Still here!

Still alive and well but busy as hell... hey, that rhymed. You'd think I was some kind of writer, or something... heh.

A. Jones, if you're reading this, I have not forgotten you, or our little online banter. I'm slammed at work AND at home right now, 'cause the lady I work with had a death in her family and I'm covering both of our desks, and of course the Christmas season is kicking my ass. Don't worry though, I am going to continue our debate.

I need to find the perfect Christmas gift for my girlfriend, and I only have seven and a half days to do it... ACK!! WHAT is wrong with me?! I'm never this unprepared...

OK, this was a relatively banal and pointless entry, but I feel guilty having not posted since Wednesday! I'll post more soon, I promise. Just wanted to check in, friends! In an act of reconciliation, I leave you with these eight random facts:

~Neither Johnny Depp nor Helena Bonham Carter had never had a part in a musical before acting in the upcoming film "Sweeney Todd".
~Time Lords can regenerate twelve times. Currently, the good Doctor is on his new incarnation, who is portrayed by the dude that played Barty Crouch, Jr. in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire".
~At the right temperature, both blood and vomit bounce on ice.
~One of the first jobs Russell Crowe ever had was the portrayal of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the crossdressing fabuluscious scientist, in the travelling Australian version of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".
~In South America, there is folklore of a mythical vampiric turkey that stalks the streets and houses of high mountain villages.
~There's a company out there that will take your cremated remains and process them so that they become part of an artificial reef that rebuilds our damaged ocean floors.
~Eating undercooked pork from the grocery store, thanks to the good ol' FDA, will no longer give you trichinosis.
~If you need an avacado to ripen quickly, put it in a paper bag for a few hours (overnight is best). The avacado "breathes" and it helps it to ripen rapidly.

Consider yourself better-prepared for Jeopardy!. Come, friends, let's away! *dives back into paperwork on desk*

Haiku Wednesday

The theme for this week's contest is "Time". As always, you can check out all the entries on Sparrow's site. My offerings this week are:

Infants have all the
time in the world; stockpiled in

heaps of coming days.

Spiraling away,

a delicate ribbon of

memory and time.

Watch, clock, sundial –

brothers who have no measure

for long, lonely nights.

“Sadly,” Mom says, “Time

relentlessly marches on –

right over my face.”

Sparrow posts the finalists on her blog on Thursdays, so go vote tomorrow! And remember, you don't have to vote for me - vote for your favorite. Regardless, it's for a good cause!

Needing a playing field

In the past few days a new person's been leaving relatively offensive comments on some of my friends' blogs. Not offensive like you'd think - not "EnLARge yOUR PeNI$ quICK" posts or anything like that - more like questioning beliefs and opinions stated in some posts. S/he and I were edging into what was sure to become a heated debate, but I suggested we stop posting on the blog comment sections of others and take our conversation to a forum. However I think the poster (A. Jones) is doing their best to preserve their anonymity, which I can understand, given the type of freaks that are out there on the internet. So, I need a good forum that we can verbally rough each other up in that will keep our personal information private. Something easy to navigate if at all possible as well. Anyone got a suggestion? I'll be googling it today to see what I can find. After all, as A. Jones pointed out in one of his/her scathing comments yesterday, I have quite the grasp of google utilization. Though I must point out, A. Jones, that my voluminous wealth of information on Portugal that I demonstrated yesterday came from Wikipedia, not Google... ha!

Grouchy Monday

Note to coworkers: Pick up your bag with the rolly wheels and carry it instead of pulling it around behind you like a yipyap dog. I know we work in a big ol' building with a big ol' desert of a parking lot and you have to walk a damn country mile sometimes to get from your car to your desk, but come ON people, it's not like you're walking across the Sahara here. Pick up your damn bag! You are NOT in an airport! You are NOT as important as you think you are. Trust me. There's nothing in that bag that's too heavy for you to carry for five minutes. So stop! PLEASE! Or I might have to run you over with my Honda.

That being said...

We had a good weekend for the most part, though Erin was sick all day yesterday. Jack came to visit and we had a great time - went out dancing Friday night, went to see the Golden Compass on Saturday (it was good!), had some sushi. He left yesterday afternoon. I spent a lot of the day yesterday taking care of Erin, which I didn't mind a bit. It nurtures my inner caregiver, I guess, to play nursemaid sometimes. Not that I'd want to do it forever, mind you. It's nice, too, because Erin is a very self-sufficient kind of girl, and it's not often I have the opportunity to take care of her. But I wouldn't trade her being well for me being able to take care of her... you know?

My blogging time is limited today because I'm busier than a one-armed paperhanger. The other person on my "team" is out today so I'm covering both of our desks. Hopefully I'll be able to get away for lunch. Corporate America sucks my brain out. I need to figure out a job that will pay me this much but let me do what I want and not have to sit at a desk all day. And, a pony... because if you're dreaming, you should really go ahead and include that pony. Saves future paperwork, right?

It's going to get up in the high 70's - low 80's today. Did I mention it's December 10th? But, there's no such thing as global warming, friends. That's just a bunch of hooey those bleeding-heart pinko commie liberals made up to fool good God-fearing American citizens like you into... into... wait, what are they fooling us into? Believing we should take care of the planet, reduce our toxic gas emissions, make the world a better place for future generations, uh, hmm... yeah... THOSE LIBERAL JERKS! DON'T THEY UNDERSTAND THAT MONEY IS THE BOTTOM LINE HERE?!

This moment of scathing sarcasm brought to you by... NoSleep! For a Monday morning presentation that won't be forgotten by your boss, try NoSleep. From the makers of HungryAsHell and AcidBurn!

Yeah. It's a grouchy Monday, kids. I can already see it coming.

Move it along, people

I keep checking the time, hoping that more than two minutes have passed. Today is dragging. It's probably got something to do with all the stuff I need to get taken care of before our weekend begins in earnest - a haircut, general house-type stuff that didn't get finished last night - and the fact that sometimes, my job makes me crazier than Charlie fucking Manson. And that's pretty damn crazy.

It's interesting the different types of job craziness there is out there. It seems like there's no end to the types of corporate insanity that plague so many office workers. I used to be afflicted with the "my boss is a micromanager, get the fuck away from my desk you crazy whore" madness. Now it's madness twofold: "stop dumping your shit on my desk, asshole, and do your own damn job" along with "why don't you actually MANAGE something, like your title suggests? I'm already getting walked on by other departments, do you HAVE to fluff me up and lay me in front of your office threshhold so I can be a permanent doormat for your foot-wiping shenanigans?" Of course, I could say something. Yeah, I could. There's really no reason that stands up to why I'm not saying anything, other than I like my job most days and I REALLY like getting paid, and it wouldn't do much good anyway... you know all the reasons, you've been here. You know what this is like.

SO, I'd say, going out and getting relatively intoxicated and causing a general ruckus this weekend definitely seems to be in order. There are a lot of little things adding up to big stress right now, and I'm looking forward to taking that coat of worry off for a while, and hanging it on a hook until Monday or so. Hopefully I'll be able to do that.

*looks at clock* Three minutes later... *sigh*

Smart Macros

By now I'm sure you're familiar with lolcats, the cat macros that butcher grammar and spelling and show cats (and birds and dogs and walruses) in varying anthropomorphic poses. For instance, you could have a picture of your cat with its paw on your computer's mouse, looking at the screen with a picture of an lolcat displayed, and it might say "Im on ur internetz, makin u laff".

I've found a lot of them that make me REALLY laugh - the ones that get me good are the ones that are kind of bizarre, but still hilarious. However I have found that I really enjoy what I like to call Smart Macros, which require a little more thought than your average lolcat picture. Macros like this one, regarding Yeats' poem "The Second Coming":



HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..... I love that poem.

Here's another one for you:



Just in case you're wondering what a palindrome is... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindrome

Smart Macros... make you think and laugh at the same time... what a concept!

Haiku Wednesday

The theme this week is "Winter". Here are my offerings for Sparrow's haiku contest:

Blanket all the green
with a creeping shawl of gray.
Warmth – a distant dream.

Hot chocolate and
blankets bunched around your legs;
fires crackle, snow falls.

Snow angels made in
the blue light of winter dusk…
steal a secret kiss.

Wake up, look outside…
joyous shouts ring through the house.
Snow day! Let’s go out!

You can vote for your favorite haiku starting tomorrow on Sparrow's blog. The voting will end Friday morning at 9 am. Remember, the winner gets to send a deluxe care package to the soldier of their choice. I don't care if you vote for mine or not... vote for your favorite!

What a Weekend

What a great weekend... although it really feels like I was just at work about fifteen minutes ago... I guess when you have a full weekend it's like that. The only real drawback to having a pleasantly eventful couple of days, I guess.

It really started Thursday, when Erin and I decided on a whim that we were going to go see the Roper Mountain christmas lights. They've outdone themselves this year... this is an annual event here in Greenville. The school district has a science center on a little mountain here on the southeast side of town... it has a planetarium, and a greenhouse, and an amphitheater, and some pioneer studies exhibits, and all kinds of stuff. In the month of December they shut down the educational part of it and put up all these Christmas lights in a huge display. It's amazing... this year they did something a little differently: up until this point, the lights have been a strictly drive-through kind of thing, where you stay in your car and enjoy Christmas music while you drive through and see all these displays... but this year, they have a section of the mountain cordoned off, called "Winter Wonderland", where you can park and walk through these paths with all these Christmas lights all around. Santa Claus has a little spot, where you can go and have your picture taken with him and get some hot chocolate. And they let you stay as long as you want and go around the mountain to see the lights as many times as you like. It was great.

Friday we started the evening with Vietnamese food with a couple of friends. We've found a great little Vietnamese restaurant here in town that has some of the best food EVER. I'm particularly fond of the deep fried spring rolls and stir-fry beef over noodles. YUM. After dinner, we went back to the house, sat around and talked for a while, and got relatively toasted. I introduced one of my friends to Sparks, the alcoholic energy drink. YAY! Then we headed out to the club and danced and drank and talked and shot pool and watched a drag show and made a ton of new friends. Stayed out until three or so, came home and crashed. I was only this much *holds fingers about a half inch apart* hungover the next morning. A glass of water, an ibuprofen and a shower later I was fine.

Then Saturday we met up with another friend and went horseback riding! A few posts ago I talked about empowering myself regardless of my body type and doing the adventurous things I really want to do. A friend read that entry, and suggested visiting a horse farm she new sometime soon. I jumped at the chance, and that's how she and Erin and I ended up on horses Saturday afternoon! We went on a trail ride, and it was really great. My horse was HUGE - his name was Goliath, and he definitely lived up to it - but he was so gentle, and I barely had to even use my reins at all, he knew the trail so well. The farm was out in the middle of nowhere, near Table Rock, and we went through these woods that were solemn and quiet and filled with sunshine. It was a lot of fun, and a REALLY great experience. We're going to try to make it a monthly thing, money allowing. Saturday evening we went to Los Amigos for dinner and then watched a movie before zonking out.

Yesterday we went up to NC and hung out with my cousin Andrew and had the BEST time. We laughed constantly and talked about music and movies and vegetarian cooking. He tried out a new recipe that he'd found for sweet potatoes - sweet potato and red onion salad - it was, ah, a little bizarre. It had a great flavor, but a really strange texture - with the orange sweet potatoes and the red onions together it was slimy but firm and sweet but savory and orange and purple and honestly it reminded me of some kind of dish that you'd find in the Star Trek universe. We had a great laugh over it though. The fruit salad he made was great - apples, bananas, pecans, raisins in cherry yogurt. YUM. I made him laugh REALLY hard at dinner, when between sweet potatoes and fruit salad he got up to get us dessert plates and I said, "Thanks, Dad!" Maybe it was a location joke (you know, you had to be there to really laugh at it), but man, we just couldn't stop laughing. I introduced him to one of our favorite bands, Murder by Death. He played his drums for us, a little, and introduced us to some really good jazz.

All in all, it was a GREAT weekend. I'm a little tired today, and I'm feeling like I might have caught a cold (sore throat and the sniffles), and we didn't do much that was productive, but I don't CARE. We had such a fabulous time... this is why we moved back here. To be near friends and family and spend time with them. I think I've had more fun in the past three months than I had the whole time I was in Indy. It's nice to get reminders like that sometimes - lets you know that you're still on track.

And we already have plans for this weekend too! YAY!!!