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 |  Now my story begins in nineteen-dickety-two... |
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2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me, Threatening the life it belongs to And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud And I know that you'll use them, however you want to -Breathe(2AM), Anna Nalick ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** For Daddy, the real world gets fainter and fainter every day. -Homer Simpson Homer, Please Don't Hammer 'Em ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **
If we shadows have offended,/Think but this, and all is mended,/That you have but slumber'd here/While these visions did appear./And this weak and idle theme,/No more yielding but a dream... -William Shakespeare, A Midsummer's Night Dream |
| Currently, I'm in the bedroom as the carpet cleaner sucks up the water. Benn had to put a fire under their butts to get a response. It turns out that the vacant townhouse next to us had a pipe freeze and it exploded. The ceiling over there, collapsed. The sudden 60 degree weather probably didn't help. We'll be plummeting back into the 30's tonight. Anyway, the maintenance came by and after looking at the vacant townhouse said he probably should have come over last night. He then said they would call the carpet cleaner to soak up the water in our apartment. I went to the grocery while Benn waited here and he still hadn't heard from them. He's supposed to be a work, but didn't want to go in until this was taken care of. So when I got back Benn called the office and for whatever reason, they were taking their damn sweet time, possibly waiting until Monday to call the carpet people. The hilarious thing is that someone was supposed to move in to the other townhouse on Wednesday. Shouldn't sudden water pouring into one's apartment be cause for a little faster of a response? Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the apartment complex people should have been more concerned about the whole thing. I guess I shouldn't complain to much as Benn didn't have to persuade them very hard to get them to call the carpet cleaner. I've never really had a problem with the people who own this place, but this time they seem to have been a little lax. How does mysterious water not constitute more concern? I suppose they could have thought we were exaggerating or we had spilled something, but we've never bothered them about piddly ass stuff before. It didn't help that I didn't get to sleep until after 4AM last night. And I have to go back to work tomorrow. A good chunk of my time today is going to be putting the living room back in order. This isn't how I wanted to spend my day off... *sigh* I shouldn't be bitching so much. It could have been worse. Others have it worse. But damn, it's still annoying as hell. |
2008 has decided it can't just leave without being a bigger pain in the ass. I discovered tonight, that something in the townhouse is leaking. It has left an inch of water in the closet and in the living room there's a strip of carpet that has water underneath it. It only comes up when there is weight applied to it. We found the emergency number for the apartment complex and the maintenance guy said that it should be fine until he looks at it.  The wall nearest the water issue, isn't supposed to have water pipes in it and he says it's not the furnace. The thing that concerns me, is that I know the problem has occurred rather suddenly. I was just in the closet earlier today while I was taking down the tree. There was no water at that time. The spot that first brought this to my attention had grown. We're keeping an eye on it and if it gets worse the maintenance guy will come over. Otherwise, he'll just be here tomorrow morning. I can't imagine this being resolved without a bigger annoyance whether that be some sort of machine to take care of the excess water or minor construction to take care of the leak. I don't think I've been happier to see a year go. And that includes 1999. I didn't think the world was going to come crashing down around my ankles, but: 1. I was concerned a lot of people would freak out anyway and 2. I was tired about hearing all the doomsday shit. Perhaps it's too easy to blame a year, but the evidence just keeps stacking up... |
| Wow, I started a blog entry about my hair and I started to get bored with it. So I deleted it and decided to try again. I think I'll just say, I figured out how to shower at night and still have decent hair the next day. At least I hope the same trick works again tomorrow, because I really would prefer to shower at night. For those interested, Mat finally moved in on Saturday. He mentioned to Benn that he doesn't like roommates, so I'm hoping that means he won't become lax on finding a place. Not that's it been a problem so far, but one extra person does cause things like electric bills to go up. Even with everyone paying their own share, I'd still like to keep costs down if at all possible. Craig was sick yesterday. I really hope I don't catch it. He was vomiting. A lot. So I'm told anyway. Tomorrow my sister will be picking me up and taking me with her to our parents. I hope to stop and get Benn's present on the way. Benn has to work so he'll be coming to my parents after he gets off at midnight or just wait until Christmas morning to come. The weather by then should be fine. Right now, it's as slick as snot. Or so I'm told. I had a pizza delivered to the library, so I wouldn't know first hand.  It was from a local place nearby campus, and their pizza is very, very tasty. They just don't deliver off campus so I rarely get it. I swear, the best pizza in this town you have to go out and get yourself. It's like they know they're so good that you'll get off your lazy ass to get it... Damn them... Sitting all smug in their warm pizza parlors... I just finished Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. It's a good read and the way the magic system is set up is very interesting. I thought so anyway. I plan to start Sanderson's other book called Mistborn. That is the book that Robert Jordan's widow read that convinced her to ask Sanderson to finish the Wheel of Time series. Just from reading Elantris, I can see where it might be a good match. Elantris was his first published novel, and I can see where he made some beginning mistakes that we often catch while reviewing others. In this case, most of it was blatant telling, but not enough to detract from the overall story. I actually caught some editing mistakes. Twice instead of using the word thought, as was proper, though was used instead. Yeah, as much as I'm enjoying reading still, I can't totally silence the inner critic that has developed inside of me. Seriously, I don't know if I would ever have been able to analyze a published work to see how it was different from my writing on my own. Maybe I would have given time, but coming to this site and finding the review forums certainly made it happen faster. I think I've blathered enough for today. Hope everyone has a nice holiday! |
| This is the worst time of the year for the library. In the being bored out of my mind, all time stops sort of way. Even summer break isn't quite this slow and dull. In the future, I may start taking vacation from when the semester ends until New Year's. Or at least until New Year's week. Of course, that's not an easy time to get vacation approved as others usually want it off. I think in most people's cases, they actually have plans. My plans would just be avoiding this dull as dirt week. And tomorrow is the last day before my holiday day's off. I just want to go home. I'd be looking forward to my time off, but once again, due to family gatherings and such, I really only have a standard weekend off. Still, should be better than being here, where no one is using the library. I do stats for our area, and no one has come into use the computers for a least a couple of hours. We may get one person an hour who wants to check out DVDs. Blah. Admittedly, I've gotten some revising and such done. It doesn't help I'm in a strange mood lately. I don't know if it's depression or just standard I hate winter thing. Or something else. Anyway, I don't want to think about it much at the moment, but I can't think of anything else to babble about at the moment. So, I guess I'll just poke about the website for awhile.  |
| We didn't have a huge ice storm. I'm not even sure we got what they said we would. By the time I woke up, the world was just wet and cold. Today we got some sunshine, but I didn't have much of a chance to soak in the rays as I have to work, but it was nice to see it. If all goes well, we'll go Christmas shopping tonight. Yeah, we kept pushing it back for various reasons. In some ways, I'm more in the Christmas spirit this year and in other ways, I'm feeling very Scroogey. Last night, I was tempted just to go to Wal-Mart and buy gift cards for everyone and be done with it. The only reason it would be Wal-Mart is because we drew a name in the gift exchange where the only thing on the list was a Wal-Mart gift card. What really ticks me off about that the list, is that it's for the daughter of the woman that my cousin is dating. We did the drawing at Thanksgiving and she didn't even bring her children, yet they get to be in the exchange. I don't even think we were introduced to her. I have no attachment to this person and given my cousins' (The apostrophe is not misplaced. I'm including all my cousins in this statement... on Dad's side anyway.) track record with women, they may have broken up by now. The cousin in question keeps making statements about not getting married, so if I would have to guess, this maybe my aunt's way of making the woman feel involved and encourage her to hang around. *sigh* There should be some rule like you have to be dating for so long to be included in the gift exchange. I know in July they weren't dating. Maybe I'm being snobbish, but I like to know the person I'm buying a gift for... unless it's a charity thing, and I don't think this counts. Hm... didn't mean to go there. Benn's parents came down yesterday to visit us for Christmas. His mom knitted these fingerless gloves for us. They're very nice. We also got a milkshake machine from his grandparents. I think I'm done for now. |
| We have an ice storm warning that begins at 7PM, EST. Abdalla is under the impression that the ice will start right when it turns 7. Looking at the detail projection, it doesn't look like it should start until midnight. Which is right when Benn gets off work and will be picking me up. But predicating the weather has yet to become a exact science. As always, I hope it's not remotely bad as they predict. I really hope it's nothing like the ice storm we had a few years ago. After the city's electricity was restored, we were assured that the city had taken measures to ensure it wouldn't be that bad again. The weird thing was, was that the roads were perfectly fine for the most part. It's just that all the ice on the power lines and transformers caused us to be without electricity. Some people were out for about a week. Fortunately we had ours back on in a couple of days, but those were a weird couple of days. I think Craig was living with us back then and we all ended up sleeping in the living room in an effort to stay warm. Both cats slept tight against me. In winter, it gets dark earlier so we didn't have much daylight to do anything. Once it got dark, sleeping just became the best option. We had candles and such, but even still that restricts some of the activities you can do. Before Benn left for work today, he said he might talk to his boss about taking a vacation today tomorrow to prepare for his parents visit on Saturday. I told him it would also be a good time to get some shopping done. Not only are his parents coming down on Saturday, but his work is having their Christmas shindig and he feels he should show up for a few minutes. But if the town ends up under a blanket of ice with no power, we may not be able to do much of anything. Including getting on the internet. So, if I disappear for a couple of days, that's probably why. I think that's all I have for now. I keep getting interrupted... |
| From time to time, I find blog entries that either complain about people not reading them or people complaining about the complainers or people commenting on the decline of the blogging community. (Man, I really hate the word blog... anyway...) I'll admit, I'm often disappointed at not getting responses from entries I felt should elicit some sort of comment. Especially the longer ones. But then again the longer ones tend to be rambling so I understand if no one even finishes reading the entry and just moves on. I often end up surprised at the entries that get the most comments. I also don't keep a blog to write anything really meaningful. I took a class on personal essays in college and I always struggled with it. It seems like I could never say what I wanted to say. In my head, it all sounds wonderful, but when it finally comes out, I think it really sucks. Fiction I have no problem with writing things down the way I want, but non-fiction, I just don't have the spark. Yet, I do attempt from time to time write something either humorous or meaningful in this blog. Anyway, the advice I often see to those who complain about lack of views or comments, is that they should comment on others blogs. One of these people offering the advice, I know I've commented at least twice in his blog, but I've never gotten a response from him. It's quite possible that he visited my blog after reading my comments and didn't think it was worth the time. Which is quite possible. I'm not sure I really have a point here. I just had some things to say about blogging I wished to put down. If a blog is truly an online journal, then writing about your day to day activities make sense. In my handwritten journals, that's all I wrote about so why wouldn't I continue that here? Obviously there is some censoring with an online journal. After all there are details about my life that the public just doesn't need to know or would want to know. I always kept my handwritten fiction separate from my journal. I know some people don't do that. Some people may even call my fiction writing notebooks journals. To me, a journal is a chronicle of day to day events and it should be separate from fiction writing. Now there may be some gray areas. After all, I did write a lot of poetry when I was younger and you can see bits and pieces all over my old notebooks. I want to get to know more people here on WDC, but my shyness does carry over to the internet as well. There are some people, I read their blogs and go, "I want to be this person's friend". One such person, I've left comments from time to time in her blog, but she never responds. I don't hold that against people. I just think they see me as a brainless wonder and if you just compared our blogs that maybe a fair assessment. So, I'm not sure I said anything really meaningful here. I just had some random thoughts about blogging for awhile now and thought I'd share. I think I started this blog in June, and I'm quite happy with the small group I have gotten to know since then.  |
| So I did move the tree skirt back and Raish has tampered with it already. It's still under the tree, though, or at least it was when I left for work. I guess I should be more concerned about the cats getting into the trash like they've attempted to the past two days. We got fried chicken the other night and the cats go nuts when we eat it. Rarely do we give them any of it, but they stalk us like crazy when we have it. Then once we throw away the bones, they'll get into the trash to get to them given the opportunity. Cats love the chicken. It's going to be another long day at work. I had to take my lunch early because I had to get Benn to work. I'm not even half way through the day yet. I don't know why everything conspires to make Sunday the worst day of the week. If Dad's plan works the way he wants it, we'll be getting my sister or husband's car around March. If that works out, it will make days like today work much better. Normally, Craig is willing to take Benn in or pick me up on Sunday, but we didn't have a chance to make arrangements. Craig is working at the toy store and this time of year she is a harsh mistress. Not to mention that the toy store can't seem to make a schedule for more than one week at a time. So that all worked against us. I think I decided what I'm doing for work gifts this year. I think I'm going to buy mugs and fill them with the Good Eats hot chocolate mix. I still don't know what to do for my family. I try to get some sort of idea for everyone so that when I go shopping I can make it as quick as possible. We were a little better off last year at this time and I was able to get Mom, Grandma and my sister jewelry. It wasn't expensive jewelry but it was nicer than the plastic stuff you buy for five bucks. I was thinking of doing something quirky, like dressed up rubber duckies or a copy of A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All. Or finding suitable things at Hot Topic... Mom really liked a necklace I got there once. *shrug* I think it would be hilarious to get them all something from there that they would like and wear. Even if it was just a necklace or something like that. For years now, I've considered getting everyone books, but I'm not sure what to get. I refuse to get the Chicken Soup books my sister seems to like. Not to mention I have no idea which ones she has. I would have to do some research to see what's out there that they might enjoy, because none of them are going to like the stuff I read. I almost put Twilight on my list for the extended family exchange, but I was afraid I would end up with the movie cover edition. If my cousin's wife got my name again, she'd probably end up getting me some other book called Twilight. She can never seem to stick to the lists. I wanted the Vanilla stuff from Bath and Body Works last year, and she just gets me some vanilla scented stuff from Victoria Secrets. She did the same thing with my sister because one of her kids drew her name. At least the scent I put down can be found anywhere. My sister ended up with something called Romantic Garden(or something like that) from Victoria Secrets. What the hell is that? At least the vanilla from there smells good, but there are number of brands out there where their scents suck. That's why I never stray from the list I'm given. There's a damn good reason people get specific about them. Gr. I always put down different things so I can have a little bit of a surprise. Benn's mom and dad are coming down next Saturday for Christmas. Last year they did the same thing too, but weren't able to come down until January or February. Instead of having everyone come to their house like they used to, they're visiting each of their children's families individually. I'm impressed we got scheduled in before Christmas. Have I mentioned Benn has a huge family? I think I have near thirty nieces and nephews. This is one reason we have no children yet. Then I have to find time to go do the shopping. One of these years, I'm going to start early enough that I can order stuff online. I hate shopping by the way. My husband hates going more than I do, and I have to remind him it could be worse. I could have ended up like my mother and sister. My stars, they take forever to shop. I get it. When I take my time, I find some really good deals or an item I wouldn't have noticed had I not taken the time to look, but still, Sephina hate. Then my husband. I never know what to get him. Me, the one person that should know him better than anyone, and I have no clue as to what I should get him. Maybe that's not entirely true, but it's not as easy deciding for him as it for others. I've told him I don't expect a present from him. I really don't. But he saves money throughout the year and gets me something. Last week, he got me a iTouch iPod, to replace my broken iPod and he ordered me a new tea maker online. (The rebate check we got from our 2004 tax return helped. Because of the name and social security number issue we never got it four years ago.) The thing is when either one of us want something we go get it if we have the money. So that's one reason it's hard for me to think of something to get him. Well, maybe I should stop blogging and start making some decisions seeing as how I only have about ten days left before Christmas... |
| I don't know why I didn't think to post the two images yesterday directly into the blog entry instead of posting the links to them. I think I was so happy to finally have a place to edit the photos, I wasn't thinking straight. Anyway, here are the two hats I got from Gen Con and a cute picture of Raish. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** The picture of Raish is right after I put up the tree. He kept moving the tree skirt to make a bed for him to sleep on. Eventually, he took it completely from beneath the tree and hasn't touched it since. I have yet to put it back under the tree. Mostly because I'm certain he'll just move it again... I think I'll put it back today, though and see what happens. |
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