two dolla

The Kid™ always sings this song about emo kids. He apparently found it on YouTube at some point with a friend of his. It goes something like this:

E is for emotional, ruins everybody’s day,
M is for miserable peeeeee-ople,
O is for on the daaaaaaark side, ’cause we got some fresh cookies. Cookies!!!

The General™ is extremely fascinated by the whole emo scene. And me? I guess I don’t really understand it at all and I don’t think I want to. BUT if I did? You know where I’d find it? Emo Chat. It’s all pink and black and … oh wait, doesn’t have any users online, which is so sad it almost makes me emo.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my favorite co-workers was all “Hey, do you think you can cover me while I’m on vacation for three da ys?” Covering him means swapping my 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. shift for a 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. shift.

At my last job at A-Hole Inc, I was never on time. Ever. For almost five years. I got in trouble for it on a regular basis, but oddly enough, I didn’t care.

With my new job? I’m up before 6:00, giving myself only around half an hour to get to the bus stop. My eyes are burning right now and the dogs are very confused at why we milling about when it’s still dark outside. The General’s work day doesn’t start until 8:30, which means I set a second alarm last night, because who in their right mind would want to be up at 5:45 a.m. if they didn’t have to?

This co-worker I’m covering lives only BLOCKS from work and even goes home over his lunchbreak. PROBABLY TO NAP. I cannot imagine doing this on a regular basis!

I have some big sweater puppies. Or fun bags. Or whatever you want to call them. But it’s true. They’re big ‘uns and they’ve been that way since high school, I think. I don’t buy the frilly bras, because A) they wouldn’t at all fit with my fashionable collection of witty t-shirts and B) I’m more of a fan of comfort than I am of pretty when it comes to something that’ll be supporting the twins on a regular basis.

I know the internet has some fancy places to get nice bras for big boobied women, like the folks at Marie Jo Bra, for instance. I browsed through their site, because HI BOOBIES ARE MADE FOR BROWSING, but couldn’t stop laughing at the thought of me in a nice ruffly pink bra. And while they do make my size, thank you very much, I think I’d be embarassed pulling that little slingshot out of the washing machine at ye ol’ Spin Cycle on a regular basis. The guy cleans it every night already hates us because we’re there so late; I don’t want him to go home and also make jokes about my boob hammock I bring in to wash every so often.

I mean, yes, it’s good to know they have different lines of Marie Jo Bras and Marie Jo Lingerie in case, you know, I ever decide to go to prom or dress up as Madonna for Halloween. There are some great options for people that are a tad (or a whole heck of a lot) more feminine than I am… just not for this slugger!

Tomorrow at 10:00 a.m., I have an appointment with the CEO of my company for my 90-day review. It’s about a month late, but I had a ridiculously awesome week for numbers last week, which will hopefully end up in my favor for my first review with this company. I’m kind of excited since my last company gave us one review a year if we were lucky.

I’m working on filling out a form that we’ll discuss during my review. I have to answer questions like:

1. List five strengths and five areas of improvement
2. What do I like and dislike about my job?
3. What are your key motivators?
4. What are your overall feelings about Awesome Co.?
5. If you could change one thing, what would it be?

You get the idea… THEY’RE HARD. I really love my job and can’t find one single aspect that I dislike about it, which is making parts of this form extremely freaking difficult.

I really love that the powers that be are this interested in their employees’ opinions. I’m overly excited about working there and can’t imagine doing anything other than this for a long time to come. It’s just really hard trying to convey that in a written form without sounding like a total kiss-ass. WHICH I TOTALLY AM NOT.

I called Travis (my younger brother by 3 1/2 years) on Friday to verify that yes, my dad knows how to text message now. (More on this later.) when I called him, he was at the Moose Lodge in Sedalia (population ~20,000) with a couple of his friends, one which is a Moose Lodge Member. You apparently have to sign in when you go to Sedalia’s Moose Club, but you can only go a certain number of times per year for free, before they start hassling you about joining. So on Friday, Travis was there under the alias of Travis Owens (or something that is most definitely not our last name). He was drinking a pitcher of beer and an amaretto sour.

I got a text message from him somewhere around 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning that contained this picture:

With a caption that said this: So I kind of bet Paul at work that I could out do his facial hair nonsense and this is what I came up with. Of course I won!

This picture and his Moose Lodge adventures? Yet another example as to why he needs his own damn blog.

Since I’ve never had one of my very own, I don’t really have a lot of experience in picking out Childrens Costumes when Halloween rolls around every year. Even for myself, I’m pretty much last minute when it comes to picking out a costume. Example? Last year’s Kevin Federline costume complete with accessories like Jayden James tucked securely away on a Taco Bell bag. We won’t talk about drinking booze from the baby’s head as the night progressed, because that’s just wrong. I still wonder if Sean every found the headless baby body placed every so lovingly and gently in a stack of blankets on top of his bookcase.

Over the past few months with The General and The Kid, I’ve began to realize I get to start thinking about all that cool stuff without having to deal with changing any diapers or having baby puke all down the front of my shirt.

And while I’m sure there are more than enough Halloween Costume Stores out there that could provide perfectly awesome costumes for kids, I don’t think The General’s going to go for that. The Kid’s had homemade costumes in the past when he’s dressed up as Frankenstein or Dracula, and they’re almost downright creepy looking! He and I haven’t had a discussion yet about what he wants to be, but I’m kind of excited to see what he’s been thinking about!

The General and I went to the Townhouse last night. We decided on the way there that we hadn’t been there for just about two months. The last time we were there, I vowed that I didn’t want to go back for a while on account of two people (both of which we met for the first time that night) were total asses (to put it lightly) and I didn’t really want to hang out with people that in my free time.

We went back last night for a drag show that we both love, and had a great time. There ended up being a ton of people there that I know, and we got to see two of my most favorite performers ever. A co-worker of mine was there - he asked me on Friday what I was doing Saturday night and it just so happened that we both had plans to go to the same bar. So, it was super fun to hang out with him for a limited amount of time outside of work.

Someone I’d briefly been talking to before The General and I got together ended up being there and sitting in the table next to us. It was kind of awesome to finally meet face to face. And my old recruiter ended up showing up with her entourage. Of course Jessie was there, which always makes for an awesome night.

It was great to go back without the drama that was there last time. There’s a show there I want to see next Friday, but we have The Kid. If I can come up with a fake ID, I’m totally taking him with me.

I’m the kind of person that doesn’t answer my cell phone unless I know who’s calling me. If I’m anywhere near a computer, I automatically type in whatever number is scrolling across my phone display in some type of search to find out who’s on the other end. Granted, I usually don’t have a lot of success when it comes to individual cell phone number, but it was kind of handy yesterday afternoon. A number came across and I plugged it in to my favorite reverse phone search tool. Turns out it was Comcast, so I answered, because I knew I’d just paid my bill in full that morning.

Comcast Lady: “May I speak to Wendy?”

Wendy: “This is.”

Comcast Lady: “This is Lady calling from Comcast.”

Wendy: “Yes?”

Comcast Lady: “I was just calling about your bill. (Short pause.) The one you paid in full this morning?”

Wendy: “Yes?”

Comcast Lady: “I just wanted to call (even longer pause) and thank you for paying it?”

Wendy: “Yes?”

Comcast Lady: “Okay. Have a good day.” (Honest to goodness real conversation, yo.)

If it weren’t for the internet, I totally wouldn’t have answered the phone. And had I not answered the phone, our cable totally would have gotten turned off! And then? I couldn’t have watched “From Gs to Gents” this morning and sang along to the theme song. It’s possible I was still intoxicated.

It’s a safe bet that most Twin Cities bloggers will mention something like this at some point, so you can probably just consider this joining in the crowd.

The RNC is taking place in St. Paul right now. Minneapolis/St. Paul as a whole, as far as I know and want to believe, is a pretty liberal locale - it’s one of the main reasons I like living here so much. Considering this, I can’t really say I’m surprised by the 250+ people (all protesting the RNC in some fashion, including a 78 year old nun and even four journalist) that have wound up in handcuffs since Saturday.

We didn’t have any source of news while we were camping this weekend, with the exception of occasional twitters about what was going on and a quick glance at the StarTrib through my phone’s tiny browser once or twice while we were there. I just know it was bad enough that I was a little scared of coming back.

I mean, seriously? This happened in a downtown metro area:

Granted, everything that’s going on like this, including the houses that were raided on suspicion of “terroristic activities” (according to the police warrant) aren’t all that close to my apartment, I’m definitely not looking forward to going into work tomorrow - most of the delegates and important RNC-type folks are staying in hotels within a pretty tight radius of where I work and I really don’t want to deal with worrying about someone dumping a 5-gallon bucket of weaponized urine on my head.

My thoughts are clearly scattered about this whole situation and I’m sure it’s because I’ve never experience anything of the nature and never thought I’d experience anything like it.

Downtown St. Paul looks like a scene from a movie, where there are 10-12 feet barbed wire fences blocking off a radius from the RNC’s locale, choppers flying overhead, and gaggles of cops full of testosterone and what they’re treating as instant and unlimited power. It’s gross and I kind of hate it right now.

I’m just glad it will all be done after Thursday. And I’m kind of glad that Bush, Cheney, and what appears to be McCain have decided to band together and physically stop the hurricane from smashing into Louisiana. My suggestion is to probably offer up Sarah Palin’s whore daughter* to the hurricane as a peace offering to God; she could totally save the world.

*I don’t really think Bristol Palin is a whore. I think her mom’s a whore for naming her after a NASCAR racing location.

Tomorrow is Camping Trip #2 of the summer. In Camping Trip #1, The General and I had been together all of three weeks. I’m not entirely sure why it became such an urgency for us to go camping together that early, but we did and it was super awesome. So, we figured we’d close the summer out in style with another camping trip with the two of us, the two dogs, and well, all of my closest and most awesome friends.

This summer has been ridiculously busy - full of working, getting used to living with someone again, adjusting to having an 11 year old half the time, and, you know, some other stuff that I’ve been busy with. I’ve taken a ton of pictures, did a ton of pretty awesome things, but have completely forgotten to document my daily awesome life over here. I’m going to make it a goal to try to do that more, but I make a lot of goals that I never seem to even come remotely close to achieving.

But not really before I spend the next few days in Wisconsin, my project with the RNC comes to a conclusion, school starts for The Kid™, and all that good stuff…