Well at Least the Problems Happend Today...

So hopefully they won't happen tomorrow!

First we went to get the flowers. No problem. We get home and my mother suddenly realizes, oh your father isn't going to be wearing his robe, he's going to wear a suit, so we need another boutonniere. So I had to call and see if the lady would be able to get another one together for us to pick up today. Then we went to get our rings cleaned. We left them there and went to get our nails done. The nail place was closed for remodeling. So we had to find another nail place. Get that done and head back to get our rings. Nice and shiny, yay. Take dad's home to him, and start toward Springfield.

So we're on the road to Springfield and I glance down at my ring where the sun's hitting it on the steering wheel. I don't know how much attention you have paid to my ring, or if you've even seen it, but it has 70 small diamonds on it and 1 large one. So I glance down at my ring, and there's two holes where diamonds used to be! I let out this horrified gasp and my heart stops in my chest. I do a U-turn right in the middle of Highway 76, a pretty busy 5 lane road I might add, and haul ass back to the jeweler. I march in and state how two of the diamonds fell out of my ring in their care. She said, oh I checked them all before we cleaned them, so they're probably in the cleaner. The jeweler says he'll fix it. I was like, um, how long, I need it back asap, I'm getting married tomorrow. So he says he'll have it down in 30 minutes.

Lordy.

Fortunately, that seemed to be the end of the misfortune. We headed on to Springfield, where my mother bought us dining room chairs to match our legless table. (Yes, I said legless. It came from the Ashley Outlet for like 25 dollars.) Then I ordered pub height legs to go with the chairs. Then we had some lunch and went and got my mother a new dress, because she decided she wanted one to go along with the color theme. Then we headed to Rivergate because when I picked my dress up Thursday night, one of the two removable straps was missing! So they gave me two straps to make up for it and we headed home.

I'm beat.

Now I'm working on compiling a CD to play during the food portion of our entertainment tomorrow. Packing for the trip to Gatlinburg. Running through last minute details in my mind.

I won't get a wink of sleep tonight.

Wedding Date

Okay, let's get the part that if anyone cares about it will be this part out of the way...

December 2nd, 12 noon, my father's church. My father will be officiating.

There you have it. The ceaseless "When are you getting married?" questions can now... well, cease.

Okay now back to the semi-beginning. As most of you know from previous postings or word of mouth, we were looking at a place in Madison. That deal did not work out. It mostly comes back to the fact that the people we were dealing with did not listen to our concerns, and then came back a few days before we were supposed to be closing and tell us that we were right in our concerns from four months ago.

Anyway... long story short. They worked with us, found us another option, and today we went to sign a contract on a house in Antioch. Before anyone freaks out and says (as I've already heard), "But there's gangs in Antioch!" I'd like to point out that this is on the "good" side of Antioch. We'll be a hop, skip, and a jump away from Percy Priest Lake. We're real close to Jerry's parents in Nolensville, and not too far (think 10-15 minutes) from Mount Juliet. Yes, I meant to take pictures of it, but we were so preoccupied I didn't even think about it til well after we left.

Okay, now you're up to speed on this, you're probably wondering, why set a date barely two weeks from today. I can think of a few reasons.

In order to get the mortgage that we agreed on originally, with the good interest rate, blah blah, from the only place we could find to give us money (and trust me, we've looked!) we have to close within 90 days of their agreeing to give us the money. That was over two months ago. We have to close before December 10th I believe they said. On the contract we signed we agreed to close on or before December 7th. Due to certain circumstances that most of you can probably figure out on your own, we need to be married before we can live together. Let's just say it's a bad influence on the children and leave it at that.

So, since we need to get married around the 7th, we figured the weekend before or the weekend after. Well the weekend before is Jerry's weekend with the kids. So why the 2nd, and not the 1st you may wonder, if you've actually read this far and put any thought into it at all. Just so happens, my parents anniversary is on the 2nd, and it's just way too damn cutesy to get married on the same day my parents did at my parents church with my dad doing the service.

And, well, I figure maybe getting married is like pulling off a band-aid. Just pull it off in one quick stroke instead of dragging the whole process out. Hell, last time I got married in under a month. Let's do it in under two weeks!

Hey, it's less time to worry about the whole thing. (And believe me, I am!) Granted, it IS going to be a small service with family and close personal friends. We're not even sending out invitations. But I still need a dress or skirt and a flower bouquet, and I'd like to get my hair done if I can find somewhere that will come in on a Sunday morning to do it and only one, count em one, weekend to get everything together. On top of that, I have this new house payment and other bills neither one of us has had to pay (think electric, water, internet) to worry about, how the hell we're going to get furniture to worry about, and how the hell we're going to buy a washer and dryer to worry about...

What, me, worry?

Of course neither one of us even have the time to take off work to stay home together for one day, let alone DO anything, so we're not even going to have a honeymoon. Sad panda...

Then, the next weekend we'll be moving. And that's always a fun, stress-free thing to do! :-P

Anyway...

While I don't honestly expect to get a lot of gifts, being as it's not the first wedding for either one of us, we did register at Target.  And yes, we scanned everything we thought we needed, and a few things we didn't. We scanned things we don't expect to get because hey, maybe some one's feeling generous. You never know. But most of the stuff on there is really things we need. We're both starting fresh. We have nothing but what's in our bedrooms, really. Our respective ex-spouses kept practically everything of use. And that's fine, I like a fresh start as much as the next guy, but that leaves us with nothing for our brand new shiny never-lived-in house. That being said, our registry is here. There's plenty of kitchen stuff (which we have next to nothing of), bedroom stuff (ditto), and some electronic stuff (if you're feeling giving... hey, Christmas is coming up too!). And of course, there's the always welcome Target gift card/cash.

As for post-wedding celebrations... at this point, there is none planned. However, it would not shock either of us should Jerry's mother take it upon herself to plan a small cake and punch type reception at her house, his grandmother's house, or something. As of right now, it's up in the air.

So there you have it. It's late. I've probably put way more information that I needed to, but oh well.

New Casr

That's my new car! 

It's a 2007 Kia Optima, and I'm liking it quite a bit at the moment. The main things I'm really liking is that it doesn't require me to hold down the emergency blinker button to get the turn signal to work, I don't have to smack the dome light several times to get it to come on, the lights in the panel don't flicker, the check engine light doesn't come on every so often just to keep my wondering, it doesn't have over 100,000 miles on it, it isn't five years old, and the left tail-light doesn't fill with water, causing all the connections to the light bulbs to rust away every time there's a big rain.

Okay well, I'm also liking that's it's new. Who doesn't love new car smell? I'm also quite liking the 10 year/100,000 mile warranty. I like that I was able to pay off my little piece of shit I traded to them, and still have 350 dollars left for a down payment. They gave me well over Kelly Blue Book value for my car, by about 2400 dollars. And they took a couple thousand off the sticker price because it was a 2007 and they have 2008s in now.

Vidalia

Yesterday, Jerry and I went to Oktoberfest. It wasn't really what I was expecting... since I was expecting more like, German stuff. Mostly it was just local booths.

Anyway, one of the booths that was there was for the Nashville Cat Rescue. While I was looking at their booth, looking at the needy kitties that have been rescued from cruel situations I saw one that just broke my heart. Her name is Vidalia. She only had a row of stitches where one eye should have been. Her owner had abused her, burned her ears, and poked out her eye. It's one thing knowing that stuff like this happens, but seeing it up front made me start crying.

Where I work, they're a big proponent of United Way and March of Dimes. We're aways being hassled about donating money for this, coming up with a drawing, booth, bake sale for that. According to Charity Navigator, if I'm reading it accurately, and correct me if I'm not... it looks like 76 percent of proceeds go toward overhead and expenses. Their CEO, Jennifer Howse, makes over half a million dollars a year. United Way of Metro Nashville is even worse, with 86 percent of their proceeds going to expenses. The CEO of just the Nashville branch makes over 175 thousand dollars a year.

I would much rather give my money to an Organization like Nashville Cat Rescue, where I can see where the money is actually going, like Vidalia's 700 dollar vet bills for the surgeries on her eye.  I know when I get a cat, it will most likely be from Nashville Cat Rescue.  They have their animals for adoption in Hermitage, 100 Oaks, and Cool Springs PetSmarts.

Perfect Creature

Last night I watched the movie "Perfect Creature". I had read the synopsis on Netflix and thought it sounded interesting, but really, the synopsis doesn't exactly capture the essence of the movie. I thought of it as a sort of sci-fi alternate history pseudo-religious vampire movie. It is a foreign movie, all in English, that is supposed to take place in the alternate reality equivalent of post World War II New Zealand.

I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but I do say some things that are not revealed at the very beginning of the movie, so if you want to see it all fresh and new, don't read any more.

The premise is an alternate reality where "vampires", instead of being hunted to extinction and becoming myths and legends, live in peace with human beings and are referred to as Brothers. They came to be as the result of a genetic engineering experiment accident. They are only born to human women, and they are only born male. They do have fangs and live on blood, but they do not kill for it; they also have superhuman strength and senses, and extreme longevity. Since the first was born 300 years ago, none have died, or taken a human life.

The Brothers are looked at as being gifts from God; when a Brother is born he is taken from his mother by the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is the religion of the people, and the devout go to the Brotherhood to give their Blood. In return, the Brothers are raised to protect and serve humanity. They also give their blood to humans as it has healing powers when ingested and can give visions. Because of their longevity thy are renowned scholars and scientists. It was a Brother that created the influenza vaccine, saving the lives of many people during the plague that was the result of another genetic engineering accident.

Because of the influenza plague and other "bad things", genetic engineering was banned. However, after 70 years of no Brothers being born, the Brotherhood started genetic engineering in secret, hoping to find a way to have more Brothers born to join their ranks and also hoping to find a way to give birth to a female Brother for breeding. As is the way of movies, things go horribly wrong. The experimentation results in a virus that infects the Brother responsible; the same Brother that created the flu vaccine. He goes mad, hating humans and the way he's been forced to "serve" them. He starts slaughtering some and infecting others with his blood, causing them to get sick, then turn violently insane before they die.

Of course, as churches tend to do, the Brotherhood tries to cover it up on their own, but the law gets involved and the authorities try to hunt down the insane Brother with the help of a senior ranking Brother.

All in all, I really enjoyed this movie, and with Halloween coming up, it's appropriate.

The Ring

We're Adults. When Did That Happen and How Do We Make It Stop?

I got to visit my shiny today. And by "shiny" I mean my wedding ring. We dropped in to talk to the jeweler about getting it sized, and picking a stone for the setting and such. It made me all happy and giddy just looking at it. It's so beautiful and unique. I've never seen one like it. It should be paid for and ready to wear by the 31st.

We've also been spending a lot of time looking at places to live.

I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't know it was going to be this difficult. We started out looking at one of those places that says "homes from the 120s, $500 moves you in". Well that may be true... if you're a single couple and don't need any extra rooms for kids and such, but we're not. We're going to have two teenage boys that preferably need to be separated into two rooms and we need an office. And I do mean need. We have like seven computers between the four of us. So that's at least 3 bedrooms and an office/study, or 4 bedrooms. Which isn't cheap.

Then we ran into problems with the mortgage. One place told us we couldn't get a loan together because of his credit, but with my salary we could maybe afford a box under a bridge in a decent neighbourhood.

So we started looking at homes that weren't new. Still couldn't find anything in our price range that wasn't a total dump. And I do mean dump.

Now we started thinking about "multi section homes". Hey, it may not sound impressive. It may make you think "trailer", but if you've never seen the inside of the ones we've been looking at, you'd be shocked. They're HUGE, and they're so nice. The master bathrooms are gigantic. They all have garden tubs and separate showers. Walk-in closets. Big, big kitchens and living rooms. Way more space than we could afford in a "real" house. Just most of them don't really have an appealing exterior. My father said "they'll spoil you for a real house". Some of them are really very impressive.

And I can't emphasize enough how much space they have. They're basically perfect for us. It's in our price range. We can get the number of rooms we need in a square footage that's amazing. It's actually kind of exciting.

So then the problem we run into there is property. We don't have any. So we have to find property we can put it on. But that's not easy either because it has to be zoned a certain way to be able to put a manufactured house on it.

We were wanting Rutherford county so Jerry could be closer to his kids when they're with their mother. That's basically out of the equation now. We can't afford the price of land in Rutherford county, and it's basically impossible to get land in the right zoning. We think we may have found some land that we really like in Madison, which isn't too bad distance-wise from the kids, and definitely better for me for driving to work, but we haven't found out if it's zoned right yet. Driving through the neighbourhood we think it's possible it may be. Some of the houses around it looked like they might be manufactured housing. There was definitely one brand new manufactured house a couple of blocks up from the land we looked at.

Keep your fingers crossed for us please. I've been getting kind of discouraged. It has seemed so far that nothing we have tried is working for us. The obstacles we're going to run into here is the land being zoned right, and the price of buying the land, getting the house set up and put down, and the price of the house combined and getting the financing for all of it with a reasonable monthly payment.

Even though it's seemed a bit discouraging however, I feel like we've gone about it the right way. We've explored all the options we can think of. We even looked at rent to owns/lease purchased, and if we can't get this land and such that we want, that'll probably be our last resort. We've gone through all the talk about financing, budgeting, spending. We know where our money goes, what we have to spend, what we don't have to spend but aren't unreasonable spending (like cell phones, netflix, video games, stuff like that), what we'll be able to put in a savings account. We've really talked it up one side and down the other.

Well, thanks for reading my 3 AM ramblings.

Life, the Universe, and Everything

Well now that my parents, Robbie, and Jerry's kids know the news, I figure it's time to let you, my friends, know what is going on in our lives right now.

Jerry and I have talked about it for some time now, and he has asked me to marry him. With everything going on (ie: his divorce and my grandmother dying) we waited to make this general knowledge, but last weekend we told my parents, and this weekend he talked about it with his kids. Also, last week, after much haranguing of the lawyer and after 10 months of waiting, the dork lawyer finally filed the divorce papers. We've been looking for a house to buy and applying for mortgage approvals and such also.

We have a ring picked out for me and mostly paid for, but it's being held hostage until it's all paid off.

There's no set plans, no date, no idea where or anything. It's totally vague right now. We need to make sure the divorce is finalized, we need to find out what kind of mortgage we can get, find a house we want, go through that process. There's a lot of variables.

We're both happy. We get along so well. We want the same sort of things for the future (which I know from experience is so very important). We like the same things, the same books, movies, music. We can talk to each other, good and bad. Every relationship is going to have their problems, but I think that the more the good things matter and grow and add up, the smaller those problems are going to seem, and the less they matter in the grand scheme of things. We may have some unusual problems to deal with, but I think that it doesn't really affect our lives as much as I may have thought at first.

He's always been there for me. He was there for me as a friend during his marriage and my divorce, and I think I was there for him during his marriage's ending. He's been there for me during our growing personal relationship afterward, and that was especially evident during my grandmother's hospitalization and funeral.

And he must be good for me, since according to my doctor, I lost 20 pounds in the last three months.

Grandmother

My grandmother died at 6 AM this morning of complications from double pneumonia, a urinary tract infect, gall stones, and a bowel blockage. She fought very hard and refused to quit. She had been suffering for two weeks.

It will be hard getting used to her not being here. My parents and I have lived with my grandmother for fifteen years (minus the years I was married and not living with them). For the last year and a half I have helped my parents take care of her, watching her while they got some time out, things like that. It's weird to realize that all three of us can actually go out at the same time.

She was a school teacher for 50 years and was always favourably remembered by all her students that came across her after leaving school. She's the only one left of her 7 brothers and 3 sisters. She was 98 years old, and would have been 99 in five months.

The viewing will be Wednesday night from four to eight, and the funeral will be Wednesday at two. I'll be back at work on Monday.

Thanks to everyone that has expressed concern and sympathy.

When It Rains It Storms

My father had his gallbladder removed today.

I didn't take the day off work because my mother said it wasn't necessary. It's just a simple procedure. He would be in and out and home by afternoon.

Yesterday, my mother was fall over exhausted. My grandmother was being extremely difficult. She kept waking my mother up all through the night before. She kept shouting for her all that night and all during the day. My mother thought she might have to have me call out from work so I could drive my father to the hospital and she could rest.

So after both of us having a vague feeling of something going to happen, this morning while I was at work my mother called me to tell me my grandmother was going to the emergency room.

Long story short(ish), both my father and grandmother were in the hospital at the same time. Dad's home; he's fine. Granny's still there, and we're not really sure what is wrong with her yet. They thought it was an obstruction in her stomach but after X-rays they don't think that's the case.

Anyway, we're all exhausted and we have to be up early in the morning to go back.

Short Story/Dream Diary: The Death of Hope

There was a dream I had a week or two ago that I wanted to write down, but never got around to it. It seemed like it would make a decent short story, so I wrote it to be a story rather than a dream.

The Death of Hope

I woke up on the floor of a cave. It was cold and dark. I had a spear in my hand and I wore a short leather skirt with a jagged hem, a leather top similar to a tube top, and leather sandals that laced up to my knees. I got to my feet, groggy and confused. I was shivering and my hand shook as I tucked a strand of my long, curly brown hair behind one of my delicate pointed ears.

At first I couldn't remember where I was or how I got there. I carefully worked my way toward the light coming from the mouth of the cave. Outside it was all ice and snow, white and glimmering. There was a winding path at the bottom of a deep valley between the sheer rock cliffs on either side. The walls were coated with inches of ice over the gray stone. My head was starting to clear and I mentally cursed the men that had sent me here.

I had been sent by the queen of the land as she was advised to do by prophets. The wise men had seen that I was the only one that could save our land. It was ordinarily a beautiful place. Our city was high in the mountains, surrounded by lush green forests. Now it was under the spell of a large ice dragon. It had settled in a cave near our city and it was cold-hearted and cruel, slaughtering people without mercy. The land was overtaken by its innate magic, putting us in a state of perpetual winter.

I had been summoned before the queen and her advisers had told me that I was their only hope. It was ironic really. My name, Dóchas, meant "hope" in our language. I told them I was nothing, no one.

Of course they wouldn't listen. They were panicked and in a hurry. The dragon was assaulting the city. Our guards were dying. The last thing I remember was standing before these panicked old men and sarcastically asking them what they expected me to do about it.

"I have no idea how to stop a rampaging ice dragon... let alone kill it! Do you even know how, exactly, I'm supposed to accomplish this miraculous feat? Combat? Magic? If you don't know that, then how can you know that I am supposedly your final hope?"

They must have spelled me, because the next thing I remember was when I woke up in the cave. Swearing profusely and as creatively as I could manage under my breath and in various languages, I started down the path. I had my spear in my right hand and my left hand slid along the wall to my left. I tried to mentally dismiss the cold. It wasn't hard. At some point I just went mostly numb from the tips of my pointed ears to my bare toes. Of course those stupid old men had sent me here without so much as a magic sword. Would it have been too much to ask for some decent clothes, for pity's sake?

I felt no fear through my anger. This was completely the fault of those damned prophets.

I snorted.

I thought, "Huh. Me. The last hope. Right. Not much a hope, is it? Well, I am where I am, and there's nothing to be done about it but sit here and wait for the dragon or see this through. Besides, it's either die out here with a spear in my hand or in the city when the dragon breaks through."

After a long walk, the path turned into a large open area that put me in mind of a courtyard. There was a tree in the middle, large and old; now it was dead and bare of leaves, coated in a layer of ice. It was beautiful in a way, and sad; a visual metaphor for our land the way it was under the spell of the ice dragon. There was a stone wall, waist-high, along the edge of the courtyard. I could hear the shouts of the guards, the screams of the dying, and the roar of the dragon. The sounds came floating up from far below, and echoed around the mountains. I approached the wall and looked out and down. Below were the gates of the city.

The city was surrounded by high mountain peaks and this courtyard overlooked the main gate. Perhaps it was where sentries had stood, in happier times, watchful for the approach of outsiders. There was a matching courtyard on the opposite side, far away across the main road leading to the gates. The walls surrounding the gates were gray stone and the gate itself was black iron. Both were now coated in a shimmering layer of ice. As far as I could see down the road through the mountains was nothing but the white shimmer of ice and snow, and the red blood of my people.

Most of the guards were dead. Their beautiful gold-chased armor was rent with claw marks. Their still faces were coasted in white frost, frozen from the icy breath of the dragon. There were only a couple of guards left standing, the only thing between the ice-dragon and our vulnerable city.

For centuries we had kept ourselves separated from the world, tucked into the peaks of the mountains in our own little enclave. No one had ever thought that the very thing that kept us safe would also prove our undoing. There was no other way to get into the city, and conversely, no other way out. We had thought ourselves safe.

The guards below were valiant in the face of their certain death. They flung spears and brandished swords at the shimmering white form of the dragon. The light glinted off his white scales, glinting with a pale blue iridescence. It was strangely beautiful.

As I watched, the last of the guards fell down under the white frost breath of the dragon. I must have made some sound. Perhaps I gasped. Maybe I shifted too much. The dragon looked up and saw me just when I started to duck behind the wall. I scrambled away from the wall on my feet and hands. It was awkward with the spear, but I managed. I knew there was nowhere to go. I also knew that my plain spear, given to me by my father and possessing of no magical power whatsoever, would be ineffectual against the shear might of the dragon.

I could tell that much from what I had saw below. What I couldn't tell was what exactly I could do against such a creature.

I heard the great beat of it's wings and glanced behind me as the dragon rose up from the slaughter far below. Oddly, the thought struck me that shimmering white-blue scales of the dragon were clean of the blood that had stained the snow of the road. It's strange how thoughts come upon us at the most inappropriate of times.

As the dragon's head rose above the wall, I had just enough time to duck around the other side of the tree. I crouched down and tried to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

There was a sharp chill of fear in my heart as I heard the dragon inhale deeply and exhale with a spray of white frost. I only had a split second for it to occur to me that I was going to die. The chill of fear wasn't nearly as cold as the breath of the dragon as it breathed frost and ice toward me. The tree blocked some of it, but not enough. The icy breath split around both sides of the tree and through it's bare branches. I barely had time for the thought, "So much for our last hope," before everything went to ice, and blackness engulfed me.

Dream Diary: Yes I Know I'm Fucked Up

It started out like a video game, but more real. I knew it was a game, but it was real at the same time. Jerry and I were together, like being in a group in an online game going on a quest. I don't know what "world" we were in. I can't remember the place we started out from but I have a vague feeling that it was a bit primitive, with wood and hide tents for buildings. Maybe it's just because of my image of the place we were heading toward that makes me think it was primitive.

We headed into a deep, dark wood; just us and our equipment, our bags, and our weapons. The place we were heading toward was up in the trees, and appeared uninhabited. There were ramps leading up to platforms in the trees, with bridges and more ramps connecting them, layer upon layer. There were large piles of bones on the ground, too large to be human. The skulls had long curving horns like bulls, but with long sharp teeth like a predator.

We climbed up the platforms and moved forward. The first pile of bones we approached formed into a large, tall entity, soundless and with bits of leather hanging from it's bones that may or not have been it's skin in life, or just old clothing or armor that had rotted away. We were strong, with good weapons and armor, and we easily tore through the constructs, working our way from platform to platform, higher and higher, until the ground was just a green mist far below us.

The skeletal constructs had pulsing targeting reticules under them, like in a video game. I could "zoom out" and look at us from above at an angle, also like in a video game. But it was still real. I don't know when it happened, but eventually I only saw from first-person and it stopped being so much like a video game.

I don't remember what our goal was. Perhaps it was to kill the originator of the constructs or acquiring an item. By the time we accomplished our goal there were more people with us. I don't know who they were, where they came from, or when they joined us; they were just suddenly there, and it didn't seem odd to me. Jerry's dogs were with us as well, but they weren't dogs. I knew they were Holly and Wonka, but they were large hunting cats. I remember Holly's appearance changes later in the dream, but at the time I remember a black panther being Holly, and a tawny lioness being Wonka. Holly was dignified and predatory; graceful and quiet. Wonka bounded from platform to platform, more playful than leonine.

We didn't want to take the time to walk all the way back down to the bottom. I remember "activating" a song like I was a bard in Vanguard that would give us a slow free-fall to the ground. I don't know where he came from, but a man that was apparently a friend of ours showed up from nowhere and tossed Jerry a nice digital camera; the kind with different lenses that you can change and manually focus. He told him it was a gift that he just picked up because he thought he would like it. I looked at Jerry in shock and envy. It was just the sort of camera that I wanted. Jerry told the man that I would appreciate it more than he would and gave the camera to me. I hung it around my neck. I told everyone to gather close and called the cat/dogs to us. After a minute of getting Wonka to behave and stay close enough for the song to hit us all we collectively stepped off the platform and floated gently to the ground.

We started back for "home", but somehow we found ourselves being chased by the natives of the region. We never actually saw them, but we knew we were being pursued. I think it had to do with us violating a sacred religious place for them. We ran full speed all the way back to the dubious protection of town.

When we got there, we found the town full of people just milling around. They looked out of place, wearing regular, modern day clothing, such as jeans and t-shirts. I don't know how we found out, but we knew that they were people from our world, our time, and they had been evacuated here to escape some catastrophe. There were hundreds of them, and I don't know why there were only that many, or how they were chosen, I just knew that Jerry's two children and my parents were somewhere in the throng. We picked a spot to meet, and separated, calling for his children. He took Wonka and I took Holly, hoping they could help track the children. I heard one of the children talking, ran to them and gave them hugs, relieved to have found them. We headed back to the designated meeting place and reunited with Jerry.

Time flashed forward and the next thing I remember we were all heading out in a giant caravan, looking for a suitable place to settle. There were no questions about going home, no questions about what happened, why the evacuees were here, how they got here. It was as if they just accepted they were there and we needed a new home. All that the evacuees had was what they could carry, and most of the children didn't have anything but what they were wearing. I don't know what we were eating or how we survived. We just did.

We started out through the jungle and when we emerged into a rocky area with lots of cliffs and mountains we looked around to see what looked like a prehistoric island with a giant volcano rising ominously into the sky. Again there were no signs of habitation; but looking around, one would not have been surprised, perhaps even expected to see, dinosaurs.

We were being led by a large tiger-striped cat-man, like the playable cat races in EverQuest and Vanguard. I don't know why, but he decided Holly was holding us back. Instead of letting her go to follow or run free as she chose, he wanted to kill her. I think it had to do with him thinking that the non-intelligent cat species were inferior to his race. I knew she was old, but she wasn't slowing us down. She was actually large enough that Jerry's youngest was riding on her back when he was tired; the other son was riding Wonka similarly. Now, in the dream, instead of being a black panther, Holly appread to be a majestic lion, with a mane like a male lion. She was standing on a small cliff ledge above us, and it was night. The sky was full of stars, bright in the sky of an uncivilized world, and the moon was large and luminous behind her. The cat-man had a gun and shot her in the forehead. In the manner of dreams, she did not die, but stood, stunned. I thought what a beautiful picture it would make, this dignified creature standing on a cliff with the light of the moon outlining her form, and used the digital camera to take a few shots. The last shot I remember taking was of her snarling and leaping for the cat-man before she, presumably, died.

Time lept forward again. As we kept walking, looking for a good place to settle, we came upon a strange town. It just seemed to spring up out of nowhere. It was not that it appeared before our eyes, but more like we turned a corner around a rock wall and there it was, all pink and white. The houses looked like a little girl's play house that had been enlarged big enough to fit an adult. The town appeared uninhabited like every other area we had been in, except for large, animated toys the size of an adult. It wasn't as if they had a life of their own, able to think and speak; only that something was animating them, making them move and play with each other, and act like they wanted us to play with them. The whole place was extremely creepy. There was a threatening feel to the place, but as we threaded our way through the small village of doll houses we found no apparent danger. The animated toys were annoying and somehow menacing; their painted smiles seemed full of malice, but they were not overtly threatening. Some of us, myself and Jerry included since we were armed, went in and out of the buildings, looking for anything; people, traps, whatever we could find.

Another flash forward in time. The next thing I remember, Jerry, the children, my parents and I were in one of the larger houses. Everyone had settled in. The house was plushly furnished, and there was plenty of rich, elegant food. There were two bedrooms upstairs, with thick comforters and fluffy pillows. There were two king-sized beds in one room. My parents were already ensconced in one of them. The other room contained another king-sized bed with another couple asleep in it, and Jerry's children had already claimed the two single beds in that room. I remember I didn't want to sleep with Jerry in the same room as my parents, but it was the only bed available. I went back downstairs to look for Jerry and there were a two or three other couples still sitting on the overstuffed couches, talking and snacking on finger foods.

There was a double glass door leading to a small deck or balcony, and I wanted to go outside and take pictures with the digital camera. It was night again, the stars were bright and beautiful over the tops of the white shingled roofs and I thought it would make a nice picture. I opened the doors and went outside to take a few shots with different lenses, angles, and flashes. My photography obviously perturbed a bitchy looking woman with long straight blond hair who said something rude about my annoying everyone with my constant picture taking and why didn't I get inside and stop bothering everyone.

There was another flash of time that went by. I was back in the room with the other couples. We looked out of the double glass doors and everything had changed while we weren't looking. Suddenly outside it looked like we were on the top floor of a tall building looking out over what I knew to be downtown New York. Now the blond woman didn't mind me taking pictures, because it was a sight we'd all thought we'd never see again after the evacuation. She insisted that I take pictures. I took my camera to go outside, as did a couple of the other men in the room. The city looked like every light in every window was lit, but again, looked totally uninhabited. There were no signs of life. No people, no cars, nothing moved.

As we were on the balcony snapping pictures, the building started to sway. It wasn't a gentle swaying like a tree in a breeze. The building seemed to bend nearly in half, and it would swing in big circle from one side and back around to the other, yet none of us felt the motion or felt like we were going to fall. It was more like the world was moving around us; that it was the world bobbing and circling and swaying while we were standing still. The sight made me slightly nauseous but it brought the tops of some of the buildings closer to us, and all I could think was that it was odd, but would make for some really cool pictures. I remember seeing the top of the Empire State building swing by almost close enough to touch. I wondered how it was that we didn't hit any of the buildings, the swaying and circling was so pronounced.

I went back inside, sliding the glass door shut behind me, to say something to the people inside about the way everything was spinning around. No one else seemed to think it was unusual. They were just chatting away like nothing was wrong. As I slid the door shut, one of the men outside ran to it. He was screaming and slammed into the door, banging on it and shouting to be let in. I saw something fall out of the sky and slam into his back. There was only a small layer of glass between us, and I could clearly see the terror and pleading in his eyes. I saw tentacles wrap around his body, his neck, his head. I saw the blood. I felt no remorse about not opening the door to let him in as more of the things fell out of the sky, attacking the other man outside and swooping around the building.

I remember thinking I knew it had to have been a trap; that the seemingly innocuous pink and white buildings were there to lure us in. I knew there was a reason why it was uninhabited, and that there was something, a spell perhaps, lulling everyone into a false sense of safety. I seemed to have been the only one that even felt vaguely like something was off. I knew there was a reason why there were no signs of life at all, anywhere.

I don't remember a lot of details about what followed. I kept dreaming about these things that flew without wings. They were large and round. The outside of their bodies was gray and hard, while the inside was like a pulsing, gaping red maw full of sharp teeth. There were gray, fleshy tentacles dangling from the edges of their armored carapaces. They had no apparent eyes or ears, but light attracted them; they looked more like armored gray jellyfish than anything. They would drop on people from above, holding on with tentacles and attacking with their sharp teeth. It was a gruesome, bloody way to die. It was unsafe to go out during the day, but more so at night, especially, because you couldn't see them coming. We were afraid to leave; afraid to stay. There were a lot of people dying, a lot of blood, and terror. I was frightened all the time. You never saw them coming until it was too late. Many people were killed right before my eyes.

I seem to remember there were a few people that got attacked and managed to get away somehow. They started to get very sick. Their bodies started to change; contorting and twisting in some areas, shrinking or expanding in others. The venom from their bite wounds was changing them into more of the flying jellyfish things. I had been bitten on the arm, and I so afraid. It was painful; red, swollen, and throbbing.

It all became a blur. I don't know what happened to everyone; Jerry, the kids, my parents, Wonka the cat/dog. I don't recall seeing them in my dream after they all went upstairs to bed. I would start to tear myself out of the dream, trying to get away from being afraid, but as soon as I fell asleep again, I was right back in the same place.

Okay so I read a lot of fantasy books and play a lot of role-playing games.

Sometimes It's Easier to Spit Than Swallow

I have strep throat. Again. Second time in six months.

I, being a good little girl and not wanting to miss work, went to the doctor the day I started feeling a little funky in the throat. This doctor, not my doctor, but one of the doctor's in his group because he's busy tells me, oh you don't need antibiotics. It's a cold. A viral infection. You'll be fine a couple days.

The next day, I feel about a hundred times worse. Take a walk to the doctor's office by my house. Hey, guess what, you've got strep throat and need to go on these antibiotics, and don't breath on anyone because you're highly contagious!

This is the second time in six months that exact scenario has happened. The second time that my regular doctor's office said it was a virus. The second time the other doctor said it's strep. So I'm having to pay for four doctors visits for two actual problems.

Anyway, long story short, I wasn't reacting to the antibiotics, had to get a shot every day for four days, and basically had to wait it out. For a week I had to make the decision every few seconds if I wanted to swallow what felt like shards of glass or if I'd rather drown in my saliva.

Hey, what did you think the subject was about? Pervs.

More Work BS

I had my interview today. Guess who did the interview? No... not HR like I, personally, was expecting. Of course not. It was my own manager! Plus one other manager of another team in our department that is creepy in her own way.

So yes, I was interviewed by my own manager, for the job I already do.

As if that wasn't retarded enough, they were asking me questions like, have you ever felt you were treated unfairly in a position here, or, what is expected of you in your current position? What am I supposed to say? Yes, by that asshole sitting right there! Or, hey, ask him, he already knows what's expected of me in my current position?

I actually had to sit there, with a straight face, and take all that bullshit seriously.

Back at my desk, I start doing the work that was assigned to me. Our work is assigned to us in "batches" in the system that are already numbered. Our assignment person just gives us the numbers and locations of the batches we are to work. If we start a batch and leave it the wrong way, it locks that batch up and no one can work it unless they pull up each individual claim. I started my first batch, number 0009. I realize I did something wrong. I leave the batch and pull up just that claim to fix it. When I go back into my batch, it tells me that batch is already being worked.

I go to the batch list thinking that hey, maybe that was the last claim and I finished that batch without realizing it. Oh no, one of the other women on my team went into it, worked four or five claims, and then locked the batch. And she did the same thing with my next batch as well. WTF?

I did find out that our assignment lady had accidentally assigned her and I overlapping batches. She had assigned that woman 0001-0010 and assigned me 0009-0015. But the woman hadn't even finished batches 0001-0008 yet. She just went into every single one of her batches, worked 4 or 5 claims, and locked them, so that no one else could "steal" her work! Paranoid much? The only reason I had even started on "her" work was because it was assigned to me too! And instead of her saying, hey, we were both assigned these batches, why don't you do one and I'll do the other, she just locked me out. Then she'll take the extra time and pull each claim up individually, all so she could lay claim to all the claims, so to speak.

I know I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I feel like I'm in high school or something.

There's a girl sitting next to me now that I less-than-affectionately term "annoying blond girl". She just finished a training class for front-end claims, which is another team, but you have to know how to do those before you can do what my team does. It was obvious today from all the questions she kept asking that she doesn't know what the fuck she's doing! She just finished training class and she didn't even know how to pull up a batch to start working! Again with the frustrating...

I also found out there's not going to be a training class for the work my team does, it's all peer-to-peer. And she was told she was going to be trained. Just you watch, it'll be me that has to train her, and I will have to kill her and hide the body.

Keep in mind this is the annoying blond girl that I told not to talk to me. Today she goes, "Hey Allison, look what I did in training!" and proceeds to show me several doodles that she did on the computer and was using as her backgrounds. No wonder she doesn't know what the fuck she's doing.

Later in the day, my manager goes to Jeanne and basically forces her to apply for the job that I interviewed for, and that she went to great lengths to avoid applying for. The job had even been removed from the job search all together, and he had them reopen the job just for her to apply. Oh and, by him doing the job interviews for the position, that basically guarantees that he lied to me about not knowing anything about the open position.

My theory is, he and the other manager already know who they want from her team to move to our team, and they just sent out the email to those people. That's why it was hidden on the job search unless you knew the specific number to look up, not the job title. Which means, if my theory proves true, that I will not get the job, because they had already planned who they want in the position.

Work, Work...

So Monday I have an interview for my own job.

Okay, so it's not so much my own job as interviewing for a position that is for doing what I'm already doing.

Not much clearer, huh? Well, let's see if I can make a long story short. This has been going on for months and months now.

About a year ago, I was transferred from the department I was in to the department I am in now, but I was still going to be doing the same job function so my job title/salary range didn't change. And that was fine. The job didn't change, so why should my job title? I get it.

Then, starting in September or August, I went through training. Then I went through more training in November. Then I went through even more training. Now, I am currently doing what the other people on my team do, not what I was transferred up there to do. I do the same job they do, and with the additional training I went through, I do more than some of them are trained to do.

So I start asking my manager. As I am now doing the same thing as everyone on the team, I would like the recognition to go along with it. After several months of me pestering him, after he's already told me no you won't have to re-apply, he tells me, yes, you have to apply for an open position to get the job title/salary range change.

Okay, so, fast forward to now. I find out from someone on another team that there are two job opening on my team. My manager, knowing that I was interested in applying for the position, did not tell me that we had two job openings that I could apply for. The job openings were not coming up on our internal job search for local openings. I've been looking. When I asked him about it, he told me he didn't know anything about it. I told him I knew for a fact that another manager had informed her team about the job openings. He finally said he'd look into it, and eventually gave me the job posting number to pull it up on the job search. It would not come up on a job search without that number. Like they were keeping it a secret or something. Then I find out from the job search that the original post date of the job openings were over a month ago.

So basically, I'm pissed because the job openings have been there for a month, and my manager didn't tell me about it, and I wouldn't have even found out if someone else hadn't told me about it. Asshole.

Anyway, I applied for the job I'm already doing, and I have an interview Monday. Guess how pissed I'll be if I don't get the position. How could I be any better qualified? I'm already fucking doing it. I don't need training. I'm good at it. Better than some that have been doing it longer than me.

Yes, I am humble, aren't I?

Moving on. Still work, different subject.

Recently, my entire floor was re-stacked and my team moved to the opposite side of the building. I was over in our new area before we were scheduled to be moved to clean my new desk. Another person from my team that I talk to was over there doing the same. Then this annoying perky blond girl comes over. I haven't had to put up with her because she'd been in training for six weeks. Now she's sitting next to me.

She asks where she's sitting and I told her she was sitting at the desk next to me. At this point, she gets all perky and claps her hands and says "Oh goody, now I'll have people to talk to!"
Without missing a beat, without smiling, without a joking tone of voice, totally serious and totally meaning it I said, "Don't talk to me."

I don't think she believed me. She kind of half-laughed. The other woman says, "No, really, don't talk to her. Not before noon at the earliest, anyway."

Then yesterday, I'm sitting at my desk. I have my headphones on. I'm listening to an audio book. It's obvious I'm listening to something. I mean, the big fuck-off headphones are sort of a dead giveaway. What does annoying blond girl do? Starts talking to me, while I'm obviously not listening to anything going on around me, like she's expecting me to answer her. I completely ignored her. She in no way attempted to gain my attention before talking to me, and then expects me to hear her? So, yeah, I did hear her, but I have no clue what she said and I don't feel bad about ignoring her. I think it's rude to just start talking to someone with headphones on and then expect a response when you didn't like, tap them on the shoulder or stand where they can see you or something. I don't mind in the least being rude right back by ignoring her.

She'll learn.

Yeah, so sometimes I'm mean. I have this thing about not wanting to put up with stupid people. Weird, I know.

My Tax Dollars At Work...

So after much beating myself up about it and convincing myself that hey, I haven't had a new system in five or six years, and this one is getting to where it won't run shit... I'm working on a new system. Once I get it taken apart, get everything I've ordered, and put it back together again I'll be running a... hopefully decent system. Not top notch, but I be poor.

Intel Celeron D 356 processor at 3.33 ghz (upgrade on the ol' Pentium 2 1.8 ghz I had going on)
ATI Radeon X1300 Pro PCI Express 256mb DDR2 vid card (after having a GeForce 4 TI4200 156mb vid card for the past however many years)
2 gigs DDR2 PC-4200 RAM (upgrade to 1 gig SDRAM)
1 120 GB 7200 SATA HD and 1 250 GB HD

And a couple of lightscribe dvd burners. Not that I needed two of them, but I already had one and the system I bought had another one, so whatever... Easier pie-rating...

Anywho, I've already got Vanguard bought, I'm going to install it and do the downloads but I won't be even thinking about getting started for at least a week. I've only got 512 RAM til my new RAM gets here, and I can't put in the video card until my 550w power supply gets here.

Hooray for tax returns.

Who needs to put that extra money on a credit card bill anyway?

Another "WTF Are You Talking About" Moment

I had another Lewis Black "What the FUCK are you talking about?" moment at work the other day.

It's the guy next to me, of course, as usual. Someone brought up the dog food recall, and someone else said something about someone sueing over their dog getting sick and such. I wasn't really following along, but then I heard this.

"People shouldn't have animals as pets. They're just part of the food chain. They shouldn't be domesticated. People shouldn't treat their cats and dogs like members of their family. They should just live and die in the wild."

Okaaay, moving on.

If It Weren't For My Horse...

I heard one of the stupidest sentences I've ever heard yesterday while I was at work. Granted, it was coming from the mouth of the guy that sits next to me, so it was no surprise that it was stupid. But the sheer depth of stupidity still had me turning in my chair and my mouth opening to say "What the FUCK are you talking about, you stupid fucking idiot??" before I stopped myself.

Here's what I heard, as best as I can remember it.

"Because it's snowing (up north), the government is going to want it's tax returns back."
This was followed by something about how the snow is killing all the cattle, and that's why the government will want it's money back.

Excuse me for a second... WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!

It was totally a Lewis Black moment:

"My favorite health club is the International House of Pancakes... Recently, I was there, when from behind me, a woman of 25 uttered the dumbest thing I'd ever heard in my life ... She said, 'If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college.'

I'll repeat that. I'll repeat that because that's the kind of sentence that when you hear it, your brain comes to a screeching halt. And the left hand side of the brain looks at the right hand side and goes, 'It's dark in here, and we may die.' She said, 'If it weren't for my horse...' as in, giddy up, giddy up, let's go - 'I wouldn't have spent that year in college,' a degree-granting institution.
Don't! Don't think about that sentence for more than three minutes, or blood'll shoot out your nose. The American medical profession doesn't know why we get an aneurysm. It's when a blood vessel bursts in our head for no apparent reason. There's a reason.

You're at the mall one day, and somebody over there says the dumbest thing you've ever heard and it goes in your ear. So you turn around to see if your friends heard it, cause if your friends heard it, and you can talk about what the jackass said, then it'll be gone. But your friends are over here, pretending they're gonna buy a cellular phone, and they're not gonna buy a cellular phone, because they don't even understand how the rate structure works. So you turn back, to find the person who said it, because if you can ask 'em a question like, 'WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKIN' ABOUT?!' then it'll go away. But they're gone. And now those words are in your head. And those words don't go away.

Cause the way I see it, 7% of our brains functions all the time, because 99% of everything that happens is the same old stuff. We get it. All right. Move on. Get it. Right. But every so often, somethin' like that happens: 'If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college. If it weren't for my horse...If it weren't for my horse...If it weren't for my horse...' So your brain goes, 'LET'S FIGURE IT OUT! Son of a bitch! I wonder what that's about!' I wonder, was she riding the horse to school? No, she wouldn't be riding the horse to school. Maybe it was a polo pony; she had a polo pony scholarship. Maybe she sold the horse and that's how she - she was betting on the horse! WHAT THE FUCK?!! And then you realise that anybody who went to college would never say anything that stupid in public.

And as soon as you have that thought, your eyes close and the next morning they find you dead in your bathroom."

When Come Back, Bring Pie

I got in trouble at work over cake.

I'll pause a second while you consider that. Yes, I said cake.

Here's the story. The day after my birthday, someone at work brought a cake for me and another woman. We all gathered around, her and I were given birthday cards, and we cut the cake and passed it out. You know, the usual.

Fast forward to after lunch. I get an email from the woman that made the cake telling me to please take the cake and take it home to my family. The other woman had already left for the day, being part time. I tell her thank you, the cake was quite good and go get the cake. I walked over and asked Jeanne, Darlene, Missy, and a couple other people that I like if they wanted some. Afterward, there was still cake left, that sat at my desk until time for me to go.

Now, fast forward about a week. I'm in my one-on-one with my manager and it's brought to my attention that there was an email going around amongst the people on my team that I shared the team cake with people... *gasp*... outside our team! And why should they get some of our cake. They never share anything with us. They don't even say hello when they walk by. My manager was called into a conference room by the people that had a problem with me sharing the cake and was told this wasn't the first time I'd done that. He was told by the person that was complaining that they didn't even get a piece of cake.

Here's what I told him. The person that made me the cake told me to take it home. I didn't need to take it home, as I had cake there that my mother made me. I considered that, at the point, the cake was mine to do with as I pleased, whether that was give it to my friends, take it home, or throw it away. I didn't share it with a team, I shared it with a few friends, and there was still cake at my desk to the time I left. Whoever it was that claimed they didn't have a piece of cake was welcome to have come to my desk and got some, and they chose not to. As for the other people not saying hello when they walked by, that goes both ways. Does the person complaining about it ever say hello to them? And as for me having done it before, yes I did. At a team dinner, I brought two pies. When the dinner was over, I still had one entire pie that hadn't even been touched. After we all took our food back from the table, I shared the pie that I made with my friends, and it was my pie to do with as I wished. Then I told him that if someone had a problem, they should take it up with me, not go running to my manager, otherwise, I'm just going to sit at my desk, do my work, and mind my own business, and they should do likewise.

I also told him that we weren't in high school and I shouldn't have to be worried about people being that petty and trifling.

Two days later, Jeanne and Darlene and Missy's team had cake for Darlene's birthday. I was the only person from my team invited to have any. Aw, poor whiny babies on my team.

Pictures and Birthday

Happy Birthday to me. :D

Okay, now that that is out of the way...

Pictures from the Gatlinburg trip are up on flickr. Go look. Comment. You know you want to. Okay well, at least admit that you know I want you to.



I'm exhausted and need a vacation from my vacation. We walked so much every day that by the end of the day I felt like my feet were going to fall off and was more than ready to slip into the hot tub on the deck. My knee is still protesting loudly at the harsh treatment and wondering what it was that it did to me to deserve all that.

Doodling at Work

So I was bored at work and I started doodling. I came up with a face that I thought kind of looked like Jeanne.

I decided to draw a body to go with the face. It's not great. Hippy, and out of porportion, and the shading is... blah. But it's just a work doodle after all.

And I was rummaging around and found this. Another work doodle. Catgirl to fit my website theme.

Updates

Added "The Master Slayer" and "Happily Ever After?" to the writings: stories page. Added "Smoke & Mirrors" to the writings: poetry page.

Smoke and Mirrors

So, I was rummaging through my stuff looking for something, which was, predictably, not anywhere that I thought it was. While I didn't find what I was looking for in my rummaging, but did however find it eventually, I did find this. I wrote it so long ago that I don't even... remember writing it.

I don't know what I was thinking, if I was just being lazy, or channeling e e cummings, but there was no punctuation or capitalization when I wrote it, and thusly, none when I'm typing it, as I'm still too lazy to do it.

absurd model
part dazzle
some shadow
a sculpted subject
picture like
a young goddess
empty fashion
elaborate beauty
aesthetic impressions
glorious visions
in the day light
are like smoke

You May Address Me As 'Your Majesty...'

When we are at work, Jeanne, Darlene, Missy and myself usually wind up emailing back and forth amongst ourselves for amusement. Some of these conversations can get fairly amusing, to the point where I can hear Missy laughing two rows over.

So, without permission from any of the said emailers (sorry ladies ) I'm going to share a couple of those emails with you, my reading audience, which mostly consists of the people involved in said emails anyway!

This here email is from January 4th:

Darlene: I was listening to Paul Harvey this morning and he was talking about a Japanese author who is a best-seller…..she just released her latest book and it's already sold over 1 million copies! The kicker is, she writes them all on the keypad of her cell phone and then downloads them to the internet, where she sells them for $10 a download! Think of all the money you save by not having a publisher etc.!

We are in the WRONG business ladies…..let's get busy and write a book! ;-P

Jeanne: Think of how much that HURTS, having to type that much…! Do you remember who she is? I think I might want to read about her, or at least, read her books. I'm assuming they're in Japanese - I'm hoping it's hiragana, not the kanji - and that I have my dictionary! Ha ha

Me: Pfft. My thumb gets tired just typing out a message to someone. Think I'll pass on typing out a book. :P

Darlene: True……but I could suffer through it to make 10 million dollars……it would only take one book, and I'd be set for life! :)

Me: Okay, we'll write it. You get to type it. :P

Darlene: Sure, I'll type it…..but I'll be expecting a larger percentage of the profits if I do! (For that carpal tunnel surgery I'm sure I'll be needing upon completion of the novel.) ;-P

Jeanne: Heck, let me type it, I'm texting all the time anyway. Of coruse it might be in shorthand. And it costs me 25 cents a text to send something ot the internet.

The japanese chick …if she is japanese because cho is a chinese name… she probably has SMS which is pretty much an internet phone. I hate people that have it. I'm so jealous of them I could steal their phones.

Darlene: Okay…..you can type it, we will compensate you for the 25 cent texts messages….no problem. If the book takes off, and we all become rich, I'll buy you a SMS phone, okay? :)

Oh, but I must insist on proof-reading your work….hehehehe!

Jeanne: Okay. I text. You buy me SMS. Yay!

I think we should all start a round robin story.

Darlene: I used to do that with my friend Kevin (round robin)……we had a nice fantasy story going for a while….but we got bored with it and stopped.

It's kinda fun though…..I'm sure it would be even better with 4 people involved. :)

Me: With the four of us that would certainly turn out… interesting. :P

Darlene and I would get started on fairies or elves, and Jeanne would turn it into a bloodbath. ;)

Darlene: Allie, that made me laugh out loud! LOL!

Yes, and then Missy could interject some romance and voila'….we have a best-seller!!! :)

Missy: And I could put in the Disney and children characters..

No wait a minute…take out my last statement. I am bringing the pirates………………….. To the book.

Me: And I'm kidnapping one. And a bottle of rum. Yo ho ho. Mmmmm pirates. :D

Fairies and pirates and elves, oh my.

Jeanne: OH, yes.

You put fairies and elves in that story, and I bloody well guarantee there will be a bloodbath. There will be the dark elves and the light elves, and one day the dark elves pushed the light elves too far, and they said, "look. We're cooler, but we need an edge. I know. Ditch the regular goth sh*, grab one of those little paper umbrellas from drinks, and get the hairfalls! You, wear platforms! This is it, little elf people! The cool Light elves are going to whip the pants off those dark, trite, stereotypical elves! Let's go!" And thus, so they did.

Darlene: Capt. Pegleg Jones is walking in the woods and happens upon his old friend Bambi. "Ello little fellow", says Capt. Pegleg. Bambi nuzzles Capt. Pegleg and looks lovingly at him with his big doe eyes. Suddenly, there are gunshots……from out of nowhere, there appears a woman dressed in black, wearing platform shoes and purple pigtail hair falls. "Die you mangey piece of venison!", she snarls through gritted teeth. With that, she pulls out a 45 magnum and blows a hole in poor Bambi's head the size of a baseball….as Capt. Pegleg looks on in horror.

Meanwhile, in a magical forest far far away…….

LOL! ;-P

Me: Lol! Too funny.

After that, poor Cap'n Pegleg is going to NEED that rum.

Jeanne: HEY! BAMBI WAS A SPY FOR THE DARK ELVES!

It's not like I had a choice or something, geez….

Blame me for the deaths of all the hapless forest creatures, why don't you….

Then today we had this conversation:

Me: Save me. I've been sucked into an alternate universe where I'm surrounded by annoying people. Oh… Wait… that's just CIGNA.

Jeanne: I thought it was just your luck.
I'm about fed up with today already, how're you doing?

Me: Pretty much fed up too. Annoying formerly pregnant woman is back. Annoying guy next to me won't stfu. Annoying blond girl won't stfu either. She's talking to the girl in front of me, who is, actually, shocker, not annoying. But annoying blond girl is like, sitting halfway in the row talking to not-annoying girl in front of me and annoying guy next to me. And if annoying guy next to me isn't talking to her, he's sitting half in the aisle right next to me turned around talking to Nettie. And of course, annoying formerly pregnant woman has all her annoying friends coming over to her desk to ask about her demon spawn.

Combine that with the oh so wonderful meeting, and I'm just great.

Jeanne: Kill the demon spawn, kill the annoying blond girl, have nettie fired, and most of your problems will indeed be solved. : )

Come to the dark side over here, I have cookies.

Me: I'm stuffed full of strawberry milkshake poptarty goodness. I think I'm going to explode into strawberry milkshake bits.

Jeanne: Well, if you ever wanted to be more annoying than your neighbors, I'd consider that.

Nobody likes icky strawberry goodness mixed with allie-brain-matter-blood on their work clothes.

At this point, Jeanne sent our conversation to Darlene and Missy.

Jeanne: And people thought we were sane….
(read below if you're not allie, that crazy chick)

Darlene: An explosion of strawberry milkshake poptarty goodness would be kinda fun!!! I could do without the 'allie-brain-matter-blood' stuff though.

Not that I don't like your brain matter Allie…..you have very nice, intelligent, humorous (in a sick kinda way), warm and fuzzy brain matter……but I don't wanna eat it. ;-P

By the way Jeanne, I never, ever thought you were sane…….. :-P

Me: My brain is warm and fuzzy? No wonder I'm so weird.

Not warm and fuzzy in the cute kittens and puppies kinda way I hope. Cuz, really, who likes cute kittens and puppies…

Jeanne: *I* like cute kittens and puppies! They taste delicious!

It's a godo thing you've never thought I was sane, darlene, then you'll never be surprised. : )

Darlene: Well, no…..not really in the puppies and kittens kind of way (although you don't fool me with your 'bite me' attitude…..I know you're a sweet person).

More in the faerie and leprechaun kind of way………

Does that make sense?

Me: *grumble* Ew, sweet, ick. :P

Faeries and leprechauns are much superior to cute kittens and puppies. I will accept that sort of warm fuzziness for my… brain.

Or… something.

Then there was a bit about a cute tech guy that I snip snipped out that resulted in:

Darlene: "But as long as you're here……….would you like to take a trip to the nearest broom closet and *use your imagination here*?"

Me: Knowing Jeanne that would be…"Would you like to take a trip to the nearest broom closet and… go somewhere to slay hapless forest creatures? They are spies for the dark elves!"

Jeanne: Well Allie, I haven't slain you yet, and you're the queen of dark elves! Ha ha

Me: Oooh, I'm queen now? Yay me! Where are my slaves… I mean… uh… peons… er… subjects?

Jeanne: Look around you…don't the majority of the people resemble peasants? Ha ha. Joking, joking.

Me: Well if I'm queen, why aren't there attractive dark elves bringing me lunch? And hot chocolate? And uh… why aren't they like, doing my work for me? Hey, why am I working! I'm the queen!

Jeanne: Well, if the best don't do it nobody does…..

Me: Aw man, I don't want to be queen anymore… no peons, still have to work, no jewels or treasurey… this job sucks. :P

Jeanne: Welcome to reality!

Darlene: Yes, but at least she's given you the correct job title……..unlike some other places. ;-P

*sigh* Ain't that the truth...

And even though Missy didn't join in our conversation, that didn't mean I couldn't still hear her laughing two rows away.

So yes, this is how we amuse ourselves at work.

It's Like the Opposite of Being Licked by a Cat

Yay non sequitur topic time!

So, I missed work Friday. I know my dick of a manager will think I was faking it and taking advantage of my FMLA to get out of driving to work after the snow. Fuck him. I called him at 2:30 AM (I think...) to inform him that I had the Worst Migraine Ever™. And by "I think..." I mean that I had taken one of my really fucking expensive migraine pills that make me loopy and nauseous and that I kept having hallucinations about calling him to the point where I wasn't sure if I had actually called him or not. I had to check my cell phone to make sure. There's no telling what I actually said when I called though, seeing as I can't really remember it amongst all the hallucinating and nausea. Fun times!

Of course, the first migraine pill didn't help, so I had to take another one at about 5 AM, so yay for more loopiness and nausea! I think I finally felt like a human being around 4 PM that afternoon. And I do mean "human being" in the loosest possible sense, because I only felt vaguly human. I felt like I'd had the flu or something. My entire body ached. The muscles in my jaw and neck ached from clenching my teeth. This really was the Worst Migraine Ever™. I thought I was going to have to go to the doctor. The migraine pills wouldn't kill it, so I just had to ride it out til it passed. I've never hurt so badly.

I blame James Bond. Yes, that's right. New, sucky James Bond. That's what we (ie: Me and Jerry... *cough* Jerry and I... whatever) were watching when the headache started. My theory is that the sheer suckitude of the movie caused my brain to attempt simultaneous implosion and explosion, resulting in... The Worst Migraine Ever™.

Purple Hair?

So I've been wanting to dye my hair. But I can't think of any way that I could dye any of my hair purple and be able to hide it at work. Sucks. When I first started working there, I had dark purple streaks at the front, and I'd pull it back and tuck it behind my ears, but you could still see the purple at the top, and they probably won't let me do that now that they're being all anal. Any ideas?

Other thought is highlights. I've never done highlights and I wouldn't want blond, so I was thinking a darker red. That's natural, right? I don't want to be bitched at at work.

I dunno. I'm just sick of my hair the way it is, and it'll only grow so fast. I used to dye it red, or lighten it, but I don't think I want to do that again. Bleh.

New Pictures: Kitty and Canoeing

So after six months, we finally got around to developing the pictures from the Queeracanoeza trip back in August.

Also, I finally developed the last roll of film that I had taken from when my kitty had to be taken and put to sleep because of her kidney's failing.

These have been uploaded them to flickr, and went ahead and uploaded the pictures I had taken of my kitty with my cell phone, just fooling around, before I knew she was sick.

Don't Hate Me Because I'm... Whatever I am

Hate me because I'm playing Lord of the Rings Online Beta this weekend! Yay me!

It's stress test weekend, and I got invited to give it a go. I r happy.

I made an elf. Big surprise, I know. Her names Ailidh, which is, for those of you who aren't as big of an Irish geek as I am, the celtic way of saying my name, Allie, and it's pronouned Ay-lee. I liked that better than the celtic way of saying Allison... Allsun.

Anywho, I'm only level five as of right now, but so far I've had fun exploring the 'newb' area. It was really easy to pick up and get right into playing, if you're used to RPGs.

Well. Can't talk, must play.