Smashley’s blog

Today we went to three booksales. Altogether, I spent $24.25. This is what I got:

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"January
1) Buffy the Vampire Slayer - No Future For You
2) Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Wolves at the Gate
3) Marley & Me by John Grogan
4) Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design
5) The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron
6) The Seven Songs of Merlin by T.A. Barron
7) The Fires of Merlin by T.A. Barron
8) The Mirror of Merlin by T.A. Barron"

This is where I left off late January.
February and March I did not get a lot of reading done due to lots of homework and other distractions. So now I am at this point:

9) Wicked by Gregory Maguire
10) The Wings of Merlin by T.A. Barron

In my defense, Wicked was dense reading. But now, no more excuses. Next up I am reading Hunted, which I wouldn't be surprised if I finished while doing my laundry tomorrow. Plus, my classes are relatively easy this term so that won't be an issue.

Man, I had such a good start. Damn you, school, for making me read textbooks (which apparently don't count) instead of funbooks, which do count.

Okay. We're sitting there, watching Reno911. It's about 1:30am. We hear a knock on the door and the bell ringing. I get up, and it's our neighbor telling us that we should move our cars because the parking lot's beginning to flood.

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Shit!! (These were all taken this morning, but the flood remains similarly effective.) So I go to move my car to the parking lot next door to our house. There's a creek to the left of this photo (it's normally very small) and so I figured it would have some water but I would just park at the top of it.

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Oooookay. So I could park in one of those spots on the left, but risk getting boxed in by the encroaching water. Actually, in this photo you can see where the water was, so it receded about a foot and a half overnight.

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So anyway, last night I parked my car safely across the street, and come home. After seeing the parking lot behind us, I told Erin "wouldn't it be scary if we looked out on the porch and it was all water underneath?" So she goes out and looks, comes back with a funny look on her face. So, I go out and look, and imagine this with it being pitch black and just seeing a murky reflection underneath your deck that is supposed to be above ground, not a water balcony:

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As you can see, it's just a little lower than it was last night. Oh how awesome. Thank god it's not raining today, let's hope some of this shit evaporates.

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And that addiction is Yahoo! Answers. I'm addicted to answering questions in the Books & Authors section.

Shit!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper. Usually I like mixing things up and using different papers but this year, everyone gets stripes!
   
2. Real tree or artificial? Real trees! But soooooooooomeone said we couldn't have a real tree this year, and that's probably for the best since I don't really have any ornaments and I'd have to water it and I have a hard enough time watering my mini-doug fir so I'm okay.
   
3. When do you put up the tree? In my family, usually the first week of December. At our house, we had a tree up at Halloween!
   
4. When do you take down the tree? In the fan-damily, usually first week of January. At my house, apparently it'll be pre-new years eve.
   
5. Do you like eggnog? Yeah!
6. Favorite gift received as a child? Oh god I don't know.
   
7. Hardest person to buy for? Mom.
   
8. Easiest person to buy for? Noah. Sister.
   
9. Do you have a nativity scene? Not here, but my grandma had this one made out of straw characters, I used to love it as a kid. I don't know where it is now, though. :(
   
10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Neither. I bought cards this year but I think I'll have to end up waiting til next year to actually send them out.
    
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? I don't know..
    
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? I really liked Family Stone and I love Christmas Story and It's a Wonderful Life. And Rudolph. I could go on.
    
13. When do you start shopping? This year, quite a ways before Christmas.
    
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Not that I can think of.
    
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? The baked goods my mom makes (cookies, truffles, etc.) and ham!
    
16. Lights on the tree? Um... yes?
    
17. Favorite Christmas song? O Holy Night.. Jingle Bell Rock, Silver Bells, Sleigh Ride, +1000 more.
    
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Most of my family lives here.
    
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen... and Rudolph. Yep!
    
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Yeah.
    
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Usually one minor one at night and the rest in the morning.
    
22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Ass-y customers.
    
23. Favorite ornament theme or color? Red and green! And gold.
    
24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Ham!!
25. What do you want for Christmas this year? I'll be happy with anything.
    
26. Who is most likely to respond to this? Nobody, probably.
    
27. Who is least likely to respond to this? These last questions are dumb.
    

I was going through graphjam today and found this:

and it reminded me of this guy that was my last customer of the day.

I checked the clock, it said 2:59, I thought, "I'll go get a kleenex before I step off the floor". So I round the music information desk, and this guy asks me how to spell "Kwai" as in "Bridge over the River Kwai" or whatever, and I show it to him, and there's two versions. He starts telling me about the actor in it (uh oh) as in full, complete, wikipedia-esque life story. I nod, "uh-huh", and "mm" my way through it, until I think he's done (he says "well, thanks for showing me this") and I start to walk away and he says "...because I work at a prison.." and starts to tell me about his prison job as a psychotherapist (his words, not mine) and how he's going to show his inmates this movie as a show of "hubris" (he kept saying it "[hocking noise]ubris") like it was a hebrew word (last I checked, wasn't)) and I wanted to cry as I watched all my coworkers enter and leave the break room that I was mere feet from.

FINALLY he shut up and I ran.

Bastard.

The latest victim of this whole economic crisis is quite possibly the most jarring of them all: Mother's Cookies.

Mother's cookies abruptly shut down (SFGate.com)

Say goodbye to Circus Animal cookies, and those damn Taffy cookie sandwiches...

This sucks. I fucking loved those cookies. I'll have to go to the store tomorrow.

Shit.

Good things that happened today:
-made it to calculus only 20 minutes late, understood the lesson
-decided on a topic for my research paper writing class, something I'd been stressing about
- ..

Bad things that happened today:
-got a flat tire on the freeway on the way to school and was stuck on the shoulder and all these semis kept blowing on by and I thought I was going to die, and then when the AAA guy got there, I thought he was going to die
-missed the first 20 minutes of calculus
-had to buy two new tires today
-my DS ran out of batteries while I was waiting for aforementioned tires
-I almost ran over a homeless guy on his bike on the way home

That's today so far.

I had a whole blog written and it was deleted, but basically it was about this seven year old kid in Australia who broke into a zoo and threw a bunch of animals to their death in a crocodile's cage, and then smashed some lizards with rocks and then threw them in the cage for the croc, too. And I thought of how nice he was to think of population control during these times and then I remembered that lizards typically do not have lines of credit.  And how it's understandable why he wouldn't be criminally tried because of his young age but that some sort of ongoing supervision should be conducted with this kid's insanity in mind.

And then it got all deleted.

But you get the gist of it. Anyway, here's a surveillance photo:

Croc

Yeah.

Update: here's some links: to the article and to the video.

O.J. is fuuuuuuuuuuuucked!

"...O.J. Simpson was found guilty Friday of all 12 counts in ... armed robbery..."

And, wouldn't you know, not five minutes after I posted the last blog, my neighbors turned off their music. Thank holy jesus.