Rambling On

The last day of the year!

And the last day of the blogging contest! Which, once I hit "post" successfully, I will totally win.

I could write a Year-in-Review post, but I kind of did that back on August 7. Who says I have to review a year at the end of it? But a few things: I got a new job this year, which was an improvement in my life. I took on full responsibility for a few other jobs, too, both of which stress me out more than my main job. Lately I've been re-evaluating exactly how I want to spend my time. If my volunteer job and my small job mainly make me stressed and unhappy, well, what should I do about that? The easy answer is quit, but I'm not the only one affected by these things.

Other than that, it's been a not-too-crazy year. I've had fun, I've made good memories, I've learned more about myself and the way I work. I turned 28, which was nothing after 27. The late-twenties are all the same. I've been depressed and a wee bit psychotic, and happy and optimistic, too. I started the year thinking that 2006 wasn't really going to be a good time, and it turned out to be not-so-bad after all . . . minus, of course, my minor psychosis here and there.

My resolutions for 2006 were
1) to get regular exercise
2) to learn html.

Number 1 has been kept . . . even better than I expected. Number 2? Well, I know more than I did at the beginning of 2006, and I even redesigned my blog template (with a little help), so I guess we're good there, too. Hooray!

Do I have any resolutions for 2007?
1) to figure out more about my retirement plan. 401(k)? Roth IRA? Or the ever-elusive Roth 401(k)?

2) to go to the dentist twice

3) to buy a Mini! (we'll see).

I want to resolve to "get organized" but all business books and personal improvement books would say that's not a very good goal, because it's vague and unmeasurable

So far, I've spent the last day of 2006 staying in bed, skipping church (which I never do), reading, and treating what feels like an oncoming cold. And now blogging my last post of the old year. In a couple of hours I'm headed to a party in Baltimore.

Goodbye, '06. All in all, you turned out OK.

I should be a spokesperson.

Today marks the fourth anniversary of my house-buying. December 30, 2002. I went to the closing with my real estate agent. I signed a gazillion papers. The seller's real estate agent was dressed like a slut, and the lady in charge of the closing had her dogs in the office that day, so they were running in and out of the room. It was a bizarre experience.

I take my house for granted most of the time, especially when it costs money, or when, like recently, things go wrong. Like my shower water pressure has suddenly seriously decreased, and I can find no explanation. Annoying.

But . . . now I own a house. And it's pretty amazing. It's also amazing how many people I know, who are my age or younger, also own houses. Because Central PA is THE place for cheap housing. Move here! Buy houses! It's awesome!

Mel has the answers

Since I made my post about “baked a toast to innocence” I can’t believe how many people have found my blog that way. Seriously, every day or so someone is googling this phrase, and my blog is at the top of the first Google page. I never realized this was such a common misinterpretation of these lyrics. I guess you could mistake “drank” for “baked,” but that makes no sense at all. We baked a toast to innocence? Although . . . toast is a food. So you could technically “bake” it.

If you want the real lyrics to this song, click here.

People have also found my blog many times by searching for “lovers in triangle not on square” which is a fortune I got last summer in a fortune cookie and posted about. That’s died down a bit, but that fortune must’ve spread across the country, because I kept getting hits from it. I didn’t know what it meant, and neither did many other people, apparently. So I looked it up.
From what I understand, basically “on the square” is kind of like “being on the level” or the “up and up.” Honest and aboveboard. So a triangle of lovers, unless they’re in some kind of open relationship (and I have a post about THAT here), are not really being honest with each other.

But this is not a fortune. It’s a statement and an attempt at wittiness.

Anyone have any other questions about bits of random trivia and/or song lyrics? I’ll try to find the answers.

You take the good, you take the bad

Blogging contest has entered the home stretch! I have posted every day except one since August 21. Only three more posts! I'm so in the habit of this now it's going to be hard to stop.

Today my work public speaking class was a happy one. It was about the power of recognition. Everyone gave everyone else some kind of compliment, which can be hard if you don't know someone very well, but it's one of my favorite things to do. Mike (who took the class last year) said that next week we have to share what we DON'T like about everyone in the class. Obviously he was kidding, but on my way home from work I sat and thought about the bad things I would say to everyone (which may be the worst mental exercise in the history of the world, and certainly goes against all Dale Carnegie's principles).

I do like everyone in my class, though, and the good outweighs the irritating. I just find it easy to think of both good and bad things to say about people.

So, here's a fun exercise. Leave me a complimentary comment, and I'll say something nice about you in return. Or, you can leave me a negative, not-nice comment, and I'll tell you something I don't like about you.

I can tell that this is going to be a raging success.

The End

Vacation ends today.

The older I get, the more vacation seems like an escape. I never wanted a life that I needed to escape from via a vacation. I always thought that sounded horrible . . . slaving away for days and months for the privilege of a week or two weeks on a beach somewhere.

It's not like I slave away in my real life, and I do like my job. But this week off has not been anything close to real life . . . I've pretty much forgotten about work or any other responsibilities, I've stayed up irresponsibly late, eaten too much, endlessly played games, and spent time with people I only see once a year. And after a few days back at work, I'm off for another three-day weekend.

Come January 2, however, it all comes back with a vengeance. And no breaks for months. So maybe I should just stop thinking about it.

I would like sleep, please.

No parade. Rain instead. Which many, many people were happy about, because most of our family didn't want to be in the parade to begin with.

We had a day full of eating and game-playing instead. Which ended just a short time ago.

I'm going to bed now.

Simply having a wonderful Christmastime

Merry Christmas!

Off for some late-night present opening.

Stay tuned for even more excitement . . .

It's officially Christmas Eve!

Church and the family gift exchange tomorrow.

And coming up on Christmas Day (provided it's not raining) . . . a homemade parade! We saw video of last year's parade and it was amazing. Anyone can be in this neighborhood parade provided they have some kind of vehicle. Car, tractor, motorcycle, unicycle . . . anything goes. I just need to go this year and get pictures.

After midnight

I have moments of mild panic as midnight approaches. Did I blog today? Yes, I did. But not since I got up this morning. I had to reassure myself several times that 12.22 was taken care of. I'm taking care of 12.23 right now.

And 12.23 also happens to be my mom's birthday. Hooray! I need to get her a card ASAP. But that can wait until I've slept.

Circle of Life

We kicked off the first day in Florida in style . . . with shuffleboard and a trip to the beach. Which is as it should be.

While we were playing shuffleboard, a group of kids in a car hollered at us from the road (many yards away). . . we weren't sure what they said. Either: "that game sucks" or "fascism sucks."

The first makes more sense, but the second is more true.

It occured to me on Tuesday that maybe I should be googling the events of my life regularly, because other people might be blogging them, too. For example, my plane delay. Maybe someone else from my plane has a blog, and wrote about their experience . . . and I would like to read about that experience from someone else's point of view.

So perhaps I should google "yelled at kids playing shuffleboard" and see if I can find a blog entry from one of those losers. Or at least a crappy myspace.

It's nothing

Posting in the AM to get it out of the way . . . which is smart, but nothing has actually happened yet.

And thus I have nothing to say. But enjoy some photos from my "Bored in the Airport" series.

Airplane!

Airports are the best place to watch people, and I had three hours of people-watching time today, when my flight was delayed from 3:15 until 6:00. Thank God it wasn't cancelled altogether.

My frustration was alleviated when I walked onto the plane and discovered I was seated in an exit row. I don't mind the exit row; I like to think that I could help in an emergency. The flight attendant asked the other girl in the row and I if we were willing and able to assist if there was a problem, and we both said yes.

"Whatever," said the other girl, when the flight attendant had gone. "Like we could do anything if the plane crashed."

I smiled like I agreed, but I wanted to argue. Because seriously, I'm determined to survive a plane crash, open the emergency door, and shout so people can follow my voice through the smoke and find the exit.

I feel like Dwight Schrute.

But there was no emergency, and the exit row was like a revelation in terms of leg room.

Because I didn't know it could be that good.

Christmas bells, those Christmas bells

Every weekday morning my alarm goes off, and I am pulled from blissful sleep into cranky wakefulness. I stumble out into the hallway to turn my alarm off. (I put my alarm in the hall to force myself to get out of bed, but I always hit “snooze” once anyway).
So, normally I hit “snooze” and stumble back to my bed, pull the covers over my head, and snuggle down for nine extra minutes of sweet, sweet dozing.

Today, however, when I got back into bed, I heard the sound of bells. Church bells, chiming out a hymn (What a Friend We Have in Jesus, if you care) and I couldn’t really go back to sleep, because my mind was busy filling in the lyrics and wondering why church bells were chiming at 6:51 on a Tuesday morning. After a couple of verses of that, the bells switched over to Auld Lang Syne, another odd choice.

So I lay half-awake, in the pre-dawn darkness, listening to this surreality. And now I wonder if I dreamed the whole thing.

Time keeps on ticking

I realized the other day that there are only a few days left, relatively, in the YLTLSWC (the blog contest that I'm in). After today, only 13. So . . . if I can make it through the rest of the holidays, which I SHOULD be able to do, I will be one of the winners! Right now, I think I would make about $10 on my original investment, so I hope some more people drop out soon.

It's nice to remember

I tried to post these pics after my trip to Virginia in early August, and I couldn't get Blogger to work. So, I'm posting them now, because I need a post and because they make me feel warm.

Presents under the tree

I love getting things done.

Five Christmas items to buy, five checked off the list.

Just one more to buy, plus a couple of small things, and I'm finished.

The next four days are going to be mad busy.

Just not a good idea

I wish I could blog about work sometimes, because it's just so darn fascinating. I could get more stories out of there than anywhere else, and all the characters in the office would make good blog material.

But everyone knows that blogging in a not-always-positive way about work can get you fired. It's happened to more than one person in the blogosphere.

So, that's all I have to say about that.

Angry all the time

Today in our speech class we had to give a one minute report (yelling) on a pet peeve.

Some people found this difficult, but I didn't. I can get peeved about a wide variety of things.

Tonight at dinner, a bunch of us were talking and I happened to mention our speech class. And then someone asked about the speech I'd given today. I explained my pet peeve, and some of the other pet peeves that were shared in the class, and soon everyone at dinner was trying to think of the thing that irritates them most.

One of the quiet guys didn't really seem to have a pet peeve . . . until I brought up one speech-giver's pet peeve about people who talk about sports but don't really know anything about them. Suddenly this laid-back guy began animatedly explaining what he found irritating about ignorant sports fans.

It's funny to watch people forget their inhibitions and start getting really into talking about the things that bug them.

So, if you want to, leave a comment about what you find infuriating.

Party Time!

As promised, here is a picture of the Christmas Party that doesn't suck.

(Although Brian's head is somewhere down around Jess's chest, and you can't really see Mike, either).

But these are the peeps I work with every day:

Running out of things to say

People come across my blog when searching for many things, but this is my favorite so far:

we baked a to innocence, we baked a to now dan fogelberg

I know exactly what this person meant, because this is only my favorite Christmas song ever. And so, person who was obviously looking for lyrics, if you come back, here's the deal:

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
We tried to reach beyond the emptiness
but neither one knew how

It's Same Auld Lang Syne. A New Year's title, but a Christmas song.

I like to think that Dan and his old lover "baked" something, but mostly they just drank a six-pack in her car.

Baby, baby

I spent part of my evening consoling crying children, putting Tigger and Winnie-the-Pooh puppets on my hands, playing with a Fisher Price People farm, school, and house (ah, memories), keeping three-year-olds from coming down a slide on top of toddlers, and chasing a crawling fourteen-month-old.

It was a nice change.

So hard (not) to say

For my public speaking class at work, which is also kind of a self-improvement thing, I had to give a talk on a relationship that I would like to strengthen. And I did that, promising to work on my attitude, to not criticize, condemn, or complain when it comes to a certain person who annoys me (not a blog reader).

Today it was very, very hard not to criticize, condemn, or complain, especially in my head. And I wanted to vent so badly to Joy. But I refrained. And it sucked. But At least I'll have something to report this week when I have to talk in class about how this is going.

(I'm not posting any pictures from last night's party, because most of mine suck. Maybe I'll get some others that will be better).

Exclamation points are the sexiest punctuation marks*

Christmas party tonight!

Photos tomorrow!

Three of my regular readers will actually be AT the Christmas Party, too!

I've got nothing more to say, because this is a total filler post!

The end!


*once said a Cosmo editor. I just read this somewhere.

Well, that's one thing we got

I don't think I'm a materialistic person (or at least I like to think that I'm not), but there's something about seeing this box in a Christmas gift bag that makes my heart beat a little faster.

How did I know immediately what this box meant? I've been trying to decide, and I think its all about the movie, Annie. I distinctly remember her getting something in a box like this from Daddy Warbucks at the end. I saw that movie when I was four, and it pretty much traumatized me for years (and made me hate Carol Burnett with an undeserved passion), but some of the images have stuck with me.



(If you don't know where the box is from, the title of this post is a clue).

Countdown . . .

Two days until the company Christmas Party.

It's going to be sweet!

Rethinking it

I said in one my earlier Questions of the Week that I would choose September if I had to choose one month of the year in which to be alive.

But December is really good, too. Parties, Christmas, food, family and friends to hang out with, time off work (although I'm not sure I would be working if I were only alive one month of the year), and just general holiday merriment. Plus, you could ring in the New Year before your return to death.

I may be changing my mind here.

The Unknown

I bought my new planner today. For 2007.

12 pages of blank squares, 365 days in which anything could happen.

New years always freak me out a bit.

Git 'er done!

Some household chores to do while on a long-distance phone call:

--load the dishwasher
--take out trash and recyclables
--scrub the gunk off the fridge/cabinets
--clean the kitchen tile and grout
--sweep up hair and dustballs

Ah, multi-tasking. I had a nice phone conversation with my parents and still managed to get more cleaning done than I had in awhile.

Note: cordless phone necessary

What if God was one of us?

Today was the first Sunday in Advent, which means that I've got to do more stuff than usual at church. I spent a bunch of time there yesterday, making sure that the electric candles were working, and then running out to get more when I discovered that they weren't.

But this morning all the pieces were in place. The candlelighter, the dramatic readers, the musicians. The sound/light guy knew what to do.

And despite all our planning . . . things still weren't ideal. There were small things that, had they gone as envisioned, would've made it even more meaningful. At least in my opinion.

But that's the thing. It's never perfect. I have to live with that every time . . . and not only live with it, but realize that the imperfections don't make it worse. Or less meaningful. Because I don't believe that church is most meaningful when it goes exactly according to plan. I believe that if we wanted to, we could show up on a Sunday morning and sit like Quakers, with nothing planned at all, and God could do something. Or everything could go wrong, and we could still get something really important from gathering together.

But what then is the point of the planning? We want to create a vehicle (the worship service) for God to speak through. But it strikes me as a bit arrogant to imagine that we can somehow manage this vehicle. We can pray and work and think, but God ultimately chooses whether S/He shows up. And I don't think that the presence of God can be orchestrated. I really hope that it can't.

So, perfection is illusive and unreachable. And God still shows up, even in the midst of the crap and the screw-ups and the stupid human mess.

Which, if you think about it, is the whole point of Advent/Christmas/the incarnation anyway.

Ruminating

Last night was my 200th post!

And what a deep and thoughtful post it was.

I'm in the middle of watching the latest movie version of Pride and Prejudice. I can't get over how short it is, and how much they're leaving out. And Keira Knightley is entirely too skinny. She looks like she could break any minute.

Plus, there's no Mr. Darcy aka Colin Firth aka my future husband getting out of the water at Pemberley to the horror and discomfiture of both himself and Miss Bennett.

In my opinion, no version of P&P can top the BBC miniseries from 1995.

Hurry up and post

Guess who's been drinking and watching SNL's Best of Tracy Morgan?

Rocket. I'm taking a rocket. I'm packing my suitcase.
And look out moon.
Yeah, a rocket into outer space. Goodbye, human race.
I'll be there soon.
Blast off, for fun and adventure. Yes, I said adventure.
Collecting stones.
Yeah, it's my way or the old space highway.
That's why they all say, there goes Astronaut Jones.