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Friday, 10 February 2012

  • The Versatile Blogger. . .


    versatile-award1

    So I actually got tagged for something.  :)  I haven't been around much lately - lots going on.  Anyway, here are the rules:

    Rules: Thank the award giver and link them in your post.
    Share seven things about yourself.
    Pass this award along to blogs that you enjoy reading.
    Contact your chosen bloggers, let them know, and post the award picture.

    First, thanks goes to godfatherofgreenbay for tagging me.  I love reading his blog, especially Caturdays, and I've never been so caught up on celeb news before, lol.

    Now, 7 things about myself:

    1.  I just bought my first brand new car.  No one else has owned this car, it's all mine.  It's a 2012 Chevy Sonic, 4 door/hatchback.  And I even managed to get it in my favorite color, orange.  I named it "Sookie" from the True Blood series, lol.

    2.  I am (embarrassingly) addicted to Farmville.  However, I am a considerate player in that I created a fake FB account and only have other Farmville players on that account so I don't bug my real friends with all the FV posts.  I'm not too caught up in the quests and masteries any longer, mostly I just like to work on landscaping my farms and making them look pretty.

    3.  I work from home as a medical transcriptionist.  It's a really great job and I get to do it in my jammies, save on gas and clothes expenses, and sleep until 10 minutes before I start my shift.  However, many people are under the impression that since I work from home I can pretty much flex my schedule any way I want or goof off all day - this is not true, I work set days/hours and because it's transcription every keystroke is tracked and they would easily know if I were goofing off instead of working.

    4.  In high school I took French because I had read that if you want to learn African languages you should learn French first.  All I wanted in high school was to graduate, join the Peace Corp and eventually live in South Africa.  I was so disappointed when I found out that in order to join the Peace Corp you had to go to college or join the military first.  The military was out and I didn't get to finish college so my life ended up going in a different direction, though I still have high hopes of someday seeing South Africa, although I've managed to forgot most of the French I learned in high school.  

    5.  My social anxiety/fear of public speaking actually led to me dropping out of high school in the second half of my junior year because at my school "speech" was a non-elective credit and I refused to do it.  I wanted only to transfer schools, however, open enrollment didn't happen for another year and I had to get permission from the principal of my current school in order to transfer, which of course she would not grant permission.  Once open enrollment was instated I transferred to a different school, made the B honor roll, and was able to take business and law classes that helped in my current career and my passion with law.  In my case, dropping out of high school turned out to be a good thing.  

    6.  I am terrified of heights and flying.  Once when my brother and I were teenagers we were heading over the "high bridge" to go to the Taste of Minnesota and halfway across I made the mistake of looking over the edge.  I totally panicked and froze and my brother literally had to carry me off the bridge.  As for flying, I keep trying to overcome my fear by looking out the window when we get close to landing.  It hasn't worked.  In my mind all I can think about is how low we would have to be in order to survive falling out of the plane - which of course makes no sense because even at a low enough height to survive the plane is going too fast to actually survive falling out of it.  

    7.  I once won award from our local newspaper for writing one of the best 25 "letters to the editor" - it was about research funding for stem cell research.

    And finally, my tags:  I'm kind of cheating on this one because I'm obviously so late getting to this that most people on my subscription/friends list have already been tagged or they are no longer really active on Xanga as it's been a while since I updated my lists (and because it's late and I'm really tired, lol) - so as far as I'm concerned if you're reading this and no one has tagged you for this yet, you're tagged so do it!  :)  Hopefully I'll be back around Xanga more often in the near future.
     

Sunday, 25 December 2011

  • Lonely Christmas. . .

    This was my first Christmas completely alone.  Last summer my parents moved to Florida, so I have no family left in Minnesota.  Well, there's still an estranged uncle and cousin in Minnesota, but as stated they are estranged and I prefer it that way for a reason.  I also have one other cousin in the state who I do get along with, but he's considerably younger and busy with his family that I don't know very well (my uncle was divorced from his mother many, many years ago).  With my new work schedule (3:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.) I've been having a hard time keeping dates straight, let alone my work schedule.  I probably would have had quite a few invites to join friends at their family gatherings, but I kept telling everyone I had to work Christmas.  I thought I did, but Thursday I finally actually checked my work calendar and realized I had offered to cover the "observed holiday", which is Monday, December 26.  It was too late to get invited to Christmas with friends.  With my brother having been killed shortly before Christmas, this holiday has been difficult enough.  Now I'm all alone.  I decided I needed to keep busy and do things I enjoy and not dwell on what was missing this holiday.  

    So this morning I got up and got somewhat dressed up, not overboard but nicer than usual.  I put the "fireplace" DVD in and put on some Christmas music, but avoided the sad Christmas songs.  Then I went out to get the mail and my neighbor was on her way over to another neighbor's and stopped to talk to me.  I've known this neighbor since I was a kid.  When I was about 9 or 10 they bought the house next door to my childhood home.  I have since bought my childhood home from my parents and moved back into the neighborhood.  Before that, the house I lived in I had actually purchased from this neighbor's daughter and husband, so we've known each other a long, long time.  At any rate, she asked what I was doing for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  I kind of did have today planned out and didn't want to change anything, but I was open to tomorrow.  So tomorrow I'm going to my neighbor's for a nice home-cooked meal.  

    Anyway, after that being set up I came back in the house and got to work baking.  I made a batch of ginger cookies that turned out perfect.  I also made a batch of butterscotch haystacks and a batch of chocolate haystacks.  Then I made about 65 sugar cookies.  I made the dough the night before, separated it into 6 sections and used food color to make red, green, blue, yellow, and brown dough, leaving one batch uncolored.  Today I cut out the dough and baked the cookies; red candy canes and santa hats, green Christmas trees and stockings, yellow stars and bells, blue snowflakes and ornaments, brown gingerbread boys and girls, and plain gifts and snowmen.  They turned out perfect as well.  

    Once the baking was done I made my Christmas Eve dinner; turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and green beans with carrots - a TV dinner actually, lol.  After dinner I cleaned everything up.  Then it was time to give the cats their Christmas treats.  They all got some loving, gifts, and treats - then some catnip.  After that the cats pretty much went to sleep, stoned out of their minds from the catnip, lol.  I turned off the music and the fireplace, got into my sock monkey footie jammies, turned the TV on to the ID (true crime) channel, and sat down to play some Farmville.  I cheat, I use a snagbar on Farmville, so I had ovfer 1000 gifts on there to open - so that was fun.  :P  

    Tomorrow I'll be decorating the sugar cookies and making a gingerbread house.  Then to my neighbor's for dinner, of course bringing some of the goodies I baked.  After that I'm going to settle in and watch my favorite Christmas movie, "Meet Me In St. Louis".  All-in-all, not too bad for my first Christmas alone, though I really do miss my parents.  We have already discussed having them fly up next year for Christmas.  I'm terrified of flying, especially alone, but even more so, there is no way I'm going to fly alone during the holidays, lol.

    Oh yeah, it's been in the high 30s/early 40s and we've only had 2 snowfalls; the first one melted completely, the second one on Friday left us with a light covering.  Almost got my lifelong wish of a snow-free Christmas in Minnesnowta, lol.  

    Some pictures from today.

    Ginger cookies.  They're nice and soft, as opposed to ginger snaps, I prefer these. 

    Butterscotch haystacks.

    Chocolate haystacks.

    Sihle trying out her new bed.

    It's after 1:00 a.m. so I should probably get some sleep.  I'll have pictures of the decorated sugar cookies and the gingerbread house tomorrow.  Until then, here's one of my favorite Christmas lolcat pictures.  :)

    MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MY XANGA FRIENDS!  

     

Friday, 18 November 2011

Tuesday, 15 November 2011