I managed several hours at my cousin's house for Thanksgiving. Actually managed longer than my parents did, but that's because I was watching a movie and wanted to see the end of it. Only got pissed off... twice, which is probably a record for my family gatherings. And one wasn't even pissed, it was just mildly irritated at Brad's aunt for being a moron. (Brad's my cousin's husband.) My aunt, however, was a bitch. She was complaining about how disorganized everything was and she shouldn't even bother to come. So I tried to joke it off about how she'd better never come if I got my own house and hosted the holidays, because it'd be chaos; I'm not organized on the average day, let alone a holiday. And she made some snide comment about how I'd never invite anyone, anyway. Seriously, WTF? I'm antisocial, my family knows that, but fuck, I'd invite family over. I may have to do it in small doses, but hell, she's hosted a holiday gathering ONCE in the past six years since I've moved here. It's mostly been my mom and my aunt Elaine. Okay, I probably won't live around here by the time I can afford a house, but that's not the issue here. Not that Aunt Sharon being bitchy is anything new, but it's been a while since it was directed specifically at me.

Oh right, I'm supposed to be thankful today. So why does my family make it so bloody hard?

Happy Thanksgiving.

Oh, I've watched Howl's Moving Castle twice since I got it Tuesday, and I still think it's adorable. I also watched Sense & Sensibility today, and reminded myself that I'm a total sap for Jane Austen films. Also, that I really, really love Alan Rickman. The man is amazing.

I have to bring a book for work tomorrow. I work outside, and the only people who check out outside are the ones who buy Christmas trees or a few brave souls trying to escape lines inside. Not that Lowe's lines are terrible. We're not exactly a Black Friday hot-spot. Still, it is busier than usual, but I'll be outside starting at six in the morning. Might as well bring a book.

Stolen from a Relly, and amusing me greatly, but that may be because my Ny-Quil's kicking in.

WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother's & father's middle names)
* Ann Lee

2. NASCAR NAME: (first name of your mother's dad, father's dad)
* Walter Wayne

3. STAR WARS NAME: (the first 2 letters of your last name, first 4 letters of your first name)
* Maaime

4.DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
* Orange Otter

5. SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you live)
* Nicole Homestead

6. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite alcoholic drink, optionally add "THE" to the beginning)
* The Purple Screwdriver

7. FLY NAME: (first 2 letters of 1st name, last 2 letters of your last name)
* Aine

8. GANGSTA NAME: (favorite ice cream flavor, favorite cookie):
* Chocolate Chip

9. ROCK STAR NAME: (current pet's name, current street name)
* Sadie Johnson-Iowa

10. PORN NAME: (1st pet, street you grew up on)
* Sanya (I grew up on too many streets to remember one in particular. HEY, I'm the Madonna of porn!)

I think these strike me as funny because most of them just DON'T WORK. Though Walter Wayne would be a hilariously horrible Nascar name.

I really hate my job.

So, I'm coming down with a cold or flu or something. My voice is hoarse, I'm hacking up a lung, blowing my nose, obviously sick. So what do they have me do at work but wash windows and mop the exit foyer where the doors are constantly opening and blasting me with twenty degree air. Yeah, that's bright.

Also, I am really getting sick of one of my coworkers. Julie was okay when I only had to work with her an hour or two a day and didn't have to hear her much. But she's a know-it-all and has opinions about every damn thing in the book, most of which she's absolutely wrong on. And she gets bitchy if you try to contradict her and pulls her 'how many years of experience at such and such' card, which doesn't impress me much when it replaces common sense.

So today she was complaining about how we have to learn how to trim Christmas trees in case we're outside. Which is silly, I admit, because I can't lift a tree onto the table to do it and I'm mostly the one out there weekdays, and they'll never get the new people or weekend-only people trained on it. But she starts bitching about how it's ridiculous because we CAN'T cut it here, they have to cut it at home or it'll die. And I'm looking at her like she's an idiot, because we've done this for years and hey, people don't return the Christmas trees because they've died too early, so she starts harping on about how it has to be FRESHLY CUT and put into BOILING WATER or else it closes off, just like a flower, and blahblahblah.

While I suppose there is some truth to this and it will probably last longer, it's complete bullshit that they're going to die INSTANTLY because we trimmed it at the store with a chainsaw and it had half an hour for the sap to congeal. Because HEY, GUESS WHAT. Our Christmas trees were mostly cut TWO MONTHS AGO out at the farms and they haven't died yet. So yes, if you want a really fresh tree, you should go to a farm and pick it out and cut it, then take it home and trim it yourself. But you know, if it was going to die a week before Christmas just because we trimmed the trunk at the store then they wouldn't be able to cut the trees so long before Christmas and ship them out, then, would they? They'd wait a little longer to stop customer and store complaints about merchandise.

So yes, Julie drives me insane and I really want to tell her at times to stop being such a fucking bitch. If I didn't know that the garden center people don't really like her, I'd probably wonder if it was just me, because they seem to get along with her up front all right. But she's stepped on a lot of toes outside, and they're always glad when I come back from lunch or where ever I was while she was covering the outside register.

Okay, enough complaining for today.

So, it has been an interesting day. I got a new winter coat, yay, because my old one was falling apart. In the way that Meg's favorite coat was falling apart, except I don't hold with using duct tape to fix my coat, and besides, it was really too big. It's a nice coat. It's dark grey wool and comes down almost to my knees.

I got to talk to Kim yesterday, which was cool, since I haven't seen her on in ages because of her computer frying and my work driving me insane.

And then I got a phone call from Meg. Which was seriously WEIRD because Meg doesn't call. So I call up and find out she's ENGAGED and has been for MONTHS. We are probably the weirdest best friends ever, because how many best friends don't talk for months and still are best friends? So yes, I chewed her out for not calling me sooner and she told me to get my butt online more often or at least onto LJ to check on things, and then I congratulated her and threatened to kill her if I wasn't somehow involved at the wedding, even if it was just as a witness to the justice of the peace. (Yeah, we're definitely weird best friends.)

So that's essentially what led to this entry. I meant to make an appearance back in August after running into Miri, Adam, and Benji at AnimeIowa and I kept putting it off and forgetting. I really need to get better at keeping in touch with people.

Uh, updates on my life. Working full-time at Lowe's still, though with a set schedule now, and going to school half-time. I'll probably end up back at Iowa State once I get my gen-eds done at Kirkwood, because they actually work with community college students to get them stuff that transfers and the University of Iowa still sucks majorly. But that's at least another year off, probably closer to two. I'm trying to exercise and lose weight, because I really need to, so I'm doing aqua aerobics right now. Yes, it sounds like an old-people thing, but I kinda need that with my leg. I can actually modify most of the stuff to work with one leg, unlike a lot of regular stuff.

Other than that, things are as boring as ever.

Merry Christmas.

I slipped on some ice while out running errands on Sunday, and strained my back. It was bad enough that my boss took one look at me this morning and demanded to know what was wrong. She heard the story and told me to go home and call the doctor. He says it's acute back strain, and gave me some anti-inflammatory stuff for it. And pain pills. I love pain pills.

So now I'm avoiding writing my research paper and playing on my computer while waiting for psychology to start. On pain pills. Wheee.

LOOK. A JOURNAL UPDATE. AND, PREPARE TO BE SHOCKED, I ACTUALLY READ A FEW FRIEND ENTRIES. My LJ-hiatus is briefly over! We'll see how long that lasts.

So I'm home sick from work and I registered for classes. Next semester it's Intro to Mass Media, which is totally stupid but I have to take it to qualify for the other classes I need for my major. I'm also taking Elementary Spanish. Which I don't especially want to learn, but it's useful-ish, and people like it on resumes. Assuming I actually do learn how to speak it, unlike German that I've forgotten most of. (I might switch up to some other language once I hit a university, but for now, Spanish is what I'm taking.)

I have Christmas/Yuletide/Holiday Season cards to get rid of. If you want one, comment here with your mailing address. They shall be screened, and I'm too lazy to be a stalker/serial killer myself.

ZOMG, LOOK, AN UPDATE.

I want to have a dog and name it Menchi.

Also, Meg, I saw a girl the other day who was creepily like a female version of Zach. I'm not really sure what it was, but seriously, she just made me stare and go "GIRL ZACH!" By the way, Zach looks better as a girl.

I am back and dead tired. Whee?

Just letting those know who might care that I'm alive and home. I'll do an actual update on my trip once the jet-lag wears off. (In other words, in another week?)

The snow hasn't slowed down any, and puppy is extremely unhappy. (She hates bad weather. The wind caught against the house just right earlier and made a loud noise, and she started shivering and whining.) But it's still not really sticking, and if I wait till Dad gets home to leave, he probably won't want me to go. Then again, maybe not; he's not usually as paranoid as Mom is. But I also hate to leave Sadie home alone when she's upset. She's shivering like we'd left her out in the snow for an hour. At least she's not panting right now.

Okay, yeah, the radar's really mild. I think I'll try going in; if I get a few miles down the road and don't like it, I can always turn around and head home. I'll leave the door to the basement open so that Sadie can hide down there if she wants to. I need to get some things done.

The weather's nasty, but I'm supposed to go into town today. Damn it. I wanted to go into Cedar Rapids to exchange money and do some shopping, but it's snowing this slushy rain-snow mix. Actually, it might all be snow, but the ground's a bit warm, so it's slushy on the road. The main road's probably clear, though, since there's minimal accumulation on my driveway.

In other words, I could drive into town, but I hate driving in yicky weather. But it's only quarter to nine; maybe I'll just wait a while and see if it gets any better, or I get more ambitious.

I have to upload music to my iPod, FIND MY GODDAMN MISSING BACKPACK, get anything else I'm missing for the trip (INCLUDING A CAMERA OR MULTIPLE DISPOSABLE ONES), print off my summer class schedule, fill out my insurance paperwork, call my bank, call my credit card companies, and cash my paycheck. All before Saturday.

WHY AM I STILL ON THE COMPUTER?

So I've been in a rather bitchy mood for the past few days, and I don't know why. People are irritating the hell out of me, for no particular reason. I'm not really irritated with my friends, but people who normally irritate me are making me want to choke them five times as soon as I normally do. Customers are bugging the crap out of me for stupid reasons; I haven't had any really bad ones, but they're still annoying me. Although I've had a few whackjobs in the past few days, for some reason. And my dad's irritating the hell out of me, too, though Mom hasn't been too bad. Maybe he's got the same thing going on and we're just clashing. Normally it's Mom who grates at my antisocial tendencies.

Anyway, I seem to be ticking off people I like by being grouchy, even though I'm not mad at them, myself. Which really sucks. And my writing really sucks right now, too, which makes me even more obnoxious, because my nice little escape is cut off.

Oh, and corporate visited today. I managed to impress them (or at least deflect their complaints to other cashiers) by finding shit to do all day, which was basically volunteering for every restocking job under the sun and then scrubbing the hell out of the outside registers. I was about to mention a coworker who irritated me, but then I realized I'd have to go into a pretty extensive list right now. I can't decide if the number of annoying coworkers is actually increasing, or if I'm just having a bad week. (We have gotten a bunch of new employees in, so it is feasible that the number could be increasing. And one who's always annoyed the hell out of me, and most other people, has started working more hours again, which doesn't help.)

So, anyway, sorry to anyone I've unintentionally annoyed. I swear, I'm trying not to be such a bitch. I'm just having mixed results.

So, I've come down with a stomach virus. x.x I'm on a restricted diet and medication. I had to leave work early two days in a row. Friday I had to leave because I was doubling over and kept having to run to the bathroom; today it just hurt to stand for too long. I really hope I can make it through tomorrow; I've got a mandatory meeting at night, and I really don't want to have to drive back in if I have to go home. At least I can eat again; now if I can only get the cramps to stop.

So, how long has it been since I posted last now?

Just a quick update to say that HEY, I AM NOW FULL-TIME AT WORK. It's sort of a promotion; no pay raise, but I'm guaranteed at least thirty-nine hours a week, instead of whatever the hell they feel like giving me. Which is NIFTY.

I still have no news. Job-hunting again. I still have mine, but I dislike it. I was going to say intensely, but I suppose it's not that bad; it's just boring and dull and I don't get paid enough. Planning on finally going back to school, but not till summer.

I think I'll have to put a movie on; there's nothing on TV.

There were some quizzes saved on here when I went to update. So I figured I might as well post them. I have boreks in the oven; once those are done, I'll go down to Aunt Elaine's for Christmas dinner. I also made a hot cider-punch thing.

My parents were happy with the gifts I got them, which is nifty. I got Mom a bird feeder, a bunch of candles, an outdoor decorative bird, an iron thing for her wall, a candle warmer... Oh, a stuffed moose (she likes moose for some reason), an angel ornament and a lifehouse ornament... And the chicken cookie jar. Dad got some DVDs (Hidalgo and a double-feature John Wayne DVD), a Dremel polishing kit, some books on Ireland and Great Britain traveling, and some grilling stuff.

Mom got me socks and underwear; I keep giving her crap about it. But she also got me some Angel Sanctuary and Dragon Knights volumes, a new purse with a long strap (do you know how hard those are to find?), and some pretty jewelry. Also, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. SQUEE. And Goo Goo Dolls! I got some hairties, a rice cooker, and these sleep socks that are supposed to seal in moisture; I have problems with my calluses cracking on my feet.

Best parody song EVAR came on the radio yesterday. "Walking 'Round in Women's Underwear." Amused the hell out of me. Mom and Dad leave for Floriday tomorrow; I actually get the day off. I am happy. I'd love to go to Best Buy and get one of the computers on sale, but my parents would kill me. (Yes, it's my money, but with the vacation in April, I don't really need another expense, even if I do put it on one of those 'six month no interest' plans.) I'll watch for some sales closer to my birthday, I think.

My guppies are doing well after the first one croaked suddenly. They gave me a replacement one since it died within twenty-four hours. So now I have a pleco, a platie, a white cloud, two diamond tetras, three neon tetras, three guppies, and a ghost shrimp. One of the neon tetras is going, though; its air bladder is messed up, and is swimming all funky. The platie might be, too; it keeps hiding in the corner, and it never used to. It's not eating well, either. Marvin was worrying me yesterday, but he seems happy again today. He kept sulking at the surface yesterday. Perhaps he just thinks he's not being emo enough.

I need to change and get dressed to go down to Elaine's.

( A meme I've been meaning to do. )

( More tests )

I live! Sorta. Finished up my Christmas shopping, though I forgot to mail J-chan's before she left. I need to wrap hers and Meg's so I can mail the one later.

My new deodorant smells kinda masculine. I hope the scent fades, otherwise I'm not sure I can wear it. A lot of the cologne-like scents give me a headache, and covering up a cologne with perfume would NOT work.

I'm sure I do have news, but I can't think of it..

OH, WAIT. I have a job interview Friday. (YAY.) For OFFICE WORK. NOT RETAIL. SQUEE. LET ME GET THE JOB. Also, I am going on vacation in April. My parents are taking a cruise for their twenty-fifth anniversary, and offered to take me along. They'll pay for my room; I have to pay for the airfare and extra stuff. Sooo.... I get to go on a TRANSATLANTIC CRUISE. There will be stops in Azores, Portugal, and Spain. And lots of ocean relaxation days. I am excited!

I am also on a diet. We'll see how well this one goes. I want to lose weight for the cruise and my cousin's wedding in June, but I also just need to lose weight. Back down to where I was sophomore year in high school would be good. Freshman would be even better. Sophomore is what I'm shooting for by the cruise; perhaps I can manage to get to freshman weight by the wedding.

( Another Personality Test )

HOLY CRAP, Paranoid Android has been on me since the fifteenth! x.x OOPS. I also need to bug Oki about who's setting A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Internet Forum. And bug Kayli on Dragons, though we were waiting on an elf to volunteer for the third position in there, I think. I'll revive that thread.

Well, I know what I'm doing on break at work today.

I need to figure out what Seiryuu stories are on me; I've completely lost track. I should start starring them when it's my turn...

We're looking at a vacation sometime in April; my parents will pay for my room if I pay for my airfare. (Nifty!)

Jenna's being a pain; she's learned the dog won't attack her, and so has no fear of flying to the floor. Stupid bird. Right now she's climbed down to my knee for some reason. And now she's back to standing on my chest, staring at me.

The fish are all doing well. Marvin's a happy betta, and the aquarium fish are all doing well. Fluffy's been hiding a lot lately, and Sadie's been sticking close after she ran off one night and had to spend the night outside in the cold.

I have no news that doesn't relate to animals. That's a little sad.