Nothing can touch me...

Had another good day the last few days, so I feel the need to write about them!

Tuesday I was off work, so I had planned to spend the day at my sister's.  I had gotten my nieces each a craft kit for Christmas that had projects using nature items, like sticks and... well, then there was a lot of felt and googly eyes and such, but they were still cute projects!  Haha, so me being a crafting geek, I'd wanted one for myself, but there were only three.  I mentioned this to my sister, who apparently made the girls wait to open their kits till I could do it with them.  Poor kids!  Anyway... before that, I wanted to go to Salvation Army to find a computer chair.  I had no idea the things were so pricy till I started looking around - the kind that I want was about $85 at Wal-Mart.  Bleh!  Well, Sal-Val failed me, sadly.  So I ran up to Circuit City since they're going out of business... but they didn't have anything.  So then I went to the bank to check my balance, and yay, I still had plenty of money!  So... I figured that with as cheap as the soap stuff was when Jenny and I went to Jo-Ann's a couple weeks ago, I might as well get more.  And there, I found that it had all been marked even further down, so that by the time I finished raping the shelves, I got about $100 worth of stuff for less than $25.  Yay!

Then I went to my sister's and just had a really nice time with her and the girls.  I love doing crafts with them, and just seeing how creative they are.  Valerie unfortunately got sick, so she went to bed early.  I made her a pinecone puppy to cheer her up.  I played with the other two for a while, once again being appointed the queen while my guard and servant went fishing with me and took me to my royal palace which consisted of their crawl cubes.  I can never get over how imaginative my girls are.  Jenny crocheted while we played.  She's making this absolutely gorgeous blanket that looks like antique lace!  It's amazing.

After that, I went to Giant Eagle and putzed around for a while waiting for Shippo to get off work.  Then we headed to her house where we had some absolutely delicious veggie and venison soup that her mom made, and finally watched the Hana-Kimi DVD that she's had for ages.  It was SO CRACKED OUT.  Holy crap!  Haha, you read this stuff in manga and it seems perfectly normal, but to see real people acting it out just... oi!  It was awesome, though, and I definitely had a good time giggling with Shippo!

Yesterday I had to get up early for work... ew.  But it was really slow most of the day and I kept having to run around for zoning and price checks and giving people breaks, so it went by fairly easily.  Afterwards I went to Gannon to see Preacher Moss's The End of Racism comedy and lecture tour.  I hadn't really heard of him before, but he's written for the Wayans brothers and for the George Lopez show, and toured with Dave Chapelle.  After seeing his presentation, I could see why!  I was laughing so hard, and he had such a great way of making a point in such a way that there was no guilt or accusation.  He was really great.  And of course I got my picture with him after. :)

Today I'm off work.  I took Grandma to Wal-Mart so she could get some shopping done, then we went out to eat.  It was just a really nice time.  I don't really spend a lot of one-on-one time with grandma, and it was nice just having an afternoon with her. 

And now in a couple hours, I'm going to a 'stepping out' party for a new magazine here in Erie - yes, I am a vulture, haha.  Not that I really expect to go there and get myself a job, especially since I have the impression that it's not exactly a career-type publication but something more informal.  But it gives me an excuse to go mingle, and there are supposed to be prizes and such, and free copies of the magazine's first issue.  I expect it to be fun.  At the very least, I'll go out and have a drink or two!

Today was a really nice day.  Niffy woke me up at around 8:30 or so even though I wasn't planning to get up till 10, but I felt rested so I got a nice early start to my day.  Headed out waaaaay early and stopped at Borders where I found the book I was looking for (but not worth buying it for thirty bucks) and resisted the mass collection of Aoi House and the second volume of Yakuza in Love.  Then it was on to Ashtabula, where I fully expected to get lost and yet didn't!  Unfortunately, I got there at around 11, and the performance didn't start till 1:30.  On the way, though, I'd passed this really cool little place... a covered bridge converted into a restaurant.  So I went there for breakfast and lo and behold, they had potato soup as their soup of the day, and every bowl comes with bread, which they bake themselves and which literally had just come out of the oven before it was brought to me.  Needless to say, it was quite yummy.  I really liked the place.  They had pamphlets there that explained that the restaurant was originally an actual covered bridge, but no longer serving its purpose, the city was going to tear it down.  But since the bridges were part of the culture, they ended up selling it for only five dollars.  Three years later, using all the same timber and everything, they built the restaurant.  It's such a neat little place.  So was the Moose Tracks gift shop next door, with a bunch of crafted souveneers.

I was still really early when I got to the mall after that, so I went to Tractor Supply - I've been getting addicted to Breyers again.  Which, incidentally, were all thirty percent off!  But I behaved and only bought a Stablemate Freisian which is GORGEOUS.  Mmm!  Then off to the mall where I got to see Emily and Grace perform a dance number as soldiers from The Nutcracker, as well as a number of other dances.  I love getting to spend time with my sister's family. 

Bleh, I'm too tired to write more.  Off to bed so that I can be minimally alert at work in the morning!

I had this dream last night that my dad was a cop, only he was suspended because of some silly little mistake he made on his last case that allowed a criminal who should have been locked away to be set free.  I was at Country Fair, where they kept their donuts in glass cases filled with water (this was no illusion, either - at one point, I opened one of the cases to see if it was just water stuck between two sheets of glass, but the donuts were, in fact, submerged in water, yet not dissolving as they would have were this done in the waking world, and I stuck my finger in the water - it was tepid.)  The criminal was holding the place up, had everyone frozen in fear while he waved a gun around.  My dad stepped forward as though he was going to engage the man, but he stopped while the criminal turned to look at him and laughed.  You see, my father didn't have his gun or his badge, either of which might have given him the power to make the arrest, and the criminal knew it, and so he just mocked my dad.  As though he were drawing a gun, though, Dad whipped out a cell phone.  Without a single word, he flipped it open and showed the screen to the criminal - it was a picture of the criminal's father, who had apparently been murdered.  The picture was taken at the crime scene, a graphic depiction of the criminal's dead father.  The criminal suddenly lost all his humor and instead started yelling, following my dad who silently shut his cell phone, put it in his pocket, and walked calmly out of the store.  All the while, the criminal was following him, raging at him, pointing the gun at him but never pulling the trigger.

At another point in the dream, I had for some reason taken to walking up and down the road, over and over.  I had the newspaper and sealed inside the pages was a very thin sound card which played 'See You Again'  by Miley Cyrus (this, at least, I understand the source of, as it was the song that was playing on the radio when my alarm went off.)  I tore the soundcard out and decided to keep it since I knew my parents wouldn't want it.  The scene was very dismal and grey, in the sloshy stage of winter where the air is thick with cold and despite the freeze, everything is just plain wet.  Dreadful.

Last night, I sat at the table talking with my mom, and just felt this overwhelming understanding of the fact that the world is a pretty fucked up place.  No one cares about each other anymore.  Kindness is nearly impossible to come by.  Everyone is so entirely self-consumed that those few acts of random, unsolicited generosity are mere rare flickers on the plane of velvet black.  I couldn't shake that feeling all day - just knowing that this is a terrible world full of selfish, ignorant people.  And I am among those numbers.  I'm not much of a praying person anymore, but I thought for a moment if I were powerful enough to invoke God to destroy the world, to break His promise to Noah and wipe out the earth again.  Would things be any different, or would we evolve into the same self-seeking creature that we are now?

Times like now, I feel dangerous.  I'm doing flip-flops and cartwheels along a razor's edge between rage and tears, and I know that my destructive force, words, can set of a domino affect of poison and pain.  Maybe it's just the sickness - I can actually feel my throat narrowing, and it feels as though Niffy has finally gotten fed up with me and attempted to strangle me in my sleep.  My heater claims that it's eighty-one degrees in this room, yet I'm in my hoodie, long tunic top, long pants, and warm socks and I'm still shivering. 

It's no big deal, it's innocent

What a freaking awesome day. 

Woke up late this morning, but still well in time.  Didn't make muffins or hit up SalVal like I'd planned, but Anna got here a little before eleven and we headed out to Renfaire!  It was just a perfect day - beautiful weather, excellent vendors, and for once, I actually had money to spend!  Yet oddly, I didn't.  All I bought was my meal, a little box made of bone... hmm, that was it, but somehow my money was gone pretty fast anyway!  We had a good time, though... didn't go to many shows, pretty much just the joust and a firebreathing/acrobatics routine where they only did three tricks and spent most of their time going on about how dangerous it is, but it was still entertaining.  They had the most beautiful grey horse there, too... oooh, I wanted to steal him so badly.   It was nice spending a day with Anna, too.  We just sort of chat so naturally, I wish she lived closer.

Naturally we got lost on the way home... pretty well out of our way.   But I was only half an hour late getting home, then I went out with my brother and sister to celebrate Jenny's birthday!  We had a really fun time... went to the BrewErie first, where one of Dominick's co-workers showed up... my god, what a moron.   I can't remember the last time I seriously pondered punching someone in the balls.  He was really drunk when he arrived and of course kept drinking while he was there which didn't help, but honestly, it was so damn annoying.  We ended up taking him to Peccadillo's before heading ourselves to the Docksider, where we had a much better time with just the three of us.   The nice thing was that Dominick was driving, so I just drank and drank... we've been home for an hour and a half and I'm still so buzzed that I have to keep backspacing and fixing things, though god knows what mistakes I'll notice when I'm fully sober later.

All in all, I just felt really good today, and it was a nice feeling.  Called off work in the morning... I haven't called off since early May, I think, if even that, so I don't feel too bad.  And Jenny's family party will be in the evening, so it'll be a nice day.

Currently Reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) By J.K. Rowling see related

We're off on the road to Rhode Island

You know, I'm not entirely sure I spelled that state right.  Oh, well. 

This weekend was exceptionally uneventful.  I worked, that was pretty much it.  I wanted to go our Friday night, but by the time it occurred to me that it was, in fact, Friday, I just wasn't in the mood to go out anywhere anyway.  I spent most of Saturday trying to hook up the computers so that I could get DSL upstairs... such a disaster.  I got the router for the downstairs computer after a tech at the store helped me get what I needed.  Linksys was almost my new best friend... they had an absolutely idiot-proof instructional CD.  Except for one small problem: at the point when I was supposed to hook up the ethernet cord to the router, I found that our old computer has no ethernet hookup.  UGH.  So I went back to Circuit City and got an ethernet card, installed it in the old computer (which, incidentally, has seemingly not been opened up since the day it was made, as it took me almost fifteen minutes just to loosen up the side panel enough to remove it.) and then got the router hooked up properly.  Went through all the rubbish to make sure it was installed, got all the happy little messages telling me that everything was online and all that... except that once that was done, the computer couldn't hook up to the internet, even though it had been able to all through the whole process.  I tinkered with everything for a while but eventually gave up and returned it all on Sunday.  It was worth a try, but I'm not going to die without highspeed on Agnes, I suppose.

So... Sunday was nice.  I went to my first non-family baby shower ever!  Courtnie at work was having her shower.  It was a nice time, though a little awkward since Jessica and I were the only ones there who weren't family, and I barely know Jessica so I couldn't really just hang out with her.  It was still a nice time, though... gave me some ideas for the day I get to have my own baby shower.  

Today sucked.  I had the day off, with plans to go see my brother playing at Docksider with Jenny.  She hadn't really said a time that she would be there, so I just sorta waited.  By 9:30, I decided to call... apparently she ended up having a lot going on today and couldn't do it, and just forgot to call.  It just kinda sucked.  I could have gone by myself, but forcing myself into social situations just tends to make me more depressed.  I feel awkward and foolish.  Meh.  I just need to come into my own, I suppose.

As much as I've sorta been wanting DD to die a horrible, painful death, I've been trying to just remember that we had a good friendship once upon a time, and try to part ways with her with that memory.  I dug out my very first scrapbook which I made during my senior year of high school.  It's filled with so many memories that I had with DD and Karli, and despite the turn things took, it really made me smile.  We did have some great years, and I don't want to forget those times.  And hopefully soon I can stop thinking about the messy parts altogether.

Until then... I'm very much enjoying my nightly Dr. 151.