oh, for the love of mondays

i'm sitting outside, probably getting a sunburn--me and my pale midwestern self--and i don't even care, because it is GORGEOUS outside!! why do i live in michigan, when i could live in california?? =)

fortified with coffee, pop-tarts and leftover pizza, i'm sitting out on my friends' patio pondering my future--and procrastinating. i'm supposed to be filling out assorted applications and writing various treatises extolling my virtues and superior skillset. what rubbish! =) geoff, the g-nome (yes, g-nome) is standing on the table next to me, mid-stride, tirelessly smoking his plastic pipe as he stationarily pushes his no longer existing wheelbarrow across the tempered glass. i keep an eye out for jerry, the mouse we spotted running across the patio yesterday, but he seems to have moved on to bigger and better things. unlike yours truly, who is still sitting in the sun, turning pinker by the minute.

i was just chatting with a friend whose roommate works for the british consulate and just wrote something that will probably be read by the queen. good god!!! the queen?!?!

goin' back to cali cali

i'm in california!!!! yay!!! my flight here was funny. first, i had a layover in dallas, and i always forget how weird texas is. everyone says hi to you and tries to make eye contact, and i'm just like, "dude, let me bury my nose in my book and ignore you for the next 3 hours, thanks; we don't have to be friends." i know. i'm anti-social, but really?? and ALL of the women have pedicures. ALL OF THEM. isn't that a bit much!??! =) then on my flight from dallas, i was sitting by the window, and there was a guy on the aisle and an empty seat between us. we ignored each other for the first couple hours, each reading and then listening to our various electronic devices. then, out of nowhere, he turns and asks me if i want to trade songs. so we spent the last 45 minutes of the flight playing music for each other. it was kind of fun =) definitely better than smalltalk! makes me want to make a mixed tape... errr, mixed cd, i guess that'd be called nowadays.

oh, and i made it onto the plane with a lighter. i didn't even do it on purpose. i'd taken a lighter out of my purse before i left, and i left my keys at home, because i'd had my swiss army knife confiscated the last time i flew, but after i got on the plane in dallas, i was looking for my chapstick in one of the pockets of my backpack, and i pull out a lighter instead. oops!! ha ha.

currently listening to new order's age of consent. we play this mix called senses working overtime at work sometimes when we need to "kick it up a notch," and i can't hear this song without wanting to jump up and down and bang my head like a teenager at an 80's prom. grin.

oh, funny waitressing stories. so last week, i had this large table, and i knew a couple of them spoke german, but i was busy and wasn't really paying attention or whatever, so i come back to refill their waters at some point, and the little 3-year old boy, who had been playing on the floor with his toy train the entire time, starts talking to me in german--"aber ich habe doch nichts getrunken." i'm like, dude, i know, but it's my job, and p.s., this isn't even your water... no, all i really said was, "das weiss ich," and kept going. i mean, i had shit to do. i'd had to bend down to the kid's level to hear him, so i didn't think anyone had even heard me say anything back. but the next time i'm at the table, this guy who was sitting on the other side of the table asks me if i speak german, etc. it was funny. and the kid kept trying to talk to me, which was funny. the mom thought it was cute, and said he was just excited to find someone who understood him, which i guess makes sense. if you're 3, you probably don't really get that everyone else is speaking english, and you're not, or maybe you're just used to being misunderstood anyway, because you're a kid. i don't know. but they'd kind of been a difficult table up until that point, because this old guy was being an ass, and big tables are generally just more work, etc., but the cute little german kid made it all better =)

then i had a german table yesterday. not so cute. another large table. again with small children, four of them. the one woman was ridiculous. (the other two were fine.) she just kept making comments the whole time in german, having, of course, no idea that i could understand her. she wasn't being mean about me personally or anything, but she just kept bitching about americans and american restaurants and ice water and portion sizes, and how we do things differently--different, of course, being wrong!! for example, she had just said to her friend (who had ordered the same thing) that it was too much food, didn't she think? and her friend is like, actually, i was able to finish it. so the rude lady had pushed her plate to the side, and was eating her salad--which, hello, i think is weird, the whole eating salad AFTER dinner thing =)--so i asked if she was finished or wanted a box or anything, and as soon as i turned around, she went off about they would never ask you something like that in germany. you're not in f-ing germany, lady, so deal!! arrggggh. it was just annoying.

a word of advice, folks, don't talk shit in front of your waitress just because you think she can't understand you!!!!!

the upstairs girls left a note of apology AND cleaned off my car. i'm all better =)

grrrrr

i went to see "The Lives of Others" last night. i mean, i was expecting it to be serious, but i wasn't expecting it to be as heavy as it was. damn. (still processing. as usual.)

then i got home, and our stupid upstairs neighbors--who weren't stupid until they started having loud obnoxious people over multiple times weekly--were having tons of people over for sangria. and instead of having this party in their apartment, they've got people using the fire escape stairs--which happen to be RIGHT OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW!!!!!!! so there are people constantly running up and down the stairs, yelling to each other, generally being loud and drunk. grrrrrrr. and more grrrrrrrr.

as if that wasn't obnoxious enough, when i went outside this morning to drive to north campus, i find my car crusted over with wine and dried fruit!!!!!! grrrrrrrrrr again. those bastards. i mean, the loudness and excessiveness of their gatherings was already bordering on moderately discourteous, but this was just ridiculously rude.

(i'm a little pissed, in case you couldn't tell.)
grrrrr.

apparently people are still reading this. impressive, guys =)

i'm sitting on my front porch with my cup of coffee watching it begin to rain. just a baby spring rain. oooh, the sun's coming out again! =)

i'm going rock climbing in a little bit. i've almost recovered from climbing last friday. almost. there's a bigger group of us going this time, so it should be fun. all the cool kids i work with are leaving soon =(

my brother's leaving for the netherlands tomorrow. i'm so jealous!!! i want to go somewhere cool! he's all cute and nervous and excited, and i'm all nervous and excited for him. i told him i'd come visit *grin*

beware the ides of march

i haven't posted since christmas?? really?? are you sure?

well here's why... because my life is ridiculous. i realize that's hard for people to imagine--i mean, after all, i work at freaking starbucks. but you have no idea. really. you just don't. that, and i have another job (and a half!!) and whenever i actually have a day off, something ridiculous happens. someone gets sick. someone dies. someone has a nervous breakdown. so who ends up working?? me, apparently. i like working. i really do. but sometimes, i want to sleep, too. or do laundry. or clean my kitchen. or have the time to cook something. like, actually COOK something. and maybe even have time to eat it, too!! *grin*

so other than working way too much, here's what my life looks like...

still volunteering at the afterschool english workshop for international kids, which is just fun. the kids are brilliant and adorable and amazing. they make me laugh a lot, which i love. they also remind me of the trillions of reason i should NEVER HAVE CHILDREN!! =)

the car drama continues. in addition to killing my car for what i think is now the fourth time since i've been home, i also managed to kill my friend/co-worker's truck. she was going out of town for the week, and knowing how difficult it has been for me to get stuff done around town with no car and the kind of schedule i tend to have, she very generously offered me the use of her truck while she was gone. she didn't really want it to sit around for a week in the cold, and why not help a friend out at the same time, right? i was so excited about having a car for a few days, i was already planning all the places i was going to go over the weekend. well... yeah, so i drove it to north campus for the afterschool workshop, then stopped by the store to pick up some groceries on the way home. i was at home for half an hour or so before i was going to go pick alicia up from work--and show off my mad truck-driving skills=) you see where this is going, right? i get out there and, of course, the truck doesn't start!!!! grrrrr...

i think this is God's way of telling me i'm meant to be a pedestrian.

holly jolly christmas

woohoo!! my second time blogging this month! it's sad that that's progress, isn't it? =)

let's see... there was a crazy-ass christmas party at my house on the 16th, followed by an even crazier roadtrip to a concert on the 17th, last-minute christmas shopping, verbal warfare with the UPS people (more on that later), my birthday, and the blur that was christmas day, followed by the insanity that is picking up a shift at the starbucks in the mall on the day after christmas. (who thought that was a good idea?!?!?) but somehow, i think i survived it all. and i'll probably do it all again next year, really.

since last year was the first time in ages that i'd actually enjoyed christmas, i'd set for myself the ambitious goal of at least not HATING christmas this year. which, i mostly accomplished. there were a few rough moments, but overall, it was ok. i could have done without the non-stop christmas music at the bucks. talk about annoying. i'd have a day off and still wake up with those stupid songs in my head!!! it was so irritating! AND there's this creepy, screechy, weird winston marsalis version of carol of the bells that sounds like something out of a bad horror movie--this girl one of my co-workers knows evidently plans to write one, inspired by that song, about snowmen stabbing people with candy canes. but if nothing else, it gave us all something to comiserate about. and there were at least the redeeming moments when the charlie brown soundtrack was playing =)

this christmas was definitely different from last year--no snowy evenings spent wandering about the weihnachtsmaerkte, no christmas trees lit with real candles. but there was some gluehwein at my party--which was a big hit, if i may say so myself =) and i had my very first christmas stocking this year, which was particularly exciting, because there's a (semi-)functioning fireplace in our apartment!! the cats enjoyed the christmas tree (although my allergies did not!)--they sat in chairs on either side of it and just stared for hours on end, OR chased each other around underneath it, amazingly, breaking only one ornament this year! and there has been much drinking of tea and hot chocolate in front of the fireplace--except when it gets too smoky, and i get yelled at =) i even had to light a fire for warmth a week or so ago, when we discovered that our upstairs neighbors had all left for the holidays and turned down their thermostat, which, apparently, controls the heat for the whole house!!! it was 58 degrees in the apartment when i got home in the afternoon, and it definitely wasn't going to get any warmer when the sun went down. brrr!!! fortunately, our landlords came over and turned the upstairs girls' heat back up, so we didn't freeze to death--or die of smoke inhalation, due to our tempermental chimney. but yeah...

there are probably 8 million more equally unimportant things i could write about, but i think i'd rather sleep for a bit. but i will post my rant about UPS soon. really. probably not while it's still december. after all, 3 posts in one month might be a bit much =) but soon...