Jade's Babblings

The baby lovies are getting big. They'll be ready for their new home in a little over a month.





This baby is going to be a cinnamon just like Daddy.












And this baby with the red eyes is going to a creamino. I wish I could keep her. I've wanted a creamino forever. :( But she is going to a good home with her sister up there (they are sex-linked mutations so I know they are both girls) and that's all I can ask for.






I used to think baby birds were really ugly, but after breeding lovebirds a couple times now, I actually think they're kind of cute. They are so trusting at this age. I can't wait until they start learning how to fly.

I couldn't have said it better myself so here it is from someone else.

It's 4:34 p.m. I was going to get together with Kirsty again today, but I think her parents must have ended up staying at her house later than she thought or something because she said she'd probably be calling around 3:00. She did come over yesterday, though, and brought some Wendy's with her. We sat around and watched tv. I showed her the two baby lovebirds we have now. Oh, and we looked through my dog breed book and lovebird book. I wish I could just always place my birds with friends so that I don't have to worry about them.

I own this movie on DVD.... I watched The Shining for the first time today. I'd always been too scared to watch it. The scariest thing in there (besides maybe a few parts) was how ugly the woman is who plays his wife. Woo! She's nasty. My favorite part (and I thought, the funniest) was when Jack says "Darling. Light, of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said, I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just gonna bash your brains in. I'm gonna bash 'em right the fuck in." I found that quite amusing for some odd reason.

So, day two of my two weeks with this machine. Man, is this fun!
Not.

It takes me twice as long to do normal things like take a shower or even get up off the couch. TWICE yesterday I yanked the power cord out of the wall because when I'm sitting on the couch or when I go to bed at night I'm supposed to have the machine plugged into a wall outlet. So I forgot twice yesterday and got up suddenly. Thank god I remembered to even carry the machine with me. I have a feeling it might be slightly hurtful to just rip that tubing right off. Ouch.

I stayed up until about 2 a.m. watching tv on the couch and then fell asleep out here until John woke me up around 3 and I finally went to bed. I slept until about 9 or 9:30 and then Gunther found a new annoying sound to make incessantly and at a very high volume. I can only describe it as a squeeky toy on crack.

I watched two good movies last night that I didn't think would be all that great. If Only starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. I sobbed through the last half hour of it. Geez.
And then most surprising was an ABC family original called Searching for David's Heart about a girl whose brother died a year ago on her birthday and he was a heart donor. It's sappy of course at all the expected moments and they could have done more with character development, but it's the family channel so what do you really expect? Cried my eyes out through that one too. lol. Sounds like a fun evening right?

No phone calls last night, though, so that was good. I hope it continues tonight. Tomorrow is my first day of staying motivated to work at home 8-5 and the good part is, I get to give the phone to either J or B tomorrow. That will be a welcome relief.

My back isn't healing properly from surgery so on Thursday my super fun vacuum dressing stuff showed up..... at my work. ::sigh:: There were like six boxes of crap I had to lug up from the dock to my desk and then down to my car at the end of the day.

The wound specialist nurse called me at work today and informed me that we're being charged $125 a day to have this stuff. What on EARTH costs $125 a DAY??? So she wanted to get me all set up with it asap. My manager just got back from Germany the day before and I basically accosted her in the cst lab and told her "I have to leave work right now to go to the hospital and I'm not going to be back for two weeks." Yea.... Went over well. But then I explained that I can't drive for two weeks and that I can work from home so it won't be too bad. She was okay with it.

J had already left early and so I had to leave B alone at the office manning the inbox. She seemed fine with that, though. They were both pretty nice about the whole two week thing. They seemed to think I should just take the whole time off. That would be nice, but A. I can't afford it and 2. I don't think they'd remain okay with that and once I got back it would be like it was all over again.

John took me to the hospital to meet with the nurse and surgeon and then we dropped a doctor's note off with my manager, C. She met John in the lobby. there was no way I was going in with all this stuff attached to me. In case you're wondering, this is not fun.

So I think Kirsty is coming over for lunch and a movie today and then John'll be home around 1:30. It's going to be so boring being stuck here for two weeks. I mean, there's only so much ER and Judging Amy you can watch during the day, you know? It's nice to be able to work from home, but at the same time it's going to be difficult to stay motivated to work on stupid cases with stupid people (LOL) while I'm lying on the couch....

I'm on-call the remainder of the weekend. Last night one of the shift leads (the only people allowed to call us on-call) called at 11:00. I was sleeping on the couch cuz I wasn't sure how comfortable I would be in bed. I had just fallen asleep. It wasn't even an emergency. Some customer couldn't generate his own key on our website we have for it - it kept timing out - so he insisted they call the on-call person. He wrote an email and said to call him. Um, no. So I emailed him back and said to send his switch s/n, worldwide name, and transaction code. 11:30 rolls around and I emailed the shift lead who called me and said I was going back to bed. Two minutes after I send that the customer emails back and says "nevermind, we got the application to work. thanks anyway." You IDIOT!!!!! Took me an hour to get back to sleep.

Take a screenshot of your desktop and share it. I got the idea from Chad Fox.

For Katie. I just still love this picture and even though she passed away in August, I still put this as my background every once in a while.

::edit::
Jan. 23 -
I should have added the link to Katie.
Also, Chad has now added a lot of people's desktop entries to his blog here. Mine is on there. Yay! :)

Your (female) manager comes into your cubicle (shared by two other girls) and mentions how we all must be particularly bitchy at the same time of the month, being in such tight quarters and all. At which point they begin to expound on their cycles and when they're due and then ask me the same thing. Oh.....dear god.....

Normalcy returns -
our other manager (a guy, whew. lol) came in to check on us yesterday. We informed him of the issues we are having with the people from me and J's old department downstairs. During training four months ago we borrowed a projector. When we were done using it, we returned it. Simple, right? Not at this company. There have been various emails going back and forth between our trainer, my old manager, J, Sandi (another woman who trained with us and is still downstairs), etc. about this stupid missing projector. Apparently, no one can find it. And apparently, even though our company just laid off 1000 people (and called it "bringing the company closer together" in the company-wide email) and just sent the sales team to Vegas where they hired Aerosmith to play; they cannot, unfortunately, afford to replace a projector. So now the "big guy" downstairs (not my old managers, but HIS manager) is flipping out.

Basically they accused one of us of stealing it. Once we told P that (our other manager) he said he'd have a word with the other guy downstairs. It's nice to have good managers on your side.

Just listening to it now. Sorry.

I'm all moved into my new space. I've got my c.h.i.m.p. mirror up from thinkgeek, all my phots, my cool magnets, etc.
I've already had one guy stop by and comment on the picture I have of John in his Fett stuff and me in my Mara Jade stuff (ugh, the picture is better). Yippee.

I believe John and I just made the decision last night to change the whole theme of our wedding. We were going for some nice Star Wars touches, but with not that many Star Wars fans going we figure it's probably not worth it. I did point out to John that we're not doing it for the guests; I thought of it more like a special thing for us since that's how we met. But it's also better to have people there who share in the fun and there really won't be many who even know or care what SW is so scratch that.

It's better this way anyway. It'll save us some money, for one. Doing a SW wedding costs a lot more because you basically have to order everything custom - favors, cake, cake top, invites, etc. So now we are going to do more of a "cinderella" sort of theme. Just the prince charming thing is kind of cute. And the good/bad thing is a lot of people do that for weddings so it's easy to find stuff for it. We're already saving $150 on the favors. And the invites... .whew. Invites are expensive. We're probably saving about....$400 on invites. Custom ones are really horribly priced.

In the meantime, anyone know where I can find a cinderella/prince cake topper? I've found two so far. One is like $30 and horribly cheesy and one is $195 and kind of defeats the purpose of saving money. I like this one personally. But it's not really themed. That's okay with me, though. I didn't have many traditional things the first time around and it's kind of nice to have them this time around. :)

First off, you have to check out this site - Etiquette Hell. I've been reading it for over a year, but it's especially important if you're getting married as it lists exactly what not to do. I've been amusing myself at work reading about all the horrible faux pas.

So maybe our new space isn't exactly shiny and new, but it's new to us and it's a whole hell of a lot better than being in the lab with all the customer support people. They bitch and moan when we get to work from home. Just because we have the same manager doesn't mean we are in the same department. J and B are over to my right at the two person space and I am the one closest to our cubicle door, but at least I am in my own space. It sucks that anyone walking by in the hall can just peer in at me and not even see the other two, but I'll take this over being at each other's elbows any day.

I've already put up a few pictures that I had cramped into my old desk and I've got my dry erase board up and my own cabinet to store stuff in..... Honestly, it's like christmas all over again. lol. And I'm soooooo glad I got to move in here before I have to be out cuz of my surgery complications. I would have hated to be stuck at home while J and B are setting up the new space. I would have felt pretty left out if they were doing it without me.

I had an uneventful weekend. John and I watched High Fidelity on DVD Friday night, but I wasn't feeling well so I didn't really focus on it. I was better by Saturday and John let me sleep in until about 11:00. That felt awesome as I never do that anymore. We ran some errands (set up his parents' printer for them, picked up a FREE dvd player they got us from John's cousin, got some stuff at CVS...), and watched Transporter 2 (good, but way beyond "it's a movie so just believe it". Some of the stuff was just freakin' riduculous) and Hitch (better than I thought it would be). Sunday John worked. I thought Kirsty was going to come over so I got up at 9:00 to clean, but she ended up having company so I watched movies and surfed online all day. But at least I got some cleaning done. I also made some cool little figures out of clay. That was fun. I like sculpting. And I'm not actually that bad at it. I can make little animals pretty well and I made this cute little teddy bear and doll too. Oh, and a miniature house that is supposed to be made of lincoln logs. I'll take some pictures after I bake the stuff.

And now it's Monday and the week begins all over again. I'm on-call starting today. Augh. Kirsty and I are going to work out on Wednesday, though. That should be good for me. I've become entirely too lazy lately and I want to lose a little (just a little) bit of weight. The gym is free for employees so that's nice too. :)

I'm sick of having to deal with this recovery process. The surgery was back in OCTOBER!!!

I just had my sixth or seventh post op today. Ergh. Now comes the fun part. They're going to try something new in my super fun healing process and it's going to take about two weeks to heal up. It's kind of a last resort type of thing which means that I will be out of work. The surgeon is going to give me a doctor's note that says this will take two weeks. In the meantime, I'm not entirely out of work because I can still work from home. The only difference is that I'm not actually in the office. One of those weeks I'll even be on-call so it's not like I won't be working my ass off.

So now just comes the stressful part of waiting to get the note to show to my boss. I hate seeming like I'm such a total slacker. I mean, they can say "your health comes first" until they're blue in the face, but you know my co-workers and manager want to smack me...

In other happier news, I think Kirsty may be getting a dog this weekend. It'd be so awesome if her dog and Pixel got along because then Pix would have a buddy to play with. That'd be a lot of fun for her, I think. That way she can play around with a dog her size rather than picking on poor Amelie all the time.

There is so much wedding stuff swimming around in my head right now, but with the wedding nine months away there's not much I can do. Most of the stuff doesn't have to be done right now so..... big waiting game.

John heard from one of his groomsmen last week that the guy has to drop out due to scheduling issues. That's understandable, but it still sucks big time for John. In good news, he heard from his third groomsmen whom we were worried about because we hadn't heard from him in forever and we thought maybe he was of the same negative opinion as everyone else (the "don't do it!" crowd), but he called John last night and says he hadn't even heard about any of the dramatic goings-on and that he was totally still in. He said that as John's friend he would never bail on him like that and if he had something to say he would have just said it already and not ambushed us or anything. So that is a big relief to John I'm sure. And to me too.

Other than that, got a videographer appointment to go to at the end of the month and that's about it. Yipee.

I cannot do splits.
I hate challenge.
My dreams disturb me.
I often wear dresses.
I've been called "fake" before.
My ears have never been pierced.
Good posture is a turn-on.
Jesus is my homeboy.
I hate all the ideas of the hippie population.
Freddie Mercury is a god.
I have a perverted mind.
My muscles are bigger than your head.
I eat too much.
I enjoy being checked out.
My skin-tone is synonymous to xerox paper.
I hate bottled water.
I've sent something to PostSecret.com.
I want to send something to PostSecret.com.
I am so sorry.
There are words and/or phrases that make me cringe when I hear them.
I love to watch gameshows.
I'm just like everyone else...
Caffeine is terrible.
I need to shave.
In person, I'm very private. On OD/blogger/LJ, I'm very open.
In person, I'm very open. On OD/blogger/LJ, I'm very obscure.
I cannot sleep in.
I hate being told how to do things that I know perfectly well how to do.
I enjoy foreplay way more than sex itself.
I can run a five-minute mile.
1,000 sit ups is an easy task.
I don't do dairy.
Pink Floyd... YES.
My eyesight is better than my hearing. (I think mine are tied for horribleness)
"Hate" is a word I use a lot. (Maybe, not a lot, but too much, yes.)
I'm a stereotypical teenager.
I think about death a lot.
I can't wait until I have kids.
I am never bored.
I collect Beanie Babies.
I sleep on a waterbed.
I am/was in Water Polo.
I hate to read.
I lie more than I breathe.
I have a new crush every week.
I sing very well.
A shower sounds really good right now.
My friends make me drawings. (I used to get awesome ones from Sarah. I don't even know if she still draws now...)
I am respected at school/work/wherever. (HA!)
The song "Bananas" by Gwen Stafani helps me spell bananas.
Most of my friends are depressed.
I own a car I do not drive.
Cartoons, that's all I watch.
I love it when my friends are happy.
I read the Davinci Code.
I'm Jewish.
Pasta is my favorite.
My cat's name is Fluffy.
I am intimidating.
I know all the songs in A Nightmare Before Christmas by heart. (Thanks to John. ;) )
The glass is half-empty.
I say "That's gay" a lot.
I am a very light sleeper.
I hug all my friends.
I feel dumb whenever I make typos.
I can't dance.
Rap is the only true music.
Lightning frightens me.
I wish I were cooler.
I hate buying things for my girlfriend/boyfriend.
Foreign movies irritate me.
I always use semicolons.
I wear a lot of makeup.
I'm homosexual.
Drugs help me cope with things.
I have cheated on a girlfriend/boyfriend.
I hate shirts with writing on them.
My cellphone ringtone is some popular song.
I like Green Day.
I wear a lot of jewelry.
My friends tell me everything.
Math isn't my favorite subject, but I'm good at it.
I have been physically taken advantage of.
I'm obsessed with OD/blogger/LJ
I celebrate my pets' birthdays.
I've been hit on by lesbians.
There is something I am addicted to.
I have a lot of zits on my face.
I hate watching the movie if I haven't read/finished the book.
I don't have a myspace.
My parents are restrictive.
Sex scenes are my favorite.
I hate the smell of gasoline.
I've watched Barney.
My favorite store in the mall is the bookstore.
By trying to be "nonconformist," I look like everyone else.
I'm putting off something.
Techno is a guilty pleasure.
I like Ska.
I laugh at jokes I don't understand.
People say I'm funny.
A friend of mine is named Claire.
I hate all of my ex boyfriends/girlfriends.
I ride a motorcycle.
I'm a stickler for grammar.
I dye my hair.
People judge me.
Gigantic sweatshirts = love.
This survey is kinda neat.
I never wear my hair down.
I judge other people based on the music they listen to.
I'm nosey.
Fire is so beautiful.

I had to drive out to my parents' house this weekend to pick up my wedding dress. I really miss living in the country sometimes. A town so.... not small, because it's actually quite a large "small town", but small-town-minded that when giving a townie directions you can say things like "the four corners", "the orchard", and so on.

Here are my bad-quality camera phone pictures.

This is my favorite old house out there. It's so beautiful with the turret at the top and whatnot. Too bad they never fix it up. I think that if you don't own a house and someone is treating theirs like crap, then you should be able to take it from them. :)

CD Driving School. My tiny little driver's ed building. To the right of it and across the street is an actual store called "The General Store".

Ken's Citgo. It's open until 7 p.m. Woo hoo. What a party town, eh?



The road home.
I love how the trees frame it. I used to walk down this street every day from the bus stop. Kimmy and I would sing Grease songs and we'd all get some exercise in.


The Holiday House. So named because at Easter, Christmas, Halloween, all that, it becomes a total eye sore with all the decorations put on it.


And the destination. Here's my parents' old brick house. My great granddad built it and my dad and friends added on the second story when I was just two years old. I love this house. 22 years and it's still not finished. It doesn't need to be, though. It's got character.

ALBS was hosting a lovebird contest last month. The prizes were pretty cool - playgyms, treats, toys - so I thought I would enter. I sent a submission for Button and one for Justarius. I though I'd play off their sympathies with Justarius being the one-foot wonder.

Well, we didn't win any prizes, but Button did get an honorable mention for "most curious". That's because I sent in a picture of her twisting her head up to look at the camera. Quite cute.

That describes John a bit more than me right now. But it also coincides with Pixel. Poor Pixel pup. She had surgery today. Let me back up...

Yesterday J met me outside my condo and I handed the on-call phone off to her. Thank God! Then John and I went out to the cafe down the street for breakfast. I had eggs fritatta, which was an open-faced omelette with spinach, tomatoes, and mozarella cheese. SO yummy! Then we headed out to see Harry Potter one last time.

I took a nap on the couch from about 4 to 6, which is how I knew I wasn't feeling well. John's all stuffed up too and his eyes won't stop watering. My throat is sore and my sinuses are burning and...augh, not fun. My mom called to ask me why when she would put her cursor in the middle of a sentence (she's working on a research paper) to retype something, it would start typing over what she already wrote. I told her to hit the "insert" key and she called me a technology genius! Wish I could please customers at work that easily. She's going to come out on Friday to drop of my wedding gown! I can't wait to finally take some pictures of it. The temptation to try it on is going to be hard to resist for the next nine months.

Today I stayed home sick. Too bad that I called my manager and THEN got the call from J that she and B were working from home today because of the snow. Ah well. I slept until 10. John dropped Pixel off at the vet at 8. She was having two of her baby teeth taken out because her big girl teeth grew right over them. Poor baby had to have anesthesia and everything. We didn't get to pick her up until 5:30. Sucked.

We watched "Must Love Dogs" while waiting. I wasn't impressed. I love John Cusak (and Diane Lane is pretty cool too) so I was disappointed. It had some cute parts, but.....ultimately fell short.

Well, it's getting late and I'm still feeling like crap. I think I'm going to go lie down on the couch and watch some of the Beauty and the Geek marathon. Good show.

It's 9:39 p.m. and I'm sitting here watching "timescape" - a Star Trek TNG episode on DVD. I just felt like a little comfort food.

I've been on-call since Christmas morning. It wasn't a bad week per se. I only had a few calls....until last night and today. I stayed up until 1 a.m. last night reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I finally finished it (I say finally, but it only took me two days to read it). Then I fell asleep on the couch. I didn't watch the ball drop or anything. I lost excitement for that around the same time that Sarah stopped coming over for Family Day on new year's eve and we used to have fun staying up all night.

Around 1:30 I got a call. Someone's softworks product had stopped working and they needed a new key. At 3:30 a.m. I got up and took a shower and John helped me with my surgery stuff. I went to bed at 4 a.m. and at 9 a.m. (yes, a bit late, but really I only had about five hours of sleep) one of the shift leads called me with an ER key request. I got up and did it, went back to bed. Another call about fifteen minutes later. I gave up and got up. I handled a few calls easily.

At about noon I got a request for a license key transfer - normally an easy request. Problem was, their s/n's weren't valid. It's all very complicated and I'd explain it if I felt like it, but I don't so you'll live. The guy who needed it was part of my company and he needed the transfer for a customer. He was a complete jerk to me. None of these people ever realize that you are on-call, that you are sitting at home dealing with all this crap on your day off. And if they did realize, most of them might not care. So he was a jerk, then he said he wanted to get my manager involved and we'd all have a chat.....He got his manager involved, blah blah blah.

Basically it took me three or four hours to take care of this issue and I had to call Kirsty, which I always feel bad about. But she helped me out a bit and I got it taken care of. What a jerk this guy from my company was, though. Ergh. It just irks me.

John brought home "Four Brothers" and "Must love dogs". We watched the first one - better than expected, and not as violent as expected, a nice surprise. We'll watch the other one tomorrow. First I am meeting J outside my condo tomorrow morning and she's picking up the on-call phone from me. Thank God. Then John and I will go catch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire once more in theaters before it's gone. Sounds like a plan.

And now back to writing down quotes from Dragonlance...