Domestic Geek

I used to have time to watch a lot of daytime soaps. Back in college I was a huge General Hospital and Young and the Restless fan. Later, I watched Another World. More recently I was really into Days of Our Lives and Passions. Now that I'm back working full time again and I no longer have the Soap channel on my dish, I've lost track of what was going on. I tried keeping up on the NBC site, but they don't really part with a lot of information and I don't really have time to stand around the grocery store reading the Soap Opera magazines, either. Now I can go to Soaps.com to find out the latest news and story lines. It's got all the info you could ever want about your favorite soap. The only thing that would make the site more awesome is if it had some past story line recaps and some family trees. Sometimes I lose track of who is related to whom and who was married when, etc. I was saddened to read that Passions has been cancelled. That's too bad.

I slept over 10 hours last night (Friday into Saturday). After Marcus and I went out and ran a few errands, we came home and napped at least three more. Needless to say, I'm wide awake now. I'll jot down a few things I've been meaning to blog about:

To answer my friend Chrissy's query: Yes, I do like my new job (so far). I'm not going to get too excited about it (I'm being cautiously optimistic), but I think I might be there for awhile. Marcus said he noticed early on into the job I had at this time last year that I really hated it. I am a creative person, but I hated the work I was doing. I hated the personality clashes. I hated that I didn't respect my "boss." I hated the drive (especially in the snow). I hated the deadline stress. I definitely work with a nicer group of people now. I also don't have to deal directly with customers. The only thing that kind of sucks is I don't have Internet access while I'm working. Oh, well. Small price to pay for more money than I was making last year, less stress, shorter drive and full paid benefits around the beginning of April. Plus, I get to see glimpses of Marcus as he runs around the place doing what it is he does.

I'm going to need to find a creative outlet, though. The type of work I do (and will do in the future when they teach me more) is not creative at all. Once I get a routine established, I need to start designing graphics or blog templates or something. I don't want to lose my Photoshop/Illustrator design skills. One of my new coworkers embroiders and is willing to teach me all that she knows. I just need to get a machine. I definitely need more cash coming in from somewhere.

Marcus and I were at CompUsa on Saturday and they were playing this fascinating DVD called Animusic. It was computer animated music videos. I'd love to get that.

It's really yucky coming home to a house with no dog. I've found myself dawdling at craft stores and such after work so that I don't have to go home to an empty house for long (Marcus usually gets home 3-4 hours after I do). It's oddly lonely and unsettling.

OK, I need to try to sleep at least or I'll never get to sleep tomorrow night.

When I'm driving on I-25, I often see big pick-up trucks with rubber testicles on their trailer hitches swinging to and fro. I joked to my passenger once that a guy has gotta have balls to drive around with those on his truck. LOL (My passenger did not have a sense of humor — Hmph!)

I used to have really bad heartburn all the time up until about a year ago. I thought it was the result of the carbonation in the excessive amount of soda I drank every day. When I eliminated soda from my diet last January, I stopped having constant pain. Since I've been back at work, though, I've started drinking coffee and hot tea and the heartburn is back. It turns out one cause of heartburn is our good friend caffeine. It relaxes the valve that keeps your stomach acid out of the esophagus. I guess that explains why chocolate also gives me heartburn. I guess I need to cut down on the amount of caffeinated beverages I consume. I don't want to use any medications to treat it, because I've read that those interfere with your digestion and keep you from getting nutrients from your food. I read that Ginger is a natural remedy and I've been meaning to try it. Supposedly chamomile is good, too. I had heard that peppermint was good for heartburn, but unfortunately it has the same effect as caffeine. When I tried that, it actually ended up making the problem much worse. I had totally forgotten peppermint's effects until a couple of days ago when I ate a bunch of Altoids after a particularly bad cup of coffee. Big mistake!

Sorry I haven't been around here much lately. Between a little bit of blog burnout and being under the weather, blogging hasn't been a priority. Between the grief of losing Skippy, my insomnia, the change in my schedule...it was inevitable that I get sick, I guess. Oh, and it's that time of month. For some reason, I tend to get sick around this time. Does the body's immune system drop or something? I keep meaning to research that. I know I tend to get cancre sores right before it starts. Oh, the joy of womanhood.

Not much is new here. I get my first full time paycheck tomorrow. Yay!! I've been given archiving responsibilies at work, so in addition to backing up the computer data, I get to file the hard copies of stuff that gets printed, too. The file room was a mess, so I've been sifting through and purging old stuff. It's horribly dusty back there.