Today my dad and I moved my desk and dresser over to my new place from his house. My office is looking more like an office now! Yay! And I even organized some of my scrapbooking stuff and albums. Hopefully I'll have some time to work on them... like the next week? My hours have been cut severely at B&N, so I work Wednesday (tomorrow), Thursday, then next Thursday. I was supposed to work Sunday, but I switched it with someone else so I can go to my family's big family birthday celebration thingy. And my shifts at Lane Bryant aren't much better... so... yeah. I'll have a little time on my hands in the next few days... I may have to fill it with writing.

Some of you may or may not know that I have a new cat. My friend Sunny's aunt had to get rid of her cats, so I offered to take one. His given name is Lane, but I've changed it to Diesel because he grows like an engine revving. Yeah. He's adjusting a little slow, and he spends most of his time behind my washer/dryer unit, only to come out at 230 in the morning and jump up on stuff---then knocking it over because it wasn't meant for a kitty to jump on it. Like my stereo speaker last night... at 430am... along with a stack of DVD box sets. Yeah. I bet my downstairs neighbor was ready to kill me. But Diesel and I had a little chat, and he even calmed down enough to head-butt my knee and let me pet him and love on him. When he had enough of that, he slinked off to the washer/dryer and disappeared. Haven't seen or heard of him since this morning. Oh well. I guess he'll come out when he's ready.

Kiera is nervous, walking back and forth now for most of the day, only going out to the living room or kitchen if I'm around, because Diesel hissed/raunched at her Monday morning. So she's wary of him, but also curious. I think she knows he's in the kitchen somewhere, and goes in there sometimes, but then runs back out, afraid he's going attack or something. Poor old girl. She's unsure how to handle Diesel, and doesn't understand why I brought home such a little punk kitty.

Okay, so I know that a lot of you have been wondering when you can get your hands on a copy of my book. Well, it's still going to take a few weeks to get it into the stores, and right now I am the only person in existence who has copies of it. So you're best bet is to just buy it from me if you can't wait. I've devised a little payment grid for those interested:

Normal price + tax For everyone
$14.95 + Carver County tax = $15.97

Barnes & Noble Member + tax For those who would have boughten it @ B&N w/ discount card
($14.95 x .90) = $13.46 + Carver Co Tax = $14.37

B&N Employee For all my coworker friends!
($14.95 x .70) = $10.47 + Carver Co Tax = $11.18

So there you have it. If you can't absolutely wait until it's in stores, you can buy it from me. I take cash and checks. =^_^=

Otherwise... please stop asking when it'll be in stores. I don't know. And I doubt my publisher will know anytime soon. They tend to be a bit slow. I'll let you know when I know.

Oh, my happy thing today for Day 2 is that I have my desk finally!

• Not allergic to plants, grass, pollen, trees, etc (scratch test on back).
• Midlly allergic to dust mites and normal house dust (in higher dosage shots on arm).
• Moderately sensitive to mold (higher dosage shot on left arm).

• Cats.

I have nothing better to do... except sleep... so I bring you...

( Cats! )

( Pictures of Cats... )

Kiera likes to help me knit. And when I say help... I really mean she likes to attack the yarn coming off the ball or out of the skien and eat it. And when I say eat it, she just noms on it. So if I don't catch her in time, I come across long sections of yarn that are soaked with kitty saliva. Thaaaaanks, Kiera. You really don't need to help mommy knit anymore. However, she does like to attack the ball/skien when it moves on the floor as I knit away. Kiera's new nemesis is my yarn ball. She stalks it and tries to figure out if it really is alive when I'm knitting, because it moves in time to my rocking chair. So Sunday night, I was knitting and watching movies, and she was inspecting my yarn ball, as normal. Her nose had to have been about 2 inches from it, and she was staring at that thing with an uncharacteristic amount of attention. Then I decided to jerk on the yarn leading from the ball to my actual knitting, to see if she'd pounce on the ball like she always does.

Nope.

I jerked on the yarn and I swear to God, that cat had an aerial lift of about 6 inches and moved backwards a foot from that ball of yarn. Her long fur was all spiked out and her eyes were as big as saucers. And instead of consoling her, I laughed my ass off in my chair, going into my long-dormant "squeaky laugh" and I had tears streaming down my face. It was the funniest damned thing I had seen in a long time, and I regret that I didn't have a video camera running to catch it to show everyone online. Oh lord, that was too damn funny.

I found a large bag of random remnants of yarn in the basement (at my dad's). It's a whole bunch of Crayola Crayon colors of bright primary colors and some fun pastely shades in between. I shall add them to my Movie Scarf. I really need to measure that thing and keep track of how long and heavy it is, and how much it grows each year. I've been working on it for a little over a year now (I started it the week after I moved into my apartment), and it's freakin' huge. I love that thing!

So some of you may know that I had a rough time this past weekend. Well, things are better, after calling in my sister and BIL for reinforcements. Things are looking better now, but not after slipping back a few steps on the progress scale. Oh well. If happens. I hadn't had a rough night like that in a long while, so I think I was overdue for one. What's Murphy's Law again... anything that can go wrong, will?

[if you see a long scratch on my arm... don't worry about it.]

My BIL and sis have officially deemed me a "cat person" because I have taken a whole roll of pictures of my cat. And here are some of the awesome ones:

(she's afraid of the vacuum and hides on the toilet when I clean)

(you can't tell, through all the fur, but Kiera is spread-eagle on my Moroccan rug, her fave place to chill)

(for some reason she loves this corner/wall section, and does a Superman stretch against the door)

("...and you are upside down now!"... from Glorious, Eddie Izzard)

(I originally wrote this on Tuesday morning... I'm not backdating it so it's not lost in the cyber miasma of friends' lists)

Because I'm nocturnal. I've always been more active and apt to staying up later than most of the people I know. My sleep cycle, circadian rhythm, whatever that thing is, is set 12 hours later than others.

And it doesn't hurt that I'm a vampire.

I just finished reading In the Midnight Hour about 10 minutes ago... and... ow! *le swoon!* So good! The last like... 40 pages just zip by and you're going "Holy shit!? How is this going to be concluded? This can't end this way! No no no!!" But it all ended good and it was such a good story. Now I have to go and get the second one in the series. And the cool part is, the series is set in Minnesota, because Patti O'Shea is from here. w00t! I'm glad I picked this for the Romance Book Club. I also got to chat with Diana, who is also in the club, and she said she liked it too, "a lot more than [she] thought [she] would." Hehehe. I do admit, when you read the back of the book, the brief description on the back is a bit confusing, so I understand the slight hesitance the rest of the RBC had when I showed them this title. But it was good! Woooo! Yay! So worth staying up 4 hours after I got home from work.

But I'm also up this late because I can't stand going to bed hungry. Why not eat something, you may be asking. Well, I can't. I'm 9 hours into my stupid fast for blood work to be done tomorrow... this morning... whatever. We're going blood tests to see if I have diabetes and some other crap, to rule those out as possible diseases/syndromes that could be causing my PCOS-esque symptoms. And for blood work fastings, they say you're not supposed to eat anything for at least 12 hours before your testing. Dammit. Sadly, more than one issue has the set of presenting issues that I have, so we have to rule a lot of crap out. Ugh. And the stupid lab work is at 845 in the fricking morning. Argh! Well, when I made the appointment, I figured that it's my day off, so I can just go get my blood drawn, and after 20 minutes of being in the doctor's office, I can come home and sleep for most of the day until DBT at 6pm. Well... now the lab work is going to be taken in 5.45 hours.... ugh. I shouldn't even go to bed! By the time I get to bed, and wind down, it'll be almost time to wake up again, and it would almost be better at that point to not have tried to sleep at all. Right now I'm way to revved up for some reason... don't know if it was the awesomeness of the book... nerves about the lab work... or... what. I dunno. Maybe I'll play some PS2 and relax... that's right folks! Yesterday after work I splurged and bought a used PS2 from Game Stop, and got a used copy of Burnout 3: Takedown. And it was even in the original case, not the stupid Game Stop default one. w00t! So I played some of that yesterday when I got home from work. However... sadly... the PS2 didn't come with a memory card... so all the awesomeness I did last night (including awards, special things unlocked, records made, etc) are all lost and I have to do it again. Ugh. Oh well. I'll get a memory card after work on Wednesday. Stupid, I should have asked if it had one, but I was dumb and assumed it had one in the box... and we all know what happens when you assume! *rolls eyes*

So yeah... that's about it for now. Yeah. Kiera is being psycho... I think she's not used to me being up this late. She makes the weirdest squeaky/chirp noises. It's freaking cute, but I don't remember ever hearing another cat make such noises. Odd. Oh well, suits me to have a weird ass cat.

Well... yeah... I guess I should get some amount of sleep. I know I'm just going to roll out of bed, slap some non-pj clothes on, and drive to the doctor in the morning---I ain't wasting time to take a shower, get properly dressed, and all that shit just to sit in a chair for 5 minutes while they draw a few vials of blood. Hell no. But I know that after my stupid fasting, I'm going to drive over to Perkins (within a stone's throwing distance from the doctor's office!) and have a big old ham 'n cheez omelet with hash browns and maybe a big ass muffin... or bacon... something like that. I hate fasting! I have been living off water for the last 9 hours! I'm starving!!! My Potbelly turkey sammich was not meant to sustain for more than 4 hours! Bastards!

*le sigh*

My long-awaited Batman movie came into work yesterday (Tuesday), and I was very excited... well, technically it came in Monday, but since it was a Strict On Sale, I couldn't get it until Tuesday. But Tuesday I was busy with stuff. So I got it today after work. Yay! It's Batman: Gotham Knight, and it's the first pure anime cartoon of Batman. True, the other animated Batman cartoons were drawn in Korea or Japan... but it was done in American style (ie, Family Guy, Simpsons, Futurama, etc.). But this movie is done very much like Animatrix, where anime artists/directors did little shorts based in the Matrix world; six anime directors/artists did six loosey connected stories that are kinda set after Batman Begins and right before The Dark Knight starts up, showing Batman still working on getting his whole Bat-persona up and running. It was really good, but now I want to get the book of the same name, that I guess fills in the gaps between the 6 shorts. I liked it and it was fun to see the different versions of Bruce Wayne/Batman the directors envisioned. Very groovy. I am getting so psyched for The Dark Knight next Friday.... oooh... in the words of my old friend Brian... "I may spontaneously orgasm!"  Heheheeee. He was always good for weird lines like that... he's also where I got my "Sweet Angry Jesus!" I've been known to exclaim at times.

But before I could watch my much-awaited date with Batman... I had to put together my couch. I bought a couch last week from IKEA, and I finally put it together. It wasn't too bad, all the parts and screws and stuff was all in the box... but trying to put that thing together and hold and move it by myself was a little hard. I needed another person on the other side to hold it while I slid things into slots and pounded in pegs... but whatever. I made it work, because I am awesome. =^_^= I scared the crap out of Kiera and she ended up hiding in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet lid watching cautiously from afar as I pounded legs and pieces together with my mallet. Yay for my random decision to buy a mallet back in college. Why? I don't  know anymore. But that's okay, I have random tools I bought when I didn't really need them, but years after the fact, they have found their use.

I wish Batman was on my couch with me....

lele244

Create your own family sticker graphic at pYzam.com

So... after seeing all these Twilight themed buttons on a Facebook application called "Pieces of Flair"... and knowing that the big Breaking Dawn midnight release party is coming up (book on sale 12:01am August 2nd) at work... I finally bought the first book in the Stephanie Meyer series, Twilight. It seems like a good book, and it's basically the Harry Potter of the teen-girl-paranormal-romance genre, so I decided to read it and see what's going down with that. I'll read it when I'm done with Rogue Angel: Provenance. Hopefully I won't get all crazy psycho about this series, since only the first 2 books (Twilight and New Moon) are in paperback, and I can't read hardcover books; so then I'd have to wait over a year to read Eclipse, and then another year or so for Breaking Dawn. Craziness.

Oh well... that's really all for now. I should get home (I'm at my dad's now checking email after work) and tend to my cat and go to bed.

It's been a hell of a week.... *le sigh*

x-posted to thereadingroom