Slightly Mad

I promised pictures in my prior post and I am here to deliver.

( Merry Christmas )

We managed a few things in the stockings this year. Not much, but enough for some joy. Kadaj's stocking looked more like a Halloween extravaganza. Yazuu got up to the Frankenmuth candy store and bought him a couple pounds of miscellaneous strange candy including a chocolate lump of coal and something that is like pop rocks dipped in chocolate. He'll be happy trying all those things for a while. Weiss and I managed to slip in a round Transformers tin of Transformers-shaped candy, a kid version of the Farmer's Almanac and some socks.

In the collective stocking (Kadaj gets his own), we got a pair of socks, some cheap earbuds for the laptop, some hot chocolate, lip balm, dental floss and pumpkin seeds (which will probably be gobbled up by Yazuu).

Not much, but satisfying.

Today, Zack and Weiss went over to dinner at the parents' house. Grandma was supposed to be there too, but apparently she came down with H1N1 and was hospitalized for a few days and just wanted to go back to her home. She declined to come to dinner. But they had a good time anyway with ham and scalloped potatoes and rolls. Mom isn't much of a cook, but she does what she can. She sent them home with pie and ham (the cats are VERY happy about the ham), so we will probably feast on sandwiches later. They introduced stepdad to StumbleUpon. No, they don't feel bad about it at all. }:)

The weather was horrible. Lots of rain and 30 mph winds. Supposed to snow tonight and the rest of the weekend. We will be at home sucking down hot chocolate and trying to stay warm. Tonight, Weiss and I are going to have a cheese and cracker feast...mmm, cheese...and probably watch a movie or Mythbusters.

Also, there is a rumor going around in-system that Zack is planning "Zack's Day" but we have no idea when it is or what the hell it entails. Should we be worried about this??

Anyway, I hope that everyone had a nice holiday.

Christmas is not a very happy time for our system. It has to do with things in our collective past and the emotional hurt those things caused. We tend to get the system-wide blahs along with frustration that leads to anger. It's a pretty messed up situation. It tends to be a little worse when we have no outlet for all these emotions...for example, if we don't have a chance to do something for Christmas due to things beyond our control.

This year, we are facing things beyond our control that have lead to extreme financial difficulty. From being so busy, we didn't see the point in putting up lights or even digging out the Christmas ornaments. We didn't have a tree or anything anyway.

But, as much as we are uncomfortable with the holiday, we do like the aspects of giving gifts to our loved ones and decorating - we can do without the Christmas songs and the feeling that we have to buy into the whole religious and commercialism stuff. Part of what is bothering Kadaj is that he wants to give his friends gifts because (and he won't admit this) but he cares about them. We just can't afford it.

This whole money, school, stress-thing has gotten everyone a bit down.

Well, tonight, Weiss and I decided to make some Christmas. We decided to have a bit of a limit and we went to the local marketplace to do some shopping. We bought a tree - it only cost us $5.50 and it is small, but it is cozy and looks beautiful all decorated up. We also got some small things to shove in some stockings (even some stuff for the kitties).

So, a little Christmas in the making. ^_^ It doesn't take all of the stress and bad emotion away, but it does feel a little better. It sounds stupid that a little tree and a couple half-filled stockings can make us feel better about things, but there you have it.

We will have to share pictures of our little tree when we get our desktop fixed. We can't wait for the school disbursement to come through next week for that. We miss the desktop.

We're free!!!! (well, for about a month anyway)

So, what will we be doing with our time off? Yazuu will be taking over cooking duties (yay!), SLEEP!, we will be in search of the textbooks that we will still need for next term, send out Christmas cards, and veg veg veg.

Managed to score a work study gig with one of our instructors from this term, Dr. A. We are just waiting for HR to get back with us for the I-9. We're very excited about this because - #1 it's money and #2 Dr. A is a pretty awesome guy. He is from India, spent time in London and Nicaragua, and is now a director for the IGS program. He's also an awesome teacher. We'll just be doing simple filing and stuff, but you all have heard and know that we super need the money to either help our household or pay for school...we haven't decided which yet.

In other money news, we are totally waiting on the school disbursement so that we can send some things out to family and friends. Then we save it and wait and see what happens.

So, maybe things are starting to look up a little instead of going deeper in the toilet?


As a side...and a bit of a tantrum on my part, so you can ignore it...I wish Santa was real.

Thank you twilight_zone for the wonderful holiday card! So completely unexpected and very awesome, yo.

Thank you to lady_ezri for the card and the chocolate! Hello Panda went over real big with the Wers' Schuldig Contingent. Probably has to do with their Hello Kitty fetish, yo. The chocolate was divvied up between the two systems. Good think the Wers like dark chocolate!

Thank you to nekojita for the tea! We could completely smell it upon opening the envelope. It is awesome, yo. I think between you and a couple other friends, we are set with nummy tea until at least April! Also, Kadaj has laid claim to the solid chocolate snowman.

Thank you all!

Yeah, so it is 1 am and I am still awake...probably won't get to bed until 3 anyway.

The meme:

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

So, I have noticed that there are a lot of "empty" journals on our list here. So many people going to new and shiny services and just leaving an empty husk of themselves here.

Housekeeping is being done. It's not that we really care about the number of people that show up on our flist count - it's that it is quite depressing frankly when people just leave you for somewhere else. Makes the internet feel like one big pile of discarded friends, you know.

This leaves me to clean out the list. Any journals that have not been posted in since May 2009, I am assuming you are gone and therefore, I drop the Ban Hammer. No worries if you are fairly regular posters or you comment to us every so often - you are safe. But if you are unsure, drop me a comment and I will tell you if you are still with us or not, which you probably are. ^^

The dead journals just have to go...

But I laughed at the irony of it all.

See, we just found out that Peter Falk, star of one of our favorite childhood series "Columbo", was diagnosed with Alzheimers.

This is only funny when you consider his character in the TV show and the fact that the character badgered the suspects with questions that he had "forgotten" to ask them earlier.

I realize that Alzheimers is not a laughing matter and I am sorry if I offend anyone. I know shouldn't be laughing and I am totally notsorry. But the damn universe is just killing me with it's ironic sense of humor.

I am in the library trying to do some final touch up work on the Kashmir project. I am also hopping myself up on more soda/cola/pop to keep myself from falling asleep. So tiiirrreeeddd.

The history test wasn't so bad. I think I got all of the matching right. Only two of them might have been confused. And the multiple choice was a little iffy in spots, but it was only worth 35 points, so I don't really care. It's done and that is all that matters.

In a little over three hours I will be home and (hopefully) nestled in bed for a nap, 'coz damn.

Expect to be spammed at will today...especially if I start to drift or get sleepy. Good ole internetz...keeps me awake.

For serious. Really, it's the only way we are getting through the last push of the semester.

I am sitting in psychology right now. See, I have this knack for memorization and putting that stuff in sys memory. I said before that I wasn't going to be a part of this school crap, but... I have an excuse! My brother is stressed out and because I care (yeah, yeah...) I am helping him out with some things. Look, I am not very good at this crap, but at least it is getting done and we are getting points toward our grade, right? And right now, being all stressed out and junk, we don't care what our grades are going to be...just have to get through.

So, I am in psychology and we are reviewing... and I am being one of the potatoes in this big lecture hall of potatoes. It's boring, but hey, I am recording it, so I can go over it later.

Yazuu sold our books back this morning - a whopping $85. Hey, it's more than we thought we were going to get. And that money can go toward several very important things now.

We haven't been sleeping. I think we are probably averaging 5 hours a night. We get to bed around 5a and get up somewhere between 9 and 11 am. It sucks. Really, we are so exhausted that we just can't sleep. And that is just so fucked up. We want to sleep...really. We just can't!

What's left for us before we collapse in a big bed of pillows, cats and comforters:

History exam
Hand in Term paper
Group project presentation - Kashmir
Book critique - Juki Girls
Psych exam

Almost there...

Your packages arrived today!

*major hugs!!*

Thank you so much for the calendars. They were incredibly thoughtful and made us smile. We really loved which month you decided for each of our cats and the quotes that went with them. Thank you for thinking of this! They will probably be something the Wers and we will keep forever. *hugs*

On to Chinese New Year! Waaaaaa!! The tiger is so beautiful. When Yazuu opened it up, he just kept gushing over how gorgeous it was. Guaranteed that it will have a place on the alter cabinet when the new year arrives. And the cash will either be saved, turned into a Chinese dinner or go toward a collective gift. Haven't decided quite yet and have plenty of time to do so.

Thank you for being the thoughtful, warm-hearted, generous and sweet individual you are!

*much love from the whole collective!*

jlsigman, what a surprise!! Thank you for all the mint tea. ^__^ It looks delicious and I cant wait to try it! And more importantly, it really made my day today.

You...don't happen to have a wishlist or anything, do you? I can't guarantee that anything sent would get to you before Christmas, but it would be nice to have the option.

Thank you so much.

*tons of love*

Will be incredibly busy this week wrapping up final projects for classes. Kadaj has taken on the Kashmir project and the psych tests. Yazuu is tackling the book report reading and we still don't know who will be handling the term paper. Kyosuke will finish up the online class tomorrow with exception of the final book critique. Hopefully we won't go crazy...heh heh.

Can't wait to sell books back and are already looking for the cheapest price on all the books we will need next semester. Texts are going to kill us next term because two of the books required are brand new editions. Damn.

Still are not getting comment notifications, so, if we comment to you and you comment back, we may not see it. We're trying to back-track, but we may miss something until we get it sorted out. Looking into a different mail service...not happy with any of them really, but you know how it goes. We need comment notifs!

Now for a little Family Guy and R&R (downtime, how I adore you)...we'll catch up with you all next week.

Later gaters!

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Like free books? Go over there and enter!

If you have the Travel Channel and you want to learn simple wisdom and get a look at your society through the eyes of tribesmen from Tanna, I recommend this wholeheartedly.

One of the best quotes from this evening: "If only they took care of their people they way they take care of their dogs."

Am I, like, the only one not getting comment notifications?

Don't make me have to get a different mail service just for you! *cries*

Like we're not busy enough/have enough to worry about right now.

Final push of the semester...two more weeks of school and technically the last one doesn't count because that is when everything is handed in. May be AWOL for most of the week...have to finish final projects.

No...not candy...

You know the squirrel from that movie "Hoodwinked" after he has had caffeine?

I found mine.

Dr. Pepper...oh yes... *manic vibrating giggles*

Srsly. We have a buzzing noise in out desktop that we are going to have to get looked at when the student money comes in. Omi spent some time with the casing open trying to figure out whether it was a fan motor going out or what, yo. While he was in there, he cleaned up the dusty stuff, wiped up the fans, etc, but when he hooked it up again he noticed that the noise may be coming from the actual hard-drive itself. So, he got the hours of the local computer doctors so that they can give it a free inspection. It could be the hard-drive or one of the rom-drives. Either way, it is something that we have to get repaired.

So, we have just spent the last couple hours removing all essential files - picture, music, schoolwork, executables, etc. - and dropping them on keys for safety, yo. Don't wanna take any chances of losing any of the important shit.

Figures this would happen at the end of the semester with two weeks and several big papers due, yo. But it is a really good thing that we have the mini otherwise we would have to use The Wers's computer and that would be a bummer all the way around, yo.

But we have decided that since we have to have it repaired anyway, we may as well upgrade it with more memory and maybe a new fan. Hey, why the heck not. The bite of all this is that we still won't be able to get it fixed for about three or four weeks. Oh well.

So, hey...pray for our desktop that it isn't anything too serious, yo?

Genesis the Being failed to put deodorant on this morning. I noticed this fact in the middle of history class when I raised my hand to add to discussion. It's not scorching with odor, but I am hoping that others do not notice very much. I am trying not to sit or stand real close to people out of courtesy. How embarrassing.

The body started the monthly also, which could account for some of the earlier stress-induced flail post and the emotions that went with it. This also accounts for the fact that I am looking for someone else to tackle the next class and the discussion on the group project. Maybe I can bribe someone with a promise to make meat buns over winter break?

So, to cheer you up, here is a 33 second clip of a bear pole-dancing!

charged with battery."

Yuk yuk yuk. ^_~

That was in our psychology textbook, in a chapter discussing intelligence.

I am only reading this because my brother is making me so shut up. I can't help it if I memorize thing good for the tests. :P