Nothing but Song

Feeling :  accomplished  Listening :  Modern Marvels: Walt Disney World  Reading :  Buddha Baby

I bought most of the gifts for myself this year, as Santa tends to forget you if you’re too old in my rather large in numbers family.

1. Candy cane mug
2. Guitar Hero III + my “White Falcon” a la Michael Guy Chislett wireless guitar (bought it for myself)
3. Harry Potter & OOTP DVD (bought it for myself)
4. Hello Kitty water dispenser (bought it for myself, had my niece wrap it, and stuck it under the tree, rofl)
5. Hello Kitty plastic wallet (for when me and my niece go to shows, so I don’t have to carry all my crap)
6. Hello Kitty metal tin (which I use to hold my bobby pins now)
7. 8gb iPhone (*happy sigh*)
8. $15 iTunes gift card (bought Brendan Benson’s 2 solo albums, delish)
9. Trader Joe’s gift card
10. Loads of Xmas cards from all over the world
11. Linens ‘n’ Things gift card (for my new bookcase)
12. Metal headbands from Icing
13. Oolong tea
14. The Simpsons Movie DVD (bought it for myself)
15. $20 Target card (bought a new pair of pants for work)
16. Terrauh’s astrology calendar (starring me as September!)

I don’t know why I expect more gifts. I always have that hope that somebody bought me something, but every year for the past decade, I have been let down. That’s why I have consistently bought myself gifts for Christmas.

But then I think, I don’t care about gifts so much. I just want to know that someone remembered me. Like Bender in that Futurama episode, A Pharaoh to Remember, “REMEMBER ME. REMEMBER ME.”

A card, a greeting, a text message. All I want is to be remembered.

I volunteered to work on Christmas Day, so I didn’t have to attend the family Christmas party!! Which was just as well, nobody thought of me on that side. No cards, no “we’re thinking of you,” no generic gifts. But at least I got to nosh on the baon (bah-OON, literal Tagalog translation means “gift/food for the journey”, but we tend to use it to mean “leftovers”) they brought home. Plus I got holiday pay. Always a good thing!

I am extremely poor now, and am going to be working for the rest of my life to pay off my credit card. I only used one card for the gifts this year. True, that means more debt. This is especially true, heading into another term at school. But I just wanted a good Christmas for my family and friends whom I bought gifts for. 2007 has been really crappy to us, and if I can bring a little happiness, I will, so help me God.

We went window shopping the day after Christmas, and that’s when I bought Guitar Hero III, the Simpsons and OOTP DVDs. Plus we went to See’s Candy at the Galleria, and bought my ma a pound of almond rocha, as well as a bar of milk chocolate and almonds for myself and my older brother. Mmm. I’m not a big fan of chocolate, but when you’re standing in line at See’s Candy and all you smell is chocolate… it sets something off in your head and makes you wanna buy chocolate! haha. Plus we went to the Sweet Factory as well, and I bought myself some Laffy Taffy. Mmm, I love sticky candy like that.

?: “How did you make out this year if you celebrate Christmas?“

Feeling :  lethargic  Listening :  Don\'t Shoot Me Santa - The Killers  Reading :  Buddha Baby & Atonement

Last week has been one of the best weeks of my life this year. My mom is home for the holidays (Filipino home cooking, mmmmmmm!!), and two of my three brothers came home as well. Luckily their visit coincided with my two days off from work.

I got my grades back for the Semester from Hell: B-, B-, B+, A, and a 3.17 GPA. I knew all the freaking out I did was well worth it! I’m so relieved. All I know is if I can handle those 4 classes and come away with decent grades, the year and a half left is going to seem like a cakewalk in comparison. But maybe I shouldn’t say that. I still have 3 terms of upper division courses to take.

I’m taking 2 classes online, and 2 on campus next term. Plus I decided to retake the 3rd semester of French next year. I have to transfer a 4th semester only. But it’s been so long since I’ve taken any French (over 3 years), I might as well retake the 3rd to brush up on my skills. I went to my old school’s website (where I have to take my French classes and transfer them to my current school), found out the name of the book that use for the upper French classes, bought a slightly older version of it on Amazon for $5, and I’m going to spend the first six months of 2008 brushing up on my French. I’m not going into this blind at all.

Anyways, on Tuesday, we did errands and chilled. Nothing terribly exciting, rofl. We saw “I Am Legend” and wow, what a trip. I love how Will Smith can still carry a movie. I don’t think anything he’s done has been shitty. My brother and my s-i-l flew in late Tuesday night, so I didn’t even greet them until the next day.

Wednesday, I got my iPhone for Xmas from my brother and my s-i-l. We also had a small dinner get-together with my cousin’s family that night, had Coldstone for dessert, and went drinking and bowling at Red Rock that night. I don’t quite remember what we drank, but it was enough to get my s-i-l shitfaced. I kept having to take her to the ladies’ room. She doesn’t remember a thing, bless her. That night will go down in infamy for us, because she’s usually the one who can hold her liquor and it’s her husband (my brother) who is hugging the porcelain! The goal of that night was to get me shitfaced, but I had to stay reasonably sober to take care of her since I was the only other girl there.

I was hoping to keep my phone number because I’ve had it forever, but they said that because the numbers are the account have a 209 area code, I couldn’t keep my 702 one. FCC rules about crossing markets, or some shit like that. So I had to go back to the AT&T store and sort it out. They had to give me a new SIM card in the store. When I got home, I had to add the iPhone to an existing phone number in the plan (which was the phone number on the SIM card). If anyone has that issue with their iPhones, there is your answer.

Siriusly, anyone who talks shit about the iPhone obviously has no experience with it. People will say “It’s $500 worth of technology in my pocket, I couldn’t trust myself.” Or they’ll say “if the phone breaks you’ll only have the iPod.” Or “if you have to fix some part of the unit, you have to send the whole thing in and you’ll be without a phone or an iPod.” Or “you can’t use Bluetooth with it, you have to buy an adapter.”

First off, I would protect this phone with my life. Not only does it have my iPod, but it also has my phone. I could not live without either. I would never treat it carelessly, even though PC World shows it can withstand pretty much any shit you put it through.

Bluetooth? WTF do I need Bluetooth? I got my iPhone to get rid of having a separate phone and iPod mostly. Everything else is extras. I love how I can set it up for Gmail. I mean, I’m so satisifed with it. The only way I would get rid of it would be when someone would have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. You think I’m joking? I’m not. I’ve never had a phone this fancy or badass before.

Saturday night I went to see Sweeney Todd with Corinne at Green Valley Ranch. Afterwards we had the munchies so I used my iPhone’s Safari browser (which is a lot faster than some might think), to find a local IHOP. Ended up not using that IHOP ’cause I was too busy talking to her, rofl.

Speaking of Sweeney Todd, I LOVED IT. She didn’t but that’s ’cause she’s not much of a Johnny Depp fan. The music worked so well hand in hand with the story. I was immediately swept up in it, because Tim Burton had enough sense to incorporate the incidental music from the original show. It is very rare when a musical gets transferred to film that the director keeps the incidentals.

I’m out. I’m going to optimize my site for mobile phones. I mean, Safari can handle my website, but I think it would be much easier to download and surf for other phones if I could make it so.

?: “Any fascinating plans for Xmas this year?”

Feeling :  mellow  Listening :  The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping  Reading :  Atonement (finally, haha!)

“Christmas Wrapping” is my Christmas song this year. It never really applied to me until this year, strangely enough.

I can’t believe how emotionally draining 2007 has been. I feel like I’ve been put through the wringer. So much drama! I’m so glad it’s over. I hope 2008 will be much easier to bear.

Tomorrow is the last day of the fall semester for me. I told my co-worker that my brain was “applesauce” from all the over thinking I had to compensate. Quick recap: I’m taking upper division courses in anticipation of getting a Bachelor’s in English next spring.

But the thing is I’m not an auditory learner. I prefer to see something, write it out, and let my brain extrapolate what it needs to understand it. But my teachers this semester pretty much required us to discuss in class. I can’t get over that. That is my only complaint with my teachers this semester (most of whom I will probably take again in the future, and cannot avoid because my school is so small). I LOVED the material we studied. I really felt like everything came together in the end.

But the majority of the time, when they ask questions to try and get us to talk, I’m like, “where the fuck are they leading with this?” The majority of the time, I wouldn’t fully understand the discussion until well after I left the class. I sound like a fool in public situations, I really do. Especially if what I say isn’t what they want to hear, or is completely not relevant.

That’s why I’m a writer. Any good writer worth their weight in the paper they write on are antisocial.

*le sigh*

Whatever. I’ll survive. If I can make it through this semester, I can make it through the next year and a half no problem!

I turned in 2 papers just now: “Love in the Time of Mango Street” for Writing About Literature, and “A History of Western Violence in The Day of the Locust” for Literature of the American West. You can guess what books I chose to write my papers on, haha.

Plus I banged out the last one due for History of Pop Culture just now. It was about Jillian’s - a local venue here in Vegas - of course. I hope my professor doesn’t mind that the visit was 3 months ago and not as recent as within 3 weeks. Like I really have time to pop over to Neonopolis with my schedule! But I took pictures, and they helped refresh my memory enough to generate a paper from it.

I really should be getting to sleep. I’ve been working midshifts at work this weekend, and my sleeping hours are all wonky. I prefer nights because I’m such a lazy ass, haha. But I shall forage for food and take a shower because I need both.

?: “Are you a morning person or a night person?”