So, my parents gave me a $50 Amazon gift card for my birthday, and I've been trying to decide what to spend it on. Because there's so many choices! My wishlist is 6 pages long, people! But! I have finally decided! I have ordered:

The Sting
Twitch City - The Complete Series
Live Free or Die Hard (Unrated)
The Dark Knight

Exactly $50.96! And I have free 2-day shipping!

Happy birthday to me! *twirls*

*HYPERVENTILATES*

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.

Ahem. I totally bought this shirt last night:



Don't like her? What's wrong with her? She's beautiful, she's rich, she's got huge...tracts of land!

I will be wicked fucking classy in this shirt.

On Easter Sunday, etumon and I met in Ardmore and hung out, and it was awesome. (Even though there's very little to do in Ardmore, since there are 13 people who live there, all of whom are named "Frank." Even the girl!) I even brought my new digital camera, to record our exciting adventures! Unfortunately, on every one of those exciting adventures, I inadvertently left the camera in the car. Or forgot it was in my purse. However, despite those seemingly insurmountable problems, I am still able to provide a photolog of our meetup. Get ready for some exciting shots, folks!

We met at the Love's station on I-35. I was suitably impressed by the beigeness of etumon's new car, though I toned it down so as not to disturb the other people about, as you can see:

( look, look! )

Now, don't you feel like you were there?

I am here to trumpet my recent not at all shameful acquisition of The O.C. Season 1 at Target for $19.99. Which I visited a second Target to get, after finding at the first Target that it was on sale but they, alas, had no more copies, the other adoring masses such as myself having snatched them all up.
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Benjamin McKenzie is very hot in a wifebeater.
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Adam Brody is adorable.
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They should make out a lot.

I have nothing substantial to say today. I just want everyone to see the wicked awesome socks I bought at Target yesterday for 74 cents.



I totally made that picture by putting the sock on the scanner bed and pressing scan. *wins*

I think I will wear them to work tomorrow.

Man, I haven't updated in ages! Guess I'll do my best to get you all caught up.

My computer is broken. The connector for the AC adapter is loose, so it can't get power. And the battery's dead. I'm supposed to be sending it in to be worked on, but I keep not having time. So I'm using my parents' computer, which sucks. Not that I have time to do much for fun anyway. I have to be at work at 7:30, and it takes an hour to get there.

I started my new job on January 2nd. I work in Systems at a university library doing tech support. Right now I feel like I've been there forever and don't know anything. I've at least gotten a couple compliments about how well I'm doing. So far we've mainly been setting up new computers, which is frustrating and obnoxious.

My boss is "H", who is from Iran. I kind of don't like him; he's intimidating. I don't know if he's really like that or I'm just misinterpreting cues or what, though. My desk is set up so my back is to the door, and every time he comes in I feel like he's sneaking up on me and reading over my shoulder. And I don't have stuff to do all the time, so I'm, you know, surfing the net. I don't know what I'm supposed to do when there's nothing to do.

I mainly work with "Mike", who is, if possible, even quieter than me. When we go out together I seem talkative by comparison. He's pretty easy to work with, though.

Right outside our office is "Tom-Tom", who is older and in charge of queries and the catalog software. He's very acerbic. He was really annoying me today, too, complaining about spending half his time following me and Mike around after we set up new computers to configure the catalog settings. Which is his job. And we don't have logins to the catalog software, so Mike and I *can't* do it. And it would be really nice if he would just shut up.

Like I said, we've mostly been setting up new computers, which involves transferring all the user's files from their old computer, particularly their email, and then setting up the new computer and putting the files on it. And then figuring out the million and one absolutely essential programs that Mike didn't put on the image because not everyone needs them. Mike and I have been doing them together, but today I did a couple by myself. People are nice and stuff, but I still hate it. In some ways it's better without Mike looking over my shoulder, but it's also worse because he's not there to check my work and do the occasional thing that only he has rights to do. Also, I did "Cassandra", the web services librarian's, computer today. She had pretty much *everything* saved to her desktop, so I got to sit there gritting my teeth for TWENTY FREAKING MINUTES while her FIVE HUNDRED MEGABYTE Desktop folder transferred. Have I mentioned I hate everyone?

Other than work there's pretty much nothing going on. The Tragically Hip are going to be in Dallas in March. It would be cool to go, but I probably won't. I'm thinking about getting an apartment nearer to work (like, actually in the same town and everything!), but I don't have a lot of money right now, and looking for apartments sounds like absolutely no fun. Let's see. Oh! I bought a car the day after Christmas. It's a blue 2004 Taurus. I still haven't gotten the title transferred, unfortunately. Um. I can't think of anything else. Poke me if I left anything out.

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.

My new computer has arrived! Bring me all the bagels and muffins in the land.

This computer is the best. Thing. Evar. It is shiny and new. It has a stylus that controls the mouse and lets you write on the screen. It has 62 GB of free space.

So far I have installed the absolutely essential things: McAfee, Firefox, Trillian, my email checker, and Pimpzilla. Yes, I did all that before Office. I had to use Internet Explorer briefly before I had Firefox installed. Ew. I am spoiled, obviously.

*waits for picara to show up and say how much she hates me*

My new computer shipped! It's supposed to be delivered on Thursday!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

acostilow tagged me, so here goes:

( 5 guilty pleasures )

( 5 weird habits )

I am back home! I slept in my own bed, which was yay. I watched lots of TV, which was in no way different from what I was doing when I wasn't home. I went to the mall, where I discovered that size 12 Gap jeans don't fit me anymore and decided to go on a diet. Then I went to the Olive Garden. There is nothing incongruous about these two activities. I discovered that Jarhead is on at the $1.50 movie. Clearly, I must go see it, because Jake Gyllenhaal is pretty.

Tonight is House, Supernatural, and SVU. THEY ARE ALL NEW YAY!

I'm bored, and I haven't updated in awhile, so let's do this.

( The Girly Meme )

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.

Whee! Today is my LJ anniversary! I have been on LJ one whole year. This time last year I was on pins and needles about the election, checking polls and blogs every five seconds. I created a Livejournal mainly for my own benefit, to write about how I felt about the election and what was going on in my life. It's kind of morphed since then, as I was persuaded to give the link to my friends and slowly got comfortable friending people in the due South fandom and in others. Now, of course, I'm relying on LJ for everything, from fandom to political news. If a website doesn't have an RSS feed that I can pull onto my flist then I probably won't visit it. Um. All that to say...LJ is life? I guess?

Still no indictments. Come on, Fitzgerald! We're waiiitttinnng.

I bought books yesterday! Books I probably shouldn't have bought, since they're in hardcover, but I've been waiting for them for ages, so. That's my excuse. I bought Al Franken's new book, The Truth (With Jokes), the new Honor Harrington book, At All Costs, and a paperback called Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity by Bruce Bawer. So, I have way more books than I have time to read. This is news to nobody.

I haven't done any work on Reference, the class I took an incomplete in this summer, since the fall semester started. (We're not telling my mother. I'm "working on it." In a way that looks like not working on it.) Mary Beth has offered to help me finish stuff, so we're supposed to go to the library on Friday to see what I can get done. Maybe we can get it all out of the way. And then I can go back to worrying myself to death over Library Management. Why did I ever think graduate school was a good idea?

(Words in this post the LJ spellchecker doesn't recognize: LJ, blogs, Livejournal, friending, fandom, RSS, flist, waiiitttinnng, Franken's, Bawer, spellchecker.)

I've been ranting about my computer running slow with the Dlink router for ages, as I'm sure some of you have noticed, so I finally got around to replacing the gorram router today (instead of throwing the computer down the stairs, as I've been threatening to do). I now have a brand new Linksys router and network card, which I bought together because I wasn't entirely sure my old network card wasn't also causing problems, and it was cheaper to buy the package with router and network card together than to wait and buy the network card separately if it turned out I needed it. So I'm out 90 more dollars, but my computer's not running slow anymore, which is yay. (At least, it's not running slow *so far*. I'm far from sanguine about how long this will last.)

Poll #587123
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

What should I do with my old router?

Target has whole seasons of TV shows on sale for $18.88! Naturally, I now own the first two seasons of the West Wing (ALL of the West Wing, as it TOTALLY ENDED AFTER SEASON TWO LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU). Also the first season of Lois and Clark, which was one of my first fandoms and I totally miss it. Target rocks.

Last night was Supernatural.
( Spoilers )

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.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has an entry at Wikipedia! I have a confession to make. I, too, am a Pastafarian. No, no, don't try to talk me out of it. I will resist persecution and remain true to my beliefs. May you be forever touched by His Noodly Appendage.

So, I'm thinking about getting a new bed. Mother and Daddy might be visiting for Labor Day, so they could help me transport it then. Then I could put the twin bed in the other room and use it as a guest room. I just happen to have been searching ebay for quilts for my hypothetical new bed, and I found this. Somebody convince me I don't need to bid on this. (Actually, I'm probably not going to, but, you know, quilt!)

I spent about an hour last night organizing the My Pictures folder on my computer. I separated screencaps by the movie they're from, and I renamed all the Hard Core Logo caps so I could tell which one they are (cause they were all named things like cap241). And, I just--the pretty!

( In the end it's love )

Yay! And now I am going to go read blogs and not buy a quilt!