Welcome to the 3rd in a series o/blogs I maintain, the number of which is mainly due to keeping up & communicating w/various friends via ea.o/their own special LiveSpace McBloggerBook spots. Eventually ea.blog may end up focusing on separate topics, but for now most entries are simply cross-posted.
All right, so apparently nonsensical, downright off-kilter crap is not only contagious, but practically genetic/familial BECAUSE this time I did not find the following gems on my own. These "treasures" were actually brought to my attention by the youngest of my four siblings (Peej being 19 & Kell @ 14) very, very late on Christmas night. I cannot possibly express (without video documentation) how gleefully proud they were of themselves when they found these & thought to present them to me, sneaking downstairs far after both their bedtimes to make me watch them, having a good idea how much I'd pretty much hurt myself laughing at the bloody things, not because the following videos are that fantastic but because they made NO FREAKIN' SENSE in such a manner that they knew I'd crack right the Hell up going, "WHAT THE F$#&?!" and crying a little on the inside.
Part of me is really very proud of the two of them for being so young & yet having such a collaborative knack for finding something strangely comical that suits any one, odd individual so perfectly. The other part of me is rather a bit ashamed of myself for having assisted in raising them (at least during their formative years when Mom & Dad were both working full-time) as if they are from freakin' space, thinking this kind of shit is hilarious because now they'll have to find their own crew of ...(ahem)...loving, caring people whose fingers won't immediately itch for indelible ink & the commitment papers when one giggles endlessly @ such ricockulousness wonderfully "accepting" friends, which are not easy to come by.
I've all ready subjected the residents of the ALL Tower to this nonsense and followed it swiftly earlier this morning by hurting poor Katiedid's brain a little when I asked her to watch all three. (She was really very kind about it, but I think only because she's a very nice person & I made her a vat of the stew she loves so much beforehand.)
All this said, there are curse words & NSFW aplenty throughout two of the three following ("Dr Tran's Quiet Log Time" is really the only safe-for-work one & the shortest, for that matter), though I did make sure I listed the censored version of the first video. (By the way, in case you can't hear/understand everything in the first video, being "The Furious Little Cinnamon Bun", do wait for the sum-up just after the first roll of the credits.)
Also, if anything is considered that F'd & weird, you may chalk it up to my YouTube revenge on Debbar for posting that FROM HELL video of Jr. Sr. & the teat-suckling which I shall NEVER be able to scrub from my brain, even with bleach and fire GOD HELP ME. (Madam, I love ya, but really all of space.)
So I just bought my ticket to see The Damned this evening after talking to Nicholas & Katie about it last week, then Bev & Sean about it last night. 'Bout 2 hours later (since I arranged mine should be "Will Call") I go back to check the site for a couple details & find the following...
Got a few different options for socializing this evening but think I may stay in after all, not sure yet. Not feelin' quite the thing but I'll see how the rest of the day goes.
Christmas with the family was lovely & it was nice seeing everyone in one place for more than just a couple hours. It's harder these days to see the older of my siblings since they both have crazy schedules between Bri's school & bartending and Kev's theatre tours. It'd be nice to figure out a way to keep in touch with them on a more regular basis. Maybe that'll be something I can work on in the new year.
I hope everyone's had a lovely holiday thus far. :) Now I'm off to take care of some dishes & such.
Cross-postin' like a mo-fo for anyone who may not have the pleasure of a Debbar on their friends list, 'cuz it's fucking hilarious.
Because BlogSpot is a bit of a bastard & only permits the tiniest versions of pictures embedded among text, you can check out the normal-size version over here.
Today I've spent most of my day working out conflicting travel arrangements, flights, cars, and all sorts of extra crap in addition to my pre-scheduled routine for the day. No big, really, it keeps me busy & I'm prioritizing.While I was booking a National car rental for my boss's stay over in Hawaii, however, something caught my eye during a booking and prompted me to backstep on the site, make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me, then I started giggling, because apparently I am 12:
Here’s to being gainfully employed. Dude, one of the things about being w/out a steady job for an unHOLY and fully unacceptable period of time (temping most certainly does not count, particularly in this economy) is that even if you do not have any money of which to speak yet, you are excited simply about the upcoming check, even if the first check is only for a few days and still isn’t due for a little bit yet. You still know that itiscoming. One needs no longer fuck about mit das Gub’ment for unemployment payouts weekly to obtain the barest means of covering one’s car insurance, gas, any other bill you can sort of squeeze in there and the weekly ration of ramen, frozen veggies and tuna that become creative “casseroles”. Man, it’s a relief. I remember telling someone a while ago that I really missed being able to bitch about my day at the job. Know why? Because doing so is a luxury. It usually means your job isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and you need to vent before going in for another day of work, because it will all be there again for you tomorrow. Correct me if I’m wrong, but people who are sincerely concerned about the stability of their positions don’t bitch so much. They talk about it a lot and they freak out, but all in all they’re too worried about what’s going to happen tomorrow because they don’t know what’s going to happen next. I think for the most part, people who are sincerely concerned don’t bitch. They stress, they get headaches, they obsess, they smoke and/or drink too much, all while on the lookout for a new position. People who are secure enough in their positions bitch because they know they can and still go in the next day. Random thought, there.
Yesterday I left the apt.about 7:20a to get to work. Had one HELL of a long day. Y’know the kind, just one thing after another and even if you wrote everything down that you did all day long, it still doesn’t seem to justify all the time you just spent in the office. Spent a good chunk of the day reprioritizing everyone’s “emergency” projects while calling all over the better part of the eastern seaboard in order to track down all the missing receipts I needed to process the thick stack of expense reports I wanted off my desk with a passion. Right near the end of the time I’m actually supposed to leave the office (4:30p), the president of the company comes up, tells me he needs last-minute reservations for one o/our guys to go to San Diego next week at a reasonable rate (oh, Lord) and that Duder needs an aisle seat and whatever non-stop flights might be available. (This was a difficult task.) In the end I did what I could, finally calling it quits around 9p (yup, that’s another 12hr.day, hooray for OT!), but with a lock on a decent fare, though not quite the right schedule, and only a few expense reports to tackle today. ::sighs:: Hopefully that’ll be enough to work with for the time being.
For the most part I’m getting my body used to a fairly normal sleep schedule, being about 5 to 6 hrs., depending. I usually get up somewhere between 5a & 6:30a now, depending on whether or not I can afford to sleep in a little. Last night was rough, though. Even going directly home, dropping my bags, changing into pajamas, curling up under warm blankets & watching ‘Tropic Thunder’ I couldn’t seem to get to sleep. Maddening, that. You know damned well you’ve little time left to sleep before you get up, and your mind’s obsessively workin’ the countdown every time you check the nearest timepiece re:how much more time you’ve just lost thinking about it, but you still can’t force yourself to crash out. Urgh. ::sighs again:: I finally decided to just type this entry out, have the last New Castle I’d stashed in the fridge a couple wks.ago & smoke a little before trying again. Eventually it worked, I just wish it’d worked a little earlier. Luckily I am not a surgeon of any sort, so no one shall die or become disfigured even a little on my watch today...they might just end up w/an unexplained über-order of colored Post-Its and rubber bands when next we receive supplies. :)
All right, I’m off to my previously scheduled tasks for the day, but before I finish up do me a favor at some point today, even just for a second or two. Some people reading this have jobs they really dig, some have ones they don’t love but will more than do for the time being, and some people have jobs that blow goats and make them want to drink heavily even before leaving the cube farm behind for the day. Just take a second, though, and remember that no matter how freakin’ frustrating that shit might be at any given moment, you actually *have* a job. It may not be much to speak of, and you might even curse it every day you go in, but you actually HAVE employment. The economy’s fucked, unemployment’s at an all-time high, and honestly even if you’re moppin’ up Slurpie guts and switching out that 5lb.chili bag right now you have *something*, which is one Hell of a lot more than a lot of other people have right now. Just think about that for a brief second at some point today before shoving another pin in the rubber band voodoo doll you made of your boss or co-worker last week. Could be worse.
...then shove another pin in near the head, ‘cuz that guy should *really* learn to chew with his mouth closed. I mean really.
All right, so all the guys are back from the Con today, which means I'm not going to have time for a full-fledged entry when everyone's likely to read it. Instead, I'm making another one of my picture entries. See I've all ready received a few texts/IMs today, one of which was a reference from Nicholas to an abandoned jar of peanut butter in the hallway of his work, which he suspected of being a trap, which then reminded me of bear traps, which of course brought to mind bears and THAT, ladies and gentlemen, brings me to...
BEARS WITH CHAIRS!!!
Dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!
I saw this lovely display, which is apparently used to advertise a business called "Bare Woods" (yes, that's the correct spelling) while driving around yesterday during my lunch break. From what I can tell, the bear seems to've been sculpted out of rather pointy pieces of metal that have since rusted, which basically makes it a giant Tetanus Bear. Also, if you look closely, you will note that both the bear AND the chairs have been chained down...for safety. If the bear doesn't get you, the chairs will for damn certain.
In case you were wondering, I've been listening to a lot of Clutch in the past few days, specifically 'Blast Tyrant', 'Beale Street' and 'Robot Hive/Exodus'. Day before yest., "The Mob Goes Wild" got stuck in my head for no reason & wouldn't leave, so I've been playing the band since (interspersed with various bits of punk and faster-paced indie) while driving around and running work errands.
Things've been busy as Hell in the past several weeks, which is great but hasn't given me a lot of time to catch up w/people I haven't talked to in awhile. I've started a new job doing admin.& operations work (similar tasks to my last job) with an engineering company over in Chantilly that designs and builds flight simulators for the Navy & USMC. It's a smaller company with the HQ in Chantilly and three other offices in Jacksonville (NC), Orlando, and one that's basically just a guy in CA working from home with occasional outside help. They’ve pretty keen benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO, etc.) that started 12/1 for me, which is fantastic considering I’ve not even been here a full mo.yet & I been w/out for almost a year. The pay's not bad either (or won’t be once I get my first check) and my supervisor seems to be pretty nice so far.
The keen thing about starting here around this time of year is two-fold. First, there are a lot of company holidays right now, like the 4-day weekend I got for Thanksgiving right after starting, then being off from 12/25 - 1/1 for Christmas. (Sweet!) Second, there's not really anyone in the office at the moment. See, right around this time of year, every year, there's a big convention down in Orlando called IITSEC where all the owners of the co.(and a good number of our engineers) go to promote what we do, which means that for about 4 or 5 days straight there are very few people in my office.
When I'm starting in a new place, something like this is freakin' fantastic. I get almost a full week to put in as much OT as I like while I overhaul whatever space I'm working in, reorganizing everything to suit me, and starting on personal projects and initiatives I'd like to get going in the office while everyone's away. In short, I'm not interrupted often (unless the guys call from the Con, which does happen sometimes) and I can work on WHATEVER.I.WANT. Love. Also, though I've made sure to keep her updated on whatever I'm doing, my supervisor seems to trust me thus far to find something useful to do and get things together, pretty much leaving me to my own devices, which is ALSO something I appreciate more than I can say in a workplace. (I despise micromanagement and have never understood the thought process behind it.) She goes for a couple of hours at a time w/out coming by or calling at all, so I’m able to get a jump on things I normally might not be able to touch if I were constantly interrupted. Hopefully this won't change completely when the guys come back tomorrow/Monday.
There are some other nice things about this place, too: Being able to listen to music (though at a low level) on speakers by my comp., even when I'm covering phones; the insistence that even if we choose not to take a break away from the office ea.day, we at least step away from our work & do something on the internet for a little bit so we don't get cranky and stressed; and getting mileage reimbursement for any work errands we do (which is not nearly as common as you'd think). All in all, not bad thus far. We'll see how things progress.
Aside from that this weekend should be nice. Tonight is wings for the first time in forever (provided it's happening this evening), Friday I'm celebrating a friend's birthday and Saturday I'm to head to a third Thanksgiving gathering, which should be pretty keen. No clue what else I might be doing, but it’ll probably be local as I’m not getting my first paycheck for a bit yet. If you’ve any ideas, hit me up.
I’ve way too many books for specific fav’s., so I just picked 13 at random books from my shelves and listed them. Subject to change at any given moment.
Aside from that, I have a really good sense of humor & will laugh at/joke about damned near anything, ranging from ridiculously morbid humor to outlandish, sub-par slapstick depending on my mood. Life’s too short not to find something to laugh about.
I’m often giddy & silly, other times serious, and occasionally (just every so often) even get a little gushy. I tend to be as blunt as possible, though I try not to be rude, and if I’m angry or annoyed about something may very well discuss at length the positive aspects of fiery defenestration, or the pros & cons of sharp objects vs.heavy, blunt ones.
My favorite teas are Earl Grey & Lapsang Souchong. The former smells strongly of bergamot and the latter tastes like burning leaves smell. Both are equally lovely.
Anything else you’d like to know re:me can either be found in my profile, this blog, or by asking me whatever you like.
1. Anything in the world to do with cooking. I do it as often as possible & almost always in far greater quantities than would likely feed the entirety of Ethiopia for a day. I like to blame it on being from a rather large family, but really it's a bit of a sickness.
2. Smoking excessively, spicy red wine, Jameson, coffee abuse. These often go hand in hand.
3. Romance novels. Oh yeah, that's right, and not just any romance novels, either. I specifically geek over historical romance novels, usually based in England or Ireland, somewhere between the 17th & late 19th centuries, chock full of lords/ladies, bodice ripping & predictable happy endings. It’s kinda ridiculous, but there you have it. For me it's the mindless, mental equivalent of what video games are for most other people, but playing video games usually bores me, so I read these instead.
