Happy Biggest Retail Sales Day of the Year to everyone!

If you called me at 7am this morning, and let the phone ring once (enough to wake my ass up) before hanging up, know that I am enlisting the assistance of the phone company to find out who you are so you can be dragged out into the street and shot. I was able to go to sleep after that, but was woke up (waken up? woken up? wooked up? all wooked up?) again 2 hours later by my grandma calling to make sure I'd made it back to Oshkosh today, and thanks for the sweet potato cassarole.

(cue heavenly music) I cooked potatoes yesterday, and it was good.

You know how sometimes you are really just not a big fan of something, like the Teletubbies, because most of the time it sucks... and then you catch a couple of episodes that not only don't suck, but are actually kind of good and funny?

That in a nutshell was this and last year's Thanksgivings. Last year was so 360-something days ago, so here's how yesterday went. Was a little sad (no, check that, a LOT sad) that I wasn't at my mom's house for Thanksgiving... I really missed being banished to the back end of the trailer with my sibs so she could have important conversations with her friends. (I hope at least one of you reading this is one of my brothers or sisters - to you I give a big fat A-SHA-SHA-SHA, SHA SHA!!!) But seriously, folks, wish I could've been there for turkey cookies. (ultimate coolness if mom asked about turkey cookies, even more ultimate coolness if Michelle made some comments about dammit, i'm never making them again under her breath.) Called my friend Ann, who (whom? whooo? woo?) I haven't talked to in at least 6 months... I'd been sending her emails, but her address had changed, so she didn't know I had left Orange County. It was helluv funny, and it was really good talking to her again. I'm just saying that because I sent her an email telling her about my little slice of blog. Just kidding dude, if I hated your guts I would've sent you thisinstead of calling.

My cooking set off the smoke alarm while I was on the phone with my mom. It was freakin' funny.

Went and checked on Jen's cat (remembered where the house was this time!), drove down to Hartford, stopped in by my dad's dad. That felt a little wierd... I mean, I know he's still my grandpa even though my parents are divorced and I haven't talked to my dad in four years, but it's still odd. Didn't stay long, drove up the street to the other Gma and Gpa and Aunt Susie's place. When I first got there Susie took me upstairs to show me her computer. She's just learning super basic stuff about the internet, word processing, and so on... She thought maybe she was doing something wrong because all of this porn kept getting sent to her email address, and she always got these weird windows that popped up trying to get her to buy stuff when she went to most websites.

For the most part dinner was okay - not tons-o-fun, but not terrible, kind of funny and a little sad. My cousin Jason is having problems with his exgirlfriend, and was supposed to have custody of their daughter for Thanksgiving but the ex took her down to Milwaukee instead. My uncle Mike was headed down with a friend to suprise gma and gpa, and SURPRISE! he got pulled over for drunk driving and is probably still locked up in Washington County Jail. Met a couple of cousins I don't remember ever meeting before; it's funny knowing that the last time I'd seen pictures of them and stuff they were maybe 7 or something. One of them was passing out invites to his 22nd bday party at some bar, and everyone in the room got one but me... I'm like fuck it, you guys are almost guarunteed no to fun to drink with anyways. I got a lot of questions about why the hell I'd move to Wisconsin from Cali, and my uncle John (kind of a dick) called me an ar-teest when I told him what I do. I don't know, maybe I'm alone here, but probably the single most condescending thing you can ever hear is someone say "oh, you're an ar-teest" when you tell them what you do. It's lame, but it really pisses me off.

Found out some interesting stuff about my mom's parents that I probably would have never known had I not been there for Thanksgiving yesterday. They cook the turkey in this oveny-sort of thing, I don't really know how it works, but grandpa bought it for grandma about a year before they got married. He was trying to get on her good side, and someone told him he should get her something for the kitchen for xmas. From the sound of it, she was pretty ticked about it, and grandpa made it up to her on her birthday a month later. (I'm not sure I want to know.) She didn't start using it until they'd been married four years, but she's used the same oveny-thing every year since - that's like 45 or 50 thanksgivings. I had no idea they've been married 55 years, and had lost track of how old they were... my grandpa's 78, I'm sure grandma's not that far behind. They met at a carnival-type thing, he drove by with one of his friends and she was on the street. The first time they went out was a double date, but they were each with other people and bickered all night. Someone brought up card games, and my gpa starts talking about how he taught me how to play cribbage years ago and I kept winning. Then something came up about strip poker, and apparently my grandparents used to play. (That concludes this weeks edition of "Things I Could've Lived a Full and Happy Life Without Knowing")

Finally got out of there at 8 or so, much later than expected. Went and watched Election at Ryan's house - that movie's all kinds of messed up funny. If you dig Reese like I dig Reese, go rent Legally Blonde or come over to my house and watch it. It's the best.

It was just a very smiley Thanksgiving. Hope yours was the same.

Didn't sleep much again last night. I feel like a freaking zombie. If we really do ditch work for a while to go catch a movie today I'll probably sleep through it. Unless it's Jackass. You should go see that if you haven't already. Funny, funny (disturbing) stuff. It won't be Jackass. Michelle has something against going to that movie. I think she's afraid it'll inspire her to set off fireworks in her parents' bedroom while they're sleeping.

Yesterday was cool - work was slow again, except for the part where we got thrown into filing paperwork for other people who hadn't done it yet. Fine, whatever, did that for a little while then went to Michelle's goodbye lunch at Mario's(Today's her last day, then I'm all alone in the cube. I think I'm gonna cry.) which was tons-o-fun. Sat next to crazy Jen. Sometimes we get outta hand when we get together - lots of giggle fits and yelling at each other - made everyone glad we didn't have alcohol on top of that. What set it off yesterday was I glanced over at her swanky paper placemat, and she had written "For a good time call Steph - (920) 867-5309" So I drew a big fat ad on my placemat for Jovial Jen's Escort Service - "One call does it all" (really wrong if you stop and think about it). I ask for her phone number so she reads me a string of numbers from her dollar bill. We tried calling the number, but it was a disconnected cel number. Damn.

After lunch, we went out to the outlet mall so Michelle could use her discount one more time and, more importantly, to slack off some more. Came back to work, did some more paperwork filing, found out in the middle of it that dammit, 8 of my pieces of artwork changed and NO ONE SAID ANYTHING. Like the files would magically fix themselves. Spent some time working like a madwoman, trying to get it all done to be sent out yesterday. After work we toilet papered Michelle's desk. Lori also wrapped her chair in Saran Wrap. Nothing says we'll miss you like trashing a desk.

Had dinner with Ryan and the Joneses(sounds like a 50s doowop group) last night. Hit a new Steph record in bad parking... got out of the car and I was a full 3 FEET AWAY FROM THE CURB. Ask me about the Lehman Parking Motto sometime. Parking aside, it was a great time. The stew was tasty, and I found out I can't tell Other Steph or Ryan anything I don't want other people to know. How many of you already know who I have for the gift exchange? Hung out for a while after the Joneses left and laughed my ass off at some cartoons Ryan had - Birdman, Attorney at Law I think it was?

Went home, was in too much of a good mood to actually sleep. So I watched last night's 24 that I taped... Anyone else watch that show? Last night was a little slow. I'm completely over Kim Bauer's whiny crap. This season better not sink into suckage, I'm gonna be really pissed. I think I finally made it into bed around midnight-thirty - had a weird dream but I don't remember what it was.

One hour down, seven to go.

Steph to the second power, it could be worse. My last checkupy type doctor had to be picked from a list, too. I never know how to pick doctors, so I just went with the one that had a name sounding like a local fast food chain because it made me laugh. He turned out to be a late 60s-early70s guy who chatted with the nurse like he was shining shoes or something during the stirrup thing. It was a little weird, but freaking hilarious at the same time.

Kat, I totally know what you're going through. It's been a really really long time (since college, maybe) since I've done my own thing art-wise. And when you think about it, was it ever really entirely your own thing if it was an assignment? I mean,there was some stuff that was way funny that I felt really good about like the teddy bears cartoon, the bigass painting of the puking guy, the series about stuff I'd recently done for a quarter... (did you ever see that last one? freaking funny) Other assignments were exactly that. Assignments. Those ones (a lot of them happened in Intro to Animation) felt really dead and lame. There's plenty of art I've done for work, but my own stuff? Virtually nonexistent lately. I'd like to say hey, it's the move, I just haven't gotten settled enough yet to do another short or a painting or start writing that crazy story that's been in the back of my head forever about the eyeball on steroids. The move excuse is a load of crap. I wasn't working on anything back in Cali, either. A while ago VeAnn bought me a copy of a book called The Artist's Way - it talks about either just starting or getting back into writing, drawing, painting, running through the streets wearing nothing but a smile, whatever creative thing it is you're having problems getting back into. It was really good for me, but then like a jerk I slacked off again. Laaaaaaame. I may go through the book again; if you want we could do it together. (Not do IT, you sick perverts reading this.)

No more personalized messages today, the rest of you are s.o.l. I will leave you one funny - my siblings and I call applesauce "pplsc" (pronounced "pluh-sus")because we're too poor for the vowels.

Another fun being-poor-game is to walk into a room where someone's reading, watching tv, eating, whatever. Turn the light off, shout "We can't afford electricity!", then run.

Anyone else seen the new Gap commercial for Xmas, where they're trying to get you to buy happy stripey things? And they're all dancing around and singing something like "people all over the world, join hands, start a love train, love train..." Just sounds kinda dirty...

Strange night tonight, doing laundry and trying to get my shit together to find a new eye guy in Oshkosh... I wish it was like going to the dentist, where as long as you took really good care of your teeth you could skip going the recommended every 6 months or so. With the bad eye I have to go all the time because stuff might be breaking inside there that I can't see, and that really chaps my hide and is a little scary. I think that's why the eye feels like it's coming up in conversation so much lately - it's not that anything new and gross is going on, it's more like I have to find a new eye doc and that bites. So obviously I feel like writing sick stuff about my bad eye, I won't feel bad if you don't read it. It's not a feel sorry for me thing, it's a hey, if you're interested in how it happened this is it. Maybe the hardest part about it has been other people's reactions; some don't understand that it's really no one's fault the eye is legally blind. The central serous retinopathy that started the whole thing is stress related. It's not surprising, at the time I had moved back home where a divorce was finalizing and I was working 60 hour weeks. Start at 7am at data entry, move on to the B.B.V. (blockbuster video) between 2-3pm, go to bed at 1am, rinse, repeat. So I started seeing a dark spot, which was the retinopathy thing. The doc hit it with a laser, and pow, everything seemed fine. About 4-6 months later I started seeing a new dark spot in a different area. The doc hit that with a laser, too. Again, it seemed like all was well. Then my vision in the left eye started to get worse - turns out it just healed really badly. The small scar tissue from the first surgery and the small scar tissue from the second had mutated and grown together into a big fat uglee mass of scar tissue that crossed over the center of my eye, causing my central vision to be nonexistent.

Because things in my eye were being moved around, pushed, pulled, whatever from the scar tissue, other gross stuff happened. There's a piece called the vitreous that broke off and just floats around in there - which is in itself is pretty normal, just in much much older people. Last November I noticed new, much smaller blind spots. Nothing's being done with those because my eye healed so abnormally the last time. My eye guy did notice some swelling and cysts on the retina and optic nerve, so he sent me to another eye guy. That eye guy sent me to get an mri to see if I had any brain tumors. (Should've saved us all some time and told him about my missing brain...) Had a ton of bloodwork, was tested for, and I quote Dr. Sadun here, "rare and weird diseases." Some of them had weird freaky names made up of letters and numbers, like they found so many diseases they didn't have time to give them all proper names, and others were good for a laugh. I'll have you all know that yay, I tested negative for syphillis. (seeing as it's been a while, that would've been really freakin' funny and hard to explain if I did have it... except for actually having a disease, which would suck.) Since everything came back negative that doc sent me to another doc, who decided to give me a shot in the eye. It felt really really weird. They numbed my eye beforehand, so you don't have any pain, just the pressure change when the steroids get pushed into the eye. That's right, for one day my eye could've beat up anyone on the block. I had this little cartoon going through my head all the time about my eye pulling me along as it wreaked havoc on Orange County, robbing liquor stores and such because it was angry and on steroids.

Since then it's been all observational visits. Nothing new and gross, just old and gross. It's not anything that's really bad - just annoying. The worst part is I'm legally blind in my left eye and I can't get a damn handicapped placard. Where's the love!?!?!?

So I'm really going to bed now. Go to the Gap, buy something stripey and think dirty thoughts.

Crapulence.

So when I was setting up my nifty little bloggy thingie here, and blatantly stealing templates and code from others (which is really really freakin' addicting, seeing as I can't code for shit and finding easy, easy code to use is rad), I got to the point where hey, I'll do the linky link thing to other people's pages. Wasn't sure about using the plethora of nicknames that I've been bombarded with since meeting everyone, though. I never really heard where the names came from... For all I know a name as harmless sounding as Plinko could be part of some weird game where the next person to say the nickname would be ritually killed in the middle of a cornfield while playing drinking Monopoly. Couldn't take that chance, so I figure the next best thing is hey, it'd be funny to put how I learned your names.

The following is a public apology to Eric, hopefully in time to avert his self-destruction.

GOOD PEOPLE OF EARTH! Eric looks NOTHING like Mr. Bean WHATSOEVER. Nor does he look like Rowan Atkinson in any way shape or form. NO resemblence AT ALL. NONE.

I can only hope I replied in time, and that Mr. Be.. Eric hasn't offed himself already.

In other news, mostly interesting to the other white Steph, I was interrupted at work today by someone who, for privacy's sake, I won't name here - let's just say her name starts with a B and ends with onnie. It was freakin' lame. She made a big deal over a mistake I made on the paperwork for something (hi, I just started doing this crazy-ass detailed paperwork 2 weeks ago), and then made some comment about how she hated to interrupt my Tetris, like I was the only one slacking off. Dude, the ENTIRE art dept.'s not doing anything! I just finished 2 weeks with tons of overtime! (Probably not as much o-t as other steph, but still...)

That be all, off to the post office and then back to Tetris...

In my defense, this template made my title look the funniest.

Just kidding. I'm a sheep. moo. That's why I'm on blogger; everyone else is doing it. That's why I wear clothes, too.

It's way to early to be up on a weekendy type day. But Jed the Fish's Out of Order countdown is on early on Sundays, so it's not so bad. It's nice that there's at least one little chunk of KROQ that's syndicated. Unfortunately, Rick Dees is also played here. For some reason I can't escape that bastard.

So I had a dream this morning about my little bros and sistahs. Duh. I have those about once a week, and they're usually pretty whacked out, like the one where we met (and talked to!) Christopher Walken. This one wasn't so much fun. I was trying to get them to the Appleton airport because they'd come out to visit for a day. I was really pissed to begin with, because they had just come into town the night before, leaving us literally no time to hang before they had to leave. And we weren't at my apartment here (my dreams change venue A LOT), I think we were in my last apartment in California but that apartment was magically transported to Wisconsin. (If I was going to overanalyze the whole thing I'd say I miss my dorky roommate.) ANYWAYS, ( I ramble and use parenthesis a lot, hooray!) before I get completely off track (trains are funny) the whole dream was me being pissed off because they were only in town for a day and they had each brought a huge bag of stuff and had emptied them out on the floor, and they were trying to pack the bags, and Brittanie wouldn't leave the bathroom because she was doing her hair, and Brandon was still sleeping and Danielle and Justin were just sitting watching tv and there was an hour before their flight took off...

I woke up believing I was going to be late for the airport. By that point I was too worked up to sleep anymore, may as well get up. It makes me laugh when I sit and think about why I had the dreams I did. Yesterday, when I got home from the mall and meeting the cat I'm taking care of next weekend, Alice in Wonderland was on. There was a commercial for a toy airport. There was this cheezy kid saying things like "We just made it!" while running the people to the airplane, and "We better get our luggage!" I remember thinking (this is messed up) that when he had them running through the airport he should've said something more timely, like "Look out for terrorists!" I also got some funny cards and candy and a crazy turkey thingie in the mail yesterday from my family. I laughed for probably a half hour when I read them - nothing says we're thinking of you like "Happy Thanksgiving, motherfucker!" So there you go. Got stuff from my family, saw a commercial for a toy airport, had a messed up dream where I was pissed off at everyone. It all adds up.

Went to the mall yesterday to help Lori and Jennifer pick something out for one of the many many really cool people that are leaving b'gosh. We got Michelle this crazy toaster she fell in love with but couldn't rationalize actually spending $45 on. It's this Winnie the Poop toaster, and has pics of Poop and Tigger on the side of it. If that wasn't enough exploitation of hapless cartoon characters, it also imprints their images on the bread while it's toasting. But that's not all! It also plays music when the toast pops up. It's freaking INSANE how much stuff is built into this little toaster. So yeah, we did that. On the way home Jennifer and I had a big long conversation about how God doesn't want us to have jeans anymore. It's true! I have been trying to find a new pair of jeans for weeks - they're all either way too baggy or they do the whole suction fit thing where they go up your ass and prevent any real breathing from taking place. (no lie, I've probably tried on 60zillion pairs of pants) And they're all made from that crappy super thin crosshatchy material that'll probably fall apart within a couple of months. Last weekend while I was on the way back from getting xmas photos taken (you'll find out soon enough what I'm talking about) I had a revelation. "Wait! You sew! You could just MAKE a pair of jeans!!!" So I go to JoAnn Fabrics and buy sum fabric and go home. My sister Michelle and I (that's 5 brothers and sisters if you're keeping track) usually practice what we call Renegade Sewing. We don't preshrink the fabric, we don't iron out the pattern, we basically cut all the corners we can in preproduction to get to the fun part. Not this time, this time I tried sooooo hard to do everything right because I really need a new pair of jeans. I mean I was METICULOUS. I got to the point where I sewed one of the side seams, and when I held it up I realized oh hey, this pattern's for someone with much bigger hips than me. So I sew in farther and cut off the extra material. Hold it up, looks like it'll work. Repeat for the other leg. Sew the two together, and try them on.

I shouldn't have cut anything off. They're way too freaking small.

God doesn't want me wearing jeans anymore.

Before I go, lemme say to everyone that's already been subjected to my copy of Rejected (and its bleeding fish sticks) that there's a whole group of peeps here in Oshkosh who haven't seen it yet and really want to. It's always good fun seeing the first reactions to that cartoon.

So enough of this, I'm going to make some breakfasty type food. ("Give me your best dish stuffed with your second best dish." "Lobsters stuffed with tacos. Yes, sir.") Watching the Packer game today - and the Wisconsin assimillation begins. Should be fun. Unless it's not. Then everyone will be shot and thrown into the Fox River except for Steph because I can't kill a coworker, I'd get fired for that. And I guess I'd let her friends live, they seem cool. So no one will get shot, except maybe me for writing that. Wheeeeee!

Oh yeah, if you're reading this from the little heat-wave going on in Ca right now and you're in a short sleeve shirt and contemplating going to the beach in NOVEMBER, bite my ass.

And before I go, does anyone else have the theme song from Doogie Howser playing in their head while they write?

Really going now.

Bye.

So after a year and some-odd months of reading Kat's online journal and meeting a cool group of people who use blogger on an almost daily basis I have finally given in to the site's bloggy ways. Maybe it'll be a good jump start to actually DOING some writing instead of talking about it all of the damn time. And then, if I'm already online typing I may as well work on the website, right? And if I'm online typing and working on the website, I may as well become an internet porn star!

Hooray for everything!

It's funny when you're getting back into writing, how you'll just sit around and talk about doing it, and then sometimes you sit down to do it and you're like, "okay, GO!" and nothing will come out. And it crosses my mind that hey, maybe I should apologize for not being more interesting on the first time out. And then it crosses my mind that Wisconsin's not all that far from Canada. One of these day's I'll go check it out and report back. And then it crosses my mind that dude, I really need a shower. Wheee!

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

this is a test. this is only a test. if this had been a real emergency, like an earthquake or volcano, we'd have told you that you're screwed.