Happy Birthday to MEEEEEEE!

I need to talk about how great this birthday was.

First, I didn't have to work, which is such an improvement over last year that today was already awesome before I even had to wake up.

Second, I checked facebook, expecting to see a "happy birthday" from my sister in Europe, which I figured would be pretty cool. Instead, I find at least 10 happy birthdays, including posts from 1am and from people I haven't talked to in forever. I feel loved.

Third, I convinced Sara to go to PeiWei with me for lunch and then *gasp* clothes shopping! The horror! I even made her try stuff on and you know what? She bought something! I also got a new (fantastic!) dress and shoes for dinner tonight. (side note: when I got home, a necklace was missing from my bag, so I had to go back to the store, which was not so great, but they had the necklace waiting for me so it wasn't too big a deal.)

Fourth, dinner at Wildfish. Fabulous food! They brought me a special cake that they set on fire! So good!

Fifth, my parents got me an iPod, which was completely unexpected and kinda shocking and I can't wait to play with it!

And lastly, my brother and I went to see The A-Team, which is a great "don't think about it too much, just enjoy the one-liners and explosions" kind of movie.

This may just be the best birthday ever! At least in recent memory. The only way it would have been better is if Katie was down here to go out with us, too. All in all, I feel fantastic and am not sure if I'm going to be able to fall asleep anytime soon!

PS: it might have also been made better by the addition of a cute guy to drag around, but I probably shouldn't be too greedy. ;)

*Headdesk*

...and yet again Girl Genius has cut away in the middle of the action to introduce yet another plot twist...
sigh...
I think I'm with Katie now; should probably just stop reading for a few months and hope something's been resolved by the time I come back. (Not likely, but I can dream)

Thoughts of the day

Things that make no sense:

• A bus in Mesa, AZ that says Metropolitan Atlanta Travel Authority.

• A day spent walking around the Renn Faire (after an hour driving a clutch through stop-and-go traffic) apparently leads to sore arms, but legs feel great.

• A specific (and important) ingredient is written on a grocery list that is checked in the store at least five times; I still got all the way home before I realized I'd forgotten that ONE THING!

Things that are awesome:

• Am on day five of my stay-at-home-and-relax PAID vacation; haven't felt this great since...um, not sure when.

• Caramelized onions! *is in snack heaven*

• The little brother's AcDec team won the state competition! Which means they get to go do it all again next month in *drumroll* Omaha, Nebraska! ...Have fun guys! ;)

• Received my tax return! I love when the gov...well, really, when anybody gives me money.

Something was... off today.

I started the day by getting in the shower with my glasses still on. I joked with myself that it was a sign of how the day was going to go. If my day wasn't jinxed to begin with, that probably did it.

Getting lunch at McDonald's, I got the cashier who seemed about to have an anxiety attack. He repeated my order back to me four times. All I had was a cheeseburger and fries, nothing complicated, but he seemed both confused and terrified. He still screwed it up, I had to wait for them to fix it and I was late for my class.

I had a photo assignment to turn in today. I knew it required three final prints. But apparently I didn't make that connection in the lab yesterday and only made two prints. Will lose points over this. I told one of my classmates that I felt like banging my head on the table.

Which is probably why I smacked my forehead against the sun visor when I was getting into my car. Hard. It's still sore. I may actually have a bruise.

I went to my grandma's to help make dessert for tomorrow. We needed melted white chocolate. Apparently, if you get water in it or get it too hot it turns hard. Spent way too much time on a lost cause. Decided to make a thin icing with powdered sugar instead.

Then went to work for the "why bother" shift: three hours, basically just closing. Found out we had to mop the whole floor because the cleaning ladies apparently get the night before Thanksgiving off. These are the same cleaners who just recently left one night without doing anything, and then insisted the next day that they had cleaned everything.

Almost forgot my jacket when leaving work.

In the store parking lot we found a pile of clothes.

One of my neighbors is moving. In the middle of the night.

And another neighbor's dog is going insane.

I think this counts as one of my weirder days.

So...good news: I got an extra hour of work tonight, which means just a little bit more on my next paycheck; always a good thing. The bad news is that I got that extra hour because the cleaning ladies just walked out without vacuuming or mopping the floors. And nobody knows why. They just left, so I stayed late to finish the close while our cafe lead mopped the floor. So I'm happy about the extra money, but annoyed at the cleaning ladies for leaving us in a mess. It's not the first time they've bailed on us either, but usually they have some excuse (seems like everyone in their family, including them, has been ill sometime in the past five months). At this point, their jobs are looking a little shaky. And I don't get how anyone could think it was a good idea to jeopardize their job when the unemployment rate in this country has passed 10 percent.

They also couldn't have picked a worse night to do this. We were busier than we have been because holiday shopping has picked up, but our schedules are still reflecting the slow months we had this fall, so we're still running on skeleton crews. We were also training our new guy, who does fine on drinks and register but has never closed before, so we were trying to get everything done while explaining to him what we were doing and why. And the icing on the cake is that the FCOM (field cafe operations manager) is coming for a "visit" tomorrow. Meaning he is going to show up at 9 a.m. to tell us everything we're doing wrong, so we were also trying to get the last cleaning tasks done tonight.

Yeah...wonderful night for the cleaners to bail. I'm just a little annoyed.

Love Halloween

The sprinklers on the front lawn are set to go off at 8:30pm. Tonight is Halloween. So at 8:30 the sprinklers went off and soaked the trick-or-treaters cutting across my lawn. The screams cut in with what seemed like perfect timing during the climax of Nightmare Before Christmas. Will be amused by this for days. :)

Current happy song

Two more weeks! Two more weeks!
Then with all my classes done
I can finally get some sleep!
Two more weeks!
La-La-La!
:)