Domestic Geek

Marcus and I had the all-you-can-eat shrimp special at Red Lobster yesterday. YUM! I need to learn how to make shrimp scampi.

I registered to vote today...for the new M&M's color, that is. You can do it too by going here. Even if you could care less about the color of an M&M, it's still a pretty cool site. I wasted a good hour there tonight.

The obligatory 100 THINGS ABOUT ME list:
(as seen on everybody's blogs)

1. I procrastinate. Look how long it took me to get around to doing this list.
   
2. I'm 35 years old.
   
3. People say I don't look that old.
   
4. I'm 5' 5" tall.
   
5. I have brown, straight, long, brown hair.
   
6. My boyfriend, Marcus, is my best friend.
   
7. We've been together over nine years.
   
8. Marcus is 6 1/2 years younger than I am.
   
9. I'm a virgo.
   
10. My favorite color is GREEN.
    
11. I'm allergic to cats. I found this out when I was a little kid while visiting an old lady that had over 100 of them. I thought I was going to die.
    
12. I'm also allergic to mosquito bites and bee stings.
    
13. And dust.
    
14. I have a BME (Bachelor of Music Education) from the University of Northern Colorado.
    
15. I used to be a musician.
    
16. I was a bassoonist in college.
    
17. I had to sell my bassoon when I was poor.
    
18. I haven't touched either my saxophone or my clarinet since 1994.
    
19. I miss playing jazz the most.
    
20. I'm a perfectionist.
    
21. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to waste time sleeping.
    
22. I cry at the drop of a hat...a lot.
    
23. I hate shopping.
    
24. I don't believe in any god.
    
25. I have a telephone phobia.
    
26. I'm claustrophobic.
    
27. I'm afraid of heights.
    
28. I bite my nails.
    
29. I'm a pack-rat.
    
30. I'm extremely shy. No, really.
    
31. I'm really bad at socializing and keeping in touch.
    
32. I was sixth in my graduating high school class.
    
33. I HATE being cold.
    
34. I love all kinds of crafting.
    
35. I don't know how to knit, though.
    
36. I'm a clutz and unintentionally hurt myself a lot.
    
37. I ran over myself with my own car once while delivering pizzas.
    
38. I never want to have children.
    
39. I never wear makeup.
    
40. I'm a Colorado native.
    
41. I have lived in Colorado my whole life.
    
42. I've become a computer geek.
    
43. My favorite television show is The Screensavers on TechTV.
    
44. I prefer Macs to Windows machines, even though my primary machine is a Sony Vaio laptop.
    
45. I hate housecleaning.
    
46. I'm a conservative/Republican.
    
47. I'm a dog person (except for small, nervous, yippy, drop-kick kinds).
    
48. I love having pets.
    
49. I want horses, llamas and chickens.
    
50. I love wolves.
    
51. My Alaskan Malamute dog is part wolf.
    
52. I'm part German and part American Indian (nobody in my family can tell me what tribe).
    
53. I love Star Trek (especially The Next Generation).
    
54. I love gardening.
    
55. I love to read, especially Stephen King novels.
    
56. I really like cooking and baking.
    
57. I wish I didn't have to work so I could pursue all my hobbies.
    
58. I used to be self-confident, now I'm not. I don't know why.
    
59. I'm way too hard on myself.
    
60. It's hard for me to make friends with girls...most of them annoy the hell out of me.
    
61. I have no patience for stupidity.
    
62. I love eating steak. Really well-done steak. Yum.
    
63. I really, really love New York Cheesecake.
    
64. I love to go fishing.
    
65. I sometimes wish I could be a hermit.
    
66. Damn, I swear waaaay too fucking much. ha/ha
    
67. I'm afraid of spiders.
    
68. I think ladybugs, dragonflies and praying mantises are the coolest bugs.
    
69. I love feeding birds.
    
70. I prefer being nocturnal.
    
71. I have a flaring temper.
    
72. I have a tendancy to keep things that bug me inside until I erupt like a volcano.
    
73. I change my own car oil.
    
74. I wish I had an indoor swimming pool.
    
75. I'm afraid of falling, especially on ice.
    
76. I live in Colorado yet I have never gone skiing.
    
77. Country music makes me want to shoot myself.
    
78. I'm addicted to pumpkin seeds.
    
79. I learned to drive on a stick.
    
80. I must be the only person who has trouble driving automatics (it's why I ran over myself).
    
81. I love full moons.
    
82. I collect teddy bears.
    
83. I'm fascinated by lightening.
    
84. I believe we're being visited by extra-terrestrial life forms.
    
85. I really miss my mom :( .
    
86. I love Broadway musicals.
    
87. Cabaret and Pirates of Penzance are my favorites.
    
88. I have a sister, Kerry, that I never see because she lives in California.
    
89. I should be sad about that but I'm not.
    
90. I haven't bought new shoes in over a year and I really need some.
    
91. My newest hobby is scrapbooking.
    
92. My feet and nose get cold easily.
    
93. I spend way too much time on the internet.
    
94. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to waste time sleeping.
    
95. I have a huge shotglass collection of places I (and some of my friends) have visited.
    
96. I used to drink like a fish.
    
97. I've had one drink in the last year -- a Kahlua Mudslide on Christmas Eve.
    
98. People who can't spell and/or speak properly drive me crazy.
    
99. My college fiance's birthday present to me was to dump me and tell me he had been cheating on me.
    
100. Whew, I can't believe how hard this was.

Wow, I guess ICQ is working again. I've logged on three days in a row with no problems. Whoohooo!

The last couple of days have really sucked. First, I've been really sick the last couple of days. My car broke down yesterday in the OfficeMax parking lot. It wouldn't start and so I had no heat while waiting for Marcus to come help me when he got off work. I then find out that I didn't have roadside assistance and towing like I thought I did. Sad thing is it only costs like $14 a year. Well, I have it now. After an hour of Marcus on the phone with our insurance company trying to find a tow company that would come out that accepted credit cards (most of them would only take cash or checks--come into the 21st century, people), my car miraculously started. Hallelujah! So, I made it to my mechanic's under my own power and fortunately one of the employees was still there working late so I could turn over the keys. Yay!

We came home to the big dog having diarrhea all over the carpet again. Luckily most of it ended up on an old sheet that I gave her to drag around, so it didn't take too long to clean the carpet. Obviously something is ailing her as she threw up her food in the yard later that evening, too. I hope I don't have to take her to the vet. I'm a little worried about her.

I had forgotten to eat all day. I do that alot lately, it seems. Probably doesn't help me get over being sick, either. The General Store was closed by the time we got home and of course there was nothing in the house that I could fix for dinner. The grocery store was one of the stops I was going to make before the car died. I'm totally out of staples: bread, cereal, milk, butter, eggs, etc. I ended up cooking a couple of frozen hamburger patties. What a great meal.

I got majorly chilled while sitting in the car with no heat and didn't warm up until like two in the morning. I'm also out of NyQuil and I have a hacking cough that kept me up for quite a while until it settled down. Since I didn't get alot of sleep, I was going to blow off going to work today, but the reality of nobody doing any of the work for me if I wasn't there caught up to me and I caught a ride into town with Marcus. I got into it with another manager at one of the stores and was really, really wishing that I had gone ahead and called in and let them run out of prepped food. I get so tired of morons not doing their jobs messing up my job. I was really hoping to get a hold of Dad to hang out with and take me to pick up my car when it was done, but I guess he went to Blackhawk or something as I never heard back from him all day. I ended up making two day's worth of dough at both stores so I don't have to work tomorrow. Yippee! Marcus ended up going with me to get the car, so he was late for some gathering that the guys at work were doing tonight. I hope he wasn't too late.

So, the car repair bill was about $340. My mechanic is really cool and he did a lot of work for that money. I got a new alternator. He said that wasn't why the car died, but the bearings were going and it was going to die in the very near future. I heard that noise a couple of days ago and had totally forgotten about it. I got new belts, a new water pump hose that was leaking, transmission fluid change, and new cam and crank sensors. He believes the sensors are what caused the problem yesterday. He won't know for sure until I drive awhile and see if the problem happens again. Why do I always have intermittent problems like these with my car? He said there are two other possibilites if the sensors were not it, one being a bad fuel pump. That's what my original guess was, but I hope I was wrong.

If this post is rambling and disjointed, sorry, but I'm pooped. I'm going to bed. Hopefully tomorrow will not continue the trend of the last two days.

1. Have you ever had braces? Any other teeth trauma?
I had a wisdom tooth abscess once. Right now I have a couple of cracked teeth and no money or dental insurance to get them fixed.

2. Ever broken any bones?
No

3. Ever had stitches?
No

4. What are the stories behind some of your [physical] scars?
I have a huge scar on my right hand caused by a burn from a pizza oven door that fell off. There is a scar on my right forearm caused by some neighbor bitch who decided to dig her long nails in and it became infected. I have a scar on the back of my left calf caused by hot pizza screens falling out of the oven. There is a scar on my right shin from the first time I tried to shave my legs as a kid with my dad's adjustable razor. There is a bad scar on my left index finger where I've tried several times to take the whole side of that finger off cutting dough balls at work.

5. How do you plan to spend your weekend?
Marcus is going to be spending most of the weekend doing stuff with guys from work so I'm on my own. Besides working I'm going to scrapbook, probably make a Valentine's blog template, try to study for the Network+ test. Search for a job. Housecleaning. Blah.