Coffeebration

I am going to decorate my apartment for Christmas when I’m done writing this. Decorating is fun, but it also means I have to clean and I don’t want to clean. And I have to try to fix my Christmas tree stand. And my sad excuse for a living room is arranged differently than it was last year so I’m not sure where I’m going to put my village. I feel slightly yucky today. It could be because I didn’t have my first cup of coffee until after 12pm. Yeah it was a rare day. I never thought the day would come where I could actually function semi-normally without lots of coffee and a few cigarettes. For the first time since I quit smoking, I didn’t have a cup of coffee before heading out the door this morning. And I was ok. The no coffee wasn’t for any particular reason, I’m not giving it up or anything. I just slept in a bit and I didn’t have any coffee here at my apartment. Don’t worry though. I bought two big things of it at CVS this afternoon. Buy one get one free, yeah … I’m going to be good on coffee for a while now.

I just don’t want to be getting sick. Everyone in my office is sick. Luckily my job encourages sick people to stay at home, so they aren’t passing their germs all around, but there is also that incubation period. The sickness has almost gone down a straight line … and I’m next in line. And I have this awful headache which isn’t a good sign. I was sick with a horrible cold back in August. I thought I was going to suffocate and die one night. Then weeks later I was still coughing up my lungs. And I cleaned my floor with clorox and thought the fumes were going to be my demise. I’m kind of interested to see how much faster I’ll recover from a cold now that I quit smoking. I really do enjoy the fact that I have absolutely no phlegm ever. That makes me feel a lot more sexy. Not that I had nasty phlegm like yucky guys do … but I still had that smoker’s cough going on. And please, if I must get sick, let me get sick right now. I don’t want to be sick during Christmas, or in two weeks 🙂

Dear Germ Monster:
I would like to be sick now so I can be not sick later.
Or if you really love me make me not sick ever at all.
Thanks!

I’m going to decorate now.

My weekend was so LONG. I felt like I was in FC forever and I started to go insane a few times, but all is good now and I’m back in Pittsburgh feeling right at home in my little cave. Thanksgiving itself was rather uneventful except for the apple pie which was just … orgasmic! Except that I waited until 7 p.m. on the eve of Thanksgiving to buy the ingredients and I was SOL when it came to acquiring a Pillsbury pie crust at any grocery store in FC …. so I improvised. It worked. And the pie was … yes orgasmic. Next year I won’t wait until the last minute to buy a pie crust though. Grocery stores really need to be more prepared. They should know that everyone makes pie and that I was going to come staggering in at the last minute demanding pie crust.

Thanksgiving was the same as it is every year. It was ok. My mom crocheted a wonderful warm blanket for my apartment. I’m so excited … I can’t wait to wrap up in it tonight while I do nothing. I also went out with my favorite people in FC – Brian, Eric, and Courtney. I thought they all died, but Thanksgiving is a magical time. We had a wonderful time at the FC bars despite the flashbacks and feeling like I was at my high school reunion. I prefer to stay out of FC bars as much as possible and pray that people I once went to school with would just forget about me or assume I died. But now they all know I’m alive. Damnit … I guess I’ll have to re-fake my death again sometime soon.

You knew I wouldn’t come back without pictures ….. so here you go. They are pretty self explanatory if you read the above paragraph! And they’re rather boring, posed, all the same. Sorry – I didn’t have the camera out when Courtney was dancing on the bar! Hahahaha, just kidding.

Certain things were bothering me today …. like wondering why my face keeps breaking out or why Wheatus doesn’t have more songs. Nothing too serious though. In fact today was pretty wonderful. I woke up after sleeping for approximately four hours and it was 6:02 a.m. Asshead upstairs was making some horrid noise and I wanted to stab him in the face 334 times and show him how much it sucks to be dead. But I didn’t. I took a nice hot shower for like a half hour and it was really nice. I drank about 4 cups of steaming hot goodness as I got ready for work. I wore my new pretty pinkish sweater to work and felt dazzling in it. And my pants fit me perfectly. Thanks Wheatus and exercise bike. I may not get skinny, but I’m certainly not going to spend my winter anxiety ridden and fat. Forget that. I’m on a new life path folks.

I got several compliments on my sweater today. It was nice to be complimented. My boss just returned from Russia and he told me I looked “good”. Maybe he just forgot what American women look like. Although someone once told me I looked like a “buff Russian woman” … and I thought it meant I was fat. I think he just meant I had big boobs. My roots do stem from Russia afterall. But Russian women have really big scary noses and their shoulders that are way bigger than mine. Anyways, I think I’m finally done with looking like death as a drag my ass into work. I’m really starting to feel like a new me! A healthy happy Jess. I haven’t been that combination in quite some time! Please God, just let me rediscover the ability to sleep and everything will be perfect!

The only thing I really must get off my chest today is this overwhelming hatred I have for all the girls at work wearing gaucho pants with big boots. They look pretty dumb … and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here. And furthermore, these pants are made of some spandex material and it seems that girls feel that it is necessary to wear these with either no underwear at all or with thong underwear as to not show underwear lines. But this causes the really spandexy ones to wander up a girls butt and then you have girls all over the place showing off their butt cracks. Ughh. And I’m not the only one who thinks this! A lady I work with mentioned it one day and even suggested that we send a memo around to the ladies, requesting that they refrain from wearing clothing that goes up into their butts. Seriously, I’d be embarrased to be walking around with half my pants up my ass, but whatever. By the way, I do not own any gaucho pants nor do I own any stilleto heel cowboy boots. I’m not that trendy though … although I do have one HOT sweater 🙂

And on to other good things …. I helped the girl I hate today. I felt compelled to volunteer because I saw nobody helping her after her plea for help via email. I must be ill. At least I didn’t have to hear about any of her new clothes. I just kept my mouth shut and stuffed some damn envelopes. I know, I must be running a fever. I don’t know what could have possibly come over me.

That’s all. I’m going to watch Friends on TV and exercise, clean, and maybe read the rest of my book (ShopGirl compliments of Brian cause he’s awesome), so Kim I’ll be able to give you my book/movie analysis of ShopGirl soon! Its going to be a quiet and relaxing night. Nice.

I’ve got nothing to complain about, which means this will be short. Sometimes I’m actually happy and don’t feel like ranting … yeah, who would have thought? Well even though I don’t understand football I watched the game today, and that kind of sucked. I listened to Wheatus. I exercised while listening to Wheatus. I can average 13 mph on my bike now. I’m getting faster and better. I better start getting hot soon cause I’m not even eating hot cheetos. I took sleeping medicine last night because I was so sick of tossing and turning … seems that I can only fall asleep at inopportune times lately. Anyways I slept for a really long time and didn’t wake up every hour. It was nice. I really can’t think of anything intelligent to say. That seems to be happening to me a lot lately too.

Phew, I think someone slipped a couple extra days into this week because tomorrow has been a friggin’ long time coming. I sent the friendly email out to my colleagues this morning reminding them about my vacation coming up next month, one day short of two weeks vacation for Christmas. I had a few unhappy responses. This isn’t my problem, this job isn’t my life ….. Christmas is my life, and having a Jewish job is already one strike against me. But without this job I would not be able to afford Christmas presents or electricity to light up my apartment, so I have to deal with it.

ANYWAYS!!! Whoo, tomorrow is the end of the week, I’m sleeping again … 50 days smoke free, woohoo! I love talking about being a non-smoker. I should be a non-smoker spokesperson or something. I’m exercising. I’ve lost my post-quit gain and even some more. This exercise bike has kicked ass since I removed the swinging handles. Except that I got stabbed in the leg by a dangling hinge last night while cheering for the hockey game and cycling. I leaned forward and the hinge just swung off the handle and pierced my leg. I have two bruises and puncture marks. Its sexy though. I still love Wheatus. My heat smells like a dead man and makes my apartment stink. Tomorrow I might go to light up night although I’m starting to wonder if I really want to be outside in the arctic weather. But if I go I won’t be alone … so if I’m there, its worth it. Even if I lose a few fingers to frostbite.

Next week is Thanksgiving and I can’t wait to go eat a real turkey dinner with my family. I’m in charge of bringing an apple pie. I can make a kick-ass apple pie. Last time I made an apple pie it was the best pie ever! I hope we all get drunk. Wait, we always get drunk …. well I usually drink coffee, but getting drunk might be fun. I think I’m the only non-alcoholic in my family. Oh yeah. It snowed today!!

The END.

Yesterday was a crappy day and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I felt surreal all day because I hadn’t slept the night before or very much all weekend. I was beyond tired and it was making me think irrational thoughts that I wouldn’t normally be thinking about. In my state of tiredness everything just seemed so messed up. I kept asking myself “Is this really my life?” It was like being on drugs … everything just seemed like it couldn’t possibly be the way it was.

Anyways, I’m still blaming the sleeplessness on the withdrawal / stress in my life since most of my problems are in my head. That would explain my dizziness, upset stomach, and other crazy symptoms. The only other symptom that it matches with is definitely not what you are thinking. Ha, that isn’t even possible unless someone came in and took advantage of me last night when I was zonked out since I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Anyways, you all know what I do when I’m feeling sorry for myself. Yeah that’s right. I go out and get myself another really cute coffee mug. And since Christmas is coming, it has to be a Christmas mug.

My friend who is studying chinese medicine gave me some tea to make me sleep – of course that is why I had to buy a new mug. It was going to be my happy Christmas tea mug. I thought maybe it would make the tea taste better since I hate tea. And this particular tea smelled like tree branches mixed with catnip and potpurri. Anything to sleep though. I was desperate. Anyways, I came home yesterday and got out my new mug and my bags of tea and rinsed out the new mug. That is when I noticed this sticker:



I don’t really know if this is a common warning label, but I was under the impression that lead was no longer used in making things like ceramic painted things but I guess I’m wrong. I was going to ignore it, but that label just got the best of me and I decided that dreaming about having children with deformed bodies and three heads wasn’t really a risk I was willing to take just to drink from a cute new mug. So I made the tea in my other Christmas mug and the tea was just plain disgusting. So I said screw it and I watched the hockey game. After it was over I tried to drink the tea again because one who thinks irrationally due to sleep deprivation believes that something will taste different than it did earlier even though it is the exact same thing. Nasty tea. By 12:30 I was still awake so I finally said screw it and took sleeping pills. Whoo.

I have nothing else right now. I have to go back to work.

I found my MP3 player. It was just sitting on the shelf hanging on my wall in the hall. Last night I went to the Penguins game and it was the most exciting night I’ve had in a long time. I had lots of fun even though they lost. I guess that having an awesome hockey watching partner also weighs heavily on the awesome-ness of an evening. I can’t wait to go again. Hopefully next one will be a winning game for Pittsburgh!

I’m trying to watch the football game, but its not really happening. I’m interested in the results but not the actual getting to the results part. I can seriously watch football if someone is sitting beside me yelling and cheering, and doesn’t mind explaining things to me. It is a social thing for me. I can’t watch football alone. And there is a Roseanne marathon on Nick@Nite right now. This game needs to be over soon so I can watch it. I shouldn’t have even written that. I might get maimed now …. or some rotten tomatoes thrown at me.

I guess I should get a shower and prepare myself for another exciting week at work … whoo or not whoo. I haven’t felt very good today. I think its post-stress syndrome. The last two months have sort of sucked in the life department. Stressed out at work, ending a big long relationship, quitting smoking. It always happens this way. I’m fine while I’m going through the chaos, but when things finally settle down and nothing is going on, it comes right out of the blue. I’m ok though. Kind of frustrated at times, but I have so many things to look forward to … I’ve actually been in a very good mood the last few weeks. I just need to get a good night of sleep without these crazy dreams that wake me up at 5:30 am on my weekends when I’m supposed to sleep until 1pm.

And not that anyone cares, but I changed my comments thing so you can leave a comment without entering an email address or a website url. So you can just put your name in or make one up. I’ll leave it like that unless I start getting crazy comment spam. I also noticed that if you have your info saved and you click on “change my information” that an error pops up on the page. I don’t know how to fix it so if you really want to change your identity you’ll have to clear your cache and reload the page. And I really hope you all view my page with Internet Explorer 6+. I didn’t realize how bad it looked in Firefox. Sad. I’m going to just redesign everything soon or at least try, so bear with me for a while.

Goodnight.

I can’t find a whole bunch of important things. First, I cannot find my souveniers from the summer. I had them in a big fancy white bag and the bag was sitting on my floor for a long time. When I finally decided to give out the souveniers, the entire bag was just gone. Like $100 worth of t-shirts, mugs, ashtrays, and other fun stuff just gone! I lost my social security card for the second time. I’m still hopeful that it is around here somewhere. The third important thing that I cannot find is a shoebox that is filled with old pictures. Gahh!! I want my stuff, and it is just NOT here. It makes me wonder what else is missing that I just don’t realize because I’m not really using it. I did find a picture CD that was missing. Onto things that aren’t missing, I came upon a Christmas list that I made for LAST Christmas that includes all of the ideas I had about what I was going to get for people last year. It was in a purse I haven’t used in a while. Now I’m excited because I can reuse some of these grand ideas I had last year. Well now that I’m looking at it I just realized that most of these ideas suck. And Todd got the entire back-side of the list. Well, Christmas is going to be a lot cheaper this year. I love buying gifts, I just hate having to make decisions. I am always afraid everyone will hate what I buy for them. Oh well.

I went to see Shopgirl tonight and it was a good movie. I think Steve Martin wrote that story just for me. I could have totally been the girl in that movie. I’m single and lonely, although I do lack a cat named Sylvia, a bathtub, a truck, and I don’t work in retail or draw pictures …. but other than that, we are the same! Well I’ve never dated any significantly older men or any font artists, but still … minor details. Claire Danes kicked some actress butt in that movie. I hope her and that dude lived happily ever after in their happy world of recriprocated love. I loved at the end of the movie he was like “oh my girlfriend drew that!” That is all us girls want, some recognition, to know that someone is truly proud of us. But every guy I’ve ever dated is just like Steve Martin … except the old man part. Oh and the rich part too. Hello rich old guys, you can pay off my student loans too …. I won’t get mad, I promise! I think I’m going to buy the book and put it on my “things that make jess happy shelf” with my Wheatus CD. Well I’ll have to buy a shelf too. It will be very small. And sorry if I ruined the movie for nobody reading this.

I’m tired. Blah. Goodnight.

And I managed to forget the main thing that is missing that caused me to get mad about everything else that is missing and write this post. My MP3 player. Where the f— are you? Grrrr.

So my event went splendidly as predicted by some and it was just great but I don’t have the energy to go into detail. I’m too cranky and I want everyone to know that! Yesterday morning I was supposed to graduate to step three of the nicotine patch but I’m so sick of buying patches. Its like I didn’t really quit smoking because I just keep buying these damn patches and they are nearly as expensive as cigarettes. Anyways, you are supposed to be on the patch for 10 weeks. For three weeks I was on the high dose (first step), then for the past three weeks I’ve been on the second step. I decided that this week I’d be strong enough to go to the third and final step, but I just don’t feel like sticking those stinking itching things on my arms anymore. I’m done. I feel fine going into week six. This is my second day patch free and I think that the nicotine is going to be out of my system soon so we’ll see if I have a stroke or something. And I got myself quite drunk last night and didn’t even have the urge to smoke. If I do feel a strong uncontrollable urge to cut heads off in the next 48 hours, I’ll run out and get step three. Nothing to be ashamed of. I’m quite proud of myself cause I’m a quitter, woohoo.

Ahh, I just opened my front door and about 15 dead crumply leaves blew into my apartment and scattered themselves in hard to reach corners of my kitchen floor. It is like a tornado out there! And who knew there were actually leaves in Pittsburgh? That would mean there must be trees. They must have blown over here the whole way from Schenley Park because the only things on my street are garbage and ugly bushes.

I don’t have much to say today, but I thought I’d update before I got yelled at so here begins a rambling mess of nothing really interesting. This weekend was kind of boring. I hope this coming week goes by quickly. I have a huge event at work tomorrow and I’m all alone in planning it so I’m sure I won’t get any sleep tonight. I’m kind of nervous about it, but I think everything is going to be ok. I guess I just get like this because this event has mostly all CEO’s and Presidents of various companies at it. But I was thinking …. ya know I have good relations with so many important people in this city and if I ever start putting out my resume for a new job there are bound to be people who will recognize my name. Even if a lot of them have never met me, they are going to say “hey wait a minute, I know this name!” Either that or they’ll throw my resume in the trash because I’m that annoying girl that keeps calling and sending emails. I hope its the first one because I need a better job soon. I think that I might dust off the resume sometime after the new year. Even though Brian and I have three plans to get insanely rich and buy an island. Which of course will be happening very soon, so I don’t even know why I’m looking for a new job. Of course, I can’t divulge our plans to get rich because someone could steal our brilliant ideas.

I’m also going to a Penguins game with Brian on Saturday … this sooo exciting, since I’ve never been to a hockey game before. Nor have a I been to a Steelers game, and I did go to a Pirates game when I was like 13 and Julie went too. It was a field trip for being in the Newspaper club. Haha, our newspaper in high school was quite bad. Anyways, I’m going to a hockey game! And since hockey is the only sport that I can watch without wanting stab myself in the face, I’m very excited!

I bought the new Wheatus CD online so I’m waiting for it to come in the mail. It is finally on iTunes, but I want the lyrics and they are nowhere on the internet yet – it only came out last month. I hate waiting! The internet is supposed to eliminate waiting. The last CD purchase was American Idiot. I really don’t buy CD’s often. I average one or two per year, but this was definitely worth the $11.98. Last week I bought “The Shining” on DVD – the good one that was made into a mini-series with cute Steven Weber. I will never forget the first time I saw that movie. It came out on TV in 1997 – so that made me sixteen. Anyways, I was horrified that cute Mr. Weber from Wings could be that evil! It has haunted me ever since. Obviously since he made an appearance as the evil villian who threw a gasoline soaked rag at a flaming furnace while the world was being destroyed by a flaming fireball in one of my natural disaster dreams that took place in January. If you’re really bored, you can read the dream here. Anyways, I really want to watch it again but its like five hours. I was holding out to watch it on Todd’s new 30″ HD plasma television madness that he bought, but since we’re never speaking again I guess that isn’t going to happen. It is funny how less than 48 hours ago he wanted to be with me and work things out, but when I said I didn’t think things were going to work out, he decided that he was never talking to me again. Instead he chooses to put up away messages about wanting sex and then goes and hangs out with Kelly all weekend – makes pumpkin pies with her and takes her to his formal and never comes back …. and he wonders why I can’t deal with any of this anymore. And the away messages certainly weren’t joking hints to me, since sex is the last thing on his mind regarding me, and the fact that he’s blocked me on IM anyaways. Ughh, that is all for the rant on my ongoing drama. I just want it (the fighting and drama) to be over – one way or another.

Anyways, back to Wheatus which is obviously much more important than anything else in my life …. I’ve become obsessed with a song called “This Island”. I am writing about in case I someday forget how much I love this song and need to be reminded. This is the ultimate song if you are unhappy where you are in life, sad, or just want to listen to a pretty peaceful song. This song can make me burst into tears (of course that doesn’t take much with me) … it just sounds like a song that you’d play at the end of a movie … with a sad ending. If you ignore the part of the song that sounds like there is a circus in the background, its wonderful.

I want to redesign coffeebration because I’m getting sick of looking at it, but I don’t have the patience right now. Sitting at my computer for long periods of time in website designing concentration mode makes me want to smoke. I don’t think I can do it right now … I’m still painfully suffering from withdrawal. I’m quickly approaching week six though and I’m pretty certain that nothing will make me go back to smoking. I can do anything I put my mind to I just have to want to do it. And coffee still tastes damn good, I feared that coffee would lose its appeal without the cigarette to accompany it but it hasn’t. So perhaps I’ll work on it some today. And by the way, I know what is going on on my website, myspace, etc. Please stop it.

I wish somebody woud come over and take my laundry to the laundromat. I have so many dirty clothes and I’m seriously contemplating throwing half of them away and buying new stuff. I think I’ll wait until my body comes out of its cocoon and reveals the new sexy me. That damn exercise bike better start paying off soon. I know, its only been a week but I hate waiting for results. And I’m letting my hair grow so I can do the “sexy hair wave” that I learned about from Brian. Also, if my hair is longer I might look more like Madelin Kahn and she’s pretty hot. And if all else fails maybe I’ll get some hair extensions, because like I told Brian ….. I’m a girl and I want hair! I don’t see what is wrong with that. I haven’t had nice pretty long girl hair since I was a kid. And then when I was in 5th grade I got this horrible mullet hair cut and cried for three days straight and refused to go to school. It was the WORST hair cut EVER!!!! They were supposed to “feather” my hair. Instead I had hair that was below my shoulders in the back, but then the front was above my ears! I’d love nothing more than to find the girl that cut my hair and stab her 34343 times for the pain she caused me. It took over a year to grow out. And then I got a perm and looked like a poodle. Adding glasses and braces to a poodle perm …. well I was 100% geek and life was just never the same again. Any chance to ever be remotely cool was swept away and it all started with the mullet hair cut. Before that I was cute, oh I was such a cute child.

Anyways, I’ve rambled enough. Goodbye.