I’m just slightly early with my Year in Review this year but I’m bored.  And tired.

This year’s common thread came in the shape of no sleep and medical questions.  I used to be resigned to the fact that I am an insomniac but, this year, it drove me totally bonkers.  And there continues to be an air of “right on the edge” with regard to my overall health.  I think doctors try to scare you a lot of the time and I think I’m really pretty much OK, but they like to keep me wondering.

Now, down to the monthly review.  It’s all in the extended entry…

January:  I discovered Sudoku, which was wonderful for a while.  Now I’m sort of bored with it.  We got our new Sleep Number bed, in the hopes that I could manage a good night’s sleep once in a while.  It’s much better than our old bed but I still can’t sleep.  I found out that I am indeed a secret genius.  And we were turned onto ”House”.  Love Hugh Laurie!

February:  I successfully finished a class in Proofreading and earned a certificate for my troubles.  I found out that I have arthritis in my hands and it’s not fun.  Buzz and I had a fun night of karaoke at home.  Something we have never repeated since that day.  Huh.

March:  Death and disease in people my own age became a common topic of conversation.  We discovered chicken and apple sausage and spent much time swooning over that.  I joined the Silver Jewelry Club as an associate and started a big movement as consumer of nice silver jewelry for $5.99 for each item.  Nice!

April:  I got a new job.  Which is to say, I got my old job back.  This was a time for great rejoicing!  Spring arrived and the flowers bloomed beautifully!

May:  Buzz and I started a personal CD swap club.  We have enjoyed quite a few CDs made for each other since that time.  Yes, we’re still doing it!  We refinanced our house and finally got out from underneath the horrible burden of credit card debt.

June:  Our TV projector died.  However, it didn’t cost us anything but shipping to get it fixed.  That was close!  Our washing machine died.  Thanks to the internets, I figured out what was wrong and it only cost $15 to get the part to fix it.  Sweet!  We overcame our fear and went to a BYOB restaurant, where we thoroughly enjoyed our very own wine, along with an eclectic Mediterranean meal.

July:  The month of kittens in distress.  The writing was on the wall for me to get a new kitten but it never happened.  Our air conditioner broke.  Thanks to the internets, I figured out what was wrong with that and it only cost us $2 to fix that!  Dude - can it get any better than that??  Buzz found out that he has tennis elbow and a severe tear.  This began months of physical therapy.  We joined a Wine Club and started to receive two nice bottles of wine per month.  Our horizons are expanding!

August:  This was supposed to be Happiness Month - one post per day of things that make me happy.  That didn’t work out so well, for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was my mother’s emergency surgery.  August is a blur to me.

September:  I got a flat tire and activated my AAA policy.  It worked like a dream!  My computer died.  My freakin’ computer died!  But, once again, the gods of cheap fixes intervened and we didn’t have to pay for the fix because it was a known problem with the power supplies that Apple used in that generation of computers.  Another close call!

October:  We tuned into the season premier of ”Lost”.  I love that show!  Mid-month, I joined the 365 Days group on Flickr.  It has become my obsession!  Buzz had some scary times at the doctor.  Lots of tests and poking and prodding to find out that he’s pretty much OK.  But that was very scary for a while.  Buzz and I both joined NutriSystem - again - and we’re doing pretty well on it.  We got a new wine rack, too! 

November:  The Democrats enjoyed a resounding victory in the mid-term elections.  It was a happy day for me, as this was the first time I smelt overwhelming victory in my 25 years of voting!  I got called for jury duty for the 8th time in my life and, for the first time in my life, got excused because they didn’t need me.  Celebration ensued!

December:  We saw the loss of two of the parents of a very special couple that we are friends with.  Within two weeks of each other.  Very, very sad.  And I discovered that I like tempura sushi.  A lot!

That’s about it.  A long year with a lot of drama but a whole lot of good times and much love, too.

Here’s to 2007.  May it bring you whatever your heart desires and then some.

Is it sick and twisted that I have had sushi on my mind for the last three days?

Four-fifths of my immediate family went out for lunch last Saturday to a Chinese/Japanese sushi/steakhouse and I had a difficult time deciding what to get.  For the table, we got an order of edamami (which was fantastic!) and two orders of grilled chicken on a stick (which was also very good).  For my main course, I finally decided on the spicy chicken tempura roll.  (I’m a sushi weenie and don’t like the raw stuff.)

Oh.my.dog.  This food was sooooooo good!!  And now I can’t stop thinking about that spicy chicken tempura roll.  I must have another one soon!!

*Edited for my own selfish purposes

How can I tell you that I love you, I love you
but I can’t think of right words to say
I long to tell you that I’m always thinking of you
I’m always thinking of you, but my words
just blow away, just blow away
It always ends up to one thing, honey
and I can’t think of right words to say
Wherever I am, I’m always walking with you
I’m always walking with you,
Whoever I’m with, I’m always, always talking to you
I’m always talking to you,

I love you, sweetheart.  Merry Christmas!

It’s the last working day before Christmas.  Should I even mention to you how much I don’t want to be here today??

I have a (small) pile of presents in my closet at home.  I don’t know if I got something for everyone or not.  Nothing is wrapped.  We don’t have a tree.  It doesn’t feel like Christmas.  I’m just not ready!

BUT…

We got the most awesome dessert to take with us to my parents’ house on Christmas.  It looks like a decorated cake but it’s actually maybe 2 dozen small cupcakes all right next to each other and they are covered in a huge blanket of icing so that it looks like a cake.  Each person can just grab a cupcake out of the sculpture and be on their way.  No utensils required for serving or for eating! 

When I get home today, I’ll take a picture of it and post it here as an update.  It’s just fun!

*UPDATE* Here’s a picture of the cake.  Isn’t it cute?  (Click to enlarge)

This is a bad time of year to be on a diet.  But such is life.

I have a small bowl of something like Cheerios and a half a banana for breakfast every day around 6:30 AM.  I try to hold out until 11:00 to eat lunch, but it’s difficult. 

So what is prompting this post?

Today, several directors have provided breakfast for their teams.  There is food all around me.  They are cooking omelets to order.  There are onions and sausage and veggies and cheese sautéeing in a pan not 30 feet from me.  There are people eating everywhere!

And my stomach is growling.  I feel I should be allowed to work from home during these occasions!  Tomorrow is weigh day and I’m up a pound since last week already.  I feel like I’m going to gain weight just by inhaling these aromas.

I’m silently whimpering to myself.  Hold me.

I’m just not in the mood to work today.  I’d rather be playing.

I’ve been working at the same place for just about 20 years.

When I started here lo, those 20 years ago, I was working on the night shift.  About six months later, I moved to day shift and became the only person on that shift.  For the first week or so, I would get a lot of calls and when I identified myself, the people on the other end of the phone would ask for any of the other day shift people and then not know what to do when I said that they weren’t there.  I wanted to tell them that I am smart, I know what I’m doing and, if I can’t answer their question immediately, I would certainly track down the answer and get back to them as soon as possible. 

I sort of understood why they were hesitant back then because they never heard of me.

But now, let’s flash back to the present.  I’ve been here for almost 20 years.  I am currently being trained to take over something that my boss has been doing for the last 12 years or so.  It’s not rocket science, however, and I’m picking up on it fairly quickly.

Part of the duties are to contact the appropriate people to fix things that are wrong.  I feel like I’m back in the old days 20 years ago. 

One person completely ignored my e-mails for three weeks because she doesn’t get these questions from anyone but my boss.  Three weeks.  Don’t you think you’d at least be curious at that point as to why this person (who she knows, by the way) is sending her these pesky e-mails?

Another person actually called me and said that they only ever got these requests to fix things from my boss and he actually sounded like he didn’t trust that I was in any position to request the fixes.  I’ve known that person for about 15 years.

I feel totally dissed.  I have an enormous amount of experience in my job and yet I’m back to being asked if someone who knows what they are doing is there.  Crap.

I watched the end of “Jesus Christ Superstar” (from 1973) the other day.  I was curious as to what those actors were all up to these days.  You know the old urban myth about what happens to you if you play Jesus in anything, right?  You die an early death.  I was interested to see what happened to that cast.  I looked it up on IMDb and started reading down the cast list.

Ted Neeley, who played Jesus, is still playing Jesus in a road show of “Jesus Christ Superstar”.  He’s done other things in between, but he’s still going strong.

Carl Anderson, who played Judas, had a good career in show business before dying of leukemia in 2004.

Yvonne Elliman, who played Mary Magdalene, is still singing.  Her latest album came out in 2004.

I continued down the list until I got to Paul Thomas, who played Peter.  The one who denied Christ three times.  I clicked on his name in IMDb and saw what seemed like hundreds of movies.  “Whoa!”, I thought.  “He must have been a character actor that I didn’t recognize to be in this many movies!”

Then I started looking at some of the names of the movies to see if I recognized any of them and could place him in the movie.  “The Price of Desire”, “Erotic Explosions 5”, “A Taste of Vanessa”, etc.

Turns out, Paul Thomas is a successful and award-winning adult movie star and director.  Who knew?

I think, if you were to decide to turn away from one lifestyle and pursue another, this guy could tell you how to do it!  All it takes is three denials and you’re on your way!

Maybe it was that scene in the temple that got him thinking about a future career in the adult cinema…

This morning, we’re going to a funeral. 

And then, from there, we’re going to pick out our Christmas tree.

I find that to be a really odd combination and my head isn’t coping well with it.

Courtesy of my good friend, ls.

A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.
The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small.
The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.
The little girl said, “When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah”.
The teacher asked, “What if Jonah went to hell?”
The little girl replied, “Then you ask him”.

Ba-dum-dum!

(P.S.  Growing up in the literal-interpretation-of-the-Bible household that I did, I was taught that it was indeed not a whale but a “great fish” as specified in the Old Testament.  Also?  Eve did not eat an apple.  It was a “fruit”.  Literal, people.  Literal!)

I just remembered something from back in the 80s.  It was “No Frills” products, sold at places like Pathmark.  The Pathmark that I went to had an entire aisle of just No Frills products.  When you walked down that aisle, you were awash in a sea of white labels with black printing.  It was sort of eerie.  And if you bought something like green beans, you could be sure that you’d end up picking out a couple of stems from the can.  The peaches were generally bruised or a little rusty.  I think these products were bordering just on this side of the “not for human consumption” grade.

It was during Reagan’s reign as president.  It was a time when I scraped together every dime I could to feed my small family.  It was a time when we spent the winter on the first floor of the house (where there was a fireplace) and hung a blanket at the top of the stairs to close off the second floor (where there was a bathroom).  The temperature on the thermostat was generally set at 58 degrees to keep the pipes from freezing.  No Frills products that were generally half the price of brand name products looked awfully enticing at the time. 

I couldn’t find any pictures of any products except these No Frills cigarettes.  Don’t you think that’s a bit weird?

OK - I conducted another experiment today.  It didn’t take nearly as long as the last one did.  But here are my results:

It does not take 45 minutes to heat up a can of sliced carrots.  Even at a low-ish temperature!

Who knew?

Yes, I forgot that I had put the veggies on the stove in preparation for dinner.  Forty-five minutes later, Buzz said, “Is something burning?”

What??  I got busy!

Ten days ago, I stumbled into the bathroom in the early morning after a hard night of drinking.  I didn’t turn on the light.  I headed to the commode and couldn’t figure out what I was seeing.  The cover was up and there was clearly something in the toilet and the water looked black.  Or dark red.

I panicked. 

What had happened last night?  My heart was racing as I turned on the light.

It was a box of tissues that one of the cats had knocked off the back of the toilet into the water.  It was a full box of tissues (I had just opened it the day before).  Nice.

So I took it out of the toilet but I didn’t want to throw it in the trash can until the water had dried up some.  I left it in my sink (we have two in that bathroom).  I checked it the next day - still sopping, I mean DRIPPING, wet.  And now my curiosity was piqued.  (Ooh, piqued - nice word!) I was determined to leave it in the sink until it dried completely.

That was ten days ago.  I checked it this morning.  It’s still slightly damp but I’m going to call that experiment concluded.

It takes ten days for a full box of tissue that has been submerged in a toilet to dry out. 

Now why didn’t I try to get government funding for that experiment??  Damn!  I missed a good opportunity!

(P.S.  I want to try and use the word “vitriolic” today in casual conversation.  Do you think I can work it in??)