The Inmates Run the Asylum

Spent my day celebrating my success at avoiding death for another year. I'm glad to be 33. I like three's. This feels lucky to me.

I spent the day indulging in my favorites. I ended up watching Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980) (the latter courtesy of Carrie; she got me that and a Funko POP Usula doll for my birthday); an episode of The A-Team ("Bad Day at Black Rock"); an episode of MST3K ("Night of the Blood Beast"); two episodes of my current TV infatuation, Emergency! ("Virus" and "Breakdown"); and closed it out with an episode of The Monkees ("I Was a Teenage Monster"). I also watched Svengoolie (Island of Lost Souls) and finished reading Dead Until Dark.

It was a fabulous, relaxing, indulgent day. I appreciated every minute of it.

I'll do all of my partying next weekend at Cubs Con.

As predicted, the Chicago portion of my drive was not as terrible as I was working it up to be in my head. My friend Harry (also my lovely date for the evening) gave me fabulous directions and was an all around sweetheart being so patient with my pre-driving paranoia.

The Palmer House is a lovely hotel and definitely out of my Motel-6-with-the-condoms-in-the-vending-machine league. I had a very nice room at the end of a maze so that I don't think we ever took the same route back to the elevators every time.

Harry and I got decked out in our finery and met up with Tim (the guy I won the tickets from) at the VIP entrance where we were passed by the likes of Ernie Banks, Todd Hollandsworth, and David DeJesus and his wife Kim. Inside, we waited in line at one of the bars with Bryan LaHair and Joe Mather. It was pretty loud in there, with the people and the music. I don't know how anyone had a conversation. It was all Harry and I could do to talk to each other. In the end, we were both just so O_O that we decided people watching was good enough. Yeah, I know, pretty chicken shit. But I have trouble socializing unless I'm feeling it's a "good" day and last night really wasn't. I had no opening lines and nothing really to say to any of the players. Harry was on par with this. We suck. We know.

I further suck because the only pictures I took were a few bad ones at the end of the night. I've never been a good photographer and I constantly forget I have the means of taking pictures, so we should all be not surprised by this. Harry took a couple of good ones that I hope to get from him though, including one of us dressed up.

So, yeah, after the VIP portion of the evening, we adjourned to the casino portion. It was there that Harry started his "hot, buttery slide to hell" as he calls it with another rum and coke (he'd had one in the VIP room, as well as a martini; I was still on water, trying to combat the flush of that hot room). This was also when I had my first of two sitdowns of the night. After a walk around the gaming area, I had to sit down. It wasn't just that my feet hurt; my legs were weak. Like I said, 235 pounds on 3 inch heels. You can't fight physics. I just didn't like that suddenly my legs were more out of shape than ever. I was better after the second sitdown and a beer (no kidding; I think it helped slow the nerve signals that let me know that I was having difficulties).

Harry ended up getting pretty drunk (but not annoying/loud/barroom brawling drunk), but we still managed to do pretty well playing blackjack. We also got pretty catty about the players' wives/girlfriends. For the most part, they all look like cheerleaders which provided a perfect example of some research that I read about men tailoring what physical qualities they're attracted to depending on the culture they're apart of. Baseball culture=cheerleader-looking wives.

Anyway, we were among the stragglers to leave the party as Harry was mooning over Theo Epstein (Hilarious! I missed having a fabulous gay friend). I was surprised by which players stayed until the very end. Darwin Barney, James Russell, Chris Volstad, Paul Maholm, Kerry Wood, and of course Ryan Dempster. I know none of these people mean much to any of you, but names to Google if you're curious.

We both bought mystery gift bags (the least we could since we didn't actually contribute to the charity by buying our tickets. Harry ended up with a signed Ryan Dempster ball. I ended up with over $100 worth of gift certificates to various places in Chicago. Guess I'll have to make a trip back to use them.

We also got goodie bags when we left the VIP room which included a Casino night t-shirt and really nice shot glass. Pretty nice swag.

I was a little worried about Harry going home on his own. Hell, I was worried about him making it to the elevator from my room, but he's a pro and made it home with no troubles.

I only managed about four hours of sleep, talked to Harry and his hangover on the phone as he made the trek to work, and then headed for home. I only got a little lost on the way out, but I really quickly figured out where I was and where I needed to go. Pretty soon, I'm going to have this Chicago driving business down pat.

It was a really fun night and I'm so glad I got to do it and it's one of those things that if Dempster is still a Cub and he does it next year (please, oh, please!) I'm saving my pennies to go back on the legit.

No way I'm lucky enough to win twice.

I got my federal tax refund yesterday and with it ordered my new TV, which should be here between Friday and Tuesday.

You guys, I can't tell you how excited I am for this. My TV (that I've had for about 15 years) is dying. The picture is squished, with at least a third of the bottom and maybe a quarter of the top black. Like widescreen, only smooshed. Also, there are lines going through the top of what pictures I can see that distorts it. Everybody ends up with extra poofy hair or Frankenstein foreheads. Any text on the bottom of the screen can't be read. Also, it's sometimes hard to tell who people are.

And if the picture is in widescreen? Squished even more!

So, yes, a new TV (particularly before baseball season!) was a must. For the love of my eyes! It's getting hard to watch.

And now that my new TV has been ordered, it's a race to see if the old one will hold out until it gets here.

I wouldn't be surprised if it died all together just to spite me.

I got the job. I go tomorrow to fill out some paperwork and I officially start the gig on Monday. It's a full-time gig, working 7:30 to 4. I hope I can get back into that groove quickly. It's been almost three years since my last real job.

This job brings me a regular paycheck and health insurance. However, now I'm going to have to rearrange my world to accommodate it. I'm going to have to figure out how to work in my exercise routine and my writing and my blogging. Not to mention I'll now be blessed with the job of making dinner after putting in a full shift and spending part of my weekend doing laundry.

It's a good thing I don't have a social life. I wouldn't know where to put it.

I'm also going to go through a certain amount of withdrawl from the Internet, particularly Twitter. And my reruns. I'm really going to miss Hawaii 5-0.

The ability to pay my bills my ease the pain a little bit, though.

If you remember from this entry, my latest in my line of scratch off tickets netted me 16 dollars. From that 16 dollars, I got two more of the same scratch offs (and a Mega Millions ticket; let's see how lucky I am) and ended up winning another 2 bucks, with which I will, of course, get two more tickets.

The streak is alive and well and I am thrilled. Five winning scratch offs so far. Best Christmas present ever.

Let's see if this luck translates to the big game. I've never won anything on the Mega Millions game, so even just one of the small prizes would be fantastic right about now.

In other news, if you don't follow my other LJ, kikiwrites, then you might not know that I started a blog last November. It's nothing fantastic, but I hope it will do a couple of things for me. One is serve as a kind of website for myself and a central hub for my writing career. Yes, I have a website and an LJ for my writing, but I felt like I couldn't get both of them to work together. And let's face it, I'm lazy. Updating the website was too easy to put off. It's much easier to update the blog.

The other purpose is to open myself up as a person and put my brain on display. I'm a fun, interesting, not always good, complex human being, but unfortunately, I have a tendency to keep myself very closed off. That's not going to work in today's writing game because you have to put yourself out there more to sell your books. I might as well start doing it now so I can do it on my terms.

Besides, everyone loves a good freak show.

I post three times a week regularly (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) and sometimes do special posts. Starting today, I'm promoting them on Twitter. If you follow me on Twitter, please let me know if the self-promoting gets annoying. I would like to ask people to visit my world, not run them off.

I'm a little nervous about doing this. I'm not used to trying to attract attention to myself.

Well, at least not without dying my hair purple.

So, the Illinois legislature has passed a bill to allow civil unions and since Governor Quinn campaigned for this, it's pretty much a lock that he'll be signing it.

I for one approve of my state doing something that doesn't involve indicting a governor or not paying their bills because they spent all of their money of Blago's hair products.

It's progress in a good direction and I'll take it.

Bob the Tech Guy came to our rescue and we are once again Internet enabled.

He called while I was at Mom's and I told him to go on to the house, Dad would be waiting.

About an hour later, Dad called to say that we were hooked up.

Bob the Tech Guy was appalled at the way we were treated. He gave us his cell number in case we needed help again AND gave us the number to his boss's boss and told us to call them and tell him everything that we went through.

Bob the Tech Guy is now my new favorite person and I'm afraid I judged him too harshly when he first called me today. My bitterness for the company skewed my view.

But he turned out to be my hero.

Thanks, Bob the Tech Guy!

Now, I can stop rushing through things and failing to comment on people's LJs due to time constraints and go back to not commenting because I am lazy/have nothing to say.

So, I turned 30 today. I was kind of bummed going into it. Not because I was turning 30; I've been looking forward to turning 30 for years. I was bummed because I wasn't doing something bigger to celebrate it.

But I forgot that I've grown to really love my birthday and even if I'm doing the most mundane things, like going to the DMV to renew my license, are better because...it's my birthday. I feel giddy all day because...it's my birthday. I don't know why. I'm just like..."Yee! It's my birthday. National holiday! Everybody dance!"

So, as much as I would have liked to do something big to celebrate turning 30 (which I might before the year's out, who knows), it was still a good day.

I did get my license renewed today. I was dreading it, but it was more fun than it should have been. The young guy at the DMV who helped me made a goof that had us both laughing hard. I've tried to put the story into words, but really, I can't do it justice. You had to be there to appreciate it. Otherwise, it's just an excuse to roll your eyes at lameness.

But my license photo is the best ID picture I've taken to date. It's the only one that doesn't look like it's a mug shot for a crime that involved booze, a pool cue, and a hospital trip.

I made spinach and shrimp pasta for my birthday dinner and I still have ten of the twelve cupcakes my mom gave me yesterday (Carrie and I had a one each earlier today...so good). Dad gave me bandaids (he stuffed some money into an empty bandaid box and gave it to me).
Carrie made me an excellent card featuring a shark eating a cupcake and a really cool apron that's right up my alley. And I'm expecting fic from one_more_cherry.

And it's NCIS night.

Yeah. I think I've got to this third decade off to a good start.

When I read the subject title, I hear the professor from Futurama saying it.

Anyway, yes, there is good news. I sold two short stories in the past three days. The details are over here in my writing journal. So go check it out and share my squee.

If you've got me friended on Facebook and/or are following me on Twitter, sorry for spamming you with this, but it's bound to happen when I get all excitable like this. I don't sell short stories every day.

In conclusion, happy birthday, doyoulikestuff! I hope it was a good one for you and the creatures in the bushes didn't eat you.