"Life's Just a Cocktail Party on the Street.."

I dreamed very vividly last night of a large, beautiful, bright red bird with a striking yellow beak and yellow talons landing on Nolan's right shoulder (no idea where he and I were or what we were doing... but that didn't seem important as I actually "said" to myself inside my mind as I was dreaming this that I needed to remember to look up the meaning of birds in dreams --and particularly red ones-- once I woke up). In the dream I had my camera with me and the bird was spreading its wings somewhat in a very beautiful and amazing pose right there on Nolan's shoulder, but by the time I dropped everything I was carrying and lifted the camera to take the photo, it had closed its wings and refused to reopen them. LOL (figures!)

Right then, the girl next door left for school and her squeaky front gate woke me up. :/

Unfortunately, I'm not a "bird" person, so have no idea what KIND of bird was in my dream or even if it *was* a species of actual bird or something my subconscious simply concocted. But this is what I found on the net:

To dream of a chirping and/or flying birds, represents joy, harmony, ecstasy, balance, and love. It denotes a sunny outlook in life. You will experience spiritual freedom and psychological liberation. It is almost as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders.

Red is an indication of raw energy, force, vigor, intense passion, aggression, power, courage and passion. The color red has deep emotional and spiritual connotations.

Red is also the color of danger, shame, sexual impulses and urges. Perhaps you need to stop and think about your actions.

The color yellow has both positive and negative connotations. If the dream is a pleasant one, then the color yellow is symbolic of intellect, energy, agility, happiness, harmony, and wisdom.

Don't have time to delve further right now.... Heading outta town for the rest of the weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who may happen upon this entry... and the same to those who don't. :)

Rhonda

Stolen from . Thank you for giving me something OTHER than work to do for the last half hour of this work day. Bless you woman!

Name Four Bad Habits You Have:
1. talking too much
2. biting my fingernails
3. procrastinating
4. taking silly quizzes

Name Four Things That You Wish You Had:
1. a houseboy
2. a waspish waistline
3. copious amounts of spare cash
4. a work-at-home job

Name Four Scents You Love:
1. fresh pine
2. my weenie dog
3. nag champa
4. rain

Name Four Things You'd Never Wear:
1. suspenders
2. leopard-print ANYthing
3. a banana clip
4. panties

Name Four Things You Are Thinking About Now:
1. that coming up with answers for this quiz is turning out to be way harder than it should be for something meant as an idle passing of my time :p
2. all the things I have to get done in the next couple days/weeks and trying to keep it all straight in my head
3. that i'd rather be home finishing the new Sandman book
4. that needing to run 2 hrs+ of errands before going home after a 9-hour workday really fucking sucks

Name Four Things That You Have Done Today:
1. listened to Android Lust's "The Dividing" album.. again.
2. started writing out umpteen lists to keep all my shit straight :p (now I need a master list to keep track of all my lists)
3. met with some high schoolers who will be dual enrolling at UF in the Spring
4. a LOT of friggin' typing :p

Name the Last Four Things You Have Bought:
1. cold medicine
2. The Ultimate Book of Kids Concoctions
3. The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Melancholy Stories by Tim Burton
4. a paper airplane making kit with colored paper, stickers and a book of different kinds of planes to make

Name Four Drinks You Regularly Drink:
1. coffee (with cinnamon/vanilla OR hazlenut creamer)
2. water
3. Ciclon (rum/vodka mixed liquor)
4. Cherry Coke

Last Song You Sang?
"The Hardest Button to Button" - White Stripes

Last Person You Hugged?
my little boy

Last Thing You Laughed At?
Jory last night when he made a whip sound effect when I glared at Mike and told him NOT to be telling Jory it was okay to feed food he didn't want from his dinner to the dog :p

Last Time You Said 'I Love You' And Meant It?
Half an hour ago.

Last Time You Cried?
August
(actually... got a bit teary eyed during Sean Penn's performance in Mystic River at the movie theater a couple of weeks ago too, if that counts)

What's In Your CD Player?
at home: Tori Amos "Tales of a Librarian"; at work: Godsmack "Faceless"

What Color Socks Are You Wearing?
none

What's Under Your Bed?
no clue

What Time Did You Wake Up Today?
too early (7am)

Current Taste?
taste? wtf kinda question is that?! I always have good taste... currently and... otherwise. :p

Current Hair?
blonde, dark blonde, dark brown and red. rather streakish. much <3 for my hairdresser!

Current Clothes?
blue jeans, long-sleeved, cotton, navy blue shirt, loafers

Current Annoyance?
too many things going on all at once for me to feel like i'm keeping up with ANY of it

Current Longing?
to be relaxing in the sun on a floaty in warm shallow water next to a grass hut in Bora Bora while gripping some fruity alcoholic concoction with umbrella adornment in EACH of my hands -- a lazy, content smile playing upon my lips -- the waves lapping idlely in the background -- my favorite person lounging contentedly right beside me

Current Desktop Picture?
at home: a photo I took of a field of wildflowers on some friends' property
at work: a photo Nolan took at Westminster Abbey in London a couple of weeks ago

Current Worry?
Why does Bobby McFerrin immediately come to mind?

Current Hate?
As much as I seem to be bitching about shit lately, I really hate to focus on the negative

Favorite Physical Feature Of The Opposite Sex?
eyes

Last CD You Bought?
Tori Amos - Tales of a Librarian

Favorite Place To Be?
whereever I am at the time!

Least Favorite Place?
work

If You Could Play An Instrument?
well I *do* play the sax and the flute, but if I could play anything else, it would definitely be guitar.

Favorite Color?
dark green

Current Favorite Word/Saying?
fah from this op-er-uh forevuh mo!
LEM!
buttafuoco

Favorite Season?
Autumn

One Person From Your Past You Wish You Could Go Back And Talk To:
best friend from high school

Favorite Day?
i dunno. i take them as they come, on an individual basis. trying to lump all wednesdays or all fridays together in general doesn't work for me.

Where Would You Like To Go?
to Wichita?
off the rail on a crazy train?
to hell in a hand basket?
(maybe just refer to the "current longing" response above)

What Is Your Career Going To Be Like?
you make it sound as if I don't yet have one.
hmm... I guess I am a 30-something who is somehow hooked on taking little teeny-bopper quizzes. go figure.

How Many Kids Do You Want?
1 is incredible, but 2 would be groovy. 3? Overkill.

Favorite Car?
Jag-yoo-ahr

A Random Lyric:
What kind of cartwheels do I have to pull?
What kind of joke should I lay on her now?
Im inclined to go finish high school
Just to make her notice that Im around
-- "I Want to Be The Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart" - the White Stripes

Work's been a bitch the past few days. Busy as hell. Mind-numbing.

Trying to finish xmas shopping for our family xmas on Dec 12th. I'm *not* finished and other than tonight/tomorrow night, I won't get another chance to do anything further until next WEEK sometime and then that's only one week away from the actual gathering. Jeezus, I *really* need to hire a houseboy to take care of all these little errands for me.

Trying to input all this damned data for this project at work by its deadline. Oh wait. That deadline was Friday, wasn't it? Yeah. It was. And to that I say, "DEATH TO ALL PEOPLE WHO HAVE EVER SUBMITTED SOMETHING ON THE LAST POSSIBLE DATE OF THE DEADLINE WHEN THEY'VE KNOWN FOR MONTHS IN FUCKING ADVANCE THAT IT WAS DUE ON THAT DAY!!! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!" Okay... hrm. I wonder why I don't feel better now? :P

Trying to keep track of what I'm helping my mom with as far as our Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday and what I need to get at the store to get ready for the campout which follows the Tgiving dinner.

Trying to keep track of the shit I need to pack up from around the house and the chores (like laundry) that I need to get done before we go.

Trying to help my mom and my sister with ideas for Christmas presents for other people in our family when I don't even know what I'm getting them yet.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I usually love Christmas time and have always enjoyed buying gifts for friends/family, no matter the time of year, but this year is ON MY NERVES.

Okay.. I'm sounding pretty damned bitchy. I need to chill and relax and try to get some enjoyment out of all of this or else I might just blow a gasket. I think once I actually get OUT of the workplace and AWAY from this crapass environment and am actually kicking back at mom and dad's (wed/thurs) and then out camping with my sister and the oodles of friends who will be out there on the Peace River (thurs/fri/sat/sun), I've GOT to chill at least a LITTLE, right?! We'll be camping on the PEACE River for heaven's sake.

Deep breaths, Rhonda! Focus! <---- feeling like Eddy on Ab/Fab. I need Patsy to show up with a case of champagne and a jeweled make-up bag full of assorted pharmaceuticals.

Also thought this looked interesting... Stolen from , one of the most talented chiquitas I know, who stole it from someone else. Wheeee! Gotta love the LJ community of quiz addicts and pilferers! Course, I tend to babble on, so one-word answers from this girl are few and far between!

First real kiss: 11 yrs. old.

First job: Pharmacy Clerk at an Eckerd Drug store. I lied and said I was 16, even though my birthday wasn't for two more months. :p

First screen name: Draovne (Before "Rho", some called me "Ron" and at the time I was dating a guy named "Dave". You do the math. Yes, I realize now how incredibly DORKY that was!)

First self purchased album: I answered all the other questions and had to come back to this one and I STILL am unsure what to put here (as to accuracy). I remember the first CDs bought FOR me... My brother got me a stereo with a CD player when they'd just come out and were all the rage... rofl... (STFU!) and he bought me Led Zep IV, The Firm, and INXS - Listen Like Thieves. But the first thing I bought for mySELF? Dayum. That's a toughie. It woulda been on cassette... and something from the era of Def Leppard - Hysteria, ZZ Top - Eliminator, or John Cougar - Hurt So Good. I'm really not certain on this.

First funeral: Jenny Jackson. Girl in my 8th grade class who died in a car accident.

First pets: Sheepdog named "Yogi"

First piercing: both ears. Age 6.

First true love: Sean Robinson. Married him at 17. It got really ugly after that. :p

First big trip: Traveled a LOT by car as a young girl, but my first plane flight alone somewhere was to NYC at age 11 (to visit my Uncle)

Last big car ride: Nine hours (one way) up to Helen, GA to go camping in the mountains... just last week!

Last kiss: Last night when I kissed my little boy goodnight.

Last good cry: August. (My Uncle died of brain cancer about 6 months ago and my Aunt came to visit in August for my grandmother's 90th birthday. I saw her walking alone on the beach and realized it was the first time I could really remember *ever* seeing her without my Uncle by her side and .. imagined perhaps she was thinking some of that same thing herself...)

Last movie seen: "Master and Commander", just last night. Ehh.... it was -OKAY- Last *really* good movie seen? Mystic River, without a doubt!

Last beverage drunk: Ciclon (a rum/tequila liquor) with raspberry seltzer and a sprig of lime

Last food consumed: French Fries

Last phone call: Work related... someone calling in with a question about one of our programs. Outgoing: Nolan, last night.

Last TV show watched: Half-watched West Wing last night, long enough to hear Leo say "Desperate times call for desperate measures" which led to over 30 mins of internet searching to find the origin of that quote. 30 mins is a long time to look for something "so commonly heard" on the Internet. And that, apparently, was my problem. It's been around for so long and used by so many people that I came across multiple references where other frustrated searchers were ranting about their difficulties in locating its origin. Turns out it's been around from the 1500's... (found from law-lib on the UC-Davis website: This is a variant of the proverb "Desperate diseases must have desperate remedies." This goes back to the Latin _extremis malis extrema remedia_
'extreme remedies for extreme ills.' The earliest English version given by the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs is the following:

1539 R. Taverner tr. _Erasmus' Adages_ 4 A stronge disease requyreth a
stronge medicine.

Butt! it was Abraham Lincoln who probably made it the most famous in his speech to suspend the writ of habeus corpus during the Civil War (which I found earlier this morning :P... yes... the friggin thing PLAGUED me! Only goes to cement my feelings that TV is evil! EVIL, I say! haha)

Last shoes worn: Converse

Last CD played: The White Stripes, "White Blood Cells"

Last item bought: Groceries

Last disappointment: Being too late to really witness the 'changing of the leaves' during our camping trip up to north Georgia last week.

Last soda drunk: Cherry Coke

Last ice cream eaten: Uhmmm... I just realized it's been WAY too long since I last ate any ice cream! But if I could have any ice cream that I wanted RIGHT THIS SECOND... I'd have me some Ben & Jerry's "Chunky Monkey". Awwww yeah.

Last shirt worn: A t-shirt from one of my work's summer programs called "Science Quest"

I just got an email from a good friend who is in Afghanistan. sigh.

He played in my rpg for about 6 months before deploying back in June (he's Canadian). He and i talked EVERY night on icq and were very good friends. I have been writing him ever since June when he first left and only heard back from him once. It's been difficult to continue writing to him not knowing if he's okay... if he'd been getting my letters or not (since i hadn't heard back from him), etc. I'd been plugging along anyways, hoping that since everything was being routed through his parents' address that at least SOMEone would get in touch with me if something terribly bad happened.

Here's what he wrote to me today .... :(

Words cannot express how sorry I am I have not kept in touch with you. We're still here for awhile, things are not going well. I seem to have no time, and a list of excuses as long as my arm why I couldn't send you mail back.

I have read everything you have sent me, and each successive letter my guilt grows and grows, because I have not written you back. As you may or may not know, two of my good friends were killed by a landmine a short time ago. Things are very real here, I can't really explain it any better than that. I miss home, and idle cares like your RPG quite a bit.

I have no time, as usual. computer use is very restricted. Again, I apologize. I'm so sorry I haven't sent you letter back. I feel so guilty, I found it hard to sleep last night, to be honest. That's why I had to send you this e-mail. I hope I can get something off soon. Maybe Saturday when we come in agian.

I hope I get home. We're scheduled to deploy back soon.

Talk to you later,

Paul


sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........

And here was my somewhat cathartic reply... though I still feel utterly lousy and sad regardless.:

I just wrote you a very long letter yesterday... hadn't posted it yet and it's long overdue... then got this note from you.

As fucked up as it seems, hearing your 'news' and the awfully somber tone of your note, at least I know you're there. You don't owe me anything, be it letters in return or apologies for having much more important and pressing matters at hand. I could never begin to understand what it is like for you there and I wouldn't dare belittle it by make a feeble attempt at assuming I could ever come close.

I miss you Paul. I miss you very, very much. It's been weird here... knowing things have to be so fucked up over there for you and trying to figure what the hell to write to you that doesn't sound absolutely stupid and trivial. I've wanted to keep writing to you, but my life is just the every day bullshit, you know? In the past month I've started several letters to you and threw them away because I felt dumb just prattling on about things going on in my life that are SO far removed from what is going on in yours. I didn't want to make you feel like what you are doing is unimportant or yesterday's news... or that I could truly think that you would find my tales of everyday life anything even remotely important. In the overall scope of things... I am (as we all are) just microscopic cogs in the catastrophic wheel that is... whatever the fuck it is we're doing in the world, as a whole, with ourselves, with each other, with the earth that we share.

Anyways... I'm zoning out and I don't want to do that... Sorry.

I did pound out a letter to you yesterday... just tales of everyday this and that. I can only hope that maybe it does you good to read about mundane triviality on occasion. A little escapism, if you will. I will post it tomorrow.

Much love and a million tiny kisses blown your way... shall you catch them and hold them close to you, stow them away in your pockets and satchels; hide them inside your kerchiefs and tuck them inside your boots so that when you most need one, you can easily retrieve it and hold it close to your heart before touching it softly to your lips and letting it loose again, feather-light and free to float away, to soar across the sand and sea retracing its original trajectory until it finds its way home to me.

I'll catch it when it gets here.

Miss you SO much. I truly do.

Rhonda

If anyone out there would like to write a note or contribute something (or ideas for somethings) I could mail to him while he's sticking it out over there, please forward to me and I will get it to him. I'm sure he'd appreciate as many ways as possible to think about something ELSE from time to time....

Dreams!! OMG! AGAIN.... total weirdness going on in my subconscious last night. This dream SEEMED like it musta lasted all night long, though in reality it was probably only 5 minutes of real time. haha! Funky how that is.

This time it was a HUGE party at my sister and her husband's for his 50th birthday (he *did* just turn 50, so that part was right, but they live in a tiny 500 sq. ft. condo on the beach and in this dream they had a huge-ass country home with a barn out back and the party took up the whole house, the yard, the barn... rofl.. there musta been 300 people there).

I'll spare you *all* the details (there are *lots* of them!), but one of the weirder points was the fact that I ran into "Sofie" (from the HBO series Carnivale) at this party. ROFL. She was drunk off her ass and NOT a very happy person. She was wigging over her mother because of the recent events in the show where **SPOILER ALERT** she thinks that her mother is going crazy and has only recently been unable to hide certain 'thoughts/images' from Sofie (the mother is catatonic but somehow speaks to Sofie telepathically... rofl.. yeah, i know.. weird!) and Sofie has just recently discovered that although her mother has 'told' her all along that her father up and left them years ago... what REALLY happened was he was just some fuckwad who raped Sofie's mother and that's how Sofie came to be. Sofie had a whole visual of the rape scene projected to her from her mother (unintentionally... she's been hiding the truth from Sofie all these years, after all) and it totally freaked her out... (understandably so!)

And... this party in my dream is basically a couple of days after that happened to her. ROFL! So Sofie's drunk off her ass and BEYOND distraught... and *I* bump into her, of course, and recognize her (though I only know her from the show... rofl... which obviously is fictitious, but there's a whole blend of fact/fiction going on) and start talking to her and it turns into this whole ordeal where I feel so much empathy and pain for her and what she's going through.

FUNKAY!

Okay... enough of that. I *have* to get some work done. haha.

Toodle-ooze!

was talking about some of his dreams in one of his recent LJ entries and that got me to thinking (again!) about the round of dreams I had last night. HOO BOY! I know everyone dreams, but I typically never seem to remember mine.. or only very rarely anyways.

Well, Mike's been homebrewing his own beer for about a year or so now (and even rootbeer with Jory! haha) and so he made this mesh bag full of hops to hang from the headboard of our bed. Hops are supposed to make dreams more vivid (and who knows what else they do to ya!) and since he hung it there a little over a week ago, I'm suddenly remembering my dreams at least 5 nights a week when I used to recall what I dreamt only like once every few months. Funkay!

So last night I remember a whole slew of things from my personal little dream world... Dreams are SO cool, too, and I always feel a little jealous when friends or coworkers recount these crazy dreams they've had and I hardly ever seem to remember mine. Now I'm starting to remember them! Yippee!

[A little aside here though... The rare dreams I do remember having from the past, were *often* lucid dreams. Dunno what bearing that may have on the recall or whatever... if any!... but... lucid dreams are the bomb! I totally find myself analyzing my dream and snickering about it or making mental comments to myself inside my head while I'm dreaming. Pretty cool. hehe. And yeah... weird. But \/\/! Just about everything *else* about me is weird... why not this too?]

So last night... I remember three dreams in particular and both of my parents were in every single one of them. In the first, we were going on a family road trip in my mom's van and she was driving. We're tooling along down some two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere just chatting away and apparently there had been signs saying "road ends ahead" or whatever, but neither my mom, nor myself (riding in the back), or anyone ELSE in the car noticed these signs... LOL... And the next thing I know, the road just kinda melds right into this huge body of water that is a very large LAKE! Mom's still chattering away... following the road driving *right* on into this lake and I start yelling at her "MOM! WAIT! STOP! LAKE!" hahahahaha.... Just far enough into the lake for her to realize wtf had happened she tries to turn the car around in the water and it starts to sink and the water is gurgling and bubbling up around us and stuff. haha. WEIRD!

THEN... I had this dream that I was on ANOTHER trip with my mom (wtf?) and we're driving along... Except in *this* dream I had two little sisters (around age 7 or 8) but they weren't my real sisters; they were foster children or something and they fought and picked at one another all of the time. Just the basic bickering siblings do, I guess. They were both pretty good kids underneath it all, but one was much sweeter than the other (who had a bit of a mean streak in her). Well one day (apparently this "road trip" was a multi-day trip.. rofl), the two got into a pretty nasty little spat and the less sweet of the two little girls said something about poisoning the other sister if she didn't start acting nicer to her. She was appropriately scolded for making such threats, of course... and the dream progressed onward.

Well on day ... who knows what.. of this neverending road trip (haha!), it was the day after the two had had another pretty vicious squabble for which the nastier of the two little girls had gotten into a good amount of trouble for. Well all of a sudden the sweeter of the two (they were riding side by side in the backseat while my mother was driving and i was in the passenger seat) doubles over in pain clutching her stomach. She turned a horrible shade of pale and looked sick as a dog, emitting these moans and clutching at her stomach. Immediately I remember the other girl threatening to poison her if she wasn't nicer to her and I look over at her (the meaner one) and she *seems* genuinely concerned for the one in pain and I feel horribly guilty for having even considered that the meaner one might have been responsible in any way for what was going on with the sweeter one. Weird! Somehow, inside though, I KNEW something was up but it wasn't the kind of thing you could actually voice aloud, because... what if you WERE wrong about it? That would just be horrible!!

Then we spent the next who knows how long driving around trying to find the hospital in this town we didn't know our way around (cuz we were on a roadtrip and not near home). I don't really remember anything after that. Hopefully we found the hospital and the little girl was okay and hopefully she wasn't actually poisoned by the other girl after all! ROFL

THEN! (good god my subconscious was busy last night!!) I had a dream that I was going camping with my family. Again.. my mom and dad, myself, and some boyfriend I had who was not someone I recognize having ever known. We had a boat and it was being pulled behind our car. We parked as we arrived at the entrance to the campground and my parents got out to go inside to check in. My bf and I also got out of the car and were just standing nearby chit-chatting, hanging out waiting, and out of the blue a car comes up behind the boat and doesn't stop and just rams right into it. LOL. My bf and I saw the whole thing and we were freaking out! And then the car just backed up and took off. We were shouting for them to stop and trying to get close enough to get a license tag #, but it didn't happen. And... I don't remember anything else after that.

How odd though. My parents were in all of the dreams and they all involved cars. hahaha! And we were traveling somewhere or out of town in all three of the dreams. Any dream analysis people out there ready to tackle this stuff?? ;)

*YAWN*

Well, the baby shower on Saturday was a huge success. Wheeeee! And the mother-to-be LOVED the time capsule idea. People brought some pretty fun stuff to stick in there. I was wishing someone had done something like that for me when I was a baby so I'd have something cool to open up and go through years later. Neat.

I made my first batch of home-made hummus over the weekend and MAN was it good!! It's SO MUCH CHEAPER to make it yourself than it is to buy it already prepared. Athenos makes some tasty hummus varieties, most certainly, but $2.99 for 8 oz of hummus? Funk dat chit! For the same amount of money I whipped up 6x that amount in less than ten minutes. Hell yeah! I'm making another batch tonight... this time I'm gonna add in some roasted red pepper along with the garlic I love so dearly. ;) Nummy!

Work is pretty busy today, but that's making time seem to go by faster so I'm all about that. We have some registration deadlines coming up (this Friday and again on Dec 5th) that will require a lot of data entry from me and payment processing and follow-up, etc., so things are really going to start picking up here. I have mixed feelings about that! LOL It's good to be busy enough that the days go by faster, but bad that I won't have as much time to be getting paid while i'm screwing around doing a bunch of personal shit online. haha!

Looking forward to meeting for the first time when she flies down this Wednesday. I've known her online for over a year now from playing EverQuest together and we have so much in common and have done so much talking over the past year that I feel like I've *already* met her! Should be both interesting and fun, I'm sure, and I'm really looking forward to getting to hang out in person. Wheeeeeeeee!

Because Nolan and I switch off years on who gets Jory at Christmas (and this year Jory will be with Nolan), my family will be having our "Christmas" together early. The weekend of Dec. 13-14th, to be exact. ACK! That means I have almost two weeks LESS to get my shopping done... but it also means that I'll be all done and kicking back when most of the rest of the Christmas-celebrating world are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, karate chopping people over that last spongebob doll on the shelf and all that.

I'm stuck, though, for gift ideas for some of the people on my shopping list. Ugh! And it's always the same people I get stuck on year after year! What's up with that?! I need some good "guy" gift suggestions... like for my brother-in-law and my dad. Anybody have any good gift and novelty-type websites bookmarked that you'd be willing to share with me? Good funny tshirt sites? Just... you know... COOL sites that sell... *stuff*? LOL Yes, I'm begging for ideas. hehe

Okay... enough dawdling on the ole LJ. Back to work! *mental crack of the whip*

Uhmmmm... I'm back! The trip was a lot of fun, though somehow more stressful than it should've been (or than I expected it to be). Hence... I think I could use a few more days' vacation time to recover from my vacation. But isn't that always how it goes? haha!

Recovering from my absence today at work was not so bad. Yesterday was a U.S. holiday and last Friday was UF's homecoming, so most UF offices were closed. That really only left me "missing" Monday...and apparently not too much went down at the workplace on Monday, so... I was happy when I arrived at my workstation this morning to find it uncluttered with "must be done immediately" notes and messages and memos. Yeefuckinghaw! Things will really be picking up there in about a week, though, and I'll be pining for these recent days of nothingness (that I bitch about now for lack of anything else to really do!) But.. then it will be Thanksgiving week and I'm taking the Wednesday before off... so that will be a nice little out-and-about to split up the oppressive blah-ness which work always seems to create in so short a time spent there. :P

This Saturday I'm throwing a baby shower for a girlfriend from work. Her baby is due December 8th and is a little girl she plans to name Hannah. I just adore that name. How preciousssssssssssssssss!!! I came up with the idea (by stealing it from some sites on baby showers that I read on the Internet! haha!) to have all of the guests bring items to contribute to a Time Capsule for the baby. I thought it might be fun to make a cd of Billboard's current Top 10 singles and maybe tape a few shows like an epi of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central as well as an actual news broadcast and maybe something like "Friends" or "Survivor". Think the poor girl will be able to find a VHS player to play the thing on in 15 or 20 years when she opens up the capsule? LOL. If any of you out there have fun and interesting ideas on other possible items to include in the capsule (that are easy and feasible) let's hear 'em! I was going to toss in a current Publix sales flyer that will show current prices of food items and thought maybe I'd donate a "Time" and "Rolling Stone" magazine. Any other ideas?

Saturday the Gators play South Carolina... our last SEC game of the season. I'll be there (in my living room in front of the tube, at least) with bells on. I've got mixed feelings about the team this year, but they've surprised me these past few games. Go Gators! Beat those Cocks! Err... Gamecocks, that is. What the hell IS a gamecock anyway?! Let's consult Merriam-Web!

Main Entry: game·cock
Pronunciation: 'gAm-"käk
Function: noun
Date: 1677
: a rooster of the domestic chicken trained for fighting

Hrmmm! Seems like a Gator oughta be able to down a Gamecock in one swallow. What do YOU think? Tune in Saturday to find out.

I have a lot more to say but I'm outta the mood now so I suppose it will be forthcoming in future editions of this very same Live Journal.

Until then....

Peace Out!

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-Oscar Wilde

Busy busy busy! Getting ready for our camping trip up to Northern Georgia. We leave EARLY Friday morning and are bound for..... HERE! Wheeeee! I can't wait! And I'll be taking tons of pics... Pretty leaves... and the Bavarian town of Helen, GA.

BTW people... Life is good. REAL good!

Dunno if I'll have time to write here tomorrow... my mom and dad, sister and her husband are due at my place by 8pm (yes, we are *all* going camping). Still have cleaning to do (nothing like having your MOM going through your house running her index finger over your bookshelves! haha!) and have laundry to finish, stuff to pack up, lists to check twice... all that. ;)

So... if I don't get a chance to post again before we take off on Friday morning... I'll be back late next week with pics to prove I really *wasn't* the hot, sexy blonde wrapped in saran down there at Club Kink in Ft. Lauderdale.

Toodles!