triple

a k is suppose to be gathering tonight in st. louis. aberdeen is visiting from arizona. it's so much fun when we all get together, but the plans for the weekend seemed quite odd and i was dreading the drive there and back so i skipped out on it. as i understood it, we were only going to be together tonight. i wouldn't even get there until midnight then the next day aberdeen had planned to hang out with other people. big al and kimono barely even know those people. so 12 hours of driving (there and back) for maybe 3 hours of hanging out, didn't compute. i hope none of them are upset by my choice. maybe when it gets warm again they can come up for a visit or i can bring people to them for some camping. i miss the days of shooting bottle rockets out of my car on the highway or trying to fly a kite out of my car while doing 60 on the highway or dumping trashcans from my car on tuesday nights or going into hardee's while it was closed and cooking food or countless other things that i can't even remember. heh. the girl just remembered that it is her pops birthday so now we might be taking him out to eat or to the boxing and then ab fab. she keeps me on my toes. my dad's birthday is the 5th of january and i always forget. it's right when i am trying to recover and get back on track from the holidays. sis #4 asked me the day after if i had talked to him because she did. damn it!! so i called him from work as soon as i got her "i'm the better daughter" email. that was a mistake. "happy late birthday dad." "what?" "i said happy birthday." "what? i can't hear you. speak up." "HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!" "oh, thank you." "what did you do for it?" "what?" "what did you do yesterday?" "what? speak up." "CAN I TALK TO MOM?" there was a box of chocolates at work. today i cut out the pictures that they have on the descriptions of the candy and put them where the chocolate use to live. people keep thinking that there is still more candy. ha! the stirrup pants lady is pissed!

my dad

pic
he finds it odd that i like schlitz and i find it odd that he likes train graffiti. he lets me weld scrap pieces of metal together into big blobs of nothing. we killed my venus fly trap by over feeding it.

sis #4

pic
we are the closest in age and 8 years apart. she lets me crash and or move into her place with no questions asked. she likes to turn off the tv to drive me nuts. i like to flip through the channels at 100 miles per hour to drive her nuts.

kimono

pic
the lonely k of aaak. she is the mom and makes lovely asparagus. i think she's gone through more cars than i have. she is the camping macgyver. her house contains a map room. she likes museums and nkotb.

big al

pic
the a of aaak. she is the glue that keeps us all together now. she is the halloween party queen. she is my satellite radio rival. sometimes she can't stop moving. she does not like dog piss. she really enjoys the elsberry fireworks. the party doesn't start until she gets a mic in her hand.

aberdeen

pic
one of the a's of aaak. my first conversation with her was at a party right before she passed out. her and big al were listening to L7 when i pulled up to hang out with them for the first time. i had that cd in too. everyone else in the state of missouri was "L7 is a what?" the rest is history.

it

has been 11 months since the girl said in my car outside of her parent's house "if you don't realize that things are different now, you are very slow." she's very romantic. that morning i gave her 2 boxes of those school valentine card things. 1 was of n sync and the other destiny's child. she opened all of them. how cute. i also gave her the movie lost in translation. we went shopping at the fabulous gurnee mills mall. i then exposed her to an evil beaver concert at the metro and impressed her with my big lens. i was then introduced to the musician and we went with her to the twisted spoke for smut and eggs. it was a perfect day. today started off with me getting up an hour later than i set my alarm for. it went off and i hit snooze. the second time i turned it off because i wanted to snooze some more, but i didn't want to wake the girl. i've been really good about drifting off and waking up a few minutes later. not today though. the girl was the one waking me up telling me that i would be late for work and all i could say to her was "just a few more minutes, don't worry." i tapped her a bit with my fingers. i was trying to communicate "i'm awake. really. look. i'm moving." close to gurnee i ran into the cowboy on the highway. i pulled up beside her and honked a few times to get her attention, waved and then took off. that was a nice surprise. what are the big 11 month anniversary plans you say? well, we might go watch semi pro boxing or to a friend's to watch an ab fab marathon or both. i'm happy with whatever. i just like being with the girl.

the cowboy

pic
she is the only person crazy enough to drive almost as far to work as i do. she's the easiest person to keep track of at parties because she usually plants herself on a couch and gets a nudge to wake up and go home a few hours later.

the musician

blog pic
she is the guitar player for the band i am in. she is the best football cheerleader. we can finish each other's sentences when we talk about bands or music. she can rap.

the girl

blog pic
my beaut. she's in love with the guy from the new yankee workshop. she can entertain me for hours by spinning basketballs on her fingers. she makes pretty food. i call her brown hair black.

little big man

pic
my boss. he is short, but thinks he is the most important thing here. he will even tell people that don't work for him to stop what they are doing and do something for him because he needs the imformation now. which now to him is usually in a few days to whoever needs said information and he brings and the rush on himself. i've sat on a call with him and a customer before and they will say something like "if you could get that updated report to us in two days that would be great." he'll seize this moment to impress them and say "i can have it to you in 30 minutes." well great. you don't even know if that's possible and why rush something and make other things late. plus instead of saying "i don't know the answer to that question. let me find out and i'll get back to you." he wants to give the impression that he has all of the answers right in front of him and he will give them some sort of answer. he'll then come over by me and i'll look it up and tell him something else. he then gets all mad and curses and says that he already told the customer different and is there a way to change it to what he said. he gets angry at me when the computers are down and i can't look something up in the database or a package wasn't delivered yet or someone else isn't doing their job in malaysia or somewhere and i can't force them to do their job and give me information. his anger management problem is way better now. he hardly ever slams his phone, hit things or throw things anymore. it's too bad really because when i talk to him as a person, he is pretty cool.

stirrup pants lady

pic
this lady sits far away from me now. yes!!! she had a child. her husband started working night shift so they wouldn't have to hire a babysitter. he would spend his afternoon sleeping while the child was in a playpen. he would put the kid into the car seat and place her on the hood whenever he was doing outside work like mowing the lawn. how do i know all of this? because i use to sit by her and she tells everything to everyone. she usually giggles while she tells stories that make people disgusted. after filing for bankruptcy, her husband and her found a good way to make extra money....foster kids with special needs. great. i went through a period of having to hear her on the phone talking to the counselor lady and calling her husband in the afternoon to hear her leave messages like this "get up....wake up....you need to feed the kids lunch.....get up soon...." "fix up the house the counselor is coming by tonight. wake up and feed the kids before the counselor comes over". oh, the stories...."our girl was dancing and jumping on the glass table and it broke. you should have seen the look on her face. it really caught her by surprise." "she was imitating her dad the other day and was using a razor on her face. it was so cute." "we were watching tv and forgot that he was on the toilet. he fell asleep on it and when we got him off he was wabbling all around because his legs were numb." blah, blah, blah. don't worry all of the stories have been told to the agency by several people. they only have one 15 year old now. should we feel better? ummm, no. so work. she works in the office, but refuses to wear dress clothes unless they give her a clothes allowance. she wears t-shirts, tennis shoes and goes back and forth between stirrup pants and sweat pants. she spends all day telling stories like above to any person that will listen to her for 5 seconds. if there is any food around, she'll be there. i sat a box of chocolate out and she won the contest of most trips by a landslide. she can't spell. human resources had me go in and change her out of office reply once. her self review is full is one liners per section like "i come to work everyday."

no fingers man

this is a coworker who works in my department and sits on the other side of one of my 3 huge cube walls. he is an engineer who picked coming into the quality group instead of being shown the door. he only has two fingers on his left hand. i've heard that it's due to fireworks. he's in his late 50's early 60's. he screams on the phone due to his own bad hearing and talks to himself constantly. CONSTANTLY. during the adjustment period to this new addition to the group, everyone thought he was talking to one of us. "what did you say?" "oh, i was just talking to myself." then we started ignoring him and when he did talk to us we didn't know. "andrea, andrea, so what do you think?" "what do i think about what? i wasn't listening, i assumed that you were talking to yourself again." all day he says things like "i need to email that guy - now what was his name?" "well i thought i'd get ahead today, but i'm already an hour behind" "well, what's this?" "hey, heeeey!" "boy, am i hungry, it must be close to lunch time" "where did i put that file?" "i wonder if i should just call" "i'm going to have to fit in a bathroom break sometime today". he's the energizer of annoyance. conversations that should take 2 minutes take an hour with him and i spend my whole day trying not to end up in the same meetings with him. just last week a meeting that was scheduled for 30 minutes ended in 90 minutes and only because someone on the phone said that it was 6 where she was and needed to go home. i went in and out of that one several times.

well

here's how the conversation has been going for the last few days
girl: did you blog today?
me: no
girl: why not?
me: i don't have pictures of anything
girl: you can blog without pictures
me: but all i have is pictures on that one
in my head: i can't start that now on my blog. i love just commenting on the pictures. i like the flow. i love pictures. i'll try to take more pictures
next day - repeat
next day - repeat
repeat - repeat - repeat - repeat
today
me: i'll just start another blog