Where My Mind is At

There's about 15 hundred random things running through my head right now. Make that 15,001. I am almost positive that I've caught some bug going around. My head feels like it's about to get stuffy and my bones are aching. I don't get aches when the weather changes. The room is hot then cold and then hot again.

I hate, hate being sick. I have yet to find the person who loves being sick, but it irritates me so. On a positive note, my temperature is normal, or at least normal for other people. I'm at 98.6 exactly. The problem is that I'm normally at 96.8. So maybe it is just a mini-bug.

In the mail today, I received a notice from the car dealership where I bought my Toyota a year ago. They are suggesting I get a 15,000-mile scheduled maintenance check. I live rather close to work and still have yet to hit the 10,000-mile marker. I think I have about another 6 months before I need to worry about this check up. I'll just get an oil change and replace the wiper blades. I get junk mail from Toyota about once every two weeks. One thing I do enjoy is the fact the salesman who sold me this car was better than the one at Chevrolet. The junk mail I get has my name spelt correctly. You wouldn't think it was that hard to spell the last name, "Brooks." You'd be amazed.

On the subject of my last name, I do have a complaint. There is another supervisor at our call center whom I've known for about 5 years now. He calls me Brooke. I know he gets my first name mixed up with my last name, but come on! Is Beth so hard to say? It makes me feel devalued when he does it. Annoying.

I spent the entire day at home. I spoke with no one and I relaxed. The only time I left my apartment was at 2 AM to take out a bag of garbage, get my clean laundry from my car (I've been a bit lazy about bringing it inside), and to check the mail. My day consisted of watching movies and scrapbooking. I actually have finished the two albums of ocean pictures from our trip to Portugal and I'm excited to start working on the pictures from our day in Evora (once they arrive). My computer was busy uploading pictures to the photo developing company I use and I found that purchasing the 500 pre-paid prints package is a good idea. 4 x 6's are only 18 cents this way. It costs $90 up front, but it still saves a bit of change.

In going through pictures, I am getting ruthless about developing pictures. I love the fact that DM and I took over 4,000 pictures while visiting Johnny (Liz figured it out - we took the equivilent of a 24-pictures roll of film every hour we were there). My screen saver is still set to the pictures and I come home from work to find a picture of Johnny, or her pets, or some magnificent artwork from the Gulbenkian all the time. It makes me smile. With five scrapbooks completed from the trip, I wonder how many more it will take. My bet right now would be 5 or 6 more. We joked before hand that I would end up with 12 scrapbooks of the trip and it is still a possibility. I'm going to need another bookshelf soon.

Because I do so much scrapbooking (which I don't talk about that much on here), I am a consultant for a scrapbooking organization. I love the products they produce and I'm in it for the discount. I don't hold classes or make any money from it, but I have been known to share a discount or two with DM and Keem. I had to place my November order for new products today. I bought even more organizational products. That's the main problem with scrapbooking. There is so much stuff (paper, pens, stickers, albums, dye-cuts, cutting systems, etc.) that it has taken over my dining room and is threatening to take over my living room. I really need a storage area (other than my dad's basement). One of these days I'll have a house. You'd think a single female wouldn't need more than 800-square feet, but I can amaze you. I'm thinking about pretending I'm moving so I go through stuff and throw junk out.

Another cause for lack of space in my apartment is my DVD-obsessioncollection. I have approximately 400 titles (I have been a bit behind on my list and lost count). I have five separate racks to hold them all. It is sick. And I haven't even been buying them with the frequency I used to. In fact, I think I've only purchased three in the last three months and two of those are still being mailed. (I had to pre-order March of the Penguins. It would have been a sin not too.)

So today I watched movies. I started with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is cute. I know people who've read the book did enjoy it. I never did read the story, but found the flow of the plot quite imaginative and am fascinated by the scope of the creativeness.

After that I had to watch The Ref. I watched it mainly because I'm going to lend it to Steve and wanted to make sure I saw it before Christmas arrives. I remember seeing this movie for the first time with my parents at the discount theater (the one that actually uses real butter on their popcorn) and laughing hysterically. It is my favorite Christmas movie. And I can watch it anytime of the year (I do in fact.) I've probably seen this movie at least 150 times. I can quote most of it. One of these days I'll watch it and try to count how many times the word "fu*ck" is actually used. And yet I can watch it with my parents.

The Ref started my Christmas movie kick. The next film I popped in was National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Classic. Then I watched a South Park DVD with a few Christmas episodes on it. There is an episode of South Park that drives DM crazy (actually, most of the episodes annoy her) and it consists of 10 songs with holiday themes. I get a particular kick out of "Christmastime in Hell," "I Have a Little Dreidel," and "Merry F*ucking Christmas." Hey, if Jesus doesn't have a sense of humor, I don't want to met him.

I also watched The Lion King tonight. I haven't watched this in ages and I remember going on a date to see the show at a local theater that still had a balcony and magnificent curtains that drew back when the show was about to start. The date wasn't that great, but it was a grand theater in its day.

Watching some of these movies reminded me of growing up. The summer after 8th grade, my cousin was living with us and she loved to go to movies. It started my parents and I on a kick to see many movies in the theater. Before Sus lived with us we rarely went to a movie and it was never on opening weekend. Then we were going to at least two movies every weekend. I do miss that. It was nice spending an evening with my parents and then going out for dinner or eating great cooking at home and talking about the films we saw.

Christmas is approaching quickly and I want to get into the season this year. It will be odd because my budget doesn't stretch far enough for an extravagent celebration, but I also feel like the past few years have been low-key. I have not had a tree in my apartment since the first year of living with Adam and I do miss it. Last year I didn't even put up my tree at my dad's. My mom always puts hers up and she did so this past weekend.

When Mom put up the tree, she ended up calling me and we both cried a little together. She found the ornaments for Taco and it just brought back many years of good memories and how much we both miss him. This is the first Christmas without him after 18 years. I have a picture by my computer of him and Chip under the tree, begging to open a present a bit early. Chip was only three months old at the time this picture was taken and looks completely different.



This week at work might be busy. I have no clue. I'm sure there are things I should be doing and haven't thought up any plan. I should run to the store tomorrow night to spend our team's budget before we lose it. Maybe that will be my lunch break tomorrow. Tuesdays are the day my boss has a supervisor meeting and so I need to be early to work again. I also have a meeting right after that one with new bankers (the ones still in training). It is a part of the "get to know you" sessions our retention committee came up with. I do like these sessions (most of the time) because it does help form a bond.

iTunes is in a odd mood tonight. I sometimes think of the program as a person. I don't know why. The shuffle has come up with these songs as I wrote this post:

Beautiful Day - U2
Happiness and Misery - Jonny Lang
Crazy - BNL
One Sweet Day - Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men (which I didn't know I had and it reminded me of high school)
Break Your Heart - BNL
I Want to Be in Love - Melissa Etheridge
It Hurt So Bad - Susan Tedeschi
Piece of My Heart - Melissa Etheridge (cover of Janis Joplin)
Show Me - Bree Sharp
Faith - George Michael
Bad - Cowboy Mouth
People Asking Why - Seal
Little Green Bag - Tom Jones & BNL
No Woman No Cry - Bob Marley
Uh Oh - Cowboy Mouth
We've Got Tonight - Bob Seger
Weapon of Choice - Fatboy Slim (this one is a video with Christopher Walken)

Have you seen this video? If you haven't, I highly recommend finding it. It is fantastic. The music itself is take it or leave it, but the video is Christopher Walken dancing around this building all by himself. It is amazing.

On that note, I think I'm going to end this random post. Hope all is well in the blogosphere. I will probably turn in a bit early and hopefully this headache will go away before my alarm interrupts yet another great dream.