The holidays came and went too fast. This year has flown by. Tomorrow is New Years Eve and I am headed to Iowa again. I'm in the middle of my long-awaited vacation and loving it. Whoever came up with this ridiculous idea of being responsible and holding a job was indeed out of his/her mind. I would much rather spend my days cleaning/housekeeping/crafting at home with my darlings (the cats).
I decided to write this blog because tonight I found out some horrible news...the website which homed my first ever blog/online journal is now gone. They had a major system failure and the website is no more. I felt a twinge of sadness when I read this news because that journal was with me through some of my most insane years (aka high school). Not that I want to remember those years...Anyway, RIP journalspace.
I guess this isn't much of an update. I kept thinking about writing posts here and there, but never got to them. Also have lots of holiday pictures, but haven't posted any of those either. Too much to do and not enough time, I guess.
If you have not had the pleasure of viewing this movie in your lifetime, you should try to watch it soon! It is a great mockumentary of folk music. The superb cast list along with hilarious music and an entertaining story makes this movie a must-see! Highly recommended by yours truly.
I don't have to work today! Hooray! Thursday I went in at 2pm and worked until 7pm. Friday I went in at 7am and worked until a little after 5pm. I brought about three orders home with me to work on this weekend, otherwise I'm caught up. Pretty crazy, right? I'm glad because working today would have been extremely crappy. I may end up bringing some things home with me next week just to be sure that I am ahead of schedule when we come back from Thanksgiving because that first week back I have Thursday off (yay vacation time).
Today I have several things I want to get done: get my hair cut, dye my hair, go Christmas shopping, and start cleaning. Tomorrow I want to finish cleaning and relax. At some point I also need to do laundry and get some groceries.
I have some pictures from the Packers game I went to last Sunday, and I will post them soon but for now I'm too lazy. I do, however, have a link that I will make available: CLICK HERE!
That is all.
OH, by the way, I have been having these crazy dreams about aliens lately!! It usually happens when I fall asleep with instrumental David Bowie playing in the background. Weird? Yes.
This has been one WEIRD week!! Tuesday morning I got to work, and the computer system was down. It's now Thursday morning and it is STILL down. I haven't been physically at work for the last couple of days. I have been trying to do as much work as I can (which is VERY limited because I don't have any logos and am missing some fonts on my home computer) and otherwise sitting by my phone waiting for them to call me. Well, they still haven't called with the *good* news, and I'm getting worried. I've already been asked to work early and late today and tomorrow and also on Saturday because of this whole fiasco, but that really isn't very fair since I have been doing nothing enjoyable for fear of being called into work immediately once I start something. I did, however, run into Madison for a couple of hours yesterday to eat lunch and spend some time with Ian's mom, sister, and nephew. That was fun. I am not really complaining because I understand work hasn't been done these last couple of days and we need to get back up to pace with everything, but then again I really don't want to work late tonight and tomorrow. Saturday I am really only going to be able to work a couple of hours in the morning. I still need to go grocery shopping this week and I will need sometime this weekend to get my chores done. This was the weekend I was planning on getting a majority of my Christmas shopping done. Will I even have time for that? Ughhhh what a mess. I don't even want to THINK about the big "what if" concerning whether or not any of our files will still be accessible once the system is fixed. All of this the week before Thanksgiving and during the busiest time of the year. WHAT A WEEK. I am freaking out because I was on pace to be ahead basically now through Christmas (more or less depending on what was to be dumped on me between now and then) and now I am afraid of how behind I might be.
I can't think about that right now though because it is stressing me out. I keep thinking that I should get my grocery shopping done or get some cleaning done, but I don't want to get everything out just to be called into work. I also can't really cook anything or do anything that involves getting a bunch of stuff out. Yesterday I tried crocheting for a bit, but I am not sure I can concentrate on that right now. I might try drawing? I have been trying to rekindle that talent and remember how to draw. I haven't really drawn anything in at least a couple of years and that makes me sad.
I guess I should get back to....waiting. I really hate this. :(
Things are going well. Last Tuesday, for the first time, I voted for president. And I actually voted for who I thought was the best candidate which made me feel spectacular. I really wish Ralph Nader would have won, but I feel good that I got to support him with my vote. I guess things could be a lot worse.....such as if McCain won....but I don't know, Obama has to be better than Bush. I am not certain about what these next four years will bring, but I'm hopeful.
Last weekend, we had a big family shopping outting. 11 of my aunts and cousins and my grandma and myself roamed around Madison, shopping to our hearts' desires. I had lots of fun and wish I could do things like that more often!
Magick is doing very well. She fits right in. Her and Spirit have become good friends. They cuddle and clean each other and play and have fun. I love them both very much and they are so darn cute.
Work isn't even too bad lately. Not that it's become less busy, but I've been more relaxed for some reason. I've been working really hard while I'm there, and then leaving everything there instead of bringing stress and anxiety home with me. I don't know how long this will last, but it's nice right now. I also have several vacation days coming up in December. And did I mention holidays? That's right...I'm excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Somehow, Ian and I managed to get our hands on Packers tickets for this weekend against the Bears. His aunt had them and couldn't go, so she sold them to us for a very reasonable price. I'm looking forward to that day! Actually, I'm looking forward to that whole weekend. Friday=relax, Saturday=relax, Sunday=Packers game. Can't wait.
Okay, I am rambling on because it's late and I need sleep. My cats are slowly making their way towards bed so hopefully we can all three go to sleep at the same time tonight. :)
Friday was Halloween! Work was great that day! First of all, it was treat day. We also ate lunch at a sushi place! It was AMAZING. There were five of us and it really was a fun time. That afternoon, the power went out at about 3:30. We all left at 4:00 because it wouldn't come back on. It was a nice Halloween surprise. :) That evening, we got ready and headed to Portage to go trick-or-treating with Ian's nephews.
Kaeden was a little cow!
And Kail was Superman! We met up at Ian's aunt & uncle's house. We walked around for awhile as a group, and then Ian's sisters, brother-in-law, and baby nephew went back to the house. Kail and Ian were SPRINTING from house to house trying to get as much candy as possible in the last 45 minutes of trick-or-treating. If you scroll back up to the top picture in this post, you can see that I was not wearing appropriate shoes to be sprinting around town. Next year I will have to consider this. Ian wants to dress up as Hunter S. Thompson next year for Halloween and go trick-or-treating again. I don't know what I will dress up as. After trick-or-treating, we drove to Ian's mom's house and watched Sweeney Todd and ate pizza. It was definately a fun night.
On Saturday, we woke up and drove back to Portage to the animal shelter. We adopted the first kitten we saw because she was so darling and sweet. She crawled under my chin and started purring really loudly and I knew she was the one. We named her Magick because she's black and orange and mysterious. She spent most of her first day here hiding under things and behind the couch and under the bed. Slowly, she has begun the process of "opening up". Spirit was very mad at us when we brought Magick home. She's been reluctantly forgiving us, though. Today, they have been playing with each other (only when we are "not looking" of course) and the kitten is not hiding as much. She's running around the apartment and actually being a little naughty. I don't blame her though because she IS a kitten and seems to be adjusting to her body and claws (I am assuming she just recently had a growth spurt). She's only six months old and we are not really sure of her background. She apparently likes to eat houseplants, claw the furniture, and leap onto lamps causing them to crash to the ground. I don't want to discipline her too much because she is just getting settled in, but I am going to have to soon otherwise the apartment will be totally destroyed.
The two cats are like my children. I just want to sit at home and play with them every second. Too bad it's only Monday and I have a very busy week ahead of me. :(
I had a great weekend. We left Saturday morning and headed straight to the Milwaukee Museum. We wandered for most of the day, and hit the planetarium before we left for a showing of "Spooky Skies". We didn't know what it was going to be, and it ended up being a show meant for little kids. Very hilarious. I kind of wish we would have gone to Titanic at the imax instead, but oh well. Then we headed to Waukesha to check into our hotel room. The outside of the hotel was being...how shall I say this...refurbished? Sure. The hotel was really crappy because of that, but our room was nice. I treated us to a jacuzzi suite, so needless to say I spent the night soaking. It was great. We ate at some local bar and grill type place. It was good. I think we fell asleep before 9pm.
Sunday we woke up, ate some breakfast, and got out of there. We hit a few stores before we left town and I bought a couple of things. We drove to Elgin and checked into our hotel there at about 3pm. It was VERY nice! It was a brand new hotel surrounded by restaurants. We ate at this place called "Sammie's" and it basically sold ballpark food and so much more. But it was really good. We took our time getting ready and Ian's friend, Adam, and his girlfriend picked us up at around 6:45 and we headed towards Chicago. Unfortunately, there was a lot of traffic and we made it to the show JUST as David Byrne and co. were getting on stage. Good thing it was at an opera house and we had assigned seating! What a show!! From what I could tell, there were not many young people there. Most of the audience was middle aged. However, most of the songs caused a majority of the audience to jump to their feet and dance. People were literally running up and down the aisles fist pumping and jumping around. It was crazy. It even seemed like a requirement that if you were to get up to go out to the lobby, you had to fist pump your way to the back of the place? I laughed a lot. David Byrne has still got it. He has a ton of energy and his voice is undeniably still very strong. I had a good time and I think we got four encores? One of which was "Burning Down the House" in which the house lights were on so I could see all of the middle-aged to old people dancing in all of their glory. After they burned down the house, we even still got a couple of more songs, which clearly seems impossible, but apparently it was not. We got back to the hotel before midnight and were pooped. Went to bed shortly after and woke up, ate breakfast, and left.
We drove all the way back to Madison, and I stopped at the Halloween store to pick up some costume supplies. I wanted to get something that I could wear to work, but didn't find anything I liked enough. However, I did get a Charlie Chaplin mustache and hat for fun and also picked up a Harry Potter scarf and glasses so that I have something to wear to the theater when the movie comes out next year. (Yes, I am dressing up). Finally, we were home. We think Spirit may have gone on a hunger strike while we were gone. She barely touched her food and water and her litter box was relatively clean. It kind of worried us, but she seemed so happy after we played with her for awhile. Eventually she inhaled some food and water and has been napping all afternoon. She even laid on me while I laid on the couch and napped, which never happens. Guess she really missed me. She didn't even put up much of a fuss when I put her Halloween costume on her. Hehehe.
Well, I am going to fill the dishwasher, shower and go to bed. I'm pretty tired. I am so glad that I took vacation today and tomorrow. In the morning I am going to the DMV to finally get my Wisconsin license. I figure I'd better do that before I try to vote next week. Otherwise, I just want to be lazy. Today was also a very lazy day. I love it. And I think I can handle the three-day work week when Wednesday comes around. I think before I do anything, I'm going to go spoil my cat some more. :) Here are some pictures from the weekend:
Spirit and me before we left on Saturday.
Ian and Spirit
Dinosaurs!
Sampson
An elephant.
Some lions and baby lions.
A REAL mummy.
Its sarcophagus.
A cat sarcophagus (I think).
The prayers written on the outside of the mummy's sarcophagus.
Is that Spirit in a tree?
Shrunken heads.
I want to own this.
Les Paul Parkway
Ian and I before we left for the David Byrne concert.
Tried to get a decent picture of the Chicago skyline at night, but failed.
It is the weekend. Today was STRESSFUL. There are a few things more that I wish I could have gotten to at work, but overall I kicked butt and got a crapload of stuff done. Now I can relax and have fun for the next four days.
Ian bought Spirit a toy ferret yesterday. She loves it. She slams it to the ground and kicks it over and over and over with her back feet. It's so cute.
I think we are leaving early tomorrow. I'm glad because I want to make the most out of my day. I am going to start the laundry and do some packing tonight. Might even clean a little (ha!). Ciao.
Thank you, lifesavers, for saving my life every day. If it wasn't for you, I would surely perish during the long and grueling hours of pumping out t-shirt designs like there is no tomorrow.
This past weekend was a lot of fun. My mom & sister visited and we had a weekend of awesomely fantastic shopping. I got a lot of good stuff and a lot of supplies so I can start learning how to be crafty! Can't wait! I just wish I had more time to practice! I'm going to spend the rest of tonight watching tv, relaxing, and crocheting!!
Chris Rock: "Sometimes I think Obama actually thinks that having the most votes is going to mean something, you know? They'll change it all. They'll look him dead in the face and go, "Hey, man, you got the most votes. Too bad you lost! We used to count votes....now we count bacon!"
Bill Maher: "In all fairness, there's no one whiter than Al Gore and they said that to him."
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Bill Maher: "I've been listening to financial experts lately, and, no offense as a financial expert, but it seems like they don't know what's going on."
Paul Krugman (Columnist, NY Times): "Right, well look, anybody who knew what was going on would have been in a bomb shelter by now. This is panicking now. I was looking at the numbers on Wednesday, and I thought, well, the world was coming to an end. Apparently the people at the treasury department thought the same thing. This was the worst thing I've ever seen.
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Bill Maher: It does seem that the country that is so afraid of socialism now is getting a lot of socialism, but we're getting only the bad parts of socialism. Like, Sweden has socialism, but they also have universal health care and everybody goes to college and they'll do your laundry for you like they do on the Michael Moore movie. It seems like we are getting only the shitty parts of socialism.
I have a few points I would like to talk about in this blog:
I watched the VP debate the other night and was disgusted, of course. Palin is so incredibly stupid. She walked out there with an agenda of things she was supposed to say and facts she was supposed to spew. She avoided the softball questions that were given to her, and wasn't challenged AT ALL with any follow up questions. This woman could be the next vice president, possibly PRESIDENT of this country, and the media is treating her like a spoiled and helpless child. Everyone claims she did better than expected...it is not hard to do better than expected when you are EXPECTED to make a fool of yourself. Joe Biden I thought did well, but of course he would do well. He's been in this business long enough and he knows what he is talking about. Anyway, here is a video I need to post on my blog because it is important. Matt Gonzalez is Ralph Nader's running mate in this upcoming election. I did not know anything about him before Ralph invited him to be his running mate, but the more I learn the more I like. He gives exceptional speeches and is really, really smart.
Also, speaking of politics, I am not going to say much about the Bailout Bill or "rescue bill" whatever you want to call it. I do not agree with it. My feelings on it are pretty much the same as Congressman Dennis Kucinich's thoughts. Here is a speech he gave the morning it was passed in Congress:
"We have come a great distance in seventy-five years; from the New Deal to the Raw Deal, from having nothing to fear but fear itself, to being afraid of everything. We traded democracy's warm heart containing the ideals of faith, fairness and frugality, for the greedy, cold calculations of the Dow Jones ticker. The New Deal saved free market capitalism with jobs and regulation; now both sink in the swamp of speculation, manipulation and capitulation. The Golden Rule of 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' is submerged by the rule of gold, 'do unto others before they do unto you.' Some people will ask of this Congress, what were we thinking? Why did we give $700 billion bailout to Wall Street without fixing what caused the problem in the first place? Why did we rig the free markets for security fraudsters? Why didn't we explore alternatives to let Wall Street solve its own problems? Why didn't we have money save millions of homeowners, create millions of jobs, and a green economy? Why didn't we stop the speculators? Why wasn't there accountability? Why didn't we take time to make an intelligent decision?
Why? Why? Why?"
That is all I am going to write about on that, since it is done and over with. Blegh.
Another thing I wanted to write about is that I saw the movie Religulous last night. It was supposed to be "offensive" or whatever, which I didn't think it was at all. It was a humorous movie poking fun at religion, which if you think about it...all religions ARE a little bit strange.
I am pretty excited about seeing the movie W. It's a movie about George W. Bush's life. I am not sure if I will actually like that one, but it will be interesting. That man is such a joke anyway.
Today we decided to drive downtown and walk around State Street. We didn't realize there was a Badger game today and it was PACKED down there. The farmer's market was still open when we got there, so that was pretty neat. We got to walk through a lot of little shops as well. I didn't buy anything, but it was nice to look. Oh, before we headed downtown we ate at a little Mexican restaurant called Pedros. I am always a little skeptical about mexican restaurants and mexican food in general, but it was good. Before we headed home, we stopped at a petstore called Animalmart. Unfortunately and fortunately there were cats and puppies there. I wanted them all!! I am seriously considering getting a second cat. If I really decide to do this, I will have to read up on how Spirit might deal with this. She doesn't seem to like other cats and is really quite stuck up. But I think that might just be how cats are, and if not I'm sure Spirit isn't the only unfriendly cat to be forced to live with another cat. We will deal with that when the time comes, though. I bought her a little cat tent and a new toy since we were there. She hasn't paid much attention to either since we've gotten back, but she's been sleeping so maybe when she wakes up she will be more interested.
I used my mall gift card to buy Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility today. I played it for about 45 minutes so far and it is really fun!! I wanted to spend some time crocheting this weekend, but I may end up playing this game for hours instead. Ian's mom ordered me a book about crocheting through her book club (it was only ten bucks!) and I hope to find some time to learn. Shelley taught me the basics last weekend at Kail and Elizabeth's birthday party and gave me some yarn and a needle (? if that's what it is called). I'm eager to make things.
Okay, well the Brewers are on so I'd better watch. Or maybe I shouldn't...it seems they've been able to score twice when I wasn't paying attention. Oh well, I think I will.
Oh! One more thing. I have discovered the joys of podcasts at work. They make the day go by just a little bit faster. On Friday, I listened to audio from a couple episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher, audio from shows on MSNBC, and a Ricky Gervais talk show. I will have to continue to do this.
