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put up my christmas decorations outside today. neighbor kim came home when i was doing it, so offered up some spiral xmas trees to add to our shared garden. had a real conversation with her for really the first time in a year and a half. mostly bitching about the company who bought the property. of course it’s super windy so my one plastic candle that i couldn’t tie up to anything has fallen over. the candy cane stake lights from last year had no stakes left…didn’t realize when we took them down last year that we left all the stakes in the ground haha oops. so they are now hung on the sides of the door. you couldn’t tell what they were at first, so i taped them all sideways to the siding so you can see they are candy canes. i had to take the snowman head lights back to biglots cuz both fuses blew, so i got new ones and they look wonderfully horrible. put the big bulb colored lights outside cuz i had space around the door, so i need to go buy new ones for the tree.

old man (OM) was back in today. chuck told me OM was around looking for me, and i was like, don’t fuck with me. he was serious. i let my boss know, and a bit later he showed up in high limit and was watching me through the fish tank. michelle kept an eye on him and was going to make him leave if he came in to talk to me. i had 2 players come to my table when he was still there, and the one player for some reason said something about wanting to marry me, so i told him he’d have to fight the old guy behind the fish tank haha. the players got all defensive for me and were going to “take care of him” but OM left for the rest of the night. i really don’t like this. i had the shift manager walk with me out of the room to go on break incase OM was waiting for me again, but he wasn’t. yuck.

i really don’t want to keep sleeping until 4pm but i can’t get out of the cycle. i’m reading “devil in the white city” about chicago’s worlds fair in 1892 and the serial killer who began his killing at the same time. it’s pretty good. we’ve gotten to the fair actually opening now, half way through the book. carol recommended it to me. so i bought her city of light for xmas, which is a novel built around buffalo’s pan am exposition in 1901(?). devil in the white city is a true story. city of light isn’t, tho i haven’t read it. probably will before i wrap it hahaha.

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no one stole my flamingo. my mom threw it out cuz it got broken in half while i was on vacation. so i need a new one.

there are new commercials for the casino and hotel on tv, and they feature motley crue’s “kickstart my heart” which thrills me to no end hahaha.

coming home there was “tons” of traffic. considering it is possible for me to drive home and not see a single car, seeing a line around tim hortons, and lots of other cars on the road is “tons”. all those insane people getting up to go to 5am sales. something i will NEVER ever do. good luck to them. aside from adr1 i’m done with xmas gifts. mainly cuz besides my parents, adr1, and baby megan, i’m not buying gifts for anyone else. except for my “project” for adr2. if i ever get around to starting it haha.

i hadn’t worked a thanksgiving day before, so i didn’t know what to expect. seemed like a normal day, slowed at the end. i dealt on 4 different tables haha. i kept getting moved around. did pretty good on tokes all things considered. i stayed after to count tokes since i have two 10-6 shifts this weekend, so i won’t make 40 hrs. prob will stay to count again on sunday.

hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. i tried to come up with things i’m thankful for but i couldn’t really think of any. cuz there are times when i’m not thankful that i’m alive and healthy. and i couldn’t really think of anything else. i am thankful that trent reznor got sober and is still alive and making his art. there.

i was trying to remember my new years resolutions from last year. i think i made one to take vitamins every day, and i am still doing that. but i’m not exercising every day, or even once a month hahaha. i don’t know if i made any others. i can’t remember doing a post about it. i’ll have to think of some for this year.

i have nothing interesting to say.

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last night the crew was over for gifts and watching episodes of arrested development. hadn’t seen it before, funny show. i’d venture it’s one of the better sitcoms on tv right now. not that i ever see sitcoms always being at work. since most of us are still awaiting gift arrivals in the mail there will be another gift night next week or the following. slow mail month…the big gift of the year is the chicken egg vending machine….!!!

today i went to see the parents for dinner and gifts, they are going to detroit tomorrow. james said he wanted to come over tonight to work on his painting, he surprised me by coming online today to follow up on coming over tonight, but he didn’t actually come over…i assumed since he hadn’t called or IMed me by 9 that he wasn’t coming. shouldn’t surprise me anymore really. nevermind.

brian invited me to his house for christmas eve with their family. 01111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 (that would be the cat) it might be a game time decision though. we’ll see i guess.

safe to say this has been an oddly emotionally trying month. if it’s some sort of test i’m failing miserably.

watching “black sheep”…i remember it being alot funnier than it is right now…

 

Merry Christmas.

Went to brian’s for dinner with their family, which was very good. it was snowing here when i left, dusting on the roads and the salters hadn’t been out yet. it just got worse though. it was pretty bad for multiple reasons 1. i have severe road rage in the winter 2. no plows had been out, tho HERE there was nothing to plow, everywhere else needed plowing, so people were driving scared 3. grand island was a near white out. there were at least 4 inches when i arrived at brian’s, and probably 6 or 7 when i left. here, we still have nothing. roads are fine pretty much now.

brian’s sister sherry gave me a banana republic leather jacket that didn’t fit her anymore, one more to add to the collection hehe, and this skirt that would probably fit jasen’s daughter, but the point was it’s the coolest fabric ever, totally fun. will need to find something to make it into.

it was a very nice time, and i thank them again for inviting me.

i called my grandmas house on the way home (since my phone won’t work here). it was sort of tough, though they all seem to be doing fine. it really is just not the same with my grandfather dead, and given my severly depressed emotional state it would have probably been very hard for me to be there despite all my professions of hating spending Christmas there. eric said there were still many incredible stories that i was missing, to be sure to ask for the update in toilet stories, and that i’ll definitely be seeing pictures of the black and leopard negliges that my grandma bought for everyone. HA i can only imagine. carol said grandma didn’t get me one though, cuz of course, i’m still 12.

so anyway. merry christmas.

i think something might be wrong with kitty’s teeth…the 2 big bottom teeth seem to be cracked and i never noticed it before. dunno…and his breath smells again but it might be from the cheese its haha.

i have a new obsession with the abandoned city hall subway station in nyc. i’m trying to get legal access, and ashamedly, i played the CTRC card. i gotta use my influence somehow i think hahah. hopefully it works out and we (me, lei and whoever else wants to go) can plan a weekend trip down to the city to take a tour. but if it doesn’t pan out we can just bribe the subway train driver to take us through on the out of service 6 train, and let us out onto the platform for a while. gotta love the internet with providing me all this useful information. i do believe that this station is where the river of pink slime ran through in ghostbusters 2, and if not the exact station, they definitely modeled the pink slime tunnel after it….now how to find out if it really IS the same station without going to rent ghostbusters 2 (tho i do love that movie for some reason, watched it a few weeks ago on tv as matter of fact).

i think i have an unhealthy interest in subways in general…i just find them so fascinating and i don’t really know why.

i’m in a ok mood right now, drastic change from before, if anyone managed to catch the post i just deleted from earlier…

*update* click more if you want info on the ghostbusters/city hall station thing…it sort of confused me but maybe that’s cuz i only have 2 of my painkillers left….

VAN HORNE STATION, NEW YORK PNEUMATIC RAILROAD, THE RIVER OF SLIME

“Slime! It’s a river of slime!”

Once one of the main stations for a revolutionary idea for an experimental subway system, it has now fallen into decay and has stagnated for over half a century. The main feature of the pneumatic railroad was it’s revolutionary idea for fan forced air trains and was built around 1870, however the system was later abandoned in favor of the now world renowned New York Subway. The pneumatic railroad, consisting of mostly illegal construction became abandoned and its inventor vanished.

F/N The NYPRR did actually exist, the station known as Van Horne is based off of the design for the old City Hall subway station, the very first station to be opened on the New York Subway. In 1870, Alfred Beach was determined to create the first subway system in NYC powered by air pressure. Using $350,000 of his own money, his crew worked for 58 days to build a tunnel 312 feet long across the street from City Hall.

The work was done in secret in the basement of Devlin’s clothing store. As of this moment, I have two sources that proclaim its location in two different spots. However, the tunnel was built curving outwards into the middle of Broadway where the current R line runs, connecting the Southern block of Murray street to the South Western Corner of Warren. The tunnel was 312 feet long.

Beach opened it to the media and then the public for 25 cents a ride, impressing all but the corrupt Tweed administration currently in power within the city. Beach attempted to get support to make his Pneumatic system larger for $5 Million, but Tweed and his cronies squashed it. After Tweed was arrested, Beach tried again, but this time landlords interfered, fearing tunnelling could weaken their buildings’ foundations. Beach closed his line.

Devlin’s store burned down in 1878 and the rubble removed to reveal the sealed up entrance to the secret subway. It was opened once for inspection, then resealed as a new building was constructed. In 1912, those contracted to build the modern subway wanted to take possession of the forgotten tunnel, causing a legal battle with Beach’s son, citing his company owned it. A portion of the tunnel was taken out to make room for the new line, but the rest exists, marked by a plaque in the now closed lower section of the City Hall station.

Ghostbusters II blended fiction with reality nicely. While their Pneumatic Transit System ran under the length of First Avenue, the tunnel work matched that used within the subway stations in the birth of the Metro Transit System. Even though the set encompassed 2 different centuries of architectural innovations, it’s still one helluva ride.

(from a site i forgot to copy the url of)

No real subway content here but the station that the Ghostbusters descend into and discover the “River of Slime” is based on the City Hall Station and may actually have had parts filmed there (I suspect it was a set based on the station). There is also a scene in which the Ghostbusters descend into a rail tunnel but this is probably just a set and not based on any particular location.

from nycsubway.org
“A piece of the tunnel remains under the City Hall station found in 1912 when they constructed the BMT lines we have today.”

i wonder if there is any possible way to access that anymore….beyond the plaque haha

merry christmas to ME

i just found 6 of my prescription painkillers in a bottle of ibuprofin!!!!!!!!!!

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it’s a politically incorrect christmas….that basically sums up christmas 2003. i have returned from hell. oops. i mean michigan. here goes nothing.

Left for detroit wednesday morning at 10. arrived at the grandparents house in the afternoon, and carol and eric were already there. same old same old. ed and laurice came later and we all had dinner. that’s when the fun begins.

i don’t ever really know how conversations begin at the dinner table, because i usually don’t pay attention. but i almost started crying all through dinner, because it was just beyond sit-com funny. and i don’t usually cry when i laugh. i had to try very hard to compose myself. i don’t know the order of the following events, but that’s ok.
1. according to grandpa (from here on known as gpa) michaelangelo was gay.
2. i don’t know how the topic of people to trust/not trust came about. but…the conversation sorta went like this
gpa: you know who you should never trust?
us: *brace for commentary on arabs and muslims*
gpa: those goddamn russians.
us: *that’s a new one. but communism is so 15 years ago*
gpa: *commences rant on why russians are evil*
the evil russians conversation ended with the revelation that my great grandfather, who lived in poland, was ok with germans. he could distinguish between hitler, who was a nazi you know (really?!?! i had no idea), and the german people who weren’t nazis. but those goddamn russians killed two of his nefews. took them out into the woods and shot them. so i guess my gpa can’t forgive the entire russian ethnicity for shooting his nefews in wartime.

now during this conversation, with my gpa ranting away about how all russians are theives and murderers, food continuously sprays from his mouth, decending upon my mom to the left of him and eric on the right. which was cause for much of my tear inducing laughter. it spurred on the comment that they were “a human shield with a different intent”

so dinner is done, but not without the running joke about how russians are evil, and not to be trusted – which went really well when eric unwrapped a bottle of vodka imported from russia.

it’s gifting time. we all pile into the living room. we find a religious calendar on the table.
ed: dad look what the arabs at the liquor store gave you when eric went to pay your bills
gpa: what’s on it? some rag head? oh it’s jesus
me: *dies laughing*

someone unwraps candles. someone mentions how gpa never let gma burn any candles in the house. because gpa hates them
gpa: you see the movies where people light 100s of candles to go to bed. I’d be too scared of fire to screw.
gma: what a wonderful way to die
TOOOOOOOOOO MUCH INFORMAAAAAAAAATION
along the same line, before that comment, was this
gpa: sara, some day when you have the time, i’ll tell you about mine and gma’s love life
me: that’s ok, i don’t really need to know that.

as long as we’re talking about sex, how about my gpa’s joke
gpa: 2 gays went to rob a bank. the one waited outside for the other gay, but he didn’t come out of the bank. So the 2nd gay went inside and everyone was standing around his partner. he asked what happened. A man said “some big dick strangled him to death”. The accomplis said, “what a wonderful way to die”

we’re still unwrapping gifts now. gpa unwraps a package of socks.
gpa: this isn’t no hanes or fruit of the loom. this is kmart’s best brand, texas steed. though i hate texas.

of course through the night, along with the running anti-russian jokes, we tried to figure out other countries we hadn’t yet attacked, bringing up korea (gpa: those goddamn korean kids don’t appreciate what the US did for that goddamn country), france, central america, etc….and of course, the rag heads.

this is the best part of my christmas. in bold so you actually read this part, while you ignore the rest of this post. i unwrapped a package of black socks from my grandma. something fell out of them. i looked down. IT WAS A FINGERNAIL. someone’s fake fingernail was in my socks ROFLMAO!!!! seriously. best christmas gift ever

so ends xmas at the mom’s family. bedtime and all that. it had started to snow that night, and i was rudely woken up in the morning by someone shoveling outside. the continuous scrape scrape of a shovel on the cement. so i got up expecting 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground. THE PAVEMENT DIDNT EVEN HAVE SNOW ON IT. WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY SHOVELING?!?!?!?!?

xmas at the dad’s family on thursday was and always is, rather uneventful. i don’t get any presents, and my 2 cousins and the 2 2nd cousins, get tons and tons and tons. whatever.

a few last gems. we go back to the grandparents house after xmas #2, and my gma is talking about our cousin gary. “Gary has a lovely, if you can call it lovely, trailer.” ROFL she also let us know that gpa tells her that if he had life to live over again, he’d do alot of things different in their marriage. gma replies that she would never marry him if she had to do it over again, and would probably become a teacher. LOL. she continued talking about how she hated being married, esp to my gpa, and blahblahblah. she told us if she knew about all the things he did as a teen, she’d never have married him. and from this we got a new story. about a fox. apparently when my gpa was still a juvenile deliquent, him and his buddies were driving around and saw a fox tied up to a tree. so my grandpa stole the fox and put it in the car and drove it back to his house. of course they didn’t know what to do with the fox at that point, and no one wanted it, so my grandpa tied the fox up to a tree in his backyard. his mother saw it and said to get rid of it, so i guess he just untied it and let it go. and the fox somehow made it up to the altar in some neighborhood church. the fox incident actually made the news paper – an article my grandma had read, about how a man was missing a fox, and how he found the fox because it walked right into the church and up to the altar. she had no idea it was my gpa who had stolen the fox.

michigan is sad. they’re not long for the world anymore. my gma looks like a corpse. she was laying on the couch sleeping with her hands folded on her stomach, and mouth hanging open, and she looked like a skeleton in a coffin. not happy. but as my mom put it, even tho my gpa won’t live much longer, it’s still so hard to be nice to him.

the shirt i wore on thursday dyed my skin purple. the purple won’t come off. we waited for 3 hours to cross the lewiston queenston bridge back into the US. it was our only wait out of all 4 border crossings.

who bought me a red chinese umbrella? because i now have one. it came in the mail. and i don’t know who it’s from. all i know is i didn’t buy it. lol. it’s rad. maybe tony got it for me, tho i don’t think he knew i wanted one. got carolyn’s xmas gift – the ziggy stardust movie – rad. em sent me the goodies she comandeered while interning at interscope records – 2 u2 photos, a trent photo, and jordan knight photo. hehe. i haven’t gotten any email or phone calls from leighanne, so i’m assuming she hasn’t met trent reznor on the streets of new orleans yet. still have to get together with adr and danielle for xmas, and mail eric’s gift to him since he’s never home. i don’t think i have his address tho. i’m not sure if i mailed him an xmas card or not lol. whatever. then i have tony and brian’s gifts here for whever i see them.

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over and done with for another year. home early today so i can go to work later. now i’m just waiting for the house to warm up so i can take a shower. i feel so dirty.

so a recap i guess. nothing extremely interesting or funny happened this year really…disappointing.

christmas eve headed to detroit…got there about 2:30. i seriously think the drive through canada from here to sarnia is one of the most boring drives ever. it is more boring than the drive to indiana. at least on the way to indiana there was some sort of change of seanery (sp i know) every now and then. even when you get to michigan, it’s the same canadian wasteland until you get closer to where my grandparents live. anyway…
carol and eric were already at the grandparents house when we got there, and almost immediately i left with them to go to walgreens, just like last year. ed and laurice came over for dinner. like i said, nothing all that interesting happened. at dinner grandpa said that when his kids get older he’s going to tell them all about his and grandma’s love life…so then when everyone expressed their disgust and asked for barf bags he was like “what, do you think you happened cuz i was looking at her?” yeah…sick. then later during the gift unwrapping fiasco that is christmas eve at their house, my uncle gave him one of those stress ball things. he said it would be good for him since he had the stroke years ago blah blah blah. grandpa says “i used to get this kind of exercise all the time when i was single.” *insert more puking here*….mom was in a snit cuz carol and ed both bought him some kind of alcohol…grandpa actually didn’t have a fit, he started to get into a mini fit when carol and eric were leaving cuz it had started snowing, and he was telling them how to drive. oh, and i heard the story about my grandma shitting her pants and the flies following her again, just like last year. the other poop stories were left out this time around…

christmas day…spent the morning with the grandparents before going to marianne and gary’s house for dinner. i think this is when my mom showed him all the pictures from wisconsin, california, and me and nate. so he’s looking at the pictures of me and nate and the conversation went something like this.
g-pa: so what’s his name?
mom: nate
g-pa: i had a buddy at work named nathan. *proceeded to keep calling nate, nathan. so i thought it would be harmless to correct him and tell him nate’s name actually was nathaniel*
me: his name is really nathaniel
g-pa: what is it?
me: nathaniel
g-pa: macdaniel? what is it?
me and mom yell: NA-THAN-IEL
g-pa: what? mcdaniels? mcdanthels? i have a hard enough time with seth (he says it “seff”) and now you expect me to learn mcdaniel? i’ll just call him dan.
me and mom yell: NA-THAN-IEL!!!
mom: NATE!! NATE!! THEY CALL HIM NATE!!!
g-pa: i had a buddy at work named nathan. he was a colored but he was still a good guy.
*hand slaps forehead*
since none of the friends i have now have met my grandparents it’s really hard to grasp quite how…frustrating…it is sometimes to deal with them. but it makes for good stories at times…later grandpa decided to tell me the state of americans this day and age. and i might be offended by it, but we’re war mongerers… LOL. yeah cuz that offended me so much….anyway…
off to marianne and gary’s around 3:30, her sons and families came over. got to see my 2 little cousins (2nd cousins i guess)…they’re cute, for kids. lol. i can sorta see how it might be nice to have one or two once your married and settled down…but still…i don’t want to touch them. warren is 3 and a half, and brenna (stupid name) is 15 months i guess. so they were tolerable. spent the whole night in their furnished basement cuz that’s where the bar is. nothing really eventful happens with that family…we forgot to do the annual shot of jager…OOH i do have a story from that night though. so every year my aunt makes this gross german cake that i don’t know how to spell the name of…binenstitch or something. anyway…she was cutting it and my uncle comments something about how we don’t want to know the origin of the knife she was using. of course, i wanted to know, since he is an ex-cop. turns out the knife used to be evidence cuz it was used to stab someone like 50 times LOL. he brought it home to show her one day, and she liked it so much (cuz it was a good knife if it cut through human) and it hasn’t left the house since. i don’t know how long ago this happened, but i thought it was a good story. but i’m weird like that…

today…left grandparents real early, 9 am, to come home for work…so nothing happened. grandpa was still sleeping.

soo…this year was the year of pajamas…got another pair from grandma bringing the total up to 5, and a pair of pj pants from marianne…i guess the plan is to completely dump out my entire 2 drawers of pjs i have now, and just have these. at least winter pjs, i will keep my boxers and stuff that i wear in the summer…carol had this mirror specially made for me…some local artisan kind of deal. it’s nice…it’s a round mirror with these decorations on it and it says “fairest of them all”…it’s nice. but i don’t know what to do with it. i’m not hanging it in my room. when i have a place of my own it’ll be a nice decoration but until then??…it’ll stay in the box i guess. got some clothes from target…yes my grandma actually shopped at target this year (grandpa forbids it, he’s a k-mart man)…so it’s decent clothes that might have to be taken back cuz they won’t fit, not because they’re hideous. umm…that’s basically it. christmas has scaled down since i was a kid. we used to pack the car to go home full of all the toys i got, and i would have to sit on packages. not so much anymore LOL. that is all on my cousins now. the 2 kids got so many gifts…i never got that many gifts when i was a kid.

overall it wasn’t that bad…wasn’t exactly fun and exciting either. the whole being upset about nate thing was under control most of the time. no one really knew much about it except carol, since i cried on the phone the day nate left when she called. so she said something about she was so happy for me about the casino job, but sad for me about nate. yeah almost cried there…i got a few of the “if it was meant to be…” comments…esp from marianne, which led into the whole aunt trudy/uncle kirk spiel and their 5 year long distance relationship…and mom feels the need to tell everyone that i’m really bummed about nate being gone. as if that wasn’t a logical conclusion. i didn’t get asked anything that i didn’t want to talk about tho, so that was good. i got asked about the job alot. and both my parents felt the need to tell everyone i’m going to get a job with immigration…but whatever.

hmm…what else…that’s about it i think. i can shower now, and call adr about tonight, and rest til work. got a massive headache once again. i think i might try to go to a new neurologist soon.

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woo hoo! i’m in toronto… yay. it snowed in oakville badly, for like all of 5 minutes LOL. but then we got lost, cuz the yahoo directions were retarded, and we were in missasauga. so we called carolyn and we just ended up turning around and going in reverse… i mean, just retracing our steps.

so we got here, sat around, went downtown to poster stores….yeah i bought 3 u2 posters that i really don’t have anywhere to put…but i NEEDED them…one is the zootv one, i HAD to buy cuz ITS THE FLY!!!!!!!! and then one from popmart tour….and one from recently, with the 4 of them….yeaah. didn’t find the bathroom bono one but…i suppose i’ll survive… for now 🙂

so then we ate dinner at pickel barrel, and then came back to carolyn’s house, did nothing for a while, then headed back downtown to go to the drag show. well there was a line, and it was cold, so we went to the same bar that we went to after depeche mode but then left cuz there was no food. so we spent a few hours there, got drunk… LOL. drunk now. if u couldn’t tell from the way i’m typing.. no the typos, but…the way i’m talking. hell maybe i’m not sounding all drunk.

but so we left the bar when it closed and got the street car or something and sang elevation while walking down the street, and then on the streetcar, and then the bus we took, and then we talked about Larry drumming in the cab back to carolyn’s house. yep, so we’re here now….yeah. i’m tired. and drunk hehe.. not too drunk., but…buzzed yeah. ok

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alright, time for the good stuff i suppose.

i realized that i live to blog. the entire 3 days i was away i kept thinking, i need to blog this, i need to blog that. how sad. eric didn’t bring his laptop or i would have. ah well, i’m home now. time for the great christmas in michigan story. sadly, being the first xmas i can blog, it was a rather uneventful one as far as michigan goes…but we’ll see what stuff i can dig up to talk about.

so we left for michigan around 11 on sunday morning. takes about 5 hours to get to warren, so i guess we got there around 3, whatever. we anticipated problems at the borders due to all that’s happened, but there was no problems at all. going back into the states in port huron they asked for birth certificates and/or passport and license. well my dad has no birth certificate (yeah cuz he was never born), so i had to dig in the back to find his passport, which i never did. and my passport is expired but they didn’t seem to care and let us go.

when we got to my grandparents house aunt carol and eric were there. as soon as i walked in the door i left with them to the drug store. lol. so my grandpa had an absess tooth. he’d had it for over a week and didn’t go to the doctor or anything, his entire half a face was swollen and he was in pain. and his heart is basically completely dead, so he could have died if the infection went to his heart. but whatever, my mom found out before we left to detroit and freaked out, and made her brother call people to get him antibiotics. i guess they finally contacted some doctor cousin who wrote him a prescription. but you might think that an absess tooth and swollen half a face would stop him from talking? wrong. he talked more than ever, if that is even possible.

well that night, carol and eric left at like 8, leaving me to suffer for the rest of the night. and i’m not a lil kid anymore, i can’t go to bed at 9. i have to wait til at least 11. lol. well i ended up having a really big headache that felt like someone was throwing a javelin through my brain, so i kinda got off with not being forced to converse as much as usual. well i went to bed, and again, like last year, i slept in my coat. my room was FRIGID. i swear, it was like 40 degrees in there. i didn’t want to put my coat on cuz it’s wool and the neck is pinchy. so i “slept” most of the night in my pjs and the shitty blanket on the bed. well i got up to use the bathroom at 7, and as soon as i opened my door it was like a 40 degree temp difference. so i grabbed my pillows and went to sleep on the couch. well my grandma was awake, and wouldn’t let me sleep on the couch?!?! she made me go back in my room and gave me another afghan…yeah that helped :P. that’s when i put the coat on, and actually got to sleep for 5 hours or so.

so xmas eve….most of the day i escaped to the other room and read. carol and eric came by in the afternoon, and we had dinner. uncle ed showed up later. we did the gift thing. since eric is one of the VP’s of Lands End we all got stuff from them. they got me this really nice coat. but anyway. they all left later and i went to bed. my dad opened the heating duct this time for me (you have to do it in the basement, it’s not normal) so i slept. yay. it wasn’t completely warm, but it was warm enough i didn’t need my coat that night LOL.
christmas day, packed up and went to aunt mariannes for brunch. we had to leave early (4:30) to drive back home, so we didn’t do the normal dinner, stay all night thing there. did the gift thing with them. my cousins, who came around 3 like normal for dinner, didn’t get me anything for xmas this year. not like i really care, but they usually do. and they are usually my source of media play gift certificates, or cds that i actually asked for. no luck this year, whatever. so we left there around 4:30 to head back, since we heard about all the snow back home, and didn’t want to get stuck driving for 12 hours in blizzards (which we’ve had to do before)…
but anyway, like i said, there was nothing highly exciting this weekend. but i wrote down a few gems.

1. the box pictures. so as i said, eric is a VP of lands end…so he shipped all the gifts to my grandparents house in lands end boxes…well my grandpa…he’s obsessive compulsive about taking pictures. and he’s all crippled now so he can’t really do it that great himself anymore. so he makes my dad do it. so my grandpa is sitting in his chair in the kitchen/family room shouting orders to my dad in the living room about what kind of picture to take. he wanted a picture of carol and eric each holding a land’s end box. so i’m sitting on the couch in the living room, and the 3 of them (dad, carol, eric) are laughing at the situation. well 1 of the boxes had already been broken down, and eric is trying to tell my grandpa that. so grandpa starts yelling to fold it into box shape, and eric is folding it wrong so then grandpa is yelling at eric to fold it into a goddamn box shape. well eric just ignored him, and used the box that was still intact. so my aunt and eric are holding the box inbetween them, and grandpa is yelling from the other room to my dad to make sure there’s a nice background, etc. lol. i’m sitting on the couch laughing still. so my dad takes the picture of them holding the box LOL. but then, that’s not all. grandpa starts yelling his orders for carol to sit on the box, and cross her legs and look sexy. LOL. so we’re all laughing, and carol is like “i can’t sit on the box, it’ll collapse” (since it’s empty) and he’s shouting “sit on the goddamn box, and cross your legs”. so she sits on the box and falls in and my dad takes the picture. it’ll be great!

2. some of these don’t seem so odd/funny unless you know my grandpa. but he never shuts up, he’s really ignorant and rude. anyway. so we’re sitting around the table after dinner or something, and in the middle of someone else’s conversation he starts yelling (cuz he can’t just talk) at carol about how he can still see her riding up and down the street on her banana seat bike, wearing her halter top… and he said “you didn’t have any titties but you had your halter on” LOL (yes i wrote down the quote). that was really mild compared to what he was talking about last christmas. he got on this big kick about talking about sex, and tits and stuff….it was revolting.

3. normally i hear the same stories everytime we visit…but it’s always the same stories from my grandma, and the same stories from my grandpa…but they are different stories from each other. but not this year. this year, i was in the living room with my mom and grandma and she started in on her same 2 stories. my mom was little, and was playing outside. she started knocking on the door to be let inside, and my grandma says *singing* “who’s that knocking on my door?”…and my mom replies “i’m is.” followed by cackling laughter from my grandma. i’m sorry but the 200th time hearing that story it isn’t really funny anymore, if it ever was. and then she followed that story up with the one about my mom playing in the sandbox outside, and running inside and the flys were following her – cuz she shit her pants. well an hour later we’re in the kitchen/family room and my grandpa starts telling a story, and it’s the freaking “i’m is” story…but he explained it… “she was combining the i am into a contraction, and then saying is”…yeah, i know. and then, oddly enough, he followed it up with the mom shitting her pants in the sandbox story. i was shocked, cuz usually, they don’t repeat each other’s stories. of course my grandpa continued on with his own shitting his pants story, when he was little and playing in the alley. he felt it coming on, and ran to his house but was too late, and went in his pants before he got inside, and then since he had shorts on he shook it out of his pants onto the porch and went back to the alley to play. and he followed that one up with the time my grandma shit in HER pants in 2nd grade and the nuns made her go home. yes, this is information i guess i needed to know.

4. we were eating christmas dinner, and eating doesn’t even stop my grandpa from talking, although he will insist he never talks when eating. well carol is sitting next to him and he’s spraying food out of his mouth onto her LOL. so carol says “don’t talk while you’re eating, i just saw the whole meal in your mouth.” LOL. grandpa replies “i never eat with my mouth open” (while food is falling out)

5. well we had perogies (sp?) at dinner, and i guess they were good. i dunno, i don’t eat them. someone asked my grandma where she got them.
grandma: the italian market
grandpa: that’s not where you got them.
grandma: yes it is….
grandpa: goddamn it you didn’t get these at the italian market, emily gave them to us. tell the goddamn story right.
grandma: i WAS…half of them we got from the italian market…
grandpa: tell them the real story, emily brought them over to us.
grandma: half of them are from emily and half are from the italian market.
grandpa: she never tells a goddamn story right. tell the goddamn story the right way….
grandma: i am telling it right, it happened to ME not you
grandpa: that’s not how it happened goddamn it….*tells the story*

yeah….so basically that’s all i can remember about the weekend. oh yeah, then today before we were leaving he made my dad take the garbage out, and my mom was asking him what to do with the newspapers, to put them to the curb or not and he basically had a fit about no you’re not supposed to put the goddamn newspapers out to the curb, leave them in the garage and bring me the bag, and my mom yelled at him that she was just asking, he didnt need to have a fit, and he continued to have his fit….

well anyway…i guess i’m done. my hands are cold, it’s freezing in here too. we did get a bunch of snow but it was highly exaggerated. weather channel said we got 18 inches in NT…we probably have 8. it’s mostly plowed, my car has alot of snow on it actually, no one brushed it off. but whatever.

oh yeah, a weird thing…ok well I think it’s odd….we were crossing the border back into the US in Lewiston, and “bullet the blue sky” had just come on…lol that was the first odd thing…and then the customs guy shines a flashlight in my face…LOL weird thing #2… and only a u2 fan would really understand why that was odd. but yeah. you thought this post was going to be devoid of u2. and we have to pass through hamilton to and from michigan, and i was thinking…god, the best night of my life occured here…in HAMILTON of all places…and in honor of passing through hamilton, i listened to all that you can’t leave behind

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home from toronto. good times good times. i blogged what we did saturday night…sunday we got up late, sat around for a long time watching this Fromage show on muchmusic where they make fun of cheesy videos. we forced ourselves to go to the grocery store to get dinner, realized it was WAY fucking cold. didn’t really wanna head downtown to try to go to the drag show again too cold…so we didn’t do anything sunday. we watched blade and blood and wine (yay stephen dorff). monday we headed downtown to do some shopping on queen street and stuff. didn’t buy anything, but it was cool. headed back to carolyn’s house for dinner and being lazy. then headed downtown again around 11 for new years stuff. we went to the harbor or something to see if there were fireworks this year, but no one was around. so we got back on the subway to go to the concert new years bash thing. sooooo many people. it was actually really horrendous LOL. but we stood around there… or well leaned ourselves up against everyone else there to listen to david usher on stage. he did 2 songs, then it was midnight, and then he did auld lang syne (sp?) and another one of his songs. when he finished people were leaving, and brilliant adrienne and danielle decided to break up a fight that almost broke out between 2 black guys in front of us. yeah, that was SO smart. nothing happened, the guys didn’t fight so i guess adr and danielle were successful. but me and carolyn stood there like WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING!!! and then we yelled at them LOL. smooshed onto the subway to go to a bar near carolyn’s house for a while, then back to her house. we watched silence of the lambs cuz i had never seen it. it was rad. yep. good times good times. now i’m home, yay.

i’m hungry. i just ate but i’m still hungry. blah.

 

oh yeah. the border crossing back to the states today was…um…the weirdest one i’ve ever done.
guy: where do you live
us: NT
guy: where were you
me: toronto
guy: why
me: visiting a friend
guy: how long have you known them?
me: 6 years
guy: how’d you meet?
me: *lies* um…school i think, yeah, school.
guy: what’s in the trunk?
me: our luggage
guy: do you have anything bizzare in your car?
me: *weird look & laff* no
guy: do you have any civil war bayonnets, antelope antlers or eagle eggs?
us: *laff*
me: *laff* no!
guy: go ahead.

LOL WTF IS THAT?!?! CIVIL WAR BAYONNETS? ANTELOPE ANTLERS?!?!?! HAHAH he didn’t ask us if we purchased anything, or our citizen ship, but he asks if we have ANTLERS?!?!?! yah we killed them while hunting with our civil war bayonnets!!!

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