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December 21, 2005

The last few days leading up to greedfest 2005 has my stress in full-affect. Not only am I trying to finish up a freelancing job, like, tonight, but I'm helping friends with comptuer-related things, attempting to get gifts together and ready for wrapping, making banana bread, and really needing to leave my house to run errands and see in-town East-coasters. Currently, there are only 2 after-work days available for this kind of thing, and the 6 hours leading up to greedfest, which will most likely be spent wrapping gifts, then going to see a movie or something else to unwind. My main goal this year: to get home from greedfest before the catholics descend and take up all the parking spaces in my neighborhood for midnight mass.

I hope everyone is having a not-too-stressful holiday season. Please don't go into debt getting people gifts. That's just silly.

Also adding to the troubles are my 19-year-old upstairs neighbors, who thought last night (Tuesday, people) was totally the best night to have a so-called "girls night", of which they informed us as the guests started appearing. This was at 9pm, and by 10, there was full-on clog-dancing, karaoke, and screaming twister being played. I didn't want to be the fuddy-duddy that stopped the party, so I just plugged the iPod into my head and continued with my work. I crawled into bed at 11.30, and realized that the festivities above me had not quieted at all, and I could hear the youngsters' stereo, dancing, singing, and screaming loudly no matter which room I entered. Point: I didn't sleep well last night. And the landlord will be hearing about this.

Note: Just because you're on holiday from school doesn't mean that everyone is on holiday. Weekend parties = okay, whatever, but weekday party = never good. Stab.

Currently, I am burping pleasantly green-oniony-tasting burps and listening to Smashing Pumpkins. Who's the old lady now, huh? Also, photos will be uploaded to Flickr soon with all the crap I've been doing. Lucky you.

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December 12, 2005

This weekend was a doozy - both Ben and I were commenting last night on how it seemed as if Sunday had stretched itself out into 2 days instead of just 1. Sunday morning we rose to sunshining skies, a great omen for things-to-be-done, and started us off with great plans. I had put off some things from Saturday night until Sunday, fearing another trip out to the mall area, where hoards of money-spending people were clogging the main arteries to and from the freeway.

After finally showering and dressing and eating, we were ready to go, and we piled into my car with the coats and gloves and scarves keeping us warm. I started my trusty steed and pulled out into the street. Immediately I realized that one of my tires was flat. Luckily, we live very close to a gas station, so we pulled in there and I got some change for the air compressor. I started to fill my tire, which was mysteriously completely and totally flat. While I was filling the tire with air, I realized that I could actually feel the air leaking from the tire right near my hand. I looked down and found a rather large hole in the rubber, spewing out the air that I was giving it, and just as quickly. Ben came out of the combini and checked my progress. I explained what had happened, pondering the strangeness of having a gaping hole in the side of the tire, and we drove the car very slowly back behind the house.

With one roadblock out of the way, we decided we would just take Ben's sedan. After a brief trip inside the house, we walked over to Ben's car, which was parked directly behind mine before we had left originally. Ben walked over to the driver's side, looked down, and uttered an explitive. I inquired about his mood, and he suggested that I come over to his side of the car to look. I did so, and looking down at the tires on the driver's side, both were flat. I looked at the VW parked behind Ben's car and saw that it's street-side tires, too, were flat.

Intense rage filled my head as I went back inside the house to call someone... the police or something... to report this mess. Instead of screaming and throwing things, as I very much wanted to do, I held my breath for a bit, and felt better afterwards. Being a family of 2 that just happens to own 3 cars, we checked the third - a Scout International that has massive thick-walled tires. That car's tires were fine, as were the rest of the cars on that side of the block. Unfortunately, the Scout hadn't been running very well for quite a while, so we were sure we were screwed in trying to get anywhere that day. None of the tire shops were open, so we took a chance and called triple-A to have them jump the Scout so we could at least get something done during the day.

The jump worked to get the Scout running, as it normally does, and we took off to Costco, where we were for far too long, as normal. When we got back out to the Scout, it again wouldn't start. We called Ben's step-dad to have him come out and jump us, and we sat out in the bitter cold waiting for about 40 minutes before he showed up. We let the good battery trickle into the Scout's battery for over an hour in vain before calling triple-A again. We were able to get the Scout started finally, and went immediately to Shucks, where we purchased a new battery and installed it in the parking lot, under a bright lamp, as night had swiftly come as we were waiting at Costco.

The Scout worked wonderfully for the rest of the night, and we were certain that our troubles, at least for one car, were over.

Until this morning, that is. Once again, the only car we have available is out of commission, and I am currently waiting for triple-A to get here so that we may both be able to get to work. Later today, I'll have my car towed to the tire store to have the replacements put on, and if I ever find the little motherfucker who decided to go down my street and slash car tires for fun, he or she will be strung up so high, they won't know how to get him/her down.

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...and that's a good line to take it to the bridge.

December 6, 2005

One of the worst things to happen to one who writes is to lose a large document. This is what happened to me earlier this week, done completely by my own stupidity. The post written last Monday was waiting for some prettyfication to be contributed by Ben, who finally uploaded the corresponding photos on Sunday. Yesterday, I was cleaning up some files, and realized that the post written so eloquently had been deleted for-ever, never to return. Life goes on, but the sting from such a preventable wound is still haunting me.

Herefore, is a paraphrased paragraph outlining the aforementioned post:

Stupid bloody inversion is making everything cold and nasty in the valley. Hate inversion. Making things smell like the sugarbeet factory in Nampa. On Thanksgiving, Ben and I pulled double-duty, making our way to the Mother-in-law's house for early bird, then to my mom's place up atop Bogus Basin, where, much to our surprise, the sun was shining and we were made to leave our coats behind in the house, as it was 57 degrees out-of-doors. Ben and I took some photos. Here they are:
Friendgiving was awesome. Friends are very nice and cool and we had the best turkey I ate (and made myself, thankyouverymuch) that whole weekend. Lovely lovely lovely. Here are some photos:

Some people know of my love of watching anime. I spent 1 1/2 weeks waiting for the entirety of Kaleido Star to finish it's download (11gig!), only to find the first series dubbed in english. Since the show has been released to DVD in The States, it's hard to find downloads for both seasons, so I swallowed my pride and revultion, watched the last 5 episodes of the first series (that I hadn't seen before), and finished the second series in the proper Japanese. What are these people thinking?

Also in the news, Ben and I have decided to not purchase gifts for each other this year. Since the only reason we're doing the whole "Christmas thing" is because of his side of the family, and we don't really care (as Channukah doesn't have anything to do with gifts, duh), it's much easier to not have to worry about one more person for whom to purchase things. This is a little bit scary, as Ben is the person for whom I actually like to purchase gifts, but I guess it will save me some cashdollars, which is good.

Other than that, I have nothing much to report. Here are the boring things: put up mezzuzahs finally, purchased a chest freezer which still needs to be picked up from the Sears warehouse, waiting to get Scout fixed before we can do so, looking forward to making gifts for some friends (much prefer making to buying), getting really really really sick of xmas music everywhere, excited about cleaning up the laundry room and being able to use the back door. That's all, folks. Hopefully there'll be some more exciting times by next week.

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