It's That Time Again

It's time for family, fun, long lines, music, gifts, travel, menstruation and service with a smile. Yeah, this post is gonna be kinda random. Hang in there with me.

For good or for bad, the holidays are here. Where I work, that means we are really busy, thanks to end-of-semester exams. Which is fine. I understand. After all, I was once a college student. But I have to say, I am on the verge of screaming at someone.

The procrastinators and lazy students finally have a fire under their asses, and so they are swarming the library like bees. Unfortunately, since they've been slackers all semseter, they have no idea what they are doing, and so they are driving us crazy. They don't know how to find books, read books or tie their shoes. They don't have any knowledge of our computers or printing system, so they want us to hold their hands and do everything for them. Remember, we are getting the lazy slacker kids at this point in the semester.

Probably the most irritating thing to me is that they don't have any school supplies. I mean, how do you attend school and you have nothing to write with? WTF? Do you look in the mirror and call yourself an adult college student? Where did you read that the librarians will just give you floppy disks? What makes you think we would have report covers? Seriously, I just don't get this mentality. Students: there is this place called a "bookstore". Try it sometime. They have lots of handy stuff there. I swear to all things holy that if one more person asks me if they can borrow our glue, I might actually rip their head off. "Glue THAT, mofo!" I will scream. The library is not your own personal Staples, people. We don't even have glue, you numbnuts.

Ok, rant over. I feel better now.

I will feel a lot better when my new digital camera gets here. I'm supposed to allow 3 weeks for delivery, but it's been about 2 now, so I'm getting antsy. I'm also waiting on some boots from Victoria's Secret (an exchange of boots) and some deliveries from Amazon.com.

Check out what I got for my bedroom, courtesy of the gift certificate from The Dummy and Modigli:



Don't they have nice taste? They knew exactly what I wanted. *sigh* I love green. You probably already knew that.

Yesterday, the Christmas bug hit me, and I got four (yes, four) Christmas CDs. I burned one from Napster that has all my favorites on it. The Bing Crosby ones make me cry. (More evidence that I'm turning into Czarina) Other songs include: "Jingle Bell Rock", "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree", Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas" and Elvis' "Blue Christmas".

Then I went to Amazon.com to look for a hard-to-find Christmas album. I have been looking for it for a long time. It is my absolute favorite, because my dad and I used to listen to it: Ray Conniff's We Wish You a Merry Christmas. On the corniness scale, it's basically off the charts. In most of the songs, there is this cheesy peanut gallery in the background shouting, "Merry Christmas, everybody!" or "Hey, Guys! Let's decorate the Christmas tree! Yeah!" They sound like they've had entirely too much sugar and/or caffeine. You almost want to blow them away with a shotgun. And I love that. Because when it comes to holiday music, the goofier the better in my book.

I also got the soundtrack to one of my all-time favorite movies: Love, Actually. I highly recommend this movie and soundtrack. If you haven't seen it, run run run to the store, folks. It's a great Christmas movie. Although, not appropriate for kids. FYI. Unless you are ok with your kids watching people play body doubles for a porno.

So what did I do this weekend? It was pretty uneventful. Some Christmas shopping. Too much tv. Baked some pumpkin bread. Some furniture assembling. Yawn. But I did go out on Saturday night. Blonde and I ended up partying with a mutual friend of ours. We hadn't ever partied with her one-on-one, and she is a scream. We laughed our asses off all night. Any night a life-sized statue of Jack Daniel gets humped and molested is deemed a fun night in my book. So I will dub her Fun Girl. Later on, I saw Mack Daddy and the rest of the Wild Youngins, Cop 2's brother (The Quiet Man), RDG and even Repo as I was leaving to go home.

It was a full moon, what can I say?

Repo called me the next day and we caught up. The Quiet Man emailed me a very sweet email. Too sweet, actually. He apparently has the same tendencies as his brother....too bad. (Trust me on this. I can smell the clinginess and ickiness, practically. At this point, I am wondering if their mother hugged them as children. They are so...gushy. Ew. I do not come from a gushy family. I come from a family which totally represses its emotions, unless the emotion is anger. Gush makes my skin crawl.)

I found out that my brother, Fat Dog, is going to go to an all-expenses-paid trip to Honolulu next summer. Why? His senior paper on jet turbine engines (or something equally geeky like that) is being presented at some mechanical engineering conference, and his school wants him there to present it. He's always getting lucky breaks like this. To quote my coworker, he has "a horseshoe up his ass." Seriously, the coolest things happen to him. I wish it would rub off on me! Luck should be genetic...

Speaking of trips, I am going to Orlando on Saturday. Work conference. Woo hoo. It's actually kinda cold in Florida right now, so I don't know how much I will get to enjoy the weather. Still haven't decided if I will tell Big Ex I'm going to be in town. I don't really see the point. But I guess it would be good to see him. What do you think? Let sleeping dogs lie or meet up with an old boyfriend just for old times' sake? Remember that I am a lot fatter than the last time he saw me. Then again, I bet he is, too. I'm also going to see Party Girl, an old friend from college while I'm there.(I am really excited about this, actually! She used to be my partner in crime in college. She is 100% responsible for all of my stage/bar/tabletop dancing. The boob-flashing was all me. Kidding. Good times...)

Special note to my male readers: You are probably going to want to skip the next part. It deals with women's troubles. No, not men. Yes, I know we always complain that men are the problem. Just skip it, ok? Go down to the Men with Cramps part. We'll meet you there.

I got a very random email today, wanting to know if I'd be interested in entering an essay contest held by Always. As in the panty liners. Yeah. They are looking for essays discussing how you make your period happy. How you can turn a bad situation into a good one. Optimism in the face of menstruation, I guess. What on earth can you say? "You're no match for my cheery disposition, cramps!" or "Sometimes, when I'm menstruating, I feel sad. But then, I think about butterflies and puppies and it all goes away." I mean, the only good thing about being OTR is that you have license to be a total bitch. That's it. The end. They want me to write a 1,000 word essay about that? Who on earth would read it? Although, if they want me to share wacked-out stories of my bizarre hormonal behavior, I can write a book:

"The driver of the other car thought it would be ok with me if they pulled out in front of me. Little did they know that their brains and other internal organs would soon be smashed all over the pavement, as I stood nearby, laughing heartily. After throwing the cops off my path with my claim of "female troubles" affecting my memory of the car 'accident', I arrived home, grabbed a tub of chocolate ice cream from the freezer and turned on the television just in time to catch the end of Old Yeller, upon which I burst into total and uncontrollable sobbing. Then I ate the entire tub of ice cream in 20 minutes before taking a 7-hour nap. It was a wonderful day. I love being on my period."

Do they have a contest quota to meet? They must be hard up for participants if they're emailing me. No surprise there. Can you imagine putting that on your resume or college application? "Winner: Always Essay Contest-- How to Have a Happy Period" Can you imagine what the judges will be saying?

Judge #1: "I really liked this one about how she views her period as an art form!"
Judge #2: "No, no. The best one was the one where the woman said she commits one random act of kindness for every cramp she has. That takes real dedication."

Little do the judges know that those women are probably referring to some major ass-kickings they've inflicted upon ignorant people who irritate them just by breathing the same air? That in their own, hormone-juiced brains, they honestly believed that slapping that stranger until their nose bled was a charitable act which probably improved the nation as a whole?

The kicker are the prizes, which include a selection of Always products (because who doesn't want a big box of pads shipped to their house for free?) and $1,000 towards college expenses. Because apparently, only college students can have happy periods. The prize they should have would be this: "The winner of the contest will receive a free job from a hit man of our choosing, all fees, concealment, body disposal and taxes included." Now that would get them some essays.

Ironically, I found this website today: Men with Cramps. Maybe men need to think twice before giving us shit about our hormones? Maybe men should also be allowed to enter the Always contest? According to Dr. Quack here, men also get PMS. He's even linking major events in world history to this male PMS syndrome. What a genius he is. I mean, look at his hair. He's totally trustworthy. I smell Nobel Prize.

So let's all just remember the real meaning of the holiday spirit: brotherly love, peace and harmony on Earth. If reaching this goal involves some bloodshed or rage, it's probably because of all the people with PMS who are under a lot of pressure, trying to think of something to write for their essay. Unfortunately, none of us are safe, because you can't tell they're pissy until it's too late. So be careful out there, folks. Use your turn signals and don't ask librarians if you can borrow their hole puncher.
And as ticked off as you get around the holiday season, just remember that in this day and age, you never know who could be watching. So watch out, or you could end up on the Internet like this German kid: