you'll ask for me

So, as it turns out, Christmas was not the fustercluck that I was expecting it to be. My parents and aunt came into the city last night to retrieve me, and we went to mass at this church near my place, which was really lovely, and I was appreciative. I enjoy church choirs a lot. Today was not so bad. My aunt didn't have any kind of crying breakdown. My cousin didn't show up, but at least he called ahead of time to let us know that he'd be showing up later, if at all, and he wouldn't be here for dinner. That's an improvement over his normal behavior.

My parents got me, among other things, one of those single cup coffee makers. Oh, is my life about to get 10x easier! I'll save money on coffee, and I won't have to worry about making it in the morning. I got myself a little coffee grinder so I could get whole bean coffee, but as it turns out, I suck at making coffee, so whatever. I'm not embarrassed. I'd rather have this single cup dealie and be able to just pop the coffee pod it and be able to have coffee at home before I leave in the morning, because I am a hungry, grumpy person without coffee. I feel a little bit like a domestic failure, but so it goes.

I do think my parents need a grandchild to spoil very soon. My aunt, too. My mother still enjoys getting me a lot of stuff, even though I'm 25. It didn't wind up being an excessive amount of goods, but the way she was talking... Yeah, I definitely need to have a kid within the next 10 years, so she's in prime "spoiling grandma" mode. I do want her to have some grandkids because I think she would enjoy it so much, and she'd have an excuse to go buy cute baby clothes.

Tomorrow, I think a trip to Costco is in order. And maybe an excursion to find me some dress pants, because I'm lacking in that department. Also, I will hopefully get to see my wonderful boy-friend. It sucks that I've talked to him twice but haven't gotten to see him yet. He's home only for a short time. I'm very Eeeeeee! inside.

 Posting this again, because I love it so much:
This one, too:


I've noted it before, but it bears repeating- Phoenix is *great* driving music. And great strutting music. It's impossible to hear some of their bouncier songs and not be cheered up. 

In a nutshell, here's what I liked about this year:
-turning 25, and actually having a good birthday for once
-spending New Years with my lovely and charming boy-friends
-How I Met Your Mother
-Parks & Recreation
-Bill Hader
-Lady Gaga (once I stopped hating)
-Glee
-finally getting a chance to see Firefly/Serenity 
-Andrew McMahon and his bands
-the presence of expatiates & mclittlebitch & tirtzah in my life
-getting back into "lose weight" mode
-getting to Carmel, CA
-going back to Boston for the first time since graduation
-True Blood
-Magnolia Electric Co./Songs: Ohia
-Charlotte Hatherley up close and personal at Bat For Lashes 
-Allison Iraheta
-the continuance of my "stop being a music snob and just love everything" trajectory
-Skins
-Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
-eating lunch in Madison Square Park

( and the not so good )

Well...I got racked by the ginormous snowstorm and will be out of power until probably after Christmas, at least that's what the power company is saying. It's been out since around 8:30 Friday night, so I'm taking refuge at a friend's house so I can take showers and have a microwave and all that good stuff. See you guys when I get back.

 Safari is so much faster than Firefox, but I don't want to give up Firefox b/c of my little LiveJournal add-on. I'm a baby. Maybe I'll try it again; who knows. My Google Reader seems to work better in Safari, too. And Google Maps and Weight Watchers don't crash all of the time.

Once upon a time, I had this Dell laptop that lasted for about 4.5 years. And then sometime in that fourth year and sixth month, I heard a strange ticking sound, and went to turn on the computer, and I think it...didn't. So we had our IT guy come over, and basically what happened is that the fan overloaded with dust build-up, and killed the hard drive. Because no one ever tells you to clean out the internal fan from time to time. I guess it should be common knowledge, but it's not something that most people think about. 

Where I am now is that my Mac (which always got pretty warm, pretty fast) is getting warmer, faster. I'm petrified of hearing that ticking sound and the "sorry, not turning" on thing happening again. But I don't want to be without a computer for days. I'm pretty sure the fan just needs to be cleaned out, but I don't know if that's something that the Mac store can do in an hour, or if it's something that's going to take 3 days and $200. I'm pretty sure the warranty on the computer is kaput. But I have my appointment at the genius bar tomorrow night, so I'll see what the geniuses have to say. Either that, or I get freaked out by every little computer noise, and every time the machine runs slightly slower. A smart panda would head this thing off before it gets any worse. I'm going to be a smart panda and hope for the best.

I looked into cleaning out the fan myself, but it's way too complicated and I don't want to risk injuring the computer. Too many little screws and pieces. 

[you ever have one of those instances when some random line just pops into your head?]

The good news is that I don't think my coworker is going to hold a grudge against me for accidentally finding out that he's leaving. He was fairly nice to me today. Again- not my fault!

I'm so not ready for Christmas this year. I only have 3 people to buy presents for, but I'm bitching about it. And everything just kind of crept up fast, with my grandmother passing away and my bank account taking a huge hit on account of my trip from freaking *September* and me just having a hard time getting my ass in gear. I'm just not feeling very Christmassy, and I know it's going to be kind of depressing without my grandmother and I'm just kind of not pumped about it. I wish it wasn't next week. Give me another 2 weeks, huh?

Winter is a horrible time to try and lose weight. There are no indoor public spaces in the Grammercy/Flatiron/Murray Hill area where I work, so if I want to sit some place, I actually have to buy lunch every day. The alternative is to bring lunch and eat at 12:30 and then just go out whenever Doug decides to roll up and relieve me, which does happen sometimes, but winter is weird. All I want are warm foods, not so much salads. So everything is kind of fattening. My only take-out options are half sandwiches at Pret [and Pret's whole sandwiches aren't even that filling] and Subway, if I don't go get a salad at Pax or the new place that opened. And that's another thing- I was so psyched for this new place, Bread & Butter to open, and turns out it's just another generic lunch place. It's a little nicer, but it's like a smaller version of Cafe 28, which is a few blocks away. NO OPTIONS!

I suspect that my computer is on the verge of overheating, due to a clogged fan. I don't think it's still under warranty, so I'll probably have to take it to Tekserve or something. I'm going to call Apple tomorrow and see what they recommend, but I'm not thrilled about giving the computer up for 3 or 4 days just so someone can clean the fan. I looked up how to do it online and it seems incredibly complicated, and not worth the stress.

Also, I'm reading "Wicked." I'd been halfway interested in it since I first heard about it, but I think a combination of Glee doing "Defying Gravity" and all of the "Adam Lambert was an understudy!" sort of pushed me to really go for it. I'm almost done with it, and I can tell that it's going to be one of those situations where I go "Aww, I'm sad it's over!" when I finish it. I was going to actually try and go see the musical after finishing the book, but I read the musical summary on Wikipedia and I'm not thrilled about how they chopped up the book, so I'll probably skip that. It's interesting reading the book and trying to figure out what parts of it come into "The Wizard of Oz," obvious and not as obvious. she

Work is unintentionally lulzy, on occasion. L, one of my co-workers told me that she's leaving at the end of the month for a new job in Boston, but she hadn't told anyone at the time, especially O, another co-worker who she is close with.

Meanwhile, O himself is planning his escape, something that I've known about for at least a month and half now. Only he didn't know that I knew until today, when I sort of let it slip by accident. He asked me, "Do you know something that you shouldn't know that I don't know that you know?" or something to that effect, but he said it with a smile on his face, so I kind of 'fessed up. But I think he's kind of pissed about it, and as it turns out, not many of the other co-workers know. I emailed him and told him that I found out completely by accident, and he wrote back and reminded me to please keep it a secret and the ironic part is that he specifically wrote, "DO NOT tell L!"

Now, I don't know if O knows about L at this point, but I just think it's kind of funny that they're both working on departures (hers sooner), and they don't want the other to know. Meanwhile, I hope O isn't too pissed at me. Again, complete accident. I was looking through the VP's computer for an email that the boss needed RIGHT THAT SECOND, and saw that the VP had filled out a recommendation for one of the schools that O is applying to. WELL. I had been debating whether or not to say anything to him, because I'm genuinely interested as to why he'd be applying to business school, but I kept my mouth shut.

I hope this is yet another instance of me making a mountain out of a molehill, but if this goes on for a week and he's still acting sore at me, I'll probably say something.

( Work!Rant )