cut the turkey

well, i've had a pretty good thanksgiving. it's been busy. it's always hectic when jeremy and i are trying to balance time with both of our parents and each other.

we had fried turkey on thursday with the works of sides. mmmmm yum. i think i've gained ten pounds from all the food i've eaten this weekend.

we also visited our friend Hani who owns a magi moos ice cream store here. we helped him close up thanskgiving night and played some make-shift pit.

friday morning, jeremy, eric, my dad, and i woke up around 4am and headed out of the house by 4:30am to get a jump start on the after thanksgiving day sales. i dropped off jerms, eric, and dad at best buy. they had to wait an hour and a half in the freezing cold to get in. i then headed to k-mart which was opening at 5am. i had to wait in line as well. my goal was to get a queen size bed set for only 44 dollars. the problem was getting to the aisle and picking out the one i wanted before everyone else. the best buy group scored big time as well. they each got a 48 speed cdrw for 10 dollars, a 80 gig hard drive and 256 ram for 40 dollars, and two packs of blank cd-rs for free. that's pretty damn impressive.

afterwards, we went over to bed, bath, and beyond and picked up some 400 count prima satin cotton sheets. we are ready to go!
hahaha. needless to say, my bed and computer got a big time upgrade this weekend.

i'm helping my parents set up christmas decorations right now. i just got through decorating the tree. picture posts to come.


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nano thoughts

good luck to all you nanowrimo freaks out there.

i'm beter than your kids

wohoo. only four more hours till we head off to b-town. thanksgiving here we come! i'm really excited about going home, eating fried turkey, dressing, and the rest of the goods, and then doing the whole day after thanksgiving shopping spree! i wish i lived in that city where they kick of the holiday spending spree with a parade and fireworks. okay. so maybe there's a bit of hypocracy to being a citizen of this country. (wink)

i'm still going to enjoy the holidays. here's my list of things to get:
-600 count prima satin cotton sheets
-new cheap shoes
-blue jeans
-clear shower curtain (cheap)
-gifts for xmas for misc people

so that's not much at all. i'll have to check the ads to see what's on sale and stuff. i'm nowhere near as good as my dad for bargain buying but i try to do the best i can.

we're all packed and ready to go. jerms is one of those prepare freaks who has to have everything ready to the last detail. hopefully john's got his stuff together so we can leave as soon as jerms comes home from work.

while i was at school yesterday, i found this link. it's damn funny.
here's an intro:
"If you work in an office with lots of people, chances are that you work with a person who hangs pictures up that their kids have drawn. The pictures are always of some stupid flower or a tree with wheels. These pictures suck; I could draw pictures much better. In fact, I can spell, do math and run faster than your kids. So being that my skills are obviously superior to those of children, I've taken the liberty to judge art work done by other kids on the internet. I'll be assigning a grade A through F for each piece: "

i am better than your kids

in the bedroom

i watched a really depressing drama today. in the bedroom. i knew it was going to be pretty heavy but..goodness. i had to take a break from watching it just to take a break from the depression. i thought the movie was pretty good though as far as drama goes.
the whole thing was like watching a nightmare fantasy. i'm about to head to bed now. i'm debating on wether or not to go to school tomorrow since it's optional. i'm not tired but i'm going to pop in magnolia and hopefully i'll just fade away.

creek crossing from sunday

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here comes the cold

today, the weather was like a whisper of death. i walked outside thinking it would be a bit warm and sunny but instead the sky was dark and the wind was silent and cold. my throat is feeling a bit scratchy now. i hope i'm not coming down with anything.

jerms and i were going to eat in today but he forgot to defrost the meat. we ended up going to this place called "888." We had the standard vietnamese vermicelli and grilled beef meal we always get. it's always a tasty treat. i was freezing after we got back so i jumped under the covers and took a nap. jeremy was lured in as well. who can resist a warm bed?

now, jerms is playing some custom war3 games and i'm getting a start on my next history paper. holy cow. yeah.

i'm really looking forward to going home for thanskgiving vacation. only two more days.

nature calls

jeremy, eric, and i went shopping on Saturday for a few things. we went to fry's to get some paper that was on sale and look for a few other things. we headed to best buy afterwards to look for the lotr soundtrack for jerms. it was 16 dollars so we decided it wasn't worth it. it took us awhile to find the bed, bath, and beyond after that but we finally made it. jeremy and i had to get some of those clothes storage vacuum bags. since our extra storage space in john's closet is caputz, we needed to find a good way to store clothes. we also gave a bunch of it away to goodwill. now we actually have an inch of breathing room into he closet.

we were going to go canoeing out at barton springs but after spending the money on shopping, we decided against it. since eric had never been to mt. bonnell, we took him up there for a brief walk and a view.

eric came over afterwards and helped us take down all the boxes in storage and consolidate everything. our room is a little bit better. we also sold jeremy's old speakers to eric. it was like a regular yard sale..but it was a room sale. :)

we then went back to eric's place (which is 30 minutes up in N. Austin), ordered chinese take out, and played the pit! wohoo. we left rather early since we decided to go hiking the next day.

Sunday, eric, his brother- sean, and his friend- mike showed up and we went to subway and got lunch to go. we drove up to the hills to do some hiking. we had a picnic outdoors and then headed off. i think we hiked 6 miles total. at one point, there was a creek crossing. two of the guys tried to skip over the creek on the rocks but jeremy, eric and i decided to take off our shoes and socks and brave the water. it was freezing, ice cold water!

at one point, we stopped to skip stones. i had never been able to skip stones before but eric showed me how and i got three skips in! it was pretty cool. we were going to try to pass across more water by building a rock bridge across but we stopped three rocks short. we ended up going further and then turning back when we reached a second entrance to the trails.

needless to say, i was pretty darn exhausted when we finished the whole ordeal. it was nice to get out and exercise though. i was also hungry as mad that night. i could have eaten ten steaks. instead, i ate a salad from wendy's and then snacked on pantry munchies all night long.

closet chaos

last night after jeremy and i got back from eating with our friends at Chili's and Marble's Slab, we hopped on our computers and started doing "geeky stuff." he started burning an entire spindle worth of svcd movies and i started doing some data consolidation on my computer since i only had 3 gigs left on my main hard drive.

john and his friends were downstairs watching the sopranos 1st season. it kinda peeved me that he started watching it without me. after all, i waited for him to watch most of the 3rd season. that's john though. he's pretty indifferent to other people sometimes. anyhow, since he was downstairs, jeremy extended his cd copying factory to john's room. i walked into john's room to visit jeremy and decided to try and find an old jacket i had hung in john's closet. (we had to put most of our clothes in john's closet for storage since our was packed). when i opened the sliding closet door, i noticed the shelf was collapsing! the weight of the clothes had caused the screws to rip from the studs of the wall. we had to move all my books and clothes out of the closet. today we have to go find a hardware store to temporarily fix the darn thing. we really need more space in this place. we're also going to bed, bath, and beyond to buy one of those clothes storage vacuum bags.

later that night, we watched Frailty. gawd. what a waste of time. for half the movie i was content working on studio work and occasionally turning around to see what was going on. however, i eventually quit working and set my attention to finishing the movie. it seemed like the movie was hours upon hours long. it just wouldn't end. it reminded me of some of my classes.. un-overtly redundant. in the end, i was pretty disappointed. if it weren't for the fact that the movie was about some pretty gruesome murders, i'd say the whole damn movie was pretty cheesy. if you're a believer or fanatic, this movie is for you.

this week i think i gave myself two olsers from stress. i finally finished my history paper today..only to have to rush into finishing up my paid work.

jeremy and i made a trip out to campus tonight so i could pick up some books to write my next paper. however, once we got to campus, i realized that i forgot my university id card! sunnambichwhore... yeah. that pretty much sums up my feelings about this week.

i have given myself a new goal to work towards in the kitchen. i'm going to learn how to make sphagetti like Vinny's does. I made sphagetti today and it sucked. It was bland, chunky, and tasteless. Jeremy was supposed to cook it but he had to work really late so I got started on it and ended up finishing it as well. I put in a whole pound of meat! I should have only put in half a pound. It was super thick. chunky monkey

here's a pic of me and my friends from this past weekend after a four and a half our game of Pit. Hanis' sister and her friend John were also there. Can you guess who in the picture won the game?

click to enlarge

picture perfect

my friend up in colorado sent me this pic awhile back. makes me wish texas was more than just desert, marsh, and hill country.


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ornament and character

i've been staring at the second half of my paper for a few hours now. i can't figure out how to start it all. there's something so unsettling about writing about irrelevant things...not irrelevant things in general, but irrelevant things to your life..career..education...etc. i keep checking the internet, my email, and taking sips of my dr. pepper. yes, i've resorted back to soda today because i need something to distract my mind from the bed.

tigger has been sleeping on the bed all day. i can't believe how much he can sleep. maybe i can enter him into a contest. he's such a huge cat. the massive amounts of fur he has doesn't help either. he's a mammoth which makes him sort of like having a gigantic living teddy bear around. i always want to pick him up and squeeze him. the other day, jeremy was holding him and he wanted off but he knew he couldn't get away. he just looked down and sighed heavily. hahaha. i love animals that have characters.

so anyhow, i guess i better get back to my paper about ornament. woohoo. i'm writing a paper about the search for a universal principle about the order of ornament and how it is a futile without also applying the notion of social or cultural influence. i just don't buy the argument that objects/decoration have a universal truth about them that is not derived from an environmental context.

i wish i were tigger

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the pit

ouch. this weekend really hurt me bad. i think every weekend has for the past month. i don't understand why i keep doing this to myself. our friend hani came up from beaumont to visit us. he, his sister- ramona, her friend- john, our friends- eric, akash, mike, and jeremy and i hung out Friday night. we played several card games like "spoons" and "kent." there were really fun...more fun than any other card games i've played before because they involved more physical action.

Saturday, we went with hani to go buy the lord of the rings collector's edition and some stuff from fry's electronics. then we went all over town trying to find him the game risk- lord of the rings version. we finally found it at a toys-r-us store. while we were there, jerms and i finally found the game we've been looking for for ages. it's called the pit, it's another card game that i played once during the christmas holidays at a friend's house. i've been trying to find it ever since. i was so excited. hani, eric, john (ramona's friend), jerms, and i played the game till almost 5 in the morning. it was insane.

Sunday morning we woke up around 11 and went out to eat at the place called "juan in a million." it's this locally owned mexican restaurant. the owner personally shakes your hand as you walk into his restaurant. it's pretty cool. the best things about this place is that you can get a huge meal for only 3 bucks and it's pretty damn good.



they all really wanted to play another game of the pit afterwards because ramonna didn't get to play it the night before. we ended up play for four hours straight without notice of the time. the game is so damn addictive. this was really good for john who is muslim and practicing the ramadan right now. he was starving but couldn't eat till 5:30. as soon as the clock hit, he was raiding our pantry. heh. i couldn't take that religion for sure.

anyhow, they left after that and jeremy and i went out to eat by ourselves. i then tried to do some reading for my paper. i thought about trying to write but i'm just too drained. such is my life. i always screw myself. so now i'm taking a LOOOONG break from my paper research. this semester has to end soon.

an order of steak to go please

i'm starving. there are two huge steaks downstairs waiting to be cooked. mmmm.. so hungry. jeremy had some overtime work to do so dinner was postponed till 7. my mouth is watering. i can't concentrate on school work because my tummy keep rumbling.

since i couldn't study or work, i re-arranged the living room and changed our bed sheets. there's nothing like good house work to keep you distracted.

PICS FROM THE MYTHIC_VAMP,SAY THANK YOU

hahahaha. i'm at the school's computers. i went to go type in a subject and a list of recent typings came up. they're not from lj. it must be from something else. maybe email titles. i don't know. here are a few of them.


American or Desi
bad bad bad boy good good good
bao, zai deng SIOMON nene
i am dying; sub and i'll live
not going to eugene again
PICS FROM THE MYTHIC_VAMP,SAY THANK YOU

i just got back from the smoothie place. i had the lady.
i went to pay and gave her three dollars and ten cents. she said "no, 3.30"
i appologized for my mistake and preceeded to pull out a quarter but a dime fell out also. she picked up the dime and the quarter while putting my other dime in the cash register. she then gave me a nickel. it seems such a shame that people are willing to lose face for a dime. i was really dissapointed.

the old man that works there spotted me a dime once. he was like "you can give me dime next time." he had not intention of having me pay him back either because when i tried to the next day, he didn't know what i was talking about.

my original title for this post would have been "the king and the old hag"

i'm off to class now. :(

lotr extended

ah. i feel downy soft fresh. hehehe. i just got out of the shower and just put on some nice clean jammies. makes me feel cuddly.

today hasn't been too eventful. i went to school, had my smoothie, and drove home. the drive wasn't too pleasant. i ran into a lot of traffic. one couple decided to stop dead in the road to talk to someone on the side of the street. lovely. austin driving is enough to drive anyone insane.

jeremy bought the extended version of lord of the rings today. we watched it. yup, 3.5 hours of my life gone. it was worth it though. the additional scenes were nicely woven into the main film. maybe one day when i'm really bored, i'll watch the movie with the commentary on.

tigger and dessy decided to watch the movie with us as well. however, they were content to watch it underneath our covers. heh. now i can't stop sneezing for some reason. we really need to do some chores around here. i plan on cleaning up the condo before our friend comes in this weekend.

da cats are on the bed now. tigger totally owns it.




click on image to enlarge

intelligent cats

it's pretty much been one of those days... sigh. i had trouble sleeping last night. my insomnia might be back. it went away for a few months. i remember, it's the worst feeling in the world. lying there, thinking, unable to stop thinking, always thinking simultaneous thoughts. this is how the world works when you're lying on your back at 2am knowing that after your brief unconscious break, you're going to be feeling like your head weighs two tons in the morning. i feel like the sleeplessness is like a trap, a huge whole where my mind is constantly being restarted. nights like that, i don't know when or what eventually lets my self collapse.

dessy is laying on the bed underneath an overturned laundry basket. she doesn't try to get out or even let out a sound. i think she knows that this is the only way she can hang with us upstairs. i like to convince myself that my cats are intelligent. i just couldn't have it any other way.

i was waiting in line today at the bank to make a deposit. the tellers were very slow and it pissed me off. i need to work on self control.

beauty and the beast

we just got back from schlotzsky's and grocery shopping. we got steaks for later this week. wohoo. actually we had steak enough for jeremy and i in the freezer but not enough for john also. see how nice we are? :) while we were there i loaded up on kleenex since my sickness has me going through them pretty fast. i also tried to find flexible neon straws but they only had the plain kind. sucks.

i just filled out a registration card for voting..so next time there will be no excuses. i'm trying to research for a papre right now but no luck. i'm just not into it.

jerms did the oddest thing awhile ago. he was reading the tv guide and was like,"hmm monday night football is on right now. beauty and the beast is coming on this week." then 5 minutes later without thinking about it he starts singing the theme song to beauty and the beast. it's cool when men are secure enough to sing disney toons.

have you seen the ring

i saw the movie The Ring awhile back. I took a picture of myself and look!




oh no!!!

(if you haven't seen the ring, disregard this message or just laugh at my funny face)

clips from jeremy's boredom, research

Unilever subsidiary Lipton approves an ad in which a man standing in line for communion holds a bowl of onion dip, presumably to improve the taste of the body of Christ. Under protest, Lipton withdraws the ad.


Eleven years after McDonald's announces that it has started cooking its fries in "100 percent vegetable oil" -- and one month after a Seattle lawyer files suit on behalf of Hindus and vegetarians who interpreted that to mean that the fries are meat-free -- the fast-food chain concedes that the "natural flavoring" in its fries is, in fact, beef fat.

w3 is the death of life

my weekend was pretty much everything but productive. i meant to do a lot of work on saturday but as it happens i end up eating, watching the sopranos (third season- we're almost done), and then eating again. we went over to a friend's house that evening for some tacos and a lot of war3 watching and playing. i just don't know how to get away from that game. thank god i learned how to play it finally or else i would have had to thrown myself over the balcony. my brother has played well over 1000 games already. that's crazy.

i've played maybe 5. i don't have the cd or anything so i basically play whenever anyone is willing to let me use their computer or cd. i think i can get one now for only 23 dollars online. damn. now my whole post has been about the damn game. w3 head. i dreamt about it last night to the point that i woke up totally wired after only 3 hours of sleep. i can't escape the damn thing. i must be free of it!..before it consumes me!

what ever happened to nice intellectual convos?

influenza

went to school a bit early today and got my flu shot. i got this really young looking guy for my shot administration and i was thinking the whole time to myself "i hope he knows what he's doing." they seem to have trained him well though because he knew how to initiate conversation and keep the patient distracted while the shot was being given. he started talking to me about how he wears sweaters because he lives off campus. i didn't really understand it. anyhow, after the shot, i got free apple juice in a nifty orange cup and drank it on the way to class.

during class something weird happened. about 15 minutes till the end of class, some black stuff starting shooting out of the air vents. we were viewing slides so it was dark and hardly anyone could tell but then this weird odor starting fuming out. the whole thing stopped about 5 minutes later but it was weird and scary. i kept staring up at the vent expecting some huge ball of fire to come gushing out.

i think i might need to lie down or think about taking some more dayquil. i'm starting to feel wobbly and woozy again. perhaps i need to pick something up to eat. food is always good medicine.

kaucshewweeze

woke up around 5am this morning unable to breath out of one nostril. it wasn't pleasant. i was very grumpy and wired from the nyquil having worn off. i remember pushing jeremy around on the bed because i couldn't get comfortable. luckily he was too sleepy to notice.

i went back to bed and woke up a couple hours later feeling a lot better. my sore throat has gone down and my sinuses are clearing up. i took some dayquil to help myself out some more. i then took some vitamin C, turned on my computer, and fed the cats.

i'm not writing a paper for my theory class today. i contemplated on skipping school again because i fear going out in the cold will make me worse. however, i need to go to school to get the flu shot anyhow. plus, i hate missing class where i think i'll actually miss some actualy learning.

i want something to drink but cold water makes me feel bad right now. orange juice might chew up my throat. hot chocolate is probably my best bet. time to go boil some water.

here comes the prepetually sick chick

haha. i read this off of a friend's friend's journal. i should add him/her to my list.

"The only thing standing between me and my novel (NaNoWriMo) is Minesweeper.
That, and insecurity about, well, everything. But mostly minesweeper. "


in other news, i'm officially sick. i'm staying home from school today in hopes to get better. i should have skipped school monday when it was cold and wet. that's what probably did it for me. i keep looking in the mirror to check and see how swollen my tonsils are. i woke up and the first thing i noticed was that swallowing hurt like hell. i also couldn't remember much about the night before. i remember jeremy getting into bed and then leaving to ask john to turn down his music. the nyquil put me out.

i don't really have medicine for a soar throat except chloraseptic. i dropped my real soar throat medicine in the toilet on accident. sigh. such is my luck.

i think i'm secretly jealous of everyone participating in NaNoWriMo. Sure, they're all facing self doubt, anxiety, and sleep deprevation but in the end, they're going to havea novel by the end of the month. i'm also curious if i could do it. i know i couldn't even attempt it this year because of school...but i also don't know if i'm capable of it. i never can finish anything i start. my mind just jumps around from priority to priority and story to story. i just can't commit. ;]

for all your nightime cold symptoms

i'm drowsy. i took some nyquil an hour ago to help me with my night time coughing, sneezing, sniffling, soar throat, fever...hehehe. i was productive this evening but i still didn't get enough done. hopefully i can wake up early tomorrow and finsih up my work for class. i'm contemplating on wether or not to go. i shouldn't have gone to class last monday when it was wet and raining. that's what did me in.

my brother got me the new tori amos cd. i've been listening to it nonstop for the past few days. there are some songs that remind me of Sarah Mclachlan's Touch album. It's not an extraordinary album but it's definitely going to get some playlist action for the next few weeks.

i want to do some chatting tonight but i probably shouldn't because i need to make myself crash out. i'm already drifting. it's taking me too long to write a sentence ..urrr.. thought.

voting, shopping, and aspartame

i wish i had been registered to vote today. john was going to vote but then we realized he was registered to vote in bmt not austin. jeremy could have voted too. he got a voter registration when he got a new driver's license. i even went online and had them send me a registration form but i never filled it out. oh well. i'll vote next time. it's all this moving around. bleh.

today i woke up with a sore throat. i think i'm coming down with something. i've been feeling light headed and woozy all day. i went to school, suffered, and then came home and did some chores. i cleared out the junk that was piling up in the pantry. i also started doing some work for my studio. i've decided that i need to be more productive during the week...or more productive period.

jeremy and i went grocery shopping after he got home from work. he's cooking lad-nah tonight, a thai noodle dish. i've decided not to buy anymore of that hillcountry flavored water stuff because they put aspartame in it. i've done some research over the internet and have found sites stating pros and cons of the substance. mainly the people who say that aspartame is safe are the manufacturers or companies that are profitting from the sell of it. however, the sites that go on about the harmful effects of aspartame are pretty spotchy. i decided it wasn't worth risking my health. i'll just go back to drinking water and orange juice. i guess my friend akash was right. when a drink sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

pros of aspartame

cons of aspartame

war3 newbie

wohoo. i just played my first game of WarCraft 3 and won. I then practiced with the computer and then jeremy. it gets really frustrating at time when i'm learning because people are screaming at me to do like a million things. I'd say i did pretty well for my first time around. i still don't know if it's worth buying the game.

jeremy and i are about to watch the first episode of the third season of the Sapranos. I've never seen the first or second season but he has. I guess here goes my next round of procrastination. I have stuff due for tomorrow. ah well. "i'll do it later". i can already see my dad shaking his head. :D

by the way, dinner was deer sausage.

halloween update

Last halloween night, Karen and I went out to 4th street to The Forum to see the Drag Queen show. It was pretty fun. I didn't have to exert myself too much which was good cuz I was fighting off a cold. The drag queens were okay. Diva Aguillera danced and lip sang to Missy Elliott's "Work It". The gay strippers weren't that good. No one really seemed interested in them. I think they didn't appeal to the younger gay crowd. I forced Karen to participate in the Halloween costume competition. She was dressed as a 1920s gangster equipped with the machine gun and everything. If she had been a young gay boy, she would have won first place for sure. As is, some stupid costume with double horns got first place. The second place winner was someone dressed in all black wearing a beak on their nose. Karen would have gotten third place if there was one. The competition was judged by people yelling and cheering. I screamed my lungs out for Karen. If I had my friend Eric there, she would gotten first place. hahaha.

Click on the pictures to see more.

PICTURES FROM FOURTH STREET at the FORUM


PICTURES FROM CARVING PUMPKINS AT MY PARENT'S HOUSE

Today, Jeremy and I went out to Fry's to pick up a new case for his computer. It is huge and green with a clear side panel. It looks cool but it is just way too large. I guess that's the price you pay for customization. We went to go see The Ring yesterday. It was pretty good but it left me asking a lot of questions about movies that play down your intelligence. Afterwards, we came home and played Tribes for awhile. Later that night, Jerms and I watched Windtalkers. UGH. What a horribly boring and pointlessly cheezy movie.

Hmm.. I'm kind of hungry now. I wonder what's for dinner.