I've been extremely fortunate to have never found myself in a vehicle versus vehicle battle to the death, which is how I tend to think of car accidents. The closest I've ever come was running into a deer going 55 mph. The poor suicidal thing leapt right out in front of me, leaving me literally no time to react. Even if I could have swerved, I wouldn't have. Huge trees on one side and a steady stream of oncoming traffic also going 55 mph makes that decision pretty easy. The deer, a fairly small specimen, crunched in the hood of my car and nearly came through my windshield. My insurance barely covered it.

• I cleaned out my fridge two weeks ago, and it's taken me this long to be able to talk about it. It was terrible... the horrors... I just.... no. I can't. Not yet.

• I went to go see My Bloody Valentine 3D opening day. Except... the 3D part? I wish. I was all excited about seeing flames and pickaxes and murder victims flying off the screen at me (and I'm not going to lie, I wouldn't have been upset about shirtless 3D Jensen Ackles), but apparently my town is small and backwards enough that my local theater didn't have the correct projectors to play the movie in 3D. If I wanted to see it in 3D my options were to either take the ferry into Seattle, which would cost an arm and a leg plus taking over an hour, or drive all the way to the next county. Because none of the theaters in my neck of the woods were playing the flick in 3D. ERRRRGGGHHH. But despite the disappointment, Jensen Ackles was still hot.

• I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft (I know, big shock) and I'm ready to kick my WoW blog, Power Word: Totem, back into gear. I took a deep breath and erased the 20-odd posts or so that were already there and decided to start fresh. The Matriarch of my collection of random toons, Harpy, dinged 74 the other day. She's slowly forcing her way to 80.

• I spent some voluntary time at work this weekend working on my Adobe Illustrater training program. Watching the training videos made me feel like I was watching a bad stand up comedian. Mr. Illustrator Trainer made an attempt to be funny with this gem: "While holding down your mouse button, hold shift, ctrl, and alt to do xxx. But now we need to change this other thing. You're out of hands! Unless you're an octopus. But if you're an octopus, I guess you don't have any hands, just tentacles! HAHAHAHA!" Really? Who thought it was a good idea to record you while you're sounding like an idiot?

Once upon a time, before Becca had a Blogspot blog, she had a Livejournal. The year was 2004, which would make Becca 19 (but she turned 20 in September '04). During this period of time Becca was still living with her parents and two sisters. She hadn't yet made the move to her first apartment (and by apartment I mean glorified 350(ish) square foot garden shed in someone's back yard), and in fact didn't even have a driver's license yet.

Becca was having a blast dating a fantastic guy named Ian (whom she has remained friends with), and was working part time as a glass blower's assistant and as an office assistant at the real estate company where she still works - though now, five years later, she has her real estate license and the back of her business card says "Listing/Marketing Coordinator".

Becca posted intermittently in her Livejournal, and used a small JPEG of Tank Girl as her profile picture. Her posts were generally short and used more as a communication device with her friends, since when Becca had a Livejournal all her friends had a Livejournal too.

Perusing Becca's old Livejournal entries were somewhat amusing:

"March 10th, 2004:

I just finished watching the second disc of 'V'. LIZARD BABIES!! HAHA!!! LIZARD BABIES!!!"

Stellar entry. Becca conveyed her thoughts so intelligently, yet left her opinion open to disagreement and healthy debate...

What's next? Ah yes, parts two and three of "The Housesitting Saga".

"March 13th, 2004:

Still housesitting. Still watching bad movies on the Sci-Fi channel. Tonight it was 'Snakehead Terror'. I decided not to watch 'Shark Hunter' which was on after 'Snakehead Terror' because I've already seen it.

Wow. That's sad. "

"March 14th, 2004:

Sci Fi channel movies watched today include 'Return of the Living Dead 3', 'Day of the Dead', 'Route 666', and 'Dagon.' Still bored."

Absolutely RIVETING! Before Becca was posting her painfully amateur movie reviews, she was simply listing off the titles!

"June 28th, 2004:

"Post offices are evil! I've always hated post offices, maybe even been a little afraid of them, and Nils made me go into one! I knew something bad was going to happen because of this, and I was right! We walked into the post office, deposited the mail in the proper receptacle, got back in the car and started it, and the CD player stopped working!!! It won't even eject the CDs that are already in it, so it has effectively eaten my Therion CD! Post offices are EVIL!"

Apparently Becca was once superstitious about.... post offices?

"August 29th, 2004:

So I dreamed last night that we all went to Oregon, and when we got there Sean told us that his shower was possessed by an evil spirit and we couldn't use it. O_O So we decided that we all had to take a shower, so we hung like fifty crosses up in his bathroom. We came back later, and all the crosses were upside down, the shower was still possessed, and we still couldn't use it. XD"

Then Becca actually went to Sean's apartment in Oregon, and was relieved to find that his shower was not, in fact, possessed.

"September 9th, 2004:

Well, I'm being hired as an artist's model for $15 an hour for two weekends this month. The glassblowing studio where I work is hosting a head/shoulders sculpting workshop and one of the people I work with is taking it and asked me if I wanted the modeling job. O_o I've never even thought about doing something like this before, but hey, $15 an hour to walk around and look serious. I can do that. XD "

Becca has a slew of photos that she took of the roomful of clay sculptures that were fashioned in her likeness. It's sort of creepy.

Okay, I'm done talking about myself in the third person.

It was fun re-reading a year's worth of silly journal posts from 2004 (I can't quite make myself call that LJ a blog). It made me a little nostalgic for the days of no bills, staying up until 6AM playing video games, and dating Ian. Things were a lot easier back then, and I had a blast.

2004 was a good year.

Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can dredge up some photos from '04 - the days before I had a digital camera - and scan them!

I just have something quick. Something that's been bugging me since this morning.

WHY have they not invented panty hose in some kind of material that doesn't catch and tear on ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING???? ERRRGGHH!!!

If I'm wearing a skirt it's impossible to not wear them - it's cold outside, and feels vaguely unprofessional to show up at work with bare legs in the middle of winter. And even though I always do my absolute damndest to try to keep them from tearing, it's inevitable that within two hours of leaving my house they'll be completely destroyed.

I believe that the person who invented panty hose did so as an evil scheme to separate women from their money. And IT'S WORKING.

>_<

This is me:

This is ALSO me:

They're going to lock me up one day.

I decided this year that I need to start writing in a diary again. I was pretty good about writing when I was fifteen and sixteen, and let me tell you, re-reading the things I wrote back then is freaking hilarious! The angst! The drama! In addition to the hilarity, it really makes me happy that I'm not a teenager any more.

Humor is not the reason I want to keep a diary again, although it probably will be pretty funny to look back in ten years at my twenties ("the angst, the drama!" my thirty-four year old self will giggle). No, the real reason is that if I'm unexpectedly murdered, I want the attractive police detective or FBI agent to have something juicy to search for clues in.

I get such a kick out of reading a book or watching a movie where someone is murdered and the investigator discovers the treasure trove of wicked little secrets - The Diary - in the victim's bedroom. Stories of stalkers, illicit affairs, furious parents... all held within the pages of The Diary, and inevitably leading to the arrest of the murderer.

Now, if I was murdered, the attractive cop or FBI agent wouldn't have a diary to read, thus lowering the chances of my murderer being caught. Clearly this problem needs to be rectified, because we never know when we might find a serial killer waiting for us in our coat closet.

My diary won't be a composition notebook like it was when I was fifteen, nor will it be a cute or pretty book with 'Diary' emblazoned on the cover. No, mine will be a forbidding, thick, leather bound tome that I'll keep hidden under the false bottom of a dresser drawer. The detective who finds it will feel a chill when he touches the cover, not quite able to bring himself to pick it up yet, because a book like that just screams 'scandal'!

Of course, it will be quite a let down when the detective starts reading:

"Jan. 6: Came home for lunch today. I had a peanut butter sandwich and some vegetable beef soup. SOOO GOOD! Kitty has fleas again."

"Jan. 7: I remembered to pick up some Advantage at the vet's office for kitty. Pat's coming over. We're going to play Grand Theft Auto and watch Resident Evil movies! Yay!"

"Jan 8: Forgot to set my alarm last night! I've never gotten ready for work so fast!"

Obviously I'm going to have to introduce some more scandal to my life to make sure my diary isn't a disappointment in the event of my murder. On the plus side, my blog will get a lot more interesting! Don't expect all the details of my new, scandal-filled life, though - I have to leave some secrets for The Diary!

I don't think I'm obsessed.

Do you?

Okay, so maybe that's a question that I don't actually need answered right now. Sleep on it. See how you feel in the morning. Then let me know.

Tragically, it's been over a month since I've been able to get my weekly Supernatural fix. Even though I'm not crazy about the direction the show is taking this season, and in fact spent the last two brand new episodes snarling futilely at Pat about how angry it's making me... I WANT TO WATCH A NEW EPISODE. You might be thinking this is mostly because Jensen Ackles is divinely beautiful, and you wouldn't be entirely wrong. Up until now the show has been amazing, and I've been singing it's praises since I first started watching it. I watched it for its brilliant writing, great acting, and magnetic story. Jensen Ackles was just a bonus. A huge bonus, granted, but just a bonus. Now, though... with the writing slipping so much, it is starting to turn into a 'damn, I really want to watch Jensen Ackles in something new' rather than a 'I can't wait until the next episode! SO EXCITED!'

I think the show starts airing again next week, and I'm clinging desperately to the hope that the writers will haul it out of its slump and make me fall in love with it again.

BUT! Even if the next brand new Supernatural episode doesn't grace our televisions next week, I have something else to look forward to:

Coming out January 16th!

Why would I be looking forward to My Bloody Valentine 3D? Aside from the fact that it's a horror flick in 3D, of course. Who wouldn't want to go see a 3D horror film?

Well, this:

Yes, Jensen Ackles stars in My Bloody Valentine.

Come on. You know you're excited!

I know there's not much substance to this post. But seriously, with two whole photos of Ackles, do we really need substance?

I really enjoy doing things with thread and yarn. I sometimes cross stitch, but not very often. I'm working on a pattern so epic that I really need to be able to sit down and work on it for a couple of hours to make dragging out all my materials worth the effort. But yarn... ahh, quick and easy, instant satisfaction.

I know how to crochet, or at least I know how to crochet one thing. It's called a granny square. When I crochet a granny square, I have a process. I assemble a huge amount of yarn of all different colors, work on it until it's big enough to cover a queen sized bed, and call it an "ugly blanket". TaDA! Finished!

My mom had been bugging me about learning to knit off and on for a long time, and I had been resisting. 'I'm not even remotely interested,' I told her. Two straight sticks that looked like I should only pick them up to eat Chinese food seemed a bit overwhelming compared to my single crochet hook. I couldn't fathom how knitting could possibly work. Then one random day I suddenly decided for no reason whatsoever that I needed to learn how to knit. So I went over to my mom's house, and she taught me the basics. A couple days later I had finished my first dishcloth (apparently I have perfect tension, yay!), and mom taught me a few more stitches.

There are just so many things one can knit! Sweaters, hats, gloves, and scarves, of course - but did you know there are also patterns out there for things like knitted penis (complete with balls) shaped chap stick holders?

I'm inspired to continue to learn about knitting. I never had any ambitions with crochet, I was more than happy with the one thing I knew how to do and had no interest in learning anything else. But with knitting I'm excited about learning more and being able to do more and more advanced things. You know, like penis shaped chap stick holders!

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.