I know the song goes “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”, but to me “It’s beginning to look a lot like I’m ready for a stay in the loony bin” thanks to all the deadlines that have imposed themselves on my life.

December started just peachy with careful plans laid out for buying and wrapping gifts, making Christmas cards, baking cookies, etc.  And then a medical test on December 1 and the subsequent call from the doctor threw all those plans in disarray.  So now I’m preregistered for surgery on December 17^th (and already have a lovely plastic wrist band which does sorta look like a candy cane so at least it’s Christmas-themed).

Needless to say my Christmas plans got put into high gear.  I made a to-do list as soon as I found out the date of my surgery.  I have 85 things on my to-do list, and as of this morning I had accomplished 63 of those things (which is pretty good if I do say so myself).  I still have to finish making fleece throws for my accounting staff.  I still have two batches of cookies to make.  I think the sewing room is NOT going to get straightened nor are the Christmas lights going to be put outside.  But I did make all my Christmas cards by hand which was quite a task.  The inside of my house is completely decorated for Christmas.  And I have baked several dozen cookies already and I’ve already wrapped all my Christmas gifts.   My master bedroom closet and my pantry have been straightened.  I’ve gone grocery shopping and have planned out meals for the next two weeks while I’m laid out.  My recovery time is projected to be anywhere between 2-8 weeks as this surgery does involve a full incision.   Which means that I'll probably be doing alot of cross-stitching.

This would be a good point for me to say how thankful I am to work for WEST Engineering.  The people here are just amazing.  My boss has been completely supportive of my unexpected upcoming vacation.  And my accounting staff is just incredible.  Do you know they are planning out meals to bring me twice a week while I am out on medical leave!!!  I mean, who does that kind of stuff anymore?  Well, my staff does, I guess.  It’s really very touching, and I’m just so thankful to have been embraced with open arms by this group. 

In preparation for the extended stay at home, my step-brother has completely risen to the occasion and has helped me with my to-do list as best he can.  He even managed to set up a wireless network at home and set up my new laptop even though his computer skills are fairly limited.  I’m so bitchy with him sometime – I really need to resolve to treat him with the same love and concern that he shows me.

And on top of all this madness in my life, I’ve fallen in love.  Well, it is very early in the relationship, so for now I’ll just say that I’ve fallen in like.  I’ve been talking a guy named Mike who lives in Victoria for a couple of months now, and we finally made plans to meet this past weekend  (please don’t be mad, Ms. Conlan – I partially blew off bunko on Sunday because I spent half the day with Mike on Saturday).  I have such high hopes for this relationship – he seems as smitten with me as I do with him.  But part of me is so scared that I’m going to get hurt, so I guess that means that I just need to take things slow.

I am exhausted.

I have spent the entire week working on a report that has just about taxed my little brain to death.  Oh, this won’t be any problem, I thought to myself.  I’ll get this baby done in an afternoon or surely no longer than a day.  And so here I sit Thursday afternoon, and I just finished.  And I started working on it Monday morning.  Now granted, I was out of the office at an Advanced Excel seminar yesterday (and it’s a good thing too because I needed some of those tips from the seminar to finish up the report today).  So it took me 3 days to finish (not 4).  But still – there has to be a better way.  And you know what took me so long?  Getting all the information in a database format so that I could run pivot tables and subtotals and such.  Timberline Accounting Software really sucks when it comes to exporting reports into text files or into Excel.

So again, I am exhausted.  I have no energy.  The good news is that I’m taking the day off tomorrow, so I have a 3-day weekend.  The bad news is that I’m behind on my word count for the novel I’m writing in November.  Through today I should have about 20,000 words, and I believe I have around 17,000 words down on paper.  So that means I have some catching up to do this weekend.  Except that my brain is limp and listless.  So I’m going to be writing crap this weekend for sure.  Of course, most of what I’ve written already is probably crap.  So at least I’m being consistent, right?

I had my big date last night with the Aggie engineer.  First let me say that he was a complete sweetheart and a total gentleman.  He brought me a candle, chocolate and a card.  He held the door open for me.  He actually stood up when I returned to the table.  I just about fell over.  And because he is so wonderful, of course I have absolutely no interest in him.  None.  Zip.  Zero.  There was no chemistry at all.  Why, oh why, can’t I fall for one of the nice guys?  Why am I only attracted to guys that are (1) needy or (2) destined to treat me like crap?  I must have a defective gene somewhere.   Could someone please knock some sense into me?

My friend Rex called me the other night to tell me how “Paranormal Activity” ended (since we both bailed on it since we had motion sickness).  I was definitely disappointed with what he had to tell me – surely there’s more to it than the wife just throwing the husband across the room?  Like maybe she grew fangs and had the flames of hell flashing from her eyes?  I really need to stop watching and reading stuff like that especially considering I have two cats that like to scare the crap out of me in the middle of the night.  Maybe I need to watch a Disney movie instead.

P.S.  I am very excited to be taking homemade tamales home with me today.  And no, I really don't want to share any with you.  Sorry.

This was just not a good football weekend.  First the Aggies barely lost on Saturday, then the Texans barely lost on Sunday and then on top of it all I lost my fantasy football game.  That’s two losses for me which really sucks.  I’m still tied for first place, but still.  My players need to get their acts together!

I’m still working on my novel for NANOWRIMO, but my writing slowed down quite a bit this weekend.  I’m up to 16,831 words which is still ahead of schedule.  And just this morning I thought of an entire new section I can insert where I talk about the list that I created in January 2008 when Lance and I were breaking up, and we were going through the sale of our house.  Not exactly the most fun time in the world.  But I created this list that gave me focus (I believe I blogged about my list when I first started blogging).  Unfortunately I haven’t really focused on the list this year, so I’m not sure I have crossed anything off as complete in a while.  I need to find the darn journal book that contains my list so that I can maybe find something to complete by year-end.

So yesterday I attempted to watch “Paranormal Activity”.  That’s the hot movie right now that was shot in the same fashion as “Blair Witch Project”.  I should have known going in that I was going to have problems because I had problems with Blair Witch.  And sure enough, I was about 45 minutes into the movie and started getting really sick to my stomach.  Motion sickness, to be specific.  I just can’t handle that live action type of filming where the camera jumps around the entire time.  I had made it to the part in the movie where the couple goes out for the evening, and the camera is filming the Ouija board which starts moving by itself and then ultimately catches fire as it leaves some message there from hell (or so I imagine).  I felt so bad that I just got up and left the theater.  So I don’t know how it ends.  I’ll just have to rent the movie when it comes out on Red Box and go to the part where I stopped, and then hopefully my stomach can handle watching it until the end.  Of course, I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to watch this movie in my own house because I was getting pretty scared sitting there in the theater. 

Have I mentioned that I have a hot date this Wednesday night?  His name is Bruce, and he’s 54 years old.  He’s an Aggie (always a good thing) and is currently working as a mud engineer on a natural gas drilling rig in Louisiana.  He lives in Smithville which is 50 miles E/SE of Austin.  He’s very sweet, and I like talking to him on the phone.  He seems to pretty much have his life together and to be truthful about everything as much as I can tell.  He’s nothing like that guy from a few months ago that lied to me about everything.   So he’s getting off the rig tomorrow and driving home to Smithville.  Then he’ll drive back over to Katy Wednesday night where we are eating at Babin’s (god, I love their crawfish etoufee).  So I’ll let you know how that turns out.  And yes, I do supposedly have a crush on this geeky guy here at work, but I can tell that he will always be clueless.  Plus I can tell that Bruce will treat me like a princess while the geeky guy here at work won’t.  And being a princess sounds pretty good to me.

So I’m sitting here at work on Friday afternoon.  It’s 2:30 and I’m ready to go.  Except I can’t go until 5:00.  Well, probably 4:30.  I do tend to sneak out of here early on Fridays.  Especially since my boss tends to sneak out of here around 3:00. 

I have done a little bit of actual work today.  The financials are done for October already!  Yea!  It’s a definite record being done in only 6 days.  Since I finished early, I’ve spent a great part of today being unproductive I guess you would say.  Well, productive from my point of view, but not so much from the viewpoint of my employer.  But we’ll just make that our little secret. 

So what have I done today?  I order a chocolate basket online as a surprise for my department.  It’s a 7-tier stack of boxes full of lots of chocolate goodies.  I’m having it delivered mid-September as a surprise.  Well, of course it won’t be a surprise if someone finds out, so please don’t tell any of my employees.

And then I spent some time on www.thechildrensplace.com to order clothes for my great-nephews and my great niece for Christmas.  The site is running a special where you get 20% off if you spend at least $75 (you have to use a special code – go to www.wantnot.net to get the code).  So I budgeted to spend about $140 total on an outfit for 5 kids, and I spent $122, so I definitely stayed under budget. 

And then I spent quite a bit of time working on my Nanowrimo novel (title: Spicy, but Sweet).  As of last night I was up to 12,050 words.  It’s amazing the turns that this little novel has taken already.  I just jumped right in and started writing about some of the guys I have met online, and then I realized I needed some kind of mechanism to make everything flow.  So I decided that in the book I would start seeing a therapist and that would give me the excuse I needed to talk about past relationships.  And then I threw in recent trip to the Renaissance Festival with the nerdy guy from work on which I have a crush, and that pushed my novel into a brand new direction.  The whole tone of the novel is similar to Bridget Jones Diary – just a lot of commentary about what is happening in my life.  And since it seemed like I needed some kind of quest so that I could have some kind of conclusion, I decided that the whole novel would eventually revolve around my crush on the nerdy guy and the procession of that relationship.  So as my relationship actually does (or does not) progress in real life, I will write about it in the book.  So I wrote almost 2500 words today, and I’m up to 14,507 words.  Very cool.  I’m definitely ahead of where I need to be.  But I don’t want to take any time off – I need to keep writing while I still have some idea of what to write about.  And I imagine I will run into dry spells considering I have 35,493 more words to go.

Tomorrow is Anne Taylor’s birthday – Happy Birthday, Anne!  My blog is dedicated to you today. J

On Sunday I’m supposed to go see “Paranormal Activity” with my friend Rex.  I’m not sure why I feel like getting the crap scared out of me, but I do.  I might feel differently Sunday night when I’m too scared to turn out the lights.

I saw online today that Walmart is going to start running Black Friday specials early.  There will be specific specials each week leading up to Thanksgiving.  So check out www.walmart.com for the specials that start on November 7.  These are in-store specials, and it’s first come, first serve.  The store opens at 8:00 am tomorrow.  And no, I’m not getting paid for this endorsement, darn it.  I’m keeping my eyes open for a netbook that comes fully loaded with Windows 7 Premium (and not with the crappy starter version).

Have a happy weekend, everyone!

I'm took a little break from work this afternoon to work on my NANOWRIMO novel.  November is NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, and my friend Ayn talked me into participating with her excellent presentation at our writing retreat a couple of weeks ago.  So I'm attempting to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November (those are the requirements). 

As of last night I was up to about 6300 words.  But I just wrote another 1100 words and will be adding that in when I get home tonight. So I guess I'm up to 7400 words!  Yea!  My novel is supposed to be about the online dating adventures of a single woman in her 40's (hmmm - who does that remind you of?).  But I find myself getting diverted into various topics because otherwise I'll never reach 50,000 words.

So today I wrote about my step-mother, and I thought I would share it via my blog.  Hopefully my step-sister will read this and find it funny:

So I get home later that evening just in time to catch a call from my step-mother Helen.  Oh god, I think.  Am I really up to a marathon phone session with me just nodding my head and saying “uh-huh” a lot?  Because that’s what happens when you are on the phone with my step-mother.  She starts talking about one subject and then starts meandering like she’s driving down one of the many farm-to-market roads throughout Texas.  You are on FM 149 and think you are doing good and then she switches and you have suddenly turned onto FM 105, and then she doubles back and heads the opposite direction and by that time you have no idea who or what she is even talking about.  So all you can do is nod your head (of course, she can’t see you nodding your head) and say “uh-huh” a lot.  Sometimes she gets suspicious and stops and ask you what she just said as if she suspects that you really aren’t paying attention.  So you have to pay a little bit of attention so that you can at least throw a few details back at her.

                All this goes through my mind as my hand hovers over the phone, but I finally decide to bite the bullet and pick it up.

                “Hello, Mother”.  Okay – time for a slight side note.  When Helen became by step-mother, my father had been divorced from my mother Mary for about a year.  I was nine years old at the time, and I’m pretty sure I called my real mother “Mommy”.  I mean, I assume I did because I called my dad “Daddy”.  And my dad had full custody of me because my mom had the sense to give up full custody of me because she was an alcoholic.  But that’s a story for another day entitled “How to Attempt to Screw Up Your Child’s Life in only 90 Days”.              

                So my step-mother didn’t want me calling her “Momma” because her kids called her “Momma”, and she felt like she had been “momma’d” to death.   And there was no way in hell that my real mother was going to allow me to call my step-mother “Mommy”.  So the only real option that was left was to call my step-mother “Mother”.  And thus I call Helen the formal sounding “Mother” and even though I’m in my 40’s I call my dad “Daddy” still.  Because I’m still Daddy’s little girl, you know.

                So back to the phone conversation.  “Hello, Mother”, I say.  “How are you?” she asks.  “Did I catch you just coming into the house?” 

                “Yes, as a matter of fact, you did.  I’m just getting in from work”.  So she asks “How was work?  Are you still working for that horrible company?”.  “Yes, Mother”, I say.  “Work was fine, and the company hasn’t run out of money yet, so I’m still working there”. 

                “You know those people take advantage of you by giving you so much work to do and refusing to hire any help”.

                “Well”, I respond, “They can’t really afford to hire any help, you know?”.

                “That’s just not right.  Why back in my day when I was working for Mr. Pride Carwash, I never would have let them take advantage of me like that.  Of course I wasn’t the accountant because Lord knows I’m not very good with numbers.  Although there was that time in Girly Elementary School when I won a math ribbon.  I was just tickled pink.  And so were Momma and Daddy although of course they weren’t there to see me get the ribbon because Lord knows times were tough during the late ‘30’s – Daddy was working at the mill, and we were just managing to get by with four kids to feed in the house.   Not that we had a very nice house – Daddy was always having to do some work on it when he wasn’t working at the mill.  Hmmm, what does that remind me of?  Oh, of course.   When I was married and living on Mill Stone Drive in MacGregor, things were a little different.  Our house there was just as cute as a bug’s ear.  Nora was our neighbor then and I think she and her daughter Jennifer are going to join us for dinner this year for Thanksgiving.  You are coming to visit us for Thanksgiving, aren’t you?”.  She pauses at this point to take a breath thankfully.

                “Yes, Mother.  I’ll be there for Thanksgiving as usual”.

                She resumed, “Now, you know we aren’t cooking a big meal because we just don’t need all that food.  Lord , if I don’t lose 20 lbs I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.  I don’t like it when my pants start fitting too tight.  Of course part of that might be because I just haven’t had a proper BM in the last couple of days.  I had to have your father give me an enema just to try and get everything moving again.”

                “Mother, I really don’t want to talk about your digestive system”, I manage to say without cracking up laughing.

                “Well, enemas were good enough for my momma to give to us kids when we were little, so it’s good enough for me now.  Of course my momma probably would have been just as inclined to give us a teaspoon of castor oil.  She wasn’t an educated woman, you know.  And she was just doing the best that she could.  Of course, I don’t have any real education either, but I turned out okay.  I’m not sure that all this education for women is such a good thing.  The Good Lord is pretty clear that women shouldn’t be in charge and in positions of power.  Just like that Sarah Palin.  Lord knows she’s an evil woman.”  She finally paused again to take a breath , and I took my opportunity to jump in and bring the conversation to a close.

                “Mother, I need to feed the cats and get out of these work clothes.  Did you need anything or were you just calling to chat”.

                “Oh, I just wanted to call and say hello.  You know your father worries about you when you don’t call often enough”, she responds.

                “I know”, I say.  “I promise to call more often, but I really need to get going now”.

                And mercifully then she said her goodbyes and hung up the phone.  Okay, do you see what I mean?  In the course of one conversation, she talked about my job, her job, her math skills, elementary school, her mom and dad, the 1930’s, the house she lived in as a child, the house she lived in when she first got married, her neighbors, Thanksgiving, needing to go on a diet, her bowel movements, enemas, education for women, politics and the evil that is Sarah Palin.  Kind of makes you tired, doesn’t it?

After many years of people trying to entice (or sometimes coerce) me into attending the Renaissance Festival in Plantersville, TX, I finally went yesterday.  Halloween seemed like a good time to go - - best opportunity to see the most freaks (and boy, was that true).  Now, I’ll explain later how I got talked into going, but first let’s talk about the festival itself.

It’s this Renaissance village, okay?  A really big village in which I was lost most of the time.   Kind of like a medieval craft show.  With lots of acts and different foods to eat.  And lots of people to gawk at.  I was there with two guys, so that really limited my ability to shop.  They were there to see specific shows, so heaven forbid, I didn’t want to slow them down.  First we saw the Birds of Prey show which was very cool.  The vulture and the buzzard were the best.  And as far as I know, no one got pooped on even though we had various birds flying over us at times (Mary, I would avoid this show if I were you).

Then we went to the jousting contest which I thought was rather lame.  It is obviously prescripted.  I’m sure they say “Okay – this time the guy in the purple tights gets to win”.  They had the Queen there (not the real one from England, silly) and her royal court, and they spoke a great deal into the sound speaker and said stuff that I was never able to understand.  And then the guys on horseback lunged at either other with their jousting spears (I’m not sure if that is the right term) and three guys eventually fell off their horses and finally the Queen’s Champion was named.  Or something like that.

In walking to the next show we were accosted by several vendors.  They were annoying, but the cool thing was everyone called me “My Lady”.  I could get into that.

The next show we attended was The Dead Bob show which I thought was pretty funny.  It’s a ventriloquist with this skeleton dummy.  But the ventriloquist’s face is covered up, so he’s probably moving his lips.  So maybe it’s really a puppet show.  No matter, the skeleton was full of rude comments and inappropriate remarks.  He told a really funny dirty joke (he asked permission first since there were children in attendance, but all the adults gave their consent since they had all obviously been drinking).  But I don’t think it would be appropriate to pass along the joke because this is a family blog, after all.  But be sure to ask me about it the next time you email me or talk to me.   Okay, I’ll at least give you the first line – “What do you call a blonde that is upside down”.  I am NOT giving you the answer though.  Not until the end of this blog.

And then the last show I watched was some juggling act that I thought was rather stupid. 

The guys went on to see another show, but I ditched them at that point to do a little shopping.  It’s too bad because it sounds like I would have enjoyed that show – it was some theatrical guy playing a piano-like instrument that had bells instead of strings.  I didn’t get any shopping done because the place is too damn big, and I couldn’t find the vendors I was looking for.  So instead, I stopped and got my palm read.  I’ve never done that before and have always been a bit leery about it.  So this old guy wearing a robe with a hood and lots of silver jewelry (he’s probably a stockbroker in real life) told me that I had good hands.  He said I was very practical which is true.  He said I never forgot anything (which is definitely not true since I couldn’t even remember to bring the Ren Fest ticket that I bought on Friday online with me to the actual festival).  He said that I like to set goals for myself which is true.  That I sometimes care too much what other people think about me (man, that’s definitely true).  And that I am generous and always willing to help out people (which is usually true).  No life changing information there, but still interesting.

The guys and I reconnected, and we all did a little shopping.  I found a very cool shop and bought a couple of very cool items, one of which I’m giving as a birthday present to someone soon.  Someone who reads this blog, so I can’t tell you want it is.  But it was very cool in a literary kind of way.

So now let me comment on the people there.  Or rather on the costumes some of the people were wearing.  The coolest thing I saw was an entire family dressed as skeletons.  They wore dressy antique-looking black clothing and then had their faces painted in white with skeleton features drawn with black paint.  They kept getting stopped so that people could take their pictures.  At that point I was wishing that I had brought along my digital camera.

There were a lot of swashbuckling pirate type guys, and for the most part they looked pretty cool with their hats with the long feathers.  And a lot of the women were wenches with bodices that had body parts struggling to emerge from the top of the bodice.  And that was okay too.  But there were definitely women there that needed to rethink their costumes and not show as many body parts as were shown.  A little less chain mail, please, and more white shirts with flowing sleeves perhaps.

There were other groups that were more into the whole barbarian look, but I didn’t really care to see so many women with tusks. 

And of course a very popular look was the whole vampire look.  Lots of that there.  I saw one guy with a tremendous painted-on wound on his neck that I thought was particular scary.  Of course it was even more scary when I realized he was not in costume and was instead sporting one hell of a hickey.

We finally left a little after dusk and got out of there with minimal traffic which according to the guys was a minor miracle. 

So, how did I come to be there in the first place?  Well, there’s this guy at work who I sort kinda have a crush on.  He’s an Aggie too.  And an engineer.  And pretty nerdy in a tremendously intelligent kind of way.  And we have struck up a friendship and usually have lunch together one day a week.  And he mentioned on Friday that he was going to the Ren Fest, and I then mentioned that I had never been.  So he asked if I wanted to go, and that was it.  Now, this guy does have a girlfriend that he talks about occasionally, but it sounds like a relationship that has almost run its course (she didn’t come with us on Saturday).  So I’m hanging around to see what happens.  Hopefully I won’t be the rebound girl.

So , I’ve wasted over 1400 words on this blog already when I should have been working on my novel.  Thanks to my friend Ayn Nys from the Women’s Writing Cooperative of Houston, I have decided to participate in the National Novel Writing Month (or Nanowrimo, for short).  It goes on during the month of November, and everyone who participates is trying to write at least 50,000 words (which would constitute a short novel).  Yes, that’s a lot of words.  And it’s a shame that I can’t use this blog in my novel.  Of course if the end of November approaches, and I’m off on my word count, I might reconsider and just start throwing all my blogs into the novel.  Except that would be cheating which I don’t want to do.  So far I am up to 3,332 words on my novel.  It’s a semi-autobiographical novel about a middle-aged single woman and her online dating adventures.  It’s called “Spicy, but Sweet” which is one of my profile tag lines on one of the Internet dating sites I use.  And yes, I do use real names.  And I’ve already talked about the time you stole Charles from me, Corina, you shameless vamp! J

Oh, I forgot to mention that I went on a ghost hunting tour Friday night with my friend Stacey’s husband Jeff.  We didn’t find any ghosts (at least none that made their presence known), but it was interesting to hear some of Houston’s history.  And I can’t wait to get back to the Spaghetti Warehouse because it smelled really yummy there.

A brunette with really bad breath

It’s just been one of those days.  You know those days where you don’t feel like doing anything productive?  Where you just want to be home taking a nap or reading a book or just being a couch potato in front of the TV?  That’s me today.

Yesterday I was tired because as usual I messed up my sleep pattern over the weekend.  I got off work early on Friday and went home and took a nap.  And then I also took a nap on Saturday.  And then Sunday morning I slept until 10:00 am.  So, of course, when I tried to get to sleep Sunday evening I just laid there and tossed and turned.  I finally got back up and turned on the light and planned out the details of a potential Christmas Tea at my house in December.  So it was probably after midnight before I finally got to sleep.

And then of course I slept through my alarm Monday morning and woke up at 7:30 am to my brother banging on my bedroom door.  The funny thing is that my orange cat Hagrid alerted my brother that there was something wrong downstairs.  He meowed incessantly and jumped on and off my brother’s bed until my brother got up and went downstairs to check things out.  I’ll have to start calling Hagrid “Lassie”. 

So I managed to get ready for work in 15 minutes (sponge bath – no makeup – glasses – hair up in a twist).  And then spent the rest of the day tired as I mentioned above.  Somehow I managed to talk myself into working out yesterday evening (I think it was guilt because I had not been to the gym in three weeks).  So I went and exercised on the EFX machine for 30 machines.  You know how all those health professionals tell you that to have more energy, you need to work out?  Even when you are too tired to work out?  Guess what?  They are right!!!  I had so much energy last night that I went food shopping for the writing retreat this weekend and then came home and got the food all organized in bags and then started working on my writing prompts for my writing exercise this weekend.  Unfortunately I had SO much energy that I couldn’t get to sleep.  So after tossing and turning again, I got up and started reading parts of Stephen King’s Danse Macabre which is what I’m using for my writing exercise this weekend.  This time it was almost 1:00 am before I got to sleep.  So guess what?  I’m tired again today.  Sigh….

I’ve been flirting all week with a sore throat, so I think I’ll just go home tonight (after my doctor’s appointment) and load up on Vitamin C and hit the sack.  I don’t want to come down sick right before the retreat.

I do want to share a great line from Stephen King’s book.  Danse Macabre was written by SK in the early 80’s, and it is his take on the horror genre from the years 1950-1980.  He addresses TV, radio and novels.  It’s one of my favorite SK books.  Anyway, in one part of the book he is talking about one of the archetypes of horror writing – the vampire.  He says that “according to popular legend, vampires are able to control lesser animals such as mice and rats (and possibly Republicans)”.  That line cracks me up every time. 

Things I have to be thankful for:

v  My best friend got great test results this week.

v  I got $20 in free gasoline yesterday.

v  I just ate chocolate cake – I’m always thankful for chocolate!

v  My staff gave me a plant and two nice cards for Boss’s Day.  And they are taking me to lunch!

v  My boss told me today that he wasn’t sure how he survived before I started working at WEST.

v  I’m going craft show shopping tomorrow with two of my favorite people.

v  I have a great job with a company that I like.  And I get to work with fun people. 

v  Bunko is this weekend.

v  I’m 5-0 in my fantasy football league.

v  My dad and step-mother are healthy and coming to visit soon.

v  My step-brother cleans the cat litter box for me.

v  The weather outside is cool and breezy.

v  I have a new red car!

v  Barack Obama is President (deal with it, people)

v  I live in the best state in the best country in the world.

v  I have two cats that snuggle with me every night.

v  I’m going ghost hunting in a couple of weeks.

v  It’s only the second month of football season.

v  Christmas is a little over two months away.

There was definitely no labor going on in my house over the weekend as I was a complete slug.  Well, I did have a date and I did do laundry, but other than that I wasted a lot of time on the Internet.  I had finally saved up enough coins on Farm Town to purchase a farm house (300,000 coins!!), so I had to rearrange everything to make room for the house and the picket fence.  I bought one dog house too, although I think I have about 8-9 dogs on the farm.  After that I played a lot of Farkle, and then I found a complex solitaire game on Facebook that kept me occupied for several hours Sunday night/Monday morning.

So let’s catch up on the dating situation, shall we?  As you recall I met a guy on BBWPersonals a few weeks ago that turned out to be a big fat liar.  But I persevered and have maintained my profile on that site.  So after I found out about the big fat liar, I sent a smile to a cute guy that lives in Magnolia, and he and I had been emailing back and forth on the site.  He finally sent me his cell phone number last week, and I was all excited about talking to him.  Except that when we had our first conversation, he seemed a little odd.  Like maybe he had a speech impediment or something.  Well, that’s no big deal.  But then he seemed forgetful too – like we would discuss something one minute and two minutes later he would have already forgotten our discussion.  So this seemed a little strange to me.  During our second conversation he disclosed that he had a condition that he had been born with and that this condition did affect his voice and made him forgetful.  Okay, that seemed reasonable to me, but not to my brother who thought this guy was hiding something.  So I got the guy to tell me the name of the condition, and then I did my research on WebMD.  Wow – was my brother right!!  It turns out the condition is really a severe side effect from older antipsychotic drugs that were used to treat schizophrenia.  So now I’m certainly a little leery about continuing this conversation with this guy, and my brother is fairly adamant that I not continue the conversation.  I’m torn – I hate to judge someone who has been able to deal successfully with a major problem in his life, but at the same time I’m not sure I’m up to adding this complex situation into my life.  So that one is on the back burner right now.

In the meantime I chatted with another guy from the site a couple of hours Thursday night, and we made a date for Saturday night.  This guy is a football coach at Houston Reagan, and by all means seemed very normal.  The date actually went very well, and we had tentative plans to meet up again on Monday.  At this point however I started acting like I was from Venus which offended his Martian sensibilities.  He specifically told me that he had not had company over to his place in a while, and that it was pretty junky.  So being a woman and all, I just suggested to him that he clean it up before I came over on Monday.  At that point he stopped responding to my emails or my phone calls.  My brother translated for me and said that the guy was really wanting me to tell him that it was okay that he lived in a pig sty and that it was more important for me to get to know him as a person than to be concerned with the amount of dirt and untidiness in his place. Okay, whatever.  I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a guy who is on a dating site looking for women to try and clean his place up a bit.  I certainly hope he wasn’t expecting that I was going to come over and clean it up for him (because I’ve done that once before against my better judgment).   So that guy is off of the radar now, so I’m pretty much back to square one.

I hope everyone makes it through this week okay – the cool thing about having a Monday holiday is that it is immediately followed by a 4 day week!

I think I turned my brain off this weekend, and I’m desperately searching for the button to turn it on this morning.  I did have a brief flicker of activity when I was driving in when I remembered that I was supposed to get a money order for work this weekend (which I did not do).  Plus I was supposed to get a new book of checks to put in my purse (because I need to write someone at work a check), and I forgot to do that too.  So I stopped by Kroger at 7:45 to get two money orders, and of course that section wasn’t open.  So I went ahead and drove to Brookshire and stopped by the post office down the street from my job, and of course (since it’s Brookshire), the post office window doesn’t open until 9:00 a.m.   So I’ll be running back out in 30 minutes to get two postal money orders.  It seems like the older I get, the more my brain seems to go on the fritz.  I keep looking in the mirror closely every day to make sure I don’t have blonde hair coming in.

So here’s my review of “Inglourious Basterds”:  bizarre.  Well, it was a typical Quentin Tarintino movie, so from that perspective it was completely normal.  There were some very funny parts in it, most of which came courtesy of Brad Pitt.  And then there were a whole lot of graphic scenes courtesy of the NRA, I suppose.  Mike Myers had a bit part which was totally strange because it wasn’t a funny part.  Thanks to Rex for a very nice evening – I promise not to tell anyone that you are a sweet guy.

I did see some interesting previews for upcoming movies.  The one I remember the most was for a movie called “Wolfman” (I think) that looks like it will be extremely cool.  The only strange part is that it is being released on February 12.  Ummm, just in time for Valentine’s Day???  It seems like a Halloween release would make more sense, but okay, I’ll go with it.  I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day anyways.

I must have had a bad dream after the movie Saturday night because I fell out of bed.  I haven’t fallen out of bed in a very long time, and that was a completely different situation which really isn’t appropriate to describe in my PG-rated blog. 

I had my fantasy football draft yesterday afternoon and was extremely surprised that I had drawn the top spot.  That meant I got to draft first, so I took Adrian Peterson, the running back with the Minnesota Vikings.  My other main running back is Marion Barber with the Dallas Cowboys.  And my quarterback is Phillip Rivers with the San Diego Chargers.  My back-up quarterback is Matt Schaub with the Texans – I had to have at least one Texan on my team.  The Texans play the Vikings tonight in preseason, so I’ll have to check it out and see how well Adrian does.

It’s time for me to head back to the Brookshire post office, so I gotta run.