I have been having mail delivery issues.  I put it on hold for Christmas, they apparently started it a couple of days early, and it wasn’t redelivered yesterday when it was supposed to.  Naturally, I called USPS to complain, and they did the only thing they ever do - they started a ticket, and told me the local post office would call me back today.

They didn’t, so I called back.

USPS employee: The ticket is still in process, which means they’re still looking into it.  If you don’t hear by tomorrow, call us back and we’ll start another ticket.

Me: *doesn’t understand how starting a new ticket helps anything, but knows that arguing with a customer service rep with a crappy government agency is an exercise in futility* Oh, ok.  Could you tell me who my delivery office is, so I can follow up with them?

USPS employee: Certainly.  *pause* Your local office is Pompano Beach, on Atlantic Boulevard.

Me: Uh, okay.  Thanks.

Pompano Beach, I think; that doesn’t sound right.  It sounds kind of tropical.  But it is New Jersey, there are beaches, we are on the water - I guess its possible.  So I check the list of local post offices.  No matches.  Check for post offices on Atlantic Boulevard.  No matches.  Hmm, I think.  I google Pompano Beach.

Pompano Beach, people, is in FLORIDA.  As has already been established, I live in New Jersey.

So I call back, and use their office locator to figure out my delivery office (the real one, which is the Bergen South branch on Martin Luther King in Jersey City) and call them.  They’ll deliver my mail tomorrow.

To Jersey City, not Pompano Beach.

Just got back from Christmas break (well, this morning at 1:30) and I’ve come to a conclusion:  I am the only one in my family who has not been infected with the lodge-look obsession.

We spent Christmas this year at my brother’s country house outside Grand Rapids, Michigan and on the day after Christmas we went to Holland to browse the tourist trap stores.  Holland is pretty much like any other tourist trap across the country; they sell Michigan-specific crap, Stonewall Kitchen mixes, and many candles.  We spent most of the time in one store, where the furniture was made out of fake driftwood, the fabrics all depicted moose and bears, and the scent was relentlessly piney.  There was nothing in there I found even slightly interesting, but everyone else seemed compelled.

I finally escaped the store when the pine candle smell got to be too much for me.

I’m sure the love of the look comes from our family vacations in the Boundary Waters, and since the most I remember getting out of them is muddy and miserable, it’s not surprising that I’m very much into it.  Just surprised that everyone else seems to be, I guess.

Yesterday we got the delightful news that we’re all being cut back to a four day week as of January 1.  Which means 20% less money, which means Amanda? Is on the poverty diet starting in the new year.  I hope to develop a love of peanut butter.

Fuck me.

Tagged by Amy, here is my year, such that it is.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before
I visited continental Europe.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I resolved to exercise more, and I did! Until about July.  Not going to bother renewing the gym membership.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Also no.

5. What countries did you visit?
United Kingdom and Portugal

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

I’d like to be a little more comfortable financially than I am right now.

7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory and why?
January 4, 2008, when I left the hell that was my previous job.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting a new job and leaving the really bad situation at the old one.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I’m not sure.  I had lots of little failures and little stresses, but nothing huge.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, not this year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My MacBook.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Mine, especially in this last month, and Amy’s, due to the shit she had to put up with.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Personally? I can’t think of anyone.  Politically? Sarah Palin, Rod Blagojovich and Eliot Spitzer.

14. Where did most of your money go?
My MacBook, romance novels, and shoes.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Presidential Election.  I used to be a big political junkie, but it had depressed me for the last several years.  Now I’m excited again.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Carmelldansen.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Much happier.

ii. thinner or fatter?
Maybe a little thinner.  But about the same.

iii. richer or poorer?
Poorer, unfortunately, despite the fact that I now make more money.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Writing

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Procrastinating.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
In Michigan with the family.

22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
No.

23. How many one night stands?
That would be….0.

24. What was your favourite TV programme?
“Chuck” and “30 Rock”

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Not really.  But there are some who started to annoy the crap out of me.

26. What was the best book you read?
“Acheron”

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Sleater-Kinney.  Yes, I know I’m about ten years late to that party.

28. What did you want and get?
A new job.

29. What did you want and not get?
I can’t think of anything, actually.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
I didn’t go to many movies this year, so I’ll have to go with one of the two I did see: Definitely, Maybe.  It was silly, but didn’t try to be more than it was.  I want to see Rachel Getting Married before the end of the year though, and I suspect I’ll love it.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I went to work, and I remember it as a really awful day for the most part where I was almost in tears for a long time.  But they did buy me a cake at the office, and I was 28.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Telling my former boss where she could shove her attitude.  Didn’t, but man.  I would have enjoyed it.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2003?
In 2003? Jeans and tees and sweatshirts.  I was in grad school.  In 2008? Comfortable professional, with a bohemian twist.

34. What kept you sane?
Daydreaming.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Rahm Emanuel.  Shut up.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The presidential election.

37. Who did you miss?
My family and my friends.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Some (but not all) of the people at my new job.  The New York Jezebelles

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
Never let them see you crack.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

It’s 1:45 AM on Thursday morning, and I’m sitting up in bed because my shuffle’s battery is dead and I refuse to endure the commute tomorrow morning without music.  In most ways, the commute is better, thanks to the fact that New Jersey actually has semi-reliable public transit, unlike other suburban areas I could mention, but it some ways it sucks a lot.

For instance, I was watching the first India episode of The Amazing Race Season 5 earlier this evening with Mura, and she was pointing out the horridness of the train in Mumbai, and I said “Actually, that’s about what the 4 is like in the morning.  Except we don’t have people hanging out the doors.  The MTA frowns on that.”

The Metro-North was much easier.

Tomorrow at lunch I need to go Christmas shopping.  I keep meaning to do so after work, but after work I just want to go home.  So I do.  And no shopping gets done.  I need Christmas cards.  And presents for people.  And I want to get it over with as soon as possible.

It’s 1:56 am now.  I think I’m going to call it a night.  The shuffle should hopefully be charged enough now to get me to 42nd Street tomorrow morning.

My mixer shorted out this week, and as I was making myself blueberry torte for Thanksgiving (and turkey cutlets and green bean casserole, but dessert is really the only thing that matters) I went to Crate & Barrel on 59th St and bought a new one.

In between the 59th St station and Crate & Barrel is Bloomingdales and two blocks of retail stores, all choked with after work Christmas crowds.  I thought I was going to kill people, and by the time I got home there was no way in hell I was going to make the torte that night; I got up and made it in the morning instead, and I decided I was going to do as much of my Christmas shopping online as possible this year.  Since I spent Thanksgiving alone in my apartment (cue teeny tiny violin music), I started mine yesterday while sitting on my bed eating the aforementioned torte.  And it feels awesome to not only have to fight through the crowds but to have it shipped straight to my parents’ house so I don’t have to worry about it.

It can be problematic reading - and writing, I suppose - a romance novel about the series’ villain.

That’s what One Silent Night is though, and while I didn’t enjoy it as much as Sherrilyn Kenyon’s last several Dark Hunters novels, I did enjoy it, and I think it does work.  The reason for that is because instead of painting Stryker (and Zephyra) as pure evil, the way Satara was, Kenyon chooses instead to make them characters that are more complicated than that.  They aren’t exactly sweetness and light, but they have their own moral codes, and their motivations aren’t really that hard to buy into.  They got a really raw end of the deal, and they are fighting for their continued existance (and, you know, control of the world).

Having said all that, One Silent Night isn’t going to be the Dark-Hunter book I pick up to read again when I’m bored and waiting for the next book in the series.  The romance isn’t overly compelling; while I’ve always enjoyed Stryker, I couldn’t care less if he got back with his ex-wife.  I found some of the new characters compelling - Medea will prove interesting, I think, and while Jared currently seems to be Acheron 2.0, he has potential.  The new developments in Nick’s character will make good fodder in subsequent books, and his reconnection with Ash, while unwilling, should move the plot of the series along.  This is a bridge book, connecting the first part of the series to the second, so while the characters used to move the plot along, so to speak, aren’t as awesome as some of the others, I don’t really think that’s the main point.

Having said all that, I am hoping that Dream Warrior and Bad Moon Rising are stronger, character and romance wise.  I love the series, but really? I’m reading this for the pr0n.

I saw a trailer for this over the weekend while I was at Quantum of Solace, and it looks like it might be good, but honestly? I only had one real reaction.

Keanu Reeves, starring as the emotionless kind of stoned alien character has not been so perfectly cast since The Matrix.

I think my iPod is on the long, slow march to death, as it keeps randomly resetting.

But the interesting this is that it resets when playing the same song.  And while that could just be a corrupted file, the choice of song is kinda…interesting.

The song? “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”

After my last post, I kind of figured this was coming, but it’s a little different than I had expected.  My boss did not quit.  My boss was laid off.  It’s a really weird situation because generally speaking, the less experienced member of the department (i.e., me) is the one that gets the axe.

Not that I’m sorry that they decided not to go that way.

I’ve got mixed feelings about it.  Overall, this is a good thing: I’m not taking over management NOW, but will be in the future, which hopefully will include a nice raise.  While we got along, our styles were completely different, our personalities were pretty different, and she tended to stress me out.  I don’t regret not having to deal with that anymore.

At the same time, she was good at her job.  She was a really good researcher, had a lot of years with the company, and I’m sorry she’s lost her job.

So yeah.  Mixed feelings, definitely.