Gift Cards
The rest of the Mall story was the gift card that I was redeeming.
It was for $10, and I didn't necessarily want to spend a bunch more of my own money to go with it, like
some people did. So I found things on sale for $3 and got three. Three for three, and some tax (they do have sales tax in Iowa, right?), and I'd get a little bit o' change back.
BUT NOOOOOO.....
It wasn't a gift certificate, it was a gift CARD, and they don't give you the change back, they just take off the exact amount from the card and give you the card back. So now, I have 40-some-odd change on a gift card, and since I don't mall, I don't know when/if I'll ever use it.
So carry around this almost worthless card, give it to someone who might actually use it, or just toss it? I mean, it's less than half a dollar.
Wall to Wall
AAckK!
I actually Malled today. So not me.
But spending gift certificates is always fun. And harrassing food service boys.
Look at me, I've got a bath and body works bag in one hand, and a frapi-freakin-chino in the other.
Like Totally.
Work Crap
I was a tiny bit afraid that Ms.PAAR's holiday plans would fall through, and I would have to face her today and tomorrow, but all is good, and she wasn't at work today, and therefore probably not tomorrow.
So with so many people gone, I really didn't work too hard today. Did what I had to do and chatted with my friends. Without seeking out extra work like I usually do. (darned work ethic)
But this is the best week at work so far, and after 9 months, I deserve a best week.
And with begining to think about looking for a different job, a best week is perfect.
Moon Me
I awoke this morning to find the full moon shining on my face through the little space between the window shade and the top of the window, it's only about a 2-3" slit, but there was the moon.
It's going to be a good day.
I've been good
Well, Santa must know how good I've been, I got
"The Year Without A Santa Claus" DVD in my Stocking!
Yay!
'Tis the season
Well, Merry Christmas and all that rot.
Or in Eleven's language:
Muy Muy Centamate.
mind Your Own Bee's Wax!
What do you say to someone when they get to personal? When their nose is so far up in your business, if they sneezed, you'd be outta business for a week!
I try to be a polite person, for the most part. And sometimes, honest personal discussion is just fine. How else do you really get to know other people. But I can tell a friend connection right away, and those folks are the ones I don't mind answering personal questions. It's the people that aren't my friends, never were, and probably never will become that I don't really care to get personal with.
I've heard the idea that if someone asks you a too-personal question you should just ask them, "why do you want to know?" Well, that would never work with the boundary-challenged people I know. They would just tell me why they want to know, and why they need to know, and why I need to tell them. Then where would that put me?
So my method is usually: 1. Ignore or B) Change the subject. both are not always possible. So my biggest defense mechanism is crass humor. Using 'blue' language without provocation (out of the blue if you will) &/or making a bad joke at my own expense usually will get them laughing and forget the inappropriate question all together.
Example: (ok, you knew that was coming, right?)
I commented that my back hurt, and Ms. P.A.A.R. (that would be passive/aggressive--always right) said I'd better watch out, I was getting sick, because the last time I had a backache, I was getting the flu. OK, first, well, she was partly right. I had been sniffling for a few days, and feeling run-down, and then had pain in my back. The next day I was out. And that was the bad flu that kept me out for most a week. But really, I've had pain in my back plenty of times. And who's keeping track of me being sick? (oh, Ms. PAAR is also a germ-o-phobe, and if anyone comes to work even the slightest bit ill, she'll go around sanitizing everything behind them, I understand not wanting to get sick, but I don't really think it does any good.)
So, I say my back hurts, she says I must be getting sick, I'm having a pain where her nose is stuck up in my business, and have to get it outta there, so I came back with, 'well, my boyfriend was up for the weekend'. This sent her and others in the office into shrieks of laughter, and saved-by-the-bell, the phone rings, and we got off that subject.
Someday maybe they will learn. Doubt it, but I'm an optimist.
A few things
Sorry that picture looks so bad.
I'm still figuring out all this Mac stuff, and I'm not whining, because Mac does have tons of ways it's better than PC junk, but now I can't figure out how to make that picture smaller.
Last day of school for the year. I am going to completely stay off the kid's backs about school junk until it's back in session. I know they're doing their best, don't need to dwell on the bad parts on vacation!
Short day at work tomorrow, no work Friday, and next week, 'passive-aggressive' and I are taking opposite days off, so complete vacation from how I'm doing everything wrong, and why everyone is stupid for not doing things her way!
I'm too much!
Remember back before DVDs and VCRs, 'special' was actually
Special? Movies like Wizard of Oz or It's a Wonderful Life were only on the air once a year at most, so it was an event when they were on. But buying a movie outright changed that, and now you can watch your movie whenever you want. And the TV specials around the holidays had the same 'special'-ness back then, hell, remember the CBS brown and yellow slide: CBS Special Presentation? Re-runs on all the cable channels changed that. Around this time, you can find the 'holiday classics' on some channel most evenings. We'd often put up our tree to whatever holiday show was on the night we happen to be doing the tree, because we could always find something.
Now that we're back to antenna (and not missing cable at all), we're back to just a few holiday specials. And I think we missed most of them, I think they were last week when we weren't paying attention to the tv. And again, not missing it. But I've missed my favorite Holiday show, what I usually refer to as 'the show with the heat miser and snow miser' because I didn't ever remember what it was.
And all the cute Christmas tree ornaments, and figurines, and various paraphenelia of Rudolph, and Santa Claus is coming to Town, and that's the same animation as the show I'm thinking of, but why no heat miser or snow miser tree ornaments???
Well, found the
figurines, and the name:
The Year Without a Santa Claus
. I guess it was my favorite without me even realizing it.
Here's the boys:
Heat Miser,
Snow Miser. (and their famous
rivalry).
Another Trip Around The Sun
Thank you all for your wonderful Birthday Wishes!
All the folks at work (even some of the clients) were peachy-keen with wishes, too. Probably since I had been a big butt-head ever since I started working there, making a big deal about turning 40. I was pretty obnoxious lately. ;p
Some of my favorite things I heard today were:
Happy 29th Birthday...again!
Well, it's all down-hill from here, right?
40 is the new 30
I should have brought you a coffin.
Oprah says up until she turned 50 she was just smokin' and now that she's 50, she's on fire!
...and the best of all...
You don't look 40!
Hey!
They say it's your birthday!
It's my birthday, too!!
The time zone is messed up a bit on the birthday calendar, so I'll go ahead and post this now, while it's still flashing.
3:11pm tomorrow is the actual time if you need to be specific.
Traditions
I'm working on changing some family traditions. Or rather, making my own and making them stick, I guess.
My mom was always the stockng-stuffing queen, and if you hang your stocking (pinned to the couch, not actually hanging), you'd get it filled. Adult and child alike. And as kids, our biggest gifts would be from Santa, in the stocking or next to. That was part of the reason for using the couch, the spoils spilled all over the place.
As a kid, at first it was very magical. As an older (read: no-longer-believing-but-just-playing-along) kid, it was fun, and there came a point when I would help mom buy the junk to fill the stockings. And always, no matter how old I've gotten (and remember, I'm getting pretty darned old!), I still get a big stocking full of junk.
When my kids were little, I kept the tradition, as we do when we are first away from our parents. After all, they were the traditions we grew up with, so they must be, at the very least, 'right' and at most, the same thing everyone else does. But I do remember the lean holidays. The stuffing-the-stocking-with-dollar-store-junk year. And the I-scrimped-and-saved-and-"Santa"-got-all-the-credit?!? year. And trying to keep my family's traditions with my ex-husband's family just didn't work. I guess that was when I really realized that not everyone did the stocking stuffers like my family did.
And after the divorce, when my mom got her years mixed up and thought it was my turn to have the kids on Christmas eve and day, when we opened gifts a few days later, we each had sacks of junk that was the stuff that would have gone into the stockings. And I use the word 'junk' lovingly, and now, really have to switch to the word that rings in my head: crap. My mom loves to shop, and has a bit of a who-ever-dies-with-the-most-junk kind of issue, a collector, if you will. So those things put together, what ends up in the stockings is unfortunately mostly crap. (and not that there are not nice presents under the tree also, just to fill up the stockings, there's lots of cheap crap) We still have a box mostly full of stocking crap from a few years ago, that no one was very interested in, so just got left in the box. And me with my trying-to-get-mimimalistic tendancies, I just want to give it all away.
So this year, the kids are with me, and my folks. We will hang the stockings, but I won't put the kid's biggest gift in there. I may not put anything in there at all. But I won't stop my mom from her fun. I told my kids tonight that grama had probably already bought the junk for the stockings already. I guess that's my gift to my mom. Letting her shop to her heart's content and enjoying the crap Christmas morning. And next year, we won't hang stockings, since the kids will be with their dad on 'stocking hanging day.'
And new traditions will grow and prosper.
Secret Santa
Our Secret Santa reveal day and monthly Food Day was today at work. The Star Trek magnetic poetry went over well, I stuck into my recipient's office while he was gone to a meeting, and put the magnets all over his file cabinet. I made extra magnets to say "To Bob, Star Trek Magnetic Poetry From Santa", and put that part at the top. The funniest part, is I wasn't actually thinking poetry like rhyming words, so when a co-worker suggested I write a little poem with the magnets, too, I didn't really have a lot of rhyming words to go with. The concept to me, I guess, is more phrases and prose, not jack-n-jill rhymes.
That, and the other purchased gifts went over great. And he didn't figure out it was me until I'm standing over him, telling him to open his final gift: a (cheap) radio controlled truck that looks just like his, and I made a
license plate with his vanity lingo on it, and stuck it to the back end.
The anticipation is the most fun part. And the challenge of finding things your recipient will really like.
Since we had Food Day on our revealing day, I thought I'd also make my pot-luck contribution be something my SS recipient would like, in this case, spicey, spicey, spicey!
So I made
these, half regular, half with metric*butt*tons of hot sauce mixed into the cheese. I brought the extra cheese with for dipping, nice and spicey.
PS, the commercials that told me to 'check our website for recipes' definately worked. I'm a drone. ;p
Sing like you mean it!
OK, I understand that corale music isn't everyone's cup o' tea. But singing in a choir is something incredible, when all are working together for the same goal. It's just magical.
All the different parts of the harmony, or even better yet, dissonence. Everyone knowing their own part, and it all blending together like weaving a tapestry.
Yesterday in rehersal, and tonight (the real deal), we sang as one voice. Our Ava Maria brought more than one audience member to tears. And boy, is it hard to sing when you are weepy yourself.
Ok, I'm just a big music geek, but this weekend rivaled singing in Notre Dame in 8 part harmony on my college choir tour.
Cool things!
The awsome images below were created with
TypoGenerator, which I found at one of my new favorite blogs:
Cyber Chocolate, who I found through another of my new favorite blogs:
My So-Called Strife. Both have a plethora of great stuff.
I've been making tons of TypoGenerator art for my desktop, and the iMac makes it sooooo easy to do that!
I want to show off my "Hero" that I made on the site
Hero Machine, (also found on Cyber Chocolate).
But alas, this Mac-Newbie doen't know how to do a screen capture/print screen yet. ;(
Pet Advent
If you play NeoPets, don't forget their
Advent Calendar, if you don't yet, click
here to sign up!
Another handy NeoLink I only recently discovered is
The Neopian Educator. One of their very helpful links has all the free stuff listed on the same page. If you use a tabbed web browser like I am addicted to, you can open all the links in seperate pages and let them load at the same time, and grab all your godies in one run. (As long as you're already logged in)
Five Million What?
I know it's blasphemous in most of Nebraska to even suggest there might be more important things than
football but the
big news this week has got me a bit riled up!
Five. Million. Dollars. WTF??
Lord and Lady A$$hat from I-O-friggin-wa think football, ok, all athletics, deserve a giant donation. What about Education? Health Care? Homelessness? Healthy Babies? Mental Health?
I know a big part of this rant is because of budget cuts, and restructuring, and it hits us at work, and it's been a very rough few weeks, and going to continue to be rough for a few more weeks at least.
Come on, Athletics don't need five freeking million dollars. Give some of the money to the poor hospitals cutting the millionaire money out of the paper to try to win stuff for their kids so the budget crunch won't crunch the kids quite so much.
If it's all about getting thier name on the stadium or something, I'm sure we could accomidate somehow. How about The Lord and Lady A$$hat Mentally Incompetent Wing? And they could check in, because if they think athletics are worth more than health and education and feeding people, they probably belong there.
The Tree Is (finally) Up
Wow, the 9th already. This may be the latest the tree has gone up. But it all worked out well.
Growing up, the tradition was to put up the tree very soon after Thanksgiving, maybe the Friday after, or at least Saturday or Sunday. (Depending on what after Thanksgiving sales needed to be attended.) I continued that tradition in early adulthood, and when my kids were little.
And when I was a kid, we'd always have a live tree. We'd often go pick it out and chop it down ourselves, occasionally picking it off a lot. I continued that tradition with my kids too, at first.
But a few years ago, I started changing these traditions to fit me and my kids. Not completely on purpose, but some of it was. I made the hard decision one year, to buy a fake tree. I know, I know, it's FAKE, so not as good, but I decided the one-time investment, and the not having to plan/worry about going and finding a tree each year, was worth it.
And, we made it fun. With holiday shows or music in the background, we'd put up the fake tree together, each of us 'fluffing' our 'branches' in our own unique way. To add the lights and garland, we'd circle the tree, (which starts in the middle of the room for just this purpose) all together, singing &/or laughing. When the tree was sufficiently decorated, it was scooted to it's rightful place, usually by a window. And we usually do it some evening after regular junk is done, school, work, supper, whatever. Not having to do it right away on T-day weekend. It doesn't need to take the whole day, just a couple hours.
So my parents have been gone since right around the beginning of school, on one of their volunteer/vacation trips. (mostly volunteer, a little vacation) And tonight is the night the Redheads and I have decided to do the tree. And Thirteen (and the Lincoln Boys Choir) sings tomorrow night again in the Heymarket (6:15 in front of the building Ivana Cone and Paint Yourself Silly are in) so I had invited my folks to come to that.
And, surprise! They showed up today. And came over tonight, and got to sample me and my kids' holiday tree traditions. It was very nice. We all did our decorating dance around the tree. I think my mom was more excited than Thirteen. Eleven danced with Grama for a bit, too, though she was not completely excited about his 'suess' tree branches. ;p
Calendar
I've used this
Advent Calendar for a few years now. I love how he's laid it out: how you have to really wait 'till the day to 'open' the calendar space, the variety of Holiday things posted, and that there is always something on the page, plus a link and a memory.
I really enjoy hearing about other people's Holiday memories. Like "I'll tell you mine, if you'll tell me yours"
Several years ago, there were books that were very popular, Question Books, or something like that. Oh, I remember, The Book of Questions, that's the title. There were several, and a Christmas/Holiday edition. I remember answering questions and hearing others answer, I don't remember any specifics, but just the sharing of memories.
So I'll try to leave a few, here and there like cookie crumbs.
Like...
My earliest christmas-morning-specific memory is this:
It was probably our first christmas in the 'new' house (that we moved into after my Kindergarten year of school, and my parents still live there now), we came out to our stockings ('we' being my and my younger brother-butthead). and there were notes to look in the front entryway, and there, lo and behold, was a banana seat lime green and white bicycle for me, and an inch worm ride-on toy for the little brother (Butthead).
What's your earliest christmas-morning memory??
Magnetic Poetry
OK, so I'm in a Secret Santa game at work, and the person I drew like Science Fiction, and specifically, Star Trek. (This is great for me, I'm a Trekker too.) I've got most of the other gifts already purchased, so didn't want to go too pricey on something Star Trek, and I remembered a few years ago when I made some magnetic dress-up paper dolls for someone.
Here's what I did then: the Secret Santa recipiant that year loved the Simpsons, so I found Patty and Selma with clothes online, kind of paper dolls. They were both dressed in just their bullet bras and granny panties, and each had two other outfits, one their regular one, and a fancy-dress one, all complete with accessories. All total pieces were about 5-7 articles of clothing for each plus the figures themselves. I printed the pix, put the printed pieces, cut out very roughly around, onto sticker magnet paper, then cut very close to make the finished pieces.
The gift was a big hit. The first day, I gave her just one of the gals by itself, no clothes. So she thought it was funny, but other people thought it was very strange to give her a magnet of an ugly cartoon character in it's underware. I gave the SS recipient the outfits and other sister, a few at a time each day after that. She loved it. And at the reveal, when I admitted that I'd kinda made it myself, everyone was impressed. Unfortunately, that was so many years ago, I haven't been able to find the site again.
So this year, I thought back to that project, I thought maybe I could make some Star Trek dress-up magnets, but I haven't been able to find anything good. Then I thought of magnetic poetry. I could make some Star Trek magnetic poetry! Just regular magnetic poetry, with some extra words thrown in, like Tribbles, Redshirt, tricorder, and some Klingon words that I'll have to look up. I'm liking this idea, and I know my SS recipient this year has a metal file cabinet in his office that should work great.
Now, here's my two questions for the audience:
1. Is there a site anywhere that lists a bunch of words that are usually used in magnetic poetry? I figured I could find a simple list, but I haven't found one yet.
and B) What extra Star Trek words would you include?
December
Before the whole month gets away from me...
1. I'm back posting a couple events from the weekend
and B) I think I'm going to sign up for
Holidailies
Haymarket Holidays
Tonight Thirteen and the LBC Corale sang in the Haymarket as part of the holiday fun down there. They sang right outside the building that holds Ivana Cone and Paint Yourself Silly. Right across the alley from the restaurant my little brother (butthead) is the head chef at. There were free Molly the Trolley rides, and Santa was giving out candy canes. Nice start to the holiday season.
Birthday Countdown
So here we are, just 19 days until the big "four-oh" birthday. I do expect cards, flowers, candy, presents, and/or good wishes from all, depending on how well you know me, just so you are for-warned. I've told all work people too, and family, and friends. I will only hit this particular birthday once. (Once is enough)
And I've always gotten gipped, since my birthday is soooooo close to Cristmas.
You gotta live it to understand it
Found Money Update
My scientific New Year's Resolution is collecting found change.
This month's updated total:
$1.73
I did cheat a little at the end, and added in the change I found on the floor when I swept
