Yes I have been MIA. I have been working my poor little (big) bum off for millions of christmas shoppers to complain about getting their kids cell phones. It is a stressful time of the year for me, and mostly when i get home i curl up into a ball on the couch and cry. and by cry i mean systematically shred every tiny morsel of value that anything on the boob tube may or may not have. It is my own sort of christmas therapy.

Today is my only day off this week - so Lauren and I are going to go start our christmas shopping. Yes i said "start". we haven't done diddly so far. As it is my list of people to shop for has been edited down to order of importance/need. lauren's brothers and parents, my neices and nephews. everybody else is going to get gifts in jan/feb. Including lauren. and me.

I've been not present for the estrip world, but then i haven't been present for much of the world. work and lauren. that is all i can handle right now.

but the following video cheered me up a bit. Almost as much as 100 greatest songs of the 90s on vh1.

Here i am in east aurora. working.

and there all ya'll are in PMT. eating. drinking. being merry. etc.

why does work always have to get in the way of play time?

oh and speaking of work... i can definetely get into some serious trouble for being online right now.

but alas i don't care.

Every year I get rather upset about the fact that the holiday season is always ruined for me. I can't go home and be with my family because I will always have to work right up to and the day after christmas. Last year I managed to at least be at Lauren's parents for christmas. This year she will be there, but I'll be here. alone.

I get very depressed sometimes when i think about it. Christmas isn't very christmassy for me. We have a single scary silver/white tree in the lving room. the stores that I work at are filled with scrooges and jehovahs witnesses who have no desire to get into the christmas spirit. Oh and the fact that we have no money. it all just makes me feel a bit hollow.

maybe its because i'm not sitting in the middle of the mall this year. With christmas lights all over the place. and people crazily running for gifts. maybe i'm in fact crazy, but that made me feel christmassy.

but oh well. this too shall pass.

at any rate: HAVE FUN AT THE HOLIDAY POTLUCK EVERYBODY!

today at work....

a woman was leaving with her baby and 5 year old little boy
and the little boy tripped on the carpet on the way out and was crying.

conveniently the woman had a digital camera and her lawyer on the speed dial.

The boy had a slight scrape on his knee with about a pinprick of blood. she was asking for ridiculous amounts of paper towels to 'stop the bleeding' woah...

we told her if she wanted to take pics that was fine but she had to wait and we would call the police. she said fine. the police came and they were SO upset about this woman wasting their time.

"if you want to make something of this, then we have to call the paramedics. Otherwise, sign that the kid is fine and everyone can go home"

she wanted the paramedics. sat there waiting with her kid (walking around - quite okay) for the paramedics. She said 'yeah he is walking now, but what about tomorrow?"

the paramedics show up and the cop says

"I have to go, there are REAL emergencies out there"

the paramedics showed up and when they saw the kid started talking to us about phones and when they are eligible for an upgrade. the woman signed that yes her son was okay.

the paramedics left and she started talking about taking photos again. WHY DIDN"T YOU DO THAT WHEN THE POLICE WERE HERE?

Tyrone was the funniest during the whole event.
"hope nobody died while the paramedics were wasting their time here"
and even took the toy that the store keeps out front for kids to play with as a distraction into the back room saying "we better get this out of here, due to the circumstance, we don't need your kids to get hurt on this"

I laughed a whole lot this morning.

but seriously - i feel bad for those kids.

this is a video of lauren and i wishing you all some holiday cheer. seriously you need to see this....

I woke up this morning with a serious need to watch the youtube video of david hasselhoff singing 'sweet caroline'. i didn't look too hard but apparently that one isn't a youtube favorite anymore. so i had to settle with the neil diamond version...


then i had to follow it up with mr bojangles.

and then 'walk the dinosaur'


can you tell that a) i haven't had a day off in a while and
b) i haven't gotten to play on the computer in a while?