Today was a rather monumental day at our house. Shannon was hired for her very first job 🙂

It’s a big deal for her (and for me, sentimental fool that I am.) She plans on saving for her own car. She’ll be working at DQ which, handily enough, is a mere 3 blocks away from home. I am digging on the funny symmetry of her first job and my first job. When I was just a titch older than her, I got a job at Oscar Hossenfelder’s Ice Cream Shoppe/restaurant down on Cannery Row. I was the soda fountain girl which meant I dished out Fudgebana sundaes, malts, Orgies (of the ice cream variety – it was the signature dish: 32 scoops consisting of every flavour we had), splits, shakes and any other ice cream variation you can think of to the tourists. It was a fun job actually (tho I may have felt differently at the time. Hauling 20 pound tubs of ice cream up from the basement was actually not so much fun, but there you go.)

And now Shannon’s going to be an ice cream girl at DQ 🙂 I hope she enjoys it. I’m going to be satisfied with having her just a few blocks away and not having to worry much about getting her to and from work.

She interviewed for the job last Tuesday and then spent an agonizing time waiting to see if she got the job. After numerous attempts to be the squeaky wheel and call the manager (and missing her each time) she finally got through tonight. She came tearing out of her room, knocking stuff over and excitedly told me she got the job. It was so amazing to see the thrill on her face 🙂

I suddenly feel like a dilly bar.

I’ve a special little mix just for you. Hope you dig it 🙂

Clicky here to grab the MP3 (Right-click and Save As to download it to your computer)

I was perusing the intertubes yesterday looking for this one chick’s BtVS dialogue remixes that I really liked and wanted more of when I found them. That’s not the cool part though. The cool part is that she explained what she used to make them – and one of the things was Acid Xpress which just so happens to be F-R-E-E 🙂

Now, I love to play to audio files. I have a huge library of wav files from various things because for some reason I like capturing audio from my favourite TV shows and movies. I can’t explain why. It might have started when I discovered I could change the boring audio sounds computers play on startup, or when you get an error or something. I preferred to personalize my comp with my own stuff. So I’ve always grabbed audio clips for just such a reason. And now I have another reason to use them – REMIXES 🙂

I had so much fun playing with the free version of Acid Xpress that I went and bought the full version today. And I’ve made three mixes so far all from Buffy or Angel (because those are the only clips I have on this particular laptop atm, plus I’m in a “phase” where I’m enamoured of both shows.)

These probably won’t be of interest to anyone who stops by this blog really, but here they are anyway:

(MP3 format. Right-clicky, Save as to play)
– Angelus Mix – This was made with the free Xpress version and so far it’s my favourite one I’ve done.
– Spike Mix – The first one I did with the full version. It’s ok. I can do better though.
– Angelus’ Passion Mix – Ok Angel again, but the sound clips I use make me tingly. I was looking more for just ambient music on this one.
– Angel’s Despair Mix – Ok Angel one more time, but I wanted to try a slow mix this time and Angel’s broody moodiness seemed to fit.

It helps if you know and love the BuffyVerse 🙂 I’ll post more when I make more 🙂 I take requests too!

But man, this software is da bomb. It comes with over 1700 wav loops to play with. I’m in heaven 🙂

Am I ever glad this week is over.

I think my head’s about done in thinking about the Big Bad internet and the problems it can cause. As much as I love this place, I’m sort of enjoying my unintentional sabbatical from it. Not logging on much except to check email (and occasionally blog when the mood strikes.) Well, apart from at work when I have to be on. It’s been nothing but trouble at work. When my server host decided to “emigrate” my account to a new server without telling it, it royally screwed up just about everything I do on a daily basis.

And I couldn’t work out how to fix it. Tech support was full of wankers who talk down to me as if I don’t know anything (god I hate that) and at the end of they day they were pretty much no help at all. So while being extremely frustrated for days and days, I had people at work coming at me with one problem after another (all related to this server migration) and it just seemed to pile up. Thankfully things seem to be coming together ok but it’s still not 100%.

And then Wednesday it hit me hard that my mother died 6 years ago that day. And everything I do to block that out of my mind failed me. It was hard to finish out the day. See, I distract myself with anything I can. Some days I don’t have to work hard at it, but on days like Wednesday I do. I surf the web, work, read, blast music, escape into some movie or TV show – anything so that I don’t have to think of that horrible morning when she died. I sleep with a fan on every night so there’s white noise in the room I can concentrate on when I try to go to sleep. After she died I slept with the TV on so I could just mindlessly listen to it drone on (mostly CNN) and for a while it helped me get to sleep. Then it got distracting and I switched to the fan. I’ve gone through 2 fans so far since then.

Anyway, technical probs at work continued to pile up and Friday my sister told me she was having soe tests done to see if she’s got FLV, which is a genetic thing passed on to kids that causes blood clots. It’s how mom died. So while I thought I was doing good having made it past Wednesday without too much pain, that whole conversation pretty much made things worse. See, Friday was also my dad’s birthday. He would have been 60 if he hadn’t died suddenly himself. It just felt like too much. I told Kelly we had to change the subject. I couldn’t think about blood clots (which, quite frankly, I think about every single day. I’m afraid of them.) or mom or Dad’s birthday or I’d lose it right there in the newsroom.

So I went to the bathroom to collect myself so I could get back to work. When I came out though, I passed one of my favourite reporter’s desk and he, by way of just making friendly convo, asked me to tell him something to make him smile. Bad timing though. I did end up losing it a little just then and I feel like a complete idiot. But he was so very nice to me about it and strangely enough, I felt better as I walked back to my desk. He said when he gets to missing his mother, he thinks about one good memory he has of her, or he thinks about some funny thing he used to do to exasperate her. This ends up making him smile and he gets over it for a while. I thought that was really nice and the rest of the day felt better.

So the week’s over and next week will be better. There’s no more “anniversary” things coming up any time soon so that’s good. To be honest, I really don’t know why this year struck me so hard. Usually I’ve been able to get through them without thinking to much on it and I’ve been fine. Dunno what made this year different. Probably won’t either.

Oh one last bit of bad news – well, bad to me anyway – after all the crap this week, another of my favourite people at the paper told me he was quitting. That really made me sad, since I’m being so open here. I’m glad he found a better opportunity elsewhere and it’s probably a really good thing for him. I know how crazybusy he was at the paper and how draining that can be. But selfishly, he is one of the fun things about my job and I’m gonna miss working with him. It was really nice having a friend there who was weird and funny and shared a similar sense of humour.

But it’s Saturday now and the day has been so far so good. Hanging out with the kidlet who happens to have vaca next week, which is good for me because it means I don’t have to get up so early. So yay 🙂 And I took next Friday off because I can, so yay four day week and three day weekend.

Some good news came out of this week though. My dad’s getting hitched in a few months and taking off on a fantastico holiday in Europe. It’s going to be so cool. Well the whole trip sounds cool but the part that I’m tickled about is that they’re going to be in London for a few days at the beginning and I may be able to get them booked into my old pub/b&b. I’m hoping to anyway. When he mentioned the cost of them staying in some boring Radisson in London I mentioned my pub and I *think* the benefits of staying there may outweigh the cons for them. I hope so anyway. I’m just waiting to hear from Rory on whether he can get them in. Haven’t talked to him in years though, hope he remembers me. He should, I was enough of a pain in the ass for him 🙂

I think it will be spiffy if my father and his lovely new bride and my sister and new step-sisters can hang out in this old veddy veddy British pub in the middle of posh Buckinghamshire (near the PM’s Exchecquer estate no less.) I’ve been told they’re all quite the Anglophiles and it seems to me that they would really enjoy the Rising Sun’s atmo for the Britishness of it rather than stay in a Radisson where it would be like any other Radisson in the world. London’s only a short train ride away and for that matter Oxford is just as near to the pub. Anyway I hope it works out.

And thus ends my cathartic blog post for the day 🙂

I’m trying to get back in the swing of blogging. I’ve had a bit of a dry spell lately. Dunno if it’s just a general weariness of writing mundane posts that aren’t that interesting or if I’m just too preoccupied with other stuff. Maybe a bit of both.

I decided (just now, at 6:23am) that when my brain says ‘hey maybe you should blog’ I’m just going to do it, even if I’ve got nothing of import to say.

So it’s very early (for me. I’m sure my dad has been up for hours and been running and is settled with his coffee as he gets ready for the day 🙂 and I should be blowdrying and getting dressed. Fridays rock. It’s jeans day at work (sad that I look forward to wearing denim at work eh?) and I intend to take advantage of that until that nice fun thing gets taken away.

Tonight the kid and I are going to carry on watching “Angel” and maybe play a bit of Buffy on the old PS2. She’s got her big District speech meet tomorrow so I’m hoping she’ll run through her speech with me a couple of times tonight as well. Wish her luck!

Anyway, stalled enough. Time to blowdry.

So I could not get to sleep last night. What do I do when this happens? I don’t count sheep or, as my cousin prefers, solve complicated mathematical equations in my head. Instead I think about ‘What ifs?’ or write little tableau stories in my head, or one of those Life Questions will pop into my head and I spend time thinking about it until i drift off to sleep.

Last night was a Life Question. It was “What ten things do you want to do before you die?” Cliche? Of course but some of the things I thought of surprised me. I don’t remember if I made it to ten because I did eventually drift off, but here’s a few I do remember (in no particular order):

1. I want to learn to speak Russian. I love to listen to that language for some reason and the few words I do know are fun to say. Would love to know more.
2. I want to write a novel. Nothing new there.
3. I want to know whether I’ve really been ‘in love.’ Grand passion, would die for you kind of love. I thought I had, a couple times, but as time goes on, I look back and wonder if it wasn’t mostly just hormones, lust and naivety.
4. I want to be known as a scholar on something. What that would be, I’m not quite sure, but it would be cool to be known as ‘scholarly.’
5. Travel more. Especially the rest of Europe and Australia.
6. I want to spend a summer following a favourite band.

I think that’s as far as I got before I fell asleep. I’m glad I didn’t think of anything trite like ‘I want to skydive’ or something.

My daughter is a gnome killer.

Sounds funny, yes? It’s true. She kills poor defenseless gnomes and giggles maniacally about it afterwards.

It all started with an innocuous trip to Hobby Lobby in search of posterboard. A trip to HL usually takes longer than we mean it to because they have so many pretties and I tend to get caught up mentally redecorating my place with the gorgeous lamps and sumptuous wall hangings (I have something of a lamp fetish.)

As we left, empty-handed for there was no posterboard that would suit, I spotted an aisle full of garden decorations. For some reason I was seized on the idea that it would be amusing to get one of those tacky, cheesy gnomes. So we went to see if they had any.

Big mistake. They did.

I picked the little guy up and we began laughing at it and coming up with clever places we could put it at home. It could be our guardian gnome, so to speak if we put it by the front door. Or it could sit in a corner of the living room and give us a little chuckle when we pass it. I handed it to Shannon because by now we were just getting silly (we could buy a bunch of them and spell out ‘Cluck You’ in the yard!)

I never should have turned my back on her.

The next sound I hear is a crack followed by the sound of shattered clay (or whatever) skittering over the shiny linoleum floor. Shannon and I stare at each other for a second – me horrified at the thought that now I HAVE to buy the thing and Shannon frozen because she can’t believe she just committed gnomicide.

Amidst the giggles and guffaws we gather the little pieces that were once feet and a little red hat we laugh our way up to the cash registers though I’m still chafing at the thought of having to buy a broken gnome.

They let us off though and I didn’t have to buy it. Phew! The rest of the day though was spent elaborating on scenarios in which Shannon is part of the gnome mafia and all gnomes tremble with fear when she steps into the aisle.

Oh the puns, the puns 🙂