ugghh

i shouldn't have eaten so much cheese and fudge for dinner.

play it again pamie

my fictional hero is liz lemon. my non fiction hero is pamela ribon. pamela ribon is probably as close to a real life lemon as you're going to get... as far as i can tell. pamela wrote 'why girls are weird' and keeps a blog at pamie.com. she is also a derby girl. if you know me at all or have spent much time with me you probably have heard me talk about my secret desire to join the derby. i don't know that it will ever actually happen but i would love if it did. ::sigh:: anyway pam hasn't been keep up on the blog and it makes me cry. what can you do? as a side note, pam was my hero first... for like the last 5 years. i haven't decided yet if i love lemon b/c she reminds of pam or if i just happen to want to be like both of them independent from each other.

in other news, it's almost the weekend. i honestly don't know where the time goes these days. two days ago was our 6 month anniversary... 6 months since the store opened. how is it possible that much time has passed?! at the beginning of this month i had my 4 year anniversary with dave & buster's (ps i know it's depressing that my anniversaries are with work... what can you do?). in the grand scheme of the world 4 years isn't a long time. however, in the life of a 25 year old who has only been working since she was 18, it's a very long time.

today ann & i were talking about when my contract would be up for this location. it's up in early march, i believe. though i don't have any plans for leaving virginia any time soon. i like it here. still. ha. surprising, i know. maybe i'm getting old or something.

the other night we watched 'it.' still not as scary as everybody thinks it is. i didn't even have any nightmares. shoot, even 'bones' gives me nightmares! however, i didn't remember how ridiculously long that movie is! it's 187 minutes, which is over three hours and not 2 hours and 20 minutes (people aren't good at math at midnight, i guess).

sylvie goes to a new home on monday. PLEASE, PLEASE if you love me or animals at all, please, do not allow me to ever get another pet besides a gold fish. if i ever ask you 'should i purchase a ::insert animal type here:: ?' say to me 'good gracious elaina get a grip on reality and drop the animal for the love of all that is good in the world!' it may also be appropriate to slap me at that point depending on how determined i look. please.

i want to go to ca this weekend but that's not going to happen. i don't think i will be in ca until january. my plan is to be there after baby boy stone is born. for the holidays i will probably sit on my couch drinking eggnog and eating pizza. or maybe i'll go to florida. it's hard to say at this point.

one last note: guys are confusing. hmmm.

get your h1n1 on

so i decided i was feeling less chipper than usual on friday and so it would probably be a good idea to hole up in the apartment all weekend. BEST DECISION EVER. i watched the complete first season of 30 rock and about half of the second season. that's a good 14 hours of 30 rock from friday night to saturday night. i love 30 rock. i feel a weird association to lemon. and usually after watching 30 rock i start to do weird things. i think the show messes with my mind. for starters, last night (for the second time in the last few months) i attempted to dye my hair to match the color of lemon's. once again it was a fail but not as tragically as last time. last time we had pink, this time it's a nondescript brown color that you would assume just naturally grows out of my head. joseph said i shouldn't dye it darker and i believed him but then brianna said why does it matter what joseph says and now i'm all confused. i'm going to take a few days and then figure out what i'm going to do.

so saturday afternoon i decided i needed some pizza for my 30 rock marathon. so i log on to papajohns b/c they let you order online without speaking to a person. but i forgot that the last time i ordered online i was at work. anyway about 30 minutes pass and i get a phone call from work saying hey people just tried to deliver pizza here but we sent it back. long story short the pizza man yelled at me and said he was canceling my order and i said ok and figured out something else for food. what a weekend!

we went to new york a couple weeks back. we took a bus in the middle of the night. the bus dropped us off in chinatown a 6 AM. chinatown at 6 AM after spending all night on the back of a bus is not some where you want to be. needless to say, i threw up 3 times within the first few blocks of being there. other highlights:
being lost on the subway for hours
-jim falling asleep on a bench in central park like a hobo
-seeing kaley which includes the coining of 'shark rape' and having the world's most delicious cupcakes
-fao schwartz has a build your muppet program
-having a sniper riffle full of fun

i could really go for one of those cupcakes right now.

i miss jack in the box. i'm watching the news right now b/c i'm pretending i'm hanging out with nate (hanging out with nate like this is reallllly boring... all he does he talk about the news) anyway there was just a commercial for some other fast food burger place and it made remember the cheesey meaty boys. they were the boy band that pitched the ultimate cheeseburger. cheese meat cheese cheese meat and that's it, baby you know it's hot and juicy! i loved that burger b/c there aren't any vegetables on it. screw vegetables!

so yesterday i bought this chocolate with bacon in it. not delicious. it was like the world's crappiest bacon. if they had used normal bacon it would have been great but instead it was terrible and made my head hurt.

"coach says we're a second half team" is that a compliment? i'm not totally sure it is. i just heard that on the news. hmm.

happy thoughts

cheerwine! yum! like dr pepper but from north carolina.
dc!
mater!
mack
in the woods with arianne
croquet, anyone?
so much sugar!
staying out of the rain... kind of.
not staying out of the rain.

gray day

feeling justified in anger is a bad spot to be. for me as soon as i feel that i am justified in being angry or in not liking someone i no longer have the desire to keep it in check. for example we have this server at work... she just... grates on my nerves. whenever she opens her mouth (which is all the time) i have the overwhelming urge to rip my head off just to make the sound stop entering my brain. at any rate for the first 4 months or so i would just smile and nod whenever she cornered me and the nails on chalkboard noises came out (aka speaking to me). but over the last couple months people will randomly come up to me and be like wow so and so is really annoying (that's what they say if they're being really nice and they're a mild person) and so now i'm like well no one else likes her so i don't have to try to be nice anymore either. and that's not good. i should try to be nice to people. instead we have conversations like this:

her: some lady called this morning, did she leave you a message?
me: i don't know.
her: well she wants to have a party. did she leave a message?
me: probably. ::i walk away as she is still talking::

what is so annoying about that conversation is some ladies call me all day long to plan parties. 'some lady' means nothing to me. i don't know what she thinks i do but when i walked into work that day i had 22 voicemails waiting. of which about 19 were some lady. all of whom were looking to have a party. that's why they call me. all of them. but that's besides the point. i should've have stood there and listened to her drone on about this woman who wants to plan a party and then been like 'ok well i'd better get to that message... i wouldn't want to keep some lady waiting.'

anyway my original point is that it's not ok to feel justified in anger. so i read the 5 dysfunctions of a team. my boss had asked me to read it, so i did. i think he asked me to read it so that i would be angry all the time. this book has cause me to feel justified in my anger towards our corporate office... because this book said to me "dear elaina you work for people who wouldn't know team work if it ran up and slapped them in the face. they are clown shoes." like i need to add justification to that fire. thanks a lot book. i think for christmas i will send copies of that book to the people at whq. ha.

i also think my boss was intentionally trying to get me to fly off the handle today. which is interesting seeing as how he's on vacation. he's not even in the state and he's trying to see if he can get me to yell at people. so anyway my whq boss sent out this thing with awards for people who made budget last month and we weren't on it, which i totally expected b/c no one cares what i do in sales since we're a new store, but i get this email from my boss saying why aren't you ever on his list, you always make budget. to which i responded with something along the lines of probably b/c we're new or maybe b/c that guys hates me. so my boss decides to email the whq boss and find out why. and i'm like dude i don't wan to be involved don't talk to me about those people you know how they make me angry. so my boss and my whq boss exchange a few emails the last of which my boss fwds to me with a "see below" and it's basically a one liner from the whq boss saying we don't really care what you guys do "ha ha". to which i responded ':) "no comment"' and my boss was like that was a nice comment. at which point i sent some sort of email to tune of tell him he's a wienie and that he can "haha that, sucka." that was actually the last line of the email 'haha that sucka.' my boss never responded. i think he was like 'finally the response i was looking for' and stopped checking his work email.

note to future elaina- when you read this blog entry some day this will crack you up: always remember that story today about grandmas telling people to dry off before getting out of the shower so that the ceiling doesn't collapse.

i was SOOOO close to buying a cap gun today at the store. i even text messaged dan to have him talk me out of it but he was just like no, do it. instead i bought alphabet magnets b/c i felt that i could justify them as edutainment. cap guns are just fun and not edutainment... though i could use it if i decide to be a cowboy in a stunt show some time. you never know.

warning to everyone who could possibly come within arm's distance of me soon: i've had the desire to hit people a lot lately. not hard or anything but my natural reaction instead of using words has been to just hit people. weird.

this just in: "should've" isn't a real world but "edutainment" is.

also, bears wake up during hibernation to go to the bathroom. so much for sleeping all winter.

and here i go just makin' the same mistakes

so vacation was AWESOME. it was really hot in ca but i survived. the highlights:

- going to the pier with felicity. she insisted on walking and would not get in the stroller for a very long time. we were walking along the bike path at the beach (at this point she'd probably walked about a mile... that's a lot for a two year old) and she would stop and look at me and say 'mimi, sit down' and she'd sit on the curb and recover for a while and then she'd get up and start walking again. it just cracked me up that she would rather stop and sit on the curb then get in the stroller! i was like dude if you want to walk you can push me!

- disneyland! it was so awesome to see everybody and to get to go there with all the babies. ultimate moment: amber and i were at the tiki room getting some pineapple goodness. we went in the waiting area, order from in there and watched the movies about hawaii. anyway we're on our way out and i see this guy flipping out. he's yelling at some poor old guy saying 'that's the tiki room not the dole pineapple express lane!' to which the man was responding with 'i would suggest you file a complaint with city hall.' we're walking away and i'm telling amber about what i just heard and who should should come up behind us? the crazy man still yelling to the woman he is with about the injustice that is 'the dole pineapple express lane.' at which point i made a zigzag so i would get the chance to check this guy out. anyway we wound up walking behind him the entire way to... CITY HALL. where he got in the world's longest line to complain about the fact that he just had to wait in a long line. oh the beauty of it! two things. 1. i would never complain about anything while at disneyland b/c as soon as someone suggested i should take my complaint to "city hall" i would probably fall over laughing and forget about it. the idea of being an upset citizen of disneyland and taking my problems to city hall is just too funny. 2. if i was the woman with this guy i would have been like dude you're on your own, i'll see you at the car. i had to stop myself from telling her 'seriously? you can do better.'

- jack in the box! they now have a touch screen ordering system, which means... I DON'T HAVE TO SPEAK TO A HUMAN. that is my favorite thing in the entire world. thank you jack in the box for being awesome.

- my new nickname. felicity has decided my name is now 'mimi.' why? no one knows. but i LOVE it.

- dave & buster's. we went to the store in santa anita. it was amber, felicity, adam, britt, james, my dad and me. we had lunch and then spend some time in the arcade. after about 30 minutes in the arcade we left. as we got out to the mall my dad shouts 'thank goodness we are out of that god forsaken hell hole!' and i say 'you mean DAVE AND BUSTER'S?!?' at which point my dad tried to explain that he doesn't actually hate my employer it's just loud and not his scene. it was hilarious mostly b/c that it was what i think when i walk out every day! ::hahaha:: oh that place.

- natural history museum. so this museum has like the world's largest bird display. miles and miles of bird information. they didn't actually make any claims about having the world's largest bird display, so don't try to fight me about it. i'm just saying that so you know it was really freakin' big. anyway they had this part where you walked through the jungle and saw the jungle birds. and what do jungle birds do for fun? EAT MONKEYS. there was a bird with a MONKEY IN IT'S MOUTH. i freaked out and was like since when do birds eat monkeys?!? it's just not ok. i can't decide if it was some joke the museum was playing on the good people of la or if there are really birds who eat monkeys.

so i just googled 'monkey eating bird' and got this: The monkey-eating eagle is the national bird of the Philippines. It lives in the rainforest and builds its nest in the highest canopy it can find. In the early 1970s the population was only 36-50 individuals.The monkey-eating eagle was discovered in 1896 by John Whitehead, an English naturalist, who said that their primary prey was monkeys. In the 1970's scientists found that they eat mostly flying lemurs. They were renamed the Philippine eagle.

so i guess they are real and the people in the philippines are a-ok with this.

- dallas detour. so monday i'm flying out of burbank but a bird hit my plane and i wound up having to spend the night in dallas. less than awesome. 'less than jake? i don't get it.' besides being stuck in the ONE STATE IN THE UNION THAT I DESPISE it was kind of cool. the airline put me up in a nice hotel and i got to eat pizza and watch cable! what's not to love? it was nice to have a quiet night alone before returning. it was kind of like a vacation buffer. plus it got me out of the majority of the work day on tuesday. gotta love that. way to sacrifice your life so i don't have to work a full day little bird. that's taking one for the team little buddy.

so now i'm back. the boys decorated my desk with balloons and a 'welcome back we missed you' sign. it was very sweet. except the balloons were all deflated when i got there and i was like uhmm did you guys just tie sad balloons to my desk or what? but no, they started as happy floating in the air balloons, so that was nice and not so much like oh hey thanks for tying crap all over my desk. last night jon and i watched the yankees / o's game at bww. i love baseball. yankees won, or course. because the o's SUCK. and on that note - the end.

grocery store antics

so this evening i was in the grocery store and the produce storm started... you know when it rains on the vegetables and there are thunder sounds? so yeah that started to happen and this couple start freaking out. i don't know how they'd never seen that happen before but they start freaking out and turn to me and say WHAT IS GOING ON?!? and i said 'oh it's so the vegetables feel at home... they're used to being outside.' i thought the woman was going to hug me the two of them were laughing so hard.

i really hate thunderstorms. they seem to come out of nowhere and are scary. i got caught in a downpour today. it reminded me of the tram ride at universal studios... you know the part where they turn on the rain and then the mexican village floods? it's JUST like that here.

only a few more days until CA. EEEEEK. i'm so excited to get some wienershnitzel. i want some chili cheese everything. yummmm.

so today i was at this uhh festival thing at the university. we had a booth to hand out coupons and whatever. mostly whatever. anyway, this guy stops so i figure he wants to talk about why i'm there. i say 'have you been to dave & buster's?' and he starts rambling about how he doesn't do chain restaurants and it was very awkward. at any rate i realized today that people in college are SOOOO weird. it made me thankful to be a worker!

remember when i used to think there was sea salt in my scalp? those were the days.