Damn, no one got me that time machine I wanted
Here's a hodgepodge post of grumblings about Merlin's last episode, Christmas details, a brief review, work stuff, and other assorted details.
Ugh, I feel like lately I have time for absolutely nothing, which I guess makes sense since in the last week my only day off was Christmas. And I got my new schedule and my next day off isn't until Tuesday. I suppose I shouldn't complain since as a co-worker pointed out, we'll probably be begging for these hours in January. But still I have a lot of shit that I need to get done that I can't. I have some paperwork I need to do for payment on my student loans. Michael and I both need to talk to the community college - he needs to set up his classes and I need to figure out when I'm going to be able to start. I feel like I can't get caught up with LJ. I have LJ posts I owe people for questions they asked. I have other posts I'd like to make. I need to get my hair done. I have three weeks of e=mail to catch up on. I'm seriously behind on working on my glomp_fest fic. And worst of all, I haven't had the chance to get to read my gift fic from merlin_holidays, which is my number one priority for tomorrow.
I've gotten some really lovely holiday cards from millionstar, superfluous_emi, watching_ghosts, teprometo, and vix_spes. Thank you, guys!
My work's office party was a couple of weeks ago. Mike was really cute about making something to bring to the party. They'd mentioned at work that people were bringing and deserts and I thought about making something, but I wasn't sure. The day before the party Mike asks me about it and I tell him they said we could bring something. The next day when I came home, Mike was in the kitchen working on something. He decided to make ambrosia from his grandmother's recipe. Mike gets really focused and has trouble multi-tasking when he's cooking, even with something relatively simple as the ambrosia. But it was so cute because he took it really seriously. He even got cherries and these spearmints (which I discovered I do not like. In gum, yes. On its own, no.) to put on top to make it look like holly. Spoiler alert- it tasted fantastic. :) So many people the next day raved about it, which I made me proud, which I told Mike.
The party itself was alright. I think I looked fairly nice. I tried to come up with topics of conversation beforehand but I got so nervous on the way to the party, my mind was mostly blank. When we got there, most everyone was there, and it was just the regular set-up at the restaurant with a bunch of tables all around. I don't know if I was ultimately happy with this or not, but most people stuck to their own tables and cliques and didn't do much milling around. I wasn't about to start making the rounds, injecting myself in conversations so Mike and I stuck together. Mike can be chatty at times. In fact, I've been surprises at how chatty he's been lately. But generally he's quiet like me, and especially so around strangers, so he didn't say much either. I did get a couple of compliments on how I looked and that was nice.
The food was bad. Not bad tasting bad, but bad in the sense that I overindulged. I know that people tend to put on weight during the holidays, but I haven't been preoccupied with that, since I don't party a lot and a lot of holiday food I don't like. But at the party I was kind of bad, which I didn't set out to be. I wasn't sure what kind of food, and how much would be at party, so I had a little something before we left the house. But there was a lot of real food (like macaroni and Shepperd's pie) when we got there and a variety of deserts. I didn't pig out or anything, but I sampled a lot of stuff (including our ambrosia, which I'd never had before) and it added up. I didn't want to panic because of one bad day and tried to be good the next day, but Mike and I went to the mall and he wanted an Aunt Ann's pretzel and I ended up getting something really bad for me there. Other than those days and a few days that we've eaten out (thankfully Christmas fell on a cheat day) I've been fairly good, though too nervous to check the scale.
Work is basically still the same. I've already entered that phase where I mostly really don't want to be there and have trouble faking otherwise. There was one girl I was talking to a little bit, unfortunately she got fired for calling out on Thanksgiving. There's a couple of people I talk to every now and then and it's not like pulling teeth. But there is this one girl, who is very hyper, and I feel bad because she talks to me, or tries to, but I just can't really fake any enthusiasm, and I think she thinks I don't like her. Which I guess she's not far off. It's not that I don't like her, but I don't know how to deal with people like her. Another really boisterous lady is our shift leader. She keeps trying to talk to me and again I kind of shut down around her. She does kind of annoy me, because she's constantly touching me, not in a "bad touch" kind of way but she'll walk behind me and touch my shoulder or pat me on the back, and there was this one time she was really pissed because she'd spent an hour and a half wrapping a customer's stuff and they didn't tip her. She walked behind the cash stand and grabbed my arm to whisper in my ear about them not tipping her.
The dogs are really great, and normally, when they jump on Mike and my bed, they're mindful of not stepping on anything, but sometimes they forget and one of them landed on my computer recently (which is my fault for not protecting it better.) It's happened before with no lasting damage, but now my space bar is really sticking. Sometimes it works fine, others it takes a few hard presses to get it to work. Ugh, one of the most important keys.
As a surprise for Jean, Greg got tickets (which I ended up having to get over the phone after a painstaking failed online process) for a Dave Chappelle comedy show. They liked his show on Comedy Central. I've never seen much of it, but have always liked him in the movies he's appeared in. The one big problem was the 7:30 show was sold out, so we got tickets for a 10 o'clock show and the venue was at least an hour away from us. I was excited because it was my first comedy live show. We ate dinner out first and then ended up waiting over an hour outside the venue because they wouldn't let anyone inside while the show was still going and Dave had started late. The two comedians before Dave were surprisingly, at least to me, funny. Dave was hilarious, too. We laughed consistently throughout the night. Unfortunately, we ended up getting home super late and Greg and Jean had only 2 hours of sleep before having to get up for work.
Christmas was nice. It's basically the same as it's always been since I've been with Michael but it's always a fun, relaxing day and I can't complain. This year we had the added addition of Greg's parents and Jean's former stepfather over for dinner. I won't say I went over board when it came to presents for Mike. But even though I had a job when Mike and I first got together, this felt like the first year I could get Mike a few things and it was the first year Mike really gave a lot of options for things he wanted. I got him underwear, which he's desperately needed for awhile since his underwear is falling apart. I got him a Mystery Science Theater compilation DVD, which felt like a gift for me as well as him. And the main thing I wanted to get him was the DVD Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy. He's talked about wanting it for years, but we can hardly find it anywhere. I found it on Amazon once, but the price was too expensive for a DVD like that of a movie not many people know and is just a bare bones disc. I found a used copy which wasn't too bad price-wise, unfortunately I waited too long and they couldn't guarantee it getting here by Christmas so I had to get the more expensive version. Mike ended up asking me how much I bought it for and even he seemed to think I paid too much for it. I agree, but he really enjoyed it when we watched it today so I'm okay with the purchase.
We discussed things we'd want a few weeks ago, so I wasn't surprised when Mike got me a back-up storage for my computer. He also got me a pretty blue scarf and a hat. But my favorite thing he got me was a t-shirt with the faces of the boys from Stand By Me (my favorite movie) on it. It just really showed how much he knows me and it was a definite surprise. Jean and Greg got me hair trimmers and the Bluray of E.T. Also, today Jean remembered she forgot a present, which was a really pretty bracelet.
I'm a little frustrated because I'm having trouble with the back-up Mike got me. I tried using it the day after Christmas and it worked fine at first. It looked like it was almost halfway done. I fell asleep briefly and when I woke up somehow my computer had turned off and restarted and the backup wasn't complete. I tried it a couple of times the next day, but it didn't work. One time it stopped because I lost the wi-fi connection on my computer, though I don't know what that has to do with the back-up. I got some kind of warning something was up with the hard drive and I went through a process today to fix it. It seemed to work. I started the back-up again and it finally seemed to be working. I didn't get a chance to go on my computer all day, and when I got home from work I decided to stay off just in casing doing anything on the computer disturbed the back-up. I got to 93% complete and all of a sudden it just stopped. I'm debating whether to do it again or just leave it with the 93% complete.
I felt kind of bad, because every year I feel like a monopolize the TV, which I tried not to do this year, but there are certain movies I must watch on Christmas, plus no one else ever asks to watch anything specific. We watched A Christmas Story, Home Alone 1 & 2, and in what's becoming a tradition the last two years, Scrooged. Also ended up watching Love, Actually finally. I was kind of disappointed. I loved Four Weddings and a Funeral & Notting Hill but maybe I should have known. They were trying to tell ten stories in less than two and a half hours, of course some stories would be underdeveloped. I've just never been a big fan of love at first sight stories. When I was a kid, I couldn't get into Cinderella because I couldn't get, even then, why they were so into each other when they barely knew each other. That's probably why the story that resonated the most with me was the little boy. I could buy him loving someone he never spoke to and doing immature stuff. I couldn't at all take the Colin Firth or Hugh Grant storylines. When the woman in the HG story signed her card/note "Yours, Natalie" I know we were expected to swoon but the only think I could think of is "Have they even shared one single real conversation in the whole movie? Why am I expected to buy this?" It felt like little thought was put into that whole storyline. It's like the writer was thinking, 'We'll just have Hugh Grant as Prime Minister, he'll do his Hugh Grant thing, we'll throw in one speech, and everyone will be charmed. Let's not worry about character development,creating a romantic connection, or a real plot of any kind.' The Colin Firth one was a little better. But the end was stupid. Him wanting to date her? Ok. But marriage? And that whole subplot with the "funny" Colin going to America...I know it's a romcom, but I don't think I've seen anything so pointless. It's not like I hated the movie. A lot of the stories were actually developed well enough - Laura Linney's, Emma Thompson/Alan Rickman's, Andrew Lincoln's (stalker issues aside). I just didn't love any of them. But I'll probably watch it again sometime. I might have been cranky since it was so late and I wasn't feeling great and I wasn't paying 100% attention the entire time.
Can't believe it's been a year since Merlin came to its cruel, cruel ending! I couldn't bear to watch it on Christmas, didn't want to spoil the day, and my instincts proved correct. It took me two days to watch the whole thing. For some reason I started it fairly late, like around 5. By the end of the episode Mike got home, but I basically ignored him while watching the end. Everyone was waiting for Mike to eat, so I was summoned to dinner right after it was over. I still remember valiantly struggling to not burst into tears at the table. So if I haven't said it before FU BBC, Shine, and the Js.
Hope everyone else had a fun and lovely holiday and have a great weekend!
Stacey
Ugh, I feel like lately I have time for absolutely nothing, which I guess makes sense since in the last week my only day off was Christmas. And I got my new schedule and my next day off isn't until Tuesday. I suppose I shouldn't complain since as a co-worker pointed out, we'll probably be begging for these hours in January. But still I have a lot of shit that I need to get done that I can't. I have some paperwork I need to do for payment on my student loans. Michael and I both need to talk to the community college - he needs to set up his classes and I need to figure out when I'm going to be able to start. I feel like I can't get caught up with LJ. I have LJ posts I owe people for questions they asked. I have other posts I'd like to make. I need to get my hair done. I have three weeks of e=mail to catch up on. I'm seriously behind on working on my glomp_fest fic. And worst of all, I haven't had the chance to get to read my gift fic from merlin_holidays, which is my number one priority for tomorrow.
I've gotten some really lovely holiday cards from millionstar, superfluous_emi, watching_ghosts, teprometo, and vix_spes. Thank you, guys!
My work's office party was a couple of weeks ago. Mike was really cute about making something to bring to the party. They'd mentioned at work that people were bringing and deserts and I thought about making something, but I wasn't sure. The day before the party Mike asks me about it and I tell him they said we could bring something. The next day when I came home, Mike was in the kitchen working on something. He decided to make ambrosia from his grandmother's recipe. Mike gets really focused and has trouble multi-tasking when he's cooking, even with something relatively simple as the ambrosia. But it was so cute because he took it really seriously. He even got cherries and these spearmints (which I discovered I do not like. In gum, yes. On its own, no.) to put on top to make it look like holly. Spoiler alert- it tasted fantastic. :) So many people the next day raved about it, which I made me proud, which I told Mike.
The party itself was alright. I think I looked fairly nice. I tried to come up with topics of conversation beforehand but I got so nervous on the way to the party, my mind was mostly blank. When we got there, most everyone was there, and it was just the regular set-up at the restaurant with a bunch of tables all around. I don't know if I was ultimately happy with this or not, but most people stuck to their own tables and cliques and didn't do much milling around. I wasn't about to start making the rounds, injecting myself in conversations so Mike and I stuck together. Mike can be chatty at times. In fact, I've been surprises at how chatty he's been lately. But generally he's quiet like me, and especially so around strangers, so he didn't say much either. I did get a couple of compliments on how I looked and that was nice.
The food was bad. Not bad tasting bad, but bad in the sense that I overindulged. I know that people tend to put on weight during the holidays, but I haven't been preoccupied with that, since I don't party a lot and a lot of holiday food I don't like. But at the party I was kind of bad, which I didn't set out to be. I wasn't sure what kind of food, and how much would be at party, so I had a little something before we left the house. But there was a lot of real food (like macaroni and Shepperd's pie) when we got there and a variety of deserts. I didn't pig out or anything, but I sampled a lot of stuff (including our ambrosia, which I'd never had before) and it added up. I didn't want to panic because of one bad day and tried to be good the next day, but Mike and I went to the mall and he wanted an Aunt Ann's pretzel and I ended up getting something really bad for me there. Other than those days and a few days that we've eaten out (thankfully Christmas fell on a cheat day) I've been fairly good, though too nervous to check the scale.
Work is basically still the same. I've already entered that phase where I mostly really don't want to be there and have trouble faking otherwise. There was one girl I was talking to a little bit, unfortunately she got fired for calling out on Thanksgiving. There's a couple of people I talk to every now and then and it's not like pulling teeth. But there is this one girl, who is very hyper, and I feel bad because she talks to me, or tries to, but I just can't really fake any enthusiasm, and I think she thinks I don't like her. Which I guess she's not far off. It's not that I don't like her, but I don't know how to deal with people like her. Another really boisterous lady is our shift leader. She keeps trying to talk to me and again I kind of shut down around her. She does kind of annoy me, because she's constantly touching me, not in a "bad touch" kind of way but she'll walk behind me and touch my shoulder or pat me on the back, and there was this one time she was really pissed because she'd spent an hour and a half wrapping a customer's stuff and they didn't tip her. She walked behind the cash stand and grabbed my arm to whisper in my ear about them not tipping her.
The dogs are really great, and normally, when they jump on Mike and my bed, they're mindful of not stepping on anything, but sometimes they forget and one of them landed on my computer recently (which is my fault for not protecting it better.) It's happened before with no lasting damage, but now my space bar is really sticking. Sometimes it works fine, others it takes a few hard presses to get it to work. Ugh, one of the most important keys.
As a surprise for Jean, Greg got tickets (which I ended up having to get over the phone after a painstaking failed online process) for a Dave Chappelle comedy show. They liked his show on Comedy Central. I've never seen much of it, but have always liked him in the movies he's appeared in. The one big problem was the 7:30 show was sold out, so we got tickets for a 10 o'clock show and the venue was at least an hour away from us. I was excited because it was my first comedy live show. We ate dinner out first and then ended up waiting over an hour outside the venue because they wouldn't let anyone inside while the show was still going and Dave had started late. The two comedians before Dave were surprisingly, at least to me, funny. Dave was hilarious, too. We laughed consistently throughout the night. Unfortunately, we ended up getting home super late and Greg and Jean had only 2 hours of sleep before having to get up for work.
Christmas was nice. It's basically the same as it's always been since I've been with Michael but it's always a fun, relaxing day and I can't complain. This year we had the added addition of Greg's parents and Jean's former stepfather over for dinner. I won't say I went over board when it came to presents for Mike. But even though I had a job when Mike and I first got together, this felt like the first year I could get Mike a few things and it was the first year Mike really gave a lot of options for things he wanted. I got him underwear, which he's desperately needed for awhile since his underwear is falling apart. I got him a Mystery Science Theater compilation DVD, which felt like a gift for me as well as him. And the main thing I wanted to get him was the DVD Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy. He's talked about wanting it for years, but we can hardly find it anywhere. I found it on Amazon once, but the price was too expensive for a DVD like that of a movie not many people know and is just a bare bones disc. I found a used copy which wasn't too bad price-wise, unfortunately I waited too long and they couldn't guarantee it getting here by Christmas so I had to get the more expensive version. Mike ended up asking me how much I bought it for and even he seemed to think I paid too much for it. I agree, but he really enjoyed it when we watched it today so I'm okay with the purchase.
We discussed things we'd want a few weeks ago, so I wasn't surprised when Mike got me a back-up storage for my computer. He also got me a pretty blue scarf and a hat. But my favorite thing he got me was a t-shirt with the faces of the boys from Stand By Me (my favorite movie) on it. It just really showed how much he knows me and it was a definite surprise. Jean and Greg got me hair trimmers and the Bluray of E.T. Also, today Jean remembered she forgot a present, which was a really pretty bracelet.
I'm a little frustrated because I'm having trouble with the back-up Mike got me. I tried using it the day after Christmas and it worked fine at first. It looked like it was almost halfway done. I fell asleep briefly and when I woke up somehow my computer had turned off and restarted and the backup wasn't complete. I tried it a couple of times the next day, but it didn't work. One time it stopped because I lost the wi-fi connection on my computer, though I don't know what that has to do with the back-up. I got some kind of warning something was up with the hard drive and I went through a process today to fix it. It seemed to work. I started the back-up again and it finally seemed to be working. I didn't get a chance to go on my computer all day, and when I got home from work I decided to stay off just in casing doing anything on the computer disturbed the back-up. I got to 93% complete and all of a sudden it just stopped. I'm debating whether to do it again or just leave it with the 93% complete.
I felt kind of bad, because every year I feel like a monopolize the TV, which I tried not to do this year, but there are certain movies I must watch on Christmas, plus no one else ever asks to watch anything specific. We watched A Christmas Story, Home Alone 1 & 2, and in what's becoming a tradition the last two years, Scrooged. Also ended up watching Love, Actually finally. I was kind of disappointed. I loved Four Weddings and a Funeral & Notting Hill but maybe I should have known. They were trying to tell ten stories in less than two and a half hours, of course some stories would be underdeveloped. I've just never been a big fan of love at first sight stories. When I was a kid, I couldn't get into Cinderella because I couldn't get, even then, why they were so into each other when they barely knew each other. That's probably why the story that resonated the most with me was the little boy. I could buy him loving someone he never spoke to and doing immature stuff. I couldn't at all take the Colin Firth or Hugh Grant storylines. When the woman in the HG story signed her card/note "Yours, Natalie" I know we were expected to swoon but the only think I could think of is "Have they even shared one single real conversation in the whole movie? Why am I expected to buy this?" It felt like little thought was put into that whole storyline. It's like the writer was thinking, 'We'll just have Hugh Grant as Prime Minister, he'll do his Hugh Grant thing, we'll throw in one speech, and everyone will be charmed. Let's not worry about character development,creating a romantic connection, or a real plot of any kind.' The Colin Firth one was a little better. But the end was stupid. Him wanting to date her? Ok. But marriage? And that whole subplot with the "funny" Colin going to America...I know it's a romcom, but I don't think I've seen anything so pointless. It's not like I hated the movie. A lot of the stories were actually developed well enough - Laura Linney's, Emma Thompson/Alan Rickman's, Andrew Lincoln's (stalker issues aside). I just didn't love any of them. But I'll probably watch it again sometime. I might have been cranky since it was so late and I wasn't feeling great and I wasn't paying 100% attention the entire time.
Can't believe it's been a year since Merlin came to its cruel, cruel ending! I couldn't bear to watch it on Christmas, didn't want to spoil the day, and my instincts proved correct. It took me two days to watch the whole thing. For some reason I started it fairly late, like around 5. By the end of the episode Mike got home, but I basically ignored him while watching the end. Everyone was waiting for Mike to eat, so I was summoned to dinner right after it was over. I still remember valiantly struggling to not burst into tears at the table. So if I haven't said it before FU BBC, Shine, and the Js.
Hope everyone else had a fun and lovely holiday and have a great weekend!
Stacey