My Band

Here is my album cover from my band's first album. This was a lot of fun.

Rules

Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RandomThe first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations"or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7daysThird picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.(If you spend more than 5 minutes, you're doing it wrong.)

Band name @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snabba_cash

Quotation

What if there is a ruling that, uh, you cannot apply civil penalties to, uh, practicing sodomites?----Howard Phillips

Book List

So I am supposed to be compiling a list of books one should read if one wants to be considered a 'well read' individual. This list will also be the reading list for my children in middle and high school. I am taking suggestions...if you have a must read classic let me know!

Where is my book?

My whole week has been an exercise in obsessively checking my front porch for my accounting textbook. I normally order from the school bookstore, but as this textbook was remarkably expensive, I looked on half.com and found one for half the price. I did not, however, check the shipping method as I ordered it a week and a half before the class began. Apparently Media Mail means, really really slow mail...and now I understand why the shipping was so cheap. So today I sat in my driveway today waiting for the mailman, met him at his truck, and lo and behold, I now have a textbook! If it had not come today I would have had to buy one from the local college to complete my assignments, leaving me with two really really expensive textbooks. On the plus side, I think my best bet to become rich would be to write textbooks. I can't think of a single reason that a one year old book should go for two hundred dollars.

I am so excited about having tomorrow off from work, I have a laundry pile that is three weeks deep that I am really looking forward to folding and even though I hate vacuuming, I really want to vacuum for some reason. I picked up the house yesterday and it was such a peaceful day in my neat house that I want to compound my pleasure by having a neat and clean house! After that, I think Rob and I have a date. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, or at least it is for someone who works in the restaurant industry.

Looney Bin

Sometimes I think I work at a looney bin. The last week has been an exercise in insanity. We have had new people trying to swallow a tablespoon full of cinnamon in a minute, convinced the new guy that one of the employees had Turret's minus the swearing and had him feeling genuinely sorry for laughing at him, played charades, and had the staff doing shots of energy drinks at the bar. I think I had five energy drinks on Saturday and couldn't stop giggling most of the day. I can only imagine what the customers thought of us. We had so much fun...and now we are all so tired. One more day to go, then I get my day 'off.' I will never be so glad to see a week end. Even now, it is six in the morning and I am too keyed up to sleep. I am never going to get any semblance of a 'normal' schedule.

Sleep, Awake

...is really all I can think about. For some reason, economic indicators don't have a whole lot of meaning for me, although that may not have anything to do with my mental acuity relative to inputted sleep resources or the scarcity thereof. As this is my one day off in a two week period, I feel I should be doing what I can to knock out my homework and it being due today is a small bit of motivation. Unfortunately, being sleep deprived is not conducive to pulling an all-nighter.

I have been daydreaming, at night which ends up being terribly confusing but anyways...daydreaming about college, trying to remember how I kept myself awake. Years of abuse have inured me to the effects of caffeine, it isn't cold enough outside to be bracing, I have already taken two showers tonight, I am running out of ideas...I thought of finally getting a piercing or playing with a nine volt but don't feel like being in pain in addition to being tired. If I remember correctly, in college, I went to the all night coffee shop where it would be rude to fall asleep. I don't think I know of any such places here. Sad, I have lived here, cumulatively, two and half years and don't know where an all night coffee shop is. Pathetic actually...

For What I am About to Receive...I am Truly Grateful

It has been a really rough couple of weeks...

Following both of us taking time off for Rob's dad surgery, we have been working like crazy to catch up, Rob on flight hours and backlogged paperwork, and me the lost money from five missed shifts and getting way behind on homework and housework. Tonight we both got home from work around eleven, collapsed on the couch and commiserated about how beat we were. Both of us will be pulling all-nighters to get our work done in time and we agreed to meet tomorrow night for an extended power nap (known to everyone else on the planet as bedtime, hard to call it sleep when it never seems to be for long enough). I suppose this is great training for when we have children. I feel like I haven't slept in five weeks and I don't foresee it happening anytime soon. Sigh...

While we were whining to one another, he said something that put things into perspective. "Guess we should stop complaining and be thankful that we do have jobs, there are a lot of people who would gladly take our places." He never says much, so it always surprises me when he says something wise that instantly changes my attitude. In the midst of my own futile job search how could I have forgotten that I do have a job and we are able to pay our bills, keep our cars running, keep our heat on, phones connected? I feel humbled...and grateful to God for taking care of us and up till now at least, protecting us from the economic difficulty so many people are facing.

"What recession!" has been the theme at work for the last month or so. The restaurant I work for seems to be untouched by the recession. Yet one more blessing I wasn't appreciating nearly enough. Being employed is nice, but if no one is coming in the doors I don't make any money. God is providing, one night at a time...

Rainbow Scarf

Here are pictures of the 'rainbow' scarf and hat I did for my niece.

25 Random Things...

Since I did this for facebook, I figure it should get posted here too although I modified some of it and fixed some errors in reason (thanks sissy!)

1. I have a small library in my office which is meticulously organized and cataloged...the only part of my house that is.
2. I cannot throw away my old floppy disks, even though we don't have a computer that will read them anymore.
3. I am slightly obsessive about list making.
4. The tape dispenser from my parents house is on my desk. It might be older than I am.
5. Current reading selection: Paradise Lost
6: Current music selection: Mozart's Mass in C Minor. If you haven't heard it...hear it...awesome.
7. Am either a very liberal republican or a very conservative democrat. Or something else entirely.
8. The four most populous authors in my book collection are Orson Scott Card, Raymond Feist, Dean Koontz and L.E. Modesitt Jr. So far haven't read much by those guys that I didn't like.
9. Am a member of the laziest book club ever. Originally formed to give moral support while we tackled books we were too scared to read on our own. Unfortunately, we have been giving each other reassurance and excuses not to read the selection.
10. Love snow, love cold, love Indiana, hate vacuuming
11. Love bandannas, wear them every chance I get
12. I am really not as grouchy as everyone seems to think I am
13. Correction on number 1, my pantry is a lesson in classic OCD behavior as well, closet too. Pretty much anywhere that you cant see when you walk in the door is meticulous. The main areas are a disaster.
14. I find paperwork very overwhelming. My mailman is lucky if I empty the mailbox twice a month. I'm really not trying to drive him crazy, I just forget until I realize I haven't paid bills in a while.
15. I wish Indy had a better recycling program
16. I have never gotten my Christmas cards out on time
17. I love Indianapolis. It is the perfect size city. Very little crime comparatively. Traffic is awesome for a big city. It has cultural activities and eccentric ones as well. It also has a sledding hill with a concrete strip at the bottom of it. Kinda sick if you ask me.
18. I wanted to be a trucker for a year in college.
19. I bite off more than I can chew regularly. I wouldn't know how to function any other way.
20. Last year after spending a winter in Alabama, when it snowed for the first time, I wrapped up in a comforter and took some tea out on the balcony and watched it snow for two hours.
21. I feel with the amount of mood swings and intense feelings I have, I should have been a poet or an artist or something angsty.
22. I am supposed to be writing a paper on economic forecasting for a Fortune 500 company of my choice. Sigh...
23. I love my parents and siblings and miss them like crazy. Sometimes I get angry with the nature of adulthood, how it separates us from loved ones.
24. I am terrified of dogs, but want a really really huge one someday, Malmut probably.
25. I think it is funny how disturbed my parents are by my sleep schedule, especially considering that I probably sleep far more hours than they do.

Chaos Studies Pt. 2

The house fell apart over the holidays. I had almost gotten it put back together when we left for Chicago. Now there are four loads of laundry on my guest bed that I have been getting dressed out of and I just did dishes for the first time in a week. I don't understand why it is so hard to keep it picked up. For the most part we put things away when we use them so why can't we ever permanently defeat entropy? I have a theory.

Chaos is a natural byproduct of the imperfect human condition. When we have had a rough day, we 'owe' it to ourselves to come home from work and 'relax,' i.e. veg on the couch, read a book, play online, basically anything but clean house. Unfortunately, we find it difficult to relax in chaos and our days get more and more stressful until we have had enough and take care of the root problem. I am going to have to start doing housework before work again which means...I am going to have to get up earlier than I like...

I remember the good old days when the house seemed to clean itself. Of course, I also remember the conspicuous lack of homework too...I think I am going to blame it on being in school in order to divest myself of personal responsibility and control of the situation. Yeah, that'll work...

Top Ten...

Weird things seen while driving...

1. A man cross country skiing...in Alabama...in August. We actually backed up because we thought we were crazy!
2. A little car pulling a...porta-potty down 465
3. A statue of a boll weevil
4. A confederate flag the size of my garage flying in the middle of 65 S
5. A 20 ft. tall superman statue
6. A moose in the middle of the road
7. Large pink animals...hippos...elephants...etc, that towns decorate with
8. A perfect replica of the ghost buster's car...complete with college students that drove the streets with a megaphone yelling "Happy...insert day of week here...People!" Loved those guys
9. Green air that started rotating around me. As I left it, the tornado lifted off.
10. Van completely covered with medium shag carpet with the dark side of the moon design displayed on the side.

Super Bowl New Year

I had all these deep thoughts I wanted to share on here...but I didn't write them down right away and they left as quickly as they had come. Yesterday we got everyone together for the Super Bowl. It was a lot of fun. We cooked, we ate, we played video games. Eventually we remembered that we were supposed to be watching football and watched the game. In a way it was bittersweet. We used to do this sort of thing weekly, if not more often. The video games, the food, the fellowship... This felt like a last hurrah of sorts. We could feel those who were missing, but also managed to reconnect with old friends we haven't seen in years. So many of us have hit a new stage in life and outside events have taken their toll on our friendships. Some of us are getting ready to move, have children, finish school, start a new job. Strange that this felt more like New Years than New Years did. So is it the end of an era or were we blissfully ignorant of the finite nature of a good thing? We felt it was amazing that we managed to see friends as often as we did being as we were adults and did all have things like jobs and bills. Did we take it for granted? And is it really so horrible that the only people I see regularly now are my husband and one girlfriend? Better or worse? Maybe change isn't all bad. Either way, it is happening and all I can do is enjoy each stage as it comes and hope that all of them are as good as the last couple have been.

For those of you who are leaving...you will be missed
For those of you who left long ago...you are always in our hearts
For those of you whose lives have gotten hectic...we are here, a fifteen minute drive or a phone call away, we will find time in our own busy schedules to be there for our loved ones.