I kind of miss the internet. Lately it seems like if I'm not at work, I'm at home prepping for work or something similar, and while woo, responsibility is neat for a while, it's getting a little old.

Bleh, I don't want to be a grown-up anymore.

Conceivably, the next week (barring Monday, since The Company doesn't want to pay any extra time because of the holiday) is going to be spent in daily training, concluding in an orgiastic make-up session on Saturday which will run from 8 am to 9 pm.

Yeah, guess who teacher is. o/

A little nervous since public speaking was never really my thing, but these are kids (and old ladies) I know and shit, it's just reading out of a book and taking them out on the floor to put learnin' into practice anyway. EXCEPT FOR THE PART WHERE THEY KNOW 99.9% OF IT ALREADY BECAUSE THIS IS THE STUFF THEY DO ON THE JOB. Uh, so. No, really - they know how to do this stuff better than I do.

I hate mosquitoes. They only come for about 3 days here, but they make my life a living hell when they're here -- 24 bites, including interesting places like my knuckles.

Waiting for my copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms to get here - I finally settled on the Moss translations; this is all Skuld's fault for being all 'lol Dynasty Warriors', but good things have come of this. Including me doubling the size of my video game collection, and encountering a lolworthy Taiwanese Dramu (KO 3an Guo) full of many man-pretty dudes.

Which is, obviously, what life is all about. Uh.

Kinda miss RP too, but this is seriously the longest I've been in front of a computer, and probably the longest I will be until this time next week. :|

I'm really starting to hate The Company. GIVE ME MY LIFE BACK, YOU BASTARDS.

Distractions, yes! My house is sadly empty. The cats want more love than ever before. xD;; I've scrubbed so much of my house today, and now we have a real kitchen table, probably for the first time in about five years. Six seats! They match! And a coffee table, eeeee

Meme the first (from synard:

• give me a scenario of any kind ( ex: 'falling out of a window', 'robbing a bank', etc ).
• give me a number 1-20.
• depending on what's chosen, I will write that scene with the character listed under that number. i've listed them totally randomly. also, might not write something but tell you in a bit what horrible scenario you've caused. you know how it is.
• if you feel a scene should have more than one character from the list, add up to at least 2 extra numbers. ( exp: 'video game, 12 vs 4', 'baking a cake, 7 & 8 & 9', etc )
• once I finish them, they'll be posted somewhere.

Meme the second (from silver_foxglove):

Post a single sentence from each WIP you have (or as many as you want to pick). No context, no explanations. No more than one sentence!

( under the cut )

holy shit that's a lot of unfinished business. But off to work, now.

...and it only took me nine years to get there! Which is kind of amazing, since I can probably count the number of times I've used this journal in the last three years or so, lol.

Um.

electricangels.net has been properly updated with a new theme, and several tweaks to shit that broke during previous upgrades. Two years late, but who's counting, right? Ahaha ... oh man. Still, I'm kind of proud of it, and hope it'll please me a bit longer than the last update did (considering I hated it about five minutes after finishing it).

A favor? For those of you even remotely interested, could you do me a favor? If you've got a different setup than Firefox 3 on Windows Vista SP1, just clicky-clicky the link and make sure it's rendering properly. The code is valid so it should be okay, but I don't know how different it might look to, say, a mac user. Anyway, if there's something that just looks fugly, feel free to say so. Those people who say they design websites for themselves, and themselves alone -- they're full of shit. Design, especially web design, is supposed to be pleasing to the masses, and that's why it's online and not rotting on a local server of your own devising.

Un-hiatused; dropped Soma. Kinda sad about that, but the muse was deader than dead and no amount of cajoling would bring him back. Still not quite sure how enthusiastic I am about devoting all my free time to pretendy fun tiems again, but ... nnngh, I'll find a balance.

It's too late to make sun tea now, damn. Also still kind of wanting to make some more jewelry, but my beads and junk are still kind of messed up from the last time the cats knocked them off the shelf. :< Maybe Tuesday?

spunbymidnight, did you get the goods yet? I admit to wondering how you'll liek them. :3

The boys should be just about finished with the new Top Gear episode by now -- time to go see if it's time for the weekly family fix. ♥

Aa, been far more active on plurk lately. It's like twitter, but prettier, and I can keep my dignity intact haha.

Should be getting dressed for work at the moment, but I've got a few.

Work is ... better. Sort of. The store manager is leaving, which is sad, but if my boss takes his job I might have a shot at hers and uh ... god, honestly I don't know if I want that. If she takes his spot, I imagine I'll lose 40% of my co-workers who can't stand her but stay because she's not the authority ...

... but, for her moments of heinousness, I don't think she's that bad.

Went to Montana earlier this month; talked to my step-father, really, for the first time in years. About black walnut trees, of all things, and how he's kind of set on giving up his retirement so us four kids will be set up for ours -- if luck holds. Mom is spayed. I want to live on a farm again -- seriously, I think I'm kind of done with town stuff. People who tell you bigger places are full of more stuff to do are a little idealistic, I think -- sure there is more to do, but if you're not interested, then it's still a whole lot of nothing.

Watched the Watchmen last night; I've never been so dissatisfied with a movie. The soundtrack was terrible, despite me loving a good number of those songs -- Papa Cohen seriously has no business anywhere near a sex scene that awkward, ew. Seriously, if they were intent on using a Cohen song, The Master Song would have been much more appropriate on several levels. And was big blue radioactive dong really necessary? And what the hell was with the ending! D: I want my three hours back. :<

I found this little guy in my yard a few days ago. Hoshit!

Speaking of pictures, Montana shots here.

More to come later, maybe. I'm old in a few days! :o

• 11:31 Seriously considering a roadtrip to MT in July. #

From LoudTwitter

Whoa hi!

I totally used to live there. Yeah, the one on the left. :o

Seriously, I had no idea GoogleMaps had gotten so far in their mapping? :o They've got that house, and the one I live in now; I've been playing with this all day. xDD

So who wants to come play with me?

I'm ... actually having a hell of a lot of fun with it. xDDD



:| Gotta find me a doctor in the next two days. I've got this ... foot thing going on. I don't even know wtf? Only that it started hurting kind of bad when I walked on it and it hasn't stopped and now it's swelling kinda bad and I'm a total wuss no matter how poor.

DAMMIT. D:

Oh, RGIS.

So, is this whole inventory-gathering company a side project for you guys when you're not running fairs?

Because I swear to god I just spent twelve and a half hours with a store full of carnies.

Except carnies can sort of count. Sometimes.

*dies quietly*

[ETA: Yes, this also means I will finally have a chance to reply to those wonderful book recs. *____*]

Oh Flist, halp.

I need books. New books. Good books! I have come hideously close to having exhausted the not-so-modest supply of what lives in the house, I seem to have completely misplaced the book I'm reading right now WTFFFFWHY, and I'm really not feeling a Dresden Files re-read right now so...

Please oh please, help a sister out?

Still on a fantasy kick atm, though I'll be happy to pounce on anything that you think is interesting/well-written/worth note in any genre. Please? :3

I still have a few hours before the bookstore closes!

Conversely, if you need a good series to try out, give me a holler; I've got at least three that I'm absolutely in love with. *cough*


...fffff holy shit I don't want to do inventory. D: This weekend is going to blow so much ass, I have no words. ._________.

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List (and upload, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

givemeyourwings gave me the letter "L". And I totally cheated, so you get ten songs. Because I couldn't choose just five? :D

( Let me beef up your playlist. )

In other news, I've written things! Whether they're good for bad remains to be seen, but I did finally de-lurk for something I did several months ago for the hetalia kink meme, and I finished another part of Wraiths and Strays, after well over a year of neglect. D: All up at gunners_view, for all parties inquiring.

Holy damn I fail at life, dudes.

Also? Someone please talk me out of upgrading to Vista. D: I AM BORED OF MY OPERATING SYSTEM.

What the hell do you mean I owe state taxes?

FUCK YOU, ARIZONA. YOU'RE KILLING ME TO DEATH HERE. D<

At least this isn't half as bad as the S.O., whose workplace apparently forgot to up his tax bracket when he got promoted and now has to pay nearly a thousand dollars because of their little oopsie.

A very special look at our fist first family. Thank you for that, fox news! Personally, I wonder who needs that sort of action when you could have your very own rubber Obamadong.

I was going to post something for LJ's Down the Rabbit Hole Day, but ... man, I'm about written out, save for what I've already got on my plate. Also, total fantastical writer's block. Dammit. Still, this is me urging all of you to take this day to be totally weird on the internet -- go go go!

In other news, my SO is twice as girly as I will ever be about finding shoes. We scoured every store in the mall. I tempted him with my employee discount+gift card combo. And still, he could not find one thing that would even remotely satisfy him. Until he finds a fucking pair of shoes already, he will be officially downgraded to 'my lady friend'.

I swear to all that's sacred, he is such a priss. ♥

When I went to click on the 'post entry' button, I realized I've been on LJ for a little over eight years. Seriously. o___o

Um. The idea behind this entry was to post a youtube video of this song that's been stuck in my head for like ... two weeks now, but on youtube's homepage I happened to catch sight of something rather interesting. Apparently MGM has recently added Koyaanisqatsi to their list of full movies you can watch there! If you've got an extra hour and a half on your hands, and don't suffer from ADD or its cousins, I suggest at least giving it a shot. It's not for everyone; it's got gorgeous music, but it's a non-narrative, kind of slooooow moving visuals, kind of like an old-school Planet Earth meets INDUSTRIALISM IS DESTROYING ZA WARUDO and uh when I saw it I was kind of coming down from tripping balls so I might have seen it a bit differently BUT NEVER MIND THAT ... it's just neat. Even if you're looking for something to put you to sleep, it's neat, so go look at it already, okay? :D Just ... fuck, don't read the blurb. Pleasepleaseplease ignore the blurb. >.>


Okay, so what I originally wanted to show you was this: Counter Strike, by Gatas Parlament. It's, uh ... liberal Norwegian rap. And highly addictive. :o It's been making the rounds about my house like I haven't seen since Flobot's Handlebars made its way into our network. Which is also amazing, if you haven't heard it.





Also, I am reeeeeally tired of being sick already. I was almost done with this, and then suddenly NO! It's back in full force, with a healthy helping of HAHA SORE THROAT AND ASSHOLE VOICE. I can deal with sick well enough, but man you give me a sore throat and suddenly I'm a completely whiny little girl who can't think straight enough to write even the simplest of tags. Fortunately, I feel it being almost over right now (save for the coughing up chunks part), so yay that.

First order of business: I had the weirdest side effects with this winter's cold ever. Computer screen vertigo ... what? Not ... screen vertigo, or even LCD screen vertigo because I was totally kosher watching TV, but every time I'd open up my laptop I'd have to reach for a bucket. THE HELL, DUDES. So yeah. Sick sick sick sucks. But I'm better now, so yay for that. Incidentally, I also became reacquainted with that thing unconnected people like to refer to as 'real life', and realized that it's actually quite a bit of fun in my house, and that I like it, and would like to partake of more of it in the future. We made a table today, what. When we sit at it in regular chairs it comes up to our chins, but we are going to build benches too and it will be utterly fantastic, I guarantee it.

Second order of business: DASHWIRE.COM -- does anyone else use this? I came across it whilst turning my Moto Q into The Thing That Can Pretty Much Do Anything, and signed up; you can find me as kissingchaos over there, because I am uber-original. *cough* Anyway, it's just a ... not-quite-a-social-networking site that pretty much keeps a copy of your phone's contents online, mainly meant for dataphones, I suppose, with an added little homepage feature that posts tweets and pictures/video you choose to share you've taken with your phone (you can also post to twitter/bebo/friendfeed/flickr etc from your dashboard). Overall, the public part is pretty effing useless, but it's kind of fun to play with.

Third order of business: About phones. And the Alltel selling ... thing. Uh, yeah. Apparently Verizon didn't buy all of Alltel because that would be vastly anti-competitive, so they just bought out as much as they could. People are probably quite familiar with this. Anyway, we go down there today to upgrade Linh's phone, and to have a friendly chat with the dudes down there, only to find out something we didn't know. In this area, Alltel didn't get bought so everything's the same as usual. We got little letters in the mail that essentially came down to 'all's cool' and we figured that was that. But none of us switched our plans over to AZ when we moved, and apparently the Montana market got bought, so our friendly rep dude got to tell us we can't even pay our bill down the street anymore much less switch phones or anything even remotely complicated, and if we want to be able to do that again we have to sign up for Alltel all over again, which means another round of activation fees and all that joy. lolwhut? He was totally cool and apologetic about it, and I suppose it kind of makes sense as far as my limited understanding of cell phone servicing goes, but balls, dude, the company could at least waive that fee, or have some sort of hassle-free program to switch back, you know? Cause this is kind of lame. :/

Randomly, upgraded to an Intuos3. I still can't draw to save my soul but holy shit it's really really nice. *____*

And SAF needs to hurry up with their student loan tax infos so I can efile already. >.> The 'what did you get last year?' question regarding last year's stimulus check is awesome -- apparently I'm getting an extra 150 this year because they feel they didn't give me enough last year. /o GOOD THING, I FELT THAT WAY TOO. Also, I made a lot more this year than I thought I did. o___o As in, about five hundred less than what I was estimating I'd make this year as a manager. Really?

And this is absurdly long, so shut up time now. Hope everyone is having a good time/not slashing wrists over the new president/breaking jars in their bumholes/etc.

Ganked from danaeaphreal, because I'm tired at looking at PHP. :/

Put your MP3 player on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results. The first line of the twenty-first is the title.

the paths have been crossed

every time you take a drink
I feel guilty
you had fun, but you couldn't get him out of the car
Bill Nye, the science guy
vous avez lu l'histoire
I feel so unsure
sunlight beats down hard here
love the run but not the race
this won't hurt more than pinch
and this is how it feels when I ignore the words you spoke to me
it's amazing to me
the world is asleep with its head in its hands
sunday morning rain is falling
it's desert ice outside
just bite your lip and try to contain the feel of nervous jitters
see my face you know where I've been
you've got a fire in your belly
there are times that walk from you like some passing afternoon
there is a house by the sea

... actually the end really coalesces into some sort of crazy Tori Amos song, doesn't it? :o


Well. Intermission over; back to work!

Mother-in-law type is here. She's hilarious and I love her and kind of never want her to go away. ;___; (Seriously, how many people can say that?)

Obama is president-elect, huh? I'm surprised. Not displeased, but a little surprised. I suppose having Mister McCain in the back yard last night didn't help much at all, eh? Politics have made me too cynical -- even now, I look at this and look at that huge gap and wonder if they didn't just throw the next four years so they could recoup during next election. I hope he survives to inauguration. Speech was good -- really good, I very much admit -- and we followed it up by watching The Wall because I think all of us who had seen it (which is all but Linh) had that same fucking scene in our heads at the end.

As Chris says: "he did good -- too bad he took his slogan from Bob the Builder, though." A lesson for you all.

Kasey is dead. That was kind of a surprise; I was working on a couple of boards at work and I turned around and there's a couple of printed pictures and an 'in loving memory' card on the stats board and I just kind of stared at it for twenty minutes or so not really comprehending because dude what? She was hired there the same day I was. And she was young and bubbly and obnoxious and followed Stephen around like a shadow and backed up into the fence on the other side of the road from our driveway and freaked out for like half an hour because her parents were going to murder her for scratching her Pontiac and we weren't even friends, not by any means and she quit shortly after the beginning of the year and still came around to talk on occasion but so do a lot of people and it's kind of weird how even the sudden absence of people -- even people that aren't important, per se -- can hit you so weirdly hard, you know? I didn't even like her much.

The sudden wham of mortality and nothing more, I suppose, and I think maybe she deserved more than that.

One of my co-workers in BC came in as Captain Hammer today.

AWESOME.

Sadly, I was the only person in the entire store that recognized him. ;____; If I'd have known, I'd have totally whipped up a Dr. Horrible costume and we'd sing at each other on lunch break or something. *cough*

WORK IS EATING MY SOUL, GUYS. WHERE DID MY LIFE GO. D:

Some old bastard in a truck randomly flipped me off today. I have no idea why. I didn't crowd him on the road (how do you crowd someone when you're driving a tin can, anyway?), I used my blinker appropriately, I displayed zero road rage indicators and um, yeah. What gives? D: Was it because I was driving a ricer or something? THAT'S UNAMERICAN, LITTLE MISSY. D< Who knows. -___-

Anyway, yes. Someday I will have another day off that won't really feel like it. >.> I've got to prepare for a two hour meeting I'm supposed to leave Sunday morning and DUDE WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY? D: D: D: I don't know why I'm dragging all my cashiers out of bed early for this but yeah, woo, exciting times. I'm glad they love me. .____.

Okay, so. Sorry for the random bout of radio silence.

But uh ... I've kind of got a good excuse?

Some of my higher-ups have obviously been smoking a lot of crack. Our last (and rather well-loved) manager (aka meestar manager, b-rad, or that guy) decided it was time to go up to Canada to see if this random girl was his daughter or something like that, and left us bereft of anyone between us and the Vicious Beast Who Brings Doom and Destruction Upon Us Should We Not Fulfill our Quotas ... which obviously cannot be.

So, uh, that person is me now whut. :o

Training! So much training! But I have Power! And Security Access Codes and stuff! And I get to write my own schedule! And yet, even with that, I can't remember the last time I had (and didn't get called in for something) two days off in a week, much less had them side by side. Almost got lucky this week, but alas, District Manager is coming and it's apparently my responsibility to make sure my new minions don't embarrass the fuck out of us. D: Which they won't because they're totally amazing but hay, I actually make Decent-ish Money now (or at least about three and a half dollars an hour more than I was before) and I'll totally take the time. So uh. Yeah. Busy busy busy and the fourth quarter hasn't even really started in earnest yet.

RP time has been utterly decimated. Sad face. Like this: D:

So, in the last few days, I've met/seen/heard parents call their kids Liberty, Justice and Oracle (the first two are siblings). What is it with kid-hating parents doing that to their poor children? I mean, people may lol and say they'll give their kids ridiculous names, but ... wow. Oracle, really? I bet she grows up to hate her sister, who has a completely normal name.

I'm not against non-traditional children's names, I'm really not. Hell, I'd love to have a Delilah or Lilith. But come on! That's like naming your kid Wicked, Freedom, or Transcendentalist.

We had a little desert toad on our porch tonight -- the first wild amphibian I've seen, after more than a year in Arizona. He was super-adorable. ♥ I kind of miss our skunks, though. ;___;

Recently, I've been desperately feeling the urge to write and doodle and design websites and all that stuff I used to do to kick back and relax. However, I feel so guilty about doing other things that I'm ... well not really obligated to do, but kind of feel a responsibility to do, that I'm running myself in circles and not doing any of it. Way to go, me! *thumbs up* Also, anti-socialness has climbed into the red zone -- not that I'm the most talkative person in the world anyway, but dude, what. I blame it directly on my urge to kill at work climbing as well, and the fact that I don't really have a relaxing outlet for all the irritation these days. I need to fix this. Soon-like. -___-

So I didn't get the MCA lead position. Neither did anyone else in our store. Apparently (lol) they decided that the best person to take over a managerial position in a retail store was some chick who did some supervising in a restaurant but has no retail experience? GOOD WORK, GUYS. Honestly? A co-worker who had also applied for the position (with the store manager's personal encouragement, which none of the rest of us got) and I were too busy being be/amused to feel any real butthurt. But seriously? Kicking a couple of waiters around and dealing with the occasional poorly-made food because the cooks are too high to tell alfredo from marinara? Definitely just like being in charge of softlines merchandising. Just like it.) Ahahahthisisgoingtobeugly.

I finally caved and got a texting package ... I kind of don't know how to use it very well, which is a little ridiculous for the kind of techno junkie I've turned into during the last decade. And I've got a Moto Q coming via ebay, because I can't deal with the Razr keypad. It's not a Treo (I was considering the 755p, but couldn't see shelling out that much money for something I honestly won't use that often), and it might be kind of like talking into a poptart, but ooh. Shiny. Also, Chris misses his old phone, so I can just pass my old one on to him. >.>

I have also discovered something beautiful and fabulous which has probably been out for quite some time but is most definitely new and beautiful and fabulous to me. That being, of course, AXIS POWERS hetalia. *______* I have no real idea what's going on, but it's history lessons and epic lulz and I'm sure I'm a terrible politically incorrect person but holy shit I totally ship Sweden Su-san/Finland now. And Germany/N.Italy oh god oh god. Word is there will be animu? I'M ALL OVER THAT. I kind of haven't fallen in love so hard so fast like this in forever, which is utter lol because the scanlations seem rather scattered and there's not all that many of them. But c'mon, adorable anthropomorphized countries being all cute and cuddly and lewd and insane at each other ... yes.

Speaking of animu, I finally found an english-subbed version of Mononoke (the last one I downloaded was Spanish, whoops). Now that is a fucked-up series of awesome and win. Ayakashi needs to finish downloading already so I can see what spawned Mononoke in the first place. The first two stories were so completely heart-breaking, for some reason; I was ten kinds of D: D: D: and trying not to get all misty-eyed for both of them. The first one kind of reminded me of that part in House of Leaves (which I finally got around to reading, though I've been meaning to pick it up since, uh, Haunted came out. Which was what, 2001? YIKES.) where he's telling the story of the doctor and the woman whose baby had holes in the brain, and she stayed up for a few days just singing and talking to him and everything might be okay but then -- "You can go now." I just happened to be reading that at work while on break, and nearly broke down on the sidewalk. Christ, ow.

So now you all know that I really am a total sap. That puts my dramatic heart-shattering moments of PURE DESPAIR at four ... in the last two weeks. Doctor Horrible didn't get me at all though, hahaha. I don't ever remember being this emotional, even over fictional things (which is pretty much the only time you'll catch me being emotional). Or maybe I've just had serious luck lately finding the heart-shattering stuff? Who knows. I kind of like it.

...cookies if you read all that. >.>