Domestic Geek

That was a colossal waste of time.

I went to work at the pizza place, opened the walk-in door to see if one of the food orders had arrived (he had placed two-jerk!) and felt no change in air temperature. Bad thing. The thermometer on the cheese rack read 56°F and the temperature in the store was about 62°F. Since it's supposed to be less than 40°F (I don't remember the exact temperature), there was no way I was going to waste my time making dough that will proof too fast and end up getting thrown out anyway. So, I cut some peppers, shot the breeze with one of the food service drivers that I hadn't seen since the end of October, weighed out the sugar/salt cups for tomorrow, then came home. So now I get stuck doing two days dough tomorrow, but not being able to get the full day off afterwards. That sucks. I'm glad that there is only 9 days of this bullcrap left.

On a brighter note, the new job seems to be going well. I don't feel like I made a huge mistake yet. That's a good thing. It will be even better when I'm not a walking zombie because I had been up since 2am doing pizza dough job. I can't wait for the 16th. I am jealous of the company's owner. He's got a lot of money and likes to spend it. I hope eventually he spends it on me (lol). Seriously, the dude has this huge house in the mountians, a separate building to house our offices, a Hummer, a huge camper, dirt bikes for the whole family, a hot tub on the back deck, a basketball court.....and I haven't even seen the inside of the house yet. I have a brand new iMac that was purchased just for me to work on. There's a T1 line. I keep forgetting to take my camera to snap some pictures. I hope this works out because the work environment is really nice.

Marcus found out a couple of days ago that the owner of our mobile home park is selling. That's opening up a whole new can of worries. Do we have to find our home a new spot? Are they going to raise lot rents even more than the ridicuous amount they already are? Are the new owners going to be @ssholes and nitpick every little rule infraction? Are they going to harrass everybody until we get fed up and leave so they sell this land for huge profits because of the Fitzsimons redevelopment? Do they plan on filling all the empty spots with really low class, trashy people? I hate that kind of limbo. Feeling a little unsettled at the moment. Grrrrr.

It's MacDude's (otherwise known as Marcus) birthday today! Go wish him a happy one. He's off of work today and I won't be around, so you know he'll be on the computer all day long!

OK, must go take a shower and get ready to go to my REAL JOB!!!!

Only 35 more minutes to go and 2005 is history. Yahoo!

I gave my official notice at the pizza job yesterday. My last day will be January 15th. There is no way I'm going to try to work both of those jobs. I really realized being off both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day how badly I hate working every day. Especially when your hard work is not appreciated by the morons you work with. So, two more weeks of hell and I am FREE!!!!!!! After that, I'll have to do some freelance work on the side to get ahead financially, but at least I won't have to work every danged day.

Today was a decent enough day, though. Marcus and I did housework. Mike, Nina, Sarah and Dave came over for a belated Christmas gift exchange (I had no presents to give because I still suck). I received a boxed Chronicles of Narnia set from Mike and Nina. Dave gave me a Foxtrot book and a Chicago Christmas cd. Marcus got me a Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets game for my PC. Marcus BBQ'd some burgers and brats and I put together a veggie tray. I'm having a nice buzz from the couple of Sam Adams I drank that Dave brought (I don't drink much anymore and I'm really a lightweight). Soon we'll ring in the new year (2006 is going to be my year!!!!), I'll give Marcus a big kiss and then I'll have to go to bed because I have to work tomorrow morning. Booooooooo! Only 16 more days of that crap. It will be nice to not have to go to bed early and get up in the middle of the night.

When I am done with pizza, I can dig into the knitting book that Marcus' mom got me. I'm looking forward to that.

So, I guess tomorrow I'll do a post about my New Year's resolutions.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY!!!!!

As promised, here's the pictures Marcus posted of his tech tree.

Even though I specifically asked him not to get me much ('cause I knew he'd get me something and I did have one small gift for him that I ordered way back in October before I lost my job), Marcus got me a really cool gift. I opened a box Christmas morning that included stuff to upgrade my old PC tower—new motherboard, processor, ram and a video card. He also got the new Trans-Siberian Orchestra CD, The Lost Christmas (I will go see them live if they tour next year!) I felt horribly guilty for only getting him a t-shirt, but that was all that could be done this year. After spending the morning putting the new hardware in and the afternoon reinstalling Windows and drivers, my "new" computer was up and running. Marcus said, "There. Now you can play Harry Potter games and stuff." Well, as soon as I had some money, I told him, I would go out and get a game to try it out. Either that, or Mike could install one of his PC games on it and see how the machine held up. Marcus left and came back a minute later with a new copy of SIMS 2 that he was hiding! Dang him!

Those that have read here a long time know that I was a Sims Addict. That was until my poor old G4 became so ancient that it became incapable of playing the ever bloated expansion packs. Then came school and my life was too busy for such an addicting game and I was too busy trying to keep my own energy up with worrying about a poor game simulation. I wanted the Sims 2 when it came out for mac, but again, no money to upgrade the old machine, so there was no point. While at CompUsa one day looking at games, I told Marcus I should just upgrade the PC and play games on it since there are already several expansion packs for the Sims 2 for PC and none for mac yet, Parts for a pc are cheaper in general than parts for a mac, as well. That way I would keep the mac gameless and open for designing and surfing.

After one unsuccessful install (my boot hard drive needs to be replaced), a sucessful reinstall on the other drive had me up and playing. By then it was late and I needed to go to bed (stupid work pizza job), so breaking in the new game would have to wait until the next day.

So, guess what I did from the time I got home from work and finished a quick surf of blogs until 10:30 last night: YOU GUESSED IT!

Now when I have money, I'll have to upgrade my boot disk, buy more memory, a flat panel monitor, expansions packs..................

Marcus' mother sent me a "Taught Myself Knitting" kit. THANKS!!!!!! Now I can learn to knit this coming year as well. Whoo Hoo! I'll have that Harry Potter scarf done by the time book 7 is released!

OK, time to quit dawdling and get off to work. As soon as I take care of some delinquent bills, I'm quitting that job. I decided for sure yesterday. I've already told one of the managers that I probably won't be there more than another month. I just can't take it anymore. SSDD. Things are never going to change there, so I need to quit griping about it and move on. Plus, now that I have to commute to Larkspur, I really won't have time to get it all done, anyway. Maybe a couple of weeks working as a graphic designer for real will give me the confidence to start freelancing on the side (evenings and weekends). February 2006 will mark my 6 year anniversary working at that store and April 2006 will mark the 15 year anniversary of working for that company. I don't really want to mark those milestones.

OK, I'm out of here.

It was a pretty good day today. Of course, any day that I don't have to go to work is a pretty good day. LOL

I got a full night's sleep. That was cool. I think I slept until *gasp* 8:30! It could have been longer except that a certain brown dog decided it was time for me to get up.

Since I have no Christmas spirit this year, I still hadn't decorated the tree as of this morning (except for putting lights on it) and had no inclination to do so. Marcus has tons of spirit, so he decorated the tree—with all things tech! CDs, fried memory sticks, ethernet cable, old floppy disks, mice, his paper-weight fried iPod, etc. It looks rather lovely. I believe he is planning on posting some pics tomorrow, so I'll link to them when he does.

We went to the store to get stuff for dinner today and had to swing by Starbucks because Marcus was out of beans and he can't get through a weekend without making himself some kind of caffeinated beverage. He bought me a White Chocolate Mocha while we were there. We hadn't sat and had coffee together at a Starbucks in MONTHS! When we got home, Marcus changed his transmission fluid while I took advantage of the beautiful weather and picked up Skippy poo in the yard. After surfing some blogs and IMing with a friend of Marcus' with whom I hadn't talked to in ages, I snuggled into bed to watch the end of the Bronco/Raider game while Marcus fixed my event calendar script (look—next year's events show up now!). Then Marcus and I made a nice dinner of cornish game hens (made in the Foreman), au gratin potatoes, biscuits and peas. I settled on the couch to watch It's A Wonderful Life (Marcus has never seen it—can you believe that?) while Marcus played Call of Duty with his friends.

Now, it's time for bed and I don't have to work tomorrow, either. Hooray!

I hope everyone (that celebrates it) has a Merry Christmas!

Happy Festivus, Everybody!!!!

(feel free to air your grievances in the comments)

Here's my grievance for the day: I've been complaining to management about the front door being broken since mid-June. It's been getting worse and worse the last month or so. I complained to the newest manager a couple of weeks ago. Even the owner commented on how much of a pain the lock is yesterday. Does anybody call a door repairman? NO! Just as I predicted, a day would come when the food delivery guys wouldn't be able to get the door open and they would just leave. Today was that day. When the company came back for a second time and explained why the delivery was so late, did that manager get off his ass and call in a repairman? NO! I'm so tired of this kind of crap.