Nowadays

I haven't felt pain like this since my dad died. I don't know what to do, all I can do is wait it out. And hope. But hope hurts. But I guess that's life, life hurts too. Five more days, I can make it. We can make it forever.

Another year

Woo! I'm 27! Well technically I wasn't born until 3:50pm today, but since I'm awake from working, it's my berfday! Happy birthday to me! I'll post more tomorrow perhaps. I mean later today.

Why?!

So yesterday was fairly crappy. About as crappy as Mondays are doomed to be. But today is my day off, woo! Well I slept in, but didn't feel good when I got up. Like the sleep had made me mad instead of rested. I think it was the dreams I had. They were very angry, I had to kill someone attacking me. And waking up with a pile of boxes and laundry that I've been ignoring doesn't help my mood either. AND we didn't have any hot water, so no shower for miss stinky feet.
I finally made myself do some laundry. Our building is notorious for people bogarting the washers and dryers. Between three floors we only have three washers and two dryers. I'm on the floor with the broken dryer. Sweet! I made it through a load, only having to pull out someone sheets from the drier, which isn't nearly as bad as clothes and undies. And the sheets were dry, so I didn't feel bad about it. But when I put a second load in the dryer it had to go through several cycles. I went down to put in more quarters and someone had taken my (damp NOT dry) clothes out of the dryer and started drying their own clothes. Effing assholes! Since I was already having a bad day, I took my clothes, opened the door to stop their clothes from drying and went down another floor and used that empty dryer. Okay, maybe I'm the asshole, but just fucking wait your turn! The clothes hadn't been sitting there all day, I was actively doing laundry. I wish people could just be more patient. Or what I really wish is that we had more washers and dryers in the craphole of an apartment building.
Alrighty, off to check on the laundry. Then off to watch a game and be "happy" about it.
Sorry, I really shouldn't blog when I'm so irritated. I'm sure the next post will be better.

Fun o rama

This weekend has been jam packed o' fun! Friday night we had a four band benefit concert at the bar, along with a silent auction and wine tasting. First off, let me tell you how the benefit started. My friend Will Muldoon (I don't usually use last names, but it's the only way I say his name, I can't help it) had decided to split his stimulus between two local charities, a homeless shelter and a domestic violence shelter. That's damn amazing in itself, I just wanted a flat screen. But then he decided to put the $600 to better use and organize a benefit to make more money. He ended up raising close to 3 grand, way better than $600!
I was first on at 8pm. When I got there it was practically full. An hour later, I had three other bartenders behind the bar! That is pretty much reserved for New Years, Fourth of July, big drinking holidays. So that was great to be so busy, and my boss was one of the bartenders, so we only had to split the tips three ways. She's so great, most bosses would take a cut. And I got to get off early and have a couple of shots with a friend before going home. Super duper.
Saturday we had an amateur night that I thought I might have to work. Turns out they didn't need me. Sweet, I was finally able to drink on the weekend. Of course half of my friends weren't out that night, but it was still great. The acts were awesome. Mostly singing, but there was also a fashion show, photography of artsy naked women in nature, a reggaton rapper, two comedians (painful to listen to) and my two favorite two acts. The first favorite act was a guy named Stanley who sang an original song that was awesome and a love song about a guy. So fucking awesome. He sorta sounds like Jay Brannan and looked like a little heavier version of him. By the way, Sarah went to high school with Jay, neato huh? Anyway, this guy Stanley sings this song and I keep thinking, "Why isn't he a part of the Rendez crew? He needs to hang out with us!" Later on he came up next to me at the bar to get a drink and I gushed to him how great I thought he was. I invited him to our Half a Ween Friday the 13th party next week and he said, "Oh my birthday is Thursday." I practically flipped seeing how MY birthday is next Thursday. So we're pretty much BFF's already:) So we hung out for the rest of the show talking about how he really needs to come do cool stuff with us. I'm pretty damn excited to find a neat new person to add to our fold. Anyway, on to my next favorite act.
This totally talented lady, Colette Costa decided to do Thriller. SO FUCKING AWESOME! She came out in a lab coat with a body covered by a sheet. She sang a song about necrophelia to the music of Thriller. Then the body gets up, starts to zombie walk around the dance floor as half a dozen more zombies start coming out of the back. They all attack her and turn her into a zombie, then you guessed it, they danced! The whole Thriller dance. It was beyond words. I was freaking out, as was the rest of the bar. Maybe it's just me but I love the 80's, I looove Halloween and I really really love zombies. So it pretty much rocked my world. Big suprise, she won. The prize? $500 bucks!
After the show, Sarah and I stuck around and continued to drink. I am very happy that we both got nice and drunk for under a hundo. I mean, we could obviously get drunk for under that, but when I'm out and drinking I get very generous with the buying of shots for others. We left at bar close, stood out in the almost daylight for a while talking to various drunk friends, then finally went home. I don't know when we finally got to sleep but I almost slept through my alarm on accident. I totally heard it at 7:30, but immediately turned it off, thinking "Why the fuck did that go off? Good thing I get to keep sleeping!" Then my head popped up realizing that the alarm was set for a reason and I had to be to work in half an hour. Lame-ola! And let me tell you, I never like going to open the bar at 8am. Never. But it's usually tolerable. Today, after a weekend of huge events, the beer and liquor was trashed. I had so much stocking and general tidying up behind the bar do. I'm glad I wasn't really hung over, then nothing would have gotten done.
Sarah came down because I lured her with the promise of Newsies in Hi Def on our new big ol' flat screen. Turns out, we don't get the channel it was on. Whoops, sorry babe. But I did have a fun craft project for her and Lee to do. For Half a Ween we are using empty alcohol bottles and putting candles in them. To make them look extra awesome and creepy, I had them drip candle wax down the sides. They turned out really good. Now we need to go to the beach to get sand to fill the bottles with. And we still need to get all the branches and spray paint them so they can dry before we have to hang them. We decided our decorations are going to be haunted foresty. And I still need to figure out my Jackalope costume. Damn I can't believe it's so soon, I'm way behind.
Anywho, that was my super duper fun weekend. Oh and after work we watched the lakers celtics game. Which I do NOT care about. But it made me very very happy to watch the Lakers lose and I hope that continues. I dislike the Lakers almost as much as the Raiders. So go Celts! Plus I was born on Cape Cod, I should root for them anyway.
I'm done. My hung over fingers are not connecting with my brain signals, this post has been about as many backspaces as letters.

Stats

So when I quit smoking, I put an app on my myspace tallying how much I've saved etc. Here are the totals up until today when I bought a pack. For the app, I averaged I smoked 13 cig's a day:

Cigarettes not smoked: 548

Money saved: $191.80

So I saved almost two hundred dollars and didn't smoke about 55o. But I did smoke bummed cigarettes, so I probably didn't smoke around 530, which is still pretty damn good. Gee, I don't feel like I have an extra two hundred sitting around. I should just put $7 in a jar everyday to simulate spending it, then I would have the money. Maybe I will do that starting now.
Anyway, it's interesting to see how it adds up.

Quitting or lack there of

So six weeks ago, I quit smoking. Cold turkey, no patch, no gum. And I did really well for a while. It also helps that when I quit I had the mother of all chest colds and couldn't breath without horrible rattling noises coming from my chest. Well I got over the cold and still didn't smoke. Apparently the first three days are the hardest, after that the nicotine is out of your system and it's all mental. Uh, maybe it's just me, but the mental part is way harder. Hell if I had self control I'd be a size 4.
During these six weeks I've probably smoke about a pack or pack and a half of bummed or pilfered cigs. Not bad for someone who used to smoke a pack (or more) a day. The worst time is when I'm drinking, I get drunk and I just don't care, I want to smoke. But during the day, I really don't want to. Until the last couple of days that is.
Today I bought a pack, the first one in six weeks. I didn't have anyone to bum any from and for some reason just really wanted to smoke. So I did. And it was damn delicious. But now I have an almost full pack in my purse. Very dangerous. I don't know how to limit myself to just one or two a day. I don't want to fall back into the routine of smoking when I get up, after eating, out drinking, etc. But it's so hard. Pretty much all of my friends smoke, which isn't that bad most of the time. But when everyone leaves the bar to go outside and smoke, I just want to do it too. Especially when I'm bartending and I want an excuse to get away from lame customers. When I wasn't smoking, I immediatly didn't like the smell of smoke. My nose started working waaay better and I could smell smoke on everything.
And it's not like I don't know the danger of smoking. My dad died of cancer. Had nothing to do with smoking, but it's the same horrible death.
I always half joke that if I get knuckle tattoos, they would read DONT QUIT. Because I like smoking and drinking and I have a habit of staying in unhealthy relationships (work, personal) much longer than I should because I don't like to quit things. But it's also fairly optimistic, don't quit living, trying, doing. Maybe I should focus on the positive side and try not to quit quitting.

Busy as a spiteful bee weekend

So we moved up in the world (and our apartment building) this weekend. Saturday we moved all our crap into a one bedroom on the fourth floor. First we had to clean the whole apartment, which was disgusting. The person who moved out had been the maintenence man for the building, but decided to flake and move up to Homer. He left dirty clothes, gross food in the fridge and his creepy vibe everywhere. There was also a couch, table and two funky chairs, and an entertainment center left behind.
We had thought they would be taken out before we moved in, but we would keep the entertainment center. Before we moved in, someone came in and claimed all the furniture with sticky notes but didn't take any of it. So come Saturday, we wanted them to move the stuff out if they were gonna claim it. The dude (who is our new next door neighbor) was an ass about it, saying he would try and get it out later that day. Like we were inconviencing him by asking him to get "his" shit out. Sarah had cleaned all the furniture before we talked to him because we thought we might just keep it. So after we talked to him, we decided we should "re-dirty" it. We took dust out of the vacuum and put it all over the furniture. We found an open can of vienna sausages in the fridge and dumped them under the couch cushions. This may sound extreme, but this guy is a massive douche. He deserved it. But wait! It gets better.
Hours go by, we move all our stuff in, and he still hasn't come by to get the stuff. So we go knock on his door to ask him about it. His crack head girlfriend answers the door and starts asking Sarah about a necklace she was wearing. Weirdo. They live in a studio that is ALREADY jam packed with shit. I saw piles of stuff, possibly grow lights (greeeat, effing drug dealers) and moose antlers. Where on fucking earth was he planning on putting a full sized couch and the rest?? So he comes to the door and is totally different than he had been before, all down in the dumps saying that he guesses we can just keep the stuff. What the hell? What some weird ass neighbors we have. I hope they leave or get busted for something soon.
Back to our vienna sausage stuffed couch and dust covered entertainment center and table. Whoops! I guess that's what we get for being spiteful, we had to clean everything twice. But it was kinda worth it, just to laugh at ourselves. I had to remove the now thawed sausages from the couch. Holy ew! They looked like severed fingers.
So it was quite an eventful day, with only marginal squabbling throughout. The apartment is almost put together enough to not mind other people seeing it. Well, except either the toilet or the shower is massively leaking onto the bathroom floor. We should probably tell the landlord about that, maybe he can get the maintenence guy to fix...oh wait...nevermind. He doesn't have one! What a ghetto. But hey, it's our ghetto!