On being a jerk.

Lately I've had trouble with sleeping. I will be tantalizingly close to asleep when, I'm falling! I flail in bed, safe and sound.

Or I'll be sleeping and then whoomp! I've slipped on a banana peel.

This is apparently called a Hypnic Jerk. Scientists are not sure why this happens but it happens most frequently when you have irregular sleep patterns... such as dog sitting in stranger's houses, or staying up too late to finish up that last episode of Dr. Who.

I guess the entire point of this post is that I am clumsy, even in my sleep.

And that, my friends is my awesome story about sleeping.

McDonalds, you rock the crazy.

Today I ordered an Egg McMuffin and a chocolate milk and for 2 cents LESS I could have had a hashbrown too.

Thanks, but no. I will pay McDonalds 2 cents and save myself 140 calories (72 of which are from fat).

Tim Tams at Target NOW.

Tim Tams are available through March at Target!

Yay!

Kiss it, 2008!

I am unreasonably excited about the demise of 2008. I have not been particularly pleased with this year. It has just pretty much sucked. Everyone I know was in danger of losing their jobs (including me) and many did. It was an ugly political year in which things were said, and not just by the candidates, that made me unhappy and uncomfortable. Watching the world economy yo-yo all over the place made me worry about my future. There were big adjustments in my personal life, which are mostly fine now, but greatly contributed to a year of over-all unpredictable scariness.

It also snowed like a mother-fuck, which did not help.

I did make some new friends, but 2008 saw vast changes in my relationships with current friends. And to quote the immortal Garth, "We fear change."

There will likely be big changes in 2009. But it is my fondest hope that rather than being crippled with two months of anxiety induced hermitage, I will be able to control the new directions in my life.

I'm hoping that 2009 will bring a new plan. A carefully thought out, well graphed plan, possibly utilizing Excel. With the end of my student loans this year, comes the end of my excuses for not just dropping everything and moving to Spain. Or going back to school. Or joining the circus. By the end of 2009 I won't owe anyone anything.

In 2009 perhaps all the blooming hope for my future will inspire me to do the opposite of what I did this year in my personal life (neglect, shut out, and generally weaken friendships) and instead grow to be a better friend. I hope that this year I will have the courage to not push people away.

2009 will by my first full year as an auntie. I hope that it will also be my first full year as a sister. I hope next year I can forgive myself for not being the sister I should have been the previous 19.

This year I want to be better, do better, dream bigger. Be a better friend, be a better child, be a better worker, and care more about being better.

I do not want a vanilla new year. I want a big delicious sundae new year. With everything on it. I want a 2009 so great that it completely obliterates the memory of 2008 with sheer awesomeness.

I know this sounds resolutiony. But this is not my resolution. My resolution, like that of all women between 25 and dead, is to loose some weight. But my plan is to be better. To live better.

So enjoy the last days of 2008 (as much as possible). I will spend them planning, scheming, and perhaps graphing to prepare myself for a better year and another step into a better future.

Thanks for reading, and a preemptive Happy New Year.

Ho ho ho.

Merry Christmas all! Sorry I've been a Christmas blogging slacker!

I hope you all have safe and lovely holidays!

Stupid frozen water!

Do I get extra credit for going to work today?

I should!

There were only 20 people there.

No? No extra credit? Fine. Here, you watch this terrifying Japanese footage of a bioluminescent deep-sea siphonophore.

Good luck trying to sleep, suckers.

Ponchito is worrisomely tiny.

Doctors say he should be fine, but he is so little and has to stay at the hospital till April.



















So far today:
- a friend needed me to watch her kids while she was in the emergency room
- a friend needed to be rescued from the airport
- my brother is father to a 1 lb 11 oz baby two months premature a thousand miles away

I cannot help my brother, I can't even get out of my driveway.

I feel absolutely impotent.

Ponchito has arrived.

My brother's baby was born prematurely due to a medical issue (apparently not too serious) and I am thousands of miles away and up to my shins in snow.

Jayce Anthony (or maybe Anthony Jayce- the kids are still sorting it out) was born earlier this morning.

Other famous JCs include Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ.

In other news, I am just pleased that they didn't really name him Ponchito.

I guess I am officially that crummy auntie that lives too far away and never calls. I guess I should mail them something noisy.

Update: Anthony Jayce.

Kinda Good Kinda Bad

Today I found out that I am unlikely to be laid off at the end of the fiscal year. Something that looked very very likely a few weeks ago.

I didn't mention it because I don't like to whinge. And I have to admit that there was a tiny bit of me that was nervously excited about fate doing what I have long considered doing. I love my coworkers and as jobs go, mine is not bad. I can't say I'm unhappy.

I would like something more challenging and I'm ashamed to say that I would like to get paid more. (Although I don't know why. I would just waste the money on clothes and expensive cooking gadgets. And maybe a new car.)

The key problem is just that I can't think of another thing I would like to do. I've always been a modest dreamer, and I hate to say it, but I am just so grateful that my life has gone this miraculously well so far that it is even hard for me to think of things that could be better.

Sometimes being happy gets in the way.

Without a plan for something greater I could never quit my job, but if my job were to disappear it would be freeing. (Though I do not have the savings to bear the expense.)

Anyway, so I am happy/sad, but mostly happy and who could ask for more?

So can we talk?

About how I am a terrible person?

Great.

So I'm watching these Christmas specials and the anti-communist propaganda is hilarious.
No toys! The bad guys are always opposed to objects, but then Santa comes and brings them flashy stuff and they are liberated. You know guys, stuff is the key to happiness!

How silly.

Additionally, if Santa started out as just some guy who shows up in town with a bag of toys, which he gives to children, if they sit on his lap. I would kick that guy's ass and leave him at the edge of the road out of town. Frontier justice. Yeehaw!

In short, I think I am thinking too hard about these shows.

Burgermeister Meisterburger

So, while not snowed in, I'm scared of leaving the house and getting snowed out, so I've been e-commuting today. I made homemade buttermilk pancakes this morning, and since then I've been watching Tivo'd Christmas specials and filling out tedious affidavits all day.

(Christmas specials viewed so far this season: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer 1 & 2, Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Garfield Christmas Special, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Twas the Night Before Christmas, Nestor the Long Eared Christmas Donkey, and the Real Ghostbusters Christmas Special.)

(On the Tivo still, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Muppet's Letters to Santa, Charlie Brown Christmas, Miser Brothers' Christmas, Olive the Other Reindeer, the Year without Santa Claus, Winnie the Pooh and Christmas too, Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown!, and the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas.)

(I'm missing Frosty the Snowman, Emmet Otter, Muppet Family Christmas, Little Drummer Boy. :(

Anyway.

As it turns out, when nobody goes into the office and emails me to ask for things, there is very little for me to do, which is making me feel appallingly slackery.

I guess if I were in the office I would simply be working on the same affidavits, so I shouldn't complain.

In other not-news, my remaining plans for the day:
Christmas Jello
Lemon Bars
A bubble bath
Comics
Muppet Christmas Carol
Scrooged
And something girly as yet to be determined

It is beautiful outside. I'm nice and warm.

I hope you are all safe and warm today too.

Muppet Videos to Prepare you for Tomorrow

Letters to Santa, be there or be square. Tomorrow.

Dear Workplace,

Please do not believe that because I (1) love Christmas and (2) am in a slow work week that I would like to organize a last-minute divisional potluck.

You see, coworkers, a potluck cannot occur at the last minute. I don't know about you, but I have every remaining moment of free time prior to Christmas double scheduled and the remaining time I plan to devote to:
1. making cookies for people I don't hate
2. drinking heavily and watching the 27 Christmas specials I have painstakingly Tivo'd
3. Repeating zen mantras to get me through the holidays

Furthermore you don't understand potlucks. A potluck is where people cook (NOT buy something from the QFC deli). Where potlucking responsibilities are carefully planned out so that the appropriate amount and type of food is procured and cooked AT HOME. Otherwise you have cake on the breakroom counter for over a week. (Do not act like you don't know what I'm talking about. This morning I threw out some crappy store bought cake from last TUESDAY.)

Additionally, I need time to prepare for events where I have to pretend to have fun. It takes HOURS of time in front of a mirror practicing appropriate facial expressions for responses to such conversational topics as:
-Useless single men you know (elbow eh eh eh)
-Unresearched political beliefs
-Your pets and the hi-larious things they do
-Why things now are not as awesome as twenty years ago
-Your children, any topic, but for example pooping or how they pronounce various words
-The da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, Twilight, or whatever book fad is striking those who don't read for fun

Your alternate plan during the economic downturn is to go to a fancy restaurant where we will each buy our own lunch. Thanks, superiors who make 2-4 times what I make, I would love to go to a seafood restaurant (blech) and pay $25 for salmon and sit with people I'm forced to pretend to like 40 hours a week. Being coerced to attend and pay for holiday events makes me filled with Ho Ho Holiday Spirit!

Things I would rather do than chase you around with a potluck sign in sheet:
1. Sex with Carrot Top.
2. Spider bathing.
3. Actual death by chocolate.

So to conclude, BA HUMBUG. (But only at work, at home it is all, let's make rum balls and watch Nestor the Long Eared Christmas Donkey.)

Two Thumbs Up

It is not every day when another driver rolls down their window and yells "Nice driving!" and doesn't really mean, "I hope you get that flesh eating bacteria and die, Asshole!", but today was my day.

Kim and I had been looking forward to a trip to the I-District all week and as the nearest freeway entrance is at the bottom of a very icy very steep hill I sensibly decided to take a more flat route to the highway.

Everything was hunkie dorrie till we came to a downward slope and the car in front of me thought, "Dur dur dur I'd better hit my breaks." Which sent him sliding towards the curb, where he ricocheted off and careened straight at me. Seeing this caused me to swerve and break, sliding elegantly into the opposing lane, then back at the curb, then all the way over and all the way back to the curb, finally gaining control as the car behind me slid with greater speed (stupid stupid stupid) toward our car until it smashed into the curb and got lodged there.

We gently pulled into the turn lane and as we waited to take the left an SUV pulled along side us and a smiling man leaned out his window, gave us the double thumbs up and yelled "Nice driving!" waved and drove away.

Thanks fellow drivers for the award for not being a total dumbass, it was an honor just to be nominated. I'd also like to give a shout out to Kim for staying absolutely silent through the whole episode, unlike most of my friends (looking at you, Steve) who would have squeeled like Swiss school girls.

Blardy Blar Blar

I feel as though I should make some sort of comment. Since I haven't been good at updating lately.

Don't have much, because things are awesome.

My mom was laid off and then got a job. So that is a big thumbs up.

I got surprise presents today. (Yay Angie!)

Christmas is shaping up nicely. I haven't started cookies really, but I am confident cookies will happen to a sufficient extent. Presents wrapped. (check!) House decorated sufficiently enough to make the neighbors look lame. (check!) Holiday cheer locked down against all odds. (check, check, checkety check!)

I just feel very content. I hope you guys are doing well too.

Amusements.

There is a new Muppet Christmas Special this year, Letters to Santa. 12/17 on NBC. Cute music video promotion for the special:



The Proposal. New rom-com I will undoubtedly secretly view and enjoy.

Best ever use of internet: Baker Street/Turkish Walrus Mashup.

Just Pondering

Lately I've had to explain to people why a Christian woman (not me) might not want to date a particular friend of mine. I think a lot of people want to believe that people don't date outside their religions becase they are prejudiced.

I don't know about you, but when someone wants to be mine I would appreciate it if they didn't think my life view was a deluded attempt to invent scenarios to avoid the finality of death. I'd hope that the person I would want to be with would respect my beliefs. I'm not saying that not sharing my beliefs is equivalent to not respecting them, but when I need to make a team to face the unpredictability of life, I would like someone who has the same GM. You know what I mean?

I got nuthin. You know, title-wise.

But here goes the post!

Amusing bacon commercial:



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Hey, just a reminder buying coke kills children. No kidding. Thanks Washington Post!

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In other news, Jim and I cut down a tree at what Jeanine described as "Charlie Brown's Tree Farm". And it was awesome. Our tree could kick your tree's ass. I just thought that you might want to know that.

That is all.

Links- now with exposed naughty bits.

3 links of interest today:

1. Via Jezebel- Anne Hathaway was on the Daily Show yesterday and confessed to her no-longer secret crush on John Stewart. Why does Stewart always seem unbelieving that women find him attractive?

2. Via io9- John Barrowman apparently exposed himself on the BBC. Now I'm not into junk viewing myself, but apparently this can be viewed by following some link on the article.

3. Also via io9- Guillermo Del Toro is directing a new Roald Dahl's The Witches (easily one of my favorite/most terrifying childhood books). Now I will be edge-of-seat style waiting. (Yay!)

Interesting article in NYT last week.

Netflix is offering one million dollars to anyone who can improve their movie recommendation engine by 10% or more.

Thank God, because some times Netflix recommends things that are not OK. (Really, you think I want to watch "Expelled: No Inteligence Allowed"? Netflix, words hurt.)

Read all about it at NYT.