I'm just joining in to say that I am so overjoyed and thrilled at today. President Obama.

AMAZING.

My friends and I popped a bottle of champagne at the oath and had a party to watch the parade.

Best. Inauguration. Ever.

So apparently there is an impending demise of LJ or something. That's sad. I'm not really worried about my lost entries because really I haven't contributed anything worthwhile from here. I'm just kind of worried because... how will I find my fic? LJ has been the clearinghouse for me. Please don't tell me I'm going to have to resort to ff.net. Ugh.

Saturday night I went to this great party for the end of the kickball season. Our team, The Fighting Alpacas, had exceeded expectations by winning 3 games this year. (Our motto had been "go for 2!" after last year's one win season.) It was a lot of fun- an 80s theme and everyone really outdid themselves. My friend C found this amazing prom dress from 1987 that was all light pink ruffles, lace and sequins. She paired it with white lace leggings and amazing hair. As for myself, I wore stirrup pants and legwarmers and a side ponytail. It was epic.

I'd post pictures except I lost my camera in a cab. I don't remember what cab company it was since it was snowing like crazy and about 2 degrees out when I left the party. And I had to work today so I didn't even think to check for the camera this morning. Ugh. There are about a thousand cab companies in Chicago. Short of checking the I found your camera blog I think all hope of me getting it back is lost. I'm sad for the camera and I'm sad that I lost the truly amazing pictures from that party. I'm also sad that I won't be able to take pictures of my nephew when I get to Florida tomorrow. (I'm not sad that I'm going to Florida. It is fucking freezing here. -30 wind chill today! Ungodly.)

Anyway. You'll just have to imagine the amazing-ness of my pictures. Lots of 20 somethings wearing friendship bracelets and jellies and lace fingerless gloves. Oh the crimped hair! The pleated jeans! It's a tragedy. (I did actually cry when I realized I'd lost it...)

Another dreary lazy weekend. Football continues to be the main focus of my life these days. I'm living game to game. The Gators are taking care of business and if they can win one more game then it's National Championship time. Not that beating Alabama is an easy thing. So I'm nervous there.

I watched Gone Baby Gone today and while I enjoyed it holy hell that movie is depressing. Though it does continue on with the trend of Amy Ryan popping up in everything I'm watching lately. One of these days I will stop getting her confused with Amy Adams.

We're getting our first measurable snowfall tonight and tomorrow. I'm always a little excited for it, even though I know I'm going to hate it come Feburary.

Other than that nothing has been happening. I worked the Thanksgiving holiday which was actually kind of relaxed. Go figure. Usually holidays are the worst because the patients are the sickest but I just had a bunch of chemo to hang and not too much else to do. Sweet.

I worked nights last week which used to be very difficult for me but has lately been a lot more enjoyable. I chalk that up to the fact that we've hired a lot of very cool new people on our night crew and it isn't as bitter and angry an experience as it once was.

After that I had days and days off. It's very weird- I only work 3 days a week so there are times when I end up with 6 days in a row off with nothing to do and I didn't have to take vacation for it or anything. (Though I suppose those little bonuses make up for the fact that I have to work Thanksgiving and New Years eve this year. Ahh well.)

This time I had 5 days off. I literally slept all day Friday. From 10:30 in the morning till about 8:30 at night and then I fell asleep again at midnight so I figured I'd just try and sleep as long as I could and hopefully switch my body clock back to normal human time. It worked- I didn't wake up until 11am on Saturday. A whole day lost to sleep, and I wasn't sick. Amazing. I did feel really well rested afterwards though.

Other than that the weekend was very tame. I watched football (the Gators continue to kick ass, the Eagles continue to break my heart) and a couple of movies. I rented Tropic Thunder which I'd seen and enjoyed in the theater because I heard a rumor that RDJ stayed in character through the whole commentary, which he did and which was amazing. Ahh. RDJ your brand of crazy brilliance is so appealing to me.

Now I'm heading off to buy a Christmas tree at Big Lots. It's only $30 so that's... suspicious as to what the quality is going to be. But it doesn't really matter. I'll get to see have a pretty nice tree at my parent's house. This is just to get the apartment feeling a little festive. I'll take pictures if it's truly hilarious. Which I think it will be as it has the word "shiny" in the descriptor. YES.

So. President-elect Obama. Amazing. Words cannot describe my joy. I'm currently @ a friend's house writng this from my phone because everyone else fell asleep and I'm too wired to sleep. But I am celebrating this so freaking much it's ridiculous.

I can't believe it's actually true! YES WE CAN!

I'm so nervous about the election I honestly don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight. I'm vascillating between the certainty that Obama will win and the fear that he won't. I honestly don't know what I will do.

I went out with friends tonight to play 2 friendly games of kickball. I had signed up for the league a few months ago and then it turned out that I was assigned every Monday to work and couldn't play on the team. We're pretty pathetic- after last years 1 win season our motto was "go for 2." We were halfway there going into tonight with a win garnered off of a forfeit a few weeks ago.

As luck would have it I was canceled from work today so I was able to play, and on a night when we had a double header no less! The first game was intense. We lost 8-0 and the team we played was... less than sportsman like. They were talking about running people down in order to get runs and in general behaving like douchebags. Why would you get ultra competitive about kickball? And when you're winning 8-0 on top of it? Douchery plain and simple. The second game was great- we actually won in extra innings and it was really enjoyable. It didn't hurt that the team we were playing had imbibed heavily pre-game. But hey we take our wins where we can find them (ie drunks and forfeits).

On the way home I had a very informed and educated discussion with my friend C about the upcoming election. With a few exceptions, I've found that my RL friends are just not politically engaged. So it's been nice to find since moving to Chicago that my friends are a lot more informed and willing to discuss politics with me. Also there are a lot more Dems in Chicago than NW Florida. (But I figure that's a given.)

Ok. Let's all cross our fingers and toes that Obama wins, and if you haven't already please please PLEASE GO VOTE.

Nice day today. Got a haircut, the Phils won game 1 and I voted for Barack Obama for president. All around excellence.

GO PHILLIES!!!!

Hah. So I somehow spent about an hour earlier today reading old entries from my journal. I have apparently had this journal for five and a half years now. Wow. Not that I update it that much anymore but I have been reading my friends page for that long. It was interesting to read about when I was all obsessed with Alias and West Wing. Ahhh the good old days.

Other interesting bits: I still feel guilty about how little work I did and what a slacker I was at my job at the theater on campus. I REALLY slacked. I mean, I knew I did at the time, but reading through this old entries it seems like all I did was IM and talk on my cell phone and pretend to do work. How did I not get fired? Or maybe that's what people expect from student workers? Now I'm in a job where it's impossible to slack. How things have changed. :)

Having a nice day. I'm planning on going to a White Sox game with friends tonight. I feel nervous like I'm being unfaithful to the Cubs. I won't cheer for the Sox, I'm just going for the company. I swear.

People. You must go read this: The Kids Aren't All Right the vanity fair article Christine Everheart would have written. Amazing. Seriously one of the best fics I've read in any fandom ever. True to all the characters it's an amazing portrait of Tony Stark and the world after he reveals he's Iron Man.

::heads back to extreme lurker mode::

So even though I've essentially stopped posting around here, I am still around and reading. Just don't have much to say these days. I still do keep up with you guys though, I've just gone into extreme lurker mode.

But I may come out of it shortly because I have a new obsession. I saw Iron Man yesterday and fell in deep deep love with Tony Stark and Pepper Potts and Rhodey. I haven't felt this way about a fandom since... probably the first Pirates movie so I'm looking to get deep and involved. Already had my first nearly sleepless night because I couldn't stop reading fic (which the majority of it is actually really good! Yay!)

Other than that I've been mainlining Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, have been catching up on all my TV on DVD through Netflix (I've watched 4 seasons of The Wire, Dexter and am starting on Deadwood).

In general I am pleased that it is no longer cold and awful here. Until about 2 days ago it was consistently 55 and grey. Yuck.

So the gist is I've been watching lots of TV if you want to talk about that, Iron Man (and Tony Stark) own my soul if you want to talk about that, and yay summer!

So my sister is 8 months pregnant. (I'm not so good with months and stuff. Suffice to say she's due at the end of March and is therefore very far along.)

Way back in October she got an ultrasound and they told her it was a little girl. We all were like weird, I thought it was going to be a boy, but I guess those are just weird not-premonitions. We've been giving her cute little girl clothes (dresses and what not) and preparing for Abigail Elyse to come into the world. They decorated the nursery and put Abby on the wall in big block letters.

So they went to the doctor today and got another ultrasound and it turns out... it's a boy. Most definitely a boy.

My first reaction was to laugh. A lot. In her doctor's 25 years of being an OB-GYN his ultrasound techs have never made a mistake. Of course this happens to Katie.

Second reaction was to cry. A lot. I know this is silly because it's the same baby, but I feel like we lost Abby somehow.

I told Katie that instead of Schroedinger's cat she has Schroedinger's baby in her womb. Until it's born it is both a boy and a girl.

Luckily for them, they chose a very "gender-neutral" theme in the nursery, and as I'd pointed out (jokingly before this all happened) that if the baby turned out to be a boy they can just rearrange the letters in Abby to spell baby. The only sad thing is that he won't get to wear the onesie that says "Nobody puts baby in the corner" that we got him (though I think it still works, honestly). I am going to buy him the chicks dig me onesie and I think I'm going to make one on cafe press that says "I used to be a girl."

And my dad had it right, being born with an interesting story is priceless.

Is it weird that I"m a little excited about this?

It's weird. I know. :)

Even though my job is stressful and can be shitty at times it's times like today where I love it. I was supposed to work today, but I got a call at 5:30 in the morning telling me that I didn't have to come in because they didn't need me. AWESOME. We'll ignore the part where I have to use my PTO so that I still get my hours for the week and focus on the fact that it's Saturday and I got to sleep in. Like I said, AWESOME. Especially since it's 5 degrees outside with a wind chill of -14. And it was colder at 6am when I would have actually had to you know... go outside.

Hey Hey whatdya say, the CUBS are going to win today!

WE CLINCHED. AWESOME.

I think I'm going to get back into posting in this thing. (I know I've said that before...)

*I think I'm going to get a Roomba. I was going to wait for Christmas but 1)that's a sad Christmas gift and 2)I currently don't have a working vacuum cleaner and I can't wait 3 months to get one. The difficulty comes when I can't figure if I want a high end fancy one (cleans 4 rooms!) or a cheap one (it's still a vacuum cleaner after all).

*The Cubs' magic number is 3 (any combination of Cubs wins and Milwaukee losses that add up to 3) and they get into the playoffs. There are four games left in the season. Tickets for the playoffs sold out in 15 minutes. I was out in Wrigleyville on Saturday night around 1am and there was a line around the block to buy the tickets. My friend A thought they were homeless people, but I'm pretty sure that most homeless people don't have laptops. If they do, they don't have priorities I suppose.

*Work is work. We're moving into a brand new very fancy hospital in a month. Seriously fancy. 42 inch plasma screen TVs with on-demand movies and video game with individual room service fancy. Though there are lots of things they forgot like to give the clocks in the rooms second hands so that we can count pulse and respirations, and there are handles on the sinks instead of foot pedals which is not good for infection control, and the patients can't control the lights in the room from their bed. Bet that'll be good for falls. Ahh well at least there's a big screen TV right?

*Because of the move we're decreasing the number of beds on our floor. This means that we're decreasing staff size, which is fine. But a lot of people have already left for their new jobs and we're short staffed now. Which is not fine and means a lot of shitty days.

Other than that not too much going on. I'm kind of broke, I still have the itch to buy a house but I really can't afford it.

Oh yeah! My sister's pregnant. She's due in March/April. Which is the biggest news of all. I'm already spending most of my non-existent spending money on the baby.

Yesterday Senator John Kerry spoke at my alma mater, UF. He was participating in an open forum where students had the ability to question him. One student, Andrew Meyer, asked Kerry a question and while it was being answered the University Police asked him to leave. He refused. The police tasered him. (That link is to a video of the incident.)

Senator Kerry released a statement condemning the incident and two of the officers involved have been suspended, but the student still has felony charges placed against him (for resisting arrest with violence which if you see the video is not true).

I just have no words, really. I wish I could fuel my indignation and disgust into writing that would get everyone else as riled up but I can't. I'll just sit here and fume, I suppose.

So things have changed round these parts. I've moved recently. It went pretty well- the movers ended up charging less than their estimate, the cable guy showed up earlier than his appointment which is unheard of and I got unpacked really fast. As far as moves go, I'm not complaining.

Other than that I've been working, I got a cat named Sammy who is completely adorable, and I bought a gigantic TV. No more 13 inch for me! (It's ridiculous if you think about how much I love TV and how tiny my TV was.) I'm finally buying nice furniture and art for my walls and for the first time in my life I feel like an adult. Sort of. I don't think I'll ever REALLY feel like an adult.

I'm looking forward to HP but I'm afraid of spoilers. My cable was out for a week and I just got it back today but... I'm afraid to read comments on anything because what if some jackass put spoilers there! I'm paranoid, but I got inadvertently spoiled for HBP so I'm not taking any risks.

There's a great thunderstorm going right now so I'm going to curl up and read The Golden Compass. I saw a preview for it at OOTP and I think it looks like my type of book.

It is so hot. My apartment has been around 90 degrees for the last few days. Thankfully it's not so humid that if I lay very very still it's not too uncomfortable. But I'm moving in the next few weeks and so I have to well... move. I schlepped around town today running errands and getting stuff together and I hauled tons of boxes up to my apartment. Of course now I don't want to actually do the work of packing them.

I do have to do laundry though and that requires hauling laundry up and down four flights of stairs. Oh the tragedy. There is a nice breeze coming in through the window and I think it might rain soon so I'll probably nap before laundry.

I'm actually looking forward to working tomorrow because that means I get to hang out in the AC all day.

( Now some quick questions about DW: Utopia )

Ok well I'm going to nap- 20 minutes should do it. And then I'm going to laundry and pack. Yes yes, must be productive!