Tagged

Sarah tagged me on her blog.

The Rules: I have to post these rules before I give you the facts. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules. (**if you’re a non-blogger, you can email them!) At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Okay, so, here goes. Eight random things about me.

1. I am ever so slightly pigeon toed. It's not so bad now, but it was more noticeable when I was a kid.

2. I thought I would never be able to live with anyone ever again, because I had lived alone too long, but I'm happy to say I was wrong. I love having J live with me. It's like I get to room with my best friend, which is just cooler than words can say.

3. I must think about the Sims 2 as many times per day as a horny 18-year-old boy thinks about sex. Seriously, the game and the characters I'm playing in it are always in my head. I'm obsessed.

4. I love Nelson from the Simpsons. His laugh is the best ever.

5. I used to love winter - it was my favorite season. And then I moved back to Central New York, and now I hate it. I wish we could have the following seasonal rotation: spring/fall/spring/fall. Sounds good, right? (I don't hate summer, I just hate being hot, so we could put summer back in the rotation, as long as the days never got over 80 degrees. Then it could be spring/summer/fall/spring. So, two springs in a row. Or two falls in a row, either way and I would be happy.)

6. If I spend too much time with no background noise (no TV, no music, no Sims sounds), random songs or theme songs from my childhood will pop into my head. Most often it's The Muppet Show theme.

7. I will pick up and take outside almost any bug that gets into my house. The only exceptions to this are, of course, spiders and flies. Because I hate them both. Spiders are creepy, and flies are just annoying as hell, and I have no patience for them.

8. In thinking about it, I shouldn't really say I hate winter, because I don't mind the cold weather - I kind of like a little bit of a chill in the air. I just don't like the snow, and the wind, and the ice and the shoveling and the driving in dangerous conditions and the fuel oil bills. we need to figure out how to have winter lite - a few monhts of temperatures between 30 and 50 degrees, with only slight dustings of snow and really, you never even need to wear a coat, jackets will do fine. Okay, so I want the winters I used to have in Virginia, only without having to move back south, and without the accompanying 100 degree/high humidity summers. Hmm.

And okay, it was incredibly hard to come up with these eight things. I think I once did a list of 50 or more random things - how in the heck did I do it? As for tagging anyone else, I'm not going to do it. Because I'm a rebel, ha! But if you're reading this, and you have a blog, you can do it, and I'll happily read it. :)

Bored Now

I'm sitting in the gym at the college where I work. Today is the day the freshman are coming to school, so I'm sitting here to sell laptops to anyone who hadn't already set up to buy one. Only it's been pretty slow for me - I've mostly directed people to other places, although I sold about six laptops, so being here hasn't been completely pointless. Still, I've done all of my Internet surfing between customers, and I've done what bit of work I could do while not being physically at my desk, and now I'm bored. So I'm sharing my boredom with you all. Aren't you lucky? :)

So. What's going on? Anything new in your life? You look fabulous!

And yes, I'm stalling because I don't really have anything in mind to say here. Oh, the perils of boredom. But feel free to answer those questions in my comments, if you would like. And you really do look fabulous. :)

So I seem to have gotten into the bad habit of going to bed at 9:30 and waking up at 5:30. What the heck? I don't have to get up for work until 6:40, for goodness sake. I just get so tired at night that I wimp out and go to bed early. I'm going to try to crank that back, though. There's just no point in being awake that early and then laying in bed for an hour kind of sort of dozing. No point, I say!

And okay, this is completely boring to read, I'm sure, because it's boring me to write, so I'll just end our agony here. Thanks for checking in, and I hope your day is going well. Ciao!

Good Tuesday

I had a good Tuesday yesterday. :) Work was okay - nothing special, just okay. But then I got home, and I got the mail, and I had another $25 check from Pepsi! Woo! I love their transform your summer promotion! I am now $50 richer, thanks to them, which J and I are going to use to pay for a trip to the Outback for dinner. Thanks, Diet Pepsi and Mountain Dew!

Then I was relaxing at home, waiting for J to get home from work, and when he got there, the dogs and I went out to greet him at the car (yes, we're sickeningly sweet like that). He got out of the car, told me to close my eyes, and presented me with the special collector's edition of Serenity! How cool is that? He was sitting next to me earlier this week when I saw online that this new edition was being released, and heard me exclaim over it, and then say that I wasn't going to buy it, because I couldn't justify spending $20 on a DVD when I already own the movie. So for our ten month anniversary of our first date (which was yesterday), he picked it up for me before he came home. Is it any wonder why I love this guy?

Now I'm at work, and I'm not looking forward to tomorrow, because I have to sit in the gym all day selling laptops, but no one is going to come buy them from me, so really I'll just be sitting there in a hot gym, bored off my ass and wishing I could just go home and play the Sims. Sigh. I'll be glad when this week is over. But! I did find out this morning that I don't have to sit in the gym on Friday, so another good thing has happened. Woo! I like this trend I have going.

Now, maybe I should finally buy a lottery ticket - if my luck continues, I could be a winner! Because hey, you never know. :)

(And now I feel the need to tell all non-New York people that the above line is the slogan they use when advertising the lottery. Okay, morality session over.)

And now I need to go get to work, because I have to somehow write, layout, print and fold the entire company newsletter today, so that it can be distributed with checks on Friday. Although, now that I think about it, the folding could be done while I'm sitting in the gym doing nothing tomorrow. Hmm. So, thanks for reading! I hope your week is going well.

p.s. Blogger's spacing is all fucked up, so please ignore the weird paragraph breaks I have going on up there. I've tried to fix them five times, and I either end up with no spaces between paragraphs or two many spaces between them. Sometimes Blogger sucks. Thank you, that is all.

Quiet Weekend, and Ow!

It's been a fairly quiet weekend so far. J had to work yesterday, so I was home alone. And since he's been working almost around the clock for the last two weeks while his boss has been gone (and has to be back in at Midnight tonight), he's been sleeping for a good chunk of today, so it's still been quiet around here. Or as quiet as a house with four dogs and five cats can be at any one time (the cats are quiet, but the dogs sure aren't, except for during the rare times when they're all sleeping, which thankfully they all are now).

And yesterday afternoon, after J got home from work, I was attempting to walk up the steps to the front porch, and I tripped and landed hard with my left thigh on one of the bottom steps. It hurt like a mother fucker (excuse the language, but it's true), let me tell you. I iced it down with a bag of frozen peas (we don't have any ice), and I thought I was going to avoid a bruise, but really all I did was make the color wait a day to come in. It's turning a nice vivid shade of dark pink as I write this. Plus it still hurts to walk or if anything touches it. I'm so graceful. Don't you wish you were me?

Today hasn't been all watching my leg bruise up and trying to keep the animals quiet so that J can sleep, though. We did manage to have pancakes and sausage for breakfast, which was very good (although I didn't eat the sausage - he's welcome to all of that), and then I made some chocolate drop cookies and some peanut butter cookies (the former for me, the latter for him). And of course I've been playing the Sims.

So there is my weekend so far. Exciting, no? Now I'm going to go replace my pajama pants with some jeans, call in an order for some Chinese food, and go pick it up. Yum, sweet and sour chicken! Deal me in. Have a great Sunday afternoon (if yours hasn't already gone by when you read this, that is.)

And hey, it's only two weeks until Labor Day (if you're in the US, that is)! So when you get up tomorrow morning for work, just remember, that two weeks from then, you'll still be sleeping. Ah, I love holidays. :)

Hank and Sims and a Picture

So, it feels like it's time for me to write a real update - posting that video of Willow probably doesn't count. :) Here goes. I have no idea what I'm going to say, so let's just see what comes out as I type.

I'm sorry to say that our neighbor dog Hank has started to wear out his welcome at our house. You remember Hank, don't you? He belongs to our drunken neighbor, and we have always felt sorry for him, because he just doesn't seem to get any love at all. He's locked in a crate a lot of the time when we drive by, and he just is so starved for affection that we feel his owner doesn't pay any attention to him at all. So we've always been nice to Hank, petting him and letting him play with our dogs.

And then a few days ago he was outside with our dogs, and Rosebud had decided she didn't want him anywhere around - she doesn't like him, and she doesn't care if he knows it. So he came up and was smelling her back end, and she started growling at him, and then she went after him, and instead of backing off, he went after her too. SO not good. We got them separated and said good-bye to Hank. No one was injured, and all was well. He was just defending himself, right? And then yesterday afternoon he came down again while the dogs were outside. I ushered Rosebud inside before anything could happen between the two of them, so we thought all would be fine. And then Hank went after Duff, because Duff was getting the attention he wanted (well, I assume that's why he did it). Duff wasn't hurt either, but we were pretty upset at Hank. And, well, Bernie decided to defend his brother Duff, and he went after Hank. That part was actually pretty funny. Bernie had always been friendly to Hank, but as soon as he went after Duff, Bernie got all defensive and chased him off. Go Bernie!

So I'm thinking Hank isn't so welcome at our house anymore, at least not when the dogs are outside. Poor Hank.

Let's see, what else? J and I watched the last episode of Hell's Kitchen last night (we recorded it on Monday night). I liked that show so much! I liked Julia the best, but she got kicked off a couple of weeks ago. Last night we saw the final two chefs competing, and Rock won. He deserved to, based on the way they did on that last night of service, so it was fair. It was a really fun show to watch - if you haven't seen it before, you should catch it next summer. Chef Ramsey is hilarious, in a dirty-mouthed, abusive kind of way.

Chapter 12 of my Sim story went up on Saturday. Are you reading? If so, tell me what you think! I would love to hear. Of course, if you have no interest in the Sims at all, I understand. You should, though - they're a great obsession. :)

Not much else has been going on in my life, I guess. J has been working non-stop because his co-worker was on vacation last week, and is in training this week, so I haven't seen as much of him as I would like. We had a good night together last night, but overall I just miss him a lot. I'll be glad when he gets a semi-normal schedule back. Well, as normal as it can be while he's in that job, anyway.

And now I'm pretty much out of things to say, so that's all I'll write for now. Oh! Except I have a picture to leave you with. When I'm not sitting in my desk chair at home, I put my foot stool in it, to keep the cats from laying in my chair and getting it all furry. As you can see, Zelda didn't let that stool stop her from laying there the other day. :) Later, gators!

Willow Video

This may only be interesting to me, J and anyone who happens to know Willow personally, but...I got video of Willow playing with a toy! This is something that she's only just learning how to do, so it's still all cute as far as I'm concerned.

Although the guarding she does of the toy when she's done playing is less cute. Still. Enjoy the video. :)

Monday Morning News

I just heard from someone at work (who is related to me through my maternal grandmother - this is a small town, so I have relatives all over the place) that my sister is telling people I'm getting married (or at least she told another relative of ours). Ha! Somehow I never pictured my sister as the sort to gossip, especially before the fact. I mean, J and I are living together, and we're going to be married someday, but I don't even have the ring on my finger yet! My sister is cute.

Anyway. I had a good weekend. J and I went to his sister's house on Saturday for their parents' anniversary party. It was a small party - they only invited a few other family members - but it was fun hanging out with everyone. She had a ton of food, and I really like J's family, so it was fun to hang around them all day. I didn't even mind when J got called in to work and left me there alone for an hour. I wouldn't have minded going with him, just to finally see where he works, but I was happy to stay behind, too. Besides, while he was gone, I got to go through an old photo album filled with pictures of J when he was a little curly haired cutie, so it was fun.

Yesterday we went to see the Simpsons movie (where we ran into Sarah and Jeff - hi Sarah!). It was funny. I'll never love it as much as J does, because he is a Simpsons fanatic, but it was funny and cute. I enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed watching J try not to lose it at certain points that he found hysterically funny. Hee. He's cute.

After the movie we went to Wal-Mart to get groceries, where we once again ran into Sarah and Jeff (hi again, Sarah!) and then we went home. J had brought his bathroom stuff home when he was moving the last of his stuff out of his house last week, so we cleaned out the medicine cabinet and made room for his stuff. It's nice seeing all of our stuff merge bit by bit. Then I did the dishes and he made me dinner, which rocks, and he can do it all the time if he wants. He made me a poached salmon dish which was very tasty, even though I have never been a big fish eater, so it'll take me some time to get used to the taste of it. I liked it - he did a great job. I think next time he's going to make me a meatloaf recipe from the same cookbook. Or grilled burgers. Yum.

Anyway, so I thoroughly enjoy having him cook for me. :) I did not, however, thoroughly enjoy the way I was feeling this weekend, or this morning. I had a headache both Saturday and Sunday, which I put down to not drinking enough water. But I drank a couple of bottles of water last night, and this morning I woke up once again headachey, plus I felt overall run down and like I am coming down with something. I hope I'm not, I really do. I don't want to be sick. I'm at work today, and I took some Advil, and I am feeling a bit better, so hopefully I'll kick whatever it is before it gets any worse. Hopefully.

And I just had a little chocolate, and really, that cures just about everything. :)

Also, in case you care about my Sims story at all, chapter 11 is up and chapter 12 will be up later this week, if I get the time and creativity to get it put together and written. There's lots of plotty stuff happening, so if you read it, enjoy!