So many things to talk about!

Firstly, let me say a big Happy Birthday to my friend Gracie!

Secondly, it's hard to believe that Michael Jackson is gone. I grew up with his music, in fact, I have several fond memories of dressing up with my friends and dancing around the living room to the Thriller album. I hope that people will remember him for his music and not for all the mess of controversy that followed him around over the past several years. Time will tell, I guess.
And yes, I'm sorry about Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett as well, but it's Michael Jackson's death that hits hardest of the three, so that's the one I'm dwelling on right now.

Thirdly, it's finally Friday. Thank goodness.

Fourthly, it's frickin' hot as heck outside, and I'm ready for that to be done. We're all crowded into one room in the house right now, to save energy on cooling the whole thing. Even a couple of days of decent temperatures would help.

Fifthly, if that's even a word.. I'm taking a tip from my friend Tisha and bolding the main topics of my little paragraphs, in hopes that it will help y'all read the parts of my posts that you're interested in. I know I have people coming here for wildly different reasons, so let me know if this helps sort things out please :)

Sixthly, last night when I got home from work, I hopped on Asara and instantly got a group invite from my guild leader. They were running a quick hit on Emalon before starting Ulduar for the night, and did I want to go? I checked with hubby first, and he said he didn't mind, so off I went. Fifteen minutes or so later, I had a new achievement, and we were looking at some loot. My guild is a bit different from others with regard to this, at least from what I've gathered. We actually earn DKP for it, and are required to spend it if we want a piece of tier gear that drops. My guild master says that tier is tier, no matter where it comes from. The PvP gear is on free roll though, as long as you can use it. We're welcome to PUG VoA if we want a chance at tier gear for free though. But if we run with the guild, it's by guild rules, which is fine by me. I don't have any DKP anyway, so I figured I'd just go for the emblems, and to experience the full boss fight, as I hadn't done that yet.

So imagine my surprise when he drops two sets of hunter gloves. Imagine my even greater surprise when winners are announced and I'm one of them, along with my class leader, even though there were four hunters there all told. I guess either the other two had them already or didn't want to spend DKP on them. The only downside.. is now I have to regem Asara yet AGAIN because the new gloves (and the new bracers I bought from the guild bank last week) have a lot more hit on them than my old ones. Time to get Saraabi out and go mining! :) Then she'll be off to Cenarion Circle to join hubby's druid and my baby alts over there!

We apologize for the inconvenience...

And the lack of posts. Hopefully I'll have something decent tomorrow. Someone is sick at work, which takes me pretty much completely away from the computer. Be back ASAP!

Let's see here...

Firstly, a big Happy Birthday goes out to my buddy Mo!

Secondly, the answer to yesterday's question was Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago. Good job Mags, you were ALMOST right! :)

Thirdly, the Whistler is grumpy today because his trip is only supposed to be good Monday through Thursday. He called when he won it last year, and they let him use it on the weekend, but this year they want $50 to let him do that. He thinks that's totally unreasonable because if he were to go, he'd bring 5 or 6 friends (plus his girlfriend.. 8 people in ONE hotel room? eeergh), and the money that they all would spend together would make it more than worth it for them to let him go on a weekend. Then he goes on to say that they really wouldn't spend that much, because they'd bring a lot of their own food, and not all of them ski, so they'd probably sell one of the free lift tickets, and on and on and on. So I guess he's supposed to call their marketing people or something now. *shrug* I say that $50 is still a lot less than he'd pay if he paid for the room and tickets himself, so why not charge each of the people that go with you $5 or $10, and make it back up that way?

Fourthly.. I'm still sick. *sigh* I think I may have some sort of sinus infection or something. All I know for sure is that if I don't feel better by tomorrow, I'll probably be calling the doctor. A week is my limit on being sick before getting a professional involved.

---Break for RL vs. WoW---

Fifthly (is that even a word?), I'm thinking about quitting raiding. I haven't been doing that much of it lately anyway, what with being sick and all, and really not wanting to run Naxx again. In the later parts of BC it was fine, because there were two raid instances for each level of content. Get tired of SSC? Well, we'll run some TK for a while then. Trash got you down in Hyjal? How about a few days in BT? Always something different to do.

Now it's just Naxx Naxx Naxx all the time. Yeah, there's Malygos, and Sarth +drakes, but that just doesn't feel like raiding to me. No matter how complex the encounter is, if it's just one boss, it's not the same for me. Can you imagine if they made a 5-man dungeon with only one boss? People would keel over laughing!

For the record, I'm not trying to belittle people who have conquered Sarth +3. I've seen Sarth +2, and it looks crazy. I can't even imagine what +3 looks like. But from where I sit, it feels like Bigger and Better Onyxia. Standing in a Void Zone? Hit by a Flame Wall? Minus 50 DKP!

Raiding for me is an epic journey, fighting your way through the monster's lair, defeating his minions and henchmen, until finally you face the big baddie himself. To walk in the door and have him staring you in the face... I don't like it.

Maybe when Ulduar comes out, I'll feel differently. I guess I will just have to wait and see. Unfortunately, I'm already leery of the whole place because of what they're saying about seige vehicles being part of the very first boss fight. Not a big fan of that whole thing either. I like riding on vehicles (read: my motorcycle), but I don't like having to use the limited abilities of one in a certain way to defeat a boss. My character is a hunter, I want to do huntering things.

Goodness I'm whiny today.

I'll leave you with another question.

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

/ponder

Sore throat, Day 3

I'm still not sleeping well. I can remember I had some weird dreams, but not what they were about. I also remember waking up quite a few times. So it's another zombie day at work. Hopefully it will be a short one. Saraabi is very close to 75, and I'm anxious to get home and get her there. She got through the Wrathgate chain last night, so I'm just about done with Dragonblight. I think I'm going to take her to Grizzly Hills next, because I didn't quest there at all with Asara when she was leveling up. I don't want to take her to Sholazar, because I like being neutral with both the Oracles and the Frenzyheart, for mining purposes.

Let's see if I can talk about something other than WoW for a bit...

I watched a couple of movies over the weekend. On Friday night I watched Sweeney Todd, with Johnny Depp, and on Saturday hubby and I watched P.S. I Love You, with Hillary Swank and Gerard Butler. On the whole, I'd have to say I preferred the second one. Sweeney Todd was all right, but for all that I heard about it being gory, I was sort of disappointed. The blood looked like Kool-Aid, even though there was a ton of it. I felt like the one scene where he's just killing people over and over was longer than it needed to be. After three or four, I was thinking, "OK, I get it, can we move on please?" The story itself was not bad, though I would have liked to see more development of the relationship between the sailor and Todd's daughter. I know it probably wouldn't have fit the overall story, but it bothers me when two people in a movie are just suddenly head over heels in love with each other. I feel the same way about Padme and Anakin in the newer Star Wars movies.

P.S. I Love You, now, that had my name written all over it. I think I cried five or six times, if not more. Hillary Swank's Irish husband, played by Gerard Butler, dies of a brain tumor. But before he dies, he sets up an elaborate scheme to deliver letters to her over the next year, to help her cope with his passing. It's an amazing journey of self-discovery for her, he reminds her of the day they met, and the wide-eyed dreamer she used to be before Real Life and Responsibility intruded. The most touching moments are the memories she re-lives, and the way they're portrayed, as though he's standing next to her telling her all the things that she's reading in the letters. It was a gorgeous movie, especially the parts set in Ireland. I could watch it several times over and not get tired of it, though I don't think my tear ducts would be very happy with me. I highly recommend this movie, if you like romance at all, I think you'll like it too.

Keep On Keepin' On...

Bit of a blathery post today.

Emily's got pinkeye. It's finally getting better, thanks to some eye drops from the doctor, but for a while there she was looking pretty pathetic. Hubby said when he went to wake her up yesterday morning, her eyes were stuck shut. Hopefully that won't happen again this morning, poor thing. Our doctor was nice enough to give us a prescription big enough for both kids, should Andy come down with it a little later.

Hubby took us all out to Olive Garden last night for dinner. I had mezzaluna with shrimp, and it was absolutely delicious. I love that restaurant. We had a bit of wine too, which went right to my head. Wine always does that, I have no idea why. I can have four or five glasses of rum and coke before I feel it, but half a glass of wine and I start getting silly.

When we got home, I sat down and started trucking through quests on Saraabi. She had eight bubbles to go until 74, and I finally knocked that out around 10PM. I did a bunch of quests in Dragonblight, starting with the Wyrmrest ones and ending with the Wintergarde Keep ones. I also have to give a shout out to Soullock, for helping me out.

I was doing the Emerald Dragonshrine quests, and got the one for the Plume of Alystros, which is a group quest to kill a huge green bird. Well, I went over to where Alystros is, and Soullock was there soloing it with his felguard. I was content to wait, and maybe haul hubby out of the living room to help me out. But since I was there, I buffed him and his felguard. I also gave him a hand with a couple of heals on the felguard so he could knock out a bit more dps and not have to health funnel, since he had the bird almost dead already. He was nice enough to invite me to a group, right before Alystros died, so I could get the quest item from it. So thank you again, Soullock, for making my road to 80 a little smoother.

The Obsidian Dragonshrine was a completely different animal, there were four or five other people there, and quite a bit of "me first" attitude going on. I spent a lot more time there than I should have had to, thanks to having to wait for kill quest mobs to respawn. So I guess it evens out.

Tonight is raid night, I'm not sure what's on the menu, but probably a wing or two of Naxx. We've done some recruiting lately, and actually had more than enough people for raid on Sunday. It looked like the same thing happened last night, which is great. Hubby and I volunteered to sit out on Sunday, but I think if it comes down to that tonight, I don't want to. I don't want to get too far behind people gear-wise, because who knows when Ulduar is coming out, and I want to be geared enough to go in and not have to be carried through. Plus I took tomorrow off at work because it's my birthday, so I get to sleep in!

That's about it for now. I hope everyone is having a great day, and if I don't post over the weekend, have an awesome weekend as well!

Sorry :(

I apologize for disappearing for three days! It turns out that I was getting sick, and in fact I still AM sick. I called in on Friday and huddled on the couch all day. Saturday was Emily's party, and I couldn't miss that (or make hubby take both kids AND presents AND cake all the way out to Chuck E Cheese's by himself), so off we went for that. I'll have pictures of her cake and stuff eventually.. she wanted a chocolate princess cake, so I had some fun with that. I still haven't had any though. :( One of the lovely side-effects of whatever sickness it is that I have is that nothing seems to taste right. So I'm probably going to save aside a piece for when I feel better, and can enjoy it properly!
Emily got some very nice presents, some My Little Ponies, a Barbie, some foam blocks, and a big cuddly teddy bear. All of the kids had a blast playing games and having pizza. So much so that we stayed for quite a long time! But eventually we had to go home. The kids went over to my parents' for the night, and hubby and I went over to Bob & Sara's to take showers. Because on top of everything else, our water pipes froze over the weekend. As of right now, they're still frozen too, thanks to the multitude of excuses our community maintenance man has come up with over the past few days. He said yesterday that he'd be over this morning, so hopefully we'll have water by the time I get home from work today.
All in all, it was an interesting weekend, to say the least! How was yours?

Yahoo!

I just caught up my feed reader for the first time in months. At one point it was up to 1000+, but I hacked it down a bit at a time, and finally, it is empty. I'm sure in an hour or so, someone will have written something.. it tends to happen. But I think I'll have an easier time keeping up now! :) (edit - in the time it took me to write this post, 7 new things have popped up in there)

Thank you to everyone who commented yesterday, and to all the people who called last night to wish Emily a Happy Birthday. I don't think she really understood that it was her birthday, but I got her favorite dinner from McDonald's on the way home, and she is really excited about her party on Saturday. She wants a Princess cake.. thankfully they actually sell pre-made cake decorations for the Disney princesses, so I shouldn't have to go through what I did to make Andy's birthday cake! It was fun to do, but a road made out of frosting is leagues away from an actual princess. Though maybe I could do a crown, I think she'd rather have the actual recognizable princesses. And she wants chocolate cake!

Didn't really play a lot of WoW last night. We watched some TV with the kids, and played a little after dinner. I got my LW epics crafted, which cost me 500g, mostly in Frozen Orbs. I had one, but needed three, and they were going for 100g each. Everything's all enchanted and stuff too, ready to go for my next raid, which I think is Thursday. SI raids Wed, Thu, Sun, and Mon, and I think we'll make a regular habit of Thursday and Sunday.. because too many days of being tired at work is not good for me. The hours have changed since last year too, they only go until 10:30 server now instead of 11:30, but we're an hour ahead of server time, so it's still 11:30 at night for us. And if anyone checks Asara's armory and wants to know, her Giantmaim Bracers are in the bank until she gets another piece of gear with +hit on it. She's just barely below the 8% cap right now (2 points in Focused Aim), and I didn't want to respec AGAIN, so the blue ones stay until I get an upgrade for another slot that's got hit to replace what I'd lose by switching out my bracers. That shouldn't take too long, I believe the chestpiece from Argent Crusade has 40 hit on it, and I'm getting very close to Exalted over there.

After that I played my newest rogue for a while.. I swear I have too many alts to count. Malfurion is full, and I had just watched that video that everyone is talking about, the Craft of War: Blind one. It got me wanting a blood elf rogue, so I went over to a new server, just picked one at random, and created Caelesti. She's level 8 now, almost 9. I already have three or four rogues scattered around.. Macleod (human) on Norgannon, Vylette (Nelf) on Azshara, and Däta (gnome) on Malfurion, but I really wanted a blood elf. I doubt she'll stick around, my characters on realms other than Malfurion don't tend to get played much. Macleod is stuck at 23, Vylette is 9, and so is Däta. Yes, Draevyn (my belf mage) is level 63, but he was on Malfurion for a long time before he got transferred to The Scryers to play with my mother-in-law. But she's not playing any more, so I haven't had much of a reason to play him.

Not to mention I really want to get Saraabi to 77 so she can start turning in her Damaged Necklaces.. she's got two stored away that Alainds and Asara have found while doing dailies, and I have to admit I was a little sad to see that they don't stack. All the more reason to level her up, right? Plus hubby has two characters that he'd like her to play with, so I really should spend some time on her. She's only level 71 right now, but her mining is already maxed from running around Sholazar and trying not to die. She really does pretty well, she can take down level 76 mobs, as long as there's only one. An hour or so in there netted her enough Saronite to send to Alainds for some Saronite Arrow makers for Asara, which was great. It would be even more great if she could just fly around though, and make use of the epic flyer that I bought her near the end of BC!

But of course in the meantime, Asara's still got two trinkets from BC that need replacing.. I hate use-trinkets, so I've been hanging on to the two she has for longer than I probably should have. She's got the Dragonspine Trophy and the Hourglass of the Unraveler, both of which took a lot of time and effort to get. They're not bad trinkets.. but there are better ones, and she really needs to get on the ball about getting them. So much to do!!! XD

I cannot type today.

I am entering some data at work from tests that have been done over the past few days.
Result one: RD number, blah blah blah numbers.
Result two: Congrol, blah blah..
Wait, what?
Congrol.
ConTrol.
That's what I said.. congrol.
/facepalm
My left index finger is annoyed at the T for some reason. Loves the heck out of the G though.

For much better internal conversation (and with a WoW theme too), check out BRK's post today.

Some sober postings.. XD

WoW stuff first!
I'm not completely out of the game when it comes to raiding, it seems! Over the weekend I ran Hyjal with some guildies and some puggies. Yes.. I pugged Hyjal. We got four out of the five bosses down (three of them one-shotted), and there was a serious mess when we tried Archimonde. It doesn' t matter how many hp's he has when half of the raid is already dead due to fire or not using their tears properly. BUT I got some new gear.. a Blade of Infamy and (woo hoo) my T6 gloves! And nicely enough, I had 3 pieces of T5, so I still get to keep my set bonus. I also got some random leatherworking pattern, but it makes BOP Shammy gear. They just didn't want it to get wasted.
Then yesterday there was a massive horde raid on IF which crashed our server. I missed that, but I did get in on the retaliation raid of Thunder Bluff. Which, unfortunately, was very full of fail. The hordies at least got into the king's chamber in IF.. the pile of skeletons on the floor in there was hilarious. We got to TB.. and the person in charge says.. "OK, anyone know where the leader guy is?" /facepalm Seriously, dude? But I got 21 HK's, and two achievements, so it wasn't a total loss.
Tonight we're going with (more or less) the same group of people from this weekend to BT. Maybe. If not, I'll probably be working on my druid, who is now almost level 44. I had three level 40 characters, and she's the one who got picked to level farther. I still need to put in some time on my mage, but since hubby is leveling an ally warrior, the hordies have been on the back burner for a few days. Not a big deal.
We're not going to be first in line to pick up the expansion this year. Besides the fact that we want to take our time out in Northrend, we also don't want to be around for the massive lag and craziness as several thousand people try to do the same quests at the same time in the first area out there. So we're waiting a week or so for that. We'll probably work more on the hordies then, because we'll basically have Outland to ourselves until the first batch of Death Knights gets to level 58. That's the plan, anyway :D
And RL stuff.. as for the bar we went to (since someone asked), I will just say that it is the kind of bar that only adults can go to because not everyone in there is wearing all of their clothes. And I spent just as much as hubby did while we were there too, not all on drinks. Oddly enough when I woke up on Sunday I didn't have a hangover either. I think I have a new bar drink! But that's all I'm saying about it on my blog. XD
In other news, our tickets arrived this weekend for the Lion King! We're going to see the Broadway musical over in Lansing in March. I'm already looking forward to it, too.
And lastly, the Manic Monday word for today is BOUNTY, so here is a joke.
A pirate walks into a bar with a piece of paper towel tucked into his hat. The bartender says to him, "Hey, why do you have that paper towel in your hat?" The pirate says.. "Yarrr, there be a Bounty on me 'ead!"

Being sick is the pits!

Bleargh. It started on Thursday, a itchy, burny sensation in the back of my throat. I knew I was in for trouble. By Friday afternoon it was a full-on sore throat and cold, with sneezing and all that fun stuff tossed in, so it was just as well that I stayed home from work. With hubby's help though, we got the kids out trick-or-treating, and watched some scary movies with hubby's brother and his wife. The kids had a pretty good night, Andy went as Optimus Prime, and Emily picked out a shiny SuperGirl costume. I should have pictures soon :)

Saturday I slept in a bit, and slugged around the house. I went to bed a little late, but I slept until 1 in the afternoon on Sunday! I haven't slept that long since I don't know when. I'm feeling a little bit better today. I came in to work late, so I'm playing catch-up a bit. Thankfully my boss is super awesome, and isn't mad at me for calling in. I'll probably have a late night, but I'm hoping not too late! Things seem to be moving at a pretty good pace in the production departments, so that's good.

That's about all the RL news I have for right now. In WoW-news, hubby and I are working toward our third level 70 characters. Mine is my blood elf mage, Draevyn. He's up there on the right on my header image. He got his epic land mount this weekend, which is a pretty big achievement for him :) He's almost level 63, only 7 more to go, and he'll be flying high just like Asara and Saraabi. Yee-ha!

Cuteness on the home front

I got an email from my hubby yesterday that made me smile, so I thought I'd share it :)

He told me that he gets the kids up in the mornings by turning their bedroom lights on and saying "Good Morning!" to them. My son usually says good morning back and gets out of bed, my daughter takes a couple of minutes to wake up. Yesterday, my son said good morning and got out of bed like always, but my daughter got up, turned off her light, and crawled back into bed!

I wish I could do that once in a while, don't you? :)

Ah, blessed relief...

Hubby went out and bought a new air conditioner for our bedroom last night. It sits on the floor, and it's HUGE, but it works really well. It was so nice and cool in there, I felt perfectly comfy with my blanket on, so I slept a lot better. I'm still tired from having to get up early, but I haven't had my morning caffeine yet!

My web browser is acting up this morning.. I think it's time for a virus scan!

The Whistler is in for the morning, and already bragging about stuff. He's going to Seattle for vacation, and he talked to the people he's going to be staying with while he's up there (because why stay in a hotel when you can sponge off people you know). Apparently they offered to let him stay there as long as he wants, either at their house, or at their beach house. Yep, you've made it quite clear many times that all of your "friends" are rich, buddy, you don't need to keep rubbing my face in it. When you've got your own beach house, then we'll talk, ok?

MaNiC mOnDaY ~ Lick

So.. it's Monday again, and Doodle Week is over. :( Saturday and Sunday were supposed to be part of it, but I didn't get any more doodling done after Friday. Why? Because as soon as I got home from work, hubby sent me to the bedroom to change out of my work clothes, he loaded the kids and some luggage into the car, and off we went for a little vacation. Nothing fancy, we stayed in a hotel near town, but it was a very nice change of pace. He brought his laptop, but it mostly stayed off, as we were down in the pool swimming, and just lazing around, doing nothing at all in particular.

We had a lot of fun in the pool with the kids. Emily took to the water like a fish, and we got Andy to unbend a little bit about going out into the deeper end of the pool with us. The only regret I have about the whole weekend is that I didn't get to spend any time in the hot tub. I went down there later Saturday night, but a whole gang of people had taken over the pool area. The hot tub was full of adults, and the pool was full of kids. They were making a full-fledged party out of it too, with bags of snacks out on the tables, as well as a cooler.. and what looked like a glass bottle of beer on one of the tables. Never mind the posted signs saying "no alcohol" and "no glass". Hubby called down to the desk after I got back upstairs, but I don't know if anything came of it, because I didn't go back down after that.

I'm at work a little early today, so I tried to go to bed early last night.. but I made the mistake of turning on the tv. The DVR was recording a new episode of Iron Chef America, so I watched the last bit of that. They were just finishing up the cooking part, and I wanted to see who would win. The battle was Zucchini, and the challenger made a very interesting thing for a dessert. She did a zucchini fritter thing, accompanied by a spoon of white taffy-looking stuff stuck in a glass of ice water. So the judges took the spoon out and licked off some of the white stuff before eating the fritter.. I guess it was a sort of soft gum or something. They make some weird stuff on that show. And right after was my latest reality tv obsession, The Next Food Network Star. I told myself I shouldn't stay up and watch it.. but I did, even though it was recording.

So I feel like I didn't get a lick of sleep last night. It didn't help that it was really humid, and since we had been out of the house for a couple of days, the air conditioners had been turned down, so the house was pretty hot. We really need an air conditioner in our bedroom.. I think I'm going to try to price a couple of the ones that don't have to go in a window. Our windows are too large to put a conventional air conditioner in them without a lot of finagling. We'll see what I can find. In the meantime, why don't you all head over to Mo's and see what other people have come up with for today's MaNiC mOnDaY theme?

ZzzZzzzz...

First and foremost, I want to send out a HUGE thank you to Bansidhe for my new banner. She is magic with the graphics, I tell you what! All I did was send her some WoW Model Viewer images of my characters, and she crafted the lovely image you now see at the top of the page. The original was a bit bigger, but my stupid template wouldn't just adjust itself, so I'll be playing around with that for the next few days. Pardon the dust!

In other news.. I'm still tired today. Played a little WoW last night and got my Belf priest Pyralos to lv 13, nothing major, except I died like 10 times trying to get there. Which was a bit frustrating. I soloed the Belf "Hogger" spider lady thing, after three tries or so, though, so that was pretty cool. There are tons of things I want to do right now, but I think that I'm going to limit myself to three. 1. Get my Draenei pally to 70 (that's Saraabi up there in my banner, currently lv 65), 2. Get my Belf mage to 70 (Draevyn, also up there, currently lv 48), and work on the twin paladins that hubby and I just made the other day. I'm going prot, he's going holy. We'll be able to pug anything we want, lol! Hubby wants a lv 70 tauren, so he's probably going to start one of those in the near future. Don't know what class, except probably not shaman. He said he's putting both of his higher-level alts on hold until he gets that done. :)

Had some lovely Chinese food for dinner last night, though I think I went a little overboard. Some sweet and sour chicken, some house special fried rice, some eggrolls, some crab rangoons, and a couple of sugar biscuits for dessert. It was all delicious though, AND I still have leftovers for lunch today. Yahoo! Hubby and I watched some episodes of Scrubs on DVR while we ate. We're about out of tv shows on there, we'll have to watch a movie or two tonight or tomorrow :)

That's about it.. I have some pain in my left foot so I'm going to be calling the doctor later this morning. It was hurting yesterday, and hasn't gotten better yet today. It's probably just a strained tendon or something, but if I need to stay off it for it to heal, I need doctor's orders to bring to work. Yippee! I'll let y'all know how that comes out.. I probably won't go to the doctor until tomorrow though. Hope everyone is having a good day!

Breathe In, Breathe Out...

/sigh

I'm going to try very hard to keep from getting so frustrated today. I have something with me at my computer now that will hopefully serve as a reminder that all of this (as they say in Avenue Q) is only for now. And also remind me not to take everything so seriously.

What is it, you ask?

This lovely image right here. I did a screenshot of a YouTube video and printed it out. This video is from an episode of The Office that I watched with the hubby a couple of weeks ago. Actually it's from a compilation of the practical jokes that Jim has played on Dwight over the course of the show, but this one is my favorite. Jim got the vending machine guy (who's a friend of his) to put all of the stuff from Dwight's desk into the vending machine. The best part is just after Dwight discovers this, and Pam comes over to peruse the selection. She ends up buying Dwight's pencil cup. Then Dwight doesn't have any change, so Jim supplies him with a huge bag of nickels to use so he can buy all of the rest of his stuff back. It sounds stupid when I write it out, but I laughed SO hard when I watched it :)

Will you please just SHUT UP??!

I work with someone that I would love to nominate for the Worst Coworker of the Year award, if such a thing exists.

Let me break it down for ya.

When I first started here, things were a great deal different. There were no radios allowed in the plant, so it would be just me and him in the lab, doing our various work things. Fine, right? Sure. Then he started whistling. I believe the song is called "Annie's Song", the only thing I associate it with is a scene in My Best Friend's wedding when all the boys suck helium out of balloons and start singing it. Anyway, because we had no radio, every day, at least four or five times a day, he would start whistling. I would have to leave the room because he would just do the first part over and over and over. After a few months I couldn't take it any more. So when he would start whistling, I would start whistling along. He would usually stop.

Besides this, he's a big talker. He likes to be the center of attention, so he always tells extravagant stories about his friends. They all have tons of money and tons of cool things, so every day he has to mention at least one of them and the cool stuff he did with them last week/month/five years ago. Today it was about a friend of his who died when he was only 26, "he just made too much money too fast for how young he was.. he was making $50,000 a year, and this was back in the 70's, you know, that was a LOT of money, we'd go over to his house and drink 3 or 4 bottles of $40 wine, that's like $150 a bottle these days." Other days it's how he went out on "the boat" with his friends, or maybe his friend who lives on a boat in Florida and lets him stay there for a week for free if he's down there on vacation, or his friend with the business credit card with no limit who took him and his buddies out for dinner at some fancy restaurant and bought them sooo many rounds of drinks. Or his friend in the wheelchair who doesn't have to work, he just sits at home all day and plays around with his computer, and my coworker goes over there now and again to take him out (at his friends' expense, of course) and relieve the monotony for him. The guy could go on for hours.

I'm long past the point where I thought any of this was interesting, or cool, or whatever. I make noncommital noises and nod my head when appropriate, but he still just keeps going. Never realizing that after 8 (almost 9) years, odds are I've probably heard that story before. More than once. I'm just stuck in here day after day, desperately hoping for laryngitis or at least my own office.

And the whistling? That never stopped. Except now we've got a radio in the lab, so he'll whistle to that instead. Oh, but he makes his own tempo, he'll whistle the chorus in the middle of the verse, and heaven forfend there might be commercials because he'll be stuck on the same part of the last song that played until a new one comes on.

The Whistler. Reason 1 of many why I REALLY need a new job!

Long-winded post, INC!

It's Monday again and I'm back at work. My attitude today is a bit better than it was for most of the week last week. Let's do a weekend recap, shall we?

Friday after I got out of work the only thing on the menu was dropping the kids off at my parents' for the weekend. We were supposed to go to Michigan's Adventure for the day on Saturday for my company picnic, and there really isn't enough there to keep Mr. Andrew occupied yet. In a couple of years we'll probably give it a try, when he's big enough to ride more rides. In the end however, we decided not to go. Not a whole lot has changed since last year, and hubby and I didn't think it would be worth the gas to drive out there for the same rides we've been going on for the past 8 years. So instead we went out to the bar that night and had a good time. Before we left, the UPS man showed up and dropped off the books I won! I was very surprised that they arrived so quickly.

Saturday morning I woke up relatively early.. when I first woke up I just had a bit of a headache, but as the rest of my body realized I was awake, some of the other parts decided to put their two cents in as well. My stomach was really not happy with me, even though I had taken some ibuprofen and a Maalox as soon as I got out of bed. So I took a bath, and sat myself down on the couch to rest and maybe read a little bit. I fell back asleep.

A few hours later, hubby got up and played some Lunar as I slept on the couch. He woke me up around 3 because he wanted to go out and about. So I took a quick shower, and off we went. We drove around for an hour or so, and stopped at a Chinese Buffet for dinner. Yum yum yum.. I had some things I'd never had before, and they were all quite tasty! I wish I had brought my camera on the drive because there were quite a few things that we got a chuckle out of. One was a billboard for "poopycredit.com", another was a station wagon for sale by the side of the road. On the back window was written, instead of a price, the fact that it gets 26 mpg. I thought that was hilarious.. "I don't care how much it is, with that kind of gas mileage!"

We were driving down a pretty hilly back road, and suddenly hubby goes, "Yzma, put your hands up!" It took me a second to get it, and those of you who haven't seen The Emperor's New Groove won't get it at all (sorry). :) Later we drove past Cronk's Oakridge Motel. Coincidence? I think not.

Once we got back home, hubby went back to playing Lunar, and I went back to sleep on the couch. He woke me up to tell me he was going to bed, so I followed with my blanket.

The next morning I woke up at around 10, when the alarm went off. We were supposed to be at my mom & dad's around noon for lunch. My dad made steak, and I brought the kids home with me afterwards. After that, grocery shopping, and once the kids were in bed, it was time to return to raiding thanks to the switch we picked up at Best Buy on Saturday. On the menu: Black Temple. Unfortunately, our raid group was very melee-heavy, and though we tried our hardest, we couldn't even drop Naj'entus. It was frustrating, and disappointing, so I imagine we'll probably try Hyjal tonight. The schedule says either Hyjal or BT, we'll have to see what sort of a group we get together. And I have to remember to pick up some more healy stuff.. I'm down to one potion and half of my bandages after the mess with Naj'entus! Here's to better luck tonight, eh? :)

MaNiC mOnDaY ~ Over

This post is going to take me a while to type.. the tendonitis in my right wrist started acting up over the weekend, so I've got a brace on it. It usually takes a week or so to stop hurting, so I probably won't be extremely prolific this week. Expect a lot of YouTube :)

I had a very short weekend.. thanks to summer being the ideal time for having hot dogs, we always work a lot of overtime. This summer has been no exception, in fact we've worked quite a few Saturdays already. I'm really hoping that phase of production is over, because everyone is just getting exhausted, and one day to recover before having to get right back to work just isn't fair when you're working 11-12 hours a day.

I'm really tempted to find a new job, but I'm scared at the same time. After almost 9 years, I'm really getting tired of where I work now, but considering the state of the economy currently, I'm terrified of switching and then losing my job due to downsizing. As annoying as this place can be, I know they need me, and that's a small bit of comfort that I really don't want to be without right now. We'll see :)

And now, thanks to my super-annoying coworker, I have a question to end with (for now, I'll probably post a bit about WoW later). The radio station he listens to every day mentioned something about giving away a suite at a Tigers game. This guy says "hey, that would be great to win, a suite!" And I replied, "yeah, but you'd have to watch the Tigers!" I say that because I'm not a huge fan of baseball.. it seems like a lot of time invested for little return, most baseball games I've seen have not been overly interesting. So I wouldn't enter this contest because I would rather the prize go to someone who would really want to watch the game. He, on the other hand, would, because he would rather have the service and amenities of the suite, and never mind the game. He also expressed interest in tickets to game 5 of the Red Wings' current series for the sole purpose of selling them.

What would you do? Enter the contest and fill a suite with a bunch of people who are just there to chitchat and have free food, or leave it for someone who would enjoy both the suite AND the game?

What a day!

Wow, am I wiped out. I'll probably be going back to bed after I write this, I'm still exhausted! Yesterday was a great day though. We left at about 9:30 am for Chicago because we had tickets for Avenue Q at the Palace Theater at 2PM. Hubby and I had seen this in Lansing, and loved it, so this time we took my brother-in-law and his wife along. We got to Chicago at about lunchtime, so we stopped at the theater to pick up our tickets, and then wandered around looking for someplace to have lunch. We decided on a pizzeria called Giardano's. The food was delicious! After we ate, it was getting close to time for the show, so we headed back to the theater for the show. It was just as fun to see as the last time, so I was very happy about that. I bought a t-shirt after it was over, too.

We headed home then, and I have to say, for a 2.5 hour drive, it went by pretty quickly both ways. Once we got back to town, we headed for a movie theater. We were going to see either Prince Caspian or the new Indiana Jones movie. But since Prince Caspian had started fifteen minutes before we got there, and Indiana Jones wasn't going to start for another half-hour, there wasn't much of a choice for us. Without giving away too much of the storyline, I have to say I was pretty disappointed in their choice of artifacts. It just made the whole movie feel wrong. Besides that, the romance felt forced, some of the plot points were waaaay too obvious (and again, a bit forced), and the ending had hubby going, "...really?" as in, "is that really the best they could do?" I'm glad I saw it, but it's nowhere near the caliber of the first ones. Sigh.

Overall it was a very fun day, and it was nice to hang out with my brother-in-law and his wife. In closing, here's a video of the song that drew us to the show in the first place. Small warning: there's a bit of suggestive language in it, so be careful of who's around when you watch it. Hubby describes Avenue Q as a sort of grown-up Sesame Street, see if you agree!

Sigh.. back to work :(

Happy Monday Morning, y'all.

I am back at work again.. I miss my vacation already! Hubby and I had a wonderful time, even though we didn't go out of town at all. Friday night we went out to a local blues club with my brother-in-law and his wife. I discovered that chocolate martinis are delicious (if expensive). We had some munchies there, and I got pretty tipsy. I get impulsive when I've had a bit to drink, so when hubby asked me if there was anything else I wanted to do before we went home, I told him I wanted to go run on the beach! The closest beach is about half an hour away, but we had the rental car and a full tank of gas, so off we went. I fell asleep on the way there, but once we got there, I kicked my shoes off, and took off for the water! Thankfully the sand was pretty smooth, and I made it to the edge of the water without doing a faceplant. I stuck my toes in, and it was FREEZING. I immediately turned around and hobbled back to the car, realizing at the same time that the sand wasn't exactly toasty either. I fell asleep again on the way home after that.

Saturday was a gorgeous day, the sun was shining, and so we went driving. I know I haven't mentioned yet what sort of car we rented.. well, here it is!


Yep.. a convertible! We had reserved a full size, and got this instead, for the same price. Awesome deal, eh? So Saturday we drove all around with the top down.. I am now sporting a very interesting sunburn pattern.. I have two stripes on my shoulders from my tank top straps, and a nice diagonal line from the seatbelt. Oops. Still, the temperature was great, we stopped and got some ice cream, visited my sister-in-law, stopped at a garage sale.. and to top off a great day, went to the drive-in movies with my brother-in-law and his wife. We saw Iron Man and The Ruins ('cause they show 2 movies for the price of one, which is awesome). Iron Man was pretty sweet.. The Ruins.. not so much. I'm glad we saw it there, because we were going to see it at the actual theater, and I would have felt like I wasted my money!

Yesterday was kind of wet and rainy, so I didn't do a whole lot. We took the car back (very very sad me!), and I spent the afternoon at my parents' house with my brother and his wife and their daughter. We celebrated Mother's Day and my mom's birthday. One more thing to celebrate in May, and that's my parents' anniversary on th 19th. It's a busy month!

That's all for my weekend.. I see that the Manic Monday word for today is doodle, so stop by later, I'll do my best to draw up something decent! ;)