However, this past week or so hasn’t been good, health-wise, for my family.

My great-grandmother is turning one hundred and freaking one years old on the 19th¹. She is old. She went into the hospital last week during the day, but was home by that night. The doctor told my aunt and uncle that she’s in the very beginning stages of congestive heart failure.

People can live for a while with congestive heart failure, but she’s 101 so what could be 10+ years for many people, probably won’t be for her. I’m hoping for a few more years, at least, but I’m trying to take advantage of the time I have with her. She’s my last living grandparent and a snarky one at that. I love that lady. When she was 98 she told me she wanted to slit George W. Bush’s throat. I nearly died laughing. It was beautiful. On Inaguration Day this year I called her and she was giggling she was so happy. She’s so adorable!

Then last night my dad had to go into the hospital because he faceplanted on some cement after tripping over a boulder in his friend’s backyard. After several hours, his head wouldn’t stop bleeding. It looks like someone shoved a baseball underneath his skin. This is disgusting. Thankfully, he didn’t have a concussion. A few stitches and they sent him on home. As a sidenote, apparently the first thing he said when he walked into the house was, “Now, I don’t want you to be worried, but…” before coming up the stairs² to show my mom his face.

Want to know the most worrying words in the English language? Those are them.

Also, my brother went to the doctor and found out he’s been walking on a fractured foot for over a year ever since a wrestling accident last year. *facepalm* And our family friend who lives with us had another seizure a couple days ago.

In other news, I have been having a lot of migraines and bad headaches lately. They always start behind the same eye and that’s making me nervous. I should really make a doctor appointment, though I’m going to wait until after my finals are over and done with this week.

Oh, yes, finals. I make things way too difficult for myself. If I’d just done stuff when it was assigned, I wouldn’t have to spend so much time worrying about the fact I wasn’t doing work. :P But I find it incredibly difficult to do schoolwork or anything, even, when I’m stressed out and distracted. Meh.

1. Funny story: Last year around July she was trying to make a doctor’s appointment over the phone and the receptionist could not understand when she gave her birthday as “12-19-08.” She just kept saying, “But…this is 08,” even when my grandma clarified she meant 1908 as in, SHE IS OLD. I lol’d in real life.
2. We live in a split-level house with an entryway and then stairs leading either to the basement or to the living area floor. This means no matter what, we have to walk up an asston of stairs to get into the house. Fun for my brother–see above!

Why was YOUR week awesome?

However, thankfully, the particular issue that has forced me to utter this haunting phrase, is just that I can hit my snooze button for hours.

My mom and I used to mock my dad because his alarm will start going off at 5AM and he would still be laying in bed at 9AM! Worst part: He doesn’t even hit the snooze. He will just let his alarm clock go off for four goddamn hours.

I UNDERSTAND NOW, DAD. I apologize.

At the beginning of this quarter, I was waking up around 7AM every day, no problems, and getting extra work done in the morning. I thought not having class until 11AM (although that means I have to catch my bus at 9:45AM because I live so far from school) meant I’d have more time to be productive in the morning!

Yeah, no. I apparently don’t know myself at all. Alarm starts going off at 7AM. I set three separate alarms¹ on my phone and it generally goes off every 3-5 minutes. By the time 9AM, I’ve probably hit snooze about 30-40 times. Perhaps choosing the Firefly theme song, “Piazza, New York Catcher” by Belle & Sebastian, and “Willkommen” from Cabaret as my alarm clock tones wasn’t the wisest idea I’ve ever had.

So I just purchased the world’s most annoying alarm clock, except I purchased it from Amazon despite my love for ThinkGeek. Saving $15USD, plus free shipping demolishes all brand loyalty.

Am I the only one who cannot force themselves to get up? Also, for those of you who can’t get your asses out of bed, are you also severe procrastinators like I am? I think there’s a correlation there. ;)

1. Mostly because I can do that weird iPhone swipey motion in my sleep and turn off my alarm entirely without actually opening my eyes. *facepalm*

Yesterday I went to the mall with my friend, Kari, to have conveyor belt sushi (at a restaurant next to the mall) and go to a movie. I’d never had sushi before and I loved it. :D I’m excited to go again!

After we left the sushi restaurant and actually entered the mall, we still had a couple hours to kill before our movie started so we headed for the Apple Store so I could check out the new 27″ iMac¹.

On our way, a crazy kiosk man comes at us from the side, shoves dixie cups containing a mysterious melon-colored liquid into our hands, and commands us to drink. He kept promising there wasn’t tequila in it².

And you know what we did?

WE DRANK IT. Our only excuse was that we were frightened of the crazy kiosk man who kept talking about tequila and how he bites his nails. He also demanded we come over to his kiosk (no idea which one it was!) and let him perform an unnamed “procedure” which would only take 50 seconds. At this point, I inch around and hide behind Kari. We decline his offer about 8 times and declare we have a movie to catch and then make a break for it.

The fact that the movie didn’t start for over two hours? Minor detail.

The first thing we both do, as soon as we reach our Apple Store refuge, is pull out our phones and tweet that shit so fast. You know you’re a little addicted when… </nerds>

We’ve decided that side of the mall is dead to us now. We can never return.

Then we saw Cirque du Freak which wasn’t as bad as I was expecting! Despite its flaws, I actually enjoyed it–it was funny. However, I have never seen a movie filled with so many damn creepers in it. And everybody just went along with the creepers, without mentioning the fact that they were clearly the creepiest creepers who ever creeped!

And on the way home, Kari and I were convinced the bus driver was going to kill us all. The PA system crackled and in a super-creepy and wheezy voice, informed us that the bus was past Tukwila Boulevard or something. Then he kept randomly stopping the bus on the side of the road for a few moments in random, completely dark areas and we kept having these “Oh my God, where the hell are we? Are we going to die?!!” moments every time it happened. I kept seeing a stereotypical horror movie play out in my head. The driver would slowly get up from his seat and turn to face the passengers. Perhaps a large scar would grace his face. And then we’d all effing die and that would be the beginning of the horror film. We’d be dead before the title even showed.

He also blew right past a group of teenage girls standing at the bus stop despite the fact that bus is the only bus that stops at that stop. It may have been the luckiest thing that ever happened to him because I’m surprised I made it out of there alive.

1. I’m trying to decide between a brand new 27″ iMac (the one with the 2.8GHz i7 processor) and a refurbished MacBook Pro (17″, antiglare, 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo) and wasn’t sure if a 27″ screen is too huge for the space I have. Another post is in the works about this.
2. Klaus (aka Ambs) says: ………….. if someone’s like “THERE IS NO TEQUILA,” that means there is rum.

1. My fellow Seattle people will not be shocked to hear it was The Stranger, a free weekly paper with copious amounts of picture-ridden escort ads.

I love books more than anything else in the world, pretty much. I have an addiction, to be honest. I haven’t read most of the books I have and yet I keep acquiring more and get lots of books at the library now that I’ve actually run out of space for new books.

Yeah, you read that right. I have no space for new books. Why? Because I have three large bookcases full of books in a bedroom the size of a prison cell. This might be taking things a little too far.

I mostly buy books used for pretty cheap (many good books in good condition for $0.50USD to $1USD at Half-Price Books, my favorite store in the whole entire world. Yeah, I’m even applying for a job there. It will be the death of me.

I also get some books bargain-priced on Amazon, on the occasion I’m lucky enough to catch the sale. I do preorder some books by authors I love and have no problem with that. I’m going to continue doing that because there are some authors that I like to support and some books I absolutely cannot wait for, such as anything related to The Hunger Games.

Many people, mostly people who hate rewatching movies or TV shows or rereading books, ask me why I buy books and if I’m ever going to reread them. And the answer is yes, I reread books a lot! Often, I reread the entire books, but more often than that, I just several specific parts of books that I loved.

I think, for books I’ve previously read, I’m going to ask myself if I’m going to reread it and if so, how often? Maybe once? Is it worth keeping it or should I just go to the library if I want to reread it?

For many, many, MANY books there is no question: Yes, I love that book to death, keep it.

For others, the answer is: Eh, I might. For the books I haven’t read, I do plan on keeping them until I’ve read or attempted to read them at least once. After that, I’ll decide how to categorize them. I read about 40-80 books each year so this won’t be a HUGE problem if I focus on reading books I actually own instead of ones from the library. ;)

What am I going to do with these books? I may take them to Half-Price Books to sell them, I may send them to friends who I think would like them, I may even give some away here! Who knows!

So far in the past 21 hours I’ve been awake I have managed to do these things instead of my homework:

1. Talk on the phone with one of my best friends for four hours. Yeah, really. She lives in Alaska right now, unfortunately, whereas I still live in Seattle, so we don’t get to talk as often as we’d like, but when we do? We talk forever. It’s pretty much ridiculous.
2. Squealed at the ridiculous amount of adorable at Cute Overload with aforementioned friend.
3. Read 85% of Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazarus Dole which I really, really like. Reading it makes me hungry! So much talk of Cuban food, so little time! If it wasn’t for the fact that my bus for school leaves in four hours and I haven’t finished my paper yet, I would be finishing it right now!
4. Watched Trembling Before G-d, a documentary about gay and lesbian orthodox Jews. Heartbreaking, but fantastic at the same time.
5. Written an infinite amount of lists about what I should be doing.
6. Began NaBloPoMo at my LiveJournal.
7. Wrote about 400 words for NaNoWriMo–though I intend on writing about 3,000-4,000 words today after the long-ass nap I plan on taking when I get home from classes. Add me as a writing buddy! I’m pumpkincarriage.
8. A million other things I probably didn’t need to do, but did anyway.
9. Wrote this post.

Yeah, seriously, I am the world’s biggest procrastinator. The other day I was procrastinating by reading articles on how to quit procrastinating. Of course, I mostly opened a billion articles in a billion tabs, then just scanned a few and closed the rest and went to do something more fun instead.

Considering the amount I procrastinate, it’s a wonder I actually manage to keep good grades.

How bad do you guys procrastinate? Or how do you avoid it?

Second, I revamped the site entirely and it feels a lot better, more me. More at home. I feel more comfortable posting here now, which I definitely like.

When I’m not posting here, I’m usually posting at my LiveJournal¹ or Twitter, though some stories that get posted at Twitter get expanded upon here. Some stories that are posted at LiveJournal are posted here as well.

In other news, I am still alive and chainsaw man did not kill me, though he nearly did my sanity in, I swear.

Additionally, the best thing that has ever happened to me in my whole entire life happened today. In that I found out that If You Give a Mouse a Cookie is playing at the Seattle Children’s Theatre for the next month. The only way I could possibly be more excited is if instead of a mouse, the main character was a moose. And if instead of a cookie, they gave him a muffin.

1. Username available upon request.

And my pear tree is missing.

Update:

Um. So. Apparently my dad¹ hates pears.

So he found a hobo on the street.

Handed him a chainsaw.

And was like, “Hey, man, go to town. Also, have some bacon.”

And now the man with the chainsaw is screaming, “YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH!” every time he revs that shit up.

It sounds like an episode of CSI: Miami up in this bitch.

I wish my life was boring.

1. I get my GENES from this man. How freaking scary is that?

While she’s in labor, her husband is running about like his hair is on fire, completely flipping out.

And then goes and gets himself some leftover apple cobbler, surveying the debacle from the kitchen table.

All the while his wife is still dropping babies all over the g-ddamn place.

And then, after the whole ordeal is over, he has the nerve to complain that HE is tired.

So I killed him.

She continues, suggesting that if kids just get jobs at McDonald’s then they will receive free food on their break.

I pretty much hope that the 20% of children considered hungry in Missouri go and eat her.

Ms. Davis neglected to mention when her hunger strike will begin so she can get motivated to resolve the hunger issue in her state. She also avoided the question of how she manages to sleep at night.

Colbert is amazing, as per usual:

After taking nearly two years off, I decided one day to go back to school starting almost immediately afterwards. The professor that was rumored to bring cookies every Friday? He did. He was also the best English teacher I’ve ever had.

In early or mid-June I decided to move away from home (and Seattle) for the first time to Bellingham, Washington…two weeks later. Where I knew no one. On June 22nd I made that move. I’m going to Western Washington University for summer quarter. I intend on fully transferring for winter quarter. The elementary education program here is awesome.

It’s been a little scary, but awesome. Sometimes you just have to do something crazy to get your life in order, I think.

I hope to be posting here more–for real this time.

Stuff I need to do:

• Redesign donut.nu
• Update WordPress
• Find and install a good plugin for comment threads
• Update my ‘about me’ pages–much as changed

Patricia: I miss Anne Boleyn on The Tudors.
Me: Guess her character was kinda temporary, huh?
Patricia: Hopefully the new wife will last?
Me: I don’t want to spoil the ending for you.
Patricia: Shhhh.

A mouse in a plastic box chillaxing on my great-grandmother’s little red table, to be more specific.

Cue shouts of my brother’s name combined with, “WHY IS THERE A MOUSE IN MY ROOM?!”

Apparently two mice were bought to be my brother’s python’s dinner. But Monty happened to die unexpectedly from unknown causes that day. Very unfortunate for Monty, but uber-lucky for the mice.

My brother apparently doesn’t like this one, but I can’t understand why.

It’s absolutely adorable. You should see the nose thing. The nose thing kills me.

Update: I know why. This mouse is a fucking ninja. A g-ddamn skydiving escape artist.

But I took the first step today! I’m finally going back to school. I just finished registering. Big step number one! Yay!

I’ve been avoiding taking English 101 for a very, very long time because, despite the fact I read about 200 books in 2007 and 150 books in 2008, I’ve always loathed English classes. They suck all the joy out of the subject for me.

And now I’m taking two English classes. Lord help me.

Granted, one is English 101. I’ve registered for it twice previously and dropped it both times. I know, terrible, but I’ve resolved to finish it, finally. Particularly since, you know, it’s a degree requirement. I decided on my new English 101 instructor purely because word around RateMyProfessors.com is that he brings cookies on Fridays and I think that says a lot about the sort of teacher he’ll end up being.

My first English 101 professor was always completely stoned and talked about Shrek in class a lot and how ogres are like onions, but he didn’t bring cookies so that was a deal-breaker. What self-respecting stoner doesn’t bring cookies?

Seriously. This college has the strangest people teaching English classes, I swear to you. It feels a little like elementary school with more homework. Then you go take any other classes (besides astronomy) and you’re in for a rude awakening when the professors kick your ass and laugh whilst doing it. But I like it, I do. I respond to ass-kicking as motivation. As much as I love it, I don’t respond to Shrek.

And yet I still signed up for World Literature III with the Shrek-referencing stoner teacher. Who, incidentally, came through my line at my job the other day with his child. Still as baked as he ever was.

Then I’m also taking math because, well, I need to improve my math skills as I haven’t taken a class since the 10th grade. I don’t want to know how long ago that was. It’ll just depress me.

All in all, I’m excited, but scared that I’ll screw it up like I have in the past.

Anybody else sort of fell off the wagon and taken ages to actually get their life back on track? I’m having a time of it, let me tell you, but I’m sick of waiting so I’m just going to hop right in rather than wait another three months or two years or whatever.

I know, this is an enthralling tale already. You can hardly contain yourself, you know it. Just wait, it gets even more action-packed.

I roll out of bed and nearly kill myself with all the crap that’s on my floor that’s left over from that time I started cleaning and then stopped, thus leaving it messier than it had been before I tried to tidy.

Anyway, after finally locating my bag of clean clothes, I try to get dressed. This includes putting on my bra, right?

NO.

I go to grab my bra and there’s an effing ladybug crawling over it.

What the hell? It’s nearly February in Seattle and it’s cold.

Oh, and the other day I hopped out of the shower¹ and went to put on my jeans and there was a ladybug clinging to those too. What the hell is going on with the ladybugs?

Now I’m afraid of clothing and I don’t particularly want to be a nudist. Ladybugs were cool when I was eight, but I don’t want them crawling over my boobs, quite frankly.

1. Not literally because I would die. I’m too uncoordinated.

Three site-related things I’ve been considering:

1. Starting a book blog.

I’ve been pondering reviewing all the books I’ve read as well as posting about all the books I’m excited about, my library loot, my 2009 reading projects, and other book-related things.

My problem: The amount of books I read in addition to the amount of time I spend thinking about books would take over my entire blog and thus might push away people that have no interest in reading about my reading habits.

My other problem: Reading is the hobby that says more about me than all of my other hobbies combined. Pushing it out of this blog entirely is sort of like separating it from myself.

Possible solution: I could post a weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly wrap-up of everything important going on at the book blog as well as link reviews in my book log and project pages, etc. It’s easier for readers to skip over one to four posts per month than 66.7% of a blog.

2. Redesigning and recoding all of my fanlistings as well as my fanlisting collective.

This desperately needs to get done. It’s been on my to-do list for about two years, perhaps longer.

Plus I’ve recently been approved for the Ron Perlman, David the Gnome, and The Boondocks fanlistings so I need to create those as well.

3. Adding a new layout here!

I’ve designed a layout for my fanlisting collective that, honestly, I want to put up here instead because I really like it. It’s rainbow though. Not rainbow all over the damn place. Just…rainbow. I like rainbows.

I still really like the current layout, but it’s really old. I could always consider adding a theme switcher, though.

Guess what type of phone I got?

Yep, I’ve hopped on the iPhone bandwagon. I know, I know. I was never planning on getting one because of the price, because I was too cheap to pay US$24 per month for the data plan, I didn’t think I needed all that on my phone, 16 GB wasn’t enough space, etc. Plus I had never really used one despite my many visits to the Apple Store.

Then my brother got one the day before yesterday. And I stole it last night for half an hour and was instantly addicted.

That’s how they get you. Bastards.

If I has has to pay for it myself upfront I would have never got it. Instead it was a combination of a huge discount (new phone credit plus my dad’s 40% UPS employee discount) and it being my belated Christmas pressie that made it happen.

Now I’m wondering how I ever lived without the ability to look up bus and movie schedules on my phone. Do you know how fun it is to wait at a timetable-less stop for an hour and realizing it’s never going to show up? In the rain? At the only bus stop without a shelter? And nobody is answering their phone to give you new bus info.

Yeah. I love it. I’m one of THOSE people.

I also just realized my last post, a particularly ranty rant, didn’t post for whatever reason. Meh. I still have a copy on my hard drive so I’ll likely post it tomorrow.

However, this does not mean you can throw a shopping basket at me when I tell you that the Transformers DVD that is on sale today (or, rather, Saturday when this happened) will not be on sale tomorrow, even if you put it on hold at guest services.

Yes, I’m serious. A “guest” threw a shopping basket at me because he was supposedly freaking out whilst trying to find provisions, but apparently had enough time to pick out a Transformers DVD set.

Everybody is freaking out because they think they’re going to lose power. Everybody is foraging for food. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

After I told him he wouldn’t get the sales price, he started going off and spewing a bunch of nonsensical bullshit:

1. “I’ve been living here for 30 years and…” (So what? My store hasn’t even been there for 35 years.)
2. “I’m ex-military and…” (Is that a threat?)
3. “I’ve been to three stores trying to get provisions and I don’t need this right now!” (Dude, you’re buying ping pong balls. How is that helping your search?)

Then he threw the basket at me. I backed up into the corner of my little register section and he began yelling at me to not freak out on him because he “doesn’t need this right now.”

I informed him he couldn’t attack me and that pissed him off. He said he wasn’t attacking me, to get better customer service skills, and that his generation had to deal with “it” and so I have to as well.

Excuse me? Your generation wasn’t typically known for throwing things at shop girls.

After I give him his receipt and run away, I get sort of freaked out. When someone’s in my face, I don’t really back down. I finally found my manager, who I normally hate, and she went over with security and kicked him out of the store.

This is where it got interesting: He started rambling about being ex-military and war and some incident in Germany and whatnot.

Here’s the thing: he was only about 35, max. There is no way he was ever in a war in Germany. And again I say, so what? What does Germany have to do with throwing a basket at me?

Bastard.

We were going to have a huge party today, but due to Snowpocalypse ‘08, nobody from out of state can get here and most people in-state (including my family!) are stranded as well. Plus she (the birthday girl!) has a terribly unfortunate cold.

My aunt doesn’t want to deal with weather issues again so she wants to postpone until February.

Now, my great-grandma might be healthier than the rest of my family combined…but 100 is really effing old. You cannot postpone someone’s birthday party for two months–especially if they are into the triple digits.

My uncle is going off about how he’s never planning a birthday in December ever again. Because we get actual snow every five years or so? Seriously?

He’s even angry that she “decided” to get sick. Really? She decided to get sick? That’s a new one.

I love my uncle, but needless to say, he can be a bit of a self-centered bastard. My mom showed great restraint in not strangling him over the phone when she heard that.

I’ve also rewritten most of the about section. A few kinks are still being worked out, particularly with the film and book logs. In addition, I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.7 which was a bitch to upgrade from a plug-ins perspective.

My new RSS feed is feeds.feedburner.com/donutnu

Why Donut.nu, you ask?

Well, me being lazy, I’m just going to copy paste what I wrote under the website section.

My first name is Donna. One of the most awesome people on the planet, my friend Patricia, calls me Donut. She informed me that dona in Spanish means ‘doughnut’–at least in Venezuela. There’s also a slight Veronica Mars connotation there for me.

Oddly, I loathe doughnuts. Except the powdered ones. Those are delicious.

I chose it because it’s short, sweet, easy to remember, and still personal at the same time. It’s a name I can keep for a long time.

I’ve decided to go by my first name from here on out rather than my middle, particularly since Donut.nu is based upon said name.

I’ll moving to a new site within the next few days and will be posting much more often.

Despite the bad, a few good things have happened since my last entry:

1) I went to see The Phantom of the Opera when the tour came to Seattle. It was a-effing-mazing and worth every penny of the exorbinant amount I spent on my four row-center tickets. Despite the fact I totally couldn’t afford them.

2) I took a day trip to Bellingham with my friend who was catching the ferry to Alaska.

I loved it, particularly Fairhaven. It was pouring down rain when we arrived by train and the first thing we see is a fish and chip shop being run out of a double-decker bus with a gazebo on the side for indoor dining. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen at that point. We were there for over half an hour and yet our food managed to be burn-your-mouth hot the entire time.

Click on image to go to source.

It’s particularly good that I loved it because I’ll be moving up there when I transfer to Western Washington University for their elementary education program.

I want to get my master’s degree in Library and Information Science (an MLIS) so I want to get my teaching qualifications as an undergraduate while still being able to double major. The education program before the double major is a five and a half year program. Adding in another concentration to that might add a considerable amount of time, but I’m hoping to plan it well.

3) My friend and I have resolved to travel through Europe for three months in 2009, unless one of us wins the lottery in which case we’re replacing the words ‘Europe’ and ‘three months’ with ‘the world’ and ‘forever’. Likely from September to December. I’ve done the math on what I need to save (plus what I was saving for my formal education, but am now deciding to blow on travel–a different sort of education, but arguably of equal importance) so I’m in the process of trying to find an additional job or two that pays the same or better than my current job.

I’ve also been building a new site. Alas, that’s been going slowly since I’m pondering a new domain¹ and I just got a new job.

I’m sort of trying to build something that’s clean. Something I’m not worried about people I know finding.

I’ll be keeping the old blog posts, but making it more personal in addition to geeky stuff I post about instead of just posting personal stuff in my LiveJournal (with the exception of stuff that needs to be locked).

1. Something I can stick with forever or for at least a very long while. I have one idea. I want something short.

His birthday was actually on the 24th of February, making Saturday closer to my birthday than his. But we made (another!) rainbow cake anyway. My baby brother is 16 now. This still horrifies me. Anybody living in the Pacific Northwest should avoid driving after July 2008, when he plans on getting his driver’s license.

On the way, “People Are Strange” by The Doors came on the radio which resulted in most of my family singing loudly while driving down the freeway with plenty of odd looks from my brother who did not join in. He’s really no fun.

Yeah, my family is strange. What exceptionally odd things does your family do?

1. That last half hour? Totally my dad spacing out and driving way, way past the road that would have led us to their house.
2. She’s 99 and will outlive us all, I swear.