just an update on my reading list: i actually spent $15 on myself. if you are wondering if it was on undies..it wasn't. no, i still don't have new undies, and mike says he won't buy me those either. what is the point of writing a christmas list if he won't get me anything on it? i ordered myself the new stephen king book "under the dome". i am pretty excited about this (i could almost wet my panties, if i had any left to wet). I hope we have at least 3 or 4 weeks lay off, because this is a read at home book. it's 1088 pages! not exactly one i want to haul to work everyday. although it might burn off a few pounds carting it up the stairs everyday. and pardon my faux pax (whatever the spelling), but the vacuum i wanted is actually called a "pet hair eraser"...not a "pet eliminator". OOPS!!!

i survived thanksgiving..at least i look better than the turkey does. now i am sitting here in mourning. i am watching the MONK marathon and i can hardly believe that this friday is the series finale. i have been a faithful watcher from the very beginning, in fact MONK is the only show i have on dvd..and i have all 7 seasons. i guess i will have to spend all my friday evenings watching dvds and hoping for a monk reunion show in 10 years. all these years i had hoped he would find out his wife trudy was not really dead, but in the witness protection program or something like that, but i don't think that will happen. i suppose i will just have to settle for him finding out who killed her.
the diet isn't going so well. i keep exercising but nothing seems to be happening (except my sore foot just gets sorer). what do i have left now, 24 days? not even enough days to count it in weeks anymore. i don't suppose there will be a snowstorm either. time to shop for bigger clothes.
i am off work til next tuesday, then we go in probably for one day and then will be laid off. normally i look forward to this time of year. i get to collect unemployment for a while ...sort of a poor mans vacation. but this year, with the economy being what it is, we aren't sure how long we will be laid off for. when we do go back it will just be key people that have a job, of which i am one. but several of my friends will be out of work for a long time. truthfully, i am not sure how long any of us will be working. only time will tell.
but, on an up note, with it being so slow they finally got rid of some of the dead weight (namely kathleen..the nasty old bat). i am not sure i have ever been happier to see anyone go. did i mention she was a nasty old bat?
oh, i have been saving monies up every payday for christmas ever since october, yeah!!! for once i am not waiting til the last moment and wondering how i can afford anything. i ordered several things off amazon yesterday, and tomorrow i will put some more in the bank and order a few more things. about the only thing i need to buy at a store is a new jacket for mike. he told me today to take some of his money and buy what i want for christmas, when i told him i wanted a new vacuum cleaner he said no vacuum for christmas. what kind of a deal is that? i have my eye on the pet eliminator, i think it just does pet hair and not the whole pet, but its a chance i am willing to take. Just kidding, for any PETA people out there. mike is sort of a jewelry kind of guy. he thinks it makes a good gift. as a matter of fact, he tells me for any old girlfriends or even his ex wife, all he had to do was walk into a jewelry store and buy something and they would be happy. maybe if i could find a vacuum with rhinestones and rubies on the handle he would buy it for me.
last week i brought in the avacado mike(?) planted. i was afraid it would freeze. it's now about 4 feet tall. i was thinking about just decorating it for christmas then i wouldn't even have to bring in my tree. a few lights and some tinsel and it will rival charlie browns tree.

ahh.. Thanksgiving morning..8 a.m. and already tired. We had to work last night..all night. you would think for a holiday we might get an early out, wouldn't you? but it was the usual bear creek fiasco. it all began 2 weeks ago when we made some new cookies for an experimental project. it seems the merchandising folks had the idea for a "create your own cookie book". so we made like 6 or 7 or 8 different kinds of cookies ...ALL HAND FROSTED!!! there is pumpkin, chocolate with frosting and sprinkles, peppermint (also with sprinkles) peanut butter (with..you guessed it, sprinkles)..the list is endless, or so it seems when you are frosting them. but a funny thing happened between the planning and the carrying out of the plan. it clearly said in the procedure "DO NOT FLIP COOKIES"...well, someone on our crew said "flip the cookies", so we frosted 1000's of cookies on the bottom. we therefore had 1000's of cookies that sort of rocked around like weebles. merchandising didn't find this to amusing so it was a total do over, at what i hear was a cost of $13,000. (and that isn't counting the labor). i tell you this, in order to explain the rest of this story. mike wanted a really big turkey so he had the butcher at winco find us a 29.8 pounder. i have never cooked one this big, so when i calculated 20 minutes per pound it was 600 minutes!!! isn't that like 10 hours?? so, i figured i would put it in at 2 a.m. when i got home from work. well, all went according to plan..except for trying to put the turkey in my roasting pan was like trying to stuff a pterydactyl into a crockpot. no matter which way i put the thing, it just wasn't going to fit. tim was up and watching me (kind of with the same look he had once when i got the lawnmower stuck inside my windmill). so, i finally just left the legs sticking out the end of the pan and shoved the thing in the oven (i swear the things was hanging on to the oven sides with its big old pterydactyl wings..it was quite the struggle). then i went to bed, but didn't sleep much, worried about the turkey, you know. got up at 6 with a headache, walked into the kitchen all smokey from drippings falling in the oven..opened door and windows (friggin cold outside), then got dressed (with no shower ..eeww), and went to the store to buy a disposable roasting pan, plus a cheese ball and crackers that i forgot when i went grocery shopping. i got back home at 6:30, cleaned the oven bottom and changed pans and now the turkey is all happy and warm again.
other than all this, life is boring. tim has been raking a few leaves a day, which i greatly appreciate. today is cold and foggy so probably none will get raked. emily is still upset over her old boyfriend, even though she appears to be interested in a new one (who lives in florida). she doesn't seem to think anyone around here is nice enough. why she would believe someone in florida that she never met is nice is beyond me. i have a vision of some nasty old (50) guy sitting around playing on xbox live and luring young girls into his lair. maybe it's just that with age ( a lot of age) comes an incredible amount of cynicism. and michael..well, he ran out of vicadins and seemed to be doing fine, much to my amazement. but, just yesterday he hurt his back moving one of the ez shoppers. you know, the shopping wheelchairs that seem to be almost exclusively used by fat people at winco. whenever the batteries die people just leave them in the aisle, and they are really hard to push. anyway, they sent him to the urgent care and he got 20 more vics. will that be all? one can only hope he won't start building it back up again.
now, i suppose i had better get back to the kitchen, still have some rolls to cook, (store bought this year since my bread maker went kablooey), and stuffing (from a box) mashed potatoes (instant) and gravy (canned), corn (frozen)...damn, maybe next year i will just buy a can of spam and shape it like a turkey for all the work i put into this anymore. i also have a small ham to cook and i did the pies yesterday (all sara lee or marie callender).

not much going on around here lately. i did have a 3 day weekend. pretty slow at winco so no demos for me. i spent all day yesterday cleaning the mobil home. now there is a ton of leaves to rake...but it's cold out there. i really need to invest in a leaf blower, i think it would be so much easier than raking, but they are so loud. everytime the neighbors use theirs it almost drives me crazy. i thought i could listen to my ipod, but in order to hear it over the leaf blower i would have to turn it up very loud..thereby defeating the whole purpose. of course, the easiest thing to do would be to make the kids go out and rake them. maybe they could just pretend the rake is an xbox controller and the leaves are little army men or whatever. tim is almost beside himself, the new call of duty modern warfare comes out tuesday. he has had it reserved for at least a month now. i have never played a game on the xbox. i used to play all the time on the playstation 2, but now i just pogo and play jewel quest (stuck on level 5-8 for a very long time now). the other day one of the guys at work was talking about the old atari game and said you can buy them for $20 or something, and play all the old games, like the ones i know...i used to love playing frogger, just the hop on the logs and miss the cars version..not the whole 3D game.
i do have news of the nasty old lady at work..she is still there. she did another thing that pissed me off. it seems her car broke down and she needed a ride home, she lives in ashland. she asked my friend sharyl for a ride (who lives in yreka CALIFORNIA!!) it takes sharyl almost an hour to get home already, so sharyl said no. her husband waits up for her to make sure she gets over the mountains and home ok and he didn't want her to do it. so another friend, sharon, gives kathleen (the old lady) sharyls home phone number and kathleen calls sharyl at home 2 times the next morning to ask for a ride home. then when sharyl gets to work kathleen is waiting for her outside, and starts boohooing about how she really needs the job and has to walk 1 mile to the bus stop. wait..did i mention the best part..up until this time kathleen, the snootty old bitch, has never even talked to sharyl, and she has brought treats at lunch and offered them to other people at the table..but never to sharyl. so i told sharyl to stick to her guns, and i told her my hilda story. the same thing happened to me a few years ago, and i ended up giving this gal a ride for months and she even called me on weekends for rides to walmart and the bank...it rarely ever pays to be nice. anyway, here is the part that irritated me..kathleen totally hounded sharyl at work and laid this massive guilt trip on her until sharyl caved in and gave her a ride, supposedly for just 2 weeks. well, then of course, it turned into picking her up too, after all, it was a long walk to the bus stop. so by the time poor sharyl leaves early to pick her up, then drops her off and gets back to the freeway she has added another 30 minutes or so to her drive everyday. i was just furious with the old bat. sharyl is a very nice person, and to stand there and see this old lady play her like a fiddle was more than i could stand. i told sharyl she was making a mistake. but finally this week sharyl told her she wasn't giving her a ride anymore. it has been over 3 weeks and now kathleen says she needs $1200 to fix her car, not $200. i suspect it was always $1200 and she was just going to lead sharyl on and on and on. so now sharon gives her a ride home every night and gets gas money and treats and the old bat never speaks to sharyl anymore. talk about using people. thursday night we were all getting off work at the same time and i was just standing by the wall waiting to go when kathleen walks up to me all smiles and says "do they make you saty til the ovens are done?"..and i just stood there looking at her. so she says "do they make you stay?"..i just stand there..she says "aren't you going to answer me?" ..and i say "no". so she finally walks away. i told mike i only have to answer work related questions..i don't have to stand and shoot the shit with her. in a way this is fairly unusual behavior for me. i try to get along with most people i work with, and if i don't like them, i just avoid them....but this old lady has really gotten on my nerves.
enough of that. you may be wondering about the vicadin situation. well, mike got another refill last friday. i figure it should be all gone by his days off this week..yeah!!! 2 days of having him here with no pills....let the good times roll. i did tell him the other day that the next time he runs out he will not be taking it out on me. i really don't need this shit. so, guess we will find out if he believes me or not. mr. "i just don't have an addictive personality". gees, i still can't get over that one. actually, i am truly serious about this. i have even been calculating finances to make sure i can pay all my bills on my own again..which i can..just like i did before. it isn't that i don't love him, you understand. it's just that i won't have him dragging me down this path with him. the drinking is one thing, he keeps it controlled and you can buy alcohol. you can't just walk in a store and buy narcotics, once the dr. says no more he will be reduced to getting them from people at work or anyplace else he can. i worked with people like that. if you go to a dentist for a root canal and they find out they will say "how are you? got any pain pills left over"? not to mention, our sex life is nonexistant now. when he has pills he isn't in the mood, and when he doesn't have them he isn't in the mood (plus he is an ass..so i'm not in the mood either). i can hardly wait to see how this plays out.
as for my exercise regime. i am still doing it almost every day..but i still don't see any difference. my jeans are still tight, my butt is still big and i still can't bend over to tie my shoes. i think i have about 7 weeks left. it's not looking good. maybe i will just go buy some super big clothes and make it look like i have lost a lot of weight. that's not me in the picture...can you believe this is advertised as a "slinky dress"? what women weighing 400 pounds would even think about buying a slinky dress? might as well just glue 2 real slinkys to your ass and bounce down the street if you want people to stare and laugh.
guess that's all my earth shaking thoughts for today. still waiting to hear from sheri on the big move to georgia, so if you are out there sheri, someone is thinking of you and wondering how things are going.