happy happy.

oh dear. i truly had grand plans to stop slacking in the writing dept over here throughout the month of december. and yet i've been gone so long i didn't even know that they added helvetica as a font option (YAY!). 

but i'm back just in time for my requisite end-of-year post. while i am scarily still in a similar boat to the one i was in last year at this time, i can safely say that this time i won't be reflecting on all the crying i did during the past year. PROGRESS! 

so i tend to sum up this year as all crappy, but in reflecting on it as of late, it wasn't a total waste. mainly a waste - yes - but some great things managed to sneak in within the past twelve months, and more importantly, i have a feeling i will someday look back and see that this year was more of a transitional one than a flat-out terrible one. i used to go around saying "when i get my old life back"....and then it hit me one day that i wasn't, ever, going to get back the life i had been leading since i've been out of college. and then it hit me that i'm actually ok with that. in which case 2009 had to turn out this way as it's laying the foundation for a new path for me. and there's nothing wrong with new paths, right? there can be oodles of exciting new places along it to explore. 

so this (possibly delusional) outlook is what's getting me through the end of this year, and more importantly, end of this decade. as i watch 2009 limp away from me with it's tail between its mangy little legs, i say bring on the 10's, and - good lord - my 30's. i can't wait to see what's in store. 

happy, happy new year, dear readers ~ wishing you all all the best for this shiny new decade. 

am i smarter than a fifth grader? most definitely not.

for reasons that shall go nameless at the moment, i have to re-learn my fractions this week. i mean old-school, mastered-when-i-was-nine-years-old-and-haven't-thought-of-since fractions. i always used to laugh about the people who went on those silly 'are you smarter than an elementary-schooler?' type shows, but now that i'm actually re-attempting math from 20 (jeez!) years ago, i realize just how freaking hard this stuff is.

after being completely bewildered by phrases like "greatest common denominator" a few hours ago, i'm starting to make strides. things are coming back to me, and i'm currently maintaining a passing grade of 77 (fine. barely passing.) on a website game for adding fractions. BUT i'm positively excelling when it comes to dividing fractions, with a 93% and a gold smiley-faced star. a fact that i am entirely too proud of -- i'm ready to print out the page and hang it on the refrigerator. 

 

greetings, cards, and greeting cards.

a quickie roundup of the past 10 days, since i've been being a slacker again (but an otherwise very busy slacker!): 

- to all who our dear readers who celebrated this week, happy thanksgiving! we hope you are all happily sated from fun family times and copious amounts of food. 

- do you know how good it feels to have a library card again? i spent an awesome hour back in the old place the other day, and i can't wait to tear through the stack of books i took out and go back to get some more. i guess since i worked around books every day i didn't realize how much i missed the actual library. something about seeing tattered old books again - all my shiny new hardcovers from the past few years in publishing had gotten me spoiled, i think. 

the moment when i realized just how long it had been from the last time i was in a library was when my cell phone started buzzing and a librarian shot me a dirty look. it hadn't even occurred to me to silence the thing since the last time i was in one i didn't tote a cell around with me. eons must have passed! 

- i've mentioned side projects that missy and i have been up to a few times before -- this is our most recent, and biggest, to date, and one that we will hopefully continue for many years to come. i won't shamelessly self-promote too much over here (that's what facebook and twitter are for! in-between learning about what that random acquaintance from middle school ate for breakfast, of course), but we'd love and greatly appreciate if you had a moment and clicked over there and checked out the new shop. 

i'd like to meet his tailor.

i'm not into the whole twilight hoopla, but i do love this piece from the huffington post, which equates it to the recession

i am a werewolf. hear my anguished howl! 


**while on the subject of wolfie noises, i spent a most entertaining 40 minutes in the car on halloween, driving to sissy's place, with warren zevon's werewolves of london on repeat, enthusiastically AWHOOOOOO-ing alongside with the chorus. traffic is so much more tolerable when you can howl through it. 

commemorating.

a day short, but i intend to spend most of tomorrow too hungover to type, but - happy unemployedaversary to me. can you believe it's been a year? i can't. it completely and utterly boggles my mind, although, i had a sneaking suspicion last year at this time (well, last year, 36 hours from now) that i would find myself here. 

and one of the things i've pondered most of late is whether that was just my pisces intuition at work or if i subconsciously caused this scenario. would the initial mindset of "oh hey, a little break. no worries." as opposed to "HOLY FREAKING SHIT - I AM NEVER GOING TO WORK AGAIN. I AM GOING TO BE POOR AND SAD FOREVER." have gotten me employed again within a neat little two months? does mindset have a hand in destiny? did i think myself to one year later, still no job and living back at my parents? is that possible? 

prescience or self-fulfilling prophecy is the wonderment that has turned my current bedtime into 3am. in my next life i would really, really, really like to become one of those people who thinks just a tad less. maybe 30% less self-awareness and i can go about my merry way. 

but besides becoming a tad more neurotic, i think i am doing kind of ok. there's been an awful lot of rough patches, but otherwise life has chugged along kind of normally, and if anything i'd like to believe that the experience of a hardship (for lack of a better word, as i do know that things could definitely be worse, and that there are millions in my current situation + much worse) such as this has helped me to develop some new positive behaviors that i wouldn't have had the insight to properly develop beforehand when nothing was really ever wrong besides the passing every day bs stuff that now i know doesn't matter. well, at least matters less. 

is this growing up? maybe life holding me by the ponytail and spanking me with the reality stick will have its benefits after all. 

new ventures!

two posts in one day! do i have a fever?


this is more of an announcement than legitimate prose, so i suppose i don't. but missy, bear, and i have started on another online endeavor - us, elsewhere - in support of an offline endeavor that we're been working on for quite some time now (and will hopefully be launching soon). i don't intend to abandon darling old loveandcyanide for the new and shiny, so expect to still be able to find me here, dear bloggy friends and readers. but you can now find me there, too.

my worst enemy.

this is a flowering pear tree.


it is also my latest arch-nemesis.


you may be asking yourself how i could possibly be at odds with such a sweet, harmless tree. don't be fooled - similar to britney, the flowering pear is not that innocent. it lords over my parking spot with ill-intent. obstructing the curb with its low-hanging branches. depositing its ugly alien berries* all over the hood of my car. shedding an obscene amount of leaves.

why my parents opted to plant this thing where did they did is a complete mystery. they claim they had no idea it would grow as massive as it has or that it would make giant berries that would then fall all over the place leaving sticky, purple-y chaos in their wake. clearly they didn't do their research, as in the past 24 hours i've learned that the flowering pear grows into a majestic (re: large) pyramid shape and is a lovely addition to your lawn. nowhere is the flowering pear suggested for a teensy patch of dirt on the sidewalk next to your driveway in a space that perfectly fits one silver pontiac grand am.

the flowering pear better hope that i don't come across an axe in the basement.


*'ugly alien berries' do not resemble cute, normal berries, like the straw-, blue-, or rasp- varieties. instead they look like escargot. and when you rather unwisely try to scrape them off your windshield with your windshield wipers, they streak a purple-y brown goo across it that will take many, many paper towels to clean off.

parking lot peeves.

since starting my 'new life' - well, 'newer new life' - two (eeeekkkkk!) months ago, i've had to adjust to some different habits. like driving almost everywhere. which isn't the worst thing on earth - i've always been a fan of driving, whether i'm the driver or a passenger. and cars certainly get you places faster. - however, i just cannot get comfortable with driving to the gym. i got so used to having a nice little warm-up during my 10-block walk to my old gym - a very efficient method of getting in that little extra bit to my workout, i always thought - that now i feel like a useless sloth driving to it. but less of a useless sloth than some of my fellow gym-goers.

the gym is in a small shopping center, with a main parking lot for a number of stores. i typically park a few aisles over from the gym, where it is less crowded and so i can get an extra 20 seconds of leg movement before getting on the treadmill. so i've noticed during my little jaunts through the lot that there is often a lot of competition for the five or so parking spots that are directly in front of the building. prime real estate - i'm waiting for a fight to break out over them. yesterday, a woman waited for at least 3 minutes in her car for a man to get his (slow-moving) self into his vehicle and relinquish the spot to her. i marveled at how lazy people can be, that they are going to workout, but yet they can't walk more than a foot to get into the place where they are going to workout.

so imagine my disgust level when i left the gym and, looking down while crossing through one of the empty prime spots, noticed NO PARKING - FIRE LANE painted all along the curb! i hope an exercise bike never spontaneously bursts into flames while i'm working out alongside those lazy lawbreakers. our sweat will have to put the fire out since the firetruck won't be able to get close enough.