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

What a great weekend!

I not only got everything done that I'd promised myself I would do (a feat in itself!), but I actually had time to just "hang out" some with friends and also watch a couple of movies with Mike.

Saturday I truly busted my ass and did almost all of my shopping and now only have two more stops to make with very specific purchases in mind, which should make the experience a piece of cake (*crossing fingers*).

Sunday I made some kickass breakfast burritos and drank half a pot of coffee with whipped cream dolloped on top. YUM! I watched "I Am Sam" (Sean Penn/Dakota Fanning) and "Drumline" (both were okay... nothing to really write home about. S. Penn did a decent bit of acting in "I Am Sam" but he blew me away in Mystic River (which if you have not yet seen, you are *really* doing yourself an injustice!), then took a little nap and ran out to do another couple hours of shopping.

I got home in time to have dinner and sit down to watch HBO's film "Angels in America", which is an adaptation of a Pulitzer and two-time Tony Prize winning play, starring Al Pacino and Meryl Streep (two of my favorite actors!). What a weird show that was! The second half of it comes on this Sunday night... but the first half alone was pretty funky. I can certainly see the home it must've made for itself on the stage, but I'm not so sure about the movie adaptation. It's just... different. It also has that chick from West Wing that I really like (Mary-Louise Parker).

Anyways... I'll definitely tune in for its conclusion but wow... what bleak subject matter to be showing just a couple of weeks before Christmas! Don't they say depression/suicide rates already do something like quadringle during these couple of months of the year? LOL Anyone else out there watch this?

The only blah thing from my weekend is that I'd hoped to make it out to the BFE party in Orlando and just couldn't make it. Wah! I hear it was a really great time and man how I *hate* missing a good party!!! *stomps feet*

So.... I'm back at work. Another day, another dollar, eh? Have a million and twelve things to do this week and still going to try to leave at least a couple hours early (if possible!) on Friday to make the 4-hour trek down to my parents for our weekend holiday celebration. I know the visit will be enjoyable, and making the trip this weekend instead of the weekend of the actual xmas holiday ought to be helpful as well, but I still despise that drive!!

I'll check in again later... Right now I need to get some shit done here. Blah! ;)

I *still* haven't quite recovered from my weekend out of town. The visit on Wed night and Thurs with my parents was great, but visits home anymore always seem to end up with me spending most of my time in my mom's bedroom trying to fix her computer or install something new on it or explain to her over and over how to to do something on it. Ugh. I love my mom and I really and truly don't mind helping her with that stuff, but when I only make it down to see them 3 or 4 times a year... I'd rather be able to spend my time there actually visiting with them, ya know?

Left mom and dad's on Thursday afternoon after Tgiving dinner. **Note to self for future: Don't plan stuff that requires one to be really motivated shortly after eating a huge Thanksgiving dinner.** haha! It was REALLY hard to get my butt up off the couch and load up to head out to my sister's Peace River property for the weekend campout. But... I managed.

The campout was a lot of fun. There were about 30 people actually camping and then during the day on Friday and Saturday another 15-20 would show up for the day and leave later on, but not stay overnight. The weather was great! Almost rained, but didn't. Almost got a touch too cold on Saturday night, but not quite (course all the substances in my system likely changed my own personal perception of exactly how cold it felt! haha!) I didn't take NEAR as many pictures as I'd planned to, but did get a few good ones though I haven't yet had a chance to even nab them off of my camera yet. I also didn't make it to the bone orchard nearby that I ALWAYS say I'm going to go roam every time I go camp there (and then forget until we leave and drive past it again on the way out). Figures. :P

The ride home on Sunday was definitely the suck and I was *so* glad I wasn't the one behind the wheel. I'd had about 6.5 hours sleep since Wed and the going-home-on-Sunday-of-Thanksgiving-weekend traffic was NASTAY. That came as no surprise really... but still... having to be in it anyways was no fun at all. What is normally a 4-hour drive home took 6 hours and we were damned lucky we were heading north instead of south. At least northbound I-75 kept a pretty steady (but REALLY thick) 50mph cruise. The southbound side was barely rolling starting at the turnpike exit at Wildwood and was completely backed up all the way until we exited in Gainesville and beyond. NOT PRETTY!!

Got home just in time to speed-unload the car and jump in the shower before the season finale of Carnivale started at 9. Watched that (juicy cliffhanger for certain!... now I'll probably only have to wait a year or so for Season 2 to start *rolls eyes*). Then... I COLLAPSED!

It's been busy back at work and I went to bed early again trying to catch up on lost sleep last night. Now I've just got to get my shit together to finish up my shopping for my family's xmas celebration which is the weekend after this one. Yes... ANOTHER 4-hour drive out-of-towner. I know I must be getting old because I just don't wanna do the every-weekend-out-of-town thing anymore! No BFE this Saturday for me... *pouts* Guess I'll make it down there one of these days. Just turning out to be bad timing for me this year (and I was really wanting to go too!) If anyone is reading this who plans to be there... have double the fun so you can make up for my missing out on it! ;)

Now... I return you to your regularly scheduled activity. I have a ton of work to get done.

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!