Yeah, I suck at updating.

When last we saw our intrepid hero... She was living in Englewood and employed at Trail Dust Steakhouse. Good gods, it's been forever since I updated, hasn't it? Was Jim still working then? Ugh. So, anyway, Jim lost his job at Janus and got severance, which allowed us to move. We relocated to Broomfield to be closer to my heart sister and her family, which is divine. Instead of driving 45 minutes each way twice a week, I pop around the corner twice a day or so. Morning coffee, grocery shopping together, getting to know her sprog, and community dinners, I couldn't be happier. Plus co-eating is easier on the budget (Jim and I ate out way to much), which is excellent because I lost my job on Christmas day. Yeah, they called us in the middle of dinner to say 'Don't come in tomorrow'. Classy.

On the bright side, since I was there over a year I'll get unemployment. I've got some wiggle room on getting a new job, and I can sure as hell use the time to work on projects and visit friends I haven't seen enough of lately. Oh, and Jim has a new job playing with Excel, so he's a happy little geek too.

I'll try to post more.

Something's got my allergies riled up fierce (possibly the new kitty, that's a story of it's own) and I've got stuffy nose, itchy throat, cough, and all the rest. So... I fill my Neti pot with warm salt water and run a few pots through my sinuses. It's... an odd feeling when you're filling your head with water on purpose, especially when you're waiting for it to clean a blockage. Then you get the weird of pouring water into one nostril and having it come out the other. Once you get good at it you can actually pour so the saline washes the back of your throat, clearing away all the crap that makes it itch. And using a good sea salt (not iodized table salt) makes it not taste too bad.

VOILA! Clean nasal passages, non-sore throat, nothing triggering cough/gag,  no drugs!

I work in a restaurant, which means I'm surrounded by brown Spanish-speaking people. Not all Mexicans, though... so when it's football season (soccer) there's a low of shouting from the kitchen as they trash-talk each others teams. One day I hearn someone shouting "U! S! A!... U! S! A!" and overheard the following conversation:

Misael: U! S! A!    U! S! A!

Andreas: Dude, you're cheering for America? You're not proud of where you're from?

Misael: I grew up with a dirt floor and a hole in the back yard to piss in. Everyone I grew up with is either dead, selling drugs, or in America. I came here so that my children can live a better life; America has given me everything, it's my home country now, and my children won't have to piss in a hole. You'd better hope like hell that Guatamala plays better football than she takes care of her people. U! S! A!   U! S! A!

I started goofing off with copper wire the other day because I couldn't hold still (damn ADD) and it kept turning itself into dragonflys!



I also plan to make a bunch of those ornament hooks and get rid of the cheap crappy ones forever.

Some of my friends may not know that I collect tarot cards... I currently own 37 decks. Of course, I also read tarot, but a lot of my decks have never been used... I bought them because I love the art or I inherited them and thus won't use them. A while back I got this idea in my head to copy the Strength card from each deck and display them together... years later I actually got around to it, and ended up using only 17 cards because the composition got too cluttered. It's an interesting thing to see because most of the Strength cards contain a person (usually a woman, sometimes a young boy) subduing a beast (usually a lion, sometimes a serpent). C'mon over some time and take a look!

( Some pictures and infoCollapse )

Once, long ago, in a faraway land, I was a hostess at a sports bar. It was Christmas of 1992 and I had just turned 18. This one guy, a regular I knew by sight bet had never really spoken to beyond "Sitting at the bar today, or would you like a table?" gave me a 2 pound box of Godiva Chocolates (back when Godiva was still supreme) and wished me a Merry Christmas.

I always wondered why he did it. We weren't friends, and I certainly wasn't the prettiest of the girls working there. He never singled me our before or after.

I think I finally figured it out. It's been seventeen years and I still remember him (though I never knew his name); whatever else he does in his life he'll always be remembered by me as That Guy. Some people leave a legacy of pennicilin, or fine art, or of a better vacuum cleaner... this guy may not have done that, but he left a legacy of one lonely girl who had a VERY Merry Christmas at a time when she really needed it.

Thank you, anonymous dude in the Lake Forest mall in Gaithersburg. You live forever.

Last night when I went to bed there was a foot of snow on the ground and the roads were covered in pack-ice. This morning at 10 the snow had compacted to about 8 inches, the roads were one big slurpee, and there was ground fog from the evaporation. Now the roads are clear and mostly dry, and there remains about 3 inches of snow anywhere there's dirt and sunlight. Still a foot of snow in the shadows. Tomorrow all that will be left will be the shady spots and the plow-hills.

Yesterday we had ourselves a little blizzard (it seems to be all better now) and Jim and I both got snow days. Most days we have off together we go out for food and maybe visit friends, but last night we were pretty much stuck spending it alone together. It rocked. We played WoW, watched a movie (Bottle Shock), and I made dinner. Then more WoW, some reading in bed, and lots of cuddling.

Hooray for the weather!

I love looking through the cleareance stuff at Bed Bath and Beyond... some of it is overpriced even on clearance, but sometimes there's an amazing deal. I've found my favourite sheet sets (Pure Beech) for 75% off because the corner seam of a fitted sheet was torn... 10 minute fix. Or because a pillowcase was missing. I've found Massive Fluffy Towels for $10 because their dye lot didn't match the rest of the display. And today I found a king size silk duvet cover. It's slubby silk in a color somewhere between slate and lavender... the color of shadows in springtime. It was on clearance because some idiot took it home and washed it without turning it inside out, so now the slubs are a bit slubbier. No matter to me, I have a cat and it will get worse anyway. I know the thing prefers to be dry-cleaned, but I gotta at least get the fabric softener stench out, then iron it.

Original price: $179.99
Clearance at: $29.95

I spend a lot of my life sleeping.

While I sleep my brain likes to make shit up and lie to me. I call this 'Dreaming'. A lot of people I know tell me that they rarely remember their dreams, and I'm not sure if I should be envious or pitying... my dreams are rarely pleasant, but I think I'd be less comfortable with the idea of those hours of time being totally missing from my consciousness.

Anyway, I have weird dreams. I even have some recurring themes I've noticed, enough that I often wake and and think (Oh, another of THOSE". I figured I'd share some for your entertainment and amusement:

The Chase
This dream involves being chased (duh), but it's more specific than that. Some group in authority is chasing be because I have some power they disapprove of, which also helps my escape. This power is sometimes flight (like swimming in air), shapeshifting, or the ability to walk through solid things. The entire dream is spent struggling to stay JUST out of reach, and my 'powers' often fail me at an inopportune moment.

Nothing to Wear
This one is pretty simple... I go through my closet and there's nothing to wear, sometimes because my size has changed, and sometimes becuase someone has borrowed things. I'll lump the 'I forgot to wear pants to work' and 'can't find my shoes' dreams into this category.

Gender Blender
I'm not always a girl in my dreams. In fact, I'm not always consistently either gender through a single dream. It's disconcerting to wake up and reach to scratch something that isn't there, I'm always confused for a moment.

Teefs
I sometimes dream that my teeth have come loose and are dangling like windchimes, sometimes I can re-socket them and hold them in place with my lips, but sometimes they just crumble.

No Privacy
I occasionally dream that I want desperately to masturbate but can't get people to leave me alone long enough.

Packing Up
This one always leaves me frustrated even after waking. I dream that I need to go somewhere (on a trip, returning, or moving) and need to pack up everything I have, but people keep borrowing parts of it, or won't help me.

Greed
Sometimes my dream involves me wanting more of a windfall... trying to stuff buried treasure in my pockets, picking up coins in the sand, getting lots of something that's on sale. Usually the focus of this dream is that i'm somehow cheating someone else with my greed. I once dreamed that I stole a tip from a co-worker and felt guilty about it the entire day at work.

Wrong Place Wrong Time
People in my dreams aren't always in the correct context. I've dreamed about going to high school with people I didn't meet until I was 30. I've dreamed that my husband and my step-mother were a couple. I've even had my mother show up in my dad's house. Weird.

The Bad Student
High school continues to haunt me. This dream involved being at school and having no idea where i'm supposed to be. Sometimes I'm staring at my locker and can't remember the combination, sometimes I don't know what class to go to, and sometimes I show up to a class to find I'm half-way through a semester and this is the first time I've bothered to show up.



So... that's the ones I have often enough to note. They seem to come in cycles, too... it's been a few weeks since my last 'Chase' dream, but 'Nothing to Wear' has been prominent. They aren't even distinct from eachother, either.... I've had 'Packing Up' dreams with elements of 'Teefs' and 'No Privacy'. Also, 'Bad Student' and 'Nothing to Wear' seems to like eachother a lot.

... and now it's bedtime. lets see what I get tonight!