Merry Christmas!

We got a white Christmas! It's so exciting I can hardly stand it! Kevin and I went down to Olympia to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with his family down there and we had a great time sliding around in the ice-rutted roads doing last minute shopping and visiting. We had a beautiful Christmas Eve dinner with David and Denise and Brian, joined for presents later by Denise's son Kelly.

Christmas morning bright and early we trooped over to Kevin's grandma's house to help get things ready for the onslaught of people and presents that was looming on the horizon (well, if you count 10 a.m. as the horizon). I've NEVER seen so many presents anywhere in one place. Holy smokes - I'm not even exaggerating! There was a stocking for everyone - even me! Everyone was so friendly including me in everything. I had a wonderful time with everyone there.

It was crazy and busy and hyper, but still managed to be warm and wonderful. Kevin's grandma is one of the sweetest women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing and I am so thankful that I got to share Christmas there this year.

More SNOW!

OK, so I meant to get this posted on Thursday because all my first-snow pictures are from Wednesday night. Go check them out on my Flickr! :-)


I'm LOVING all the snow we've gotten! The best part is that it has stayed so cold it has not done the regular western Washington winter pattern of: rain, rain more, snow, warm up, rain more, gross slush, melt, ice over, rain more, rain, rain some more - until April when it rains even more. So, back to my wonderfully happy post this started out being... :-) I played in the snow and threw the snow and ran in the snow and made a snow angel! I LOVE the snow!

Locks of Love

So I have been getting daily headaches from my hair being so long.  Ponytails, braids, barrettes, simply down - It was too long and too heavy.  Then there were the tangles.  At my lower back, any chair I sat in would pin my hair between my back and the chair and every small head movement added to the horrendous tangles I'd have to get through.  Not to mention the cost of washing and styling products it takes to maintain that much hair.  I was 14 months overdue for a trim (at the VERY least).  

So about 2 weeks ago I really knew I needed finally get around to getting a trim and have it thinned out a bunch.  Then, out of the blue, Locks of Love was weighing heavy on my heart.  I know several people who have donated in the past, but haven't heard anything in years.  I decided that I would at least look into it and see how long the donation has to be and what else they require.  The more I looked into it the more it felt right - the right thing AND the right time.  

So I picked out a hairstyle that I liked that I thought would look good on my face and body and that my hair would actually DO.  I made the appointment for later in the week and surprisingly got excited about it even!

...and I LOVE the final result!  Kevin likes it too.  It's going to take a lot of getting used to after 7 years of really long hair.  Check out my pictures on my Flickr account since I apparently can't figure out how to add them here.  :-)

....It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

It snowed! Yesterday evening and last night! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it! Light, fluffy, powdery, swirly white stuff blowing in the wind. There's not very much of it and, unfortunately, it probably won't last that long - Just a couple days before it warms back up again.

This is my favorite kind of winter weather - Bright blue sky, puffy clouds, FREEZING cold outside, but crisp and beautiful and dry!

On Friday morning I cleaned my living room, unpacked some boxes (from moving in exactly a year ago!) and rearranged the furniture. Put lights in the window and on my spiky green plant since I didn't get a tree yet and listened to Christmas music all day - It was glorious!

I really don't want to be at work today. Don't get me wrong, I don't really mind being here, but I'd much rather be listening to Christmas music and baking and drinking hot cocoa - YUM!

Merry Christmas!!!

Dream Journal

I started keeping a Dream Journal. I've actually thought about it before since, as any of you who know me probably have heard, I have insanely rediculous, crazy dreams. I found this one (http://gifts.barnesandnoble.com/Home-gift/Dreams-A-Dream-Journal/e/9781892033222/?itm=3) at Barnes and Noble.com while I was ordering my work Secret Pal's Christmas present. So I ordered one. I had no idea the cool things inside! On the front of every page it has places for all the small broad details - time you woke up, time writing down, date, who was in the dream, where were you, what sleeping conditions and did you eat anything before bed. Then the back of each page is lined for all the details or meanings you think etc that you want to record. It's super fun! This way when I try to remember long after what that one about the bears living in the bedroom and the one about the Venice-esque house with pirates and finding the baby to play with, I'll have them written down for reference. In any case, it should make for very entertaining reading for my grandkids when I'm old!

Are you ready for a SHOCK??

I'm actually doing Christmas Cards this year!

I know, I know, I can feel the doubt from you all oozing through my monitor... but it's true. I have a letter written (already beat my attempts last year), as short and concise as it may be and cards (leftover from last year that never got written in or addressed, but hey, unless you read this post you'll never know!). I have stamps and motivation! Now I just have to get everything put together and in the mailbox before that motivation gets diverted on Tuesday.

If you'd like a card - leave me your current address in a comment! :-)

Thanksgiving...

As I have been feeling rather in a state of discontent and irritability, Thanksgiving looms just around the corner - Note to self: Stop brooding. Breathe.

I am thankful that I live near family and have the ability to take advantage of precious time that so many may not get.

I am thankful for good friends. Though they may be few and far away, they are only a call or prayer away.

I am thankful for my boyfriend, who is the most wonderful, patient, kind, and goofy man I know. ...And I am thankful that he loves me.

I am thankful that I am employed and LIKE my boss, job, and workplace/employer.

I am thankful for the rediculous number of pairs of shoes that live in my closet (and floor and car and...).

Hey... who said we can only be thankful for the "important" things.

I'm writing a book!

Well, I'm actually finally compiling a book of my creative work over the years and finally found a way to get it published!  So, now I just have to actually sit down and finalize any changes to any works and then organize it and add fillers and decide if and where I want artwork in it.  I'm almost excited about it!

(well, I'd be totally excited about it except the Valium hasn't quite worn off from my lab test this morning - I still don't do needles well...)

I just can't help it...

I try to keep things short and simple, but they never stay that way. How does a simple, tiny, finite, single thought turn into a million-miles-a-minute-hardly-coherent-well-maybe-totally-incoherent-random ramble? See, there I go again. Somehow, the fascination with and need for (I can legitimately be classified as obsessive-compulsive and anal-retentive) finding exactly the precise, exact, most appropriate description ends up uncensored and excessively more elaborate that most (read: "normal") people find droll and boring on top of utterly confusing and thereby irritating.

*sigh*

What's a (overly-articulate-while-at-the-same-time-always-searching-for-a-better-word-and-thereby-ruining-any-otherwise-good-story) girl to do?

the Beast in our office...

and by Beast I actually mean wretched, wicked, conniving, down-right-mean, horrid, hateful, spiteful, nothing-better-to-do-than-gripe, emotionally poisoning, total witch. This goes far beyond her usual petty, gossip-y, complaining, know-it-all, if-mama-aint-happy-aint-nobody-happy attitude. It's not that she can't be personable and compassionate; I've seen that side of her. However, all too often, the very very ugly side is displayed to the world - and by world I mean those of us who suffer through sharing a work environment with her.

Do people seriously think that by "sticking it to the man" everything will turn out peachy keen in their favor? Seriously? Some people (well, actually just the one at the moment) make me so SICK! Absolutely physically ill and disgusted by their behavior.

Does she think that she's going to be the only one left standing? Really? Departments don't work like that. When you stir up shit and bring a swirling mud/shit cloud to attention, does she really think that they are going to praise her for bringing down our entire department? Holy Freakin' Cow! Does she not care or just not realize that she will probably literally ruin the lives of many of her co-workers, AND LOSE HER OWN JOB IN THE PROCESS! Just to try to make a stink and prove a point that she's pissed off? Some people are apparently entirely that vindictive and pathetic.

poetry.com

Of all the random thoughts! and, mind you, to be counted by me as a random thought in my brain it must be exceptionally so, considering that most every thought in my brain is a drop of complete randomness in the murky pond of my mind.

I have not thought about poetry.com in a couple years. I have really no idea what provoked my mind to think about it just now (well, about an hour ago technically speaking), but be it Providence or Conscience I started looking for my login and password. This was not an easy undertaking considering the slew of email addresses that I have had and still maintain, at least to some degree, since high school or college, not being sure of exactly the year I would have signed up, nor what email address I might have been using predominantly at that time. *sigh*

I finally gave up trying to locate whatever email I would have archived in some dusty old folder and did the "I can't remember my password" using my 3 oldest email addresses. Lucky me, the first one I checked was correct and my password was sitting politely in my inbox waiting for me.

I have missed my poetry. I miss words as much as I miss typing them. My beloved mini thesaurus LIVED in my purse only because my excessively large unabridged volume barely fit in my backpack and spent most of its time on my desk at home next to my Bible. I'll have to go dig them both out when I get home... and try to find my notepads and spirals with words I like and thoughts and drafts in them...

Anyway, get to the point, Alissa. Right...

So, since I'm obviously having trouble dreaming up things to write about that I won't hate myself for later, perhaps I'll keep my poems and prose and musings here, both for something to type and something to as something keep myself occupied so as to not forget for so long in between that I actually do like making words flow together, whether eloquent or profuse, mundane or melancholy. Well, we'll see.

oh, and if you find poetry.com (good luck making any sense of it all - they have horrendously revised the format of the site and it looks ghastly not to mention very un-user-friendly!) my poems are under Alissa Marie Jones including "Him" and "My Lilacs" and were written approximately 2001-2003.

Full of sighs...

Today is a beautifully perfect fall day - crisp and a little warm with traces of summer that was...? wait, a summer that should have been. Maybe I'm just a tad bit bummed out that I have to be sitting here at work while I'd much rather be enjoying the warmth of the day doing anything with a couple friends.

But seriously. This has to have been the most pathetic, unpredictably predictable, COLD, wet, ugly summer I've known since living in this glorious little city (I really do like Bellingham). Sure, there were a couple "nice" days, but I swear the temperature NEVER got above 85, never. Not even once for an hour or anything. We are turning out to have a beautiful fall, but fall is supposed to be the last bit of fun before we get into the plain old dreary wet winter that defines western Washington. And though I'm a proud washingtonian born and raised (one year in Illinois and California at ages 5 and 6, respectively do not count) , I am morally opposed to socks with sandals and therefore have not been able to fully enjoy all the brilliant, cute, sexy, fun shoes that I would normally wear in the summer.

I know, I know... "get over it". But I can't help what I want and what I want right now is to go play on the beach and lie in the grass in a park or my backyard, pick berries and make basil lemonade and not be freezing cold when I'm done with it all. *sigh* Welll, I suppose there's always next year...

Why I Will Blog - by Alissa

Ah, the first of many long, meandering and sometimes highschool essay-ish posts...

For me typing is cathartic. When we had to take keyboarding class with Mr. Hipple in 7th grade it was HORRIBLE and I absolutely hated every minute of that class. I thought it was dumb and a waste of time.

Silly me... 15 years later my profession is to type.

In highschool I started liking typing more and thought that it was fun to see how fast I could be on those online WPM tests. I was ok, not great, but I liked it and the competitive streak in me wanted to always be faster and better.

In college I typed EVERYTHING I could get my hands on. I would type and then retype papers instead of editing the first draft just because it made so much more sense to me to get the "flow" as I went. And because I physically liked typing. Good thing, being an English Lit major since all I ever did was read and analyze and make up the most far-fetched rediculous crap I could and use the magic of words to pull off a very pretty A- (side note - it's a totally, utterly worthless degree unless you are going to pursue library science, law, or teaching, none of which I was interested in then - but that's a whole different story/post).

Actually, I honestly read very little of what I should have based on what was required for college; but, again, I digress...

I LOVE typing. I love sitting at a computer, or typewriter for that matter, letting my fingers do all the thinking. People wonder how we can listen to what doctor's say and come out not remembering very little of it... it's because our fingers are trained to compose accurate masterpieces - yes, I really believe that - of the medical documents that would otherwise look and read like the incredibly poor speakers that so many physicians are. Scary to think that my life might actually depend on one of them someday.

But, back to my main point - if there was really one to start with - now as transcription as we know it is changing, evolving or devolving depending on with whom you speak, and as I fill my new role as department lead I am once again finding myself (for lack of a better analogy) like a fish out of water. My fingers still want to type so that my soul can process without getting my brain too involved. Journaling helps a little bit (and I'm addicted to pens almost as much as I am to shoes - those of you who have seen my closet know that this is not a confession to be taken lightly), but my brain goes faster than my sorely youthful and yet arthritic hands will go. I miss words and whole phrases sometimes and, Lord, how hard it is to decipher after the fact! I want to keep track of my memories and I want to have an excuse to type.

The answer - blogging! Well, at least for now that will probably be the answer. So many people are doing it, why not?

My boyfriend will definitely have an opinion though... Being a computer programmer, designer, senior architect person who builds websites for a living, last I talked to him about it, he thinks that blogger is total crap. Oh well, it's mine and Marie Antionette would say "Let them type words!"... well, maybe she wouldn't say that, but it sounded like a good outro... *sigh*

p.s. If you plan on following this, my first attempt at public extemporization be prepared for random, wordy, at times obnoxious, pathetic!, incomprehensible, rediculous posts. I can only hope that someday I make more sense to myself and the world around that has to listen to me!