springading.com

So, that was it. My three day weekend. Damn, that was fast. I did manage to make some bread and get to the craft store, but my sewing machine is still sitting on the same box that it has been for the last year and a half. So much for that idea.

I did, however, finish crocheting Piper’s cat mat, polish off season 1 of Buffy with Jim (we’ve agreed that it’s high time we had another Buffy/Angel marathon), and we started watching season 2 of Justified. By the way, Jim has given me the heads up that season three of Justified starts tomorrow. I don’t know how many people watch the show, but if you’re not familiar with it, check it out here. It’s awesome.

I’m really glad it’s starting tomorrow, too. Tomorrow promises to be a hellish day as it is predicted be the busiest phone day of the year at my company. My thought? I’m going to need some cute guys in cowboy hats by the end of the day.  Thank god Jim will be there watching it with me. It just makes everything better.

I’m trying really hard to concentrate, really, but you guys–two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks from today, Jim and I are tying the knot, and all I keep saying is Jim, now would be the time to run.

To which he responds with Hell, no.

Of course, when you consider the fact that he’s got a woman who gets up early even on her days off to go start the car for him so it’s warm by the time he drives it to work…well, who runs away from a warm car?

(Unless John Wayne Gacy is in it or something.)

Right now, I’m mostly just waiting for Jim to come home, killing time by playing on the computer. I still need to get something to wear to this wedding thing of mine. Yup, two weeks away, and I still have nothing. I keep trying to tell myself it’s not a big deal, it’s not like I’m looking for a traditional wedding dress, but as it turns out, even with more casual skirts/dresses…I don’t like them. OR their prices.

One of my co-workers didn’t understand why I was worried. “You said it’s a barbecue,” she told me. “I thought you were going to your wedding in overalls!” She laughed and laughed.

Hey, now, even I’m not that tacky. And trust me, I’m pretty tacky. If I could, I’d wear T-shirts, jeans, and my hoodie to everything. Oh, that reminds me, Jim needs a suit, too. If you’re wondering why talking about “tacky” immediately brings me to “Jim,” it’s because I wouldn’t put it past him to wear some crazy, loud suit. I mean, c’mon, this is his sartorial role-model:

Lorne from Angel.

Okay, actually, that’s not bad. Maybe I should say “tacky” leads me to “Jim” mostly because of this terrible Hawaiian shirt he likes to wear. Trust me, Lorne wouldn’t be caught dead in it.

So, wedding stuff, save the clothes, is pretty much together. Invites are done and out, the preacher-lady (or maybe she’s just an officiate–I’m not sure) knows where and when to show up, Jim’s sister is buying our cake, Jim’s mom pulled rank and said that she’s ordering the food, we’ve got the marriage license (gotta laugh when they ask you if you’re related), we’ve got the rings, witnesses have been informed, and I’ve got the appropriate hotel rooms booked. Well, for the first half of the honeymoon. I think we’ve decided to wing the second half.

So…why do I keep thinking that I’m forgetting something?

This week has been crazy. Remember how they moved some of us to the predeterminations department a few weeks ago? Well, we’re all–I think all of us, anyway–getting shuffled back to doing claims again because inventory over there is just getting so high. Guess they couldn’t handle it without us, haha. So I’m back doing what I was doing before, but it’s going to be even better because rather than have us flipping and doing different books of business all the time, they’re having us focusing on one book of business, and the one I’m going to do was turning out to be my favorite book of business, anyway.

(I realize that almost nobody understood that. Recap: Moving back to the old stuff, but better old stuff. Whee.)

In other news, I got a tooth yanked out earlier this week. Oh, there is a lot more the dentist wants (er, needs) to do to my teeth, but we’ve already met my dental max. Better luck next year, bucko.

At any rate, because of that, my mouth has been a little sore. But, luckily, the dentist  prescribed me Vicodin. Score! I take some of that, and then I feel like this:

Okay, not really like that. I don’t feel like dancing on Vicodin–just feel REALLY mellow. It’s a little weird at work. By the way, if Jim were a robot, he would totally be one of those dancing Claptrap ones from Borderlands.

Okay, I’m off to watch Angel. Or read A Game of Thrones. Or crochet. Or play Warcraft. Obviously, I haven’t decided yet.

My throat. Oh my god, my throat. I cannot tell a lie: When I saw that IDOT was reporting that the roads were “partially covered” with snow and ice, that the road next to our apartments still looked messy, and that schools were closing, I was relieved. I was relieved because I could call in for inclement weather. Because of the sparse amount of sick days I have left, had yesterday’s snow not occurred, I would have had to go to work today and probably talk on the phone (I’m on the list to back up the phone people this week) and it would have been torture on my throat.

Instead, Mother Nature decided to work with me. Still, a girl cannot live on luck alone. I told Jim to please bring home medicine because I am not going to get a break like this again (it’s supposed to be in the 50s next week) and I’ve got to get over this.

So does Jim, by the way. He’s also suffering from some of it, although he never seems to get anything as bad as I do. Either that, or he is and is just being all manly about it.

Anyway, it seems like every winter, all I do is complain about being sick and about snow and about being sick of snow. I’m sick of complaining.  So, instead, I’m going to suck on this throat lozenge that doesn’t  taste great but totally numbs my mouth and type about something else.

Like…D&D. Yeah. We haven’t played in, like, two months, people. And I thought we were going to start back up this Saturday, but as it turns out, yet another person at Jim’s work  was fired, so Jim is going to have to work Saturday. Again. I guess it’s just as well. I tend to forget how everything works if I take even a little time away from D&D, so I probably should take a couple of days and reacquaint myself with Natalia’s character sheet.

What else?  Oh! Jim has a new addiction. Farscape. Funny because the idea of getting the first season belonged to yours truly. Now it’s me how half-watches it, while Jim watches episode after episode.

(To be fair, I  only half-watch everything. Right now, I’m half-watching Angel, which is one of my favorites. I simply have a hard time sitting still and only watching TV.)

But I have my own new addictions. Mine is coming in the form of a book, Unholy. I’m plowing through it pretty quickly–well,  as quickly I get through books these days, anyway. “Are all the Forgotten Realms books this good?” I asked Jim. Then I remembered. “Oh, wait.  Homeland. Nevermind.”

Not that Homeland was bad. It was just…not as good. Maybe it’s because I found Drizzt a tad boring for my tastes. He seemed kind of wooden. To be fair, I don’t really connect with the characters too much in The Haunted Lands trilogy either, but focus there is more plot than anything. In the books with Drizzt, they had more time with him, more time to pay attention, so I had expected more character development, to really like the main character. Or, hell, I’d even take really hating the main character. But it just wasn’t there. Drizzt was “blah.”

I’ll probably eventually read the rest of The Dark Elf trilogy, too, though. Maybe it gets  better. If anything, I’m sure more exposure to evil things will prepare me  for Jim’s game.

Speaking of Jim, I’m going to get off the computer. My man should be coming home soon. Hopefully, with medicine.

Okay, I really don’t have any 5 o’clock news.  I just love that I’ve already been to the store, done dishes, cleaned up a bit, and it’s only now five o’clock!  As I’ve mentioned before, my new position means I can pretty much work whatever hours I want, as long as it’s within the hours that the building’s open and we get our 8 hours in at the end of the day.  Which means that I’ve been going straight to work as soon as I drop Jim off for work.  Yay for that.

So, I thought I’d post.  It’s been a bit, enough that Jim was disappointed the other day when he checked my blog for updates and found that there wasn’t any.  Well, that would be because, again, work.  Between working more nearly 11 hour workdays and my new (admittedly self-imposed) schedule, I have almost no alone time to post.   So I’m sucking it up and posting now, with Jim here.

Okay, so Jim’s in the kitchen making me dinner.  (You know, where a man belongs.  BWAHAHAHAHA.)

Like I said, nothing new, except that Jim and I are in the middle of watching Riverworld.  I bought it for him as a reward.  For something.  Never you mind–the point is that Jim made an interesting observation when Sam Clemens and his crew showed up on the screen.

“Let’s see,” he said, “we’ve got here a perky, female engineer…a prostitute that has an Asian feel about her…and a likable square-jawed leader.  Gee, what does that sound like?”

The answer:

Firefly

Seriously, Jim and I have decided that as much as we love Joss Whedon’s stuff, he sure does like to “borrow” ideas.  Which, you know, not wrong–writers do it all the time.  But I never knew until I met Jim how similar Buffy and Angel are to Jim’s beloved Highlander series.  Proof?  How about an immortal man who is cursed by–get this–gypsies so he cannot get married without something awful happening?   Jim could name you all sorts of other similarities.

Regardless, so far, Riverworld is pretty good.  It is, however, a very long movie that really needed to be a series.  Jim told me that it was actually a mini-series on the SyFy channel.  (By the way, I hate the new spelling of the SyFy channel.  I thought the purpose of being geeky was to show off how damn smart you were.  SHEESH.)  Anyway, I guess for the DVDs, they smooshed everything together into one big, long movie.   They shouldn’t have.  There’s a LOT going on in it, squashed into too little time, so you don’t get to…to…savor it.  Yeah, I said it.  SAVOR.  I just used a food word for a movie.

Did I mention Jim’s cooking dinner and I can smell it and I’m so hungry?  Also, I’ve been dieting.  That doesn’t help.  I lost something like three pounds in two days, which makes me very happy, but also, it makes me want to EAT A FREAKIN’ CAKE.

Nevermind.  I can’t talk about Riverworld anymore.  All I can think about is cake.  The moment is gone.

If there ever was a moment for a dramatic collapse and heaving sobs, this would be it.  Let me eat cake.

Checkin’ in, ma!  And a real quick check-in because I signed up for overtime this week, and I’ll need to be going soon:

• Last night, Jim and I finished off Angel.  Now, you’d think being the big Buffy fan that I am, I would have watched all of Angel a long time ago.  Not the case.  I saw some of it but not all of it.  And WHY?  WHY?  It’s great.  And leave it to Joss Whedon to let that axe fall where it may when it comes to killing off characters.
• I’ve decided to try to cut down on Internet usage.  Why?  Because I feel like I waste a lot of time really doing nothing on here.  So I’m going to pop on here for an occasional post, check email/Facebook, a couple blogs, and then leave.  I’ll probably leave Warcraft mostly for weekends.  What will I do in the meantime?  Well, cleaning, for one.
• Last night, I started my less-Internet thing on a good note: I spent most of the night shopping for groceries and made Jim buttermilk oven-fried chicken, which he LOVED.  I don’t know if worked as well with my Quorn, but he was pleased, which was the point.
• Since we got leftovers from last night, I know tonight won’t be spent in the kitchen, so my plan for tonight is to start working on the next “Homebrewed.”  So look for that.
• OH.  Guess what Jim told me?  Jim took yesterday off, and the lady from the bank was back with court papers for me.  Apparently, The Ex is losing our old house again.  FOR THE THIRD TIME.  Luckily, after going to court last time, I found out they’re not after me for the money (I’m actually not on the note, so if he loses it, they can’t come after me)–they’re only summoning me because of “interest” I might have in the property.  Which means that if my ex sells it and gets money from it, I could get possibly get a portion of it.  Which, no, I have no interest in.  I’m only interested in getting my payments, not extra money.  In all fairness, I told the ex he could have the house, so I don’t see why he shouldn’t have any profits that he can get from it.

Which begs the question: Where is his money going?  He’s not paying his bills, he’s not paying me.  (He’s almost 5 months behind in his payments.)  Jim and my guess?  Up one of their noses, heh.

Oh, well.  That’s his problem, not mine.  My problem right now is that I need to run to work and put in some overtime.  And, boy, am I dreading it.  Yesterday, several portions of our system was done the entire day, so today, we’re probably going to get slammed with people calling back from yesterday along with the normal Tuesday crowd.

I already can’t wait to get back home.