yaay

Yesterday was pretty sweet. Due to various meetings and projects, I didn't have to spend much time on the phone at work. I made a pumpkin pie for my team meeting, and it was tasty and very easy to make. I also unveiled a team folder project I had been working on and it was well-recieved.

The other nice thing is that fall is aparently the time of year for extra activities at work, because we have a couple coming up that I get to be involved with. More time off the phone! More fun!

Oh and I almost forgot, I got this tea I ordered online awhile ago yesterday, and it is really good. Plus an electric kettle so I don't have to be the person who ghettoly microwaves water for tea anymore. I'm looking at getting a nice teapot in the future but all the cool ones cost money. I guess I'll just have to keep using that one I stole off the homeless guy in the street.

EDIT: Man I can't believe I forgot to post about this but a couple days ago Julie and I went to Medieval times! It was really awesome and there were lots of cool horseys. It seems mostly andalusians (I think the whole thing is sort of based on Spain in medival times) but the herald guy had a friesan. I was able to look over to Julie and say, "I breed imaginary versions of that on the internet!" Instead I didn't say that, and she still thinks I am sane. I do think I mentioned Howrse to her when we were looking at the horses in their little air-conditioned stalls beforehand, though. They are really bizarre-ly still horses. Julie thought it might be the fact that there's no flies.

I bought an overpriced keychain and we sprung for a photo of ourselves in medival garb. We posed in front of a green screen and they added green hills and a horsey in the background. I look sort of sarcastic and Julie looks like she's bonking the horse on the nose, but all in all I am happy with it.

So they acted out a story, I don't know whether or not it was based on any real incidents in Spanish history, but basically the prince was kidnapped while securing peace with a kingdom that they'd recently been at war with. The rest of the family had to go on with this feast they were putting on for the nobles (us). It turns out the son of the warring kingdom didn't want peace. He cheats at the games at the feast and says there will not be peace. The prince comes back and fights him. The guy's dad still wants peace. The prince wins, there's peace, everyone wins, woo! So basically the knights did tricks, the horses did tricks, and they had a falconer too.

The food was actually really good as well. Coming from someone as picky as me, that's a compliment. So delicious roast chicken (half a chicken, I'm not kidding), tomato soup, a rib (that seemed weird to include, but okay, it tasted pretty good), apple pastry, garlic bread. And we ate it with our hands!

The long bus ride disagreed with me, but it was worth it. Yay!

bleh

Today was shitty.

1) I actually accidently ended up in the middle of a funeral procession today. I was in the lane next to them and the lanes merged. I panicked and ended up in the middle of it, much to the anger of the participants. I felt their burning hatred on me for most of the tortoise-speed crawl down Washington Avenue. Awesome. They also honked at me every time I tried to obey traffic laws.

2) actual shit, painful poops galore too. The blood in my stool seems to be more often and more each time, which means I should probably get to a doctor.

3) Dinner with my sister's family. JESUS CHRIST, can we NOT keep going to the same GODDAMN restaurant that doesn't have chocolate milk, or bring our own? The Phew had a meltdown last time and was barely better today. And of course both phews were sick, and the little one wouldn't stop crying. Why the hell do we never just get fucking carryout, they hate restaurants and won't behave in them.

4) I hate insurance education but don't want to fail.

So everyone at work seems sick. I'm trying to choke down as much vitamin C as humanly possible to see if it helps. I fucking hate Airborne, btw, that shit is gross. I have my doubts, too. I mean, I would not be advertizing the fact that it's made by a school teacher. If this guy was a kindergarten teacher about all he/she needs to know is letters, colors, and shapes. Now if it's "made by a scientist at *prestigious place* FOR school teachers, or tested on school teachers, here are some peer-reviewed articles we wrote about it in major medical journals that explain our results" I'd get it. Still I guess their marketing worked somehow cause I got some. Or rather Kroger generic version of it. It's still way too expensive. But I hate being sick and I really will get in trouble if I have like one more absence.

I don't think I gave myself enough time for the insurance education. I started late, on the grounds that it would be boring to re-read it all again closer to time for the test but I didn't realize how much shit they packed into this book. I could definitely read it in a month, but I don't know how much I'd retain. So I'm trying to take notes or whatever, I hate re-reading notes but actually writing them seems to make the info stick better. We'll see. I'm probably freaking out over nothing, this particular test is multiple choice. Still I'll be using at least two or three hours per day on this unforgiving piece of shit for the next month. and it kind of pisses me off.

I have an interview on Thurs. I don't think I'll get it, it's in a competative area. To give you a picture: a couple months ago I interviewed for the job level below this job and didn't get it. I have a less competative one sometime like mid October. Get me the fuck out of this place.

I guess that's all I have for now.

ha!

I found some things I drew for friends.

Yes, I am retarded. They still made me laugh, though.

Achooooo

I love Asthmatic Kitty (indie record label). Not only do they offer free music (most indie record labels do) but they actually encourage you to share it with others, too. I mean I guess it is good marketing for them, but that is basically the opposite strategy the big guys use.

And of course the other nice thing about them is they have good music ;)

Anyway, here's some tracks from Rafter...

Juicy (my favorite)

Sweat

Salt

bleh

So I guess I've alienated Rebecca to the point where she will never speak to me again, which puts me up to a grand total of 3 people I've done this to in my life thus far. What is wrong with me? How do I keep doing this? I guess the only comfort is that we weren't really talking anyway. But I digress: the reason I'm pretty sure she won't talk to me at all is I have this promo Monty Python fluxx card I got for free that I don't really want. I emailed her to see if she wanted me to mail it to her (she loves both MP & Fluxx) and she never emailed back.

Things with the water seem pretty much resolved. I sucked up a lot of the water with some carpet shampoo-er thing my dad has. Then I used fans on it. I've been keeping my fans far longer than I probably need to, but I'm afraid the dry surface hides wet carpet pad. I really don't want mold in there and have to replace carpeting that is basically brand new.

Josh visited again, and it was good. We frisbee golfed, and it was beautiful outside. We watched some movies, and he bought Season 3 of Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which was hilarious. I especially liked the rock band episode with the two bizarre songs, Nightman/Dayman. I made an apple pie, which turned out pretty well. I also made black-bottom pie, which unfortunately has rum in it. Which unfortunately, neither Josh nor I like. I don't know why I still put it in, I thought it wouldn't be that strong. But seriously, after putting it into my fridge for a couple of hours, the fridge reeked of booze. Josh still liked it enough to eat most of it, though, so I don't have to throw it away or pawn it off on anyone. It's a good enough pie otherwise that I might make it again but with vanilla or citrus flavoring in place of the rum. Also, through the making of this pie, I realized I could make meringue, so I might be making a lemon meringue pie in the near future. At one point Josh started maniacally laughing because he was "so content." The laughing was weird, but the sentiment made me feel good.

Spore has gotten better, space stage is more fun. I've sadly been playing it nonstop. My imaginary horses are getting neglected. It sucks that Howrse is such a rat-race-y game, you stop for a couple of days and everyone horses get better relative to yours.

I'm kind of irritated, the lady who got the job I wanted was this chick who I'd talked about it with previously and had not even really wanted the job that badly. Poops. I have another job interview in October, I guess. Some claims position I don't want that badly (but that I want more than what I have now, I guess).

I guess that's all the updates I have right now.

Today was pretty good. Julie called me out of the blue, and we talked for awhile then hung at noodles. She's always fun, and noodles are always good. We also happily conferred about our upcoming trip to Medieval Times soon. It is super-exciting! I have to say, I'm excited just in general that Julie's moving back to town. Aside from the aforementioned trip, we also have hazy future movie plans, based mostly on a) both of us like children's movies and no one else ever wants to watch them b) I want her to hear the creepy "wehrenberg" whispers at the Galaxy theatre.

Yesterday was the poops. I woke up to a good portion of my living room soaked. I left the window open over night, which I guess was a stupid move. My dad (who I borrowed a wet vac from) kept saying things like, "couldn't you tell it was going to rain?" "Didn't you know Ike was coming?" I kept saying things like, "I've watched my open window before when it's been raining hard, even when it's been windy and not a drop has come in. This stuff had to have come in almost horizontal to have gotten in." I was lucky, my TV was just out of water range, and my computer chair shielded my computer. We'll see how my little CD player is doing... it was drenched, so probably not well.

The day before that (or the day before that I get my days confused) I managed to stupidly injure myself on christmas lights.

Well

Stuff got a little better, Josh & I got over the stuff in my last post. And he visited. And I had a day off work, and took an extra day off work, and given that I hate work, that was good. And he and I had a lot of fun going through Target looking at their halloween crap. He had mad props for the Buckeye Cake I made.

Stuff with Rebecca is still the same, I guess. She's on AIM all the time, but I decided not to be all desperate and message her first, seeing as how every time I've messaged her first lately has ended up as an arguement. Maybe if I wait till she actually wants to talk to me (if that ever happens) things will go better? I dunno, it sucks so bad. I already missed her friendship when I didn't have the constant reminder that she IS online and doesn't particularly want to talk to me.

Today was kind of crap, I'm too lazy to type it out again so here's an excerpt from an email:

The actual work
wasn't any worse than usual, but there was this promotion I was
really, really, really hoping I would get, I interviewed for it a
little while ago, and my supervisor said I made the short list. And
it was one of the few jobs I've applied for because it sounded like
something I'd actually like to do, as opposed to "ANYTHING TO GET OUT
OF WHERE I AM NOW." So right at the beginning of work today I had an
email saying they picked someone else.

One good thing though is that I got chosen to take over "the pivoting
report" which is just basically one person gets this raw data on how
much everyone's pivoted each week and takes it and organizes it into
something presentable and sends it to everyone. I wasn't that happy
about it, because I would've rather gotten the goddamn promotion, but
it is a pretty sweet deal--at least one hour a week off the phones +
looking good on my records + the fact that only one person does it,
somehow they thought of me out of everyone at the CRC, I take that as
a compliment. I'm not even that great of a pivoter, I do just enough
to look like I'm trying. I think I do steadier numbers than a lot of
people though, so maybe that's it.

The other bummer about today: Spore is really not very good. Like
the creating the creatures or whatever is kind of fun (though
obviously, I was already doing that for free). In fact, creating the
creatures gets less fun when you start playing the game because you
have points you have to earn to afford body parts and all that. But
the actual game is like, so fucking simplistic/easy that it's boring.
Waste o' money. I wish the packaging had made it more obvious that
it's a kid's game.

Continuing the theme of how butt-hurt I am about life right now, last night I had a woman scream "asshole!" at me, and another who said, "Why do you even answer the phone? You're a big waste of everyone's time."

WHY WHY WHY? I need to quit and get another job, I guess. I just feel like all the time I have spent at this retarded job will be wasted if I don't stick with it to get a promotion.

Plus the economy's so shitty right now that my already bad chances at getting anything non-soul killing will be even worse. I feel trapped and I don't know what to do.

Then I spoke with Rebecca last night, which is a whole sub-category of bad in and of itself. Now this is purely from my perspective, which obviously is flawed, I have no idea why she is acting the way she is. She might have valid reasons, but I am having difficulties figuring them out. But basically I feel like she abandoned me when I needed people the most, but I was too much of a pussy to come out and say it to her and came off of as this passive agressive jackass. You see, the trouble with saying what you mean is that it often drives people away. And when the people are already drifting away, you don't want to push them farther. But the trouble with halfway saying what you mean is you do push them away still, but they get mad at you for lying to them on top of any anger they would've felt anyways for what you said. But yeah, that's it. I sort of told her I was mad that she hasn't talked to me, but then immediately took it back and pretended like I hadn't said it. She in turn seems mad at me, even before this, and I can't figure out why. Every time I talk to her it's this big horrible thing, but I can't help trying because I miss her so damn much.

Then I retardedly forwarded the conver onto my best friend to see if he could make heads or tails of it or figure out why she is mad to me. Unfortunately, my best friend is Josh and I forgot that we discussed him in there briefly. See, Rebecca's opinion of Josh is that he's psychotic. Because basically all she knows about the breakup is I IMed her one day, "Josh and I broke up because he secretly hates me." That was basically the whole conversation, because she refuses talk to me other than IM, and the only time she could access the internet was at work, she got busy after that and never got any clarification. She thought he genuinely stayed with me for some reason for six months secretly hating my guts for some reason the whole time. What I meant was he didn't really love me anymore and had been unhappy for a good chunk of the relationship. And since she thinks he's crazy, she dislikes him. SO I wasn't about to just admit that he's my best friend, we still occaisionally accidently sleep together, I love him more than anything, and even so I'm content with how things are going right now, and I don't mind doing the work to transition from what we were to regular friends. I said men are too much trouble, I'd rather masturbate, there's only one man I want and I can't have him. She said that keeping him close is making it difficult for me to get over him. Instead of defending him and saying that even DURING multiple breakups he was closer to me and supported me more through this difficult time in my life more than any of my supposedly "close" friends, including her, I just kept it short and said that I'm not about to get rid of the only close friend I have living in this area. So of course he feels bad that he's supposedly ruining me and keeping me from moving on. He feels like he's fucking me up worse. He feels like I'm only friends with him because I can't get anyone else to be my friend.

Well newsflash: it took me 25 years to get a boyfriend in the first place, it's not like I've been having all these great opportunities to hook up with people and am turning them down because of him. Also: losing my best friend at this point over some stupid conversation I had would fuck me up way worse than getting over him slower. Lastly I DO have friends but he is still my favorite, because he is a caring, thoughtful, fun person no matter how much he thinks he isn't, and I do feel close to him--which IS admittedly rare for me these days but would be valuable even if it wasn't rare.

Lastly today was just crappy too. My grandpa visited. I know he was having health difficulites at the time, but I'm kind of mad at him that he didn't see mom before she died. I mean, he was alright to fly to New Hampshire and visit his girlfriend's relatives, but he wasn't alright to fly here? And of course this meant hanging out with my sister too, because basically all he cares about is seeing her kids. The times he did talk to me it was about my job which is my least favorite thing of all time to talk about. Then of course the Phew was being a brat again and it's painful to be around him at all anymore.

So...

Last night at work I had a woman who screamed, "Are you even awake?" into the phone when I answered it. That was awesome.

And while I'm sure that woman (don't even get me started on the rest of that call), and many others, are just simply dicks, I have to wonder if people are even more hostile to me than other reps because of my voice. No one else I know gets, "Your voice is so nasal," or, "you sound tired!" or "You sound monotone!" at all, much less at the rate I get told. I've even had nice people who call me at home think I sound tired or like I just woke up even when I'm fine.

Either way, the world is a horrible place. I'm not kidding--anyone you know, even love or care about could be one of these people. People who yell at strangers over the phone who they know darn well didn't cause their problem in the first place are BAD PEOPLE. I don't care if they go to church or give to charity or are your sweet old grandma. It's what you do when you think no one knows that counts. Plus, I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure these are the sort of people that would've gone along with the holocaust, or any horrible world event you can think of because they like feeling more powerful than others.

well

Today has been pretty good.

Its my first day in some time that I haven't had to go do something with my dad. Not to down him, I understand he's under some stress & pain of his own, but I tire of the constant emails trying to get me to take my mom's shoes (her & I had the same shoe size, but I actually wear shoes much larger than my size because my feet are freakishly wide) or this or that.

I slept till 2 pm, which I really did not mean to do and will probably fuck me up when I try to get to sleep tonight, but felt good.

I cleaned a ton, which I needed a ton. To be honest, any given day that I work I probably have enough time to clean about as much as I did today. But I never feel like cleaning on a work day. I'm a terrible procrastinator, but I've realized that I don't necessarily put things off till the last minute, I put them off until I feel like doing them, which is unfortunately not as often as I should do them. I still have to do my laundry (I clean only the bare minimum of what I need and then clean it over and over again while the rest of my stuff sits in baskets or all over the floor getting wrinklier and wrinklier) which due to my lack of will is a terrible mess, but at least the main part of this place (living room + kitchen) is presentable again.

Though, given my recent penchant for cooking/baking, the kitchen never stays nice long. Speaking of which, I made turkey tonight! Not a whole one, like a frozen breast or something, but it turned out tasty. The gravy turned out sort of too watery and too salty, and definitely not as strongly turkey-y as my mom's. I dunno if I'm going to eat it or not. I froze about half of the turkey to eat some other time, and ate all the outside bits from the side I didn't freeze (had all the seasonings, I put this Emeril Lagasse-endorsed stuff on the outsides). Then I kind of ripped off that thing Julie does where she pulls all the chicken apart, puts barbecue sauce on it, and puts it into burritos with cheese or whatever else one would prefer (tonight I put some refried beans in there). Delicious!

So I have to do dishes all over again.... but I have a dishwasher. Thank jeebus.

Now I'm trying to make myself do the laundry or organize the MP3's some people have donated, but I doubt it'll get done. Partly because I do have a really bad headache. I actually have a really bad headache nearly every day, but lately I'm trying to not take advil unless I'm at work or something where I'll go insane if I don't get headache relief. Basically because I think it's bad that I take advil every day. Partly because I'm lazy and don't feel like it anymore.

Well...

I decided to bite the bullet and... well... take the bullet (har har har). If I hate it I have it on good authority I can trade it for $60 bucks worth of crap at Bed, Bath, & Beyond. My main concern is that though they say it's smaller than a blender, it really actually takes up the same amount of space as a blender, and then has 80 other fucking things that are like the top part of a blender that I'll have to find space for.

Now I think technically I do have a little space in my cupboards still, but it just seems useless to clog it up with random shit just because I can. Especially since my dad's latest thing sounds like I'm going to be getting a lot of cheap-ass tupperware knock-offs soon that I'm going to have to find space for. (I might just chuck that or chuck the cheap ass tupperware knock-offs I've already got). The annoying fucking thing about having too much of this stuff is trying to find a lid that matches a container before you can store anything. I already go hulk smash with anger most of the time attempting this feat, then give up and use a plastic bag. Adding more shapes and sizes is a recipe for badness....

So I did hang out with the fam on Sat and it was slightly better than the time before. But I think tomorrow when I go to my Dad's house it's going to be tupperware time (and hence-annoying).

Before that I hung out with Josh. I wish we could've hung out longer but he had work and I had the aforementioned family togetherness. We both have been having crazy work schedules lately (him--insane boss, me--hurricane season. My sched is not so crazy, just less flexible than usual). So some of my plans seem to be going astray (we were going to make real mashed potatoes together like we did at thanksgiving). But the nice thing about hanging with Josh is that I can have a lot of fun just watching TV or doing nothing in particular too.

Lastly, but not leastly, I made some Pumpkin Scones which were alright but not fantastic like I thought they would be. Like, I think I did it right, but it's just not as flavorful of a recipe as I was hoping for. Plus I'm pretty sure I gained a ton of weight eating the entire stick of butter in there.