moriath

...Well, okay. Not really at all.

Went into Manhattan this morning 'cause my schedule for next week never was e-mailed to me. For some reason when I look it up on the computer system at work it shows that I don't work at all...ever...but on the paper printout version of the schedule, I work three days this week. Sunday from 2 until 10, Monday from 10 until 4 and Wednesday from 11:45 to 7:45 (yeah, that's not random). But, yay, work.

Spent the rest of the morning wandering around Midtown to check out paper shops. Had a horrendously frustrating day yesterday trying to buy the paper to do our invitations, but thought before resorting to ordering online I would check out some of the local places so I could get to work faster. No dice, but it was fun wandering around. I still have silly tourist moments, like as I was walking down Fifth Ave I noticed this nice, old store that had "Saks Company" (or something like that) etched into the facade. After a few seconds I realized, duh, I was walking past the infamous Saks Fifth Avenue.

Also, the Rockefeller Center skating rink is already set up for skating? I work right next to it and as I was on my way to check my schedule this morning there was a woman out there ice skating when it was 60+ degrees out. Weird.

Then stopped by a Goodwill out here in Queens to pick up some work clothes. Might have to go out and do more shopping later. Billy was on Craigslist this morning and randomly found a photographer who wants to do some free engagement portrait sessions in the city this weekend. I'd already told Billy that I want to get our portraits done in the city at some point, though I was thinking after the wedding and we'd get all dolled up in our wedding gear again. More engagement photos would be nice though, too :-) Especially since we'd get a free 16x20 canvas print...

I just removed someone from my LJ friendslist because she was happy that Margaret Thatcher has dementia.

That's just...disgusting.

Happy talk like a pirate day, everyone. My favorite holiday. That I am way too wiped to participate in (honestly, I completely forgot about it until I saw blog posts this morning. And I'm so tired/lazy that I haven't even gotten up to change into one of my pirate shirts to celebrate).

Spending two days walking around Manhattan is hard work, apparently. And I only have today to rest up and recover before spending two more days out there. I'm finally beginning to feel like I'm really living in New York.

I'm working on another original story ~gasp~ Two original stories started in one year! This is (seriously) a record for me.

It's about zombies. I am loving it much more than I was loving my erotic novel. I'm still keeping that one around; it's very possible I'll still finish it and try to publish it. But way too often I find myself NOT IN THE MOOD to write angst/smut/whatever.

So now I'm writing about high schoolers fighting zombies. OMG will I ever need a pen name if I try to publish both of these.

Getting a little bored at home. But at least my cats are settling in and not freaking out too much any more. They still don't like the dog (poor Coyote was SNEEZED on the other day by the dog!), but she's a big dog and they're little cats, so it's understandable.

Oh, found out something crazy about my mom yesterday: she has a crazy conspiracy theory that Japan wants to take over the United States. They're inundating us with their manga and anime and "so many" people are learning their language. And why would so many (white) Americans want to do that when Japan is such a racist country? They're going to destroy our economy and blackmail America into forcing us to accept waves of Japanese immigrants and they're going to take over the west coast.

MY MOTHER IS INSANE.

Going to see my grandparents today, then meeting with the officiant tomorrow, ordering bridesmaid dresses on Tuesday, LEAVING FOR NEW YORK ON WEDNESDAY. HOLY CRAP.

Stop killing people.

Plzkthx.

No love,
Me

For some reason, Google Reader keeps recommending Stargate slash blogs for me to subscribe to.

Not that I have anything against Stargate slash...except for the fact that I've never watched the show. And it's m/m slash. Women don't get enough love in fandom.

ANYWAY, went out to the bar tonight since it's our friend Richard's last night in Ypsi. Sad face. But he assured us he would definitely be coming back for the wedding! Which is good. I would be very very sad if Richard didn't come back up (he's moving to Alabama. That is possibly crazier than moving to New York).

Spent a good chunk of the evening talking wedding shop with Nina, who competed with Billy and I for a year before being a coach on the team for the rest of our time. She's getting married a few months after Billy and I and it was SO NICE to have someone to talk inane wedding details with. We compared wedding colors, talked about how AWESOME my (and possibly her!) photographer is, talked about moms and budgets...it was fun. I think that's one part of the whole wedding experience that I'm missing out on a little bit because my bridesmaids are spread out all over the place: I don't get to sit down and just blab about all of these things with anyone. This is probably why I have an unhealthy number of wedding blogs on my Google Reader, so that I can at least be privy to the inane details of someone else's wedding.

... And my brain just shut down. I didn't really have anything else specific in mind to blog about...but I can't even think of a coherent way to conclude this entry. Maybe the Kahlua affected me more than I thought?

I can has magnetic macroz?

Everything's been quiet around here recently. Collecting the last few addresses for my save the date cards (they're going out before Billy and I leave for Origins tomorrow, whether I have everyone's addresses or not. To any forensics team members who see this: the entire team IS invited, whether they get a card or not. I've tried to e-mail everybody, but some people like to dawdle over responding. Or they don't check the e-mail that I have for them. So the cards will theoretically be arriving on Friday or Saturday, before the banquet. Feel free to spread this gossip there)

That was a long parenthetical phrase. I swear I didn't intend it to be that long.

So, yeah, just tying up a few loose ends here before I take off for the rest of the week. Gotta clean up around the apartment, and finish buying some sexy accessories for my boudoir photos back in Grand Rapids on Sunday (I have waaaaaaaaaaaay too many outfits suitable for boudoir photos. I have NO IDEA which 3 outfits to choose. Well, okay, I have one definitely picked out, but the other two I'm having a very hard time nailing down!)

and I'm missing all of it.

No, this isn't some emo post about how I wish I'd done more with my life or something. It's because half of my favorite sites haven't updated/are updating infrequently this week with no explanation. Is there a holiday somewhere that I'm unaware of?

Okay, have to go do some novel writing now (need to get my couple through the next sex scene!), then I need to put together some wedding stuff. Maybe I'll even get some cleaning done before the air conditioning wears off (our air conditioner is OBNOXIOUSLY LOUD, thus making it impossible to think, let alone do anything productive while it's on. So we turn it on at night and any time we leave the apartment and it keeps us fairly cool. I think the cats are melting, however).

And then later this afternoon Billy and I are going to see either "The Strangers" or "Kung-Fu Panda." Yeah, we aren't eccentric in our movie tastes at all!

So working at Borders pretty much sucked the life out of me. I was totally not meant to be an office drone. Doing the exact same brain-numbing thing every day was killing my desire to do anything but sleep. Oh, and killing my back. And my wrist. I've decided that eventually my entire generation is just going to have carpal tunnel, because all we ever do is sit in front of computers.

Yeah, anyway, so yesterday was my last day at Borders. It came about for a couple of reasons. Primarily the soul-sucking-ness of it all, but also because Billy and I were just BORED OUT OF OUR SKULLS and a little depressed that we weren't doing anything with our lives that involved our expensive degrees. I have to start paying back that money in June and $10.75 an hour just wasn't going to help with that.

So quitting Borders gave us the impetus to say that by July we're going to move out to New York. I've been frantically submitting my resume to all of the publishing houses I can think of since I want to go into publishing. At least for a little while. I'm going to do one more office job, and if I can't handle that again I'm going back to school to get my media studies degree. I have absolutely no problem parlaying my geekiness into a degree, lol.

In the meantime, I'm going to start writing porn. Lol. No, seriously, Billy has been pushing me forever to try my hand at writing "real" stuff (smutty fan fic doesn't count). I've always refused because I've just never felt the drive to write anything original. I could come up with characters galore but nothing to do with them. Then he suggested romance novels, which seemed even more preposterous. I'd never read a romance novel in my life, how the hell could I write one? Why would I want to?

Except that romance novels can now double as porn. I've been reading a few of Harlequin's Spice novels and...they're not half bad. Some of them are not as great as the others(this month's novel, What Happens in Vegas... has some ridiculous plots that are totally just tired old romance novels with explicit sex), but essentially they're not much different from some of the fic I've written. It's all about sex; I can write sex. Seems like a perfect match.

So I'm dedicated June to bashing out the first draft of the novel. I already have a couple of chapters finished written (I'm sure I'll go back at some point and read them and ask WTF I was thinking). It'll be my own personal NaNoWriMo. Then at a later point I can go back and see if the darn thing actually makes sense.

Wedding plans are coming along fairly smoothly. Getting ready to send out save the dates soon (mental note: need to get addresses from Billy's mom. And forensa-addresses from...whoever has those at the wedding today. Marisa? Anke?). Doing a final round of bridesmaid dress shopping at the end of June with Carling.

And speaking of weddings, I have another forensics-related one to go to later today. That makes 3 forensics-weddings in less than a year. RIDICULOUS. And then in August two of our former coaches are getting married. And then there's a break until February...which is mine. That is still so surreal to think about. Over Memorial Day weekend Billy's brother had a barbecue that a bunch of the family went to. At one point while I was chatting with some of our friends there the whole Coffing family was gathering for a big picture. I was completely oblivious (I think we were having a really interesting conversation) until Billy's dad started calling me over. I "said yes" so now I had to be included in the family portrait. SO WEIRD.

Anyway, need to go start getting ready for Lauren's wedding. I need to go rouse Billy from bed and then dye my hair. Yaaaaaaaaaaaay hair dye.

The bottom line is, we still don't know how to advise patients in how to make boys.

WTF?! Maybe it's just because the headline (Mom's diet may play role in whether baby is a boy or girl) leads one to expect that there would be coverage of the diet that led to boy babies vs girls. But am I the only one seeing some tacit approval of the desire to have boys over girls?

Max & Erma's rickroll'd me.

Billy and I went there for dinner tonight, and as we were leaving, Billy was like "Angela, listen!" and "Never Gonna Give You Up" was playing over the loudspeaker.

I have NEVER heard that song outside of the internet.

Is this some sort of punishment for rickrolling Jon last week?

I got home from work this evening to find a note from UPS on my door. Apparently I have a package from here waiting for me. That's my best guess, at least. When you Google "GB Russo & Son" that's the first hit, and the package originated in Grand Rapids. So...yeah.

In case you haven't guessed yet, I definitely did not order anything from them. I've never even heard of them until I Google'd it. I have no idea what's going on. I can only imagine my mom sent me something, but no one's home answering the phone so I have no way of finding out.

I also don't get to pick it up until tomorrow after work. Boo. And since they're only open until 6, just like the bank, I need to go there INSTEAD of the bank, which THUS means I'll have to wake up obnoxiously early on Saturday to go to the bank to deposit my paycheck. Stupid UPS. Why can't I choose what UPS location I use to pick up my package? 'Cause there's a place that's actually on my way home from work where I could have picked it up. It's so convenient that I probably could have gone there AND the bank in one fell swoop. And even if I couldn't, that place is open on Saturdays.

In short, UPS=Lame

Work also=lame because the team leaves for Nationals tomorrow. Without me. THAT SUCKS. I'm going to get to see the team off, though, which will be nice. Wish them all luck one last time and all that.

Dammit. That means I'm going to have to e-mail my letter. I meant to write it while I was at work today so I could print it out, but we are crazy overloaded so no writing for me. And since I still don't have my computer from Best Buy, the printer on my desk is pretty much worthless.

In other news, Billy has convinced me that I need to start writing romance novels. Especially for these people. Any thoughts?

YouTube wins for having THE BEST April Fool's Day prank EVAR.

I mean, Google's is pretty funny, but... YouTube's wins more.

Not spoiling the surprise if you haven't found it yet. Just trust me that it's BRILLIANT and you too will literally LOL when you see it :-)

Best Buy wants $140 to reinstall Windows. Seriously?

Please tell me I know someone who can do it for significantly less.

Also: they put waaaaaaaaay too much garlic on my pizza at lunch. And I
loooooooove garlic, so that's saying something.

Work today is crazy. It's nice to be busy, but it's not helping the
funk I'm in due to PMS (stupid doctor not re-prescribing my birth
control in time. I DO NOT WANT TO BLEED THIS WEEK. Or any week,
really, but I'm digressing) + not going to prep + crazy complicated
orders.

I have BANGS




And with the glasses:



(Yay cell phone pictures!)

Most of you will have no idea how huge this is for me. But it's huge. I started growing out my bangs in 2nd grade. This is the first major change to my hair since 8th grade (the disastrous haircut that turned me off from haircuts until just before I came to college). I've had it trimmed, sometimes quite short, well relative to when it was past my waist junior year (it was just a little bit longer than it is now at the pre-college hair cut).

And then I found my wedding hairstyle a couple weeks back. It needs bangs to work. And with less than a year left until the wedding, I felt like if I wanted to do something major with my hair (which I have for awhile - when I got my hair trimmed at the beginning of January I'd originally envisioned a much more dramatic change) I had to do it now, so that if I hated it I would have time to grow it out before the wedding.

But I think I like this. I highly recommend Christy at Tricho salon & spa in Briarwood, if anyone in the area is looking for a nice place to get your hair done :-D

Now I'm going to go back to watching Short Circuit 2!

"One Day" from At World's End kills me every time I hear it. The beginning is such a sweet and haunting melody (it was my second choice for a processional song after Jack Sparrow's theme, though I'm very happy with choice number three) and then it builds to great drama in the middle before going back to being sweet and melancholy and...~sigh~ It's currently slated to be the last song of our "pre-show" music for the wedding (is there an actual name for that time? Weddings seem to be hyper-structured everywhere else), which, at this point, will pretty much guarantee I am sobbing by the time it's my turn to walk down the aisle. But I'm sure I'd cry eventually anyway (Billy turned me into such a freaking sap!), so might as well get it out of the way first thing, right?

Know what also sucks? That my parents have had one wedding-related chore for a week and have been unable to fulfill it. It was a simple task, too! Just call their church and see if we can use it for the ceremony (since the room at Doubletree lacks drama. Have I mentioned this before?) I called them last Saturday night to see if they could ask at church on Sunday. Well, apparently talking "business" on Sundays is rude so.........here we are, Friday night, and no call has been made. And no one will be at the office tomorrow.

Isn't is supposed to be too early in this process to get frustrated?

Billy works until 11:30. Friday nights alone suck. It's snowing just enough that I don't want to go drive anywhere, and I probably shouldn't be spending money right now, anyway, so...I'll just sit here. Because my life is exciting.

I need to stop listening to this song. It's beautiful and wonderful and depressing

My bridesmaids are "chattering." This makes me very happy, right when I needed a pick me up.

More on that story (the why-I-need-a-pick-me-up part, not the chattering. I have no idea what exactly they are chattering about, just that they are) tomorrow, when I'm not exhausted.

So while I'm browsing around teh intarwebz looking at the galleries of various wedding photographers, I stumbled across a picture that made me pause. At first I just thought I really like the suits all the guys were wearing.

Then I looked closer at the groom and said aloud "Oh my god that's Brad!"

It is so weird to stumble across pictures of people you know COMPLETELY RANDOMLY.

"Tribbles Driving"



I LOL'd. Quietly. Because I'm trapped in my cubicle for another hour and
15 minutes.

When searching to see if the company "Creative Memories" exists in our
database already, I stumble across no fewer than 2 dozen different
companies. All named Creative Memories.