Life Under Construction

Posts Tagged ‘Christmas’

I LOVE… Christmas.  It is the only good thing about the winter season.

I LOVE…  green.  It is my favorite color.

I LOVE…  my hot new video camera from Walter.  I seriously love it.  I take it everywhere with me now, even if I’m not using it.

What??!!!

I LOVE…  taking pictures and video of everything.  I remember things better if I have a visual.  I recorded 80% of today’s Christmassy festivities with my new video camera and I’m very excited about it.

I LOVE…  my awesome new Nintendo DS from Sarah!!!1  She even gave me a cute little carrying case for it.  I can’t wait to find a game I like!

I LOVE…  my family… my parents, my grandparents, my brother and sisters, my husband’s mother and brothers… I’m so lucky to have such an amazing and loving family.  I really am thankful for them all!

I LOVE…  that Pham took time out of his day on Wednesday to help me figure out what was wrong with my non-video.  On a related note, I simply hate (HATE!) Windows Media Player. French The Llama.

I LOVE…  the video I made that was supposed to be a vlog on Wednesday, even though it ended up not being saved.

I LOVE… Harry Potter.  Oh wait, did I already say that this week?  Santa *cough*I*cough* got me Books 4-7.

I LOVE…  watching people open the gifts I got them, and getting gifts I really like (I have always been more of a ‘getter’ than a ‘giver’ at Christmas).

I LOVE… prime rib and au jus.

I LOVE… that I can out eat just about anyone I know.  Seriously.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!

What do YOU love today?!!

The mulberry bush!
The mulberry bush!

I got my Christmas present from Walter!

Did I just use my camera phone to take a picture of my brand new camcorder when I could have used my digital camera?  Yes I did.  And do you see that remote behind it on the left?  That is for the camera.  MY CAMCORDER COMES WITH A PHASER (yes, in my family we call remote controls “phasers”, don’t judge us.).  Isn’t it AWESOME?!!!  I’m going to try it out soon.  :D

I wrapped Sarah and John’s Christmas presents this weekend after going shopping with my dad.  I only have a few presents for me and my dad to wrap and put under the tree.  And what’s more?  My wrapping has improved so very much that people will not be grossed out when they see the mangled forms of their Christmas presents!  WINKITTY!

I seem to be getting more and more blog-tarded these days.  I have a very short attention span for blogs that are more than like four paragraphs.  It makes me feel bad but obviously you people have something against me and don’t want me to read the things you write, or you’d make your blogs shorter!  Or add more pictures.

I’ve become Mrs. McSkims-A-Lot.

I watched all 26 Episodes of Fruits Basket, and I loved it.  I wish I had the manga, but I don’t feel like spending the monies on it and I certainly can’t guarantee that I’d ever read it once I did get it.  I mean, after watching Gravitation the first five times I bought the mangas and I’ve only read like the first three or four (out of 13).

That was five years ago, people.

So yeah… snow.  We have it here, like it seems everywhere else on the planet also has it.  I got stuck trying to get out of my driveway this morning (we got about 14 inches yesterday).  My driveway empties out onto a rather busy road but as I’m nearing the end of the drive I can see that no cars are coming from either direction!  What luck!  But like I said… it’s a semi-busy road… so you can imagine my embarrassment when I go to pull out and get stuck in the massive inches of snow and the stupid dip that everyone and their brother bottoms out on when they pull in or out of my driveway.

People!!!  I was ¾ hanging out of the driveway for almost 5 minutes with my hazards on (and my face buried in my delicate, ungloved hands as people drove around me and gave me the fist) before my downstairs neighbors came out and gave me a good shove because they, too, had to get out of the driveway.

And did I mention that I live on a hill?  And that I had to go up the hill?  You’d think no one ever used this road what with the crappy job they do plowing it every. time. it. snows.  Not to mention that my landlord didn’t bother sending someone to plow the extra six inches in the gigantic driveway when the snow stopped (he’d plowed it wicked early yesterday morning while it was still snowing outside and never came back).  My sister broke the front of her Toyota Highlander (it’s kind of big) trying to get out of the driveway this morning, too.  And that’s AFTER our upstairs neighbor spent half of yesterday shoveling what he shouldn’t have had to shovel.

And don’t say anything about my blog being long today.  At least I gave you pictures.

…

Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Challenge:
December 21 Project. What did you start this year that you’re proud of?

NaNoWrimo.  Wait, let me go back and answer NaNoWriMo for every question.  It is the most self satisfying thing I have ever done.  I”ll never forget the things I learned about writing and about myself last month (it was only last month?  I had to look it up, it feels like years ago) and I’ll use those things in the future.  Not only did I start the project, but I finished it too.  And that’s so impressive of me, because I never finish anything (unless it’s food).

TEN DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!  I only have one more present to buy, this is the first year I’ve been so prepared!!!!

Also, I’m drooling over the new holiday design that I made this morning.

I spent a large amount of time yesterday watching Hank Green’s song videos.  I don’t say music videos, because not all of them are just music.  Some are songs incorporated into his vlogs.  But here’s my current favorite Hank Green song:

When I heard this song, it was love immediately for me.  LOVE.  I love this album (This Machine Pwns n00bs) so much, I want to hoard it away and listen to it alone in my room (but not in a creepy way).

Maybe partially because Walter said Song About An Anglerfish sounded stupid when he looked up the lyrics.  Maybe.

But this album is 100% AWESOME.

Hank and John are like 80% of why I want to go to VidCon2010 in July.

On a completely related note, is anyone going to VidCon2010?  Because if I can go (still have to talk to Walter about it) I’ll need a room mate to split the cost, and I have severe issues with traveling alone and need a travel buddy….

I was totally supposed to be reading the blogs in my Google Reader because there were just so many blogs to read, but I got side tracked listening to This Machine Pwns n00bs and subsequently watching Hank’s videos.

When I finally got around to it there were 164 blogs waiting for me.  PLUS FOUR.  It is so hard to catch up on blogs when people are constantly posting new ones.  But when I went to bed last night there were only 23 unread blogs.  WIN!  Considering that I’m subscribed to 124 blogs, I really shouldn’t go more than a day avoiding my reader.

I thought once I got laid off I’d have more time to do things like read blogs and watch YouTube videos.  But no.  Now I spend ALL my time playing Facebook games and Heroes of Gaia.  It’s pretty disgusting.  I swear I’ve gained ten pounds in the last week.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some YouTube videos to catch up on before I get sucked into one game or another.  At least there aren’t 160 of those!

Do you like my Christmas theme?
How many blogs are you subscribed to?
Are you a bad traveler?  Do you prefer to travel alone or with a buddy?

I’m sending out Christmas cards this year, and I’m pretty darn excited about it!  I was totally going to MAKE Christmas cards this year, but I’m at a loss as to how to do such a thing in a short period of time (read: by Friday – which is when I’m sending out cards).  I am plagued by such questions as How thick can an envelope be for just a regular stamp? and Where on Earth would I get envelopes that take one stamp for construction paper cards? and the like.  Also Who even does that anymore besides first graders?.  You know?  I’ll do it next year when I’ve had more time to prepare.  Probably next year.  Maybe next year.  I’m up in the air about it (( at least I didn’t say “we’ll see” )).

So I’ve been sitting here trying to write a blog that doesn’t sound like I’m writing in in novel form.

I AM OUT OF PRACTICE, PEOPLE!

I’ve come to realize in the last few weeks that I love writing a lot more than I thought I did.  I mean, I knew I loved writing.  I’ve loved writing creatively since I was in the 9th grade.  But recently I’ve developed a desire to do it all. the. time.

When NaNo was first over, I was all like I am never doing this again! and Walter was all like Yes you are. and I was like I know! but I totally thought I’d at least give myself some time before I started working on another project.

Nothing like 50k words in 30 days, mind you.

But last night while I was laying in bed trying to get some shuteye my brain was working up a storm.  One of those furious-ideas-shooting-off-like-thunder-and-lightning-in-the-cloud-that-is-my-brain storms.  I keep a wee notebook by my bed for such occasions so that I can get them out and they don’t float around up in there trying to keep me awake, so I wrote them down (( I also wrote ‘fixed width columns’.  Whatever the Hell that means  o.0 )).  I’ve been thinking about trying my hand at short stories and this writing project Badass Geek asked me if I was interested in helping out with.

I look at all these fantastic pep talk emails from the people over at NaNoWriMo and I think “I can do this!”  I’ve never wanted to BE anything, as I said in my things you probably could have gone the rest of your life without ever knowing about me blog.  I haven’t ever seriously wanted to do anything with my life.  I’ve wanted to just ‘get by’ and do as little as possible since I was in the second grade.  I remember Mrs. Hammond telling me I was the laziest child she had ever met in her years of teaching, and that I was so smart and it made her sad.  And now?  It is like the gods of What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up? have finally smiled upon me.  MRS. HAMMOND WOULD BE SO PROUD.

I wonder if she remembers me.

Maybe what I’ll do today is design a new header for my blog.  Maybe.

Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?
How old were you when you realized what you wanted to do with your life?
Should I buy the Twilight series or just ask for it for Christmas?

…

Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Challenge:
December 2 Restaurant moment. Share the best restaurant experience you had this year. Who was there? What made it amazing? What taste stands out in your mind?

This one is a tie:

1.  Breakfast in NYC with Lauren, Pham, and Katie.  It wasn’t the food, because the food sucked so bad.  It was definitely the company.  I ♥ them.  I already knew Lauren (we drove there together DUH), so it was fantastic and fun to meet Miss Dot Com and Mr. Pants.

2.  Breakfast at Bagels ‘N More with Walter.  It felt so normal, so good.  I wish every day could feel like that.

I LOVE… Kellogg’s Raisin Bran
I LOVE… bottled water.
I LOVE… sleeping in on Friday mornings.
I LOVE… BlogTV.com
I LOVE… getting/sending Twitter updates via text message.
I LOVE… Edward Cullen.
I LOVE… vanilla coconut room spray.
I LOVE… leftover Halloween and Christmas candy.
I LOVE… having a webcam so that Walter and I can video chat when he’s at home.
I LOVE… Caramel Delights flavored ice cream.  *drool*
I LOVE… wearing shorts to bed.
I LOVE… that there are only 44 more days left until my birthday!!!!

I LOVE… this picture:

It’s Monday, and while I complain a lot about Mondays, they usually fly right by here at work.

I’ve been MIA in the blogging universe lately, but it’s a good MIA for me.  Sometimes I feel like there’s so much going on in the online world and I can’t keep up with it so it stresses me out, because I feel obligated to update some web page or read ten thousand blogs.

It’s hard.  I’m trying a positive outlook on life, and about a lot of things.  I’m trying to school myself away from being instantly negative about most of life’s surprises.

So anyway, my Christmas was great!  I had breakfast with my dad, sisters, brother, and nephew.  Then I went to my mom’s for dinner where she called me chubby, and then I went to Sean’s to exchange stockings with him.  I got him a guitar for Christmas.  He picked it out, so it wasn’t a surprise.  I loved my stocking.  He’s wonderful.

We saw Yes Man this weekend in the theatre, and it kicked so much booty.  It’s my new favorite Jim Carey comedy movie ever.  I can’t understand why all the critics are giving it bad reviews.  My advice is to GO SEE IT!

That’s about it for today I guess.  I’m going to clean my cubicle now (well, it’s already clean so I guess I’m just reorganizing), work on a short bio for the main page, and eat a pop tart  Then I’ll play some games on iminlikewithyou.com (my new favorite website) and then read for a while.  Maybe knit.

How were YOUR holidays this year?

Ten days until Christmas, ladies and gentlebloggers.  Sean’s stocking is officially stuffed and waiting for The Big Day.  There’s nothing too big in it since I got him a guitar, it’s just a stocking but I think he’ll like it.  We went out and bought new stockings and decorated them since it’s our first Christmas together (thanks for the collective “aww!”).  We’ll be a whole year together in January.  *glowing grin*

A word to the wise:  Do not use glitter glue on super fuzzy stockings.  *pout*  Sean’s is already peeling.

——————–

RANDOM RANT:
There is no milk in my house!!!  I’m cranky and thirsty and DAMMIT I WANT CHOCOLATE MILK!!!!

——————–

We sold our iPhones FINALLY, the day we got back from the Cape.  Got new cell phones, but I’m not sure how I feel about mine yet.  The AT&T software is lame, it should just be simple.  Sean got a BlackBerry Curve and I got a Samsung Rugby (the phone I’ve been ogling online for days).  The BlackBerry is too complicated for me, and I really like flip phones.  Here’s what my phone looks like, except there’s no yellow on mine:

Mine is all black baby, but only because they were all out of burgundy.  The only thing I’ll miss about the iPhone is how I could check my email wherever (I’m a compulsive email checker), but I’ll get over that.  I don’t need to be CONSTANTLY connected.

Do I?

——————–

I went to Texas Roadhouse yesterday.  First time ever.  And it was gooooooood.

There was this old couple sitting diagonally from us, and the woman had such thick white crimped-like hair that you’d have thought it was a wig!  …Except that she had a mustache to match, but that’s neither here nor there.

The food was wicked tasty.  It’s my new favorite restaurant (especially now that there’s no Macaroni Grill in RI >.<), their prime rib is so yummy!

This is us being silly at the restaurant:

OK, so Sean is being silly and I’m being cute.  :D

It’s Monday, I’m back from vacation, and I’m probably not even really “back” yet (if I was ever gone to begin with).  I’m excited for the holidays and spending time with my family.

What is everyone up to today?  I need a distraction from the stress of being me, so DISTRACT ME!

Maybe I’ll ask for some for Christmas.  :]

It’s Friday, halfway through my workday, and I’m so ready for the weekend.

<– I like this picture.  I took it at Alli’s old apartment (they just moved) and I’m still so fascinated by word magnets.  Plus it’s all rainbow-y like sorta.

I hope everyone had a great trke day!  Mine was cool.  It was different, but cool.  It was the first time in about 10 years that I didn’t eat Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother’s house and she wasn’t very happy about it (she’s so greedy with my time :]).  The food was good, the company was excellent, there were only two things missing but I’m not going to tell you what they were.

I finished making my 101 in 1001 list today and posted it as a separate page to my blog here (I’m not sure if making new pages alerts you through email).

I miss spending time with Alli.  I hope we can get together and go to the movies this week (although I’ll probably regret it because she’s that person who asks a billion questions during the movie even if you haven’t seen it before).  There’s a couple things out that I want to see.

I’m almost done getting Sean’s Christmas gifts in order.  I still need to buy stockings for us, but maybe we can do that this weekend (if we dare to go out in the sudden after-trke-day hullabaloo).  Probably Target or something.  I don’t know if I want to go all the way to Providence with all the crazies on the road.  Please.  There were a billion on my way to work in CHARLESTOWN.  I can only imaging how Providence will be this weekend.

The greatest part of my weekend is being with Sean.  After watching Heroes tonight I’m going right to his house.  I’ll make him play Flyff with me too, because he hasn’t played with me since last weekend.  There’s a new event going on over the weekend and I want to get a lot of the limited time offer items.  I’m all over that event stuff, LOL.

For the time being I’m going to have to read my book and hope the phones stay as slow as they’ve been.

What is everyone up to today?  Anything good?  Still in a trke coma?

I saw boobs.  Real boobs.  In person.  And they weren’t even mine or Alli’s!

This weekend was pretty freakin’ awesome.  Sean and I left for Massachusetts on Friday after work to spend the weekend with mC and Scott.  When we arrived Scott was cleaning the guest room in his underwear so we couldn’t go upstairs yet, but when his clothes dried we all went out to Uno for a late dinner.

Pizza skins.  Om nom nom nom nom.

Then we went back to mC and Scott’s house and hit the sack.

Zzzzzz.

Saturday was an adventure.  We went to breakfast and Sean ruined my homefries with his french toast butter so I had to eat mC’s, it was tasty.  They fill your plates so high there!  None of us finished EVERYTHING on our plates because there was just.that. much., but we put a good sized dent into the mountain of food.

Then mC and I went shopping while the boys bonded.  I only spent $30.00 on myself. Isn’t that incredible?!  I mean… we went to Borders and I didn’t eve buy a single book!!!!!  I bought some stocking stuffers for Sean’s stocking and part of his Christmas gift.  I got myself two pajama sets, a mini plastic organizer for my bathroom sink, and a pin that says ‘I’m So Blogging About This‘ that mC found it at Hot Topic and I had to have.

I’m wicked excited about what I got Sean for Christmas.  I’m only buying for a couple people this year (for real this time) and my dad said not to buy him anything big like I usually do so I’m spending most of my money on Sean and my nephew John.

OK, after the mall mC and I went to Coldstone for ice cream.  Nom nom nom.  Then we went home and Scott was just about done baking the ham I’ve heard so much about in the last three years.  It was good.  He made some good applesauce too (it was way better than mine LOL).

After dinner we played a drinking game.  Kings, or something like that.  I dunno, I lost.  I just drank water anyway lol.

It was after the drinking games that the fun began.

When I say real fun, I mean REAL FUN.  There were boobs.  Lots of them.  We went to a STRIP CLUB!  A full nude strip club.

I was a strip club virgin.  I never saw boobs before that weren’t mine or Alli’s.  It was exciting!!!

OK I was real nervous at first.  But the scantily clad women were so nice to me.  And there were naked women everywhere, and mirrors all over all the walls so no matter where I looked I saw T&A.  Courtni would be so proud of me not running out of there.  I mean I didn’t want to run, but I was blushing the entire time.  I was blushing so much it made the dancers laugh at me (all in good fun, I hope).

They were all really nice.  And wicked pretty (except for that one girl *shudder*).

It turns out that I love having naked women crawling in my lap.  Who knew?!  I got FOUR lap dances.  Count ‘em: one, two, three, four.  Four lap dances all for me.  I didn’t even care that Sean got four too, because I had such a good time!

Then on Sunday we went out for breakfast and then Sean and I left for home.  We went to see Zack And Miri Make A Porno, and it was hilarious.  It’s not a real porno, but there’s a lot of nakedness and porn making in it and it’s a love story too.  I will buy it on DVD when it comes out.  Definitely go see it, but not with your parents.

That would be bad.

I had an amazing weekend.  I’ll fill all y’all in on all the dirty details about it tomorrow (if I have the time, that is).  It was crazy, busy, and jam-packed with fun.

Did I say dirty details?

I meant Dirrrrrrrty.  *wink wink*

I’m sort of adjusting back to normal life after my first weekend getaway of sorts.  I’m really looking forward to another one.

I’m also working on my Christmas list.  I’ll probably post that for my Thursday13 this week (it’ll be my first submission).  I’m not sure I can think of 13 different things I want for Christmas, but they don’t all have to be actual things I can hold in my hand, right?

I’m getting ready to leave work and I’m exhausted.  I got the usual amount of sleep last night (usual lately = less than 5 hours, broken) and I noticed when I woke up this morning that my tonsils feel a little achy.  I hope I’m not coming down with something.

I’m in a cheerful mood.

Off to try Mike’s lobster bisque before I leave for the night!