death and dying

My father died two weeks ago tomorrow. That in itself feels strange to type, and even more strange to read. I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality that I'm bound to wake up from if someone will just slap me a couple of times, but unfortunately, this is really happening...

this office is cursed.

If you missed it, the Bears beat the Packers on Sunday. I celebrated by sleeping through the second half, thanks to a couple of mysterious sleeping pills from 2005 that seemed like a good idea at the time, however I am lucky enough to have a lady who is aware that she shares me with the Bears, and she woke me up to watch them win. Thanks to my lady.

In other news, the new job is going well. It's not quite what I thought it would be, but it'll do for now. I'm hoping that in a couple of months it will turn into something more, and, well, permanent. As of now, I've gone from part-time Museum employee to part-time temp. And originally my temp position was supposed to be guaranteed for 6 months, however in writing, it ended up being 3 months. So I took a big risk, and it's getting bigger every day. Maybe I'm just getting too nervous, being too paranoid. Maybe I need to stop thinking about it too much and just shut up about it already. Done.

missing weeds!

I've been missing Weeds. Don't ask me how long, I don't know, that's why I've been missing it. The point is, all of this working and canoeing and ignoring television has led to me missing what used to be one of my favorite shows. And yet somehow, I don't feel empty and lonely like I thought I might if this day ever came. Which leads me into talking about the new house we're moving into:

After months of thinking about buying a house, we finally realized that we're not sure what we want to do, so in the meanwhile, we're going to rent instead. In a couple of weeks, we found a near-perfect place in the same neighborhood we've been looking to buy in, and, BONUS, also Lo's hood. And that, my friends, is what brings me right back to television. The new place has two cable outlets, one in the master bedroom, and one in the living room, HOWEVER in both rooms, the outlets are in completely useless places. Lo and my lady's solution is to move them (via Lo's boyfriend's handywork)to a different wall, however my solution is to not turn the cable on. Problem solved. If there's no t.v., we don't need the cable outlets to be near the television.

Unfortunately, my dreams of not paying for television were stamped out, and Lo's man friend is going to help me move the cable outlets. Crap.

single soon

It's going to happen. It's unavoidable I suppose. I'm going to start packing my stuff, which is really just a shit load of books, and looking for my own place (or a friend with a spare room). At least most of this stuff is hers and not mine, so I won't have to move too much.

I guess when someone keeps telling you that they don't want you, they mean it. And it's pathetic to stay where you're not wanted.

work stories

Things are changing at work. I'm getting a feux-motion (close relative to "pro-motion"), which is very exciting, except that it doesn't actually go into effect for another few weeks. Not few enough. Big point is, however, I no longer have to work with the general public. This could be the last time ever that I have a "retail" job, and I can't wait! So look out world, I'm crazy!

Also, the canoe is wonderful. I've been out on the water three times this week, and I already have plans to go canoe camping after the promotion happens and I finally get my weekends back. Ah yes, the weekend. The last time I slept in on a weekend was...5 months ago. In fact, that's the last time I slept in at all. I think somewhere in there I was sick once, but that's about it. I can't wait to spend the morning in bed talking about where to eat lunch (the answer: on the canoe).

doonesbury & africa

A three hour class on Africa can be good for the soul, but bad for the eyes. I'm about to close mine. If only we weren't reading out of the book for a lecture. It's already dark outside, which is usually the time of day that I contemplate eating something before bed time, but on this rare occasion that I go to class, I'm sitting up in an uncomfortable torture device, learning and blogging about Africa.

Kudos to all the other web-surfers in here!

tip-a-canoe

We are now the proud owners of a 17' We-no-nah canoe, two paddles, three flotation devices, and one bar that goes somewhere inside the canoe to help us paddle better. Anyway, we're paddlers!! First trip was across White Rock Lake with the Lo sitting in the middle passing us samiches and pudding, but the next trip will likely be down the Brazos or something interesting like that.

More typing about it later, with pictures. :-)

good morning morning

No, I'm not just waking up, but I thought I'd say good morning to the day anyway. Today feels like it's going to be a good day. All the bosses at work are out of town, I have a lunch date with two of the three amigos, and I'm guessing that Carmine's will not let me down.

Yay for calzones!

blog surfing

Is anyone else tired of seeing boobs and butts every time they try to find a new blog to read? Whenever I click "Next Blog" on Blogger sites, it's next to impossible not to come across some creepy porn "blog" promising me videos of Britney blowing and Jennifer jacking somebody off. If I wanted to see naked girls pretending to have orgasms, I'd use Google. Blogs are for words and thoughts and...well, not porn. Pornography sites are for porn.

Keep your porn off my blogs.

Speaking of blogs, my Bloglines is currently filled to the brim. I have so many posts to read, I'm not sure if it will ever happen. I know that I can automatically clear the right-wing, Republican blogs that I subscribe just to get an idea of what's going on behind enemy lines, but I don't want to miss anything in my National Geographic feeds, or for that matter, any of my feeds. Ooo, I could also clear the two community paper blogs I try (half-hearted) to keep up with. And I'm sure that I don't need to read all 152 posts from BlogHer, considering I never really read that one. Okay, now I'm down to about 150 posts to read. Maybe I'll just skim.

Also, is anyone watching The Two Coreys? The episode I have been waiting for all season is coming up on Sunday. Finally, after ignoring the show for the past couple of months, the two Coreys are going to come to blows. Over what, I don't care, I just want to see how they fight. If anyone feels the need to place bets over who cries first, I'm in. Let me know.

back to school, back to school

School is back. Currently I'm signed up for 12 hours of brow beating, but hopefully there will be at least one non-T.A. head of class the semester. Either way, taking night classes and working during the day is going to KILL me! So bring it on.

We've been looking at houses lately and may have found one that we'll seriously pursue. However, since 20% is the magic number (according to everyone), we have a long while before we'll have a down payment ready. So more than likely we have no chance of getting the house we're currently eyeballing. Why can't people just throw money at us?

the dog

Mine's sitting on the couch next to me, sleeping and running and sleeping and running, but someone else's dog managed to get his own t.v. show and t-shirt line. This is why I need to start a reality show about being a lazy college student. If there is a market out there for a family of bounty hunters, there has to be a market for me. I promise, I'm super interesting. Today, I've already done the dishes, e-mailed a few customers, gone to the bathroom (twice), and talked on the phone. That's entertainment!

But really, today is my first day off since what feels like the beginning of time, so if I was supposed to do something for you today, good luck getting it done. Call me tomorrow, the phone's off the hook.

how to be a great parent

I'm not a parent, nor do I plan to be in the near future, but I think that if I was a mommy, this feed would be on my bloglines:

Babble

who i'm voting for

this weekend

Will be fun. For incredibly nerdy reasons. First of all, tonight's dinner entree will be shrimp. Yum. Tomorrow night will be Black Bean Tortilla Pie. Double yum. And Sunday's will be bbq pork chops. So we're all set up for an amazing weekend of food. Also, Amy's mom is coming in, which is always fun because she gets my jokes, and actually thinks a couple of them are funny, so I'll have someone to encourage my misbehaving.

That's all really. Just wanted to share about my upcoming fun!

amazing!

This will be my third post in just over twenty-four hours.

And I am STILL bored! We're up at my lady's work right now, wasting the night away. I have no idea what made me think that tagging along would be a good idea, but at the time, it seemed to beat sleeping. I was wrong.

I found this site called "Eco-Libris", where I can "Balance out my books and plant a tree." For every book that I own, I'm supposed to send them a dollar, and they will use those funds towards planting a tree. What a novel idea! I even get a cute little sticker, made from recycled paper, to attach to my book jackets, and make me feel better about myself. I wonder if it works...Lately I find myself reading about living greener and saving what's left, so maybe I should turn some of these lessons learned into lessons practiced.

First lesson to heed: recycle. Even though my neighborhood does not have recycling bins, I could at least recycle my paper, plastic, and glass. I just need bins to hold everything in. I'm sure I can buy a couple of forty dollar buckets at my local Container Store.

right now

I should be cleaning. I should be sleeping. I should be making something. But I'm not. I'm blogging. And, to warn you ahead of time, this blog is likely to fall under the catergory of "Nothingness". With Beirut's "Elephant Gun" in the background, my dog under my feet, and Cinammon Toast Crunch in my belly, life is good. There's something about brass horns that just make everything better. Oh, and the singing isn't so bad either.

I spent tonight at work doing nothing much. It's really kind of hard to get much at all done in four hours, with all the questions and concerns of everyone around me. I should carry a sign that says "I don't know" with me everywhere I go. Even if it doesn't cause people to look elsewhere for assisstance, it would at least make me feel better. Perhaps I would even giggle as I pulled it out of my bag. And, of course, it would have to be mounted on foam board. And printed with a laser printer, so as not to smudge too much, in the event that I'm forced to pull it out in the middle of a tsunami, or any other event that produces falling water.

This is how bored I am right now. I'm inventing scenarios in which it would be socially acceptable for me to blatantly ignore someone by shoving a sign in their face. I really don't have a problem helping people, I just wish that I worked in an environment where I didn't HAVE to help people if I didn't have time at the moment.

Which would be all the moments.

who are these people??

These ones that blog every day? How is that possible?? I'm sitting here with Amy, and as we watch another bad Kevin Bacon movie on television, I can't help but pick up the laptop. But my first instinct is not to type up an exaggerated thought for the day.

Today we rearranged the living room, learned about a pregnancy, and decided we're too young to be mommies. A lot went on today. I can hardly remember if I went to work or not, but then I remember something that my boss did, and it all comes rushing back.

Oh, Kevin Bacon, why didn't you stop with Footloose?

i hate my job

I hate my job, I hate my job, I ate my job, I ate my job...

I didn't eat my job, but it's actually starting to sound rather practical. My boss is crazy. Crazy. Freaking crazy, a lunatic. And she's now cutting my hours because I complained to HR about something she tried to do, something that they said was "shady". So what now? The way I see it, I have three option: #1, I can quit, which is what she wants, so that's not going to happen. #2, I can go to HR about her cutting my hours, but I have no idea if I could prove that she's doing it out of malice. Or, my favorite, #3, I could go to the manager of the other job I put my application in for and tell them that I want to interview as soon as possible. I know that I'm in the running for the promotion, and boy do I want it. Not just because I need to get further from CRAZY, but because this other job is something I was made for, something that was made for me. I'm perfect for it.

Dear Blog Gods, please let someone who matters read this and fire my boss. She is truly touched in the head. Somebody save me!

washing and drying

We FINALLY got a washer and dryer, and now, the world is a different place entirely. Clothes are clean, sheets are smooth, and I am the envy of all my friends. That last one isn't true, but I love the new washer and dryer.

the wonders of the wii

Here is what I find to be wonderful about the Wii:

#1
The Wii has returned my Gamecube to me. Though we have been parted for the past 3 years, it is back in my possession again. I have re-learned how to play Zelda (sort of), and Amy and I are back to playing Madden football. Though we're both terrible and probably couldn't even begin to compete with an actual "gamer", it's been fun. If only we could both remember how to play SSX Tricky...Last night's first return run was awful.

#2
Boring visits to my parents house have been made less so with bowling challenges. Again, nothing I'm good at, but it's better than cable television.

#3
Tennis. Something I'm also terrible at, but it is way fun. It's like playing ping pong without the table.

That's all I have to say about the Wii. Mostly I'm excited because we have the Gamecube again. There you have it.

how to work

Not that anyone asked, but here's my two cents.

#1:
Don't expect anything. Expect everything. As much as you don't want it to, it is likely to happen, whatever "it" is. Whether you're sure that your boss won't pull out her psycho card in the middle of a work day or not, just remember that these people are not your friends. They are not your family. You do not know them. They still live with their parents post-grad school, they still don't know the difference between "our" and "are", and they still haven't figured out that pointing out their bad boob job is no way to get a date.

#2:
Keep your head up, but still low enough that no one will notice. Don't let them make you quit. Make them quit. Do everything with a smile, and then share your torture tactics with you coworkers over a Lean Cuisine.

#3:
You will probably never be paid what you're worth, but the insurance makes it okay. Right.

Work's not going well, if anyone is wondering. I'm holding out for a promotion or a transfer, but this one is wearing me thin. Please, learn how to spell, learn how to manage, and learn how to be a human being. Don't be such a boob.

god and evolution

I found an interesting post at shelleytherepublican.com today:

That is the lucky blessing of citizens of the USA. It is clear that there has been devine intervention in that case. God gave the Godly of Old England an empty land to populate and spread the Good Word to the brown and yellow natives that lived there ignorant of Original Sin, God’s covenant with Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, Israel, Moses, et cetera and the jews generally, the troubled history of that race to establish a workable state and at the same time stay true to the what their jealous god told them what to do, what with golden cows, kings, slatternly women, and what not, and then that Jesus was foreseen, that a preacher came to announce His arrival and baptise Him, and God impregated a working class woman, and her husband adopted him and taught him his honourble trade (which makes we question whether the neuclear family is the basic building block of humanity) and Jesus followed his father’s trade, and then preached the Good News for a brief ministry, and then was subject to interdiction by the Roman State and the local religious bigwigs, and was cruxified. He died for us to conquer Original Sin, so that we can choose whether we go to Hell or be saved on the Judgement Day before Jesus Himself if we believed in God his father who is the creator and sustainer of all.

But when I do a search for “jesus and evolution” at biblegateway.com the result is:
“Sorry. No results found for “jesus and evolution” in Keyword Search.”
Yeah right! Didn’t Jesus say love thy neighbour? But didn’t Darwin say “survival of the fittest”? They don’t fit together. If you are a liberal christian who wants to believe in God and Evolution at the same time, then do you think God can contradict himself? The Bible makes it quite clear that God is a man by the way, and if he wasn’t, how would he have been able to make love to the Blessed Mary?

Believe in the Bible, or you will be damned for eternity.

Sometimes crazy people scare me. Maybe this person is not crazy all the time, but it's interesting to me that the same people that say "Love thy neighbor" are also threatenting the rest of us with eternal damnation.

fire!!

As Amy and I were driving to her work today, we saw our first downtown fire. We've lived here for almost four years and had yet to see anything very exciting happening down here, but today was the day! Someone's welding tanks ignited and caused a HUGE fire over on Industrial. I'm watching the news about it right now, and it looks like it was a gigantic fire. When we drove over 30 earlier, we actually saw one of the explosions, and the flames were OVER the highway...Okay, they just said two people have been taken to Parkland in serious condition, so hopefully they're okay.

I'll admit, when we first saw this fire, I think we were both just a little afraid that it was some sort of attack...luckily it's just an accident.

one documentary to watch...

And one that I could definitely have done without. First, the better of the two:

Operation: Dreamland
A brief look at a few soldiers the 505th battalion of the 82nd airborne in Falluja before the final seige in 2004. This was an excellent documentary, much different from Michael Moore's "9/11" representation of soldiers in Iraq. There were a few men (and yes, all the soldiers were men) that wanted to shoot and kill and shoot and kill, but there were also explanations as to why they seemed so bloodthirsty, and the cameras kept rolling when they discussed their thoughts with other soldiers. This reinforces how scary it is for everyone over there, and it was refreshing to hear American military members express doubts about their task overseas. A must see.

The second documentary is not even worth giving a synopsis, but let me attempt a warning: Don't watch Paper Clips. It's as simple as that. I wrongly assumed that this would be an interesting look into the non-tolerance of rural areas towards the Jewish community, and instead it was just an overview of the Holocaust. So, if you've already taken a history class, at any point in your life, you don't need to watch this.

Yay for no work days, and yay for Blockbuster online rentals!

Work

Working on the weekends has become more than tedious. Every Friday night, while the rest of this city settles in for a restful weekend, I dread the next morning. It's not that I don't like my job, because I do, I just wish it didn't have to be EVERY SINGLE weekend!! Ah well, I signed up for it, it's my own fault. All I can do at this point is keep my fingers crossed for a promotion. And believe me, they're all crossed.

Amy and I went to Half Price Books and bought a "Home Buying for Dummies" book this morning. We're hoping to purchase our first house in the next year or so, and I have to admit, I'm incredibly excited. Life has been boring lately, and it should be fun to have a new goal. Although perhaps finishing school and scoring an amazing job should be enough to satisfy, but they're not. I have about 30 hours left to finish in my degree, and that's yet another thing I can't wait for. I strongly dislike school, and I'm ready for all my hard work to actually go towards an end product, rather than a grade book.

It's been a while since I updated, but suprisingly this is all I have to write. Maybe tomorrow I'll post pictures of my shoot with Val tonight.

good news

So there was an opportunity a couple of months back for my lady friend and I to embark on a risky but supposedly lucrative business journey, one which we considered and then turned down due to the inescapable amount of sleaziness coming from the propositioning lady of the job. We turned the job down after doing a couple of weeks of work on it, but she was very upset with us the whole time, for reasons that were, for the most part, her own doing, so it didn't seem to us that we needed to be involved anyway.

Well...come to find out, she has disappeared now, with who knows how much money and who knows how much debt to other people. She owes us some, but we didn't get too much into it, and really only for work we did, so we're not really worried about it. However, we do know someone that got VERY into it, even though we told them they probably shouldn't, and that the propositioning lady was a seemingly dishonest person; some might even have called her a "scam artist".

So this just goes to show, when it tickles your tummy (and not in the good way), don't let some smooth talking "New Orleans victim" talk you into something that sounds too good to be true, because it is.

Yay for us being smart!

boring boring boring

Long time no post.

I've been up since 6:30 this morning. Too early. People talking puts me to sleep, even though I've had enough caffeine to keep an elephant awake.

Okay, I exaggerate. But the point it, this woman is boring. This subject is boring.

I have "Piano for Toddlers" later today. I sure am looking forward to that.

For whatever reason there is a lot of negativity coming out today. I think it's because I've been up so long and my jeans are still a little damp from being washed. Maybe I'm a little washed.