So.... this random guy IMed me. I asked Tina if she knew who he was, because she and I have known a lot of the same internet people over the years. She thought he might be a guy named Jamie:

thanatos989 (10:45:36 PM): hey
phoemeister (11:18:16 PM): are you Jamie?
thanatos989 (11:18:55 PM): er nope
thanatos989 (11:18:56 PM): lol
thanatos989 (11:19:59 PM): I was wondering who you were actually
phoemeister (11:25:21 PM): your name means death
thanatos989 (11:27:01 PM): yeah
thanatos989 (11:27:08 PM): or more like a kinda winged
thanatos989 (11:27:10 PM): deathish
thanatos989 (11:27:12 PM): thingy
thanatos989 (11:27:20 PM): greek maybe
thanatos989 (11:27:24 PM): I don't know
thanatos989 (11:27:26 PM): I was 15
phoemeister (11:27:57 PM): Were you mad when Bill & Ted melvined you?

...and then he blocked me. It made me laugh.

Today was pretty good. Jeremy & I had lunch at Mandarin Garden (I know, fancy!). I'd never had lunch there before. Even though it was good, I sort of prefer dinner. They gave me less of my entree and put my rice on my plate instead of giving me a separate bowl for it. Plus they threw in a little fried chicken which seemed.... random. It was pretty good as far as fried chicken goes, but whatever.

At work we had our yearly outing. Previous years we've gone to a restaurant and sat around socializing during the time we didn't eat. This time we went to Chuck E Cheese. I dunno what it was, I generally like Skee ball, but I found it kind of boring. Then part of our group (including me) splintered off and went to Barnes & Noble which was more fun.

I had a fantastic weekend; Jeremy & I went to Matthiessen park. We couldn't get to a couple of the places because the water level was too high, but we still had fun. We also had a failed attempt at making pesto. The problem was caused by a strange culprit: the cheese. Jeremy & I both love cheese but the Parmesan I bought was moderately fancy (i.e. not the powdered processed stuff, an actual block that I grated) which apparently translates into bitter. I'm not even kidding, it had a bitter flavor, like coffee or citrus rind. It was disgusting. If I ever try again I'll use the processed stuff or find something else. To make it even edible Jeremy dumped a bunch of spices & cream in. It still wasn't very good so we dumped some marinara on top of that. Oh well, at least we had fun cooking together. We visited the new Fresh Market place (as expected, it is moderately interesting but somewhat pricey) and did some Halloween costume prep (I am going to be Wolverine again; he is going to look like I mauled him with my chopstick--I mean, adamantium--claws.)

In other news, I'm trying to decide on this French program thing. I was looking at the application and there's even more BS than I thought there would be to do it.

Pro's:

1) I've always wanted to go to France. Plus, I might even get to visit other countries over there.

2) I am reeeally tired of my job right now. I need something different. This would certainly be different.

Con's:

1) The BS involved in applying. I have to write a thing, get my passport up to date, pay a $40 application fee, get 2 people to recommend me, get a physical, probably other things. This sounds like a lot of time and money without even knowing ahead of time that I'd get in.

2) I don't even know that I'm qualified. The application thing says to write the essay IN French. I haven't spoken French much in a long time. I was hoping that I could apply and actually re-learn French after I got accepted. They also say you need a minimum of 3 semesters of French.... I think they mean college. I only took one semester in college but years and years of it in high school and jr. high. So I feel like that more than covers the 3 semesters, but I don't know if they care. Also, the recommendation letters are supposed to be from people who can speak to your French ability... I don't know my French teachers anymore. So if I apply it's all this work and then I might not get in. And I'll have wasted my time, money, effort, energy, and feel depressed again like I always do when I get rejected for a job.

3) What if I do get over there and I'm really homesick? I've never spent much time away from here. And what about when I get back? I'll be jobless again and the economy will probably still be shitty.

Cons outweigh pros, I guess. I just want to be brave for once and go somewhere and do something. And I really, really hate the job I'm doing now. I feel so fucking trapped sometimes. I'm going to give myself a couple more weeks to decide whether to apply. I guess I could apply and decide whether or not to actually go later, but the thing is, I don't really want to commit the amount of time, effort, and money the application process takes if I'm not 100% into it.

Blah. You know that it's not the weekend anymore when you spend the first couple hours you are up:

--creating a justification on why you deserve a raise at work (technically we're supposed to do this at work but I just don't have the time between customers and this is important enough I'll suck it up and do it at home)

--needing to write 10 (it turned out to be exactly 10 emails) to friends, loved ones, and the damn condo association because you are so behind on keeping up with them

Oh, poor blog. Sorry that I've been too busy for you lately. The paradox about blogs is when you have the time to write in them you haven't probably been doing a lot of interesting things to blog about. And when you are busy with interesting things, you probably don't have the time to blog.

As you might've guessed, the majority of my busyness is related to a certain gentleman caller named Jeremy. We have had a lot of good times since the last time I mentioned him on here. He's met my family and they seem to approve, I've met a lot of his friends and they seem to approve, we went to the Lincoln Museum in Springfield this weekend with my dad and his woman, he's cooked for me, I've cooked for him, we've gone out to eat, we've dealt with creepy waiters, we've played games, we've cuddled, we've talked, watched TV, saw Where the Wild Things Are (I think a child might be disappointed with the movie, it's a bit artsy and slow in some places, but we really liked it).

I don't think I've really been doing anything else of note lately. Still hate my job, love my family, hate cleaning, love 007 and spend way too much time watching TV.

Ah, Facebook. Thank you for letting me know that Neil Diamond is going to have a new Christmas album out. At first I was like, "Neil Diamond's Jewish. Does he really need a third Christmas album out there?"

Then I clicked the link for the description. And while there are probably plenty of actual Christmas songs on the album, it mentions that he is covering Adam Sandler's Hannukah song.

That's right. NEIL DIAMOND IS COVERING ADAM SANDLER. Can the apocalypse be far?

Anyway.... here, if you don't believe me.

Meh. The worst part of cleaning? All the fucking abortions. I am not even kidding.

Well, I'm not kidding about it being the worst part. Obviously, I am not literally aborting people's fetuses. I would be a lot richer and happier than at my current job. Probably.

But yeah, every time I vacuum I have to get all up in my vacuum's tubes with a coat hanger to get the gunk out, and it's a pain in my ass. It's more effort than vacuuming itself. It used to be the fuzz my new(ish) carpet threw off, but that stopped and I was abortion-free. But then I got a rabbit who should be fucking bald by now, the little fucker. He has been shedding like a maniac for like two months now. So I've been aborting like a maniac for two months now. Bleh.

The whole time I was cleaning I was mentally bitching about what a dick he is, but I've decided he can't help it, most animals shed, and should probably just get a less shitty vacuum. He IS, however, a dick for strewing his hay and feces all over my kitchen floor all the time.

Anyway.....

Because I'm lazy I'm just going to copy & paste something Tina posted on her blog and then add "Amy did want to."

The process of waiting to hear back from one person or another is very boring and drawn out. It is even more so when Archie goes to bed early and I am not drawn to any particular amusement because I've been feeling sick. So when my friend had a little social game on her blog, I said I'd join. The deal is she sends me five words and I write what those five words make me think. I'm supposed to keep the game going by offering to do the same for anyone else who asks but with their own five words but since I have two loyal readers, it all depends on whether Amy wants to play :b

Amy did want to.

Tina emailed me:

I just woke up so your words might suck.

1 Success

2 Amusement

3 favorite

4 Musical

5 Family

1) Success - I dunno. Depressing? Unattainable? Career success, anyway, is clearly never going to happen for me.

2) Ah, tons of things. Life may sometimes be depressing (see #1) but there's always something hilarious going on. There's my rabbit, doing secret missions and running full speed laps around my couch. There's my nephews, taking their pants off at a restaurant. There's the crazy woman + woman's children + blind guy + lesbian love trapezoid at work. Also at work, there's people with crazy names, such as Bill Pancake, Supreme Allah, Richard Dong. Hell, I can get amusement from my ass-burning runs by choosing to make pooparcels. Jeremy & I got amusement on Tuesday simply by being in a restaurant where the lady calling out people's orders sounded extremely angry. If you think about things, most anything is hilarious.

3) People tell me I rank things too much. Which is probably true. Off the top of my head, I could probably tell you my favorite of any sort of thing. Fav author? Kurt Vonnegut. Fav musician? Ben Folds. Fav meal? The pork chops mom used to make that now I make. Favorite expensive french fries: Jim's Steakhouse. Favorite mid range french fries: Meatheads. Favorite french fries after that? Steak N Shake. Favorite fast food fries? McDonalds. Yes, I have shared with you my hierarchy of fries. I have a favorite everything ready for any type of conversation.

4) Well... music could probably be another 70 blog posts in and of itself, but "musical" makes me think of broadway type stuff. I don't often watch musicals, but I actually like them a good chunk of the time. When I was a film minor I would always pick the old Fred Astaire musicals because the boringness that a lot of those old movies had (sorry... I don't hate all old movies but I do hate more than a few) was at least broken up by good music. I (sadly) have been watching the TV show Glee for the same reason lately. That and Jane Lynch is hilarious no matter what she ends up in.

5) One thing I always think of is how I wish I were closer to my extended family. And how weirdly small it seems now that mom is gone.

Yesterday was badass. I got to:

1) Meet my dad's woman. She laughs at my jokes. I approve. Just kidding, she actually seems nice and all otherwise as well. I think I'd have a problem if she were like, way younger than dad and really trashy or something, but I know dad has better taste than that.

2) Julie was in Bniz! She apparently had to retrieve her car and paint a mural for some friend of hers. We watched 007 hop around, caught up on things, and discussed how we would improve on Poo Parcels by adding candy corn, or finding some kind of candy that looks like real corn, various fillings/flavors, various shapes produced by different animals, white chocolate for bird poo. I could RULE the mail order fake poop business. Though I sort of cheated, I used fudge instead of trying to mold a poop from regular chocolate. It was orig. the super sexy dessert for dinner with Jeremy, but I let Julie have part of a turd too. I tried to get her to take some back for Lothar, but she was afraid the people she was staying with would freak out if she tried to keep a poop in their fridge until she left.

Gaaar.... halfway through the poop talk I remembered that Lori reads my blog now. Good god, I'm sorry. Yes Lori, this is the extent to which I am obsessed with poo. I apologize. Really, you should be happy that I'm good enough of a sister that I heretofore kept the most disturbing things from you.

3) Then I had dinner with Jeremy. I at first felt bad (I think I had heartburn from the poop--yes, yes, I deserve it for eating poop) but felt better after I ate something else and had some peppermint tea. The something else is this tortellini soup he made me, which was actually really good. I had my doubts when I saw him adding "vegetable broth" to the mix. I had not known of the existence of such a thing, nor would I have likely tried it on my own if I had, but it was actually really good. Of course, he gave me the opportunity to smother it in Parmesan cheese. Considering I do that with half of what I eat most of the time anyway: yay. Then we watched some Monty Python. It was something completely different (har har har) but good!