Steal Flamingos and Gnomes from the dark side of the Lawn

Got a hair cut today. Still keeping it fairly long because it bothers me to have it a length at which I can't put it in a pony tail easily and I'm no good with hair pins and clippies and things of that nature. Also cleaned out my closet today which was exciting. Threw away just a whole bunch of crap and clothes that I don't wear anymore, so hopefully this means that I can get the clothes that I do wear off of my floor. That sure would be nice, and I can be more organized about what I pack for Hawaii (slowly moving ever closer! YAY!) I also found a zip drive that contains the poster I made for a AAA (American Anthropological Association) conference that I went to about 3 years ago. I am so impressed by the skills that I had back then with the computer. It looks so professionally put together it's blowing my mind. Maybe I'll have to find a way to post it up somewhere, or back it up, because I don't know if I have it anywhere other than the zip drive that I found. Maybe on google.docs. I save a lot of stuff on there, and should really go about backing up more documents up there that I don't want to lose.

I have been writing pretty consistently lately, which feels good. I also have between 1 and 3lbs to lose before Hawaii to meet my goal. I'm excited about that because staying on track during the winter time is kind of very hard. Especially with the tasty food and parties that have been going on. I'm going to have to watch the alcohol consumption carefully on Saturday if I want to consume more on Monday. Excited for both of those things. YAY! Also have finished up some knitting projects in the last couple of days. Which is nice. I need to finish some of the socks that I've been working on...I just keep starting them and finishing one and then starting another pair and never going back to the other pair and finishing it...not so great there.

I need to get back on playing the ukelele and the guitar more often. I have not been very diligent and I feel like I may have lost a few of my skills. Not that I had many to begin with. But I feel definitely lacking at this point. I also need to restring the guitar and probably the ukelele at some point. And I've got to get that one strung by someone else because the strings go on funky like in a way that I don't understand.

I think that's all I have to talk about right now. So good bye internets. I feel irreverent and silly and need to go do some things...I do not yet know what those things are.

Saturday Night Burns a Redness on My Face

Reflecting on the past week. My days off were wonderful. My days at work were okay. I definitely stay for the people I work with and not for the bureacratic bullshit that flies around this place. It's pretty much no fun from that stand point. Managers and higher ups pulling rank at every corner and just having petty little power trips. Blegh. Don't like it.

In other work related news I have discovered the only thing that it is acceptable for your significant other to yell in the background while you are talking to a staffing clerk. It's "You're our favorite!" Because that's just kind of awesome. This person also told me I should write a book about all of the stupid shit that goes on here. I told her to think of a good nom de plume for me because I would certainly need it.

We finally got the new refridgerator for our kitchen today and now all the appliances are fancy matching stainless steel. Aren't we all the fanciest people you've ever heard of? Yes, yes I think we are. Also now we can start assembling the downstairs kitchen. Which would be lovely. I would very much enjoy having a second kitchen since when everyone is in the one upstairs at the same time it's just a bit crowded. (okay, I lie, it's a lot crowded).

Got my mom a Roku player so that she can fully enjoy netflix on the upstairs TV. It seems to work very well, though I can't say I've done much more than browse through the interface so that I can answer any of her questions about it. I also made her watch all of the Pirates of the Carribbean movies last week since she hadn't seen any of them. She continuously asked me when Keith Richards was going to show up. I continuously went on about how Stellan Skarsgard is the father of my favorite actor (Alex Skarsgard, so dreamy, **swoon**), so I guess we're even. Next week we are starting Sherlock. The BBC reboot of it. Because I think my mother would appreciate it. And Benedict Cumberbatch is kind of AMAZING.

I helped my sister take her two new kitties to the vet this week. They are adorable and I loves them like a good auntie. Tomorrow I will come into town early and get them some shiny new toys! Their names are Callie and Calvin. They got them from the same lady they got Whiskey from for the price of a massage. The woman found Callie and her brother (who is still looking for a good home) on the side of the road while she was doing her paper route, they were starving and trying to eat anything that came within reach of them. Callie has an awful upper respiratory infection that is now getting slowly better with some antibiotics. She is going to be absolutely gorgeous once she feels better. She's long haired and dark gray with a white patch on her chest and a little white on her face. Almost looks like a dark gray tuxedo cat. She's also a snuggler, clearly mommy's little girl. She's also going to stay pretty small. Calvin is a boy and is a medium haired ragdoll. He's got dark brown dusky kind of points and is cream colored all over with light blue eyes. So pretty. Also he's kind of dumb, or maybe not dumb, but incredibly silly. And kind of macho. Like "You can't jump that high? Oh, I can totally jump that high, watch me. Oh, I missed it. Let me try over and over and over." He's kind of got a prominent brow. I like to call him cave man cat. He's on the antibiotics too, cuz he was sneezing quite a bit and probably just getting over the respiratory thing. He also has ear mites like no ones business. So my dear sister will have to revolution them next week. Because she already advantaged them for the fleas and the vet said she had to wait at least 7-10 days before she revolutioned them for the ear mites (and revolution also takes care of some types of worms).

So, that's the update on how my week has been. I can't think of anything else that I need to include. Have a wonderful day internets. Be good to each other (which I almost typed as 'Be food to each other' and really it works either way).

The dog days are over

So, though the first few days of the year were great on Monday it totally crashed and burned.

How it went down: I had e-mailed my boss that I wasn't sure what my schedule was because me and a co-worker were supposed to switch and he had never changed it. I told him I would be working what the computer reflected unless he texted me before 2pm on the day of. I need to know by 2pm because I need to leave around then to get to work by 3pm. It's commonly known that everyone in our office lives on their e-mail. I didn't think this would be a problem. I thought I could text him, but I didn't want to interrupt his weekend. I also might have been a touch passive aggressive because I get sick of him getting away with things that would never fly. I hate double standards.

At 3:07 I get a text telling me that I have to work...at 3:00. Clearly, there is absolutely no way that I can be to work at 3pm when it's already almost 10 minutes after. I was, needless to say, just a bit angry. I told him that wasn't going to fly for me. He responded that if that was the case then there would be no more changing of schedules. Which is kind of a horrible scare tactic if I've ever heard one. I told him that was fine. I'm not switching schedules for me, I'm switching schedules to make going to school easier on my co-worker. Because clearly I am far too flexible.

Then he called both of our boss and she called me and told me that I had to get to work and attempted to pass the whole thing off as somehow my fault because I hadn't cc'd her any of the e-mails. How does it end up all my fault when I'm just trying to help a co-worker with school? I have no idea. I told them I would be at work at 5pm and that this would not count as sick time. I ended up getting there a little after 4:30. I have never been so frustrated with a job that I felt like I was going to cry. I feel like I desperately need to get out of there.

The icing on top of this delicious piece of cake day was my sister texting me at about 6:15 that her cat Whiskey had been hit by a car and was no more. Instantly this sent me into hysterics and I cried off and on for probably the next 3 hours. And really, that's what you want to do when you have a job that includes talking to people on phone who ask you if you've suddenly developed a horrible cold. A very nice RN saw my distress and went and got me tissues. Thank goodness work has some lovely people or I would never survive. Alas none of them seem to be among my higher ups.

The cherry on top of the night was that at about 9:30pm the computer system that we use to do all of our work on decided to stop working. IT, whom I have to call when that happens, has no idea how our system works and has to forward it to people who are on-call. They usually don't have any idea what's going on either. So, I couldn't completely finish any of my work and had to leave it to my relief to figure out how to explain to the people how to get it working again. I imagine it was a server issue because it was 10 days previously when it happened to me the first time. There was no way I was staying a minute past when I was able to go.

That was the beginning of my week. Clearly this made me want to go to work the rest of the week. My poor sister was depressed and then her husband was on night shift this week so I spent a lot of time over there after work watching movies. But it pretty much made me feel like a terribly failure all week.

I got to see a friend who lives down in California and meet his lovely wife for the first time, so that was a bright spot. It's nice to talk to him. He writes music basically as a ghost writer for a much more well known composer. We talked about some of the projects that he's worked on and what he's been working on since I saw him last (apparently all the music in the game Epic Mickey is his) and talked about the excitement of living in downtown LA compared to the quietness of Lynden. It was a nice chat, and I got a delicious red velvet cupcake out of it as well.

Saturday was Nate's house warming party. A few friends and I car-pooled down to Seattle to see his place in Fremont. It's an adorable little place. Just about the perfect size for one person, kind of a classy bachelor pad. We all got there about 3pm because we decided we'd spend the whole day down there since we were coming from Lynden. We walked around Fremont and went and saw the troll, took some pics and then walked around. There's a giant statue of Lenin that you can buy for $150,000. We played a game of Balderdash were my dyslexia kicked in epically. AGH! Because that made me feel so good about myself after the week that I had already been exposed to.

Other people came over and we ate and chatted and drank and then played some mafia. Mafia is a good game when everyone isn't too drunk and you have a manageable amount of people. This was not the case by the second game of mafia. Narrated by my cousin who picked possibly the most emotionally painful way to off me when I was killed by the mafia. Not that he could have known at that point. But I almost started crying which totally caused me to be horribly embarassed. Meanwhile people keep getting louder and louder because they are getting more and more drunk and I'm in no fit mood to be around people at this point. Also, biggest flirt in the world guy who has a girlfriend (who isn't there) is getting hit on by someone who is EPICALLY annoying when drunk and that was pissing me off because she felt the need to shout everything. I should have gone and taken a walk. Blegh!

We left about an hour later and had an exciting drive home through snow in Everett to Marysville and then once again when we hit Alger. It was certainly some exciting times. Though I think I might have slept a bit.

I went home and went almost directly to bed. I felt as though I had a little too much exposure to people yesterday. Sometimes I can handle it, but this week has been so full of high emotion that I just don't think it was a good idea to expose myself to that many people. Oh well, it was fun. Mostly.

Next week will be a better week and work is just work and it will be fine. Work is not my life. I've got a nice little lunch to go to on Tuesday and everything will be excellent. And then Hawai'i at the end of February. Looking forward to that. Really, really looking forward to it.

That's about all I have to say. It feels good to get that all out of my system. Starting fresh.

Map of Tasmania

So, here's the first post of the year: the sober edition.

New year's was really great however and everyone's costumes were super. Brent's Charlie Chaplin will go down in history as the best Charlie Chaplin outfit ever. At least before he took off the mustache.

I think I pulled a muscle in my left thigh while dancing. Which is the most ridiculous thing I can think of. Also my abs hurt. I must have been dancing like a crazy person. Well, no, I was dancing with the biggest tease in the whole world. We won't go there. Stupid tease. He has a girlfriend! Tease and a flirt...grrrr...but on the whole a friendly kind of grrr, because I do need the practice.

This year will be a good one. I can feel it in my bones. I know that it will have it's ups and downs, but it seems like the downs won't be quite so bad at this point. I've got lots of fun and excitement planned and I'm totally ready for it. Hawai'i at the end of February, beginning of March and then hopefully comic-con in July, and then Chicago for my cousin's wedding in August. I'm totally ready for all of it. And to continue with my weight loss adventure. I'm roughly 5-6 lbs away from my goal for the end of February, and I know that I can totally make it. I'd like to get better about exercising more frequently. That's a big goal for this year. Though not a resolution because I just don't like being resolute about things.

I'm kind of sick of working in the position that I have as well, so maybe I'll keep my eye open for something new and far more exciting than this one. Or at least I'll keep it in mind. It is comfortable here, and the pay is alright (though no where near decent). But it's a thought for sure.

Amanda Palmer is supposedly going to be in Seattle sometime in November. So I'm definitely keeping an eye out for that and planning on dragging everyone to it that I possibly can because she's so fantabulous. I hope she brings Brian...I can practice my flirting on him too **wiggly eyebrows**

I think that's all I have left to sum up. One word of advice: If my sister offers you punch...you better bet your ass she put rum in it.

P-p-p-p-poker face

New Year's was great. Everyone did very well on the 1920s garb, though it is probably best I am writing this slightly inebriated. I need to get this make up off and head to breakfast in the AM. I can't imagine having spent it with a better group of people, minus a few bright shining faces. Audrey's brother was Charlie Chaplin and he was totally spot on. It was great. I even danced with a boy...who has a girlfriend, but I'll take what I can get...there were many single girls there who I am sure were not as fortunate as I to have wonderful friends.

Here's hoping this year is bright and shiny and while it's still new I think it is the best year ever...

Happy first post of the year blog

Auld Lang Syne

I have never learned the words to that song. I probably never will...is it french? Should I ask my French cousin-in-law if he knows it?

Last post of the old year, hope you all had a wonderful one and you get everything you hope for in 2011! It's bound to be a great year, filled as it is with trips for me. Hawai'i, Comic-con, and Chicago. I greatly look forward to it and hope you all do too...Now I am all dolled up and waiting for my ride to a party (a drunk driver I am not folks, plus the house I am going to is a 15 minute walk, though that could be longer when inebriated).

And as I do every year, I will get a picture to change my facebook photo into for the new year.

Later internet. See you in the new year blog!

Sent out an SOS call...

In case anyone ever wonders, I title the vast majority of my blog posts with whatever song lyric happens to be at the top of my brain (or that I may have specifically marked out before as being an awesome blog title, or that I haven't recalled using before, cuz often I have the same song stuck in my head for days at a time).

I am very excited about New Years Eve party. I have spent the last 7 or 8 New Years Eves with the same people and I refuse to be anywhere else because it is always a fun and exciting time. Last year we went with a classic: the toga party. It was great, the vast majority of people dressed up, in fact I think we only had one person who wasn't wearing a toga and we ridiculed him roundly. This year it's a 1920s theme. You know, roaring 20s and prohibition and all of that good stuff. I'm excited even though my mother took the dress in a bit to much and now I'm going to have to be really good about the food that I eat for the next week and exercise and stuff so that I can hopefully lost a lb or 2...gah! I'm kind of frustrated with her because the reason it happened is that she just wasn't listening when I explained what I wanted her to do, even though she was nodding and agreeing. And it's not like she basted it. She surged it...so ugh...It still looks really good. Much better than it did at the wedding I wore it to. Now the fringe just needs to be added to the bottom and it shall be done! and I need to assemble my little head band and read up on some 1920s make up application stuff and that's pretty good.

I think that's really all I have to talk about tonight. Perhaps I will make a more substantial blog post at some point. Whoot.

CARIBOU

UGH. I feel kind of horrible and it may be time for more tylonel. I am also not being very good about my diet this week...alas...as long as I don't gain significantly (which hasn't been a problem since starting the metformin) I will be satisfied. However, the cramping which is causing me to inhale tylonel and wish I had brought the heating pad to work is not cool. It's that time of the month (or in my case I try for no more than 6 times a year) and though the cramping is tapering off, it's still kind of awful. It makes me wish I could take my ovaries out and give them a stern talking to. Also, I despise the super fatiguedness. I could go to bed right now and sleep all night, very fitfully, but I could sleep. It would be wonderful.

Other than that Sarah's Ugly Sweater party is on Friday and it seems like it should be a good time. I have to make some crab dip. I kind of want to make gingerbread men as well, but I don't think I have time enough to make them and frost them. Mmmm...gingerbread with cream cheese frosting...mmmmm...

I can't really think of a whole lot more to say today...except it's kind of a Pixies and The Smiths kind of day...Caribou

I promise not to try...

Weird dreams have been plaguing me once more. I think I've been playing too much Assassin's Creed (though I did beat the main story part) and that definitely factors into it. Last night I dreamed I was trying to start myself up as an assassin/thief/general ne'er do well and that my base was my room at the old farm house (which is definitely large enough to make a good base, plus ghost for security). However there was an entire guild of ne'er do well operating out of the shop and the old barn down the hill and they thought I was encroaching on their territory and they did not like that so much and kept sending me strange warnings (a string of what looked like cow hair with a bunch of small dead creatures tied up in it that they hung outside of my window, and someone bit my ankle). A guy I knew in high school was trying to convince me that it was a bad idea to become an assassin type (and I was sorely tempted to agree with him, if the other ne'er do wells hadn't been trying to scare me off, I may have) whilst he was giving me a piggy-back ride through a swamp (oddly similar to a speech he once gave me youngest sister about why she should be careful about how she dressed, though that one definitely didn't happen during piggy back rides in a swamp). That was about the time at which the neighbor decided to turn on some horrible machine and I woke up. Maybe it was an air compressor or something? I hate construction with a passion.

Tonight, my job is making me crazy. Also I want to buy my comic-con tickets already and get that purchase out of the way, because I've got a lot of other purchases coming up. Ticket and room in Chicago in order to go to my cousins wedding (which does mean, alas, that I won't be hitting up Renne Faire for camping this year and I'm a little saddened about that, but family totally comes first).

Other than that I've really got absolutely nothing to say, but I thought I would send that dream there out into the ether. Very strange. I woke up with WTF scrawled across the front of my brain, and then I forgot it and then on the way to work I remembered it again. O.o

I've got a bullet proof heart, you've got a hollow point smile

I completed Nanowrimo, which alas, is not always the same as completing your story. Sadly enough. I wish it was the same, but the story still has a ways to go. I'm fairly pleased with my Nook. I have been reading a lot lately. I have a reading problem. Or maybe just a book purchasing problem. Le sigh.

I don't know what I'm really planning on writing. I've finished all of my christmas shopping for the month and Mary bought a new car that she's very excited about.

Mom is also looking for a house or some property out in Birch Bay. And I burnt myself with refried beans. I think that makes me spectacularly talented.

I am 10lbs away (or maybe a little bit less) from my goal for the end of february, which is totally doable I do believe. I think that the closer we get to nicer weather again I'll drop a little quicker than I do now because I'll be able to walk around outside. I'm not particularly fond of exercising inside, sadly enough. So I try to drop a little and mostly maintain during the winter.

Still no word on when we'll be able to buy Comic-con tickets. They're still looking for a viable way of selling them that won't crash everything. Grarg! Definitely frustrating.

Blegh, I'm too spacey to really right anything. So I'm done now.

If you did it say you did it, if you didn't suck it up and say you did!

Had a lovely 8 days off for my birthday. Only now I'm 25 and that's a little bit daunting. I went to Seattle to go on the Underground Tour, it was pretty great, even though I didn't get the tour guide that I wanted. It's still a really interesting tour of places that you don't often get to see. Also found the coolest toy shop in Pioneer Square with the best coloring books of all time. I got a paisley pattern one and a geometric shapes one and a fairy one. So, I love coloring books ^_^

Other than that I spent the week having super vivid and ridiculous dreams. At least two of them involved zombies (to be expected since I used my B&N gift certificates on some The Walking Dead comic books, they are horribly scary) but those dreams are too far away for me to remember any details.

But then, I had a dream where I was in a camp/school thing with basically everyone I had ever had a class with throughout Kindergarten through high school. And it was a musci class being led by Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione (YAY!) and I was whispering to my friend Lynae that I thought Brian was super attractive, and she thought I should tell him, and I think essentially Brian heard the entire conversation and then I woke up out of embarassment right as we were all about to head off to health class. This also all took place in a barn with a big sliding door that looked back into a field with a tractor in it. I don't know how that fits in.

I also had a dream that I had a flying pirate ship (I am so bad ass in my dreams). I had to park it above a house and climb down (every house was like it's own little world within a world) I had to do something down there with inverse colored tigers that were ghosts of people or something really bizarre like that. When I climbed back up to my Pirate ship it was under attack and Derek had used a special paste he made from kitty litter to patch the hole and was now trying to steer the ship defensively while Whitney was running around crazily firing off small wooden cannons (half of which were missing) and using wooden tennis rackets to lob things at the attacking ships. At that point it was so weird I had to wake up.

So, I have now summed up my very strange dreams, that definitely rate up there with my mythbusters apocalypse dream (that one was awesome). I really do love dreaming vividly.

I go Christmas shopping tomorrow and I've got to find a way to get myself out of bed by 10am...argh, I am not a get up that early person. However, the crowd should be severely less if I can get to the mall that early...oh life is very very hard. :P

There Will Still be no...Air to Breathe

I don't know if I can really comprehend how much I missed Conan O'Brien being on TV. Seriously, him being back is so amazingly awesome that I can't really cause it to make sense in my mind. His humor is so much better than anyone else on late night TV. I don't know why, he makes me laugh much better than anyone else. And the whole he's a red head thing definitely probably helps on some strange subconscious level.

Reached my word goal for today for Nanowrimo. I'm keeping about 3 days ahead. Which is good. I hope to reach about 21,500 be tomorrow sometime, or maybe a little bit more. It's going kind of slow. I'm really good at the beginning and knowing where the story is going to end, but I'm really bad at the whole middle part, and sometimes things don't go the way I think they are going to go.

Mary and I finished watching Fruits Basket today and I really wish there was more of it. Sad Face. I hope that my Sherlock blu-ray gets here before Christmas. Stupid back ordering. Oh well. I got lots of Barnes and Nobles gift cards for my birthday and intend upon hitting B&N tomorrow after dropping off some birthday cake at my grandparents house. I'm hoping my birthdayness doesn't set me back too much in my diet, but I think if I keep up with the exercising and keep track of my calories that I will be fine.

I haven't watched the second episode of The Walking Dead yet. It's kind of a scary show. And I need to find it online.

I think that's all I have to say. Later interweb peeps. I gotta watch Conan.

Unless you have Friends Among Fish

Writing today has been like pulling teeth. Which could be because I really don't know where this characters storyline is going...AGH! Oh well, it's a first draft and I don't need to know anything and incredible long periods of characters monologueing in their heads is perfectly alright...word count, word count, word count!

Um...finally started reading Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman. I may only be reading it because Michael Whelan is the cover artist and I love him...I love him soooooo much. He has done the covers of all my most favorite novels. Which I think says something about his caliber as an artist. And usually it's very clear that he's read an ARC copy of the book before he made the painting that eventually became the books cover. I want my house covered in his paintings. They are awesome.

I really think that's about all I have to say. My brain is awfully blank today...must have been all the sleep I got this morning/last night.

This Ship of Fools I'm on Will Sink

So far I'm keeping up really well with nanowrimo. I'm at 12,000+ words, so that puts me almost 4 days ahead of myself. Which is where I want to be heading into the weekend, since I won't have as much time to write while I'm at work. I don't want to work this weekend...oh well. I feel like I'm not getting out enough, or that I'm supposed to be doing different things. This is probably just all in my head and it's just making me crazy because it's that time of November where I always get kind of crazy and weird emotionally. Blegh. Make it stop please. I like to use nanowrimo as an escape from it and it does seem to keep me from dwelling quite so much. Cuz I'm a big dweller on of things. Le sigh.

I guess it's just an whelming sense of ennui that this time of November brings for me. Because I really don't feel that you can be overwhelmed by ennui, that wouldn't make any sense.

I'm relatively excited to watch the show The Walking Dead. It's a zombie post-apocalypse show. Just what TV needs.

Also had a delicious dinner for my mom's birthday at Sarah's house tonight. Sarah and I spent literally all day making a red wine marinated roast. It was delicious, but I'm not quite sure it was worth all of that work. However delicious it was. The creme brulee was totally worth it however...mmmmm, creme brulee...I loves it.

I really think that's all I have to go on about tonight. I need to organize my bookshelves at some point. I'm thinking by subject and alphabetically. Maybe? I'm not sure.

You're like a buzz, looking for a bee

Nanowrimo is going very well for me so far. My goal is to always be at least a day ahead and this isn't so hard on my days off at all. It's probably going to get harder on my days at work, but hopefully they will decently staffed and I will have some time to write while I'm at work. Because falling behind is what kills me. Also just getting trapped in long inner monologues, and strange conversations between characters. I need more action. Action is a catalyst for stuff! AGH!

Finished a book called The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook...it was a good light reading, smutty, steampunk book. My universe is very flexible so chances are that any book I read this month will somehow bleed into my work. Hopefully in ways that aren't easily recognizable to people who don't either know me really well or have a time line of the books that I am reading.

Also, blew my mom's mind tonight by showing her a clip for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's rally to restore sanity and/or fear. I showed her Cat Stevens on stage with Ozzy Osbourne and both Stewart and Colbert arguing over whether it was a Peace Train or a Crazy Train and finally deciding it was a Love Train (though Stephen just wasn't sure). Mom kept just being like Cat Stevens...I can't believe this is happening. It was kind of hilarious. Then I blew her mind more because a guy who I went to high school with was on a TV show airing on animal planet tonight (how sad that we don't get animal planet, I promised I'd find it online for her somewhere). It's a show called Lost Tapes where they do little stories about supposed 'lost tapes' from people who got attacked by urban myth-ie animals. So, that should be interesting as he will undoubtedly be the WHITEST PERSON ON SCREEN EVER. I'll still watch it and laugh really hard.

That's about all I have for this evening before I'm back to Nano-ing! Good luck for November party people!

Last Night on Earth

So, in about 45 minutes Nanowrimo begins. I can't wait. Of course, every year I start off with such high hopes, but I do always seem to fall behind. This year I am determined not to. I have a lot of determination. So, my favorite thing to do, a bulleted list of things I am determined to do this November!

• Finish a 50,000 word novel! This will be hard, but it's not impossible because I have done it before, however that was while I was unemployed and I drank caffeine then as well. So, now I am employed and don't drink caffeine. I know I can do it though
• Keep up with my exercise stuff, and progress it further. Right now Mary and I are doing 10 minute videos every day. After another 6 days it is my goal to do 2 of them a day, followed by a day with one, followed by a day with 2 and then repeat that pattern again eventually working up to doing one entire 10 minute solutions video in one day! I know I am very ambitious.
• Get my writing speed up to 500 words an hour. Because I type roughly 60-80 words per minute this is technically well within possible, but rarely does it happen. Because I spend so much time going back and forth and editing. I would like to stop that.
• Have a good birthday. I have a tendency to get depressed around my birthday, and I really don't like it, so my goal is not to do that.

And that is my bulleted list for this month! I think they are reasonable goals. Another goal is to lose another 10lbs this month, which shouldn't be a problem if I stick to my exercise stuff and manage to stay at least close to my diet. Which I overshoot some days and undershoot others. It all balances out in the end. I would rather lose weight slowly and allow my body to adjust, than lose weight quickly. Even the weight I've lost so far makes me feel strangely off balance. My body doesn't necessarily feel as hardy as it always has, it seems like a lot of little things are bugging me. Also headaches that are not cool keep accosting me. I'm pretty sure this is because I carry a lot of tension in my neck right were my neck meets my skull and this causes me to have headaches and sometimes migraines if I stay tense enough long enough. Sarah has the same problem, and it's not unusual for family members to carry tension in the same location. So it's painkillers for me when that happens. Yay.

I've got a vague idea for Nanowrimo this year, it should give me a lot of material to work with if I don't get bogged down in logistics. It's kind of combo sci-fi/fantasy with a lot of room for expansion in either direction. Knowing me it will probably end up more fantasy like than sci-fi like because, well, I gravitate more towards one than the other. Though I do love me some sneaky sci-fi that presents as fantasy but deep down underneath if you peel away all the layers...it's sci-fi way underneath (THE CLOISTER IS A SPACE SHIP YOU FOOLS!) As always though the hardest point for me will be character names. Also perspective. I'm thinking of doing a combo of 1st and 3rd person. MC being 1st person and then doing small sections from other characters perspectives in 3rd person (because sometimes you just need to write from another persons point of view and get away from your MC.) If anyone wishes to join me in my venture I would invite you to friend me on nanowrimo.org and find my username which is Sayasha. As always of course. ^_^ Only half an hour to go!

literal vs. poetical translation

Thinking about things today, like literal translations vs. poetic translation (or translation into the equivalant phrase in English). Just kind of funny that it might literally mean I want to eat your face but the poetic type translation is I want to kiss you or something like that. Just remembering a song I used to listen to that said that. And it was kind of really funny.

Other than that I've started doing these 10 minute pilates videos with Mary every morning and good God my legs hurt from the other day. The arm exercises weren't that bad. But my upper thighs burn like none other. My minimum goal by mid-November is another 5 lbs. Which might be a bit hard with my birthday in there and everything. But hopefully it'll work. I think I can definitely do it. It is hard though. Sometimes more than others.

I've decided I am dangerously obssessed with Sweden (basically Europe in general). If and when I go there I may definitely never come back. I'll end up in Sweden, or Ireland, or some other interesting country just chillin' like a villain. I wonder how hard it is to get a work visa in another country? I'll have to go about looking into it. Maybe. Or maybe I'll just spend my days dodging the international version of ICE ^_^ Mwahahahahahaha!

It's 3 days until I can buy comic con tickets and I am so excited about it! I've got the money just waiting to be blown on it. Tickets are only $105 for all four days which is less than I thought it would be. Though perhaps with service fees it'll come out to almost $120 and then all we have to do it book a hotel (I plan on making one of my RN friends put it on their credit card since um...I don't have one of those and don't intend on getting one for some time if I can avoid it. I love that it always confuses people when they try to find credit history on me and nothing pops up. I do not exist in your silly world of credit you strange people!) And that's about it for me for today!

Later blogverse and the interwebs!

Where am I Going with This?

Enjoying myself on my last day of my four day stretch here at work. It's been a decent few days. I'm glad I'm heading into an off again/on again stretch though. It is kind of frustrating that it's not a solid stretch off, but at the same time one day on/one day off has it's advantages of not making you go extremely batty from being here several hundred days in a row.

Something that's making me really frustrated about work lately is that our bosses at work only seem to tell us anything when we're doing something wrong. There's never any positive feed back. Only feed back for negative things and that's really really frustrating after 5 years of working here. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been told that I'm appreciated by my bosses. That's kind of really lame. Just every once in a while it really starts to bother me.

I've got to be getting back on the band wagon for dieting this week. I haven't gained any weight back but I haven't lost any either for about a week or two now. Lame. I hate dieting but I understand the necessity of it. I'm only 18 lbs away from my goal for Hawaii/ the end of February. Which is definitely reachable and will only be set back by delicious holiday food which is coming up. Oh holidays. You defeat me.

I need to plan a big trip. To Europe. I want to go to Europe in the worst kind of way. So the money saving must start and the planning must as well. I'll have to price out some options, the problem I always have is that the plane tickets are just so stinking expensive. But it is pretty much a 20 hour flight. Of which I spent most of the time sleeping. And flying over that much ocean is severely nerve racking. Seriously. So nerve racking. Argh.

That's all I have for today my dears. Please have a safe and happy halloween if I don't write you all again by then ^_^

Here's the map to my oubliette

So, cousins are up this week. I do love my cousins from Illinois, this could be because I see them so rarely. I love my aunt Ellen and Uncle Herman as well. They are great. Uncle Herman being my dad's only older brother and they look almost exactly alike only Herman is all dark and my dad is all light. Kinda funny that way.

So, went out to dinner with them all the other night. Met Lizzie's fiancé (as he told me one e because he is a boy) who is named Matthew and is French (now say Matt'hue). Dinner was a bit awkward for me. I'm almost up to having lost 30lbs and I kind of feel weird about my body. None of my clothes currently fit me and I really need to invest in a belt. So I didn't talk a lot of the time. Ugh.

However, went out tonight for drinks and some dessert with Sarah &Mark, Lizzie & Matt (John didn't come because he's a recovering alcoholic and it's still really hard for him to be around alcohol since he's only been sober a little over 6 months). We had a blast. Lizzie had finished a bottle of wine before we even went out to New York Pizza. So we all had a drink there and then Lizzie wanted to dance and to give them the out in the county experience we took them to Bobby Lee's ...because it's kind of hilarious there and it was karaoke night. We really got there much to late to put in anything for karaoke. But it was fun none the less. Liz and Matt danced and I swear to you everyone in the bar watched them because Matt clearly dances like a European (meaning he's a guy who can actually dance). It was great. Jack and Greg were there and I talked to them and a few of Mark's friends were there as well. One of them let Matt try on his cowboy boots and it was kind of hilarious because Matt immediately decided that he NEEDED some cowboy boots.

I dropped everyone off being the responsible DD (YAY ME) and felt kind of bad cuz I left Matt to carry Lizzie into the house all by himself. He said he could handle it though.

So that's been my exciting time with cousins so far. They are here til Tuesday so we shall see how it goes! Excitement!

You're like iodine chasing all the storms away

I'm having a lovely day. Not really for any particular reason. Everything just seems infinitely lovely. It could be the fountain I discovered on my walk tonight, it could be the man walking his dog who waved at me (nothing makes me happier than friendly people oddly enough), it could be that I watched both Boondock Saints movies back to back the other night with some friends.

Point is it could be any number of things. And while I would love to sit here and break it all down and analyze like I have a penchant for doing (if you haven't noticed). I think I just might let it be what it is...lovely.

I'm thinking of caving and getting an ipod nano just because it's more convenient that it syncs to itunes. Sorry sansa, you are my love, but you don't sync with itunes and that is incredibly inconvenient.

Still writing a whole bunch...YAY! Though not necessarily on the same things all the time.

Goal: get a new laptop. One that works. Preferably.

New band that I like (okay more like band I've known about for a while that I just got the CD for): USS (Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker) they are pretty much nerd core yet still awesome. Get a little ways into 2 15/16 or Hollowpoint Snyper Hyperbole and you will very much know what I mean. Some of there other stuff isn't quite as cool, but I do still like it.

Now I am DONE! SWOOSH!