Monthly archives: October 2010

Excuse the crappy camera phone picture, my camera is being lent out at the moment.

This past week was brutal.

Sunday I woke up early, did some homework, went out to breakfast with my parents, then went to work from 1-5. Came home and did more homework, passed out at 9.

Monday I worked 9-1, came home and wrote a two page paper for class, then went to class from 6-9:30.

Tuesday I had a classmate over at 10 am to work on a group project for Wednesday’s class. She brought me a maple flavored doughnut, but none of her work for the presentation. I did most of the work, and we finished by 2. Relaxed a bit until work from 6-9.

Wednesday I worked from 9-1, then came home and wrote a 4 page paper on I don’t even remember what now. Class from 6:30-9.

Thursday I knitted and watched tv most of the morning, that was nice. Then work from 5-9.

Friday is normally my day off of work, but the library was closed for an in-service day. Meetings and such from 9-5. It wasn’t too bad, and lunch was great. They hired a caterer to grill out on the lawn of the library and we had burgers and fried chicken. After work, Russ and I went to see my dad’s band play at a restaurant. They were awesome, but I was beyond exhausted and we left at 10. The drummer from my dads band told us we were old fogies for going to bed so early.

Saturday was kind of fun, we went to an apple orchard nearby, got some cider doughnuts, a big jar of honey, butternut squash, and some pumpkins. Then we went to petsmart to look at kittens, I saw two I wanted, then we went home. The rest of Saturday was spent working on my Monday class’ final project. I worked on that until 11 pm or so.

Sunday morning I got up at 6:30, and worked on my final some more until work from 1-5. After work I continued on my project, and finished at about 10 pm. Went to sleep.

This was one of the most crazy busy weeks I have had in a long time, and its not one I’d like to repeat. Most of it was spent in a daze of “what to do next”, and I was exhausted and ate crap food.

I just got a new purse recently, since my old one was too small to hold my school books and stuff.

This bag is fairly huge, shown here with a cat for scale. It can hold a text book, a knitting project, a notebook, along with all my regular purse stuff.

Things I normally carry:

• A brush
• Wallet
• Key card for work
• Chap stick
• Eye glasses cleaning cloth
• Small notebook for grocery lists or whatever, I haven’t used it in months
• Keys
• Pens
• Cell phone

I have just one sibling, my brother Logan, pictured here with my mom at his high school graduation. He’s four years younger than me, and for the most part, we get along pretty well. As kids we played together a lot, and I used to take care of him after school.

As kids we had different interests, I read a lot of books and played video games, and he played a variety of sports: hockey, soccer, baseball.

He’s likes reggae, Phish, and hippie jam band music. He plays the guitar really well, but is somewhat shy so never played in a band or in front of people. He taught himself guitar, beginning around age 13, with some help from my dad.

He’s an amazing dancer (and breakdancer), but won’t do it in front of family, mostly with his friends. We share the same sense of humor from our dad, and we both sing made up songs (we did this as kids too). We share the same curly hair, mine red, and his brown with a red tint.

When I was in my early 20s, Logan in high school, we didn’t talk much, and kind of did our own things. But recently in the past few years we’ve become closer, hanging out together a few times a month.

The library where I work is closed today for staff meetings. It won’t be fun, but I can wear jeans.

Its very hard to take pictures of yourself in a mirror. I don’t know how other people do it. This was the only shot that got my whole outfit in frame, even if its on an angle.

And my shoes, that I love.

I’m an atheist. I was raised Catholic I guess. I had First Communion, but we didn’t really go to church after that.

I believe in being a good person without having to do so because a church or religion tells me to do so. Take care of your family. Be nice to people, unless they aren’t worth the effort.

Work hard at what you love, and try to stick to difficult things that are good for you. i have no patience for slackers and time wasters, at my job or at school. I like being on time, early even. I try very hard to not blow off plans with friends, and try to always be there when a friend needs an ear.

I try to be nice, or at least polite to most, but occasionally I am guilty of a short temper or the occasional verbal diarrhea. I do feel bad about it almost immediately.

In a nutshell, be a good person, not because someone tells you so, but for yourself.

I remember early one Sunday morning the phone rang. It was before 6 am, I woke up, and my mom answered the phone. I knew immediately that my grandfather had died. I didn’t have any kind of warning that he was sick, he wasn’t in the hospital, at least I don’t remember that he was. I just knew immediately he had passed away. I was 13. My mom’s mom passed away before I was born, and my dad’s parents lived in California, so my Grandpa JB was the only grandparent figure I had in my life.

We weren’t extremely close to my grandpa, my mom is one of 10, and he remarried to a woman who stated that she never really wanted kids or grandkids. Kind of weird considering when they got married in the 80s, he already had 10 kids and at least 6 grandkids.

He was probably mid 90s when he passed away, I don’t remember the exact age, but his funeral was the second one I had ever been to, and definitely the first of someone I cared about. What I remember from the funeral was wearing an uncomfortable new black dress my mom had got me, and having to sit and wait for everyone to get there. My mom is the organizer in the family, so I think we got there a good 3-4 hours before it started.

I remember when I saw my grandpa in the casket it was a really weird feeling, it didn’t quite look like him and I didn’t want to get all that close. I don’t remember being super sad, just thinking the whole experience was fairly surreal.

My mom’s family is scattered all over the country, so this was the first time I had seen them all together probably since I was a baby. The only one who didn’t make it was my Uncle JB, who was mountain climbing in Nepal at the time. Apparently he found out by telegram. It said “JB DAD DEAD STOP.”

Even though it was a sad occasion, I remember my whole family gathering at my Aunt Mary’s house laughing and eating a big Irish meal. There was lots of drinking and smoking and telling great stories about my grandpa. He had to use an oxygen tank for the last few years of his life, so he wasn’t the huggy, come sit in my lap kind of grandpa, but he was nice anyway. He was 6’6″, hilarious, as Irish as you can get (with a name like John Basil Carroll, how couldn’t you be.)

The main thing I remember from a young age is that he loved mixed nuts. He would grab a handful, shake them in his hands like dice, and say “mmm peanuts” in a kind of Frankenstein voice as he ate them. It made me and all my cousins giggle, in fact it still makes me laugh. My whole family still does this in tribute, and we always have his favorite kind of mixed nuts out every Christmas.

I don’t really define friends as best friend or other. I could cop out and say I married my best friend. But I guess if I define it as someone I tell absolutely everything, it would be Matt. He is amazingly funny, with a filthy and strange sense of humor. We talk on the phone about once every two weeks, and pretty much every day online.

We met my last semester of high school, he was an acquaintance of my boyfriend. After that bad breakup, Matt and I started talking online a lot, then on the phone, then started hanging out.

We had a bit of a thing at first, I was ready to be in a relationship again, and he was fine with just making out, so it didn’t really work out. I can’t really blame him for being a 17 year old boy. He was the year below me, but we kept in touch when I went off to college. We would hang out every time I came home from college, since he just lived a few blocks away. I remember watching Adult Swim for the first time at his house, since I didn’t have cable in college, and both of us dying laughing at Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

We had this picture taken of us at some photo booth in an arcade, and I love it. Its a great picture of both of us, we were probably 19 or 20.

When I transferred to a college back home, we started hanging out every other day. We’d watch fun tv shows he had downloaded, play video games, and I learned how to hold my liquor (cranberry juice and vodka was my drink of choice).

We both went in and out of relationships, had a bunch of fights, mostly about hating who the other was dating. Once we had grown up a bit more, it became much less dramatic, and we are still close to this day.

When Russell and I got married last year, I asked him to be one of my bridesmen, along with my little brother. During the reception, he said a lot of sweet things about how much he liked Russ (after having a little bit to drink), and it was the only time I’ve seen him tear up.

Yesterday I went to bed at around 3 am, woke up at 7:30, showered, got dressed for work. Breakfast with Russ and my parents at 10:30, back home for a bit, then went to work from 1-5. Work was pretty boring, but went quickly. Russ showed up at the last 15 minutes to return a DVD and check out some books. Then we went out to dinner, came home, and I started feeling really sick. We watched some movies in the bed for a while, and I fell asleep early, around 9:30.