The Sunday Where Nothing Happened

This last Sunday was one of those rare days where both The Husband and I had the day off together, and because I worked a half day on Saturday it feels like I had the whole weekend off. You'd think it'd be a nice chunk of time, but I just came to realize that I'm probably the most boring person alive. Seriously. My Dad came and stayed with us on Saturday into Sunday, and we literally had nothing to do. We went to Wal*Mart, The Husband cooked dinner, and all we did is watch movies and play games. Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun... I love when my Dad comes over to stay... I just feel so bad that we can't think of anything beyond parking our butts in front of the TV. It makes me want to take up an interesting hobby, but really that just takes too much work.

I am seriously a boring person, it's embarrassing.

What's funny is that there was plenty of opportunity to not be boring, and I'm so boring (lazy) I couldn't even do anything about it. Noob and Mrs. Noob invite us over for dinner, we turn them down. My Dad hangs out and we could do something interesting, we don't. The Husband's work calls because he needs to do some quick, urgent training, he says no. I go to find new music to listen to, but I hate it all. Tried to find a good movie, but all that we had available I'd seen a thousand times or didn't want to see at all.

Please tell me I'm not one of those people who has become boring and lazy... I swore I'd never be that person. What happened?

I'm blaming it on winter. Stupid winter. I hate you like I hate Nicholas Cage.

People and Things I Want to Smack

We all have a list like this. Some people admit to it, some people don't, but we all have one. And it feels like my list is just getting longer and longer, and people and things that haven't been on the list in awhile are now finding their way back on...

Here's my "People and Things I Just Want to Smack" list for the week:

1. My scale. I think it's horrifically unfair that when I first step on it, for exactly 1 second, it flashes a weight that's .2 pounds lighter than the weight it actually gives me. It makes me want to scream. Especially when the lighter weight is XXX.8 and when it goes up, it goes XXY.0. It gives the illusion of losing a pound and gaining a pound in a second. So infuriating.

2. My co-workers. Yes, most of you are fine, but a few of you... And you know who you are... Are douche bags. Sometimes I think a good smack to the head is what you need. Seriously. No, your irritating antics aren't as profoundly affecting my life as you'd like to think they are, but still, I have to deal with you and that just bugs the crap out of me. And now I have to deal with a co-worker who quit a year ago, who was an obnoxious pain in my butt, because she came crawling back for a job. And we're dumb enough to give it to her. Ugh.

3. That guy who argued with me over $3. Yes, I get that it's $3 and you want it back. Yes, I get that you're very special and important. Yes, you still have to wait in line to get your $3 back. And I don't care that you make so much every hour that waiting in line for $3 means you're undervaluing your time. You still have to wait in line.

4. Valve. Give me my damn "Left 4 Dead" content already.

5. My husband. Honey, you know I love you, but you make me insane sometimes. You have a week off and the only day you can go out with the boys is on my first day off in 7 days, the only day I have off this week, and the last day off we have together for 2 weeks? Really? And no, I don't want to watch anything on the Military Channel. Ever.

6. Nicholas Cage. Stop doing stuff. I don't like you. Please go away.

7. My hair. Please, please, PLEASE, for once do something besides be a limp, stringy mop on my head. You're killing me. Why can't you be interesting and pretty, like other people's hair? What do I have to do? Just tell me, I'll do it. I actually am taking this one off the list. My haircut seems to have cured my boring and limp hair issue... I now have very cute, maybe even incredibly hot and sexy hair. Now to refresh my color, and I'll look even hotter-er and sexier-er, both of which are now officially words because I say so.

8. My husband's insurance company. You suck. The whole idea behind insurance is that eventually, after all of the paying in, you occasionally pay out when we need you to. Not that we just give you money that you take and keep. And would it kill you to return our calls within the same week we called you? I just don't understand... Do you operate out of a basement somewhere? PS... A dislocated kneecap? That does qualify as "emergent and urgent care." If you dislocate your kneecap, going to the emergency room is the appropriate response, waiting 3 days to go to your PCP is not. Kneecaps belong on the front of your knee and if it's not there, you should probably get that checked out right away.

9. My Blackberry Storm. I love you, I really do. And I realize that the reason you're not working is because I stupidly left you on the floor of the forklift cage and dirt and dust got underneath the screen. It was a dumb and poorly thought out action on my part. It really was. I'm truly sorry. I really am. So please, please, please make the right side of my screen work again. Please? I'm lost without you and when you don't work right, my day is a mess. How can I properly supervise without my Blackberry? It's not possible.

And thus concludes the airing of my grievances. For now, anyway. I have faith that someone or something will eventually piss me off again.

E74 = Epic Fail

So just when you thought it was safe to own an Xbox, a new error rears it's red-ringed head.

The so-called "E74" error is apparently on the upswing after Xbox's big LIVE upgrade back in November, and a massive upswing on both older units and newer units after the patch released last February. This error stems from one of two issues, the first being a defective A/V cable (easy fix and obviously the reason you'll root for if you ever see the error), or broken video hardware in the Xbox itself. Be prepared if it's the latter, because this error is that it isn't covered by your extended warranty... Which means to fix it, you could pay between $95 - $120. You'll know you're one of the lucky ones who suffers from the E74 by the single red flashing light in the right lower section of the Xbox button on the unit itself, and an error message on your screen that looks like this:

Microsoft's solution to the error, which stems from a video hardware failure of some sort, is to have people who experience it to contact customer support for further assistance... A solution which has gotten Xbox owners all over the place all in a crank, because Microsoft isn't doing enough to fix the problem.

Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones since I haven't had any of these issues with the Xbox so I'm less jaded and pessimistic and maybe I'm just playing on borrowed time and, eventually, my Xbox will crap out like so many other people's have. I know two people in my immediate gaming circle who got the infamous "Red Ring of Death," and maybe I'll be next. But at this point, I'm not going to get up and arms over the E74 and Microsoft's response to it. With the Red Ring of Death, people were upset at how Microsoft handled it initially but after realizing the problem was widespread (and the negative press was horrific), they came through and took care of Xbox owners. If this upgrade to the new Xbox LIVE experience is the root to the E74, I'm sure Microsoft will come through again.

And if they don't, maybe the name of my blog will turn from "Xbox Maven" to "Playstation Maven." No, I'm just kidding. PS3 sucks. ;)

In the meantime, if you're playing on your beloved Xbox and you notice your screen is snowy or distorted, there's major pixel lag, or things aren't as crisp and sharp as they used to be because of the vertical white lines all over the TV... Get out your favorite game, play one last round or two, and give your Xbox a big hug, because an E74 error is in your immediate future.

A Case of the "Blahs"

So I'm driving home from work (or was I driving from home to work?) with my trusty Zune in hand, skimming through my music library in hopes of finding songs that make my 24 minute drive more musically entertaining. "The Kill" by 30 Seconds to Mars? Next. "Just Dance" by Lady GaGa? Next. "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis? Ok, that sounds good. "Please Don't Stop the Music" by Rhianna? Nope, next. "Gives You Hell" by All-American Rejects? Pass. "Cry Me a River" by Justin Timberlake? Oh, that's one I want to hear... But not "So What?" by P!nk... How about "Sober" instead? And I'm more in the mood to hear Gwen Stefani's "Early Winter" than her "What You Waiting For," so I'll play that too.

Then it occurs to me, my musical choices of late have been pretty darn depressing... And you know what? I feel pretty depressed, for some reason. Either I've been just too generically busy, or just too generically dumb, to realize that I have been feeling down in the dumps lately. No particular reason, I guess... Work is fine, marriage is great, life is as it should be... I'm just... Blah. And it's not just me, either. One of my closest friends (hereafter and forever known as "Noob" for the purposes of this blog... Since I've decided if I'm going to talk about these people as they are a major part of my life, they should probably have names I can refer to them by so you people can follow along) is acting weird too.

So, I did what any person would do... I made rash decisions, with little thought or planning. I went to Noob's house and played games and watched stupid movies, went out to lunch and ate like a pig, then went and got all my hair chopped off because obviously changing my hair will change my life.

Amazingly, the only thing I regret doing, at this point, was eating like a pig. We went out and got Chinese food and I ate more greasy fat-laden food then I've had in months, but figured it was OK because I've never had a problem with Chinese before... But apparently 3 months into Weight Watchers and the Chinaman's food (excuse me, apparently that's not the preferred nomenclature... Asian-American's food*) doesn't sit well with me anymore.

The hair, I think, came out cute. I went from about 6 or so inches below my shoulders to just slightly longer than shoulder length. My old cut is the same one I've had for over 10 years, while this one is cuter and more up-to-date, and exactly the same, though slightly longer, than Reese Witherspoon's hair in "Sweet Home Alabama." I was dreading the husband wouldn't like it since he claims to have an irrational dislike of short hair, but he actually seemed quite happy with it. And get this... When my hair is long, it's as straight and stringy, but when it's cut to my shoulders, it has a natural curl on the end, so it's bouncy and perky and interesting... Who knew?

Of course, after the original excitement of having new hair and an afternoon of pigging out on Chinese food, the "blahs" returned... So I'm sitting on the couch with cute hair and indigestion, moping about nothing in particular. I don't know what that's all about. Maybe I'm antsy for spring? Maybe I'm tired of working so much? Maybe I have nothing better to do? Maybe it's all of the above? Who knows.

* If you haven't seen "The Big Lebowski," stop reading this blog and go rent it now. Funny stuff. Stupid, "WTF?" funny, but still funny. Unless you don't find movies like "Fargo" funny, in which case you won't find this movie funny either... Probably because you have no soul. No, I'm kidding... You have a soul (probably), just not one with a sense of humor.

Um... Excuse Me...

This last Sunday was a beautiful day... It was kind of cloudy and overcast with a light breeze, but it was 42 degrees, which might as well be a heat wave around here. I heard a very loud robin in the morning, and there is a lot of bare ground... Ok, it was brown, bare ground... But still, it's bare ground. Anyway, it really felt like spring was on its way.

However, when I came out of the shower and looked out the window, I saw this:

And this:

All I have to say is... WTF? Enough with the snow, already. And it's in the 40s! It's not supposed to snow when it's in the 40s!

I am so over winter. If spring won't come, I'll inject spring into winter:

I Have to Wait HOW LONG??

So Valve has finally announced that it's L4D DLC (nicknamed "Survival Pack" by somebody) will be released on April 21st.

April 21st.

Are you kidding me? I don't think I can wait that long. Though I do think I get major credit for assuming that in and around April 21st was going to be when the DLC would be released.

I'm dying (pun not really, but kind-of, sort-of intended) to play "Survival Mode." It sounds like profanity-laden, un-winable frustrating fun.

Personally, I think this event calls for a ticker of some sort:

On a somewhat related note, TickerFactory.com needs more zombie-related ticker themes. I'm just saying.

Surviving Inventory

I promise, this is my last inventory related post. I swear. It's just that this event has been the center of my 50 - 60 hour weeks at work, so it's really the only thing going on right now... And you people will have to deal with it for just one more post.

So I did it, I survived inventory. I even got to go home 45 minutes early, which is a miracle. Right now, I'm happily laying on my couch, fantasizing about how I don't have to worry about inventory for another whole year.

Surprisingly, being put in a tiny cage in a forklift and raised up about 30 or 40 feet so I could lean out and take down paperwork wasn't as terrifying as I'd psyched myself up for. I think part of the reason was because I asked (begged) that my driver be one of two people, both of whom are friends of mine. Another part had to be that the person in the cage the row opposite of me was one of my close friends, and he felt it absolutely necessary to shout things at me to try and make me laugh. I won't lie... I was hanging onto the bars on the side of the cage for dear life, and I did have one freak-out moment, but other than that it wasn't so bad. Dare I say it? I actually had fun...

As always, though, actual inventory night was a controlled debacle. Do you know how frustrating it is to spend an entire week cleaning, organizing, and counting only to have a group of illegal Mexicans and people on supervised work release come in, tear everything apart, and count things wrong? My "I'm-going-to-punch-you-in-the-face" moment came when I was counting in the freezer and I had a series of 3 coolers where the person doing the counting had under counted inventory by like 40 to 90 units. Seriously, I looked into one cooler and saw 4 boxes of 12 units, another box with 10 units, and 5 boxes of 6 units (for the kids counting at home, that's 93 units), and the counter, an obvious rocket scientist in training, put the total of units in the freezer at 38. I'm looking at the freezer, just staring and wondering WTF? How can you mistake 93 units as only 38? Is that even possible?

So I call the department head (who's also the close friend who was shouting at me while I was in the cage) over to verify, and we were both dumbfounded. They were obviously counted wrong. After standing in the section for awhile, we realize the error was probably because the delinquent they had counting the case couldn't have cared less about the job she was doing, and she was far more interested in flirting with everything with a penis as opposed to counting. Our department head ended up calling over their supervisor, who was as stupid as these counters only he had a title, and he went on and on about how we had probably counted wrong, how most of the time their counts are right, and if there's an issue, it'll come out during the verification process. I just wanted to punch the guy in the face... Obviously I was there doing the verification and obviously the case was counted wrong... He just didn't want to do his job and adjust the inventory count. Freaking idiot.

All and all, aside from the morons in the freezers, the whole event wasn't that bad. The two zones I was in charge of both were managed by my two good friends, which meant I didn't have somebody riding my butt the whole evening, and the Home Office sent over somebody from another branch to help us with the count and he ended up being a riot to work with. Wouldn't you know, he's an avid gamer too... So my friend, the transfer guy, and I ended up screwing around a lot more then we probably should have. And we walked away from the night with a new Xbox buddy, which is always wonderful.

When all was said and done, I was finished by 11:15 (which is better than the 1am I worked until last year), in bed by midnight, and I didn't have to worry about work until 1pm. I don't know how long the department heads had to stay, though. I'm guessing until about 1 or 2am. Nice thing is the later they stay, the less of them there will be at work the next day, which means I have a built in day of screwing off.

And it's exactly 1 year before I have to worry about having to do inventory again. Freaking awesome.

Not Me Monday: Inventory Edition

Being the sucker that I am for forwards and quizzes, I just had to participate in "Not Me Monday." This week is the Inventory Edition, since my inventory weekend was full of "not me" moments. And I swear, all of the events below, I in no way took any enjoyment from them... ;)

First off, I did not intentionally show up only 10 minutes before the start of inventory in the hopes of avoiding the pre-inventory pep talk meeting, and I was not at all disappointed to see that they had waited for me before they started with the meeting. And when I showed up, I did not laugh when my boss blamed me for causing a friend to "choke on his chicken" because I didn't bring a drink from Dunkin' Donuts. I also did not think of the phrase that included the words "choke" and "chicken" in a sexual way, and use that as the basis for several jokes through the whole evening. During the meeting, I paid attention the whole time and did not goof off with my friend because I knew that the person I'd be with would know what to do already.

When I was on the forklift, I did not laugh when my driver told me that he required all of the people in his cage to have a "nice hiney." I also did not participate in a lewd conversation with my driver in an effort to take my mind off of how high up I was. I did not notice when my friend in the cage in the next aisle made crude noises, and I certainly did not laugh my butt off. I also did not freak out when my driver left me in the cage 40 feet above the ground so he could go talk to somebody. I didn't spend the time stuck up there obsessing about how my new pants were getting dirty, and I didn't text one of my coworkers that I was stressed that my jeans were getting dirty. He, obviously, did not think I was a freak for sending such text messages.

Most importantly, when I was given paperwork to verify unit counts, I didn't dread not having a calculator and finally showing the world that I can't even do very basic math in my head. I did not make numerous basic math errors that my 7 year old nephew could have done, and I certainly didn't blame my fear of heights as a distraction from being able to do said very basic math. And my boss? He certainly doesn't think I'm a little stupid for not being able to figure out 12 x 3 +11 in my head.

I also didn't make a big deal about how everybody, after inventory, had to be on Xbox so we could play a few rounds of "Left 4 Dead," then ended up going home and not logging on. Then the next day, when one of my friends asked me where I was and why I didn't log on after I didnt' make such a big deal about everybody else logging on, I didn't tell him the reason I didn't log on was because I was "getting some."

Nope. None of that ever happened.

Where the Hell Did My Butt Go?

Yesterday at work, a woman I work with made possibly one of the strangest comments I've gotten in awhile... She told me that my pants were too baggy in the butt, and it was almost time to buy new pants. After wondering why a female co-worker was looking at my butt, I decided that perhaps she was right... It was time to buy new pants, and most likely a new belt. The pants that I've been wearing were pre-weight loss size 14 and my belt has had so many holes added to it to get it to fit right it looks like a long strip of leathery Swiss cheese.

So after work, I wandered over to Kohl's and went through their Levis (the only brand that has covered my behind for like 15 years), grabbed a few sizes and went to try them on. I almost died when I ended going home with this pair:

I haven't been a size 8 in like nine years. I couldn't freaking believe it. So now I'm wearing size medium shirts and size 8 pants. I feel so thin. Yay me!

Maybe I shouldn't have skipped that meeting after all...

Taking My Life Into My Hands

This is the worst time of the year for me at work... Inventory. Blech. I hate it. Every year, we clean and organize for a week straight (hence the 6 day work week I'm currently enjoying), count everything, count it again, then people like me go behind the other people who can't count and recount what they've already counted twice, then the Home Office brings in an outside company made up of mostly illegal Mexicans who count everything that we've already counted for a fourth time, then we take a piece of paper with the total the outside agency counted to the people in charge, and then they issue us a paper back telling us to count it again because the illegal Mexican's total doesn't match our total. And this goes on until the wee hours of the morning.

My fun is amplified big time this year, though. Now that I'm a supervisor (which isn't as big a deal as it sounds)with career aspirations, I get pretty much be the gopher for my bosses, which ordinarily I wouldn't mind... Except for I was chosen for the dubious honor of being put in a cage that they raise with a forklift about 30 feet so that I can pull down tags on things we've already counted. And I'm terrified of heights. Like super terrified, in a big way. There's only one thing that scares me more than heights, and that's spiders. Luckily for me, there are a ton of spiders up there. So my fear is that I'll be in this little cage up 30 feet in the air, and I'll see a spider... At which point I'd wet myself and then pass out. My plan was either to work during the day so I would get out of it, or be pregnant and have my doctor write an excuse for me to get out of doing it. So much for that.

I hate inventory. With a passion.

The irony of this whole situation is that when I started working at my current job a year and a half ago when I was a stay-at-home-wife, it was supposed to be just a silly, part-time job that would give me spending money for Disney World. No responsibility, no obligations beyond just showing up, nothing. Who would have thought I liked my job and would want to advance in it as a career? I had careers and I hated them, and I go out and get a job and end up finding a career.

And now I get stuck doing inventory once a year. Blech.

Time to Admit Defeat

Well, I think it's time I finally just admit to it... I'm a dork. A raging, red-headed, female dork. Today, I finally bit the bullet and did what apparently 9 million people, including William Shatner, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Ozzy Osbourne, have done before me. I downloaded "World of Warcraft." I swore I'd never do it, but then I found a friend who plays, and I got a new computer that could support it... I guess it was just inevitable at some point.

I have to say, though, the whole "World of Warcraft" process is less than noob friendly (yup, I said "noob." Deal.). I had to download about a billion patches to get the thing to work, and then about a billion more after I logged in the first time. Then another billion when I put in the "Burning Crusade" expansion. Then you have to choose armies and races and servers and game play styles, sit through another billion updates, accept about a thousand end-user agreements (I think I may have given away my first-born, I'm not sure), and then research your booty off so you can try to figure out just what the heck is going on in this micro little universe that everybody knows more about than you.

Luckily, I have a friend who walked me through the first 3 hours of the game. Yay for laziness!

Overall, I find the game interesting... I'm not sure if it is or isn't what I expected, but considering I'm only 3 hours in, I don't suppose I can expect to have a judgment on how I like the game yet. Only time will tell. At this point, I'm just happy to have another game to play, and another person to play with, when my husband monopolizes the Xbox.

So, my name is Xbox Maven, and I'm a red-headed, big chested, level 6 Blood Elf Warlock, with an Imp. Boo-ya.

Wh00t! New DLC for Call of Duty!

Remember that list of things that make me disproportionately happy with life? You can add new DLC to that list! Yay!

Actually, yesterday was a great gaming day for me all the way around. First off, I cut out of work an hour early (considering it was my day off and I worked anyway, is it really still considered leaving an hour early or is it leaving 7 hours late?) and did some good, old fashioned achievement whoring to boost my pathetically small gamer score. Now, I've gone from a gamer score of 600 and change to 1100 and change... Thank you "Scene it: Lights, Camera, Action!" for handing an avid movie buff some easy points... But whatever, achievements are achievements, and I'll take what I can get.

Secondly, "Call of Duty: World at War" FINALLY released some new maps beyond that freebie Makin Day map.,, Including Verrückt for the Zombie Nazis. Yes, I freely admit to being one of those dorks who co-ops Zombie Nazis for hours on end, which is really silly when you think about it, because if I want to shoot zombies in a co-op format I should just play "Left 4 Dead," but I can't help it. It's a guilty pleasure and I'm addicted. Considering I am the most awful person alive on multi player death matches, Zombie Nazis is all I have to save face.

As always, I knew the maps were coming out, but did I prepare? Of course not. I had 1600 points just waiting to be redeemed, but I didn't redeem them ahead of time... I had to wait until everybody and their brother was trying to buy points, so I got error message after error message. So aggravating. You'd think I'd be better prepared, but I never am.

The only thing that would make life better is if I didn't have to be at work by 7am and I could stay up all night, getting my butt kicked on CoD: WaW.

Now what I want to know... How much longer do I have to wait for "Left 4 Dead" DLC? By default, I know it *has* to come out before April 21st, when the new version of the game is released, but I hope they release it a bit earlier than that. I'm just dying to play the new Lighthouse map on verses (even though I hate verses because I'm awful at it) and their version of horde mode a la "Gears of War 2" looks completely addicting. And, bonus bonus, it'll be free, so I don't have to worry about redeeming codes and points. Freaking cool.

Come on Valve! You're killing me! I can't wait anymore!

Weight Watchers Weigh-In: Week 9

I don't know how it happens, but weigh-in day always sneaks up on me. I know it's coming for a week, but somehow when it comes down to crunch time, I'm blindsided. And I have something very bad to admit... This week, I wasn't happy with my total weight loss (a measly .6 pounds), so I skipped my meeting. I know, I know... That's not a great thing to do at all, but I knew that going would just make me feel worse. Meetings are great when I have some sort of weight loss, but when I don't, it just makes me feel like a failure to hear how others had such a good week. So, I used a long day and week at work as my excuse not to go to a meeting so far away, so early in the morning, along with the fact that it's my least favorite time of the month, and instead opted to sit at home on the couch drowning my sorrows in Fruit2O and Midol until it was time to go to work... Which is actually fine, since as long as I'm working these 6 day, 50+ hour weeks, I have no time to myself at home, so this time is something I really need right now. The stress of maintaining this schedule is literally making me sick, and I'll take every moment to myself I can steal.

Really, I can't complain about my progress... Losing 20 pounds since January 9th is really good, and the difference is really noticeable. And 40 pounds total weight loss? I never thought I'd be able to do such a thing. Did I mention that when I went clothes shopping on St. Patty's Day, I actually tried on mediums? When the heck was the last time I did that? I think I was still in high school...

I feel like lately, though, my weight loss has kind of... Stalled. And I know it's 100% my fault. When I first started the diet, I was a strict tracker, a strict good-food only eater, strict figure-out-the-points-on-everything-that-goes-into-my-mouth person, weighed everything religiously... But now, I find myself sneaking in one or two "fun sized" candy bars that are hiding in my friend's desk, or having a sample of food that I know is bad for me but I trick myself into thinking that if I only have a little it's OK, or having a little more than a serving size, and I won't lie... I've been eating just to eat. Yes, the food is generally OK for me, but if you're eating because you're bored... It doesn't matter what it is. It's like your body knows you're eating just because, so it retains every last trace of what's bad and sticks it right on your thighs. And with two of my overall goals met, and no long-term goals to replace them that are as compelling, I find it hard to get the motivation to behave on my diet.

Every week, I know I should make goals for what I'd like to do or see happen, and this weeks goals are clear:

1. Go back to tracking religiously so I can be accountable for what I eat
2. Stop snacking on things I know are bad for me
3. Exercise more

True, I make pledge 3 every week, but this week, I'm serious. Not like last week where I said I was, but really wasn't.

I am just chalking this up to a bad week, all the way around. Next week I know will be better, at least in some aspects. I hope.

Edit at 9:20am ~ Karma has a great sense of humor and an obvious taste for irony. I skipped my meeting so I could have more time at home, but my husband called to say he forgot his passport and needed me to bring it in to work for him. If I'd gone to my meeting, I would have left home early and thus, I would have missed his call, I wouldn't have been able to bring in his passport and he'd have been SOL. However, because I skipped the meeting in order to stay home and be lazy, I didn't miss his call, which means I have no excuse to avoid bringing him his passport, and now I have to go in early anyway to bring him his stupid passport. Grrr...

Now, before I sound like an ungrateful wife who's unwilling to go out of the way for her husband, this has to be at least the 5th time in less than 3 months I've had to drive into work to bring him something he's forgotten... Cell phone, wallet, passport, or some combination of all three. It gets irritating to have to drive 45 minutes to his work, hand him something, then drive 20 minutes in the opposite direction to my work, and work a 9 or 10 hour day. So where I was going to leave at 10:30 to be at work for 11, now I have to leave at 9:45 so I can be at his work by 10:30, then leave right away so I can be at my work by 11. ARGH!!

I should have gone to my meeting!

Seven Things That Make Me Disproportionately Happy

Wednesday is my only day off this week... And it's my last day off until next Thursday. So I pledged to do as little as possible with my day. I even turned down a lunch invite in favor of sitting on my butt and restarting Fable II, a game that (under my old profile), I've almost beaten. I don't know if that makes me sad and pathetic, or just somebody who's indulging in some much-deserved "me" time. I'm going with the latter because it makes me feel better about myself.

Along with my plan to contribute as little to humanity as possible, I went about and did some blog surfing. One of the blogs I stopped at, Heather's Hodgepodge, had this cute little thingy about the seven things that make make us disproportionately happy with life, and I couldn't stop myself from doing one of my own. Seeing as I'm easily amused and I love doing little quizzes and questionnaires, that sort of thing is my kryptonite. So here's my list:

1. Any marathon of "Top Chef," "Kitchen Nightmares," or "Hell's Kitchen." Seeing any of those on for an entire day just thrills me to bits. I might as well get my sweatpants, a bag of chips, and blanket, because I won't leave the couch all day.

2. Getting Xbox LIVE Achievements. I really don't know why, but the need to get Achievements on my Xbox profile, literally, drives me to play some games for hours on end. It's like those little points validate my entire gaming life, and at the same time, serve as a numerical watermark for how much time I waste online.

3. Sleeping in, and/or not having to wake up to an alarm. I don't think there's a need for any explanation there.

4. Stickers. There, I said it. I love stickers. If I get stickers or stars or some other reward for a job well done, it thrills me to pieces. Maybe that's why Weight Watchers works so well for me... Because my entire weight loss journey is validated in stickers and stars, and getting those is my crack.

5. Comments or emails. 90% of my communication online is through forums and private messages on forums, or messages through Xbox... And that represents a relative fraction of my overall online correspondance, seeing as 98% of what I get overall is spam. Whenever I get an email or a comment from a person, even a random person, it makes my hour.

6. Free food. You ever go to a store that has samples of food, and you watch a person just bounce back and forth from sample station to sample station, getting sample after sample? That person is probably me. Samples always turn into free lunch for me. I wish I could say I was joking, but 2 of my 3 favorite stores have free food somewhere most of the time.

7. Rainy and/or foggy days. I love rainy days. Rainy days make me so happy, it's insane. Especially now, since it's been winter for so long that rain means it's too warm to snow... Which means that spring has to be on the way... Right?

My dreary, foggy backyard... But spring has to be coming, right?

Equipment Upgrades

It would figure that just as I get my blog up and running again, I suffer from an equipment meltdown. My old laptop finally suffered the last glitch I could handle before throwing it out the window. Considering it's ripe old age of 3 years, it seemed criminal to have to replace it already, but such is the wonder of modern inconveniences. They're designed to be exactly what you need for only a very short amount of time.

Now to be fair, I rode it out as long as I could... The CD drive is broken, the battery can't hold a charge, the power cord is starting to fold and fray, and the thing has absolutely no space left to save anything. It was (and is) a great laptop, and I still plan on using it for stupid things, but it was time to get the newer, fancy model.

And I have to say... My blog (and the Internet in general) looks entirely different on a 17" screen then it did on my old 12". So far, I'm really loving it. I feel so... So... Modern.

It's Thirdsies Weekend at GameStop!

I'm not a frugal person. I know that's not a popular thing to say right now, but there you have it. I'm perfectly happy with my overly-expensive Blackberry Storm, my 42" flat screen LCD screen, my $10 a tube lip gloss, and my $50 bras from Victoria's Secret. I did the frugal thing for awhile and really it was just too much work to squeeze pennies until they bled. If you hand me a good deal, I won't turn it down, but really I don't have the time or energy to find ways to work the system to save a few bucks.

That's why I love GameStop.

Once every few months or so, they have what a friend and I have coined as "Thirdsies Weekend." Thirdsies Weekend is where you buy two used games at any price, get the third free. Being the avid gamer that I am, I live for Thirdsies Week because it allows me to get games I want for cheap. And I have one of those Edge cards too, which means I get a certain percent off of my purchase on used games, so bonus.

This weekend just so happens to be Thirdsies Weekend, so I managed to snag some pretty neat games that I just can't wait to get into. I ended up getting "Prince of Persia," "Lord of the Rings: Conquest," and "Street Fighter 4" for under $100. Considering all three retail for in and around $60 each new, I am pretty psyched. My friend ended up getting something like 6 games for under $130. Who says I don't know how to save? Of course, some people wouldn't count saving money on a luxury item as a great example of frugal living, but a saved dollar is a saved dollar, if you ask me.

The only bummer is I just started "Dead Space," which is the coolest game I've played in awhile, and this week or two at work will be the week from hell, and I know I won't be able to dedicate the time and energy to these new games that I want to, for the time being. Oh well. At least superficial playing will boost my embarrassingly meager Achievement score... Which, for the record, was over 3,000 before I started my own profile. No worries, though. I know it's only a matter of time before my score adequately reflects the numerous wasted hours I've invested in my Xbox.

I am truly a petty person...

I'm a flawed person. You'll never hear me say anything to the contrary. There are just times where I know my flaws are more obvious then they probably should be.

For example, I have a co-worker. Drama is her middle name. She's not happy unless she's either creating drama, perpetuating drama, talking about drama, or otherwise just being dramatic. I think it makes her feel important. Anyway, she's not especially well liked by anybody, especially me. Such people rarely are well liked, save for other people who thrive on drama.

The day before yesterday, I was at work and I saw a poster that this woman made that was supposed to be presented to actual clients, and this poster had two glaring spelling mistakes. I mean, they were so obvious it was embarrassing. I had to work in the department with this poster, with paying clients, and I was just mortified over this awful set of errors, so I took the poster down and leaned it by a desk. I figured that she was coming in the next day so she could do what she wanted with it... Fix it, trash it, whatever. I didn't care. I just didn't want to be in any way associated with the poster. My supervisor, however, had other ideas. He took out a Sharpie and proceeded to "correct" her poster.

I won't lie... There were two thoughts going through my mind... The first being that this woman was going to freak out, the next being that this woman was going to think I did it since I was the last person in the department before it closed for the day, and that the next time I worked with her would be a pure hell.

Sure enough, I go into work the next day, I get the iciest of cold shoulders. She won't give me the time of day. Pretty much a confirmation she found her poster leaned against the desk, saw the doodles, and assumed it was me. I casually weighed out if I should tell her that I wasn't the one who so recklessly defiled her horrid poster, but I decided against it. I figured that if I told her that, not only would I rat out my supervisor (who I like), but she probably wouldn't believe me and would probably want to argue about it. I let it go, deciding that if she asks, I'll tell her the truth but volunteering it on my own was just too much drama for me. So she worked, and I worked, and not a word was spoken between us. And so it went for 4 hours.

Eventually, my supervisor came to work and saw this woman, he told her that he was the one who doodled on her hideous poster. As was to be expected, she freaked out, announced she thought I was the one who did it, and then proceeded to create the most dramatic scene... Complete with flailing arms and the obligatory "How could you?!" He left and she ranted for another 10 minutes or so to nobody in particular... And then she started talking to me. And talking. And talking. And talking. And talking. Talking to me like she hadn't been totally ignoring me for the 4 hours prior. The Iron Curtain had been lifted, and an endless stream of verbal vomit followed.

At that point, I actually wished we could flash back to the start of the day where she thought I was the scum of the Earth who was out to destroy her hideous poster. Because if she was still thinking that, then she wouldn't have started talking to me.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm a petty person. I'm perfectly OK with a person I don't like being so mad at me that they won't speak to me, because it's better than be bothered by them otherwise.

And then at the beginning, there was...

Well, so here it is... My blog. Not much else I can think of to say at the moment... How sad is that? An author of a blog with nothing to write about? Say it isn't so... Really, not having anything interesting to say hasn't seemed to stop other bloggers, so at least I'm in good company. What's the saying? Something like "A man once theorized that if you give 100 monkeys 100 typewriters and 100 years, they'll write the great American novel. Obviously, the Internet has proven this theory false."

I guess this blog is just my little space in the virtual world that further goes to prove the monkey theory false, but effectively wastes some of my time and, hopefully, gives me a nice outlet to express myself. I could of course choose to express myself privately, in a nice little journal that I write in whenever the mood strikes, but really... What's the fun in that? As we all know, there's a strange sense of validation that comes in having an audience.

What am I going to write about? I guess time will tell. A little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing, I'd imagine.