"...no dead end in sight..."

lately

Yay and woohoo, lovely weekend! In which I get absolutely no housework done but am still enjoying relaxing.

Next weekend I'm going to Houston because my baby sister is turning 16. I am not there for my parents, who seem to think everything is all okay now and they can return to Pretending Nothing Bad Has Happened, but I am there for my sister, who I haven't seen in almost nine months. I would lay down in front of a bus for that kid. She is so smart and pretty and fun.

Also during this weekend I am going to probably see if I can have brunch with my aunt and grandmother. Just because it annoys me that my dad will say he wants to do something, then back out of it when we all get our hopes up. But I need to find that Stop the Negativity switch and keep my hand firmly in the Off position for this next week, focus on the positive and stay strong so I don't say anything this next weekend that I'll regret later.

This weekend pookie and I have discussed my possibly going to get my master's degree once he gets his career!job started and we are moved to a more permanent place. (I'm talking the place that we will live in until we have The House (haus), in which we will stay and be fabulous and raise little adorable babies forever and ever, amen. But probably not til we're like, thirty or something.) I'm thinking about Interior Design because it's something I'm interested in. I've found a program but I have to have 20 portfolio samples. And with wiring and stuff like that? Something I've never done before, and something that I'd have to read up on, hardcore, before saying I'm good enough to get in and complete a master's program in the stuff.

We'll see. I just think if I take 2009 to do some independent study and get a portfolio put together I can be ready to apply in February 2010, for Fall 2010 classes. The degree program is all online, too, so I can still work full time and hopefully maintain my sanity. But we'll see how things go in the next year and where we end up.

Also I have photos to share also so this is going to be written out of order:

Driving back from Oklahoma after Christmas. There are casinos like this everywhere!

She is TOTALLY not supposed to be up there. But I caught her anyway. Then yelled at her and made her get off the counter.

This is our cable amplifier so we can cancel our cable because it sucks. The reception here sucks anyway, because it's satellite, and satellite is lame, and no one has yet to prove me otherwise. This is also getting moved to another location eventually because Elephant Clock is not pleased by having his view obstructed in such a manner.

This is how our living room looks with all the cables and stuff. We are watching KERA because there is nothing interesting on on Sundays. Oh plus that's my Brothers & Sisters DVD on top of the currently unused Direct TV box. Also note the Tivo that's been shut off and my copy of Animal Crossing: City Folk sitting next to the Wii. More on my views on that game in a later post.

The rest of today is going to be spent cleaning and planning healthy meals. I've lost another pound this week!!! That means 5 total since I started dieting two weeks ago. I'm not at even a third of my goal yet, but that's okay. I think I'd be happy with ten pounds, or at least something where I look better. I looked in the mirror last night and it's like, okay, I don't feel so bad. But I can't remember what I looked like when I weighed 120, and it must have been really thin.

There is football on TV and a whole pile of things to put in page protectors in my scrapbooking resource album, so I will shove off and go accomplish something today!

iTunes Meme

Stolen from both Grey and SaraKat!

RULES
Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line of lyrics from the first 30 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing
Step 3: Strike through the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.
Step 4: Don't look them up on Google or any other search engine you cheater.

^That's no fun! Only use Google as a last resort, you cheater XD

Step 5: If you like the game, post your own.
Step 6: After a week, any songs left, I'll just post the answers

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(I've also left out most Ralph Stanley, all of my classical and instrumental music, and strange stuff like Baaba Maal and Sufjan Stevens because I don't think most of my blog readers can recognize those lol)

1. "Nobody stands/in between me and my man..."

2. "When I was a robber/in Boston Place/you gathered round me/with your fond embrace..." 

^**Bonus points for this one because it's not a part of the normal lyrics, as far as I know**

3. "He wakes up in the morning/does his teeth bite to eat and he's rolling..."

4. "She's lost in coma where it's beautiful/intoxicated from the deep sleep, the deep sleep..."

5. "She grew up in an Indiana town/had a good looking mama/who never was around..."

6. "Way down here/you need a reason to move..."

7. "'Son,' she said/ 'have I got a little story for you'..."

8. "I wonder what it's like to be a rainmaker/I wonder what it's like to know that I made the rain..."

9. "Living is easy with eyes closed/misunderstanding all you see..."

10. "There is a young cowboy/ who lives on the range..."

(Note: This song makes me cry like a baby every time I hear it ;_;)

11. "I have climbed highest mountain/I have run/through the fields..."

12. "You can dance/you can jive/having the time of your life..."

13. "I think I was wrong/I think you were right..."

14. "It's morning/I wake up/the taste of summer sweetness on my mind..."

15. "I wept for those who suffer long/but how I weep for those who've gone..."

16. "Picture yourself in a boat on a river/with tangerine trees and marmalade skies..."

17. "I'm Miss American Dream since I was seventeen/don't matter if I step on the scene or slink away to the Phillippines..."

*ducks

18. "Tonight I'm tangled in my blanket of clouds/dreaming aloud..."

19. "When you were languishing in rooms I could've found you in..."

20. "There must be some kinda way out of here/said the joker to the thief..."

21. "Don't be so quick to/walk away..."

22. "There's too many things I haven't done yet/there's too many sunsets/I haven't seen..."

23. "Standing in line to see the show tonight and there's a light on/heavy glow..."

24. "Hello darkness my old friend/I've come to talk with you again..."

25. "Don't walk away like you always do/this time..."

26. "Right now/he's probably slow dancing with a bleach blonde tramp and she's probably getting frisky..."

27. "I'm like/good gracious ass is bodacious/flirtatious/tryin to show patience..."

28. "Life is a mystery/everyone must stand alone..."

29. "She packed my bags last night, pre-flight/zero hour, nine AM..."

30. "Lord God Almighty, let me tell the news/my head got wet in midnight dew..."

**Also bonus points for this one IF you can get it without Google. It's kinda weird.**

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Run, my minions! Run and decipher for my amusement! *evil chortle chortle* XD

up with the breeze

Lovely Saturday~ In which I have lots of things to do and absolutely no drive to do them.

Christmas shopping has been prickly and fraught with fits and starts, and thus I will gloss over it for another time.

My agenda today is as follows:

• I have to go to Michael's for scrapbooking paper and spine posts. I may also go back to JoAnn's because when we were there last night I think I was incredibly fatigued and cranky; thus, nothing worked. Things may look better in the daylight.
• I am going to either Calloway's or Walmar for pots for these gorgeous white azaleas I ganked from work. Do white azaleas work well inside? I hesitate to move them outdoors because they've been in the comforts of an environmentally-controlled office building for 6+ weeks and Dashboard currently says the temperature outside is 49 degrees, and windy. We shall see. I'm putting two in one big pot and that may or may not be a disaster.
• I will then proceed to either Circuit City or Walmar for an ink cartridge for my blasted cute photo printer. I tried firing it up the other night and the menu said "cartridge failed". That was a huge angry temper tantrum moment with me, I must say. I bought a new packet of photo paper and now the cartridge is wonky. Figures.
• Grocery shopping? For what? I don't ever have time to cook anymore. OH chicken and dumplings would be delish on a grossly overcast day like today, though. We shall see. I tend to grocery shop a lot better-slash-gratuitously when I'm hungry. 

I am then going to return home, put my feet up, and while I would prefer to play Sims for 3498673768503 hours I assume I will have to relegate myself to something as mundane as laundry.

Reading a book? What's that? HA.

Also, the trash is mostly bundled so that has to go down to the dumpster. Woohoo, so exciting /sarcasm 

I promise once I'm chored out I won't be so snarky and/or pseudointellectual. Honest.

rabbit rabbit!

November is off to a rockin start! The apartment is a mess from the party but woohoo and yay, I finally threw a party! It wasn't as big as I wanted but it was still nice to hang out with Amy and Austin and get to talk to them when one of us wasn't getting married.

We have a whole Hello Kitty Halloween basket of candy left, as we live in an apartment and had approximately zero trick-or-treaters. Most of it is Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse saltwater taffy, which you'd think would be good but after awhile it's kinda gross. 

Also:

Rudie did not like her princess costume. This was without the hat, which she refused to wear. Also, because it's a dog costume her arms wouldn't fit into it, so I had to just velcro it around her for the five seconds that it took to take this picture. Then she glared at me for a long, long time after that. So maybe I'm going to wait until Christmas to try dressing her up again.
Also yesterday we went to my boss's wedding! It was so cute ^_^ She looked fabulous. And I mean like absolutely happy. Jay went with me and got to meet work people and while it was kinda awkward for him I think overall it was a good time? And one of those "hey, you never have to do that again until the office Christmas party! :D" type deals.
I am on Day 2 of Nanowrimo and I have approximately 4k words. Amazing! Hopefully this isn't going to be where I peak and slack off and hit that big ol' wall. I've got cheese and crackers and lots of ice water to keep me fortified, as well as all the notes I took in October that should help me plug along until the 30th. Also playing Sims isn't helping me. I thought about asking Jay to lock up the game disc until the end of the month but figured that would only make me want to play it even more. So yeah, I guess it's not making me procrastinate too much.
The trees across the waterway are putting on a fine fall display...I'm going to wait until more of them turn to take pictures, but omg lovely. If I knew I wouldn't be arrested for trespassing I'd take a Saturday and take the Canon Rebel out there to do a photoshoot. I might, anyway, seeing as how my photo count for next month's issue of Fotos is pretty low at this point.
The weather here has been weird, and everybody in the office is sick off and on because of it. Like this picture I took last week:

That is ice on top of my car, I think last...Wednesday? How jacked up is that. And today it's like 85 degrees and we've got the AC on. Gross! I want winter to get here or make up its mind or something.

Also, next weekend in Grapevine is the Mid-Cities Stamp Expo, which I'm pretty sure I'm going to go to because pookie has class (or so he says. He said it was this Saturday but apparently it wasn't. So I will believe it when I see it!) and then maybe I can find a stamp appraiser for this Scott 613 that may or may not be completely worthless. That's how I phrase it, all in one breath. And then the weekend after that is Grey's birthday, then lakehouse/writing until we drop, then Thanksgiving, and then November will be over. It's going to go by so fast, and then we've got to start thinking about Christmas, which is an entirely different post altogether.

So for the remainder of my day I'm going to clean up all the trash and then possibly do laundry and no Sims until next weekend, honest. Also, I've got a hankering to reorganize my study, and not just clean up all the trash and sort stuff I said I'd just sell on Ebay but hasn't sold. I mean like move desks around. Maybe not the bookshelves, because that would be too strenuous, but definitely my craft table, and maybe get rid of the hutch that has been sitting on the floor for 4+ months just being a pseudo-shelf. There's so much to do and I don't quite know where to start (the beginning. Yes, I know. Har har) so I will get away from blogging and go take care of my business. Latah~<3

Woohoo, it's Saturday night and we're watching the Stars! Plus Tivo is being lovely so we can pause it at commercials and fast forward later.

This week has been an okay week. Sort of slow...budgets are due, which is gross. I think comparing this Friday to last, it was a lot more put together and I got my work completed in a more timely fashion. But next weekend my boss is getting married, so I have to find something adorable and sophisticated between now and then.

Clothes are difficult for me. My bottom half doesn't match up to my top half so sometimes it's frustrating, off and on, to go clothes shopping. Especially for an event in which I have to present myself in a certain manner. Or maybe I just stress way too much about it.

This morning I woke up early and got some chores knocked out (did 2.5 loads of laundry, and folded two; shuffled some old art portfolios and stuff into my study from the bedroom; bagged up some old clothes for Goodwill; fed the ratties; finished organizing my closet; etc. etc.) then went grocery shopping. People look at me like I'm nuts, walking around Walmar with my Ferry Building tote bag and picking out my food based on free range vs. organic vs. low fat, low cal, low price. I try not to be too picky, because the best stuff is really, really expensive, but I refuse to buy generic or poor quality-equals-low price on the following:

• toilet paper
• Ziploc bags
• Band-Aids 
• chicken or beef stock, or basically any type of good produce
• anything involving rat food mix.  

That's all I can think of for now, but that reminds me - I have photos!

Namely, of rat mix: 

This is the latest batch, a modification of the Suebee's Mix: Kashi GoLean 7-grain cereal, Shredded Wheat (Wheat n' Bran), Wacky Mac, and dried banana chips that I've broken into tiny pieces so they don't have too much sugar in one sitting. I put kitten food in the last batch but I'm not sure if that's giving them too much protein, so I left it out of this one.

I found this photo on my phone today; the ocean at Half Moon Bay. *sigh.

Oh, and I gave Zig a bath last weekend. This is my least favorite part of the car wash because I start to get incredibly claustrophobic if it takes too long.

Steve and Barry's was having a sale last night, so I bought this shirt and a cute necklace on clearance for like $12 - then this morning as I was hanging laundry I walk back into the bedroom to find Rudie using it as a nap spot. The one shirt that wasn't christened with black and white cat hair...grah.

We went out to Grapevine to hit up the Best Buy because Jay bought this tiny, tiny computer to use on his research projects and the store in Grapevine still had them in stock. And it was on sale! Then I put in a request to go to the Books-A-Million in Grapevine Mills because I always look there for stamps and stamp material (where I was greatly disappointed. Who knew so many people were obsessed with coin collecting? It's taken over the stamp section - anyway. Another nerd rant for another time) and he found a book he'd been looking for. Then we went to S&B, where I was hoping to find a snarky hockey t-shirt, but alas, nothing. So not a complete disappointment...just not what I was expecting.

Anyway. Today after most of the chores had been knocked out I've been sitting here on my butt playing Sims. When did I ever decide it had gotten old? Sad, sad. I've got two pages from the SF trip scrapbooked and I've got about two or three more to go. I was also looking through my scrapbooking reading materials and found photos from the SF trip last March. Kite flying and all! It was a nice discovery. Like in high school when I'd hide $20 someplace in my room, to find accidentally six months later while cleaning. Surpriiise~

Next weekend is our Halloween party! I don't think a lot of people are going to come, but we're going to pick a scary movie to watch and play some scary video games. I say scary because it's probably going to be Fatal Frame or something like that, so I will probably just stay in the kitchen and make cute little edibles instead of watching Jay play that because it might give me heinous nightmares.

Tomorrow I am going to experiment on little foods for the party. Stay tuned, lovelies! <3