The glue on United States Postal Service stamps is NOT kosher...

...just so you know.

It’s warmed up and the snow is melting all over the place here. By “warmed up” I mean “gone above freezing”; the temperature has been in the 40’s this week. I am so damn ready for the weekend. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I just feel so frustrated about everything lately. It doesn’t matter if it’s work, personal life, money, car, health, anything… everything just makes me so frustrated. It’s like there’s a constant little rain cloud above me that just won’t go away, no matter how hard I try to make it leave. It’s possible that it’s just a symptom of cabin fever – maybe getting out of the apartment will help. I think we’re going to go to Chicago sometime soon, which will be a nice change. We’re going to go to the Museum of Science and Industry, which is always fun for geeks like me. They have all kinds of really cool stuff, like baby chickens in an incubator, a real airplane (a small one but a real one nonetheless), and a coal mine replica in the basement. It’s a very cool place, and if you’ve never been I highly recommend it. I also love the Art Institute, but I don’t think we’ll do both in one weekend. You really need to devote two days to the AI and we just don’t have the time. I want to wait until it’s warmed up a little bit more before we head up to the Windy City, though.

We’ve been watching American Idol. I knew we would get sucked in; it was just a matter of time. Last night the twelve girls competed. They were ok, definitely better than the guys. My favorites so far are Chris Sligh and Lakiesha (don’t know her last name). She rocked out last night! Everybody else ranged from “eh” to “WTF?” to “boooooring…”. I guess we’ll find out tonight.

Did I really just type a whole paragraph about American Idol? I must be hurting for blog material.

We found an interesting place to live in Greenville if we decide to move. It’s called the Lofts of Greenville, and it’s in the old mill down on 276 (I think it’s 276, anyway), that’s right near Greenville Memorial Hospital. They’re great (and beautiful!) apartments. I’ve been to the mill when the Handlebar was still there (this was a few years ago), so I know what the inside of the building is like, and I know it will be a very classy place. Hardwood floors, brick walls, windows from floor to ceiling… very cool. It’s not too far from the middle of everything, either. Sometimes I wish we could move right now. I’m sick of all this deliberation and everything being up in the air. And it’s gonna be like this for months, because I can’t start looking for a damn job until May or June at the earliest – we can’t move until August, and I don’t want to land a job before a month or so before we move… I don’t know how understanding a new employer would be about me needing to start four or six weeks after I’m hired. I don’t even know if employers do that… well, I guess if they want you badly enough, they’ll do anything.

My truck smells like hazlenut coffee because some nimrod Hoosier decided to slam on his brakes in front of me this morning… my entirely full coffee cup flew out of the cup holder, hit the floor, and the lid popped off so the whole cup spilled all over the car. GRRRR!!

Word of the day: tie between “whatever” and “FUCK!”

~Becky

And the winner for the comment that generated the most laughter this weekend is...

SLOP that COY WHORE!!

This is an auditorily hilarious comment was made up this weekend, and every time I read it or say it, it makes me laugh. Something about the way the words sound together just slays me. It started with Normandy being coy at the door on Sunday for some reason. Then we started talking about what a coy whore she was… and how we should slap her around… but “slap” came out of Erin’s mouth as “slop” for some reason… so for the rest of the afternoon we talked about “slopping around that coy whore like she deserves…” LOL!

The weekend was good. We did NOT go see Murder By Death. That’s ok though, they should have another concert in Bloomington sometime soon. They normally do one to kick off a tour and another to celebrate the end of a tour, so we’ll catch them the next time they’re in town. Which is fine – it snowed another 4” on Saturday, and to tell the truth, I was relieved that I wasn’t going to have to ride with Norm driving for at least 2 hours while I was intoxicated.

We went to my company’s employee appreciation party this weekend, and had a good time. It was a casino night party, and there was plenty of gambling, food and booze… YAY! A great combination! I gave all my chips to Erin and let her gamble to her heart’s content. I was informed the next day that if we ever go to Vegas, I am to keep her on a tight leash (these are HER words!). But anyway, we had fun.

I got my first Gunslinger Born comic book this weekend, and read it from cover to cover in about twenty minutes. It’s good. I wish that these guys would just go through the whole series like this. It would be interesting to see their visualization of Roland’s journey, from start to finish. The next book is supposed to be about Roland’s trip to Mejis, where he meets Susan Delgado and falls in love (almost the entire story of Book IV: Wizard and Glass). I wonder if it’s going to be as short as this one? Seems like a lot of story to squeeze into one little comic book.

It’s time for a good movie to come out. What’s coming out soon? I know Ghost Rider came out this weekend, but I don’t think I could get Erin to go see it. I think there’s something good coming out in March… I know “300” is coming out then, but I’m not sure I can get her to go see that, either. *sigh* Time for something good! I can’t wait ‘til May, when Spider-Man 3 AND Pirates 3 comes out! That’ll be a stellar movie month! YAY!!

OK, I better get back to work… sorry I only posted once last week. I'll try to do better this week.

~Becky

Immaculate Deskception

I’m rethinking the job in Columbia. First off, the job posting was from 1/22, which means if it’s not filled yet, it will need to be filled soon. And while our apartment complex won’t kill us with thousands of dollars of fines if we break our lease (we only need to come up with one month’s rent), we still can’t afford to move any time soon. Not only would we need to come up with an extra month’s rent, we need the first month’s rent for a new apartment, a security deposit, gas money to get down to SC (no small feat when you consider that one of the vehicles concerned is a U-Haul), a truck rental fee, and at least two weeks’ worth expense money (if not more) just to be safe. We just can’t afford that right now. It’ll take several months to save up that kind of money, and by that time the job in Columbia will be gone. And there’s no way I can make payments on rent in Columbia and rent in Indianapolis, if Erin were to stay to get our things in order until we can permanently move. I think that would cost even more than just plain moving.

That’s the practical part. Also, I just don’t want to live in Columbia. I know nothing about it besides the fact that it’s gray, dirty and there’s not much there. Greenville has a lot more to offer us, in a lot of ways (housing, culture, food, family, etc). So I’m not too disappointed that it really won’t work out practically.

It’s supposed to DUMP on us tomorrow, weather-wise. They’re calling for 8-12” and possibly up to 15” (I’ll believe that when I see it; Indiana forecasters seem to love to sing the DOOM chorus well before they know what the heck is going on for sure). They’re likening it to the snow we had in December ’04, which was my first big crazy snow… the one that shut down I-65 right before Christmas. I have asked a friend to give me a ride to work, as I am not driving in that bullshit… and as, to quote my facility manager, “we’re not in high school here, we don’t get a two hour delay or leave two hours early” (asshole, how demeaning of a comment is that?!), I need to make some kind of arrangement to get here. I may just end up taking a personal day. We’ll have to see. A few people thinks I’m stupid or crazy or a wuss, but you know, I’d rather them think that than me get stuck like I did last year. I’ll be glad to get back to Southern civilization, where people have the sense to get indoors and stay there when it snows. Don’t you people know that God makes it snow so we can stay home and appreciate it with some hot chocolate and movies watched in bed? Get with the program, people… Hoosiers! Jeez!

I had a decent weekend. Played some Diablo II, cleaned out my desk (this was a MAJOR undertaking). It seems like all the clutter from my life ends up shoved into my desk drawers. And Erin asked me to clean out one of my desk drawers so she’d have a space to store her school stuff, so I really had to throw away a lot of stuff. I didn’t mind, though. It was actually liberating after a little while… I would come to something that I hadn’t seen in months, and say to myself, “am I keeping this for a real, useful reason, or just because I’m a packrat and don’t like letting go of anything?” Then I’d dispose of (or store) the item accordingly, after I’d answered this poignant question. I filled up a WHOLE TRASH BAG with stuff from my desk! (And I threw it away, too!) And now everything’s organized and clean and not so damn cluttered. And Erin has her drawer too. So, I feel like I was very productive, which is always a good thing.

I also watched The Grammys last night, mainly to see The Police perform together for the first time in over 20 years. It was great… I hope they tour, I’d love to see them (provided they don’t charge the price of a Honda for a pair of tickets). The Grammys were ok… a little too much Justin Timberlake for me, but ok. I don’t mind his music, but in person he REALLY gets on my nerves… I just want to smack him in the face with a phone book. In other music news, NIN (one of my favorite bands) announced their new album will be released April 17th. Will we be attending the concerts? My friend, do pirates wear poofy shirts?

*sigh* Back to work for me… gotta make my desk immaculate in case I’m not here tomorrow… Happy Monday, everyone!

~Becky

Jobs...

I’ve been looking at job postings on our parent company’s site, and I found one in Columbia, SC…

I don’t know how I feel about living in Columbia. I’ve always said that it is the armpit of the state. But it’s a job that sounds very similar to the one I do now, and I’d love to just be able to transfer instead of having to go through the process of interviews and screens and all that. (I HATE looking for a new job.) There’s a prominent lighting company in Greenville, but I don’t know if they’re looking for anyone. I think I’ll put my resume in at the Columbia branch and see how it goes… maybe living in Greenville isn’t exactly what I’m looking for, yet. Maybe it would be best to live and work an hour and a half away from my family at first. Then I could go up for weekends… visit my family and see them on a regular basis… but not have to deal with them every day.

I know this sounds as if I don’t like my family, but that’s not true. I love them all dearly. But you know how it is. Sometimes you want to be far away from the people that you love. Because they make you crazy. I’ve gotten used to living far away from my family, so we always treasure the time we have. We always make the most of my visits (or theirs), and put aside what we would normally pick at each other about because we don’t see each other on a regular basis. But if I lived in Greenville again, I’m not sure if we could continue to do that. The saying is “familiarity breeds contempt”, and honestly, that’s one of the truest cliché’s I’ve ever heard.

Being in Columbia might not be so bad. We have friends in Florence that we’d really like to see on a regular basis. This would make them an hour and a half away instead of three hours. My family would be at a distance, so that inevitable vortex of family drama would be there if I wanted to delve into it, but not so close that I couldn’t escape it if I needed to. We also have friends in Gray Court that would only be about 45 minutes away… and if we wanted to go into Greenville for Pita House on a Friday or Saturday, we could leave after work and be there by seven to spend an evening in a city we’re familiar with. I don’t know much about Columbia, but I do know that USC is there and Erin is very concerned about finding a good school that we can afford where she can work on her international business degree. Since it’s a college town, the rent might be astronomical, though.

We’d also be two hours closer to the beach… :-) Ahhhh, to live close enough to a beach that you can get in the car after work on a summer day and be at the ocean before the sun sets… Yowza! How I’d love that.

Well, I’ll put in a resume. What can it hurt? Worst case scenario? They say they’re not interested and I send in an application to that lighting company in Greenville. Best case? I have a new job, at the same rate of pay or better, set in the middle of the state we’d like to move back to. I don’t lose benefits or anything – I just transfer down there. We can find an apartment wherever we go. I’m just READY to go.

~Becky

Rest, little puppy. For the love of Christ, go to sleep already!

I’m so sick of all this going back and forth in my brain. I forgot that when I have a problem to chew on, or a really important decision to make, my brain is like a little rat terrier that worries and worries and worries a bone… it just won’t let it go. Even when I’m not thinking about it, I’m thinking about it. And it’s starting to freak me out. I know what I will probably eventually do (i.e. move back home), so it’s not really the decision that my brain is trying to make. I think it’s all the different aspects of moving back to Greenville that are scaring me.

I think I need to work on having more faith in myself and my abilities to act/live like a normal, responsible person. When I moved up here from Greenville in 2004, I was a totally different person. My life had turned into this black pit with greased sides. I was miserable, and completely self-destructive. I was also not a very nice/good person – I was pretty selfish, and I didn’t really know what it was like to work a full-time job that wasn’t a bullshit position (sorry, but FastSigns was b.s.), among other things. Of course, at the time I was pretty out of it mentally and emotionally, and moving away from all that crap down there definitely helped me get my ducks in a row in those departments. I’m more comfortable with who I am and how I feel about a lot of things than I used to be.

But I can feel that Greenville-panic seeping back into me. It seems like while I lived there I was in constant Oh-shit mode. Oh-shit, I have to find a job, Oh-shit, my family’s pissed at me, Oh-shit, I don’t have enough money to pay my rent, Oh-shit, I’m falling into some kind of crazy depression, Oh-shit, what am I gonna do now?! You know what I mean. I just have to keep reminding myself that a PLACE does not make a PERSON. Regardless of the town, I should be the same person no matter where I am living.

I guess what I want to do (when I think about moving to Greenville in my hopeful daydreams, not my terrified imagination) is start over in Greenville, with a clean slate, and do there what I did here in Indianapolis. Find a great job, a fabulous place to live, have a healthy, functioning relationship with someone I’m head over heels about, and be an all-round generally ok person – financially, emotionally, romantically, etc. The thing is, I love Greenville as a city, and the South in general (there are some pretty shitty parts of living in the South but overall it really is a great place, and I will be a Southerner until the day I die). I just have terrible memories of Greenville, and all the crap I went through there. But if I can just be the person I am here while I’m living there, I’ll have it made. That’s what I really want… I’m successful here, but there’s no one around that I care about to show it off to. To PROVE that I have changed. Erin already knows, and so does Norm. I think I just want to show the rest of the world… well, the rest of the world that knows me. If that’s egocentric, I don’t care. Everyone’s entitled to at least a little egocentricity.

On a side note: I’m entirely ready to live in a place where employers don’t make you feel guilty or accuse you of not being a “team player” when you leave early because there’s 6” of snow on the ground and the roads are terrible… Don’t worry, you’ll probably be treated to a mini-rant about this later, heh.

~Becky

Snow day!

It’s snowing like crazy here. I’m so happy! I love snow. All my fellow Hoosiers think I’m crazy, but I still turn into a little kid when the snow starts coming down. All I want to do is run around in it, make snow angels, a snowman, snow forts and have snowball fights with my friends. I also love to walk around in the snow when it’s falling. It’s so quiet… like nature itself has been muffled. I think it’s amazing. Of course, I also love to watch the snow fall while I’m in bed in my pj’s drinking a hot mug of cocoa…

I remember when I was very small, it snowed... we have pictures. My dad made me an alligator out of snow once. I think I was about five. This was before global warming really geared up, remember. So there was actually snow in the South. It was over the tops of my boots... I remember making a snowman with my sister and then coming in to have hot chocolate and fresh snow cream.

May I just say, GRRR!! FUCKING GLOBAL WARMING. My kids might not have that opportunity... and that really bites.

So the Colts won the Super Bowl. Yippee! We watched the whole damn thing… from the terrible Cirque De Soleil performance at the pre-show to the presentation of the Vince Lombardi trophy to Tony Dungy after the game. I even watched the welcome-home pep rally last night to boot. It was a lot of fun. I made mini-pizzas and piglets in blankets (vegetarian AND carnivore versions). We had beer, I was moderately inebriated for most of the game… a good time was definitely had by all.

We had a good weekend. We bought a timed coffee maker (I think I mentioned this in an earlier post). We actually paid only $13 or so out of pocket for this really nice $130 model… at Macy’s! I had a gift card left over from Christmas, and they were having a sale, and they gave us an additional 25% off for inconveniencing us when their card reader wasn’t working and there was no instruction manual in the carton with the coffee maker. So… not bad huh? It’s a nice model, too. The past two days I’ve had coffee on my way in to work, and while I’m not an avid coffee drinker, it’s nice to have that extra kick in the morning.

Erin likes her new job. She’s been doing well with getting up early in the morning, too. I guess the coffee helps… that and we are going to bed hella-early. I don’t mind, I never get enough sleep it seems… but at the same time, it feels like our evenings have been cut REALLY short. We didn’t even watch Horatio last night (CSI: Miami, our shared guilty pleasure). Although… we did watch Heroes… damn, I wish I’d gotten into that show when it started. It’s really well done… I get sucked into it immediately.

Back to work for me… I want to have as much done as possible in case we leave early today because of the snow. Wheeee Hoooooooo!!

~Becky

Fridays are the longest days in the universe.

Unless, of course, you are on vacation, and then they're like any other day.

This is why I normally hate blogging: I start off with the best intentions, keep up with it for a couple of weeks, then realize I can think of nothing to write about, so I avoid it like the plague for a few weeks/months. Then I feel guilty and post song lyrics to make it look like I care. So, here's some inanity for you. It may not be much, but at least it's not song lyrics.

Today I am counting the minutes (nay... the seconds!) until five o'clock, and honestly I'm wondering if time isn't actually moving backwards. I swear, it was four thirty a few minutes ago...

Erin got a new job. Hooray! My only concern is that her hours will be starting 7:30 am every morning, and my girl is not well known for being a morning person. Which probably stems from the fact that she's not. At all. Ever. I think I may buy a coffee maker with a timer on it, so there will be coffee ready when we wake up in the morning. Last night we had a giggly conversation in bed (one of my favorite types of conversations) about how she will need to stop at Starbuck's every morning and consume all the espresso in the building to stay awake throughout the day. (Give me an espresso pound cake, soaked in espresso, with espresso icing, and wrapped in a box made of espresso beans! And while you're at it, boil a shot of espresso until it becomes espresso sludge, take the spoonful of sludge and mix it into a double shot of espresso for me! WHEEEEE!!!)

I just composed an entire paragraph about snowflakes and then deleted it. I think it's time to stop blogging for the day. I'm putting a leash on myself (kinky).

~Becky