While I was getting ready for work today (and by that I mean that I was rooting through my clean laundry hamper trying desperately to find clean clothes that matched) I was thinking to myself, gee, self, you should really think of something to write about. Fortunately, my sweet, loving, adorable little kitty decided to help out.

"You need something to write about?" her wicked little eyes seemed to say. "Here, I'll give you something to write about!" She launched herself at my defenseless hand and gashed my forefinger and thumb with her vicious claws, then ran off, chuckling to herself.

I was struck speechless as I watched the wounds instantly start gushing blood, mostly because I couldn't figure out which profanity to utter in my cat's general direction.

This was what it felt like attacked me:

But this is what actually attacked me:

I'm beginning to see a striking similarity.

In other news, I was tagged by Heather Rose over at Mad Madam Mim's Mimsy (absolutely LOVE that blog title) to list seven quirky things about me. And even though I'm having trouble thinking about anything other than the fact that my finger and thumb look like they got trapped in a running garbage disposal, I'm going to give it a shot!

1. In my computer room, I have a big piece of black posterboard tacked above my desk. On it are a slew of band stickers from a bunch of concerts I attended several years ago, because at one point I thought it would be neat to have a collage of band stickers. On black posterboard. >_<>

2. Speaking of Into Eternity, I was at one point determined to have a one night stand with bassist Troy Bleich.* And actually may still be determined to have a one night stand with Troy Bleich.

3. There was a time when I absolutely hated olives. Any kind of olives. But I just thought they were so neat that I desperately wanted to like them. So every time they were available I would force myself to have one or two, and now actually enjoy limited amounts of black olives on pizza and sub sandwiches, and almond stuffed green olives. Behold my awesome willpower!

4. I have never had a cavity. (knock on wood!)

5. I hate wasting soda, but I can rarely drink a whole can. So, to remedy this problem, I'll put the partially finished soda in my fridge with the full intention of finishing it later. Of course I never do, so if you ever open my fridge you're likely to find at least two or three forgotten half empty soda cans forlornly awaiting being emptied and tossed in the recycling.

6. I don't mind cleaning my bathroom, but hate cleaning my kitchen. I usually have a clean sink and toilet, and a counterful of dirty dishes.

7. My cat is psychotic and bent on destroying my hands, but I love her to death anyway. ^_^

The rules were to tag seven people, but I'm tagging anyone who wants to share their quirkiness with the internet! But since I don't completely disregard authority, here are the original rules:

• Link to your original tagger(s).


• Share seven facts about yourself in the post-some random, some weird.


• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.


• Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs/twitter.


• List these rules.

*I got closer to achieving this goal than I would ever have thought possible, by which I mean I actually hung out and had a beer with Troy after a few of his shows, and he remembered who I was. Then I stopped going to concerts because I was broke. Pretty sure he wouldn't remember me now. *sigh*

I know I've been absent, right after I promised I would get back to posting. But here in my little corner of western Washington we were smacked hard with about nine or twelve or a thousand inches of snow. This might not sound like a lot, but it's rare for us to get more than an inch or two maybe once or twice a year. And when I say rare I mean that the last time it snowed this hard was probably about twelve years ago.

Unfortunately this means that the entire town grinds to a screeching halt. Roads don't get plowed or sanded until you're ready to start screaming in frustration, and even then it's only the main roads that are cleared, and none of the little side roads that people actually live on. My neighbor's friend actually had to haul my car up three side streets to the main drag with his giant truck so I could get to my parent's house yesterday.

And by the way, Neighbor's-Friend-Whose-Name-I-Didn't-Catch, I love you forever and am leaving everything I own to you in my will.

I was stuck and unable to get anywhere under my own power for a week. That's enough to make you sort of hostile. Cranky. Somewhat homicidal, even. I still can't park in my driveway, so every time I have to go somewhere I have to tromp through eight billion miles of snow, ice, and slush to get to my car. Which means I'm wearing jeans and work boots to work today, but hey, I'm AT WORK so if anyone complains I'm going to kick them in the shins. And these work boots? Steel toed.

Whew. Sorry. Still sort of cranky. Anyway, all that is why I haven't really felt like posting.

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. I certainly did. You know, after my father and grandfather had to come out and push my car down their unplowed side road after I got stuck halfway down.

After a bit of a hiatus which may or may not have been caused by a sudden obsession with 'Bones', I'm back! And because I'm sure you're wondering what I've been up to for the past couple of weeks....

• I... uh.... watched a lot of 'Bones'. Two whole seasons to be exact.
  


• I got my Christmas tree! I visited a tree farm with the full intention of finding the ugliest tree I could in the reject pile (a.k.a. the clearance area) and despite my best efforts, actually ended up with a really nice looking tree!
  


• I got my eyes examined to the tune of $257. Because everyone loves an extra $257 bill to pay, especially in December. It's not like we have anything else that we need to spent that money on, like gifts. Oh, wait....
  


• I learned how to knit! Which has been a lot more fun than I expected it to be! I am rocking those knitted dishcloths. Although I have yet to figure out what one is actually supposed to do with a dishcloth...
  


• I've had a conniption fit two weeks in a row when I rushed over to Pat's house to watch Supernatural only to discover the episode to be a rerun. I knew they were breaking over the holidays, but I was thinking they were back by now. Last night after enduring my shrieks of rage at the television (the only expression I could find for my now extremely severe Supernatural Withdrawal) Pat looked the show up on the internet and pointed out that the next new episode wouldn't be aired until January 15th. ERRRRGH.

• I realized that it's been so long since I got new Netflix that my little Netflix widget shows that there has been no recent activity on my account. And by 'recent' I'm pretty sure they mean there hasn't been any activity for, oh, six months? Time to put the movies in the mail...

I also caught up on all my favorite blogs, and while doing so, realized that Sleepyjane has presented me with the Superior Scribbler award (which she probably would not have done if she'd known I was going to go AWOL just to sit in front of a TV and watch 'Bones'). Go visit Sleepyjane's blog, she's wonderful!

I was a crazy bad ass special agent who had the power to turn back time by several minutes at will. I had an important mission to save the Dalai Lama from something dire, but I needed the help of an old friend of mine, a female mercenary.

I found her house looking fairly ominous. Before I could walk up to the door and knock, the mercenary and a second woman came leaping out of second floor windows, landing to my right and left, while a man appeared in the front doorway. They all started shooting me. I pulled my guns and started to shoot back, then stopped. Faintly irritated, I thought 'well THIS isn't going to work' and turned back time.

I finally got the mercenary to join me, and we went to visit a Haitian soothsayer who could see the future. We reached her house and walked in without knocking. She had hundreds of tiny snakes held in jars of embalming fluid all over the house. I immediately got the creeps and told the mercenary that we had to leave. She told me not to be stupid, and we wandered around until we found the Haitian. As soon as she saw me, she threw a handful of tiny venomous snakes into my face, and I turned back time.

We decided to forget about the Haitian.

I finally reached were I was supposed to be and found that I had to impersonate the Dalai Lama. This sort of seemed somewhat blasphemous, but I was doing it to save his life. I disguised myself by putting on some robes.... and that was it. Prepared and clearly looking exactly like the Dalai Lama, I went out to sit cross legged on the roof of a car for some kind of procession. I was openly armed with two swords, two guns in shoulder holsters, and a Rambo knife. Everyone was fooled by my ingenious disguise. At the end of the procession, the bad guys finally saw through my charade, and I was forced to engage in an epic action movie battle that would have made an action hero you could name proud.


It was awesome.

My Thanksgiving was wonderful. I spent a good five hours or so with my parents, grandparents, sisters, and one sister's boyfriend. There were traditional dishes like turkey, gravy, stuffing, crumb coated potatoes, and green bean casserole, along with the slightly different brussel sprout thing* and pumpkin rolls. I ate myself into a coma - almost literally. Directly after dinner I staggered to the sofa where I promptly fell asleep for an hour, despite repeated attempts to keep me awake by my little sister. I even missed the call for dessert. Falling asleep was no mean feat, especially since when we're all together, my family is very loud.

My favorite part of the evening was when I sat with my two younger sisters reminiscing about the past and sharing our fond memories of each other.

Caroline, 19, chuckled at a sudden thought. "Hey, remember that time years ago that you dragged me up the stairs by my hair to do your chores?"

I laughed. "Oooh yeah, I remember that! Matt was over!"

"Yeah, and he thought it was hilarious!" Caroline looked down at her arms. "Your nails were all long, and you scratched me up."

"Now that part was an accident."

"Oh, I know!" Caroline grinned. "But the pulling me up the stairs by my hair part wasn't."

"What about that time you threw a glass of water on me when I was in bed asleep, and I chased you up the stairs, punched you a few times, then repeatedly slammed your head into the wall with the door!" I shook my head, remembering the event. "I was in a rage!"

Caroline burst out laughing. "OF COURSE! I was terrified! If I'd only run just a little bit faster I would have made it to Mom's room, locked the door, and gone out the window!"

"Teach you to throw water on me," I said with a laugh.

Susannah, 11, smiled smugly. "I was an angel."

I gave her a look. "Oh please. You were an unholy terror. You were biting way past when you should not have been biting any more. I was hauling you to your room for time out once, and you bit me so hard you drew blood through my sweatshirt."

"I remember the biting," Caroline groaned.

At this point my dad, who had been watching us, laughing intermittently but mostly just staring, broke in. "Do you guys have any good memories of each other?" he asked.

Silence.

Caroline sobered, lost in thought, then visibly brightened as she turned to me. "You read the Shannara books out loud to me! That was great!"

"That was great," I agreed.

Silence.

"Umm.... that's about it," I said to my dad.

We all laughed.

We were joking around, of course. We've had a lot of really great times together that didn't involve violence. I realize that the conversation related above makes us sound like homicidal maniacs (me, especially), but I promise we're not. We were rambunctious kids always testing the limits with each other, and these things that seem to horrific when hearing about them for the first time have really turned into a huge source of amusement for my sisters and I. "Hey, remember that time when you kicked me in the face and broke my glasses"** is always great for a laugh, however strange that may sound.

It sounds cheesy, this last holiday being Thanksgiving an all, but it's times like that, when we're all together and having a good time, that reminds me to be thankful for my family. Thankful that we're all together and relatively healthy and sane. We may fight bitterly at times, we may go through as many awful patches as good ones, but there really is no replacement for family.

Now if only the aunt, uncles, and cousins would move here from the east coast, we'd be set!

How was your Thanksgiving?


*The brussel sprout thing and I have a love/hate relationship. I hate looking at it, but then I eat it and I love it but hate it at the same time because even though it tastes really good I can't stand the texture. Then I look at it and think, "I don't want any more" but I remember how good it tasted so I try it one more time and love it but hate it too....

**That was Caroline kicking me in the face. Just for clarification.