As everyone knows, the “official” start of the holiday season begins the day after Thanksgiving. That being the case, despite the fact that we are still a few days away from December, I have changed my ring tone from No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” to “Sleigh Ride”.

Of course, now that I’ve changed it, no one has called me yet, but knowing that it will play a sound of the holidays makes me happy. This tone will play for a month, and then of course around New Year’s I will change it to “Auld Lang Syne”.

The dip in the temperatures lately, with a noticeable briskness in the air, also helps to serve as a reminder that winter and Christmas are just around the corner. It’s now just a matter of time before Steve and I go follow the trolley again in order to see all the pretty lights.

Each night I am seeing more and more houses popping up with festive decorations and lights. Now that I have made it “official” with the change of the ring tone, the only thing left to do is put my Christmas music CD in my car (well and begin my gift shopping, but that’s not as much fun and is probably a whole other post)!

Posted at 3:58 PM | (0)

This year, as I mentioned in my last post, I went with Steve to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family in SD. We drove down on Thursday morning, hitting a bit more traffic than we anticipated, but still arriving safely and without TOO much delay. The group gathered for dinner totaled 12 people and included his mom, dad, brother, aunt and her husband, cousin with wife and two teenaged kids, and grandma. I got my helping of turkey and mashed potatoes, so I was pleased. I also got turkey sandwiches and turkey soup made with the leftovers. Between the 12 of us we all managed to eat the leftovers within a day or so.

As far as the family went, they were all very nice. I have of course met his parents several times, and this was the second time I’d seen his grandma. The rest of the people I met for the first time. I suppose I was a tiny bit apprehensive wondering what it would be like spending the whole weekend with his extended family—especially since the group would be together most of the weekend. In addition, the cousins were staying at the house for the duration of the weekend. But it worked out well, and I think they all liked me. We played a lot of games as a group, including Oh Hell, Hearts, Uno, and Pictionary.

So all said, I had a nice weekend spending time with Steve and his family. This was the first time I didn’t spend the holiday with my family and I was surprised my mom didn’t seem upset when I told her my plans! It seems it worked out well all around for me, but now the sad thing will be going back to work tomorrow. The 4-day weekend went by a little too quickly!

Posted at 6:39 PM | (4)

I am off in a bit to watch Steve run a local SB race, and then we are headed down to SD for Turkey Day dinner with his family. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving (those of my readers who live in the US). Not sure if I’ll get the chance to post again while I’m down there, so if not, I hope everyone has a nice holiday/weekend/whatever.

Posted at 8:00 AM | (1)

While checking one of my personal email accounts I came across some spam offering letters from Santa. For a small fee, your child can get a letter from Santa, signed, and even postmarked from the North Pole.

This sounds nice and all, but read that again. Letters FROM Santa. Since when does Santa write letters? I thought the whole point is that kids are supposed to write to Santa saying that they’ve been really extra good this year and really really need a talking Elmo or whatever the heck is currently trendy.

I mean, it’s one thing to even assume that Santa has time to read your letters, considering that he’s busy overseeing the elves, making sure all the toys are done on time, making the naughty/nice list, checking it twice, and all that good stuff; but it’s quite another to suppose that he has time to write you a personal letter!

Everyone knows that even if Santa DID write letters, they would probably be done via an assistant, so the signature could hardly be considered authentic. In addition, children are supposed to find out ON Christmas whether they’ve been good this year, as demonstrated by the number of presents left beneath the tree. Heck, that’s why you’re supposed to bribe Santa with milk and cookies—to ensure he leaves you good stuff and keeps your donation in mind come next Christmas.

In short, I conclude that this is a ridiculous marketing scheme, designed to take advantage of gullible people during the hectic holiday season. I hope the children of the world are smart enough to realize that the letters are a sham. Besides, who wants letters from Santa? People don’t like Santa because he makes a good pen pal—they like him because he brings you the presents you ask for!

Posted at 10:20 AM | (1)

1. Heads up:: 7-Up. (Hooray for rainy day games.)
2. Kicker :: Goalie
3. Aggressive:: Mean
4. Getting ugly:: Escalating
5. To be continued:: dot dot dot (…)
6. Twist:: Shout
7. Form:: Mail
8. On the road:: Jack Kerouac
9. Import:: Export
10. Flowers:: for Algernon

Posted at 10:38 AM | (2)

This weekend I went home to celebrate my grandma’s 89th birthday. I am actually still at my parents’ house as I write this. My mom invited a few family members over and we had a home-cooked celebration meal. Altogether I think there were about 19 of us, including all of my cousin’s little kids. The dinner was nice, and it contained all the family that I usually wind up talking to anyway, which is good since I’m doing Thanksgiving at Steve’s this year, and hence won’t see them again 4 days from now.

After the dinner my mom, dad, and I went to go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. As might be expected, a bunch of things were cut out of the story—after all, the book on tape is over 12 hours I think. There’s no way you’d be able to fit everything into a 2 1/2 hour movie. Overall though, I think they did a good job of putting in all the major plot points, although the end result is that the more minor characters pretty much had very few speaking parts.

Oh and ugh, while trying to connect to my mom’s wireless connection on my laptop, I found that my new wireless card didn’t like the default settings of her router. I don’t know why it took me so long to try this option, but I just NOW decided to go reconfigure it with different security settings. Once I did that, it connected right away. Last night though I tried only slightly successfully to connect. I was able to connect sometimes if I didn’t move, but when I attemped to IM, I couldn’t hold a connection, which was quite frustrating. All seems to be fixed now though, and it doesn’t appear that I’ll have any more problems.

Posted at 2:30 PM | (0)

Today my company had a Health and Safety fair. They had tables set up for the various vendors that provide us with benefits. This included the coastal housing people, a credit union, pre-paid legal service, the local athletic club, and the SB Fire Department.

I am not sure why the fire department was there, but I will guess that they fell under the “safety” category of the fair. Although they didn’t provide any safety tips while I was there, they were giving out plastic fireman hats to anyone who could answer music or movie trivia. I did learn that they knew WAY too much about Forrest Gump. I also found nothing to dispute my theory (and really, is it even a theory anymore when it is proven time and time again?) that you can only become a fireman if you are attractive.

Of the two firemen sitting at the table, one was an attractive guy in his late-20’s, and the other was an older gentleman possibly in his late-40’s. The older fireman had really pretty blue eyes and was probably cute back in the day (ok, he could probably be considered attractive now, if I were into middle-aged men). Thus, they have more firmly cemented my belief in the attractiveness requirement. Along with the physical and mental tests, which you can prepare for, I believe there is also a more subjective attractiveness test. If you aren’t cute enough, you don’t get hired. Period.

At any rate, while I didn’t take a cheap, plastic hat, I did walk away with a brand-new hot pink pencil (I had the choice of blindingly bright neon pink, neon orange, or neon green). And who doesn’t love neon?? I seriously considered taking one of each color. It made me wish wearing neon clothing was still in style!

Speaking of things that are hot, it’s been in the mid- to upper-70’s for the past week. Craziness!

Posted at 4:07 PM | (3)

They just announced today’s contest winners. Guess who was among them? ;)

Off to go collect my prize and submit the answers to today’s trivia…

I rock!! :)

UPDATE: During our weekly meeting, my boss acknowledged my win and then said that she knew my source. She shared with the rest of my group, so I guess I no longer have the monopoly on this info (if indeed I ever did!). At any rate, the two new employees remembered receiving the timeline in their new hire informational packets.

Posted at 10:37 AM | (1)

Starting Friday, my company is holding a contest wherein they ask two questions every day up until the day of our Christmas party. You submit answers for one or both questions and the next day they draw a winner from those whose guesses were correct.

Yesterday, the first batch of winners were announced, and I was one of the winners! I got to choose between a free movie pass, a $5 Borders gift certificate, or a $5 certificate for the coffee truck that comes daily. Given that I’ve previously ranted about how the movie passes are never good for the movie you want to see, and that you can’t buy anything at Borders for $5, I chose the coffee truck. I know, I know, I don’t drink coffee, but you can also order hot chocolate or muffins.

After my win, some people wanted to know my secret! Where did I find the answer? It may have been a bit mean of me, but I refused to divulge my secret. You see, my source also had lots of other information on it, which I felt will probably be used in future contests. The rules only state that you may not win twice in one day (meaning win both of the questions of that day), but it says nothing about winning multiple times on different days. Therefore, I am out to secure as many wins as possible!

Unfortunately, I didn’t win today. I got both of the answers right, although one was a bit elusive to find. The winners of today’s contest were a husband and wife, which leads me to wonder if it was fixed in some way. Did they cheat to win? It wouldn’t be hard to tamper with the box to see what other people guessed. Or did the judges pick them over me because I already won and they thought it would be cute to give it to a married couple?

Oh well. Today’s questions were announced and, using my sources, I have already found the answers. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Will victory once again be mine?

Posted at 10:31 AM | (2)

This weekend was pretty mellow, but it did allow me to get all caught up on my oh-so-important TV watching! I am actually all caught up on everything, which I just now contemplated listing off, but I don’t want to scare anyone with the vast quantity of shows that I Tivo. In my defense though, I do often have the shows running while I’m doing other things (especially the soaps…you rarely need to WATCH soaps as the dialogue is generally sufficient to follow what is going on. If not, well, that’s what the rewind button is for!)

Anyway, I also made dinner for Steve last night, since I’ve been promising to do it for eternity. I made chicken marinated in Italian dressing and grilled a la George Foreman, with mashed potatoes. I suppose it’s not super fancy or anything, but I only know how to make so many dishes off the top of my head! Besides, we both tend to prefer the plainer foods, so that works out well.

After that I got him all caught up on Lost and Desperate Housewives. Despite his realization that Desperate Housewives is very much like a soap opera, he is hooked! See, guys love near-implausible drama too! Perhaps next I will have to get him hooked on the daytime soaps! :)

Posted at 9:53 AM | (2)

Time again to guess random song lyrics. Submit your answers and win fame and fortune! Ok, maybe not, but if you get the answers right you get your name posted so everyone can know what an awesome guesser you are! :)

1. You don’t have to put up a fight. You don’t have to always be right. Sometimes You Can’t Make it on Your Own guessed by: Redhat

2. My tea’s gone cold, I’m wondering why I got out of bed at all. Thank You by Dido guessed by: Cephyn

3. We’ve got each other and that’s a lot; for love, we’ll give it a shot. Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi guessed by: Dre

4. Every whisper of every waking hour I’m choosing my confessions. Losing my Religion by R.E.M. guessed by: Dre

5. I’ve been fooled before, wouldn’t like to get my love caught in the slammin’ door. Straight Up by Paula Abdul guessed by: Jessica

6. To me you are the sea, fast as you can be, deepest shade of blue. What am I to You? by Norah Jones guessed by: Datcat

7. Here I am expecting just a little bit too much from the wounded.

8. I know it’s hard to keep an open heart when even friends seem out to harm you. November Rain by Guns ‘n Roses guessed by: Cephyn

9. You’re my best friend. Best friend with benefits. Head Over Feet by Alanis Morrisette guessed by: Dre

10. I swim, but I wish I’d never learned. The water’s too polluted with germs. Bad Fish by Sublime guessed by: Cephyn

Posted at 1:30 PM | (6)

In honor of my company’s 50 year anniversary, I walked into the office this morning to find one of those 16oz coffee thermos thingies on everyone’s desk, along with the formal invitation to our Holiday party next month.

I’m not sure how often I’ll use the thermos as I’m not a coffee drinker and don’t usually have need to transport large amounts of liquid in its respective hot or cold state, but hey it’s a free gift that’s probably worth about $25-$30. Besides, you never know when you might need such an item, and it’s got the name of my company on it, so I guess that means I’d know if someone outside the company stole it!

If I ever go on a long trip, between this and the insulated lunch bag I got when I started working, I’ll be all set!

Posted at 4:10 PM | (0)

I am back from my birthday weekend in Vegas. We were possibly going to stay until Tuesday afternoon or so, but as should now be apparent, we are back a little early. Despite that, I think I’m going to stay home from work just because I already set my mind on not working until Wednesday!

We arrived Friday night and surprisingly avoided any sort of heavy traffic—I can’t believe how we managed to avoid any accidents and gridlock. On Saturday night we went to the U2 concert, entering the arena just after the opening act. U2 played for almost 2 1/2 hours and did songs from their latest album, as well as a bunch of earlier favorites. Our seats were pretty high up, but the concert was still a lot of fun, and U2 put a lot of energy into it. I wish they would just tell you they are going to do 4 encores though—we almost left before the last one! The encores are also when they brought out special guests Mary J. Blige and the lead singer of The Killers.

After the concert was done, we played some at the MGM (which is also where the concert was), and of course everyone the question going around to anyone and everyone was whether they saw the concert either Friday night or Saturday. It seemed almost everyone around had attended, so I pity the minority of people who had to answer in the negative.

On Sunday, the day of my actual birthday, Steve took me to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant. The ambiance was really nice, though I’m afraid the sophistication of the menu was lost on us. The waiter obviously knew the food items and was good at being persuasive and getting us to order things we might not have otherwise. He was also a bit of a lurker and came back at least half a dozen times to check on us and then just stood there staring at us. I’m not sure what he was waiting for, but it got amusing after awhile just waiting to see when he’d come lurk again.

We got a dessert and they put a celebratory candle in it and wrote Happy Birthday on the plate. The dessert was really good—it was basically a giant smore, with a chocolate pudding cake, a marshmallowy part on top of that, and then graham cracker-flavored gelato on top of that.

All in all it was a very nice trip—I got a nice dinner, a concert, got to play blackjack, watch 2 Bellagio watershows less than 5 minutes apart, see the Shark Encounter at Mandalay Bay, and I can’t forget that I beat Steve 3 games to 1 at air hockey!

A few pictures are below, for those interested.

I think I look cute in this picture!

Me with my birthday dessert.

Steve at the concert, taken with my camera phone.

Posted at 11:47 PM | (4)

I know I haven’t posted for a few days, but now I’m posting to say that I won’t be posting for a few days. (you all follow that?) ;)

I am off to Vegas with Steve for my birthday, which is on Sunday. We also happen to be going to attend the U2 concert happening there this weekend.

Woo, more details when I get back.

Have a great weekend, everyone! :)

Posted at 12:46 PM | (6)

Yes, nothing quite says “autumn” like 80-degree temperatures. Good grief the last two days have been hot! Anyway, I’m totally digging it and hope it sticks around, since I hate being cold. Unfortunately, I know that at any minute the winds of winter will blow in and turn me into a Jen-sicle. I didn’t get the name “Icyshard” because I am always hot!

At any rate, I’m sure last night must’ve been awesome for little trick-or-treaters. I remember being really damn cold when dressed up in costume at night, and nothing ruins the awesomeness of a costume more than having to wear a jacket or turtleneck with it.

Posted at 3:56 PM | (2)