Listening: Underworld soundtrack
I'd rather be: walking in the sunshine
Aches and Complaints: kinked neck
Enjoying: warm coffee

Can you tell I just haven't felt like creating my own content here? I dunno I just haven't fell like doing day to day write ups in a long time. It's not that nothing is going on. Maybe just very few things that I want to have happen are going on.

Money has been weird and getting weirder due to holiday shopping. On top of that I'm moving in December from my bachelor pad in downtown to a two bedroom in Long Beach. I'll be sharing it with a Faerie. She's coo.

Thanksgiving weekend was really nice. The contrast between the comfort of hanging with friends and family and coming into work is pretty striking. ah well the Christmas presents won't pay for themselves.

OB is gone again. might get out on Friday, we'll see. In the meantime the family has been without its sons at home. MB and BB were at basic in Georgia and Kentucky, respectively. BB managed to finish up on Monday and flew home on Tuesday. We were thinking he wouldn't make it and he would miss Thanksgiving but the surprise was pleasant. MB called home from base after his dinner and it was nice to hear him. BB will fly out to Frankfurt on the 15th-ish and MB will fly home (theoretically) for the holiday break on the 17th-ish. So they'll unfortunately miss each other by a little bit.

Anyway with Tha Brutha Man in town Molasses had to coordinate Thanksgiving dinner with him in terms of driving out to San Jacinto to eat with their maternal grandma. I've had three dinners in a row with her but this year I was either going to have dinner with my family or with the boy's. With the crazy situation of my brothers' comings and goings it just wouldn't be fair to also be gone on T-day. So no joy of eating at Marie Callendars' with Lois. 'Parently she went off this time on how demanding the young generation (*ahem* her grandons) are with their salaries, always expecting more than their companies can pay and then obviously managing their money poorly if they couldn't live within the limited means she has. Seriously, she expectes twentysomethings with mortgages and kids to get by on $1000 per month or less. In California. I seriously think the old folks community homes slip a little something into the water. And dammit, I want some.

Instead I got to hang out at my mom's house, played with the niece who took a little while to remember who I was. But she got over it when I started reading to her. *smile* she stays still for that. She's a little turbo, runs everywhere and chatters up a storm. I can barely understand one in ten words and I think the universe obviously makes kids so darned cute so we don't smack the shit out of them when they won't shut the hell up. I love being an aunt. I love being able to give 'em back.

Miss Thang was in an out. As usual. Barely able to stay put and be where she actually is. Sometimes I think her body is just an afterimage of where her mind has been. Maybe not even that. Her mind doesn't like being at home. I remember those days. They were dark ones for me. Fortunately my sis doesn't seem prone to depression. Lucky for the kid, too, I guess.

But I'm still somehow saving for Disneyland. Rabbit and I have been planning and it's been put off a couple times. So it better work this time, darn it. For D-land to happen I can't afford a trip out east for a while. I would have liked to have gone in early December, but not with the rate I'm having to burn through my income right now. Bah anyhow, the people I know out that way are too busy for me right now.

Anyway D-land. I expect it to be hectic. Adults have been trying to attach themselves to the project. Which is why I'm all about surrounding the two of us with toddlers. It's mostly about giving the kiddies a day out and maybe recapturing a little bit of that D-land magic as they run from ride to ride. I keep wondering what I'll do to make sure they can take a nap, but that's putting the cart way ahead of the horse.

I've been doing a shit load of overtime at work. Management is happy with that, which I had kind of worked into my plans. The only thing about it is the work that I do in overtime is typically more prone to errors and quibbles fom QC than the work I do during regular time. It's a completely different work type and my control over the work produce is significantly less. (It's the difference between copyediting and copywriting.) So when I do OT my quality scores take a dip. Irritating for my overall scores, but still kinda nice for the department bottom line.

A couple of weeks ago I let go of my dieting and exercise plans. I've been super extra stressed, to the point where I just wasn't able to sleep restfully or be very proactive with my waking time. So I'm concentrating on projects with a hard end time like holiday shopping and moving and I'll try to fit in some exercise in the coming weeks. Gaming is in there somewhere, but Vampire has fallen way to the back. I'm pulling together a game for some non-Cam friends that revolves around one person who plays the President of the U.S. I'm creating the mechnics more or less whole cloth. It's a reasonably huge undertaking for me and while I'm a little nervous of doing a half-assed job, I'm petrified of getting a group together that doesn't get along or makes it their goal to make me crazy or something.... These are seriously smart people so they have to have something to do that isn't just talk at each other. There's some influence that's from the West Wing, but since the game is in direct relationship to the President it's not quite an ensemble situation. It isn't about the advisors and then the President shows up every now and then. Quite the opposite. Anyway. I have a problem with long gaming sessions. I can rarely stay with anything that lasts longer than six hours without letting my mind wander. So right now designing a single sit down session is a bit of a challenge.

So that's a bit of a huge undertaking that's taking up a lot of my attention and time. A lot of my shopping is done. Now I have to try and remember which present was for which friend. I always swear next year I won't forget, and then the holiday comes around and I get all confused. *sigh* I have one thing left to get my sister and then something for BB and MB. MB can't take much of anything back to training, however they don't limit small religious items like jewelry or (small) tracts. So I might get some milage out of that. BB is done with Basic so he can take personal items with him to Frankfurt. Of course, now he wants to take his desktop and all his games. I don't know what to get him that won't irritate me, and of course a gift certificate won't be especially useful in Germany. So I think I'll try for another trip to a bookstore. He might be irritated at a religious book but I'm hoping it'll be one of those you'll-thank-me-later kind of things. I mean, I hope it isn't to trite to show him that our religion does have a strong tradition of upstanding soldiers who served with distinction and made the folks at home very proud. Well... we'll see if the bookstore has anything like that. Also, if I can find it, I was thinking of finding him a book or two on choice German phrases.

My parents are all done and shopped for, 'course I still have to get my dad something else since his birthday is three days after Christmas.

Yesterday I made Target very, very happy. I find it amusing that Sears and the mall-people of America (whatever their group is called) reported that shopping shot up a good healthy amount while Wal-Mart is posting lower than expected earnings. Heh. Maybe the economy is looking up when people can feel comfortable shopping someplace nicer than Wal-Mart. Not that I can really say everyone who could be shopping was out shopping. Before you can mention Black Friday, I should point out, poor people aren't going to skip out on the huge savings big chain stores were offering. So it's really only the affluent and upwardly mobile who really sat the day out. Personally, I worked some OT and then hit local independent bookstore. I also went by Tower but they didn't have anything I wanted. But it might also mean that lower income folks who last year thought of Wal-Mart as a godsend can't even afford that anymore. I think that's a little dire so I prefer to believe in my freshly-pulled-from-my-ass theory that people have figured out that Wal-Mart sucks ass and are taking their money elsewhere.

anyhow most of the shopping is done. Only one friend is unshopped for and that's cause I don't know what to get her. If PayPal and I got along that would be taken care of. Hmph. The thing that I haven't gotten and is slowly beginning to drive me batty is a little extra to my Molasses' present. I want to get him something, some trinket with the Korean version of the rabbit astrology which is all warrior style. Here is a picture of some copacetic-style statues of what I mean. There are also pictures of the same guys in fighting poses. Darn it all, I missed my chance to pick one up in Korea and I can't find it here, try as I might. I've searched everywhichway I know how online, even pulling up Korean sites, but the Folk museum and other sites we visited don't believe in online storefronts. Koreana gift stores based in the U.S. don't have them and there basically aren't any K-town gift stores. I live in K-town. The stores here are for Korean-Americans, not for non-ethnic Koreans. Which basically means you can get pretty cheap Samsung electronics but no traditional knick-knacks. Koreans love their tech and the K-town store owners haven't decided to turn their homes in to tourist traps a la Chinatown.

*sigh* if you know what I'm looking for and you find it, please give me a holler.

Ok, I think that's mostly it. Gotta get back to work. the presents aren't going to pay for themselves. Unfortunately.