And they are fucking creepy! Even the comb is fucking creepy. My mother took a big chunk of it to school to show her students, because 9th graders get off on fucking creepy. Weirdos.

Also, they're, like, endangered bees, or something, so you can't just kill them. My dad had to get a beekeeper to come out and relocate the GIANT BEE HIVE INSIDE OUR HOUSE. Behind the cut are a couple pictures the beekeeper took before he performed this relocation. (He thanked us for "allowing [him] to save the bees". Uh-huh. You're welcome, bee guy. Now go away, and take your precious endangered bees with you.)

( I like my coffee like I like my women...er...covered in BEES! )

My parents very generously spent all kinds of money on me and picara today. We have two new twin mattress/box springs sets (total = $400) plus two new bedding sets (comforter, sheets, pillowcase, bed skirt, and pillow sham), mattress pads, and pillows (total = $160). So: MY PARENTS = AWESOME.

Lucy is, not coincidentally, having a bad day, and is therefore trying to make sure every who comes near her has a bad day as well.

My car is broken. And it won't go.

My dad and I are headed to the auto parts store with some random parts he just spent half an hour using various obscure tools to remove from the car.

Whee.

ETA: The car works now. The battery is wedged in place with a piece of wood and a paintbrush. I am not kidding.

This was a busy weekend, but SO MUCH FUN. I had Friday off for Independence Day (but the Initech University Library was open Saturday and Sunday, like, whose damn stupid idea was that? Who was actually going to come to the library on those days?). Anyway. So I spent Friday driving all over the place and visiting friends and having lots of fun!

( cut for length LIEK WHOA )

So that was my weekend! How was yours?

picara and I were discussing how we plan to get tattoos when we graduate. picara's would be something like the scales of justice, mine would be an open book with the pages flapping. My mother, the English teacher, (who thinks tattoos are stupid) heard this and interjected, "I'm going to get a tattoo of Shakespeare on my butt. It'll say 'But, soft!' "

We just about died laughing.

Then picara suggested it could say "What, Lucius, ho!" Because my mother's students, when they read Julius Caesar out loud, have been known to pronounce this "What luscious ho."

So, my presentation is over. It went...okay. People are telling me it was good, so I'm trying to just take them at their word. Anyway, it's over. H even said it was good, so it must have been truly outstanding. And he talked with me like I was part of the team instead of a stupid underling. That won't last, of course.

I'm going to be attending the Reference meeting every week now as the representative from Systems. I think this will actually be really cool. I'll get to go and be the expert, and have something to do for awhile, and their meetings are way more fun than Technical Services' meetings. For one thing, H is not at their meetings. So that's a positive development.

My Internets at home are awesome. The wireless router hates me, but I have momentarily given up on it and just plugged the computer straight into the modem. Maybe this weekend I'll try to get it working again.

My birthday is Friday! It will be totally awesome. My family is taking me to lunch on Saturday at Belle Isle Brewery in 50 Penn Place. I love this restaurant. They're almost never busy, and they have tons of vegetarian meals, including the option to substitute a veggie burger on all their burgers. They have pizza and burgers and Mexican and Italian oh my!

TV shows are coming back. There are tons of shows I'm watching now, because I have absolutely nothing better to do than watch TV all the time. Tonight is the premiere of both Kitchen Nightmares and America's Next Top Model. The CW has been off the air most of the last couple of weeks, but it better damn well come in tonight.

So, this weekend? Fucking awesome.

Saturday picara and I took Daddy to see Live Free or Die Hard for Father's Day. God I love that movie. Die Hards are the perfect action movies, I think. Lots of things blow up, there's a few jokes, and the good guys win. Also, it has Justin Long, the completely adorable Mac from the Mac/PC commercials. Who is completely adorable, as I may have mentioned. Also, Tuvok. Yes, I know. Tuvok! He's getting work! And Governor Devlin from OZ, who appears to have a contract requiring that he be in every movie ever at this point. And playing a good guy, which was, um, disconcerting. Anyway, I very highly recommend it and will go see it again with anyone who wants to. Yes, I am just that cool.

We took Daddy to dinner for Father's Day after the movie at Garfield's, which was really fun. They have awesome taco salad there. And we shared chocolate cake, which was yay.

Saturday evening picara and I watched like 10 episodes of Supernatural. We finished Born under a Bad Sign at around 11:15, and I still had to drive back to the City, but. The next episode was Tall Tales! So we totally had to go ahead and watch it, because it is the most completely awesome episode EVAR. Dean! With his cheeks all puffed out! Sam hugging the frat guy! Wrestling! On the BED! So that was also yay.

Sunday I had dinner with a couple friends from high school, Hannah and Julie, whom I hadn't seen in ages, and we had a great time. It's so cool to me how the fundamentalist Christian clique (or whatever you want to call it) from high school have all become so much more liberal. It gives me hope for this country. So, yay for all of you, because I have totally awesome friends, who were awesome in high school, and are even more awesome now. And I, while also awesome, evidently have a very small vocabulary.

I was researching options for Father's Day gifts by going through Amazon's many helpful suggestions (pineapple slicer? faux rock? motorized tie rack?) when I discovered the best Amazon guide I've ever seen.

Stuff to Annoy Your Friends and Enemies.

It includes excellent suggestions, such as:

Have the condiments and sauces on hand but nothing it can be put on or eaten with (bread, crackers, pasta, etc.)

....

'Milani 1890 Dressing' - why make a salad (the salad dressing delivery device) when you can have the dressing straight?

Truly, as they say, read the whole thing.

So far, I've spent my vacation providing an annoying amount of free tech support to my parents, who managed to let their computer get infected with what appears to be every virus known to man. According to Daddy, when their Norton subscription ran out they didn't have virus protection for awhile, until he managed to set up Charter's virus protection. Yay. I imagine that's when it happened, and it's their own fault, and I've now spent hours and hours trying to fix it. First reinstalling the operating system, then installing Office, then SBC Internet service, then McAfee, then configuring McAfee, then running several virus scans. And now my dad is practically demanding that I "help" him change their email over from web-based to use Outlook. Mary Beth thinks I should leave the computer on the edge of desk so it can "accidentally" fall on the floor and break. Failing that, I may have to start charging by the hour to make my dad realize how much work all of this has been. The SBC tech support guy gets $60 an hour. I'm working for free, which Daddy doesn't seem to realize is a huge bargain.

Also, Daddy hasn't gotten Mother a present yet. We had to go to Wal-Mart last night for something else, and he was using that time to look for a present for her. Yeah, not at all successful. He usually gets her jewelry, but Wal-Mart didn't really have anything good. And he wasn't listening to me when I pointed out stuff she might like anyway. If he would make an effort to PLAN AHEAD this wouldn't be nearly so difficult.

Um. Merry Christmas Eve to everybody. Heh.

Here is my current plan. I will go to work tomorrow from 10-2. While I'm there, I will ask June if she needs me to actually be in the office to work for the rest of the week. She will probably say no. I'll spend the time from 2 to 3 or so getting ready, and head for Shawnee around 3. That gets me there around 6, which is good because it's before Supernatural and House (this is an important factor in my thinking). The plan becomes less specific from there. I will probably stay through the weekend, see Serenity with picara on Friday and be there for Sara's birthday. I can work four hours a day using my parents' computer. So it'll be like a mini-vacation! One where I still have to do work and school, but I'm doing them...someplace else! Whee!

If I'm making little or no sense, it's because I've taken an Ambien. I feel all groggy and weird, but I can't get to sleep. So I was going to listen to MST3K on my laptop, which led to me getting annoyed with my laptop again. Also my DVD player is screwed up. So I want to go somewhere else, and get away from all these hardware problems. (I'm taking the laptop with me, but it won't be connected to the Internet so it won't matter.) The laptop's about to be annoying and overheat, anyway, and then I won't be able to listen to MST3K anyway. *is sad* My torrent has finished, but the files won't play right. The picture's all jerky. I checked the codecs, and GSpot claims I have the right codecs. I'm open to ideas, oh LJ land! I'm going to see if I can play it on picara's laptop, I guess, so I'll know if there's something wrong with the file or with my computer. I am so tired of dealing with this type of crap. SHUT UP COMPUTERS STAB STAB STAB *STAB*.

Grr. I bought some CD-Rs so I could burn Twitch City and due South season 4 for picara, but they won't work. The computer keeps insisting that they're not writable. I tried a CD-RW I already had and it worked fine. I don't have any other CD-Rs, though, so I can't test to see if it's griping about all CD-Rs. Stupid computer.

I broke down and bought Oz Season 3 today. I bought jeans a couple days ago. Also a pair of cords from The Gap that I am totally in love with. I was going to buy them in another color, which they didn't have at the store when I was there, but Gap.com is closed, apparently. Who CLOSES their WEBSITE? Morons.

I'm still enjoying my vacation, which is almost over. I've spent quite a lot of time watching reruns of Law and Order: SVU. Also M*A*S*H and The X-Files. When I was at Best Buy buying Oz I noticed that SVU is out on DVD. I was tempted, but then I realized there isn't really much point to buying it. SVU is on TV an average of five times a day already. Same for M*A*S*H. And The X-Files just costs too much. Seriously, it's like eighty dollars a season.

My parents are thinking about visiting me Labor Day weekend. If they do, hopefully I can buy a bed then and they can help me transport it. In secret news we're not telling my parents: I bought a full/queen quilt already. (No, not the one on Ebay.) Mother wants to go shopping at Grapevine, which is going to be all kinds of fun on a holiday weekend, I'm sure. At least I'm not driving. She also wants to eat at Panera Bread. I eat there at least once a week, and any time I mention it to her she acts like I'm doing it specifically to make her jealous.

Well, that was definitely a bunch of unconnected (and probably boring) news. But I haven't updated in awhile, and I have very little to say. I do, however, have a new icon. It's by pearl_o. See? Dan is so very hurty.

I figured out how to work the scanner! (Okay, so Sara gave me a grudging lesson consisting of "put the picture on the scanner, press scan, and the software opens by itself.") Anyway, there were a couple pictures of my parents I'd been wanting copies of because they're insanely cute, and since I have now scanned them I can share them with everyone! Whee!

( Click here for insanely cute pictures from the '70s )

(With no apologies to Loverboy, because, they're, you know, *Loverboy*.)

This weekend I'm going to Shawnee. It's going to be a busy weekend--I've gotta get my driver's license renewed, and then there's tons of different stuff going on. It's Mother's birthday on the 22nd, though I don't think we're celebrating until Sunday at lunch. Sara's prom is this weekend, and so is the Meeker prom. I may be helping chaperon the Meeker prom, which I had fun doing last year. (Note to self: remember to pack something semi-nice to wear to that. And comfortable shoes.) I also need to decide if I'm giving picara her birthday present this weekend. Since her birthday's not till the 30th, after all. But I don't know if I'll get back up there the next weekend. Also also also! picara ordered the version of Hard Core Logo that has the commentary track on it, and we're hoping it'll be there this weekend! Hugh, telling stories about Callum! And being mean to Noel Baker! What could be more fun?

So, yeah. I need to pack tonight, and take a DVD back to Blockbuster, and do my next lab for cataloging (which isn't due till Saturday, but I won't be able to do it in Shawnee). And I have papers due next week, God. School. Who ever thought it was a good idea?

I kind of got out of the habit of posting, since I only had dial-up and my parents' crappy computer over Christmas break. But Erin asked me to update, so she'll have something to read while she's bored at work. So here we are. I've been back in Denton for a week, and school starts tomorrow. All my classes are online, though, so I don't know how it's going to work. I haven't bought my books yet, so I need to do that tomorrow.

I've been pretty depressed almost constantly since Christmas morning. I'm still not sure why. Part of it I think is that I had set up Christmas morning in my mind as something to look forward to, and once it was over I didn't feel like there was anything to look forward to. And part of it was from watching Grandpa on Christmas. It's always hard to tell with him, of course, but he seemed sad and not really entirely there while we were opening presents. It just kind of made me sad too. It didn't feel as glaringly obvious that Grandma was gone on Christmas morning, since she wouldn't have been there anyway usually. But after opening presents we would usually have gone to Ardmore, and of course we didn't do that this year. So I was probably missing her then. I've just stayed so depressed almost constantly since then. I remember a couple times we went out to eat and I just couldn't even talk to anyone. I just sat there and stared at things and never smiled or felt much of anything. Erin asked me if I was mad at her once, and I was feeling so depressed I couldn't really even convince her I wasn't mad at her. I just didn't want to talk to anyone or do anything or be with anyone. There were also a couple of times people wanted me to go to movies with them. I was having trouble drumming up any enthusiasm about anything, and it just seemed like a big production to go to a movie. Even if I got interested, I'd lose interest again before we actually went. I did go see a couple of movies and ended up glad I went. It was just hard being there at home and knowing I don't see these people real often so I should try to do things with them, but not really being interested in doing anything.

So now I'm back in Denton, and I've been sleeping a lot. I haven't been interested in doing very much here either. I haven't even finished unpacking. A couple of nights I just needed to be around people, but not actually having to talk to people, so I went to Barnes & Noble and had coffee in the cafe. I couldn't really get interested in a book (this keeps happening, off and on), so I wrote in my (paper) journal and drank coffee and wished the coffee shop employees wouldn't talk so loudly. They're probably half-deaf from the sound of the machines back there or something. I'm kind of worried that I'm going to keep feeling like this, partly because I'm not going to have much of a set schedule (or reason to leave the house, for that matter), even once school starts. With all the classes online, I can just do the work whenever and not ever think about going to class. The only appointment I'm probably going to have is meeting Dr. Lee, the professor I'm working for, once a week. So I'm trying to set a schedule for myself, to make sure I get up and get dressed every MORNING. And I'm going to try to start exercising in the mornings. So we'll see how that goes. It's been really cold the last few days, so I haven't actually gone walking yet. It's supposed to start warming up tomorrow, though, so I'm hoping to start then. And I'm trying to stop drinking caffeine. I know, that's really weird, but I'm just so tired of feeling so dependent on caffeine all the time. It doesn't do a lot for me, as far as giving me energy or whatever, but if I don't have enough caffeine I get more headaches. So I'm starting out cutting it down to two cans of soda a day for awhile, then I'll step down some more in a couple weeks. All of these changes I'm making (the schedule, the exercise, the caffeine) are supposed to make me feel better physically, which will hopefully help at least a little mentally.

On a lighter note....

Movies I've Seen Recently:
1) The Incredibles - This was okay. Not as funny as I hoped it would be.

2) National Treasure - Pretty good. Not deep or anything, but entertaining. I've actually seen it twice, now, once at Thanksgiving and once this week with Mary Beth. We went to this theater about 10 miles south of Denton on I-35E (loop-de-looping all over the place first because we were following the Mapquest directions that ignored the existence of service roads). That was so much fun. Neither of us has a lot to worry about right now, since school hasn't started yet, so we just got to hang out and talk about cute boys and movies and TV and stuff.

3) Ocean's Twelve - Really funny. I loved Ocean's Eleven, and this one was almost as good. It had a kind of long annoying part in the middle, where Julia Roberts character pretends to be....Julia Roberts. Get it? Because she actually IS Julia Roberts, so it's funny! Hahahaha! Not. But I loved both George Clooney and Brad Pitt in this one. And Don Cheadle, who I kind of have a crush on now. He has a new movie called Hotel Rwanda, that looks really depressing but that I might see anyway because he's in it.

4) Blade Trinity - Callum Keith Rennie is so hot. And that was the entire reason Erin and I went to see this movie. Neither of us cares about Blade, or even knows much about Blade. Also, Jessica Biel is in this movie, and we both hate her and would normally have avoided this movie like the plague for that reason alone. But. Callum Keith Rennie. With lines! In a movie that's actually being released in America! He plays Parker Posey's brother and wears a pinstripe suit and has a vampire Pomeranian (best part of the whole movie right there). On a different topic entirely, there is the most obvious product placement IN THE WORLD in this movie. Jessica Biel's character, Abby, likes to make playlists for her iPod so she can listen to music while she kills vampires. Uh-huh. It's just as bad as in The Truman Show, when his wife turns around to the camera while she's making cocoa and talks about the kind of cocoa she uses and Truman's all "Um...who are you talking to?"

5) Supersize Me - I rented this one a couple days ago and have now also watched the director's commentary version and all the extras. The director, Morgan Spurlock, puts himself on an all-McDonald's diet for 30 days to see what will happen, since fast food restaurants insist that their food is wholesome and doesn't hurt you at all. It's disgusting to watch him keep eating this stuff. He gains, like, 30 pounds in the month and his blood tests come out awful. There's also an extra where he puts different McDonald's sandwiches and fries in jars to see how long it takes for them to decompose. Twelve weeks later, the sandwiches are all nasty and growing mold and everything, and the fries still look like he just bought them. Um....Ew. Yeah. This is a really well-made and funny movie, and definitely made me think about fast food and how bad it is for me to eat very much of it.

I can't get away from thinking that, even though I know several Republicans. I'm having trouble not biting their heads off, especially since the stupid election keeps coming up all the fucking time. My mother voted for Bush, even though she isn't happy about the war in Iraq, because Kerry never made it clear what he was going to do about Iraq. Gah. Yes, I'd rather vote for Bush, who's clearly going to start bombing the whole freaking world one country at a time. Of course, I was annoyed with Kerry for being less than clear about Iraq, so it's partly his fault too. And Mary Beth apparently voted for Bush because her boyfriend's in Iraq. How that makes sense, I don't know. I've been trying to leave it alone, because that conversation can't lead anywhere good. She lives in Texas, at least, so Bush's win isn't her fault. Ditto for my parents.

I've got a horrible headache right now. Since last night, really. And I'm out of Migrin-A. Now I have to decide if I'm gonna go back to the doctor for more or not. If I still have a headache tomorrow I'm gonna try to go in and get that shot they said they could give me.

Mmm, chicken stew. I'm gonna try to get Mother to make some more at Thanksgiving.