Stess's Journal

So today was fun. Good church, lunch at a local hamburger place with the best waffle fries ever, and then my interview at Avenue, which went swimmingly. Almost definitely have a job, unless katysdiary upholds her threat and tells the manager all sorts of horror stories on me.

So after my interview I did a little random shopping out of boredom. I've been on a flip-flop hunt, looking for cute ones that aren't just your average $2 Wal-Mart variety, but still cheap. I went to Kohls and found a cute pair. I also learned, via the five-year old girl in line behind me, that Thumper is actually the Easter Bunny, and that he has email. Seriously, y'all this girl was adorable. This is the conversation:

GIRL: Mom, can I have some candy?
MOM: No sweetie, you can't have candy. Remember, you got in trouble with the candy? I had to tell the Easter Bunny not to bring you any because you are in trouble.
GIRL: *gasp* You know Thumper?
MOM: He has email.
GIRL: *pause* What's his email address?
MOM: Only mommies know it. Otherwise you would email him, and only mommies can tell him if you get candy.
ME: *silently dies laughing*

So I come home, blah blah, normal afternoon, watch some TV, play a little Sims, make some icons for my icon contests, and then about 11:30 I am totally bored, hungry, and still not tired. Mark, it transpires is also hungry. This calls for a random sneaking-out-of-the-house-to-get-McDonalds run. That accomplished, I return upstairs, sit down, and not five minutes after I have delivered Mark his chicken nuggets he IMs me and says "help. come down here now." I proceed to freak out, run downstairs, to discover that Mark mistook a bottle of rasperry vinagrette dressing for barbecue sauce, and consequently has spilled it ALL over the carpet, chair, himself, desk, and keyboard of his computer. Woe. His words? "Oh good, it didn't get on my nuggets. That would be nasty." I'm like...uh...who cares about the nuggets, dude, if you don't get this up quick, your mother will murdelize you. You'll never eat another nugget again! Although it smells lovely now, it is quickly staining the carpet, which our mother is highly protective of, being that this house is brand new. So we quickly fetch the industrial strength carpet cleaner (WHY we have this is anyone's guess) and manage to get the stain out, for the most part. The keyboard is another story, but that's his problem, not mine.

Blah.

I stayed up until 4am the other night talking to katysdiary on the phone. Now my sleep schedule is off again. I had almost gotten it under control. Sigh. I don't like taking Unisom because it makes me feel heavy and lethargic the next morning. But I have to get up tomorrow, because my mom is going in to have...something done. I forget what it is exactly. She's been having problems for a while, but they're the kind you really don't want to hear about, so I'll spare the details :) Anyway, for this test they have to put her under anesthesia I guess, so I have to go with her. I get to spend about three or four hours chilling in the medical center. Whee. My dad won't let me bring his laptop either, which sucks. So it's back to good-ol' pen and paper for me. I just printed like twenty Sudoku puzzles from the internet, so that should keep me occupied for a while. I can get some writing done too, though I wish I could have the laptop so I could type instead. It's faster. Oh well.

In other news, still broke, still jobless. This is getting very old. Avenue hasn't called me back. I think I'll have to look elsewhere. There's a really nice shopping area nearer home, maybe I'll check over there and see if anyone is hiring. So far the only other place I've noticed is Old Navy, and I really really don't want to work somewhere were teens/kids shop. I like working with older customers. They're nicer.

Also I just noticed that my room looks like it belongs to that little girl from Signs. There are half-finished water bottles all over the place. I hate drinking water if it isn't cold, though, so if it sits for too long I won't drink it. Note to self: put them back in the fridge.

By the way, l8nitewriter any confirmation on the idea of a reunion game night while I'm in town? (I will be there. I will!)

I'll give you a fair warning: it is late, and I have had caffeine tonight. I am talkative.

So after much toil and editing, I have made myself a rockin' awesome LJ layout. Everyone should check it out. I figured out how to add a banner image (thanks to help from l8nitewriter) and then with a few more changes made something that I can be happy with for at least a few weeks! (lol - that's for you, Aaron!) When I have an income, perhaps I will upgrade to a paid account so I can get my excessive icons and do more fun stuff to the layout. Now that I've become an icon-making madwoman, I suppose I should.

Anyway, church tonight was amazing. First of all, they opened with James Taylor's "How Sweet it is to be Loved by You". I was like, James Taylor? In church? Rock. On. The pianist/singer from the worship band is amazing. Then the pastor giving the lesson this week said that he didn't want us to learn anything tonight, he wanted us to feel. We're doing a series on Ephesians and tonight was all about the end of chapter 3, about God's love and how awesome it is. It was really great. They gave us snacks too! Before the service there were people walking around with trays of cookies and trail mix, and they had water and soft drinks. It was so fun.

Yesterday I finally shelved my pride and took an application in to Avenue. (For those of you who aren't familiar with women's clothing stores, Avenue is like Lane Bryant, only less hoochie - which I can say because I worked there for three years) I should hear back from the manager soon. It's longer hours, but hey, it's a job. I need one of those, not just because I'm broke but because I am bored to sobs around here. I need something constructive to do besides make LJ icons and watch movies and play Zelda. Hopefully the people from JB Graphics will call me back soon and then I'll have a real job, doing what I really want to do.

In that same vein, sort of, my dad decided this afternoon that I could have been a math major. See, my family has fallen prey to the fad known as Sudoku. If you don't know what it is, go here and check it out. It's a matter of filling in the numbers so that 1-9 only appear in each row/column/box once. It's addicting. My dad is good at it, and my mom tries, but I've mastered it. It's what I do now when I'm bored. I generally end up doing maybe, twenty odd puzzles a day. This is why my dad thinks I should have been a math major. I like math. I'm pretty good at it too. At one point, I thought I wanted to teach it. Then I realized I was psychotic and had a death wish. Sudoku isn't really math, it's logic. But it's still addicting. (strangely, after deciding I was insane for wanting to teach high school, i became an art major. now I've decided to eventually go back and get a masters so I can teach graphic design in high school or college. Go figure.)

Ok I've rambled enough.

OMG y'all. Apparently, when I break my Writer's Block these days, I turn around and laugh in it's face and then saunter away proudly. Seven pages. SEVEN PAGES in one day. That's a lot of pages.

Anyway, other than writing all I did today was cook. Seriously, I baked three batches of cookies and then made dinner. First batch was sugar cookies, I found colorful sprinkles and I made happy-fun-springtime cookies. That is their full name. Happy-fun-springtime cookies. They looked like easter eggs. :) Then I made oatmeal raisin cookies for mom and dad, because my mom just found out that, in addition to like nine other health problems that she's having, she is pre-diabetic and can't eat lots of sugar anymore. Not like I should be either, I'm probably on the verge of being diabetic myself, but so far that hasn't stopped me.

Then I made dinner tonight, because my mom wasn't feeling all that great and none of us were super hungry, so I made quesadillas and they were excellent, if I do say so myself.

So all in all, a good day. Now its time to go back to playing bridge with the parents. We are sad, sad people y'all.

My "Aunt" Debbie recently discovered a spot of melanoma on her leg, and when they did some tests, they found two more spots on her body. They're small, but the doctors are 90% sure that this is something. But they also think that it is treatable, since they caught it so early, before it spread to the rest of her body.

Debbie and Alan have been my parent's best friends since before kids, and Alex and Mitchell are about the same ages as me and Mark, so our families have always been close. This is all coming just months before Alex's wedding. My mom is pretty shaken up, because Debbie's always been so full of life. Anyway, just pray for them.

Good two days, actually, because yesterday was good, too. I actually got up in the morning, got things done, and then yesterday evening my parent's friend Kathy came in. She was in town on business but came by to have dinner, and since I seemed to enjoy playing bridge I got to play with them. When Kathy and her husband were here for a weekend, they played 51 hands in one day. That's a lot. We only played about six or seven, but had a good time, and me and my dad won all but twice. Kathy said I'm not allowed to have beginner's luck anymore because I'm not a beginner. lol.

But the best part about yesterday was when my dad called. I did some work for his company when I first got here, designing a logo for a service in his company. Anyway, they took what I had done to their normal graphic designer to work on further and utilize in other ways. She met with my dad yesterday, and when she learned that I was the one who had done the original and I was looking for a job, she said she was looking for a new entry-level designer and she wanted my resume. !!!

So I took my resume over today. The principle wasn't there, but one of the other designers was, and he was really nice. He seemed impressed by my resume, so I'm really excited. The woman who owns it will be back tomorrow, so here's hoping!!!

Also LOST tonight was probably the best episode I've seen all season. Alex! Others! Ethan! Baby Aaron! And almost no Jack! And next week? Sun pregnant wha?

I had to post, because my mom thinks I'm going to get on here and tell you all that they tortured me into playing bridge with them. Actually I had fun, bridge is like slightly more complicated Hearts/Spades. I got the hang of it quickly, and actually won the last three hands, which thouroughly irritated her.

In other news I've been working on a website for my story. Admittedly, I have started and restarted doing this about six times in the last year or so, but this time it looks rock awesome, thanks to my recently heightened knowledge of GoLive. Yay for rollovers! It would look even better if I had Flash, but that shall come later.

NBC just showed an ad for the new Monday programming after the Olympics. Their tag for the show Medium is "Everyone's favorite psychic soccer mom". Like, how many other psychic soccer moms do we know?

Ahhh Andre Boticelli. I'm telling you, man, my future husband better have a good singing voice. I'm a voice person. And there are like four hundred brides walking across the stage...ooookay. Ahh...they represent "hope" and carry torches made of lilies. Gotcha.

A friend of my mom's asked for a copy of my resume for her son's company. So I print the first official printed draft of the whole thing and sign it and show it to my mom. You know what she says?

"Well it looks really good, except I really hate your signature. Could you reprint it and sign it different?"

*Sigh*. It's my signature mom. Yes, it doesn't say "Stephanie Ringold" exactly. It looks more like "St*scribble* Ri*scribble*. But I like it. "Well what if they think you're sloppy?" Have you looked at the rest of it, mom? Does it LOOK sloppy? *shakes her head*

Oh well.

Why is it the best V-Day ever?

Because my day had absolutely *nothing* to do with Valentines Day. :) For the first time ever, I wasn't surrounded by friends passing out Valentines or getting roses or teddy bears from their boyfriends, or heart balloons in the student center, or being depressed and dissapointed because I'm missing out on something.

Today my mom and I had a girls day out, and it was great. She went to her Embroidery Club this morning, loved it, and then we went to lunch at this really cute restaurant called "Ye Old Library" because it was the original building of the Carmel Library. Then we went to this quaint little town not too far from us and went in antique stores and art galleries and knick-knack shops and I bought a really cute brown hat for me to wear in the winter, and was inspired to start doing art again. AND I got chocolate covered cashews, and $10 from my dad for v-day. Then my brother rented a classic - Bill Cosby stand up. "Dad is great, He gives us Chocolate Cake" never gets old.

And as I said, today I decided two things. 1. I bought a digital camera with my Christmas money. Time to make use of it. I shall now carry my camera whenever I go out, and look for fun stuff to photograph. Just for fun. 2. I need to start making art again. Playing video games and staring at a computer all day is not a good use of my creative energy. I should paint! Do those woodcuts I promised katysdiary forever ago! Of course, my mom is threatening to take said work and then take it to the art gallery we went to today that features local artists. Note to self: Make it, then Hide it.

So I totally rented the original Where In the World is Carmen Sandiego...I remember it being a *lot* harder. Of course, there is a big difference on my grasp of world geography now than when I was you know, nine.

My parents best friends from Ohio are here visiting for the weekend. I like Tom & Kathy. They are fun people. But usually when the two couples get together, it's elsewhere, like, they both go away for the weekend. It's kind of irritating to have company over and not be invited to join in. I think my parents realized how left out we felt because this afternoon they invited me and Mark to play Apples to Apples with them, but then they went out to eat and now they're back to playing their umpteenth round of bridge. Seriously, y'all, they played bridge until 1am last night, and went through at least one bottle of wine between four.

So having basically been sequestered to either the upstairs or the basement, I have been bored to death this weekend, because I have no life, and nothing is on TV. Mark and I watched The Corpse Bride last night. Very cute. I liked it better than Nightmare, personally. I think he's been to the video store twice today already. I have been staring at my computer screen, television, or books intermitently. I watched a movie, played a video game for like five minutes, read a chapter of Eragon, played Sudoku, watched CSI, and now I'm trying to dispel my persistent writers block. I think it worked. I'm just so BORED.

And I was supposed to babysit tonight but the family never called me back and I think they changed their minds. *Shrugs* Oh well.

Stephanie the die-hard football fan has returned! Hooray! Time to get ready so I can cheer on my team. Go Blue!

Something about living down south made me not enjoy football anymore, which is sad, because I love football. I think the fact that I watched like, every bowl game with my cousins over new years helped.

And my parents are AT THE GAME OMG. So jealous. So if you're watching the game, and the camera pans up to the LUXURY BOX SEATS, my parents will wave happily at you while they...I dunno what they do up there, sip cocktails and eat little hot dogs on toothpicks I dunno. lol. j/k, they got the tickets from work, but they'll be just as into the game as anyone else! Indy loves their Colts, man.

ETA: Holy crap. That was a crazy game. Colts lost, but Pittsburg played freakin awesome, so I guess I can't really dispute it. It was amazing though. They almost got too far ahead, with a 4th down conversion on the 2nd yard line, but with a freak fumble we got it back with enough yardage to get a field goal and tie it up, but the kicker missed, and that was that. (that was all with one minute left in the game - the last five minutes of play time were CRAZY)

Ok...well...happy eleven minutes until New Year! Unless you're on the east coast. Then Happy New Year. If you're on the other side of the country, happy hour and ten minutes until New Year. :)

Anyway, I got my exciting Christmas/Graduation present today. A Digital Camera!! It's a Kodak EasyShare 5-mpx camera with 4x optical zoom and lots of neat features. I'm having way to much fun. I'm in Fayetteville with my family. Internet in my room should be operational later this week.

And my cousins are totally trying to make me get off the computer so they can play Rollercoaster Tycoon. Wesley says Hi everyone. :) Ok, he doesn't really. I just wrote that. But he would, if he knew you :) (and Siah too) (they think I'm weird, but I can totally beat them at dutch blitz AND paper football)

Hope everyone had a happy holiday!

Well, so far, it's been a good Christmas. I got some clothes (which we bought over thanksgiving) as well as the new red purse we bought during thanksgiving. :) So not a lot of suprises. But I did get a gift certificate to Best Buy, two new Gamecube games: The Return of the King (so hard!) and Chronicles of Narnia (which I haven't played yet because I still haven't seen the movie!) and a few new movies. Lemony Snicket, How to Lose a guy in 10 Days, and Theres Something About Mary. Apparently, my mother had *no* idea what the latter was about. Yeah, exchanged that one. And I actually exchanged How to Lose a Guy, because I've seen it so many times already that I'm a little tired of it. I don't really enjoy watching it anymore. Oh and my brother bought me Ocean's 12, which I already had, so I returned it too. So I got instead: Sahara, Earthsea, and Stepford Wives. I actually haven't seen Earthsea yet (it was a tv-movie special with the guy who plays Bobby on X-Men and Kristin Kruek, Lana from Smallville), but I was told by several people I would really enjoy it, so I thought, lets take a chance, why not? Although the last time I did that with a TV fantasy special it turned out badly. (*coughcough*10thKingdom*cough*)

Anyway, tomorrow we leave for Fayetteville for the Holifield family Christmas. Our numbers will be somewhat lessened, because my cousins Julie and Chris and their two little ones are spending New Years with Chris's sister (Sad day - I love them, but I understand). And my other cousin Beth (who is my age) has decided not to come. At all. Apparently she doesn't really enjoy family christmas, which I can't understand AT ALL, but I guess she just never really clicked with anyone in our family. I absolutely love family christmas, and wild monkeys couldn't keep me away.

But I'm going to use the Best Buy money my parents gave me plus the christmas money that my grandmother always gives us to buy a nice digital camera (finally!). So that's exciting!

Indianapolis is fun, really. I like it. I don't like not knowing anyone yet, but once I get a job after the holidays are over, and once I get plugged in to a church, it'll get better. We went to a really awesome church for Christmas Eve. Y'all, this place was so cool. It's a big church, and they have their own bookstore. Their programs for the last four week series and the Xmas Eve service were professionally designed (this is a good sign for me) and the auditorium was nice sized (they have four services because their membership is so large). The preacher was actually moving - like, he actually challenged me. And the singing - the lead guitar player was incredible. We sang all my favorites, including O Come, O Come Emmanuel with this totally awesome haunting thing going on in the band...chills, y'all. Chills. We're going to try out a few more, but as far as my mom is concerned, Northview is the place, and I'm sort of inclined to agree, but I haven't been anywhere else yet, so I dunno.

Well, now that this entry has gone on forever, I'll give a quick update on the Stessie-wants-her-own-internet situation. Tuesday, I will be connected. YES! Until then, have a happy New Years!

Well, I'm home.

I like the house, a lot. It's really nice, and very well built. My room is huge, but the ceilings aren't as high as my old one. But all in all, it's nice. Long drive though. Nice area.

Haven't gotten my computer hooked up to the 'net yet. We're fighting with the system. It doesn't like me, i guess. If i had known that we'd be on the exact same steup here that I was in searcy, i would have saved my modem thingy, but i didn't. now I think we might have to get another, or find a way to run a cord between the gateway in the basement, to my room on the 2nd floor. Yeah, that ain't happening.

Anyway, I managed to con my mom into doing my xmas shopping for me, except for hers, which I did on the way here, so yay for not actually having to do last minute shopping on Christmas Eve! Tomorrow will be spent unpacking/decorating my room. And hanging out with my brother, who seems to have decided that my surround sound, gamecube, dvdplayer, and desk are all his to use freely. The surround sound and dvd player have been relocated to my room, and the desk has to stay down here because it's too big, but the gamecube WILL be recaptured. Eventually. :)

Anyway, very tired, so I am going to go sleep now.