Lewt-mas

Well I hope everybody had a good holiday weekend. I sure did even in spite of coming down sick for the second freaking time this year! I had a total of three days off, so that was nice. Saturday I spent baking; I tried my hand at making candy. I made mint chocolate truffles drizzled with a little white chocolate. They turned out pretty damn good if you ask me. Oh, and I made lasagne too. I added zucchini instead of meat because my roommate, Steve, is a non-meatatarian. It was also tasty.

Sunday I went up to my dad's to visit and I spent the night there. He lives in a modular/mobile home that while v. nice is still pretty small. Since I never actually lived there I don't have a room of my own. Hence I get to have the bottom bunk in my (half)brother's room. Well I get it after I kick all the stuffed dinosaurs out of it. They take up about 3 feet of a bed that is not very big to begin with. My futon might not be the most comfortable bed, but at least I can roll over without falling out. So I evicted the dinos, curled up under the pokemon blanket, and went to sleep. I was the first one up in the morning, apparently I was more excited about christmas morning than my nine-year-old brother. Jeez, we never slept in when I was his age; crack of dawn and we were up.

We opened presents there. Then we went to my Uncle's to visit with my dad's family. There were heaps of food and more presents. Then I dashed up to another Uncle's house to visit with my mom's family. Oh, and to get even more presents. My mom gave me a shit-ton of stuff. And believe me, I'm not complaining, I'm just establishing that it was somewhat unexpected. So here's a run down of the spoils of xmas:

::Clothes
::A Game Boy Micro and some games (it really is tiny, but the screen quality is amazing; especially for someone who had both the original GameBoy and Nintendo, and an Atari)
::Various DVDs including Serenity, Venture Brothers Season 1, the Simpsons Season 1, and Arrested Developement Season 3
::Book case
::Candles (you gotta have candles) and assorted kitchen thingies like a pizza cutter so sharp it needs a sheath and a cooking stone and two different sets of goblets
::A Tao, no not enlightment silly, its a digital photo keychain. Holds 56 or 62 photos, depencing on which side of the box you're reading.
::Two fluffy pillows
::Drawing supplies

So that's my list o' loot. Hope Santa brought you everything on your list. ;)

If I were smart I'd be sleeping

Truth of the matter is that I have trouble falling asleep. If left to my own devices my sleep cycle will gradually drift later and later until I end up going to bed around 3 or4 and getting up no sooner than noon. This presents a problem in that I have to be to work by 7am three days a week.

And I can't do anything about changing my schedule to give myself a break from working early anymore. I'd love to take a month off of doing it. However, I just got [Fanfare] promoted(exclamation point). One of the requirements of said new position is working no less than 3 of the morning shifts in a week. Oh well. Good news is I get/got a raise. Six percent in fact, which works out to be the largest single raise I've ever received. I get some other perks, people below me having to actually do what I tell them (because I'm right dammit) not being the least.

Receiveing a extremely high degree of sweetitude is the fact that after a year I'm going to get two weeks of paid vacation. [The last time I had more than four days off from all work was 2001 (a week) and a week in '00.] Now I got promoted last week which means I'll hit the one year mark around mid December '07. At that point I will be eligible for two weeks of vacation in 2007, but that vacation has to be used by the end of the year or I'll lose it. By my calculations this means that I will have to take the last two weeks of December off next year. Two weeks in a row of paid vacation falling in the last half of December....*happy girly squeal*...yeah, it's that fucking sweet.

Sparkly Stuff

I'll catch hell for this...

But there's nothing for it. I can't spend an evening watching tv this close to xmas without being inudated by commercials from jewelers for all sorts of diamondy baubles. And I have to say it, there are so many things I would prefer to get instead of diamond jewelry. Jeez, hundreds or thousands of dollars on some little rocks. I still sleep on a futon for fuck's sake. How 'bout hooking me up with a mattress. Or a flat screen tv. I'm not trying to be shallow, I just can't imagine being at a point in my life where I'd be like "Yay! Diamonds!"

I don't even like diamonds.

That's not to say I totally eschew all jewelry. I just like other things. I try to pick original pieces when I buy jewelry. For example I have this awesome hematite necklace. The pendant is a dragon carved from a piece of camel bone (don't worry they don't kill the camel [nasty buggers anyway from my understanding]; what happens is in certain countries they don't bury the camel when it dies [too close to sea-level], they leave it out in the desert for the scavengers and the sun dries the bones). And that's much cooler than some clear sparkly pebbles.

Me gusta la comida de El Zarape

Yesterday my good friend Colonel Eggroll and I went to have lunch at one of our favorite eateries, El Zarape, or as we sometimes affectionately refer to it "the rape". It's one of my favorites, the best Mexican food evAR. In spite of its popularity we never have to wait for a table, the food is delicious, the prices are good, the servers are friendly, and I've only waited more than 15 minutes for my meal once (on a friday night when the place was packed wall to wall). After receiving our chips and salsa we gave our order to the lady who usually waits on us, a very nice, soft spoken middle aged woman.

We were about half-way through our meals when two couples were seated in the booth directly behind us. We've all had it happen, there are other open tables, but they put people right next to each other. It wouldn't have annoying except one of the two guys was a loud douchebag. He was talking loudly about what to order, the others ordered right away. Thig guy seemed to have trouble deciphering what the dishes were, in spite of the fact that they all have a description right under them. When the waitress came back he was like "I want some Menudo!" She was talking to them and the douchebag suddenly says "what did all the cooks here get deported?" Let me establish that all the people who work there are hispanic/latino/proper-pc-term-for-anyone-from-Mexico, Central, or Latin America. I heard the waitress say "What??" And he repeated it! and just as he finished one of the cooks came out with some plates and the douche says "oh here's one now!" Col. E and I about died. The saddest thing about the whole ordeal was that there were three other people with the guy who were just like "whatever" about the situation. I wouldn't have blamed her for braining him with one of those heavy, hot plates they use.

busy but not productive

Ok I apologize for a lack of posts lately and I super apologize for the utter lack of new additions to the comic. It must be the curse of the holiday season that starting two weeks ago my life got busy. But as the amount of busy increased the amount of actual stuff getting done decreased. There's all this socializing going on.

Good news is that I'm almost done with my xmas shopping. The only people I have left are the hardest ones. You would think that my closest friends would be easy to shop for, I know what they like, but this is apparently not the case. Oh and what do you get a two-year-old? I barely remember being two, so that doesn't really help.