smell ya later, 2006

i did not much care for 2006. i'm not alone in this feeling, and i know quite a few people who will enjoy watching 2006 go away along with me. 2007 can only be better, which isn't to say all of 2006 was lousy. just big chunks of it!

i have some fun plans for 2007 including moving into my new big house (okay, it's technically my roommate's new big house), setting up a giant sewing table in the basement of the new home, and getting rid of tons of stuff during the move. i want to meet henry and see more of baby, along with tiernan and jude and all of the other kidlets i know, i'm going to cut all my hair off (just as soon as my bangs grow a bit longer), and try to watch a bit less tv. the only thing i have going on resolution-wise is to pay more attention to my bank account and try to get some of my debt consolidated. does anyone have any tips for that? or have you used one of those non-profit services? i'm going to need some help with learning how to manage my money in a grown-up way.

thanks for reading in 2006, i know it wasn't always pleasant or fun, and here's hoping 2007 gives me better material to work with. happy new year!

hungover

just a little, but still. sort of fuzzy round the edges, sleepy but not wanting to spend all day in bed, you know the drill. i won't be going out tonight, so i made up for it by going out last night.

we went to a bar that i had never been to, that was seriously cool looking and had 2 pinball games, amazing slices of pizza, booths with seats that suck you in and won't let go, all of which could have totally made me love that bar until death do us part. the only downside was how the place had the unmistakable underlying scent of barf. it's like meeting a seriously tall, dark and handsome guy wearing a uniform (my favorite) only to discover he has dandruff and it's everywhere. so close, yet so gross. thinking back on it now i can't believe how much time we spent there, because the moment we walked outside all three of us said, "damn," as we tried to inhale as much of the cold colorado air to cleanse ourselves of the vomit odor. even my girl roommate, who is sick with a cold, could smell the barf. we must have been drunk.

strawberry vodka + 7up = good times. go write in on a bathroom wall somewhere!

shit bags

friday i got paid. that was yesterday, and the amount of money in my checking account at that moment almost made it hard to breathe. i got my very first grown-up commission check and it was massive. i kept checking the account to hear the amount in there, i kept thinking about all the things i could do with all that money, i just looked at my balance lovingly and thought good thoughts.

of course, life has a way of spending your money before you get to do anything actually cool with it. today i put new tires on my car, something i'd been meaning to do since i moved out here, but which i realized i desperately needed halfway through skidding into a 180 on ice in my car. sitting there, with my car pointed the very wrong way, not able to get it to move forward because i was stuck in the snow i thought, "hmmm...guess i put that off too long." all the careful driving in the world cannot compensate for tires without tread. when all was said and done my tires cost about $500. i didn't want the cheapest tires, and i didn't want the most expensive ones, and with all the other dicks out there buying tires there wasn't much in the way of middle ground. i could have spent less, but sometimes you get what you pay for and truth be told i haven't put new tires on my car in years so i knew i was going to have to suck it up. driving home this afternoon was a dream; my car handled beautifully and i knew i did the right thing. it was hard to say goodbye to all that money, but not dying in my car is worth it.

how to have a successful snow day

1. go ahead, get up early. it will just make the day longer, and will make the nap you take in the afternoon that much more enjoyable.
2. take a shower, if you must, but under no circumstances put on make-up or a bra or brush your hair. this will ruin all the fun of being disheveled all day.
3. it helps to have a cat or dog around to nap with, and feed illicit treats. a toddler might be fun too, but only if they like napping and laying around the house.
   
4. watch the movies you kind of always meant to watch but never got around to.
5. finish a knitting project. if you want to make it a really successful snow day, finish two. (you can substitute any crafty project for knitting.)
6. watch everyone else shovel the walk while laying on the couch.
7. don't answer the phone! the outside world does not exist!
8. do some internet shopping. it will make you feel like you've accomplished something, and give you something to look forward to in the mail. today i ordered some new knitting needles on-line with one of my gift cards, and will be ordering some more yarn tonight after i finish project #2. i have a rule right now about finishing big knit projects before starting new ones!
9. drink stupid amounts of coffee spiked with non-dairy creamers. the sugar and caffeine is extra delicious on a day like today. if you are worried about getting too big a buzz, make a pot or two half-caf, but don't tell anyone.
   
10. gloat about your snow day on your blog. revel in the smugness of having only been outside once today, and not for any good reason, and not for very long. go relax some more, and check back in the next day!
    

hey, guess what?

it's snowing again! they are calling this phase two of the blizzard, and honestly with all the hype surrounding it i kind of thought it wouldn't happen. weathermen, you freak out about things so often that i basically don't believe you. have you ever heard the story about the boy who cried wolf? take a lesson, jerks. all day today the sky definitely looked overcast and menacing, but by three this afternoon all we'd gotten was some paltry rain. i was really thinking we weren't going to get any snow here in fort collins, that only denver would get hit, but then right at six it showed up. it's about ten now, and it hasn't let up at all.
M is convinced we're all going to be snowed in for quite a while, so he made go grocery shopping with him after work. all i really needed was toilet paper, but it was fun to see what he buys at the store. you can learn a lot about a person by what they buy, and how they shop. like M does not look at labels or prices, which makes me INSANE. i followed him around the store, picking up what he picked up, looking at it and saying things like, "do you know what's in this?" and he kept saying, "no, put that down." i ended up buying two of the last four boxes of mac and cheese on the shelf, some pumpkin spice creamer, and the toilet paper i came in for. there was pretty much nothing on the shelves, since everyone else in town is stocking up, but i did that last week so i wasn't really in need of anything big. plus, getting snowed in means having to eat all the weird stuff in your cabinets anyway. don't people know anything? it's like god's way of saying, "hey, stay in for a few days and catch up on your reading/movie watching/board game playing. and while you're at it, figure out what to do with that can of tomatoes that's been in the pantry for months, why don't you?"

snowed in or not, i have the next three days off and the whole house to myself. i plan on doing nothing but drinking coffee, sewing, knitting, painting stuff and wrestling with the cat. oh, and watching movies. yay for pay-per-view! it means movies at my house, no waiting in line, no returning them, not having the movie i want all rented out, and not having to leave my home. i love you, pay-per-view. i have lots of good things to tell you about christmas, and a meme i've been tagged with, but right now i want to go enjoy being snowed in. i have some mac and cheese that needs to be cooked, and a kitten to watch tv with. hooray!

whew

now that i'm home in my pajamas, full of christmas pizza and beer, with a fun project* stretched out before me, i'm in a fantastic mood. jerks can definitely dampen my christmas spirit, but it cannot be totally thwarted!

sorry i didn't get my cards out in time (or at all). here it is anyhow, in all it's silly watercolor glory! Merry Cthuluhu Christmas to you and yours, and here's hoping for a wonderful 2007 and that the Old Ones keep on sleeping.

xoxoxoxo

*i'm making some headbands to tame my bangs during this awful growing-out phase. giving my hair up is the easy part, watching it try to grow out is the hard part.

merry fucking christmas

i am in a seriously foul mood. it's christmas eve, and i'm at work, people are jerks, and it's snowing again. i like the snow, i love that i'm going to get a white christmas, but my tires do not like the snow and i won't be able to get new ones until next week. it's just kind of an inopportune time for snow.

i'm making the boys at work listen to christmas music, and they love me and aren't even complaining. i'm feeling horribly homesick, and out of sorts, but i promise tonight i'll leave a nice christmas message for you. i did a cute watercolor for the christmas cards i never made or sent out, so we'll just do it electronically. at least science and technology are there for me!

man, i shouldn't even post this, but if i have to be grumpy then you have to hear/read about it. sorry!

Do any of you work retail? Are you working today? Are all of your customers evil & crabby like mine are?

Cossacks! Pain! Jerks! They are ruining my xmas mood.

knitters only!

i want to try out those addi turbos, but am looking for a good place to buy them online. where do you get your needles? i want to be able to go fast! faster! fastest! i think the turbos will help me do that. i got a need for speed, baby.

baking and knitting

this is the baby hat i made earlier today. it ended up kind of pointy, and not in an all together pleasant way (i don't want people thinking kali is a conehead), so i made my very first pompom to detract from it! at the same time, when i put it on over my knee, in an approximation of what a baby head might look like in it, it looked perfectly reasonable. there's a good chance i'm more nervous about the hat being pointy than i need to be.
this is the eggnog bread i made today. i actually made a loaf before these two, but like the math-challenged girl i am, i put the whole batch in one pan not realizing i had a pan smaller than recommended. oops! needless to say, it sort of exploded, part of it burnt, and part of it didn't cook at all. maybe i'll stop bragging about my cooking skills because when i do i invariably funk something up. the thing about eggnog bread is that even people who maybe don't love drinking eggnog usually really like this. in fact, when my mom started making it i was seriously anti-eggnog, but i would eat tons of this. now i enjoy a little nog in my coffee on occasion, and i owe it all to eggnog bread! although i don't think i can actually drink it, it's a bit too thick for my taste. in any case, here is the recipe! it comes from an issue of better and homes and gardens, circa 1991. a good year.

you will need:

• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 4 tsps baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 beaten egg
• 1 3/4 cups eggnog
• 1/2 cup cooking oil (light, like canola or a very pale olive)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (or more! i always use more)
• a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan, or two smaller ones. i think i used 8x 12 here.
• a mixer is nice, but you don't need it. all you really need is a big bowl and a wooden spoon.
  

in a large mixing bowl, stir together, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. i usually sift it right into the bowl to avoid lumps. combine the egg, eggnog and oil, add to the dry ingredients, stirring until just combined. it's important to note that like a lot of breads you shouldn't over mix the dough because it can lead to toughness. tough is good on the mean streets, not in the oven. stir in the nuts!

turn the batter into greased/buttered/sprayed/non-stick loaf pans. bake in a 350 degree oven for 60-70 minutes (if you are making two loafs you might want to lower the time to 45 minutes, or at least make sure you check on them at that time!). cover bread with foil if the top seems to be getting too brown but a tester comes out with batter stuck to it. once a tester (toothpick) can be inserted into the center of the bread and come out clean it's done. cool in pan for 10 minutes, then remove and finish cooling on a wire rack.

if you want to store it in the pan, it's always a good idea to wash and dry them after baking to make them all clean and good for storage. you can also wrap in wax paper, then foil, and freeze the loafs. then you can stash them just in case jerks stop by and you need something to feed them.

snow days are the best days

why? take a look at the list below, grandly titled "why snow days kick major ass;"

1. watching the cat freak out at how the snow is taller than she is. she got up on her little paws to sniff at the top of the pile only to sink in, which totally pissed her off, but not enough to make her come inside.
2. drinking beers and cocktails while knitting and watching everyone else slave over digging their cars out so they can go to work.
3. having the day off to enjoy all the snowy-snow goodness.
4. eating leftovers of last nights primo dinner.
   
5. watching bad movies. and good ones. and bad tv, too!
   
6. starting and finishing a knitting project in one afternoon. granted, it was a kids hat knit with bulky yarn, it was a piece of cake project, but it still felt satisfying.
   
7. not taking a shower! wandering around the house looking moderately homeless and disheveled, and loving every second of it.
   
8. even knowing i have to go into work tomorrow isn't that bad. we're close to christmas, i only have a fews days of work before i get to open presents and see if my parents really do love me (ha ha ha), i've fed everyone i know cookies so far, and sooner rather than later my hair will be all nice and short again. the combination of alcohol, sugar, christmas songs and crafty good times has made me impossibly giddy.
   

this is real weather

all day yesterday the weathermen did nothing but talk about the "storm of the year," all the customers talked about what getting ready for big snow, and all i did was roll my eyes. you hear a lot of hyperbole from pretty much every weather "authority" these days, so like everyone else i just look the other way when they show up on the tv, and check out the sky before i leave the house in the morning. clear? no hat. cloudy? hat.

i went to bed last night at 1 and there was no sign of snow. the sky was cloudy, but whatever. i woke up this morning to a nice, even layer of snow, a ton of insane wind, but it wasn't that big. i've seen snow like that before, so i got dressed, made breakfast (cheesy grits! best breakfast ever!), and headed out. the roads were definitely sort of rough since the plows weren't really out in force yet, but i just did what i always do; drive slow and steady. got to work, only to find out everyone that didn't live in town was excused from work, and it was just me and M and our assistant manager. we goofed around for a while, a few folks braved the elements to see us, but it wasn't many, and they were all either jerks or retards. while at work the wind picked up even more, and it was decided that the store would close and we'd all get to go home! yay! my assistant manager and i went to the grocery store and liquor store across the street, picked up things to make big dinners and beers, and then went home.

i got stuck in the parking lot for about twenty minutes. the trip home, all three miles of it, took over half an hour. i saw a few accidents, got passed by just about every asshole with a big truck and a tiny penis, got stuck in a snow drift at a stoplight, and when i finally made it home, i got stuck one more time in the parking lot. whoo! getting stuck in snow in a skirt, with wellingtons on, so close to being able to just go inside and warm up by the fire was extra-super-lame. however, one of my seriously nice neighbors helped dig me into a spot, and i gave him a beer and finally got to go inside where my roommate and i went right to work lounging. we made a delicious roasted chicken with veggies, some mashed cauliflower, and ate cookies. it was a great night. i wanted to take more photos of the snow, which continues to fall and is at this time seriously deep (if i wanted to i couldn't drive out of my parking lot), but it's cold out there! instead i'm going to bed where i will watch cartoons. i have the day off tomorrow and i plan on trying out a new recipe i have in my head for a cross between egg-in-a-hole and frittata, watching movies, finishing my sweater, baking eggnog bread and trying to take not blurry photos of the snow.

photographic evidence

cookies!

and the stitch markers i finished for my mom. to the left is a small oilcloth pouch i made her for all her knitting accoutrement's, and up above are some nifty needle holders. there's actually one more marker i made her, but i forgot to take its picture. it is cute, though!

you wish i was your housewife

tonight i came home from work and made not one batch of cookies, but two. even more amazing, i got home at 6:30 and was done with all my cookies by 9! i deserve a happy-homemaker medal or something. i have honestly never been seriously organized when it comes to baking, but i've been doing so much of it lately that i can get in and out of that kitchen in no time. tonight the secret was making one batch of dough earlier. i used a basic ice-box cookie recipe, but made it spicy, and then rolled it up into tubes and stashed it in the fridge this weekend. tonight all i had to do with them was slice and bake, and while they were cooking make up the other batch of dough, which was a basic chocolate chip cookie with coconut. i like a little something else in my chocolate chip, and coconut makes them feel all festive. why all the cookies? i'm going to a cookie-swap party tomorrow night. i'm not going to hide out in my house and gain five hundred festive pounds. promise.

there are now quite a few dozen cookies upstairs, cooling, and i still have all this time left to myself to get other things done! like finish yet another knit hat and maybe (maybe!) get some stuff actually packed up and ready for the post office. i need to finish the stitch markers i'm making my mom, too.

i'm also pretty serious about cutting all my hair off. it's time for a change. in a few weeks my bangs should be grown out enough for me to pin them back and out of the way, and then off with my head. better yet, i'm sending my hair off to locks of love. i might not want a lot of hair right now, but i know some kids out there who lost theirs in chemo might like it. i'm going back to my bob, baby. i'm more fun with shorter hair, anyway. the funny thing is, i told my roommate i was going to do it, and she said, "i was just thinking this morning about how i missed your short hair." i won't do it right away, but it's going to be one of the first things i do next year.

I am making everyone @ work listen to xmas music. They hate it, which i don't get. I'm supposed to be dead inside, not them!

familia!

i had a super-shitty day at work. i kicked out a deaf guy (!) THREE times, and the last time he came in he actually said to me, "you call the cops." so i did. fuck that shit! he might have been deaf, but he was still a total asshole. disability does not excuse awful behavior. the end! and after all that shit, i didn't make one single sale. working on commission can suck eggs.

after that i came home, made a drink, and called my aunt charlotte. i'd been meaning to call her for a while because she has this crazy-good recipe for sticky buns that i cannot seem to replicate. i've looked all over for the recipe, i've looked for a similar recipe, but it wasn't right. i need her recipe. i must have it! i was telling pop about that, and he said, "you should call her." um, duh. so i did, and it was great. aunt charlotte is my grandmother's little sister; she was pretty much my dad's mom for a while, and she was one of the few aunts we visited as a kid. my pop loves her more than anything, and i have always been extra-fond of her, but i get shy when calling her. we ended up having this nice chat, she cracked me up (i think she is the funniest lady ever), i got to talk to a cousin of mine, and at the end of the call she said, "i love you, call back soon," and it was like a really good hug. i mean, aunt charlotte has 52 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, meaning there's at least 100 of us nieces and nephews. if she didn't remember me, i wouldn't be offended; but she does remember me, she loves me, and i might have the shittiest job on earth, but there's a lovely indian lady up north who would totally take me in. how can life be that bad when there are people that good out there? plus, when i hear that reservation accent, i just feel better about life. curious about what that sounds like? rent smoke signals. close your eyes and think about giant families having dinner, yelling kids, big hugs, the smell of never-ending pots of coffee, and you'll know how i feel when i talk to aunt charlotte. it's not that just she's indian that makes her amazing, she's just a really great aunt, who happens to be indian. you don't know what dinner can be until you've eaten it with fifty other people, juggling a baby on your lap, goofing with cousins, laughing about something dumb, and munching on something delicious. it's not always amazing being to be indian, but when it comes to dinner, it totally is. i'm a lucky girl.

drinks!

Chocolate vodka & coke makes the world feel like a nicer place! Go tell it on the mountain.

hair

I am going to cut all my hair off! I hate it. And i hate the world, i mean customers.

Secret Boyfriend Saturday

this week's secret boyfriend, mike rowe, is very dear to me. mainly because this week i had a sort of...friendly dream about him. isn't it strange how once you have a naughty dream about someone, you're automatically more fond of them? i mean, i liked him before, but now when i see him on tv i feel like we have a secret in common. of course, that's sort of a stalker thing to say, isn't it? forget that last bit.
you might know my secret boyfriend from his work on dirty jobs. i know he did some other sort of cheesy things, like selling fake diamonds on the home shopping network, but it's his work on dirty jobs that makes him so attractive to me. he does all sorts of disgusting things, he's always got a good sense of humor about it, and we often get to see his muscles bulging. i like that. he just seems so wholesome and manly, and that is a dangerous combination for a girl like me.
he seems like the kind of boyfriend who would change a flat tire for me, try to cook dinner on occasion, and break up bar fights. he'd be sweet enough to let me rent the movies i want to see, but he wouldn't be a total pushover. he would also wear boxers, never briefs, and have a huge collection of hoodie sweatshirts, which i could steal and he wouldn't complain. yay for mike rowe, this week's totally imaginary, extra-shot-of-testosterone secret boyfriend.