Tuesday, December 25, 2007

White Christmas

It's snowing! I don't remember how many times as a kid I hoped for a white Christmas and was left with maybe a grayish-brown one. Or just gray, cause it was raining the whole time.

I doubt it will stick, but it's lovely for now.

Merry Christmas, everyone!!!

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Almost Christmas!

This week has been long. After more than a couple of months sitting on my chair doing nothing but attempt to prevent myself from falling into a coma, going back to doing real work all day long was rather tiring. I was so tired, in fact, that I went to sleep at 6:30pm on Tuesday night after getting home from work.

Both because of the keeping busy part and just because, I LOVE my new job! I really like the people, I like the atmosphere, I like the style of the company, and I like what I do. I'm never bored, and there's always something interesting and amusing to see. Today, I ran across an email address: "hexenweib43" or something similar, which translates loosely to, "witchy woman." The funny part is that she was attempting to buy an electronic item on a new account with several bad debt relations. Not the most brilliant thing one could do and expect to get away with it. So, in case you're wondering - ordering electronic stuff online using free emails with silly handles isn't probably going to be successful.

I watched the Canadian Brass on Wednesday evening with my brother. They were about as schticky as I expected, but also just as talented as I expected. They are all wonderfully technically proficient, of course, and they put on a great show. I very much enjoyed it, and considering I spent only $16 for my ticket, I'm quite pleased with it.

I'm now back at home for the weekend. I have to go into work Monday, quite early. I'm planning on getting there around 7am, because I don't yet have an after hours pass to my building. Then I'll work through lunch and hopefully be out of there in time to beat it to the ferry dock. Thankfully, most people can't order anything and guarantee it arrives by Christmas if they order it on Monday, so there should be fewer bozos to deal with. Everyone else in my department is working this weekend, but since I'm still training, I would actually slow down the progress of my supervisor so I'm not working. I only feel slightly sad about this - and that only because I calculated how much money I make on overtime now.

I'm also looking forward to getting trained to work on business in France, just to see how much French I've forgotten. I do find it vastly amusing that the most useful portion of my Master's degree was my language training. We received an absolutely hilarious email from a customer that quite literally took me back to my days of reading German before it was standardized (essentially pre-1550). If there's a name for the sort of German that corresponds to the English a redneck on his sixth beer at 3am would use, it would apply to this email. It's difficult to misspell in German (at least, I think so, coming from English), but maybe 1/3 of this person's email was spelled correctly. Not only that, but it was utterly nonsensical even if you could read the whole thing well, which you couldn't. Really, an excellent way to start off one's morning. :)

I am told that tomorrow will be a day of baking and food preparing, so I guess my big plans for tomorrow are to bake some gingerbread and possibly go to a movie with my brother. I do like these sorts of weekends.

Happy weekend before Christmas, everybody!

Monday, December 10, 2007

'tis the season

Maybe I was just feeling a little more prickly than usual today. But when I heard the phrase: " 'tis the season to be shopping" on the radio, I got really annoyed. I know that hardly anyone actually celebrates Christmas because they actually believe in Christ, and most people don't celebrate 'Christmas' anyway - they celebrate the 'holidays' - whatever that's supposed to mean, since the word itself comes from Christian holy days anyway.

But even if you don't care at all about or find the reason for the season offensive, the idea that the whole purpose of this time of year is crass materialism is just a little too much for me.

Maybe I need to go watch Charlie Brown Christmas again and restore my faith in humanity, even if the messengers are by turns racist and cruel cartoon children.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Nostalgia


moving on...but first, a break

Today is my last day at this job!! YAY!!!

Okay, got that out of the way. This weekend is going to be quite busy. Tonight, I have a concert with the Wind Ensemble I joined in October. I would like to find an orchestra to play with, though, because playing French Horn in band is boring. I would much rather be playing Euphonium in a band. But anyway, I’m sure the concert will be fine. Tomorrow, I’ll be sitting for the Foreign Service Officer Test for the second time, but it’s the new testing format, so I have no idea how I’ll do. My scores on the practice test have improved, though. I also bothered to study this time. :)

After the test, I’m grabbing my cat and heading back to mom’s place for a few days. Since my new job isn’t supposed to start until the 17th, I figured I’d spend some time with mom, plant the bulbs I’ve been meaning to plant, and just kind of dink around. I also got an order request on etsy to make some special order lace gloves, so that’ll be fun. Since I’m still finishing up the stuff I’m making for my friend K’s baby, I’ll be pretty much crocheted out this weekend.

Hopefully I will have enough money to join a gym soon so I can get rid of this sneaking suspicion that all the muscle/cardio capacity I built up in Singapore is slowly turning to flab.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

An Auspicious Beginning to the Holidays

Today is an auspicious day. At lunch, I will go to the post office, and mail not only my Christmas cards (and it’s still the first week of December!!) but also my voter registration. I am currently still registered to vote in Oregon, but I don’t like voting in Oregon, so I’m switching to Washington. I like the registration process in Washington better anyway, because you don’t have to register with a political party. However, because of consolidated voting, I don’t get to vote for a Republican in one race and a Democrat in another, which is really irritating. As an independent, I would like to be able to choose who I think is best for a job based on their positions and experience, not based upon their party affiliation. I really hate political parties.

Anyway, that will also be early, since my deadline is January 18, 2008 if I want to vote in the Presidential primary in Washington (not as though my vote will count, but it’s the principle of the thing). So, I am early in two important areas of my life for the first time in recent memory. I didn’t get my Christmas cards out last year until the week before Christmas, and I’m pretty sure some didn’t go out until after Christmas. But then, traditionally, Christmas is December 25 until January 6 (Epiphany or Twelfth Day), so I always said I had until the 6th. Technically. But of course, no one actually cares about the twelve days of Christmas anymore, it’s all crass commercialism up until the 25th, then the tree gets chucked by the 31st. How sad.

Next week, I am not working. I gave notice to end my current employment on Friday because I can't stand it anymore but because of background checks, I will not be able to start work this Monday, but the following Monday, unless by some miracle my background check comes back early. I sincerely doubt this, because I had 15 addresses on my list in the past seven years (five were from this year alone). So, I’ve decided to enjoy my last week of freedom before I settle down to my average 10-15 hrs of overtime per week job.

Monday, December 03, 2007

What's in a name?

Does anyone else find this utterly ridiculous?

My favorite quotes from the article:

"The teacher's conviction under Sudan's Islamic Sharia law shocked Britons and many Muslims worldwide. It also inflamed passions among many Sudanese, some of whom called for her execution."

"Sudan's influential Council of Muslim Scholars had urged the government on Sunday not to pardon Gibbons, saying it would damage Khartoum's reputation among Muslims around the world."

She let her class name the teddy bear Muhammad, so she should be executed? And not pardoning her would cause Muslims around the world to be offended? What is wrong with these people?

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Snow!!

Today, I had the pleasure of going to my friend Michelle's show/booth at the Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle, at the Exhibition Hall in the Seattle Center. I got some business cards from some great artists and crafters, and I can't wait until I have money and can go online and buy some of their stuff.

But, most importantly, after I left, it was snowing!! It never snows here, for those of you who may not realize, and it's AWESOME!!! I haven't seen this many smiles in Seattle for quite some time. I'm just finishing up my soup and hot chocolate at the local coffee shop and I can't wait to go back to my apartment and curl up with a book and watch my Netflix movie later tonight.

And... it's December!! Happy holidays!!