench Y- worker's ass. Seriously, when did I become the designated lab asshole? Maybe answering the work-related calls wouldn't be so strenuous if people weren't spending the entire morning on personal calls discussing the relative importance of whether or not they should have mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese with their chicken fried steak. Maybe if they took the stick shoved way up their ass out, they could work a little faster than a three-toed sloth in a footrace. That's the thing about this whole concept of teamwork...when they say teamwork what they really mean is I'll do this important stuff and you can do whatever it is I don't want to do. I definitely need to repeat my new mantra to myself more often, "Six more months, six more months."

brainwashed

Walking through campus today and watching other people go about their business, I realized something. Almost everything I learned during my brief stint as a GI Jane (and trust me it wasn't much, I'm pretty sure I spent most of that time in a drunken haze), I summarily forgot the day I took my uniform off permanently. But one thing I can't let go of, no matter how hard I try, is NOT walking on grass. I just can't do it, no matter how brown or how weed-infested I cannot walk across a field of grass. Even if traipsing across a lawn would shorten my walk by half, some random siren in my head goes off and I end up staying on the sidewalk. It's not that I haven't ever walked on grass since Uncle Sam and I decided it was best that we went our separate ways, I have. But I feel a little guilty about it, an emotion I don't often pay much attention to, and the guilt makes the walk completely unenjoyable. I think I need some hypnotherapy. Not walking on grass makes going to the park pretty pointless, and picnics...fuggetaboutit.

satisfied in the end?

I got my copy of Return of the King Extended DVD yesterday in the mail and watched it last night. It had a lot of extra scenes, although none of them so important to the storyline that you felt like you were watching something new (not like The Two Towers where storylines were way better explained by the extra scenes). Is it just me or was anybody else extremely disappointed that Aragorn ended up with Arwen? I remember being not to happy with that turn of events the first time I saw the movie and last night was no different. I don't mind the predictable "the good guys always win" storyline but I cannot stand the predictable "meant to be together" love-story bullshit. I guess I'm too jaded. I prefer my love-stories to be like Romeo & Juliet, somebody had better die. If you ask me, love stories where one of the protaganists die are better because you (the viewer) knows that the living person will always remember the other person as beautiful and lovely, perfect even. But when they get together in the end I always think, "Yeah that lovey-dovey stuff isn't going to last. She'll get tired of his farting in bed and start spending money to fill the emotional void. He'll get mad when her ass gets bigger and her sex drive slows down and go find a twenty-four year old stripper." Yeah, cynical, definitely the word-du-jour.

ecstatic

I just got my Chinese grade and I am very very pleased. Clearly Zu Laoshi is more than a little generous because somehow I managed to pull an A out of my ass (and yes Katie I can already hear the "I told you so"). I can only imagine the curve required to give me that A because I know without a doubt that I blew the final.
I also got my evaluation at work. My supervisor must be feeling the holiday love because I got the highest rating I've ever gotten and that means I get the highest raise that my company will allow. Although it'll only amount to a couple-o-few cents an hour, it is still more money in my ever-emptying pocket.
The one thing I am not so ecstatic about is my new roommate. Don't know when he decided to move in, but this morning he let his presence be known. I opened my pantry door to find a mouse. And embarassingly enough, I screamed like a five year old girl. He's a tiny thing, maybe three inches at the most, but still big enough to turn me into a charicature of the pearl and high heel wearing housewive that jumps onto the counter and screeches in mortal fear.
Seeing Monk (the name I've given the little guy) made me think of a short story I read a while back about a woman, recently separated, who finds a tick on her back. The tick is in a spot she can't reach on her own and though she tries and tries, she can't find a way to remove the tick by herself. During the whole process of the attempted delousing, she realizes how truly alone she is. I feel a little bit this way because of the mouse. I would totally have left the finding and exterminating of Stuart Little up to W., but now I have to do it myself. All I have to say about that is EEEEK!

the death of imagination

Okay, admittedly I am waiting for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to come out with baited breath. But come on, it has Johnny Depp starring and Tim Burton directing, it just screams cult-following (not that the first one doesn't have and deserve its own LSD dropping, joint toking, lost in the bluest of blue eyes, Gene Wilder loving cult of disciples). Aside from this super-special remake, I am sick and tired of remakes. Its bad enough that they are making a Dukes of Hazzard movie (although they do have Jay Chandrasekhar directing), but when I was watching the preview for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory I noticed that they are remaking Assault on Precinct 13. What the hell? How can you possibly remake what is one of the coolest movies ever (a movie I have been watching since I was like seven and NEVER tire of) and have Ja Rule a part of it? ARGH!!! Damn you Hollywood, isn't it enough that you twist the world's perceptions of beauty and make completely undeserving people wealthy? Now you have to fucking RUIN movies with your remakes? Are there no imaginative and creative people left in Hollywood? Is everybody's head so far up corporate ass that they can't come up with new shit??? Seriously, HOW DARE YOU HOLLYWOOD, HOW DARE YOU!!! It better at least have the same soundtrack!!!