Crafty Crafterson

I made a craft for the holiday season. I thought I'd include the instructions along with a picture of my finished craft so that you can all make it as well.

• Step 1: See a cute idea on the internet.
• Step 2: Let coworkers deceive you into believing that you're capable of creating it.
• Step 3: Wait a week.
• Step 4: Show cute idea to your mother. Purchase tulle with her guidance.
• Step 5: Have your mother cut out the tulle into pieces so they turn out correctly.
• Step 6: Leave your mother's house with specific instructions to finish by the end of the night.
• Step 7: Wait three weeks.
• Step 8: Get your craft back out. Re-evaluate your decision to be crafty several times.
• Step 9: Get back to work. Tie loops of the %@# tulle around over and over and over and over.
• Step 10: Run out of pieces after two hours of work.
• Step 11: Cut more pieces.
• Step 12: Finish the wreath while watching cheesy made-for-TV holiday movies.
• Step 13: Smash enormous wreath with a broken TiVo so as to reduce its ridiculous fluffiness.
• Step 14: Wait an hour while continuing to watch cheesy made-for-TV holiday movies.
• Step 15: Hang wreath on inside of door because it is too cold and too late at night to open door.
• Step 16: Take a picture of wreath, just in case it gets stolen when you finally get around to putting it outside.

So, folks, there you have it. A step-by-step tutorial for how to make a Christmas wreath. (Note: some non-essential steps may have been excluded. I'm sure you'll figure them out.)

Finished product:

Funny Comic

My dad sent this to my siblings and me. It cracked me right up, so I thought I'd share it with you.

I've Said It Before, and I'll Say It Again

May the light always find you on a dreary day;

When you need to be home, may you find a way.

May you always have courage to take a chance,

And never find frogs in your underpants.

–Unknown Scandinavian

Thanksgiving

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.

-Johannes A. Gaertner

Dear Self

Dear Liz:

When you're talking to someone on the phone, and strange/disturbing questions you could ask that person pop into your head, I have a bit of advice for you:

Don't. Just don't. Just say goodnight and then hang up the phone, hoser.

Love,

You, Ten Minutes Later

Tidbits

This week, I was training some excellent employees for work, while working on other projects in the evenings. It was a good week.

Here are some tidbits from my week, no particular order, no particular significance:

• Tellering is an awfully snuggly activity. It's nice to be alone with plenty of space in my apartment this evening.
• I'm 5'2''. I stepped on a teller today. How on earth does that happen?
• My sister-in-law gave me a new picture of my newest nephew, which I promptly hung in my cubicle at work. He's so adorable, it's distracting!
• One of my coworkers is going to be out of the office next week, so when I saw her for the last time this week on Thursday, I told her I'd see her next in December. How is it already almost December?
• Random person in the parking lot of the grocery store asked me for money last night. I had $0.75. Sorry, random person. Hope you found more money from other people!
• One of my tellers this week has an aunt who owns one of my favorite restaurants here in town, and I've been craving it ever since we talked about it! Mmmm... La Carreta!!
• On Thanksgiving, I basically want to eat mashed potatoes, rolls, and pie. Lots of pie. Bad sign?
• One of my good friends recently told me that if she gets a vote in a matter, she gets four, because she eats for four people. The eating for four people description is completely accurate. She'll be in town soon, and I suspect we'll be doing a serious amount of eating.
• I changed my thermostat to warm the apartment slightly before time to get up so that it would be easier to get out of bed. The opposite has been achieved--I'm so warm and snuggly first thing in the morning that I have no desire to get up.
• One of my tellers was speaking in Spanish to a customer today. I put my hand on his shoulder to get his attention, and quietly spoke half a sentence to remind him of something that I needed him to do in the transaction. He looked up at me, completely puzzled. The half-sentence I spoke had words in it that could be mistaken for Spanish, and he had no idea what I had just said. We laughed about it all day--we know my Spanish is not that good!
• The cooler your job is, the fewer days you'll have to work next week. Take a moment now to assess your relative awesomeness. Mine's fairly high.

Headed into what is sure to be a fabulous weekend--hope the same for all of you!

Jealous?

I often draw on the board as I train to illustrate what I'm discussing and to help solidify the information. I am, of course, a terrible artist, and these drawings are often quite comical.

Yesterday, the employees I was training got to see some pretty fancy artwork.

Some samples (phone photos, so they don't really do it justice; also, try to not be too jealous that you didn't get to be part of this clearly fabulous class):

Spaghetti Dinner

I still don't have anything to say, but fortunately, I still have really cute nephews.

For your viewing enjoyment, I present the following:

Nothing to Say

I really have nothing to say lately.

However, I'm feeling bad for neglecting my poor, bored readers.

So here are a couple of adorable pictures for your viewing enjoyment. I'll try to come up with something interesting to say later.

Netflix Suggestion

I love Netflix. It's one of the special things in my life that I just really enjoy. I have an easily-accessible, internet-based queue where I line up all of the DVDs I'd like Netflix to send to my house. The movies arrive, I enjoy them, and then I pop them back into the mailbox and wait impatiently for my next movie. It's a fabulous system that's worth every penny I spend on it.

Netflix is also open to giving suggestions. Each time I open up the website, I am greeted with several categories of movies that it thinks I'll enjoy, each filled with movie suggestions just for me. It's a very handy system, and quite intelligent, as well. For example, if I have rented and enjoyed both romance movies and comedies, it may create a category of "Romantic Comedy" movies for me to peruse.

Although it seems pretty awesome in theory, every now and again, I wonder what on earth I rented to create a category that it thinks will suit my desires.

Case in point: last night, when I brought up the Netflix page, I was greeted with a category I've never seen before. It's odd and incredibly specific.

"Sentimental Independent Dysfunctional-Family Movies"

Huh.

Are any of you readers Netflixers as well? What categories has it created for you? I'm thinking that the sky's the limit on this thing...

A Request

Dear Population of the World:

Let's ratchet back the panic a bit, shall we? Everywhere I turn, it's Panic City about one thing or another. Economy, illness, doom, doom, DOOM!!!

From now on, just assume that I get it: we're all going to die jobless, debt-riddled, and infected with several kinds of flesh-eating bacteria and other diseases that plagued us as we wasted away in an economy that would never regain its glory.

Got it. Please stop telling me.

Thanks bunches!

Liz

Quote of the Whatever

I love this one...

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.

-George Bernard Shaw

Diagnosis: Anti-Social

Tonight, one of my former roommates, of the most recent set, called to see if I wanted to go to a corn maze with her and our other roommate (they still live together).

My reply: Sure!

Her: (pause) Really?!??

Me: Yep. You sound surprised. Were you just inviting me to be nice, but planning on me saying no?

It turns out that, evidently, I say no a lot to invitations for social events.

My most sincere apologies. I'll endeavor to do better.

Go ahead--ask me to do something social with you. I'm in.

Maybe.

Past/Future

Seven years ago today, I sat down in a training room for my first day at my new, fancy job.

Today, I sat down in my cubicle at the same company. Although my job is now somewhat different than it was seven years ago, many, many elements remain the same.

Sometimes, it seems like I just started yesterday.

Other times, it seems like I've always worked there.

Two different employees asked me today what I thought my long-term plan was. Apparently, I'm starting to look old for my job.

Home

I'm back from my visit to Cheeseland.

I had the most wonderful time with my sister and her family. I have many funny stories to tell, adorable pictures to post, etc.

But for tonight, I'm just doing a little bit of being sad on my couch. I sure love my sister and her family, and I have such a wonderful time spending my vacation with them. It's hard to have to come home to a place that is so far away from them.

Stay tuned for the all of the silliness, love, and corresponding pictures, as soon as I can muster the will to get back to regular life.

Until then, I'll be indulging in a bit of TiVo and ice cream.

For The Fam

Here are a couple of pictures of my newest nephew, for those of you who are family and cannot wait to see him! Born yesterday, 8 lbs, 4 oz, 20 inches (I think...you'll have to wait for his mom to heal up for all the official details).

Such sweet friends already! His older brother sure loves him!

I'm An Aunt!

In truth, I've been an aunt for a while, but I'm now an aunt again! My newest little nephew (bringing my nephew count to seven) was born early this morning.

Although I have not yet seen him in person, I can verify that he is gorgeous, snuggly, beautiful, fabulous, brilliant, handsome, charming, compassionate, loving, hilarious, wonderful, and practically perfect in every way.

Giggles

My parents just had the following conversation:

Dad: Where's the phone?

Mom: The telephone?

Dad: (completely sincerely) No, the remote.

I couldn't stop laughing. Upon further explanation, it made (slightly) more sense, but still...pretty funny, if you ask me.

R.I.P.

My TiVo is on the fritz. Over the past week, instead of getting better, it has been getting worse.

I fear it's only a matter of time.

Poor, poor TiVo.

Poor, poor Liz.

In other news, it appears that I may need to re-evaluate my priorities.

October

Things I'm looking forward to in October:

• Mini vacation in Cedar City (have you all been to the Utah Shakespearean Festival lately? If not, you should definitely head down there)
• Big vacation to see my sister and her family in Cheeseland!
• Finding some serenity (not totally sure how I'm going to accomplish this one yet, but...)
• Sweater/jacket season! WAHOO!!
• Hot chocolate
• Pedicure with one of my favorite people
• New nephew! (he hasn't been born yet, but if he hasn't been born by the end of October, it'll be some sort of medical horror movie or something like that...)

So many fun things going on! The only problem is that I don't have anything fun planned past October at all.

Any suggestions for November/December?