• Christmas, in a nutshell. Or an LJ post.

    So as previously stated, the two of us packed it up on the 23rd of the month and booked it on down to Pembroke for Christmas. As usual, it went over with the required amount of hillarity. Unusually, the frustration/irritation that comes with managed to hold off at least until we got a ride back up here. I think, personally, they did that strictly for Jessica’s (samari76) benefit. Lord knows I’m used to the way things usually turn out. Since everyone else on the flist’s doing it practically, I figure I might as well prattle off what I ended up walking away with from the whole Christmas thing. I got:

    • CSI seasons 1 and 8 on DVD
    • A couple of different card games from the girlfriend
    • A DVD player with surround-sound speakers
    • The 2008 country hits CD (will be stuck on the computer next week)
    • A couple of sweaters, one from mom and dad and one from the brother and his wife
    • A coin storage thingie… I guess people were getting scared at the sheer size of my wallet’s change holder
    • A new one of said wallets from the grandparents, came equipped with $10, for which my broke ass was quite appreciative
    • … And a partrage in a pare tree.
    • /

    We had, as usual, the dinner of teh awesomes. Typical spread for our folks; terkey, stuffing (both stove top and home made), potatoes, and about half a billion different varieties of all things green and/or healthy. There were movies watched, though it doesn’t sound like mom got to watch all the ones she was hoping for… she has her selection of movies/shows she likes to watch in the week or two coming up to Christmas. I know she got to see a few of them, but I think the list of ones she didn’t see this year was longer. Boxing day, A.K.A yesterday, was our return trip to Ottawa. The parentals dropped us off, and the brother thing plus wifey came along mostly because they were in the area at the time. Which I guess worked out, since apparently dad needed a hand to set up the DVD player. Which didn’t quite get set up as it is; the only thing those particular two were intent on agreeing with each other about yesterday was that it wasn’t working. We did have a bit of a Christmas party on the 24th, but it was pretty much just members of the family sitting around with drinks in our hand, shooting the shit and listening to music. Jessica got introduced to several more of my relatives, including aunt Holly’s husband, Mike, and their daughter, Sherry (aliases: queen dramatus persona, wicked bitch of the north, and madam complains a lot). She was introduced to the brother’s niece, his sister-in-law, and… a whole shit ton of others. Christmas day was more meetings as she got to meet Trish’s parents and brothers, seeing as we had to drop off their givts anyway. After the parentals left yesterday, we sat around and talked for a bit, had supper, and dug ourselves out from the mountain of email that had accumulated since we left. Now, at too goddamn early in the goddamn morning on a goddamn saturday, we’re both up and figuring on catching up with our LJ postings. My body decided it was done sleeping, and I think my being up and wandering around out here might have provoked her to get up. Oops.

    I’ve had a hell of an awesome week so far, the only black spot on it being that tomorrow I have to bring myself to get her to the bus station, so we can get back to doing our own thing on our own side of the border until who the hell knows. Either way it’ll be way too damn long, in my blatantly honest opinion. But the week as it’s been so far has definitely made me look forward to the next time. We crack jokes about how each of us is more than likely just counting down the hours until the other one’s finally getting back on the bus and leaving, but the truth is she has no idea how anticipated the chance is to start counting down the hours until one of us actually goes to do the visiting. As for right now though, we’re both up way earlier than either of us would like to be, so methinks it’s time I either contemplate preparing mass amounts of caffeine for immediate consumption, or get one/both of us back under the covers. This whole not sleeping past like 6:30 stuff? Yeah. Die in a goddamn fire.

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  • I have too much time, methinks.

    So in between getting things settled up for Christmas, and taking Jess (samari76) out for her birthday, I’ve had a bit of an opportunity to do some technological geeking. I’ve been toying with the idea of installing a local copy of various versions of Linux, mostly for the awesome factor that would go with it. That, plus trish is rather curious to see exactly what the system looks like. So with mucho assistance from Mike (lightvortex), I got my hands on an iso of Gentoo, A.K.A. my OS of choice. Burned two live CD’s, one for my eventual booting/possible installing, and one so Trish can look at it on her own schedule and optionally install it when she decides it’s something she’s got time to dink around with. If I ever do get around to installing Gentoo locally, I’ve still got the HP laptop sitting in the other room that’s been in a sort of semi-state of retirement since about September/October of last year, when I got my hands on this machine. I’m giving serious thought to plunking Gentoo on that machine, and taking the Orca screenreader for a test drive. Thought about a couple others, but from doing my own poking around Orca’s got the most publicly available documentation/information on it. I’m not *overly* impressed with its selection of speech synths, but considering it’s free software, plus is completely and totally open source, I don’t see that being a permanent problem. If it turns out I actually enjoy locally using Gentoo,I may do exactly the same thing with the desktop here; ditch the copy of Windows and subsequent copy of JAWS for Windows I have on here, and stick Gentoo in its place. God knows there’s about 40 billion equivalent programs I can use to do the same every day things I do on here while using that particular OS. Now I just have to muster up the nerve to actually take the plunge. One of these days I’ll let loose with my Windows versus Linux post. But for the moment, I’ll just leave it at Linux will pwn j00. And yes, Rox’e (pawpower4me), it even pwns your macs. Like wo.

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  • The day that was, and who ate my heat?

    Jessica’s birthday went off without so much as a hickup. We spent the majority of the day just hanging out and talking, and I gave her her next and last birthday gift. It was a foot warmer from mom, which turned out to be appropriate thanks largely to the fact we had a slightly colder than usual night and it only served to confirm that yet, in fact, the heat in here isn’t working quite as well as I’d of liked. So there will be phone calls made about that momentarily. I took Jess out for dinner last night, dropping in for a couple hours at Montana’s Cookhouse. For the record, I’m ever so slightly reminded of a restaurant we went to during my initial trip down there. Except, of course, it’s in Canada. So it’s better. By default. Now we’re both sort of awake and hanging out in my living room; she’s checking her email, and we’re both just doing that thing where we be like 6 different kinds of lazy. Eventually, the plan is to take off for the parentals’ place and the coming Christmas cellebrations (translation: eat ’til you puke, drink ’til you puke, and get up early-ish). As for immediately right now, though? This apartment needs some serious heatage. Like wo.

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  • Up, but not necessarily awake.

    As generally hinted at by other entries posted here, Jessica (samari76) made it here with absolutely no difficulty whatsoever. Well, once she found herself a bus that was actually leaving when it was supposed to. She managed to get herself aboard the bus leaving at 8:15, since her usual bus was cancelled thanks to the queen bitch that is mother nature. She didn’t end up getting in until about 9:00 on saturday, much thanks to one delay or another; be it trafic, scheduling, or people taking too damn long. She was tired as all get out, so we crashed relatively early (well, early for us on a saturday, anyway). We slept in extra late yesterday, then were significantly more lazy than is usual for us while she recovered a bit more from her trip. Spent the rest of that day just talking, and catching up on things. I gave her one of her birthday presents yesterday, the 9th season of Everybody Loves Raymond. There’s another one here for her, but being as she’s both in this very room righrt now and reading over her friends list, I won’t be saying what it is on here, but thanks for coming out. There are plans in the works for later on today, assuming I can get a hold of specific individuals. But first, I’ll need to nail someone to the wall regarding our apparent lack of heating in the place. See, this is what happens when you’re not actually sleeping in your own bed for a couple weeks at a timie; the major cold sets in, and you don’t notice it until you get to being here with, um, company. So that’s the basic plan for the day. And, though I’ve already said it in person, I’ll say it here anyway because, well, it’s me. Happy birthday, Jessica! Hopefully this year’s as good for you or better than the last one.

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  • Oh, balls.

    NEXT WINTER STORM IN THE SERIES TONIGHT INTO SUNDAY.. AFTER A BRIEF BREAK TODAY FROM NASTY WINTER WEATHER IN THE WAKE OF FRIDAYS WINTER STORM THE NEXT DISTURBANCE IN THE SERIES WILL THREATEN TO INTENSIFY INTO A WINTER STORM TONIGHT AND SUNDAY AS IT MOVES FROM THE US MIDWEST INTO SOUTHERN ONTARIO. THIS WINTER STORM IS EXPECTED TO HAVE AN EXPANDING AND INTENSIFYING AREA OF SNOW AS IT MOVES INTO SOUTHWESTERN ONTARIO TONIGHT AND THEN RACES INTO REMAINING REGIONS OVERNIGHT AND SUNDAY. SNOWFALL AMOUNTS WILL RANGE FROM 5 TO 15 CENTIMETRES OVER SOUTHWESTERN AREAS AND NEAR 15 CENTIMETRES IN THE GOLDEN HORSESHOE AREA AND SKI COUNTRY. HIGHER SNOWFALL AMOUNTS ARE QUITE POSSIBLE THIS TIME OVER EASTERN ONTARIO AS THE STORM INTENSIFIES ON SUNDAY. WHILE SNOWFALL AMOUNTS OVER SOUTHWESTERN ONTARIO MAY BE QUITE MARGINAL VERY STRONG WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO DEVELOP SUNDAY IN THE WAKE OF THE STORM CENTRE AS IT MOVES NORTHEAST ACROSS THE LOWER GREAT LAKES. HENCE WIDESPREAD BLOWING SNOW MAY BECOME A SIGNIFICANT PROBLEM ON SUNDAY PARTICULARLY FROM GODERICH TO TORONTO AND NIAGARA SOUTHWEST TO WINDSOR. WINDS MAY ACTUALLY BECOME STRONG ENOUGH SUNDAY TO REACH WIND WARNING CRITERIA ESPECIALLY NEAR LAKE ERIE. MOTORISTS SHOULD BE PREPARED ONCE AGAIN TO ALTER TRAVEL PLANS FOR TONIGHT AND SUNDAY ACCORDINGLY. TRAVELLING CONDITIONS WILL AGAIN DETERIORATE QUICKLY BEGINNING TONIGHT WITH DANGEROUS WINTER DRIVING CONDITIONS FROM WHITEOUTS IN BLOWING SNOW AND HEAVY SNOW EXPECTED TO DEVELOP. SNOWSQUALLS MAY ALSO BECOME AN ISSUE TO THE LEE OF LAKE HURON AND GEORGIAN BAY SUNDAY NIGHT AND MONDAY. ENVIRONMENT CANADA CONTINUES TO CLOSELY MONITOR THIS SITUATION AND WARNINGS MAY BE ISSUED LATER TODAY OR TONIGHT AS THIS STORM DRAWS CLOSER.

    And here I thought I’d be in the clear. For the record, I do believe this is the same storm that cancelled buses out of Rochester earlier this morning. Mother nature, burn in hell. The deepest level of hell.

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  • Return of the spambot?

    I believe so.

    CongestedCoho (7:34:40 AM): Hello.

    arinieth (7:35:27 AM): can i help you?

    CongestedCoho (7:46:05 AM): hi, who is this?

    arinieth (7:46:33 AM): was just about to ask you the same thing.

    CongestedCoho (7:46:53 AM): I got an IM from you a little over an hour ago… you said

    CongestedCoho (7:46:56 AM): Hi

    CongestedCoho (7:47:05 AM): I’m sorry, “Hey.”

    arinieth (7:47:50 AM): ‘fraid not. though your screenname does look similar to someone else i discovered to be a spammer.

    CongestedCoho (7:49:04 AM): shoe?  I did get an IM from you though, it’s still in this same window for me… you may have a mallet then or someone else
    has your password or something, might want to look at that (sorry if being presumptuous) … anyway, gotta run, have a nice day

    Thanks for your concern, but well, you have just been confirmed. Long and short of it? I can has spamproofing, plz?

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  • The blog just got slightly more drama free.

    As hinted at by Jessica (samari76) while I was out of town, certain individuals have decided to subtract a few years from their mental age and instead resort to wining and complaining about every small problem that’s ever been invented. Since I have a huge ass problem with reading it, not to mention she’s decided to sling mud at a few folks I *am* friends with (you just don’t do that if you don’t want to piss me off), she no longer graces the friends page. Some of you folks already know the guilty party of which I speak. She gets a special place on my get over yourself list.

  • This post took way too damn long.

    Yes, I know, I should have posted forever ago. Deal with it. Anyway, things have been steadily doing that thing where they both calm down and pick up at the exact same time over the past week or so. The visit with jessica (Samari76) ended as wonderfully as it started, if you’re willing to ignore the fact I got home about 4.5 hours later than I, like, ever wanted to. The thanks giving dinner we had at her coworker’s place was absolutely awesome, and so was the company. Bonnie, our hostess, pretty well went all out with the dinner, trying her best I swear to compete with my mother in seeing just how quickly we all wound up in a food coma by 10. I don’t think anyone ended up staying late enough to find out, though; Tasha and her friend/boyfriend/whatever ended up calling their cab at upwards of quarter to 9, the rookies. Jess was getting a tiny bit tired, so we ended up going home shortly there after. Well, that, plus she had to work the next day.

    Friday was originally going to be our spend time alone together evening; we were thinking about cracking open something alcoholic, ordering pizza, and calling it an evening to remember. But Tasha’s playmate came over to collect her vodka, what was left of it, and he and Jess got to talking about our respective plans. He mentioned making Tacos, and that pretty much cieled the deal for what we were planning on doing. Half an hour later or so, we’d packaged up Tasha’s alcohol, and grabbed some of our own, heading to Marvin’s place for Mexican food. The plan was originally we’d all (Jessica, me, Marvin and Tasha) get together over there and do some drinking. Since tacos were apparently initially her idea and she had the stuff, Tasha was going to bring it ahead over. But I guess she decided at some point throughout the day to lapse into her teenage years, because not long after we got to Marvin’s place, she called him all pouty like and said she wasn’t coming over. They went back and forth for a bit, her getting pissed off at him for trying to convince her to come over, him getting pissed off at her because at this point she was 26 years old going on 4. The more pissed off she got, the more her story as to why it was she didn’t want to come over changed… y’know, typical childlike fashion. It ended up getting to the point where instead of calling Marvin out for things, she started calling both Jessica and myself out for supposedly things that were done when I first met her like 3-4 months ago. Now, it should be pointed out that neither of us remembers, like, anything she’s saying we’re supposedly guilty of doing/saying. She eventually gets herself over to his place, but insists that she’s here but doesn’t plan on coming in. So Jessica went out to see what the hell her problem was this time.

    Now, anyone with half a brain knows I’m not the kind of person to bother getting in the middle of crap like that. Neither, for the record, is Jessica. But on this particular evening there wasn’t gonna be any of that staying out of it stuff. Not according to Tasha, anyway; we were there, so obviously we were targets too. Marvin starts to crying about how this is the crap he has to deal with from her and yada yada yada cry me a goddamn river. So I flat out told him, either put up with it and hope to god she grows up, or drop the chick like a bad habbit and move on to the next. By this point she and Jessica are in a bit of a screaming match outside, so I went out to see what the hell her problem is. sure enough, no sooner did she get here than she’s talking about how she should have just stayed home and no one listens to her and all that typical “pity me, I’m pathetic” crapola. I finally got Jessica to come in, and Marvin went out to deal with her. I’d of gone myself but at this stage of the game she’d of wound up carried. Either into the house or into an ambulance; that much all 3 of us were looking to let her decide. I don’t know what all Marvin said to her, but she eventually ended up coming in, and heading straight into the living room where again she started shooting her mouth off, this time at both me and Jessica.

    Keep in mind all of this started because her freaking boyfriend committed the ultimate sin and asked her why she changed her mind last minute and didn’t want to come over. I was getting tired of this like nobody’s business, so when she finally stopped screaming for 30 seconds all 3 of us pretty much told her to shut up, grow up, and at least try acting like somebody a year older than me for a change. I think she got the hint this time, because the next like 10 minutes or so was basicly her crying and appologising and all that wonderful fluffy crap. Jessica ended up going back to Tasha’s place with her to get her stuff, since she’d apparently not bothered to have the sense to bring it with her. She had it all packed and at the door though, minus whatever she’d be sleeping in that night, so clearly she’d planned to show up. Have I mentioned before the two things that irritate me most when it comes to your average person are extreme amounts of self-generated drama, and head games? Well, this little bundle of wtf apparently comes packaged with both. Not what I wanted to see on a friday night where there’s alcohol involved. Or any night, but whatcha gonna do? Marvin and I pretty much shot the shit while they were over at Tasha’s place, and it turns out we have a lot of the same theories. Which surprised the hell out of me, when you consider the fact we come from entirely different cultures/backgrounds.

    By the time Jess and Tasha got back, we’d killed the vodka and pretty much what was left of everything else. We did have some of her rum left, so Jess and I killed that, too. Which was good, because my buz was pretty well taking a small little tiny vacation about then. The rest of the evening actually wasn’t too bad. We ordered pizza, killed the remainder of the alcohol we had on hand, and generally shot the shit. I think over the course of the evening Tasha managed to mentally age the missing 22 years. We ended up getting ready to leave well after midnight… I think it was closer to 1 or so before we headed out the door, and caught a cab home. I made sure Jess got to bed okay, then let the other two nutcases know we made it home, before pretty well punching the lights out myself.

    Saturday was pretty well all manner of lazy, with the exception of an hour or two taken up in the morning to grab breakfast with Julie and her fiance. Then we just came back to Jess’s place, and did that thing where we got all kinds of lazy. Threw on some music, and kicked it around the place for the day. Sunday was go time, and it was pretty much one scheduling fuck-up after another. We got to the station somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1:30, for a 2:45 departure. Then shortly after we got to the station, so did the hellishly bad weather. Snow storms galore by the sounds of it. All told the bus didn’t end up pulling out of Rochester until upwards of 5. And from that point, we were behind the eight ball. About 3 hours behind when we left, 3.5 when we hit the border, 4 when we hit toronto and 4.5 or so when I finally made it to Ottawa. And it was all that bitch mother nature’s fault. Weather stuck with us the whole time on the road. Except for, probably, about 10 minutes or so between border and Toronto. By the time I got to Ottawa it was upwards of like 6:30-7:00. So I left my suitcase at the door, crawled my ass to my room, and fell into bed. Like wo.

    Pretty much all of that week was spent doing job search related things, talking to the girlfriend, and generally picking up on stuff that needs taking care of after you get back from the dark side. Finally got unemployment insurance related things sorted out, so there will be no moving back to the drama capital of our family this bitch of a winter. Next, well, hopefully I won’t have to think about that. Fired off about 6 handfuls of applications, though, and got a total of 0 callbacks so far. Figures, but whatcha gonna do? Same thing for last week. Applications galore were fired off left and right, but notta so far in the interview department. People blame the slowing economy, I blame Murphy’s law. Or something.

    Last Wednesday I booked it on back down to Pembroke, so we could make a family thing out of decorating my parents’ Christmas tree. Or rather, I planned to book it on down to Pembroke, but mother nature decided to slow things up then, too. Bitch. Otherwise, though, that went off apparently problem free; the sister-in-law didn’t give us too much of a headache with that. Surprised the royal hell out of me, but for a change, it was a pleasant one. Came back on Friday initially to stick around here for the weekend, dad had an appointment in town so they dropped me off for that. Took the hour and a bit to apply for a few more jobs and pack extra clothes just in case, as dad wasn’t sure if he was going back to work at that time or not. Turned out he wasn’t, so I went back to Pembroke to give him a hand with finishing the flooring project he started at about the end of October or so. We didn’t exactly get that finished, but he did manage to finish up the flooring in the front porch. He went back to work on sunday, and I took the day to be 6 different kinds of lazy.

    Monday was a little tiny bit of a twist in and of itself. Marvin decided to stir up a little bit of shit where Jessica and I are concerned, which naturally upset her. Her LJ goes into the basics of what he said, but it pretty much boils down to he told her I hinted to him during our first conversation that there were things I was doing specificly because she wanted to, though I didn’t necessarily want to. I just kind of shook my head at it, but it seemed to bother her a lot. She forwarded me the emails he was sending back and forth with her. I had a read, then promptly went off on him like nobody’s business in email. He was all appologetic, after changing his story once or twice, including saying it was something she told him that she’d discussed with Tasha, or something like that. Siiiigh. Drama blows hard. He emailed me with a profuse appology, then texted Jessica repeatedly with the same damn thing. Next day, he appologised to her in person. She’s apparently accepted it, but as for myself, I think I’ll still be pissed for a while. The rest of the week was pretty uneventful though, and I eventually (meaning on Wednesday) wandered on back to Ottawa. This after finishing the wrapping of Jess’s birthday present. I took wednesday to recover from the week. Thursday was mostly job related stuff, and yesterday was wrapping the Christmas presents I’d bought here but didn’t take to Pembroke with me. Primarily because the 3 people I bought for were living in or frequently visiting the house during that week. There was a little tiny bit of frustration with Jessica’s buses, mostly related to issues with mother nature. Queen bee killer bitch herself decided it would be awesome to dump like a hundred feet of snow on Rochester and area. Well, okay, only 1 or 2. Her 1:40 bus is apparently all manner of cancelled, so she’s going to make a shot at the 8:15 one. Later than usual arival time, but hey, she’ll be here. So not complaining. Today will be, um, well, let’s see. Laundry, cleaning. No, wait, cleaned already. Okay, laundry. Oh, and waiting to hear if she’s actually going to be here or not.

    In the chaos that is my life, I seem to have missed a couple special occasions. So, happy belated birthdays, Shon (thecrazykiwi) and Rox’e (pawpower4me)!

    PS: If ever I go this long without posting again, could someone please drop kick me?

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  • PSA:

    The real post is coming when I get home. For now, advanced warning. Things are happening at the moment. Pissed off would probably be the most child friendly way to describe my state of mind. Do not email unless you want a snipped reply. Do not IM, as I’m still signed in at home. And you’d probably get an even more snipped reply if I wasn’t. It’s nothing earth shattering, just somebody needs a clue by four taken to both sides of their head. Twice.

    ETA: The appropriate asses have been kicked, attitudes adjusted, morons drop kicked back to stupidsville, all that nifty shtuff. Still mildly irritated at the situation, which will be posted more in depth in the novelesque entry I’ve been working on at home since *last* tuesday. Meantime, I no longer want to make a special trip across the border to slug certain individuals.

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  • Sheepity sheepity!

    Real post coming. But not at early thirty in the goddamn morning. Instead, have this.

    Dear Santa…

    Dear Santa,

    This year I’ve been busy!

    In November I gave change to a homeless guy (19 points). In April I bought porn for fordanglia (-10 points). In January on a flight to Pakistan, I stole the emergency flight information card (-40 points). Last Tuesday I punched masterofmusings in the arm (-10 points). Last Sunday I gave pawpower4me a wet willie, then I took it back (-5 points).

    Overall, I’ve been naughty (-46 points). For Christmas I deserve a lump of coal!

    Sincerely,
    arinoch

    Write your letter to Santa! Enter your LJ username:

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