Happy Holidays

Today was Thanksgiving, and tomorrow will be Memorial Day, Easter, and Christmas all rolled into one. Since I was gone for a few major holidays this year, my family is having them in May. Not full-blown holidays, mind you, just little pseudo-celebrations. We had a turkey roll tonight with mashed potatoes and green beans, and mom made a pumpkin pudding for dessert. Tomorrow we'll be having hot dogs for dinner (Memorial Day) and jelly beans and devilled eggs and chocolate on the side (Easter).

Where does Christmas come in, you ask? Well, tomorrow is the day that I get my new pets, which I am very excited about. Even more anticipation in getting these than in getting Christmas presents this year.

Wherever life finds you during this holiday season, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and a Happy Easter, and may your Memorial Day be memorable.

Un-unemployed

Hooray, tomorrow I begin working again. I'm looking forward to my new job- it's a place that I like, it's really close to home (we're talking a 30 second commute here), and the people so far seem friendly and more clean-cut than my old coworkers. Let's all hope that I like working there, and that I like the people and stuff. Getting the job was the most painless thing in the world- I got an application, took it home, filled it out, brought it back a few days later (today), and the manager interviewed me and hired me after about 15 minutes of me walking in the door. No, it's not the most glamorous job out there, yes, I'm still working with food, but it's better than my old job and it's absolutely better than my recent state of no-job-at-all. I'm excited- I now will have a reason to wake up in the mornings. This is obviously a Good Thing, especially when you take into consideration that the thing that will keep me busy and not dying of boredom will also supply me with money. In return for what? In return for having something to do all summer, that's what! Having a job rawks.

Also, since I now have a job and will soon be earning money, I can now start seriously working on obtaining that pet that I want, which is now looking like those two pets that I want. I imagine that I'll have them sometime within the next month, if all goes well with the job and the pet-obtaining process. I'm very much looking forward to meeting with the breeder and checking out the various animals, choosing which ones will be right for me.

All in all, this summer is shaping out to be pretty good. A job to keep me busy, a pet (or two) to keep me company, and an income to keep me happy. The only drawback? When I talk about waking up in the mornings for my job, I mean the mornings. Like, up with the sun. It may even be up before the sun; I don't even know, because I've never woken up early enough to know when the sun rises. Early to bed and early to rise, as they say.

Don't get your hopes up

I don't really have anything to say, since I haven't done a whole lot of anything during the past few weeks. Well, other than getting a cute orange skirt a few days ago for seven dollars, and getting a black eye tonight for free. I'll give you internet people a picture of the cute orange skirt, since the picture of the black eye didn't turn out very well.

Mainly I just wanted to reassure you that I'm still alive, and the blog is not dead. It's just in a dormant phase while I have a boring life for a few weeks. I've got some tricks up my sleeve, though. I have plans to obtain a job really soon (I'll be applying at every place of business in a five mile radius of my house on friday), and I also have supersecret amazing plans of coolness that will make me less lonely. No, I'm not hiring a male escort, I'm thinking about buying a pet. But not just any pet! It's a supersecret amazing pet that if I actually get one, I'll tell you more about. Here's a hint as to the species: it has fur. Is it a hippo? Is it a stoat? Is it a yeti? Those of you not in the know, please leave a comment with your guess as to what would be my perfect pet. If you have a better idea than me, I might just change my mind!

Grammar Nazi

I used to be one, probably from grade 8-11. My senior year of high school, I relaxed a lot about it, realizing that people are going to talk the way they talk no matter what I thought about it, so I should just chill. Then I took a linguistics course during my freshman year of college, in which I learned about descriptive and proscriptive grammar. Now I essentially root for descriptive; if everyone in history was all grammar nazi-like, nothing would ever change, and we'd only speak one language, and talking would be boring. Innovation and evolution are part of language, so all you people who visibly cringe when someone uses a word "improperly," you can all just shut up. I hate you. Alright, I really don't hate you, but people who use their so-called superior knowledge to make normal people look up to them, they really annoy me and sometimes make me angry.

That all being said, I still have little bits of my past control-freak that surface now and again. One that really bugs me? When people try to type "Voila," but end up saying "viola." Those two words are not the same. It really shouldn't bother me, since spelling isn't terribly important in the grand scheme of things, and especially since neither of those words is used very frequently. But still. Every time I see "Viola!" in somebody's writing, I think to myself, "Cello! Bassoon! Marimba!," even though I know what they really meant to say.

Now What?

I'm back home. I spent the day with my parents, going to lunch with them and grocery shopping with them. Much as I love them and have missed them, I really hope that the rest of my days don't follow that pattern this summer. I guess I need to find a job, and I hope that the job will keep my busy enough to forget the fact that I don't have any friends in this country. Sigh. Eight months doesn't seem like a long time, but I feel so amazingly out of the loop here. I went back to my old workplace just now to visit, which was a mistake. It only depressed me, and the two people who I was hoping to see weren't working at the time. The few coworkers I did recognize were vaguely friendly, but not very interested to see me, as I was not very interested to see them. I've been back in town for about a whole 24 hours, and I'm already lonely and sad that I left Canadia. Also very bored. Perhaps I'll watch a movie tonight, to distract me from the fact that I have absolutely nothing to do: no school, no work, no friends to call, no shopping to do (because of the lack of money to spend), no jobfinding to do until monday morning. Not even parents to hang out with; they've got a previous engagement with friends and food. Thank you for reading my long paragraph of boringness. Sorry I'm not more exciting right now, but perhaps my life will pick up again when I see people at church tomorrow, and start looking for a job on monday. Cross your fingers for me.

A Quick Update on the Trip

I'm not going to detail the past three days. I'm far too tired. Suffice it to say that each day has been excellent beyond belief, and I'm loving the whole idea of hostels, especially the four most recent ones we've stayed at. Each one has been so absolutely cool and breathtaking, with great locations in cities and in the middles of nowheres, and wow. Just great. Tonight we're staying about 50 feet from the ocean, and I'll leave you with a picture of our explorations on the beach this afternoon.
(please don't mock my giant calves. They're genetic and I can't do anything about them)