dystopia

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I will be traveling tonight, among thousands of others on the road, going to see family and spend Thanksgiving eating turkey and watching the Macy’s Day parade. I’ve made my Christmas list and have told several people what I want. However, my fiance, keeps asking. Boy, he doesn’t listen at all. I even made him a list and gave it to him. But he must’ve left it at home. I made another list and e-mailed it to him, plus printed it out just in case. He has yet to really tell me what he wants. I have already bought some stuff for him though. I think I am going to buy a few more small things. I have no idea when that’s going to happen though. I don’t know how long we’re going to spend in Roanoke with his family. I’m guessing we’ll be heading back home either Saturday or Sunday. He has homework to do. He only has five weeks of school left. I know when I had that much time left, I was ecstatic. I can tell he’s getting excited about finally being finished with his bachelor’s degree. It feels like it has been forever. He’s been going to school for 6 years or so now, ever since I’ve known him. It took him so long, because he didn’t go full time because of course he had to work full time and could only go part time to school. But, now he’s so close to being finished.

I have no idea yet if he’s going to continue on and get a master’s degree or stop where he is and maybe get some certifications. Not to mention that he’s still working on getting his commercial license to fly. He’s got so many different options, that’s what’s so great about it. I guess he really took the saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” to heart. That’s good, you need a lot of options in todays world. You can’t pigeon hole yourself into one career and think that you’re going to stay there forever, because as we all see stuff happens. As for me, I’m done with school. I’ve thought about getting a masters and right now I’m against it. That’s not to say that one day I might change my mind, but we’ll have to wait and see where life takes me in the next year or two. I’m thinking about marriage and maybe starting a family in the next couple of years. I wanted to be finished with my bachelor’s, be a home owner and have my finances in order before starting a family and that is where I am now headed. I’m finished with my degree, I’m a home owner, although, I’d like to have a larger house. We’ve been talking about it and think that we’ll stay in our current house another year or so, we’ll probably sell in 2010 and start looking for something larger then. We’ve got some more work we want to do to improve the house and make it more appealing to buyers. We live in a really nice neighborhood, a pretty good part of town and it’s a perfect starter house for a couple or small family or an elderly person. I’m certain in another year or so we’ll probably be able to sell it with no problem. I can’t wait for next year. I’m getting married, we’ll do some more work to make the kitchen and sun room look better and my fiancee will hopefully get another job that he’s been interviewing for, maybe i’ll get another job too, that pays more than I’m currently making, plus something more stable. That would be awesome. I’m looking forward to 2009 with a very optimistic and positive attitude. I hope it doesn’t let me down.

Mmm…turkey day is almost here. I am such a huge fan of the holidays. I love it all. Getting together with family, eating a huge dinner with lots of food and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade, all the Christmas music, the Christmas movies, putting up a tree and lights and candy canes, buying and receiving gifts. So much fun!

My favorite tradition is to watch the movie “A Christmas Story” every year either on Christmas eve or Christmas day. However, I have cut off my cable now, so I only pick up the basic channels. I’m really hoping that the movie will play on one of the basic channels sometime before Christmas this year. If not, I will have to find some other way to watch it, perhaps at my families house. I know they will still have cable. Speaking of all the Christmas shows that will be on tvguide.com has a pretty good listing of when Christmas movies will be on and which station they will be on. Just check out their holiday guide. Unfortunately it does not have a listing for “A Christmas Story” yet.

This year for the holidays we are going to Roanoke to visit my fiances family for Thanksgiving and then for Christmas we are going to try to see everybody. When I say everybody I mean, all of my family and friends and all of his family and friends. This is definitely going to be interesting and challenging! It’ll be like that new movie that’s coming out “Four Christmas’s”. It’s always weird when you have so many different houses to go to. You don’t want to leave anyone out, but at times it can get pretty difficult. Both of us have some strange situations going on in our families. My mom has remarried, so has his, plus he has family in Richmond to see. It’s crazy! There’s no possible way to see everybody, that’s for sure. I’m getting so excited though. After Thanksgiving, the rest of the year will definitely fly by in no time. I’ve got my Christmas shopping finished for my family and mostly for my fiance, but we have to get gifts for his family now and I have to pick up a few more items for him. We are leaving on Wednesday night to go to Roanoke. I have no idea when we’re coming back. It would be nice to stay a few days and be able to meet with the people at the country club to do taste testing and decide on a menu for our reception. Not to mention, we still need to decide on who is going to make our cake for us. As soon as the holidays are over, then I’m going to get busy with planning our wedding again. This has been one crazy year and I’m not sorry to say that it is now almost over. I’m looking forward to what will hopefully be a better year for everyone.

So, apparently Dr. Pepper made a deal with Guns-n-Roses that if they released their album by the end of 2008, it would give a free Dr. Pepper to everyone in America. Well, it turns out the album was just recently released and Dr. Pepper is going to allow anyone who goes to their website this Sunday to print a coupon for a free Dr. Pepper! Good for us, probably not so good for Dr. Pepper, giving away all that free soda! Yay for us and guns and roses though!!

Check out the links:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gc9S2shf_wKwjH11jMbO9iJGbjlAD94IV63O1

www.drpepper.com

There are several web sites that allow you to search and win prizes for signing up with them and using them to search. Here are a couple I have come across:

www.blingo.com  - Allows 25 search entries daily to win. The time people win is chosen at random throughout the day. If you search before or after the chosen time then you win. A pop-up indicating you have won a prize should appear on your screen if you win a prize. They give away cash, gift cards and movie tickets. You can invite friends to join and try to win as well. If your friend wins something, then you win the same prize too.

www.winzy.com - Very similiar, they pick random winning times each day too. Invite friends to join and if they win, you win too. You earn points with every 50 searches per day for quarterly sweepstakes. Winzy gives away cash, ipod nanos and ipod shuffles and gift cards. There is no limit to how many times you can win with winzy. You must be 13 years old or older to win and live in the United States, Canada or United Kingdom.

www.irazoo.com - Again, you search to win prizes. This site allows users from any country to win. Each search is a chance to win an Amazon gift card and gives you points that you can use to exchange for prizes, like MP3 players, cameras, memory sticks and game systems. You can also earn points by voting for or against each website you visit at the top of each website. Only users from United States, Canada, UK and India are able to exchange and earn points, but everyone can instantly win prizes.

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Eats, Shoot & Leaves is a book about grammar and the fact that our society is still for the most part illiterate when it comes down to how to correctly use grammar. The book was tastefully written and I found it to be fairly humorous throughout. The author, Lynne Truss, goes over the proper way to use several punctuation marks; including the colon, the semicolon, the comma, the question mark, the exclamation mark, the ellipsis, the dash and brackets. It is definitely a good book to have to brush up on proper grammar and it also serves as a reminder that we cannot do without these marks. We cannot do without these marks because our language would not sound right to the reader, everything would be in disarray. Truss definitely illustrates how it seems like less people are using grammar correctly and she ponders on what the future may hold for our generation of people who text shorthand language and send e-mail with little to no correct punctuation. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who is an English major or just enjoys grammar and knowing the proper usage.

The joke at the beginning of the book titled Eats, shoots and leaves:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

Why? asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

I’m a panda, he says, at the door. Look it up.

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

So punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

The economic downturn has spurred all sorts of things. One being a turn towards people being more frugal and spending less and trying to save more or cut back on expense. There have been numerous stores closing completely now and many more who are cutting back and closing stores that are not profitable. Now we have a new president elect and what will he do for us I wonder? How long will the madness continue? How long will we continue to see economic and financial chaos? This has been a historic year in so many ways. The price of gas hitting record highs. The amount of foreclosures and houses being put up for sale or rent with no one to buy or rent out. The credit card debt that’s soaring through the roof for millions of Americans. The fact that people cannot finance hardly anything nowadays because of the credit crunch. It is all very disturbing and alarming. The fact that all these huge financial companies are tanking and the thought that many more could. It almost makes me wonder how many banks will be left before this is over? How many will survive? 2008 was like a horror movie unfolding before our eyes. It was so crazy and unbelieveable, that these companies, that seemed so secure, backed by so much capital, could just vanish and fail overnight. Going into 2009 we will be a completetly changed society. Hopefully, it will be for the good of our people and hopefully we will learn from these awful mistakes that the government and the everyday “Joe” have made. The scenery of our economy will no longer look the same. Many companies that existed, both in the financial and retail sector will no longer exist. It’s truly crazy to think about how much can change in a year. But, that seems to be nothing new to me. I learned that lesson many, many years ago. Life is ever-changing and it can change at the drop of a hat. You’re whole life can be forever changed in one minute, one instance, one moment.