Well, once again I might not have to go into work. I'm waiting to hear from my GM...whos waiting to hear from our DM. Though really, all US Mail services in the state of Maryland were canceled for today and when an organization whos motto is 'rain, snow, sleet or shine' kowtows to the 'Blizzard' warning that is in effect I think perhaps the greed mongers at the mall should do so as well.

I watched the Muppet Xmas Carol the other day, and I was struck by how all of Scrooge's early lines (when he is nasty) really reflect modern corporate thought and greed for the most part.

Like using less coal to keep the workers warm so as to have lower operational costs. Hmm...Annapolis Mall doesn't actually turn its heat on, it lets the stores heat themselves and sucks out their heat so everyone is actually pretty cold.

Or not giving to charity---though we do, but not really. Its a way to get people to buy another thing in the store. If Scrooge had thought of it he would have done it as well. "Would you like to buy X to give to THE TROOPS" Totally playing on people's patriotic guilt.

Am realising what a defining movie Lord of the Rings was for my college years. This is my current facebook status:

( Read more... )

Two of the participants are my old roommates. Definitely bringing back some good SMCM nostalgia.




Here's what Kiki and I are referring to:

http://cassieclaire.livejournal.com/

We were very entertained by these when they first came out and usually read them out loud to each other.

This was on the start-up page of my mom's computer. How totally apropriate.

http://www.switched.com/2010/02/01/how-many-facebook-friends-do-we-have-for-real/?icid=main|aim|dl5|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.switched.com%2F2010%2F02%2F01%2Fhow-many-facebook-friends-do-we-have-for-real%2F

Date:	2010-02-02 02:12
Subject:
Security:	Public
Mood:	heartbroken

Well, I did it.

I unfriended the 'friend' on facebook.

I was finally pushed over the edge when I realised she had deleted all of the photos of us and our group of friends from her account. I want some of those photos, so that kind of stinks. It seems so childish to 'unfriend' someone, which is why I had avoided doing it. But in the end it was hurting me more than it was worth. And not because I don't want to be friends with her, its because I still do want to be friends with her and clearly the choice isn't up to me. Friends aren't supposed to cause you this sort of heartbreak. And yet, it happens time and time again.

I'm in some sort of cycle. If I've known you five years thats the time when you decide you don't want to be friends with me for whatever reason and there is nothing I can do about it. If we make it past the five year mark I consider myself gifted with a friend who will actually stick by me. Something about me apparently has an expiration date. I wish one of these former friends would tell me what it is. I can't handle loosing people that I have invested so much emotionally in.

When I was younger, I was used to this, moving around loosing friends because of that. I haven't moved, I haven't changed the essentials of who I am, I hopefully have refined myself to some degree, but I am recongnizable in essentials as the same person I was five years ago.

I am left in an awkward position however, I am also friends with her mother on facebook. her mother is a great person, I know she is responsible for the last time I saw my 'friend' because I dropped off something at her house and started crying about my mother (it was early in the whole process) no doubt there was a guilt trip involved. I feel like I owe her an explaination perhaps, but I don't want to stick her in the middle of something that I don't even understand the inner workings and reasoning of.

I hate that I am in this position. I hate that I feel this loss and knowing that my old friend does not. That people are always asking me how she is doing and then I have to explain that she hasn't felt it necessary to talk to me in almost a year. That she is getting married but I know nothing about the wedding. I would not have predicted myself in this situation.


Also, I really don't like those black out the screen ads that lj has become so fond of.

Okay, by some magical means my old broken camera worked, which is great because it can take close ups!

So I had a little photo session (in the bathroom, it has good light...so sorry about the view of my toothbrush).

Here is a link to an album with LOTS of photos, I took multiple ones of the various pieces because things like tails got cut out of shots from one direction.

http://s9.photobucket.com/albums/a66/happythoughtsfly/


( Sample Photos behind the cut... )

Hopefully this works!!

Date:	2010-01-26 15:52
Subject:
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

I love creative glitch messages. This is what I just got when trying to get to lj.


Page Not Found

I'm sorry, you've reached a page that I cannot find. I'm really sorry about this. It's kind of embarassing. Here you are, the user, trying to get to a page on LiveJournal and I can't even serve it to you. What does that say about me? I'm just a webserver. My sole purpose in life is to serve you webpages and I can't even do that! I suck. Please don't be mad, I'll try harder. I promise! Who am I kidding? You're probably all like, "Man, LiveJournal's webserver sucks. It can't even get me where I want to go." I'm really sorry. Maybe it's my CPU...no that's ok...how bout my hard drives? Maybe. Where's my admin? I can't run self-diagnostics on myself. It's so boring in this datacenter. It's the same thing everyday. Oh man, I'm so lonely. I'm really sorry about rambling about myself, I'm selfish. I think I'm going to go cut my ethernet cables. I hope you get to the page you're looking for...goodbye cruel world!

-the webserver

Okay. I doubt I will get any feed back on this, but its worth a shot.

So for my mom's chemo I've been giving her a part of a nativity with each round.

There are two more rounds to go and I need one more nativity part.

Thus far we have:

Mary
Joseph
Jesus
3 wisemen
Camel
donkey
sheep
angel
3 cherubs in a band
shepherd

So looking online at various nativities, my options seem to be :drummer boy or goat. There has to be something better?

Any ideas are welcome.

Ever been minding your own business when something just triggers you to realise you are more upset about something than you let yourself be most days?

I'm tempted to unfriend this person on Facebook. It sort of breaks my heart whenever she posts one of her updates. She was one of my best friends for almost 5 years, and she's set the date of her wedding for October. In the last year I've talked to less than a handful of times. In the five years we were friends she went through alot and I always tried my best to be there for her. She leaned on me heavily, and often. She's failed me so completely right now, and I don't know why.

I know she thought I was jealous of her getting a boyfriend, and that I was too judgemental of her getting one. I met him once, my opinion was never really formed. It was, possibly one of the most disasterous first meetings people could have. Our other friend and I were coming back from D.C. to have dinner with her and her mom, and he decided he wanted to join us. It was thef irst time in the months she had been dating him that we had seen her, so the awkwardness factor was all around. He left in the middle of everything--I actually thought he left. That was when I found out he spent most nights at her mother's house.

I went from talking to her almost daily and seeing her several times a week to nothing. With no explaination except her getting a boyfriend, and now fiance.

I want to wring an explanation out of her, its not fair that I am left with this worry over what I could have done differently when I know she isn't wasting time thinking about me. Its not fair that I did spend all of those years trying to be the best friend that I could and she isn't helping me at all when I could use good friends the most.

I know significant others change things, many of my friends have gotten involved with people after I met them. I expect a degree of change in all things. Its the complete dismissal that hurts. She hasn't returned phone calls or emails. On face book she responds to my sisters--but not to me.

And it really hurts to know she will be having this very important day in her life, that she plans and anticipates with friends and knowing that I won't be one of them.

At this point, I doubt we could ever be friends again, but I really mourn the loss of her friendship and the lack of explaination I get with the loss. I don't have a why.

Knowing myself, I will probably end up writing some email to her, or maybe a letter, but I'm trying to save myself some dignity. I've sent those things out before...the wait and eventual acceptance of nothing is horrible. But knowing I did all I could is all I can expect to gain from it, and I guess that is sort of closure.

So...I get off of work, I'm checking my phone as I get ready to leave. 3 missed calls from 2 of my sisters, I took this to mean that they were in the mall and looking for me.

Wrong.

I text message one of them 'What up?'

My text message back, 'Mom broke her ankle and had to go to the hospital'

Yup.

My mom 'was trying to be nice' her words, and was taking out some extra trash for the pick up this morning, and getting the newspapers. Our drive way is definitely slick right now. So she slipped and fell. And then, insult to injury. No one in the house heard her screaming for help so she had to crawl back up our drive way (its a hill). When she made it to the front steps my one sister heard her and ran down to find her still sprawled out.

So they had to take her away in an ambulance. She's at the hospital now and its her right ankle, which means her driving is going to be nil for a while. I don't know if she is going to be able to teach, or if she'll be able to get up to her bedroom. Apparently they were talking about getting her a boot to walk in. So hopefully that is the case. She can't have crutches because of where the incision from her lump-ectomy is. Plus she has bad lymphodema on that side.

So I came home, postponing plans I had with my out of town friend. I pitch in, as I can see my sisters worked hard to get the downstairs looking clean, aside from my cookie disaster in the dining room. So I start cleaning that up. Youngest sibling comes in'WHAT SHE"S CLEANING?!' At which point I snapped.

I have been cleaning alot lately. Not my room. But other parts of the house have been very thouroughly polished and dusted and reorganized (I even alphabetized my mom's collection of cliffs' notes) And I've been resenting this particular sibling's attitude towards me for a few weeks now. I feel like both she and her twin see in me aspects of themselves that they hate, so they nitpick me for them. It wasn't graceful of me to snap. But its not easy to go from high pressure of helping and being happy with the crazy chaos of christmas and the mall parking lot to first words out of someone's mouth after finding out about another pitfall my mother--who I am already extremely worried about--are criticism.

Just argh.

So now she's locked up in her room and I'm pondering how best to apologise.

Aw, Britney Murphy. She definitely was a raw talent who got swallowed up by the Hollywood game. I saw Clueless again, not too long ago. She was such a gem in that film.

Well, I attempted to get to work today. I honestly did. I shoveled, and scraped for over an hour to get my car out of the driveway. But, living on a hill wasn't work in my favor. I got up so far before my car's wheels got stuck, and no amount of backtracking or manouvering got me past the bad patch, in fact, most attempts ended with me being even further away from the to of the street. Getting back into the drive way was even hard after that. It's another hill. My tires slid on the ice that had been made from my shoveling. So my car slid backwards a good foot after I put in in park and had the parking break on!

My mom is encouraging me to continue my baking binge. You think all the cookies I already made would be enough. But she bought ingredients for another kind that I wanted to make (they have honey and coconut in them..mmmm) plus a whiskey cake.

I had Belle out with me while I was shoveling, but she hasn't had a real walk yet today...she's going to be lost in the snow now! Its over a foot and she's only 15 inches tall!!

Ehh....

I thought it was going to be good. But I don't think I like it. I used to love all of The Calling's stuff, but I think he is floundering as a solo artist, needs the other guy (who's name is totally slipping my mind right now) to tell him this wasn't so good.

Argh.

LJ won't let me respond to my responses or to other people's posts. It goes gray and then another window of nothing pops up.

I'm guessing is a popup add that my computer is too old to handle, but that means I have to use another computer to do all of my responding. Grrr.

So, friends with all sorts of people on facebook.

Real life friends, family, co-workers, random internet people...people I went to high school with.

Its the last one that is amusing/annoying at the moment. One girl, who's name now includes 'Toylady' keeps flooding my inbox with invites to pole dance lessons, and VIP toy parties. Yes, those kinds of toys. Plus all of her friends are trying to friend me. I don't want to be part of their pole dancing network!!

Also, done baking for the night. Still another type of cookie (or two) I want to make, but I need to gather parts. Have to be at work at 7am tomorrow. *cry* We know I am going to fail that goal, but I'll try anyways.

Had three conversations via text message today.

TWO of them involved 'Scott's Tot's' One of the newest 'The Office' episodes. hee hee. That show is so good.


Also, am still on holiday baking spree. Just made short bread, have two other things waiting to go in oven. Cookies--that need hershey's kisses, and banana bread that needs...uhm..eggs. Oops. I sort of jumped in guns blazing and forgot to account for all of the materials. Hopefully parental will be home from work soon with the necessaries.

AND! Triumph, I went to the gym again today. Twice in a row. Not bad. I'm pondering if I should go tomorrow. I want to, but I don't want to over do it and end up too sore to do anything. Maybe I will go and treadmill tomorrow. Though....treadmill vs. very fun weight circuit and rowing machine? So don't enjoy treadmills.

Went to the gym today.

Had snazzy new sneakers to inspire me.

And the people watching was good, if only I was promised that every time I went to the gym there would be no problem in getting me to go.

So I'm on the rowing machine, getting warmed up to do the weight lifting circuit. The rowing machines are sort of exiled, there are only 3 of them compared to the countless treadmills and stationary bikes. All of those are in front of the 6 jumbo screened tvs. The rowing machines are just beyond the televisions, so I have to twist my head in a way that's not too comfy to see them, besides not having a sound jack to plug into and hear them.

So I normally just space out while I'm on them.

This time there was entertainment though.

So row, row, row. And this guy hops on one of the weight machines in the circuit, but one in the middle, he isn't doing the whole circuit. Okay, whatever. Row, row, row. Then I notice how bad his form is. Mind you I am SO far from being an expert, but he's like pumppumppumppump. Super fast reps, never looking to see where the weight is set or the seat heights, or anything that one should do when hopping on a communal fitness machine. Then he hops on another random machine in the circuit and franticly does reps on it.

Okay.

He goes away, off into the sea of treadmills.

I'm done rowing so I hop onto the circuit. Taking my time to adjust things so I don't injure myself. I am a few machines in and he comes back, hops on another random machine, pumppumppump, he then wanders off again and I can see him on another machine thats not in the circuit franticlly pumping away. He's like a crazed bee zipping all over the place, sniffing each flower.

I'm thinking the dude was really trying to get noticed by any girl he could. 'Hey lookit me! I can pump super fast! But I still look pretty unfit! Hot innit?'

Anyways, I'm going to try and go again tomorrow. I really want to get in shape. I've told myself I'm not allowed to buy new pants until I do, and I am on the cusp of needing new pants.

Am so glad the semester is over, just wish I had had more time at the end to really finish off with a bang instead of a whimper. Boo. New boss of me at work wouldn't let me out early to study. R told me I should have just left, my mom told me I should have called out. I should have followed either of their advice--I needed those extra hours BADLY.

In other news life has continued to be crazy on all fronts.

My uncle died, not something that wasn't looming, but its going to be tough for my aunt and my cousin. They are planning to come up here for the holidays...and possibly my mom's other sister and husband too! As soon as I am done this, project clean house begins. I don't know what to get my cousin for Xmas though--I haven't seen her since she was a little kid, she's a surly teenager now...must ponder this, ideas welcome.

The hermit resurfaced. Well, he's been in contact for a few years now, but not to this extent. He said he wanted to meet up while he was visiting this state, but it all fell through. Its hard not to question it falling through, but I'll take him at his word and believe it was the flu.

My mom is doing okay...holding her own, I'd say. Nauseous daily, but still trying to eat, so that's good. Things like pasta and potatoes she can't stand, its so the opposite of a normal sickness. The chemo gives a metallic taste to everything, so unless something has a more powerful flavor that's what she tastes when she eats it.

I just bought a bunch of new Xmas albums, I am determined to make this house festive this year. We have SO MUCH in terms of holiday decor...and we never get it out until the last minute.

Tim Curry and John Cleese! How did I miss this??

My dog just marched me in from my mother's room and back to mine. Geeze, even she is getting on my case about procrastinating this paper.