Christmas!

Wow, its been the busiest week off at home I’ve ever had! For the sake of avoiding annoyingly long stories and odd phrases I use that no one understands, I’ll simply skim some of the high and lowlights in list form.

-After a rather stressful evening of much phone tag and waiting, Andrea’s flight came in only 1.5 hours late instead of 14 hours late. Prayers are indeed answered :)

-I enjoyed 4 days of family Christmas-ness. Although it wasn’t the family I’m used to spending Christmas with, it was quite nice. This is the first time I’ve been away from my family for Christmas, it was rather odd. And to go along with that, this was the first white Christmas I’ve ever experienced.

-I can no longer say that I’ve never played Guitar Halo. I mean Hero. Sadly, and to my dismay, I found it quite entertaining. This may be one video game that I actually would enjoy playing. Alert the papers.

-Having many many visitors over Christmas is uber fun, but also time consuming. It leads to things like a very messy kitchen, and lack of time to clean it up.

-Somehow, 6 days of work is eternally longer than 6 days off from work.

-I got lots of stuff that I haven’t had time to really look at yet. I even got some gifts twice!!

-Dates can be stressful.

-Dates can be very fun.

-I like surprises, giving them and getting them.

-Goats are awesome.

-Sometimes the simplicity of a normal work schedule is the single most element I want added to my life right now.

-However, I do enjoy a job where I can show up, punch in, and sleep for 2 hours before doing anything.

-Next week should be fun again, with New Years and a trip down to Omaha.

That’s a brief overview of Christmas, what I got isn’t so much important as what I did. And who was here, and the time we got to spend together.

_______ of the day: I forget, its that thing, you know…

The working-on-Saturday Ogukuo

I like making lists of random things

Discovering you’ve bought shredded wheat when you meant to buy frosted shredded wheat is horribly disappointing.

Adding some granola and a sliced up banana to shredded wheat significantly improves it.

Blogging about breakfast cereals shows how boring one’s life is.

I enjoy listening to Peasants play their music.

I agree with the second paragraph of Andrew’s blog.

This week looks very long and bleak until the weekend.

I can barely find the floor in my room because I do nothing but work, and I have no time to clean up or organize anything. The same goes for the living room and kitchen, and I feel bad(ly) about it. Hopefully that changes tomorrow when I may actually have some free time at home. I also really wanna make dinner for myself tomorrow, but the boys have a Christmas party, so I’ll prolly skip the food making to attend that.

I hate being under constant deadlines and always having one more thing to do before I can relax. I think 6 days off for Christmas will do me a world of good. Deadlines of having to get presents wrapped is much nicer than deadlines of paperwork and book writing.

I sat down at the piano for the first time in a long time today, this makes me happy.

I hate having short amounts of time off from work during the day because I am never motivated to use them wisely. If I know I only have an hour or so, chances are I won’t wanna tackle a project like cleaning or anything, I’ll spend it relaxing. If I have a whole day off, I’ll be able to actually get something done.

I realize after reading this list of things that it is quite boring, which reflects largely on my life.

______ of the day: Just one day without obligation would be splendid

The unmotivated Ogukuo

I make pictures!!!

I'm a little behind, but I wanted to put up a few pics from Thanksgiving if I can figure out how...

Yes, she was mean. But the haircut looks awesome, and as you will notice in future pictures, both my ears are still intact :).

This would be my sister and her husband, me and Andrea, and my brother and his girlfriend. We kinda took the Van Dyken family Thanksgiving by storm. Marching two by two, of course.

We spent the weekend after Thanksgiving at a cabin up in the mountains. We drove to the lake where we'd camp in the summer time. Its drained down for winter, but still beautiful. Where I took this picture from would be under water during the summer.

Even when she's upset with me for taking her picture, she's still beautiful :D

My brother was nice enough to let us take his awesome motorcycle for some rides. This was a break during one ride around Ripon on the one cloudy day we were there.

So I guess I'm not very good at documenting trips with photographs, I missed pictures of alot of the fun stuff we did. But most of my photographs include Andrea, so thats good. In short, we had Thanksgiving at my grandpa's house with the whole family (ages 8 months to 94 years old). It was somewhat packed, but very fun. Then we spent the rest of the weekend up in the mountains, which was a very good idea, because moutains are beautiful. Took several drives to see pretty things. Andrea and I went wine tasting on Saturday, found some good wine, and even better company. Even bought a ring! A big, rubber one that has flashing lights inside that make it look pretty. And is good for getting people very excited over nothing :).

And now I've worked 8 days straight since returning to Sioux Center, and still have 2 more to go before I have a break. Someday I would like to have a regular job that allows me time to sleep and maybe even have a social life. Someday.

_______ of the day: Life is weird when you center justify your type.

The symetrical (kindof) Ogukuo

So here's a little rant...

About "the system".
So my roommate just got a ticket while driving my car because my plates are expired. The ticket is in his name, etc, but of course, its my fault cause its my car. I totally understand this. Evidently, my plates have been expired since September. So obviously, I deserved the ticket.
My beef is why my plates were expired in the first place. Generally speaking, I'm pretty sure that registration lasts a year right? And I know for a fact that one's birthday is also a default date for setting registration dues (Happy Birthday, you owe us money). Now, I registered the car in May, and my birthday is in March. Why on earth did my plates expire in September? Thats 4 months after I registered my car, and 6 months from my birthday. Silly me, when I received a notice in August to pay my registration, and it said "disregard if you have paid already", I assumed that I had, since I'd paid just a few months earlier. Now I have to pay to register my car (plus fees and charges, cause I'm 3 months late on it), and pay a $90 ticket. Does this make sense to anyone? Don't get me wrong, I don't blame the patrolman at all, he was totally right for giving me the ticket, my plates were expired, after all. But why on earth were my plates expired?? I'm very frustrated and much poorer now because of this. And I have no idea why I'm in this situation to begin with. I have no choice but to pay the ticket, if I brought it to court the judge would take one look at it, see that my plates were indeed expired and make me pay anyway (not to mention whatever other costs would be involved). I hate having to just eat $90 for no reason whatsoever. Paying the registration hurts, but I owe it. I dunno why I owe it this early, but I do.
Living paycheck to paycheck is a lot harder when suddenly a large chunk of your income disappears for reasons unbeknownst to you.
______ of the day: I'm gonna have to cancel my ski trip to Vail, shopping trip to New York, and that 3 week Caribbean cruise now.
The even poorer Ogukuo