Well today proved to be an interesting one. I woke up feeling like crap and staying home from work. I think the yo-yo weather around here lately contributed to my sudden illness. It was 80 degrees one day and then into the 50s the next. VERY annoying!! It's typical of North Carolina though...we don't have what you'd call normal 'seasons'....Spring lasts only 8 days in early April. Summer begins after that, lasting from April to late November. Fall is one day: Thanksgiving. From there, it's straight into winter, which lasts until February. The gap between the end of winter and spring is what we like to call Sprummerall....a mix of everything. I've also come to the conclusion that the Snow Fairies have an intense dislike for the people of North Carolina. This past weekend is a perfect example of what I'm talking about: the weather forecast was for a bitterly cold front to come through the state--on the same day that we were supposed to get (FINALLY!) a good amount of rain. Now, even people who aren't meterologists can guess what the combination of cold air and moisture equals--snow and/or ice. This is the way that it always works though....the moisture will explode over us and give us heavy downpours for hours at a time, but the instant that the cold front arrives, the rain stops IMMEDIATELY. Not even a damn snow flurrie to speak of!  As annoying as that is, I suppose that I'm used to it by now. If it weren't for the fact that I've already lived up North a couple of times in my life, I'd pack my bags and head up there. The people up there talk funny, so I'll be sticking around these parts I suppose!

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IN OTHER NEWS:

                    ---Once again, I've taken on a new presence on the web. I liked doing the website thing, and the server I was using had some pretty good advantages, but it was getting NO traffic whatsoever. So today, I started looking for another one, but ended up finding a pretty cool blog site instead called WebJam. Like a website, it has a lot of bells and whistles, but it's much easier to use and a lot more versatile when it comes to content. So I'll be doing away with the old site and concentrating on the new one now. It is also a community based area, so if anyone is interested in joining up, the address is www.webjam.com --you all should check it out! If you can believe it, it's even more fun than Blogstream! Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere, but I think it'll be cool to do this thing.

                    ---I've been doing something I haven't done in quite a while....watching the soaps on a fairly regular basis! Don't laugh....there are PLENTY of guys out there who watch them...they just won't admit to it! Anyway, since catching up on everything I'm pretty annoyed:

• ALL MY CHILDREN:  This show REALLY sucks lately! Greenlee and Kendall's husband (I forget his name) have apparently fallen down into this deep hole in the ground and can't get out. Of course, this is going to result in what's his name and Greenlee doing the humpty-hump in the pit while Kendall and Aidan (Greenlee's boyfriend) will find comfort in each other's arms when they learn that their mates are "dead". Of course you realize that when Greenlee and the dude are finally rescued, they'll eventually all have their little blow ups and everyone will break up. 
• ONE LIFE TO LIVE:  Apparently Marty is now dead....she was kidnapped with some other people and put into a van that went over a cliff. You realize of course that as soon as the role is recast with another actress that she'll be discovered living in a small town with no memory of her life. Or she'll be in "hiding" from the kidnappers. Blech! 
• GENERAL HOSPITAL:  First Alan Quartermaine dies from a heart attack and comes back as a ghost. Then his daughter Emily is murdered (although HER ghost seems to be hanging around...or IS it her ghost??!) by some serial killer. Today, Georgie Jones is found dead....another victim of the serial killer. I suppose it was just as well for poor Georgie...she hasn't had much of a storyline in a couple of years. Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass about GH anymore....and I'll continue not to until Genie Francis comes back as Laura!!  

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   So that's about all for now.....I'm back to work tomorrow and I'm REALLY dreading it. One day out is going to be murder catching up on!!       

I just got in from the Christmas party for the home improvement store I used to work at. Chris still works there so he brought me as a guest. Overall it was a nice party, though the steak that I had left a bit to be desired. I've never been big on ribeye steaks because they have a tendency to have a lot of fat on them. There are few other things that are as nasty to me as biting into a steak and realizing 3/4 of the bite is fat! 

 Also on the menu was a baked potato & green beans. I'm not fond of either one of those either but hey...it was a FREE meal after all! The best part of the evening was seeing some of the girls I used to work with at the Customer Service Desk. Even though I only worked there a few months and have been gone longer than I worked there, it's nice to know I'm still remembered fondly! 

                       Today kinda sucked before the party though. It was cold & VERY windy here today!!  At times it was gusting upwards of 50MPH, so I opted to just stay inside today and do some serious cleaning in preparation for my aunt's visit next weekend! That in itself was a chore because she and her husband will be sleeping in my room while they're here, so I'm having to "auntie proof"....you know what I mean: put out the pictures, hide the porno, etc! Not that she'd actually go nosing around in my room, but I'd still rather have everything in order regardless. Speaking of the family gathering next weekend....I bought the turkey and ham yesterday. Get this...did you know that a turkey BREAST is MORE expensive than a WHOLE freakin' turkey??!! I was amazed!! So I ended up getting a whole turkey and a half ham. Thank God for Cindy....she's volunteered to cook them both for me. Since I don't cook big stuff like that very often, I'm not very well versed in HOW to cook things like that! Two years ago when I had the party here everything turned out fine as far as the food was concerned, but it wasn't without its tense moments~~ I put the ham in late and it just BARELY had cooked long enough before the company arrived. 

                       Sorry to have to cut this entry so short, but I just realized that it's 11pm here and I've got to work tomorrow! Hope everyone has a great week!! 

I'm going to have to take some time this weekend to go back and read some of the entries I made during the period of December 2006 to April 2007. It hasn't been THAT long ago that I wanted (NEEDED!!) a job so bad that I would have been willing to roll around in pig shit as long as it increased my income & made me feel like a real person again.I need to remind myself how MUCH getting THIS job meant to me and how much I stressed over waiting to hear if I'd gotten it or not!! It would also help for me to read about how excited I was when I actually DID get the job!! You see..if I can remind myself of how desperate I was just a few short months ago then maybe I can get a better outlook on things at work before I end up exploding in the middle of a staff meeting! Here's the story:

                                               I've been getting inundated with emails from my supervisor and his 'mini-me' about some stupid web-based training stuff that's coming due at the end of the month. Since I knew that these training "classes" required a total of 5 hours to complete, I warned my supervisor before I left work yesterday that I'd be spending a good chunk of the day doing this training stuff. So I get to the office this morning & load up the website where the classes are......imagine my surprise when I see a whole LIST of OTHER web-based training classes that were due back in NOVEMBER!! I'd had NO idea that it was due....so I end up having to do THEM before I could start on the OTHER stuff! Incidentally, these newly discovered courses ALSO amounted up to a good 5 hours as well. I said, "fuckit" and started the old stuff. 

                                               As is the case with most company training stuff, this stuff was INCREDIBLY boring!! Quite frankly, I really don't give a rat's ass if "Mike" isn't storing volatile chemicals in the right manner. I can't see myself getting upset because "Jan" got her feelings hurt when she walked into the breakroom and overheard a dirty joke. And I *TRULY*, *HONESTLY*, *FOR REAL* don't give a damn if "Marcie" received a picture of a man's hairy chest in an email and got offended. My man Mike needs to be fired, Jan needs to really lighten up, and Marcie needs to get laid and stop being such a bitch.

                                               If watching this crap wasn't enough, it ALSO included a "knowledge test" at the end of the show...presentation...whatever you want to call it. The tests at the end of each lesson were as humdrum as the training material itself. Yes, I passed all of the tests. Yay. I feel REALLY special now. 

                 So...how was YOUR day??!!

WOW!! What a party!! I'd be very hard pressed to think of a time when I enjoyed myself more than the official Blogstream Christmas gathering! Here's the highlights:

• Several of us arrived at Bella's place a wee bit early. We COULD have arrived even earlier to help Bella with the deorations, but we got stuck in traffic. Of course it didn't help matters that Randy was throwing water balloons out of the window at people who were singing Christmas carols to the stranded motorists. That damn ticket is going to cost me $50!!
• Once we FINALLY arrived at Bella's we had to wait on her to finish getting dressed. She was in such a hurry that she didn't even notice that she had her shiny black vinyl dominatrix outfit on backwards! I didn't say anything to her about it at first, but everytime she took a step it sounded like a couch was trying to sneak up on me!
• About half an hour later we heard the sound of tires screeching and then a powerful crash! We didn't even have to guess who had just arrived....HeatherScot. We have TOLD Heather not to bring that damn squirrel because he keeps getting stuck under the accelerator and causing her car to careen into buildings, bodies of water, and the lobby of McDonald's!!
• Just on the heels of Heather's arrival, Buffy comes bursting into the front door and annouces that she's just spotted Santa Claus heading West on the interstate! We were all quite excited until we learned that it wasn't actually St. Nick that Buffy had spotted....it was in fact just a mailbox with a picture of Larry Hagman on it.
• Things were going pretty well up until Annie's grand entrance. She'd decided that she wanted to arrive in the same manner as Santa....so she had climbed onto the roof and started down the chimney. I have to give our Annie credit...she was doing good until she got about 3/4 of the way down. She got stuck between the bricks, a squirrel's nest, and a bunch of empty Advil bottles. It took us nearly an hour to get her unstuck...though it WAS funny to see nothing but those black go-go boots dangling in the fireplace!!
• Secret blew in at around 9...she apologized for being late and explained that on the way over, she'd gotten lost and ended up doing some last minute shopping at one of those roadside markets. Her story was that some old man in his 80s with only one tooth in his mouth had started up a conversation with her while she was shopping and once he started talking he just would NOT shut up! If it hadn't been for the fact that the poor old geezer sneezed and blew his one remaining tooth onto her hairbow she might have STILL been stuck there!!
• Secret's story got cut short when we heard AZRON explaining how to turn 3 inches of string, a Snickers bar, and a picture of Rob Lowe into a source of energy that could effectively make ordinary electricity obsolete...admittedly I was a bit skeptical about Ron's theory at first, but once he showed me the numbers on a spreasheet I was quite impressed!
• As I was looking over the spreadsheet, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw kktaylorcc standing there!! I was so happy to see her that I almost spilled my drink onto Bella's brand new olive green shag carpet!! You'll recall that poor Taylor was wrongly convicted of that incident that happened in Duluth back in September with the cow, the rooster, and the cast of "The West Wing". It was such an ugly, drawn out trial. Miss Taylor could have beaten the wrap had it not been for the state's key witness: a grumpy little old man named Moe who claimed that he'd been pelted with little shards of glass last summer while he was walking by Taylor's house.
• Taylor's arrival was overshadowed only by gjwlegs, who'd stopped by Dunkin Donuts on the way to the party and picked up a couple dozen blueberry cruellers with sprinkles on top. We were all a bit hesitant to have one of the treats at first. I don't have to remind everyone about what happened at LAST year's party when we all started seeing things after eating those "sprinkles"!!
• As is always the case at these functions, we had to go and fish n.lynn out of the pool. She said that she'd spotted little orange men from Jupiter out on the back deck and wanted to investigate. When she confronted the orange men's leader, Zorblock, things got way out of hand. Zorblock pushed lynn, lynn threw a drink in his face, and seconds later lynn was head first into the pool.
• While we were gathering towels to dry lynn off with, Miss Lou came flittering outside to see what the ruckus was about. THAT turned out to be a nightmare....she and lynn had exchanged some looks a few weeks ago over one of life's OLDEST mysteries: how DO those cherries get into that blob of chocolate??!!

Now, THIS year we had all vowed not to let things get out of hand as they have the past few years, but you know how the old saying goes...."famous last words".....it took me two days to get all of the bits of pineapple out of my hair back at Christmas of 2001, and I know for a FACT that those tables we broke at the Hilton were NOT worth $85,000 each regardless of WHAT that little knucklehead at the front desk says!! Anyway, we'd managed to live up to our pledge until Buffy's cat spotted Heather's squirrel and began to chase it around the house!! It was all I could do not to laugh when that crazy cat landed on top of Randy's head while he was telling the story about 4 midgets at Chicago's O'Hare airport! The frantic look on Bella's face cut my laughter short though. She pointed behind me and I turned just in time to get nailed in the face with a chocolate cream pie that someone had left sitting on the front porch as a joke. Personally, I was NOT amused and immediately began to plot my revenge, which I'd have been able to carry out if the damn electricity hadn't gone out!! When the lights finally DID come back on, I heard Heather scream when she saw her beloved squirrel humping a potted plant!

Even though things managed to spiral out of control for the latter part of the evening, the party was still a huge success! I can hardly wait for the New Year's bash we're having over at the Ritz!! This time though I don't think it's a very good idea for each of us to arrive on the back of a mule with a broken back, missing teeth, and a bad case of hoof rot!!

                There's one thing that I have always liked about you all here that read my blog....when I'm at my lowest, you all always are there to lend a shoulder to cry on. When things are going really good, you're all there to cheer me on. It is a very nice feeling! After my entry last night, though I have come to the conclusion that y'all are just WAYYYY too nice to me! Either that or you all think that I have finally gone over the edge and lost all my marbles! Trust me, there's NO way that any sane person would buy a 2 year old a hunting knife, and my sister in law would murder me if I presented her with a new broom for Christmas....that is IF I survived giving my brother a shitload of canned tomato paste! hehehehe Unless of course....IS it appropriate to give canned goods for Christmas?  It WOULD save some money......AND it would be handy for those last minute spaghetti dinners.....

                 SPEAKING OF CRAZY......

                 I'm convinced that the guys I work with are trying to either drive me insane or at least make me THINK that I'm off my rocker. Either way, I know they're out to get me. For instance....yesterday I spoke to one of the guys about scheduling a check up on an MR and a CT machine on the same day. He'd done it in the past, but I wanted to make sure he'd still do it that way, so he tells me, "sure..go ahead and set it up for any day and let them know I can start as early as 8 a.m....."  So I spoke to the customer today and set up the appointment for December 26th..which is of course the day after Christmas. So I email the guy and let him know what we came up with and he starts sending me 50 questions via email...each question of course being in a separate email...things like, "did you make sure that there's enough coverage for machines that go down...." My response, "yes ...there's plenty of coverage...." Then he writes, "what is Bob doing that day? Is he on vacation that day?" I respond, "no, he's not on vacation..he's working......."  And it went back and forth like that for almost the whole day. Finally, his LAST email of the day was, "ok...go ahead and schedule it....."   At least amongst the madness, I found out some GOOD news today....I got a raise!! Unless I imagined it. Damnit!

                 The good thing is that I am not the only one in my family who's a little off......my aunt who lives in Charleston had gone to Green Bay, Wisconsin this past weekend to see a Packers game and to visit my cousin who lives up there. She was due home yesterday, so I figured that it'd be safe to call her today and find out how the visit went. She answers the phone and announces to me that she's STILL in Wisconsin!! Apparently she had procrastinated getting ready to leave for the airport and ended up missing her flight home. Now get this...she flew into Milwaukee and had driven to Green Bay...which is a pretty good distance. Her flight was due to leave at noon yesterday.....she leaves Green Bay at 11:30 in the morning. In her defense though, she IS a natural blonde! Well, naturally, she's upset about missing the flight and books a flight out for today leaving from Milwaukee. Since she doesn't know anyone in Milwaukee and doesn't know her way around that city, she heads to Kenosha....again, a pretty good ways away. She figured she'd spend the night in Kenosha and go back to Milwaukee today to catch the flight. Believe it or not, she acutally DID leave in plenty enough time to get to Milwaukee on time.....but got caught in the middle of the humongous ice storm that is moving across the country. So her flight gets canned for today. She tells me, "who would have thought that I'd end up getting stuck in an ice storm??" I had to give her a reality check on that one....."Auntie dear....you're in Wisconsin....in December.....you are FROM Wisconsin....you KNOW it snows there EVERY WINTER....and you're SHOCKED you got caught in a winter storm??!!"  I love my aunt...in fact she's my FAVORITE aunt and we're very close.....but she's a source of entertainment when she does things like this! In fact, she's my next victim on my "Family Tree" page on the website.

                 By the way....I hope everyone will keep Randy (Life After the Hollow) & Secret (My Soap Opera Life) in their prayers.....Randy had a really scary thing happen to him the other day and it's got him & Secret pretty shaken up, so I hope you'll all send them some good thoughts! 

                  That's all I've got for now....hope y'all have a good evening!