i'd say bring-your-sister-to-work day was going pretty well, wouldn't you?

i totally forgot to write about this yesterday when i was talking about the weird shit i do when i'm overtired...

when we were kids, there was this girl that i was friends with for quite a while. and then around fifth grade, there was some dumb grade-school falling out and we weren't friends anymore. i can't really remember what it was about, just that she decided i was lame and she wanted to throw me out of a moving car.

so my sister michelle and i would sit in our backyard perched on top of our swingset, yelling her phone number to the kids playing in the apartment complex parking lot that was behind our house. we'd say things along the line of "hi i'm so-and-so, and my phone number is such-and-such, and you should call me because then we can hang out". we thought it was hilarious, because we were picturing them getting all kinds of random phone calls from strangers. and we yelled that phone number a lot. like every time we were in the backyard. for months.

on tuesday i tried calling michelle at work and she wasn't at her desk. so i dialed her cell phone. i got the wrong number, but thought it was weird that the voice that answered sounded familiar. i realized about a half hour later that after 15 years of not really thinking about it at all, i had dialed that girl from fifth grade's number. crazy.

so, you know, when i'm overtired and/or a little stressed, i have a tendency to subconsciously do things that are completely wrong and retarded, but i'm just not really paying attention. i share the following with you:

yesterday at lunch, let's say four people got to our party before the rest of us. i sat across from one of the ladies. i didn't think anything of it when i picked up my soda from the table and took a drink and put it back. but right after i did that, i remembered that oh crap we had just sat down and i hadn't ordered my drink yet. i played it cool, and if anyone noticed that i totally drank out of someone else's glass, no one said anything. i hope that lady sitting across from me doesn't have any crazy weird diseases that could be passed through a drinking straw.

oh there was something else i was gonna say, what was it. oh yeah, two things:

1) talk about get while the gettin's good - michelle and i leave wisconsin on saturday, and it's supposed to snow on sunday.

2) this afternoon is round two of steph sittin nekkid on a table, let's hope the appointment actually happens this time. cuz if i have to reschedule again it'll be without medical insurance, which is tons of fun for everyone. i remember this one time i had a really bad cold that hung on for a few months and i went to promptcare or something. when they asked for my insurance info and i told them i didn't have any, they totally treated me like i had the plauge for the rest of the visit. someone should tell em the poor ain't so bad.

3) i'm really close to being done packing. it's pretty hot.

so yesterday i enlisted the aid of the art department to get my old furniture down to the dumpster so the thrift store and the garbagemen could have at it...

i had this entertainment center i'd inherited from chris, and it's basically two bookshelfy type deals with some shelves connecting them in the middle. some of the shelves come right out, some of them are sorta tacked in there with nails from behind. so we take out the takeout shelves, and leave in the others. eric's got one end, i've got the other, and it goes down the stairs fine. kathy's bringin up the rear with some other stuff, and as cross the parking lot, pieces of the thing just start falling off. by the time we reach the dumpster we're literally carrying planks of wood, leaving a trail of nails and other wood pieces in our wake.

then came the big fluffy couch's demise. it made it down the hallway fine, made it down the stairs fine, and then successfully got stuck between the bottom of the stairs and the back door to my building. i hear a kid buzz at the front door and of course the friend he's visiting lives in the apartment who's door we're blocking. so this kid comes down the hall, and the kid who lives there opens his door, and they're both just kind of staring at this huge hunk of couch that we're trying to maneuver out of the way. 15 minutes and fifty tries later we ask them if we can use the first couple of feet of their apartment. a three-point-turn the dmv would've been proud of was executed, and the couch was free to live out the rest of it's hours in the outdoors. the smelly smelly outdoors.

everything else made it downstairs in a fairly uneventful manner... adventures in moving, that's what this all adds up to. stay tuned for the direct to video release starring ron perlman next week!

cheers to mercedes and her mad knitting skills, for if it wasn't for her (and all those twinkies i ate last weekend) i wouldn't have this to show you:




next i'm gonna knit a ranch house a la breakfast at tiffany's!

oh my, i'm further along in the weekend errands than i thought i was.

remember that flashlight in my car that hasn't worked in at least 2 years? i finally got new batteries for it today, all the better to read maps in the dark with.

and you know how i haven't gotten a spare car key in... um... well... yeah, i think i got a spare key once but i lost it. so i got one made today and wow boy howdy am i ever productive.

my point being this is the last time i'll be blogging from this crappy computer, and i love it. to the computer graveyard with ye!!!

man oh man i'm beat. i spent a full twelve hours working on moving crap, cleaning, packing, running out for more boxes, cleaning, packing, tearing down stuff, blah blah blah blah blah yesterday... i don't have a ton of stuff but there's still a lot to do, you know? i think it'll be less overwhelming in a couple of days when all my big furniture is whisked away to fox valley thrift to sit amongst the 80s motel furniture. i hope my crappy little computer can hold it's own in the computer graveyard and not get pushed around too much by the other old-timers...

speaking of, i'm wiping out the hard drive on it tonight. it's gettin ready to go. so no computer in my house until mid-may, when i'll be blessed by the computer fairy. which means not much, if any blogging. you'll have to actually call me to find out what's up... spooky.

so friday night i missed the first of the week-long event that is the art department leaving. i was sitting at uhaul waiting for my hitch to get installed, and paging through this entertainment weekly. it was this issue about 90s pop culture icons, so there was lots of really recognizable photos and crap throughout. and as i'm taking the how much do you know about the 90s quiz, this 6 year old boy comes up and goes nuts over the magazine cover, cuz it had bart simpson on it. so we started looking through the magazine together, and he'd point out the photos of the characters he knew and how he had this video and that video. his mom finishes up at the counter and comes back to join us right as the kid turns to a picture of hannibal lecter, with the face mask on and all that. and he's completely fascinated by this picture and he's asking me who it is... and i'm like uh, i don't know but he looks kinda scary, huh? and he agrees. and he just kept staring at him... it seemed inappropriate to tell him that the guy eats people for fun, so i said hey, maybe it's his halloween costume? and looks at me like i'm completely lame and says no, i don't think so. and me and the mom are just looking at each other telepathically screaming "come on, just turn the darn page already!"

then he did, and a couple minutes later they left.

also, i watched 21 grams last night after clean-a-rama. it was really good and you should rent it. then i fell asleep.

you know where i'll be in ten minutes? yeah... probably still at work. lovely.

but you know where i'll be in a week? on my way to milwaukee to pick up my sister and engage in some espionage at the safe house.

and you know where i'll be in two weeks? roscoes house of chicken and waffles, baby.

in an unrelated story, it's getting progressively more difficult not to say "thanks, now i can go hook up with hundreds of strangers and not have their babies" to the pharmacist when i pick up my pills perscription each month.

oh and the pharmacist was cute.

i also had a cheesy gordita crunch for the first time today, and at the risk of being lynched i have to stand up and say it didn't live up to the hype and was only meh. i blame my local taco hell.

which wraps up just about all the unimportant things i had to tell you today. cuz i believe in yoooooooooo and meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

so i'm gettin' my hairs chopped off tomorrow, and i was at the point where i was sold on going back to super short short shorty short pixie hair steph. because i do so love that hair. my hair's really super fine, so when it gets longish and stuff it just ends up looking flat and dumb. i know, there's millions of products out there that could make it look full and thick and oh so sexy, but i'm not that spend five hours on my hair kind of girl.

so i've gotta find pictures of what my ideal funtimes haircut is. but alas, i've already packed away my photo albums, where i could get pictures of me with that hair for the hair choppy lady. have no fear, the internet is here! i got some good stuff, including pics from imdb of jamie lee curtis at the oscars.

then i found this picture... i will never cut my hair again.

it seems like such a long, long time ago... but it was just this morning.

i had one of those yearly checkup type doctory appointments, and it was a complete scheduling disaster. the dr. office called my house yesterday at 2:30pm saying they needed to reschedule and could i come in at 8 instead of 9? i didn't get the message until i got home from work at 5:30, and they were already closed so i couldn't call and say hey, no prob, sign me up. so i went in to the doctor's office at 7:45 this morning and explained the situation and asked if they could still take me at 8. receptionist lady goes and checks with some people and says sure, doctor lady'll be here. so i get taken into the little room, i sit with a nurse and get my vitals taken, and then she tells me to get nekkid and sit on the table and wait for doctor lady.

i sit.

and sit.

and sit.

a half hour goes by, and another nurse apologizes, saying whoops doctor lady never got a confirmation yesterday that i was indeed coming in so she wouldn't be in at all and they needed to reschedule.

i think it was a game to see how long i'd sit on the table before asking questions. before 3 hours went by, someone caved, took pity on me, and told me the scoop so i could put my clothes on and not be so chilly. i mean, they gave me one of those little gown thingies, but they really aren't manufactured for warmth.

upside is i get to take more time off from work to go back to the doctor again next week.

cheers to gettin nekkid and sittin on tables.

also, i've been told by the california dmv that i'll be required to take the written driving test when i go in to switch to a california license, and that i could find the driver's handbook online to study from.

back in high school driver's ed, the booklet was like 8.5" by 5", and it was maybe 40 pages long or something.

i mean, that was ten years ago, and maybe inflation had something to do with it... but that the booklet (the online one, anyways) has ballooned to eighty-eight 8.5" x 11" pages is ridiculous.

what a great weekend.

drove down to madison friday night for ddr/drinking good times with the kids down there. ddr is much, much harder when you've had 2 or 3 or 4 drinks mixed by mixmaster nicole. we watched some stella skits in there somewhere that i vaguely remember, and at one point while i was in the bathroom mark accosted a taxi driver that was taking some friends home.

the next morning we all got together for breakfast/lunch at willobys - the place was full when we got there, but thankfully there was an angry lesbian couple that just got up angrily and left after putting in their order, tossing a quarter on the table for their coffees as they walked out with their kids. so bonus, there was no waiting for the table.

there was, however, much too much waiting for the food.

and then we sat there for like a half hour after everyone was done, just waiting for the check.

we were having a good old time, mind you, but we waited for a half hour all the same. donielle pulled some dollars out of her purse and started fanning herself with them to try and get the waitresses attention.

the creepy thing is i was sitting with my back facing the counter, so i went a good long while without seeing our girl running around helping people. and all of a sudden i turn around and she's looking really harried and carrying around this baby. no one agreed with me, but i think we were waiting so long because she decided to have a baby in the kitchen. you gotta commend the girl for getting right back to work afterward, you know?

the drive home was uneventful and much too quiet. and then i slacked off on the couch for the rest of the day, watching kill bill interspersed with talking with various people on the phone and knitting.

sunday i called best buy to make an appointment for next weekend to get the new stereo put in my car and they told me hey why don't you come in today we've got a bunch of time slots open. went to see the new kill bill, then headed on over and not only was the cd player i wanted on sale, but they had a free installation deal going on, too. i mean it sucks because i shouldn't have had to buy a new cd player in the first place, but at least it wasn't as spendy as planned. went home and took care of some packing and then just crashed on the couch.

that's my story and i'm stickin to it, and now for some reason the powers that be think i should actually be doing work right now. what's up with that?

okay i have a horrible confession to make.

i don't usually vote on american idol. unless one or more of the performances are just wow. so i voted on my favorite girls last night, and found out this morning i had acidentally hit a wrong number on my text message and i voted for that jerk j.p.l.

thank god my vote didn't count for shit and he got kicked off.

seriously, it's a good thing i still have like 2 weeks to take care of this crap... while i'm usually pretty on top of things, i procrastinate like no tomorrow on packing. i hate packing. oof.

so in this dream i had last night, i did take a job as a character at disneyland.

but in my dream disneyland was trying something new, and all the characters now rolled through the park on space-age longboard-style skateboards. the only thing space-age about em, really, was i think they were made of metal and they were very shiny. so i guess they were more retro-futuristic-looking than actual space age... they didn't have rockets on em or hovercraft abilities or espresso machine hookups or anything like that.

anyways, michelle was helping train me to be a character, and i couldn't skateboard to save my life. which isn't a whole lot different from me in real life... my skating experience goes about as far as me sitting on one and rolling down the driveway when i was like 10. and it was raining in my dream, and there was this asian gang on supernice schwinn bicycles following me and my sister, laughing their asses off at how terrible i was doing.

my alarm woke me up while i was attempting to skateboard uphill.

so i get that i had the dream because i'm probably working at d-land until i find a fulltime gig, and michelle being there makes sense because she's in charge of hiring and training and all that. and maybe my trying to skateboard uphill (or skateboard at all, for that matter) symbolizes the frustrations with getting shit together to move and things not going as smoothly as i'd like or something else very deep and meaningful, because i'm a very deep and meaningful kind of girl. burp.

but i have no idea where the heckling kids on bikes came from, and i have no idea why disneyland would ever think making the characters go on set on freaking skateboards was a good idea. best interpretation wins fifty points and the old scrubbie i found in the back of my cupboard last night while packing.

man i better be sorta on my feet job-wise before august - the who's playing in ca and i don't wanna have to make out with a stranger for tickets.

over the past couple of weeks, jenn and i started comparing getting ready to leave the job to graduating from high school. i'd love to commission a drug company to come out with something to combat senioritis, i really would.

"are you suffering from job-leaving-induced senioritis? get cialis. it works."

except that the name cialis is already taken.

who here watched that jessica simpson/nick leche travesty last night?

i caught the last few minutes of it, when dumbass was singing "take my breath away". then they went through some old photos of nick and some whore photos of jessica, which transitioned into a lame sonny and cher "i got you babe" imitation.

nick and jessica creep me out. seriously. stop and think about it - that newlyweds show, all the publicity they've been doing, their new variety show... basically their job, what brings home the bacon, is to talk about how much in love they are.

barf.

i wanna find love and all that just as much as the next girl, but this is ridiculous and nauseating.

you know those people who talk about how this one thing doesn't bother them at all (let's say their boyfriend spends every night of the week at the strip club), and the more they talk about how not bothered they are, the less you believe them? with nick and jessica, the more they talk about how desperately in love they are - number one the more they do it the more i wanna throw things - but more importantly, the more they say how perfect everything is for them and how insanely crazy in love they are the less i believe it.

and if it doesn't work out for them, it's gonna suck getting the next tv gig - here's how some of jessica's resume would look:

********************

Objective:
I just wanna say this section objectifies me as a woman and I don't like it.

Professional Experience:
"The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour", ABC. 2004
Every week for one hour talked about how great it was being married to Nick, and revealed in a tear-filled season finale that while I was poor as a child we didn't have money for corn flakes and were forced to eat bowls of lead paint chips instead.

"Newlyweds", MTV. 2002-2004
Every week for one hour talked about how great it was being married to Nick, and revealed in a tear-filled series finale that I was lobotomized as a child.

Skills: type -6 words a minute, burping, farting.

blogger is weird. the end.

also, i'm completely in love with dan akroyd, or maybe just his character, in the blues brothers. it's on that long list of movies i will never ever see too many times. unfortunately, starsky & hutch won't make that list. i saw it this afternoon and it was good and it was funny, but it was not nearly as good or as funny as zoolander. i love ben stiller and owen wilson together, lemme tell ya.

also, i dyed some uncooked eggs today because i didn't feel like hard-boiling them. michelle and i figure it'd be really nice and in the spirit of easter if i drove around tonight throwing these colored, raw eggs at random people's houses. the raw egg would make the broken shells stick to the houses - it'd be like decorations! and who doesn't like decorating?

pundits, that's who. pundits hate decorating.

are you ready for some good car-related news for once? it got an a-okay for the trip when i had my shop take a look at everything yesterday! NOTHING IS WRONG WITH MY CAR AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME!!!

spent a couple of hours busting apart the crate that housed that chandelier find from a couple of years back (finally!), and then sent it back to the dumpster from whence it came. got all the utilities shut-off dates set up, got one of the local thrift stores to set up an appointment to pick up a bunch of my stuff in a few weeks, including this piece of crap computer right here.

because deep breath... i'm getting a new computer. a pentium four. with a buttload of memory. it's become a neccessity - can't swing freelancing on the old one. and now i can start collaborating with michelle on some animated shorts. in the immortal words of the go-gos, (unless that wasn't who sang it), "watch out here we come."

and also, in the immortal words of the presidents of the united states of america, "everybody wants to be naked and famous."

and also, in the immortal words of sir mix a lot, "i like big butts and i cannot lie."

okay so now i'm sad. and i almost want to put my hands in a T, call time-out, and get my buddy superman to fly around the earth and stop this shit.

because that's it, we're outta time.

jenn's packin up tomorrow and leaving friday. i'm headin outta here in 3 plus change weeks. it's like the end of a really great movie, you know? like when mark and nicole and reem introduced me to wet hot american summer, and it was so good and so over the top funny that i was sad when it was over.

so cheers to the bus driver, double cheers to the madison kids we met while we were here, and jenn can suck it for making me sad that we can't hang no more. except that we're gettin lunch tomorrow, and when i give her a goodbye hug i'm totally gonna try and touch her butt. shhh, don't ruin it, it'll be a surprise.

got my triptik in the mail this week, and triple a was cool enough to plot out a journey around the big mountains in colorado that my car hated so much the last time around. steep grades = 5mph, which is no bueno for me or the cars stuck behind me.

they also send maps of the states you're driving through, so i gots me a new california map! wheeeee, how exciting, right? the old one was passed on to jenn, along with a geography lesson on where the cities called out on the oc are. and for your benefit, my lovely readers, here's all the california you need to know.

hey kat - consider your couch dilemmas solved!

Two cushions or three? fifty-seven for multi-level fort action.

Leather or twill? solid gold.

Regular or hide-a-bed? the hide-a-body feature is the one you should be looking for.

Modern or Traditional? thoroughly modern millie demands the same in her couches, and i'm not one to argue with julie andrews.

Sectional? see, this is a good option for when you're playing that "the floor is lava" game - there's more to stand on.

Ottoman? sure, why not?

Loveseat? i think loveseats were invented for good lovin so yes. everyone needs a loveseat.

Color? i think if you get solid gold... you're stuck with a goldish type color.

And how much do you want to spend? i believe a couch with all of these features discussed above can be found at your local goodwill, so check it out and don't buy one that costs more than 20 bucks.

i take it back - if i'm gonna live on any tv show, i want it to be the oc. where i cause seth and summer to break up because seth is madly in love with me.

and then jenn would show up and smash me in the face with a surfboard because she called him first.

and then chino would show up and start fighting the both of us, because that's what he does. he'd look all deep and pained while he was trying to kick ass, and we'd all fall onto a table or into a pool because that's how fights work on the show. and seth's parents would shake their heads, say something to the effect of "kids will be kids" and we'd all order a pizza and laugh it off. and then we'd get dressed to go to this week's black tie event.

seriously, i'm still cracking up over the oc movie paul has up on his blog. go check it out.

when i grow up i want to be an actress on a soap opera.

or better yet i want to live in a soap opera.

or better yet, just give me the dog in the purse and cap'n crunchy nick paine. thanks.

it's 4:30, rock and roll hootchiecoo! leaving your job means never having to say "i should keep working on this for another half hour."

i'm fighting to control the urge to start breaking down furniture and throwing stuff that can go into the dumpster outside. can't do it til next weekend after my cousin sheila's visit for a couple of days - where the hell will we sit and such otherwise?

i. am. so. excited. about. moving!!! while jenn and i were out and about last night i got to thinking out loud how moving somewhere that you don't really want to be, it's kind of in a strange way like going to prison. i mean, you didn't kill anyone or steal a car or even spraypaint a swear on a freeway overpass, and there's no one waiting for you to drop the soap... but moving back to california feels like getting my life back. so much has been on hold in the name of having a wonderful job that's given me some great experience. i'm just really looking forward to getting out of here, going west on a three to four day road trip, and figuring out what comes next.

and wow, last night we went to this hole in the wall bar that has karaoke almost every night of the week. jenn likened it to something you'd see in texas chainsaw massacre - it was dark, a little run-down, had angry handwritten signs up that if you weren't buyin booze you should get the hell out because you were useless... the bartender lady had almost no teeth... what was left was pointy little chunks of enamel.

there was a small group of drunk college kids there - they fell in love with us and our song choices... to prove their good will, one of em poured beer down my left leg. good times, good times. and good thing i hadn't gotten around to doing laundry just yet, you know?

jenn did rousing renditions of "9 to 5" (in honor of her last day coming up) , "moonlight at the oasis" and "i wanna be sedated". i did a wonderfully bad "thriller" (remembering much too late all those high notes i couldn't do if my life depended on it) and "on the road again", but the highlight of the night was singing "we didn't start the fire" together. we also rocked the house on "monster mash" and "beauty and the beast". oh and "dixie". which was a really slow version.

stuck around until they told us we couldn't sign up for any more songs because it was quittin time, went home, got into bed around 2, and woke up at 7 for no good reason. i really gotta stop doing that. spent some time at work photoshopping a present for a co-worker, hit the grocery store, came home and did some laundry and cleaned house. and that brings us to now. i'm tired. maybe i'll take a nap. i can't believe i'll be back at my sister's house in exactly one month. i'm gonna throw up in glee.

okay, so i got a call this morning from the manager of my apt. complex, and someone else's car was broken into last night. that's two breakins in two days. and while it does make me feel better that i don't have a mortal enemy who singled out my poor car for a beating, it doesn't make me feel any better about having the fresh-from-the-body-shop car back in ye olde parking spotte, with it's new window and back-in-place dashboard (minus some chunks of plastic... this car's getting more and more ghetto by the day, lemme tell ya.)

oh and remember the door that hasn't opened since 2001? the fine folks at tony's fixed it just to be nice.

so if i was a big badass dude like samuel l. jackson, i'd camp out in my car for the next couple of weeks so i could protect my car, catch the jerks who're doing this to me and my neighbors, and exact my own justice on their stupid asses. and since i'd be just like sam jackson, justice would involve much swearing and shooting. but i'm not a big badass dude. so i just have to relax and hope chuckles the happy weenmobile clowncar of doom survives the night.

it'll be easier to sleep tomorrow night; we're taking a trip up to crappleton to get the remainder of the stereo ripped out to hopefully prevent someone from breaking in again to "finish the job".

you know, i hate when people fuck with your shit. i really, really do.

"it's cal worthington and his dog spot!"

i have no idea why i just started singing this decades old jingle, but if you've never seen any of the commercials you really should think about checking them out. they're helluv funny. the end.