Turkey Shenanigans

I'm neglecting my blog again.

Here's the recap:

The Tuesday before break, my boss decided to chastise me. We were doing an early Christmas session for one of his friend's children, and apparently while preparing the set, I leaned over and part of my lower back was showed (gasp!). This lady was livid that her small girls had to see something so offensive. Grrr. I share my office space with a dog, a Harley, and whatever else happens to be sitting around... and in the company of all that, I'M offensive.

Luckily, Karen was in town that day and we went to see the latest Harry Potter installment to take my mind off it. AND it was BYOB (bring your own bucket!) Tuesday. So we gorged ourselves on popcorn and candy.

Ha. Well, we put a picture from that session on the front of our Christmas mailer. Today, one of our best clients praised the mailer (which I designed) and then asked why we used "such homely children". :) I've been grinning all day long.

Well, Thanksgiving went pretty well. I spent the day being completely useless (except for yanking the turkey guts out- that's my one t-day responsibility!). I also watched "Top Hat". Love that movie. I tapped danced everywhere I went for the rest of the day.

Oh, and we had a crazy blizzard. On Wednesday, there was practically no snow on the ground. By Thursday evening, it was up to my waist.

Then it all melted again...

Well, anyway, I've been busily buying the tightest, sexist things I can find that technically speaking don't violate my new dress code. It's war!!!

Is There A Time For "Miss Sarajevo"?

Ugh. Shot right through the heart. I bought the Vertigo tour DVD today... didn't look at the playlist on back...watched it...finished it...mostly it was great...BUT there is no "Miss Sarajevo"! I'm sitting there in disbelief as the credits are rolling, thinking, "No, this can't possibly be the end." HOW COULD THEY NOT PLAY MISS SARAJEVO!!!!??? (Ok, it was more of a "Hell no! They played "Running to Stand Still" instead??!!") It was such a focal point in the Detroit show... I was so looking forward to having it on this DVD. Never expected U2 to let me down... Sigh

I watched "Dead Poets Society" right after the Vertigo DVD. To be honest, I don't care for Robin Williams. Something about him makes me feel all crawly and barfey. Don't get me wrong, it's a great movie, very inspirational, -but- while watching, I began to consider how much young Robin Williams and Bono (minus shades) look alike- they have a very similar bone structure. That just creeped me out.

Moving along.

Thanksgiving is coming! Yea for a short work week! (Still picturing Bono as Robin Williams)

Rockin' Around the Xmas Tree

Forget everything I said before about not feeling any Christmas spirit. Today we had our first real snowfall. (Did I say snowfall? I meant BLIZZARD!) And I couldn't help myself. I went Christmas shopping after work, bought lots of decorations and trimmings, and then spent a good two hours wrapping presents.

HA! I'M BACK!

Tonight I'll have to load my Ipod up with Christmas-y songs. Then I'll have to design my Christmas card... There's just so much to do!

Am I So Unloveable?

Grrr. I had a really crappy day.

Around 3:00, I was sent downstairs to work quietly ( meaning "pretend I don't exist") for the duration of a meeting with an important client. The lighting downstairs absolutely sucks. You can see your reflection in the monitors better than what's on the screen, so I usually turn the lights off when I'm working there. My boss' wife keeps turning the lights back on the second I turn them off. The third time it happens, I start to say "Actually, I'd prefer to have the lights off- I can't see well..." But she starts to scream at me before I even finish. Apparently, the DOG might want to come downstairs and I HAVE to leave them on in case it does. (Because the dog's desire to float around the business is more important than my needing to work.)

I sat down and cried. No sobbing... no one heard or noticed, just a few quiet tears. I shouldn't have, the situation didn't deserve that kind of response, but I did it anyway. I was already feeling bad about myself, and hearing that the dog's needs outweigh mine was about the last thing I needed.

Over the last few days, I've come to realize how many of my friends were merely "friends of convenience" or "friends by association"... and how few actually liked me. I've been looking back at certain times of my life and feeling like so much of it was a lie. Ugh. And now even the damn dog is higher than me on the totem pole.

Where Are You Christmas?

I think I'm in a funk.

Normally I'm the ultimate Christmas elf, bubbling over with "Peace on Earth" and decking the halls by mid-October. But not this year. I'm stuck somewhere back in September, just after "back to school" and before Halloween. I've been out Christmas shopping, trying to "beat the rush" but even that isn't doing it for me. Am I depressed? I don't feel depressed. Am I losing the Christmas spirit? Will I still be able to hear the bell ring this year?

I have a disoriented feeling - like when you take a nap, wake up a few hours later and think it's the next morning. Except I missed a month or two in there somewhere. November is almost half-over and I'm feeling very unprepared. Thanksgiving can't possibly be so close.

Maybe I was abducted by aliens, and they adjusted my memory. That would explain the new bar-code tattoo on the back of my neck.

Better Days

It seems like every time I turn the radio on, I immediately turn it off again. I love dance/hip hop as much as the next person, but I'm sorry... "My Humps"? (Dammit, it's stuck in my head now!) What happened to songs that are ABOUT SOMETHING? What happened to "inspired lyrics"? I guess I don't "get" today's pop music. I'd totally given up on the radio and joined the ranks of ipoders.

Today, on my way to lunch I accidentally left my ipod at work. I hesitantly flicked the radio on and heard the Goo Goo Dolls latest single. Wow. It's a sort of generic Christmas prayer. It's beautiful, it's haunting, and most importantly, it's not about someone's ass.

Better Days

And you ask me what I want this year
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
Cuz I don't need boxes wrapped in strings
And desire and love and empty things
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

So take these words
And sing out loud
Cuz everyone is forgiven now
Cuz tonight's the night the world begins again

And it's someplace simple where we could live
And something only you can give
And that's faith and trust and peace while we're alive
And the one poor child that saved this world
And there's 10 million more who probably could
If we all just stopped and said a prayer for them

So take these words
And sing out loud
Cuz everyone is forgiven now
Cuz tonight's the night the world begins again

I wish everyone was loved tonight
And somehow stop this fight
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

So take these words
And sing out loud
Cuz everyone is forgiven now
Cuz tonight's the night the world begins again
Cuz tonight's the night the world begins again

Thank you, Johnny. I needed this.

One Fish, Two Fish

Yesterday I decided to feng shui my bedroom. (That's how I found Mr. TV Remote!) Unfortunately, I don't have a clue how to do it, so I just moved stuff until I felt more "positive energy". (Actually, it was time to move everything around so that my carpet will wear more evenly, but feng shui sounds sexier.)

For some reason, I always have really weird dreams whenever I change something about my sleeping situation. So of course, last night was a doozie. I dreamed that I was in a spaceship, and we docked at an interstellar Meijer. There's characters from sci-fi movies all over the place... klingons, jedi, random Egyptian people... I decided that I wanted to turn one of the rooms in the spaceship into an aquarium, so I bought a bunch of space-fish. (Someone made a snide comment about the fact that I hadn't checked the labels properly, and that all of my fish would probably eat each other.) Anyway, I put my fish in the room, close the door, fill it all the way to the ceiling with water, and go somewhere else for a while. I go back to the room to show somebody my "aquarium" and the carpet has soaked all the water up and all my fish are dead.

Who knows. I don't even like aquariums. Must have feng shui-ed very badly.

I Think It's Time to Buy a Plot in the Graveyard

First of all, I'm pleased to announce that Mr. TV Remote Control was discovered earlier this afternoon. He was simply hiding under my bed, NOT kidnapped for ransom as we all suspected. Thank you to everyone who kept him in your thoughts and prayers these last few weeks!

Second, my gray hairs are multiplying like crazy. I was brushing my hair today, looked closely, and noticed that they're everywhere!!! It won't be long before I really have to start dying it. Sigh. I'm too young for this. Before you know it, I'll have fine lines and things will start to sag.

Finally, we just had our first winter weather advisory of the year. I swear, if I wake up to a white snow cover tomorrow...

100 Things About Me

Jme has an irritating ability to inspire me. Bleh.

Presenting "The 100 Things You Never Needed to Know About Me But Will Waste Your Time Reading Anyway"

1. I play the violin. Very poorly, granted. But I own one.
2. I quit taking lessons many years ago when my teacher suffered a stroke. Never found another teacher.
3. The first real concert I ever went to was Kathy Mattea. (eek!)
4. My first real rock concert was Third Eye Blind. They weren't very good.
5. My first album was Bette Midler's "Some People's Lives"- featuring the smash hit "From a Distance".
6. My first favorite artist, however, was James Taylor. (Mom and I sang Jellyman Kelly on the way to preschool!!!)
7. After Bette, I disowned pop and listened to nothing but classical music for about three years.
8. That would be from the age of 8-11.
9. My parents thought I was a weird kid.
10. They were right.
11. I wore a lot of sweatshirts with cats on them then too.
12. And the cutest boy in class called me "catwoman". I didn't mind. :)
13. I had a pair of "hammer pants" I liked to wear with my kitty shirts. (The fashions of the late 80s and early 90s still make me shudder!)
14. My mom still hates the way I dress.
15. But we wear the same shoe size, and she likes those well enough.
16. My feet have been the same size as my mom's since the fifth grade.
17. I was literally a foot shorter then. Eek!
18. I was also in safety patrol in fifth grade.
19. Shockingly, no one ever tried to beat me up in all of elementary school.
20. Ok, except one boy... but I won the fight, and he ended up with his head in a snowbank.
21. I did a lot of stupid things in the winter, like jump over the side of the hill I lived on when there was a good ice cover. Did I say hill? I meant... cliff.
22. Come to think of it, I leaped off the side of that cliff during the summer as well.
23. Sometimes I jumped over the side with a piece of cardboard to sit on. Sometimes I didn't.
24. Miraculously, I've never broken any bones.
25. Actually, I've never been admitted to a hospital.
26. And I haven't thrown-up since I was in 3rd grade.
27. I puked my guts out for a week, and decided I was never going to do that ever again. And I haven't.
28. When I'm feeling really nauseous, I tend to collapse or pass-out instead.
29. But I've only lost consciousness twice.
30. One of those times, I really clocked myself on the noggin.
31. Speaking of hitting my head, I slipped in the bathtub once, and cracked my head open on the toilet.
32. Incidentally, that was also in third grade. Rough year.
33. Bleeding on the bathroom floor, I dreamt up the flux-capacitor.
34. I slipped because I was dancing in the shower.
35. I have a big scar down the middle of my left eyebrow from that episode.
36. If the men in my family knew how to put the toilet seat down, it probably wouldn't have hurt quite so badly.
37. I was on vacation when it happened, in a hotel.
38. Later in the week, I took a dive on Stone Mountain (in GA?) and skinned my ankle up really bad.
39. I still have a scar from that too.
40. The worst part of all of it was that my parents wouldn't let me go in the hotel's pool with all my boo-boo's and I had to watch "The Wizard of Oz" while my brothers went swimming.
41. I've never liked that movie. The blue "Oh-eee-oh---yo-ooh" dudes freaked me out.
42. My least-favorite movies all seem to star Ben Stiller.
43. My favorite movies all seem to star Johnny Depp.
44. Or Alan Rickman. I dearly love that freaky man.
45. I love all men with British-derived accents (British, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Australian, etc.). Who doesn't?
46. I tend to place a high importance on very stupid things when it comes to the opposite sex.
47. I will most likely die a crazy old maid, and my fifty cats will feast on my rotting corpse for a few weeks before anyone discovers me.
48. Or they will bring me back to life, and I will become Catwoman.
49. "Meow".
50. I not-so-secretly enjoy wearing leather. But where does one respectably wear leather pants?
51. (Good God, I'm still only on number 51?)
52. I dance like no one's watching...
53. I sing like no one's listening...
54. I drop things, fall over things, basically make a fool of myself many times a day... and always pretend that I meant to do whatever it was I did.
55. I really do like myself. I like that I'm a big dork. I like that I'm not a poised, sophisticated woman. I like that sometimes I spill ketchup on my pants. I'm human, and I'm 100% cool with that.
56. My mom says I remind her of Meg Ryan's characters in chick flicks. She says I'm a cute loser.
57. I think she meant that as a compliment? ... moving on...
58. "Unsolved Mysteries" scared the hell out of me on a weekly basis.
59. I still have an irrational fear of/nightmares about aliens and yeti.
60. I also have an irrational fear of the late Robert Stack.
61. I think I would feel more comfortable if David Duchovney were my personal bodyguard.
62. I remember at least some part of my dreams almost every night.
63. Cannibal pygmies show up a lot more often than you would think.
64. As do lightsaber duels.
65. One time I had a dream that the devil was chasing me and everywhere I went, he was already there. I woke up wondering if it was just a dream- or not.
66. Oddly, I've never had a fear of ghosts.
67. I've always believed that departed souls have better things to do with their time than to bug me.
68. Considering the sheer number of potential souls floating around the Earth, my chances of running into a ghost have to got to be far better than my chances of running into either an alien or a yeti.
69. I'll let you know how that works out the next time I write one of these lists.
70. Yeti is a funny word. Funny or not, I don't think I'd like to run into a 10ft wookie-ape-man in the Himalayas.
71. I doubt I'll ever find myself wandering about the Himalayas.
72. I used to have a desire to climb mountains.
73. The guy who cut his own arm off with a pocket knife killed that dream.
74. Had I been in his position, I would have stood there and cried until I died of exhaustion, hunger, and blood loss.
75. I think I'll just stick to the Mt Everest IMAX movie. (This "list" doesn't resemble a list of things about me anymore, does it?)
76. I took five years of piano lessons.
77. I can successfully play "Pop! Goes the Weasel" reading the music.
78. I can play much more difficult pieces when not reading the music.
79. I learned to play by ear, memorized the songs, and faked "reading the music". Once we started pieces that were four and five pages long, I gave up and told my teacher what I had been doing. She wasn't too pleased.
80. I sank a lot of my parents' money into lessons without accomplishing much.
81. I still feel bad about that.
82. But I'm very well-rounded.
83. I never played sports.
84. I was frequently picked last in gym class.
85. I'm not that uncoordinated- I think it had more to do with being the weird kid... and I didn't realize I needed glasses until the 8th grade.
86. I still hate volleyball.
87. And I'm still not a people-person.
88. Every now and then we did the limbo- I was always picked first for that!
89. I'm still quite the limbo champ. :)
90. Hmm... I took seven years of Spanish classes and still can't speak it. I'm beginning to see a pattern of incompetence.
91. I have unnatural dexterity in my toes. I'm quite good at picking things up and catching things.
92. I'm ambidextrous. I was left-handed, then in kindergarten the teacher only taught writing right-handed, so I switched. I still have full and equal use of both hands. (Neither of which is very good at playing the piano! :) )
93. I'm colorblind, which is quite rare for a woman. Fully defeating all genetic probability, both of my brothers have normal color vision.
94. I don't have exceptional hearing, but I must be really good at picking up the lower registers. I've always heard cars at the bottom of our driveway before anyone else( my driveway is exceptionally long, by the way). I used to freak my mom out when I was little by saying "Daddy's home!" and then he'd show up a few minutes later.
95. Either that, or I'm psychic and I only pick up on really stupid things. I have a talent for wasting talent.
96. My earliest memories are of jumping off my brothers' top bunk bed onto the spare bed on the other side of the room. A real leap of faith.
97. I also liked to sit in a crate on that bed, and jump up and down. (It was my boat!) Once I flew off the bed and crashed, taking a chunk out of the wall (and my head).
98. I respect and love my mother and father more than anyone. It took a lot of patience to raise me.
99. It's amazing that I'm still alive. It's more amazing that I did such stupid things without consequences.
100. That is the number one reason I believe in God. I don't think I could have made it this far on my own.