Thursday, December 17, 2009

Worst Christmas Songs

Crystal has a habit of only listening to holiday music when it's this time of year and we're in the car, so I get subjected to all sorts of jolly tunage.

I love quite a few Christmas songs, especially the classics, and for the most part I'm generally kind of apathetic towards the rest.

There are some songs, however, for which I would pop my own eardrums if it meant not having to listen to them again. I'm sure everyone knows them. Here's my top five worst Christmas songs.

5. "Little Saint Nick" - The Beach Boys
4. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" - Band Aid
3. "Last Christmas" - Wham!
2. "Wonderful Christmastime" - Paul McCartney
1. "The Christmas Shoes" - NewSong

I decided to only do five, but "Happy Christmas (War is Over)" by John Lennon was fighting with the Beach Boys for number five.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Guess What!

Right now I'm high for the first time in months!

Getting high is starting to become kind of lame, but I'm still happy to indulge in it every once in a while. I used to smoke pot quite often (at least a bowl a day), but I kind of grew out of it when I met my not-yet-then wife. Sometimes it's still nice to go back and just scrub out my brain, especially since I still feel like I need some form of catharsis for all the stress and shit I've had in my life lately.

I took two of Crystal's leftover Vicodin (she's still been taking one or two every couple days; I can't really begrudge them to her since it's from a legitimate prescription she still has) and smoked a bowl of some good weed I've been saving. It's been a fun couple of hours, just watching shitty movies and laughing my ass off. It's getting kind of late, though, and soon it's time for bed.

Oh well, Monday. You finished stronger than you began.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Top 89 of 2009

I Voted in 89.3 The Current's Top 89 Albums of 2006

This was a fairly hard decision, and I had to leave a LOT of good tracks off the list. In some cases the song I picked is actually indicative of my feelings towards multiple tracks released by a single artist; I just picked the one I thought was my favorite.

I think I could have added ten, twenty, or even thirty more songs, from all sorts of genres and styles. Maybe later I'll do a list of my top fifty or something ambitious like that.

Anyway, here's what I picked, in no certain order:

Lily Allen | The Fear (It's Not Me, It's You)
Solid Gold | Get Over It (Bodies Of Water)
Metric | Gimme Sympathy (Fantasies)
Gossip | Heavy Cross (Music For Men)
Regina Spektor | Laughing With (Far)
Ladyhawke | Magic (Ladyhawke)
Polly Scattergood | Please Don't Touch (Polly Scattergood)
The Decemberists | The Rake's Song (The Hazards Of Love)
Bat For Lashes | Sleep Alone (Two Suns)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs | Zero (It's Blitz!)

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Dawwwwww.

Crystal just emailed me from her new job. It makes me happy to see her working, even if it's only for a couple weeks. Getting a job is going to be the best possible thing for her right now, I think. It's a chance to get out of the house, to use her brain on something productive instead of Maury (you're the fucking father, now fuck off), and to gain back some confidence in her own abilities. She was the administrative assistant to the vice president of IT, and she was the only one that managed to work there for almost five years. She only left the company due to her back pain from the last pregnancy; she just couldn't take sitting up at her desk for eight hours a day any longer.

She's trying to get a job back with this company again, but so far without any luck. We were in a hiring freeze for a long time, but HR recently opened up a few positions in customer service and data entry. She submitted a new application and has called a couple times, but they keep putting her off. I just emailed HR again to ask if they filled all the positions; I'm sure it will be a no-go. I think they are turned off by how much work I've been missing due to her postpartum, and I'm scared they think she would be a risky hire. She's better, honest! Give her a chance! And even if she's not 100%, having a job is going to be what turns everything around for her. I just know it.

Jeezum Crow!

According to my "dashboard" (I always hated that word, even when referring to one in a car), my last post was October 15th. Shit, wow. It's been a long while. Obviously for those of you who read my Facebook it's been a really stressful and bad time, but that's not really an excuse. What is an excuse is that I wasn't really working and I didn't have internet at the apartment, so I didn't really have a way to update. For a couple weeks, anyway. I've just been lazy the rest of the time, but I think I earned it, dammit!

Things have definitely improved for us in the short-term. My kids are no longer sick with swiney flu/pneumonia/croup/etc, my wife has a full-time job for the next couple weeks, we have a new car, I'm working almost full time again, and we have a place to stay until we can find a new home. That's about a 95% turnaround from this time last month. Christ, that was rough.

The eviction went better than I thought, even though I wouldn't recommend the experience to anyone. I had to go to court, and since I wasn't really familiar with the whole "court thing" and didn't really feel that comfortable talking to the judge about my case in front of a whole court room, I made an agreement with my landlady. We had seven days to come up with what we owed from October, which we wouldn't have been able to do, so that gave us a week to pack and prepare for the move to Heather and Nikki's. We moved most of our stuff to public storage (bloody fucking expensive), sold our giant TV and its stand (which we had received for free when we moved into our apartment...profit!), and crammed ourselves into one room of a two-bedroom apartment. Thanks to the incredible generosity of the Pajibans, we had enough money for public storage, gas for Nikki's dad's truck, and some left over to smooth all the edges of our rough move.

Our car died the last day of our move. According to the family mechanics, a piece of our fucking engine block snapped off. Because the Universe hates us, obviously. After a day or two of panicked freak-outs, my aunt said that she could help us out. She had been meaning to buy a new car for a while, and decided that this was as good a time as any. She gave us her old car, a 2003 Mercury Sable. Silver, 92,000 miles, in pretty good condition. She wants $2,500 for it, with $100.00 payments, starting next November! Once again, the generosity of others managed to save our asses. I swear to Godtopus, the amount of good karma I need to contribute back to the world is ridiculous at this point.

We haven't started looking for a place to live yet, as we don't have the money to even casually apply. My first "real" paycheck will be tomorrow. It isn't quite full, but it's probably going to be three or four times the amount I've made on my last several paychecks. That's a really good feeling. The next paycheck will be even bigger! And now Crystal is bringing in some money too, so I see an end to our current situation not too far down the turnpike.

I can't do an update on the weight loss thing, because I don't know how much I've lost. I don't even know if I'm still in the contest at work, since I haven't been there to get weighed in. I know I've lost weight, I just don't know how much. I figure I'll do the weigh-in next Monday and then have an update for the contest.