But sometimes it's fun to be a sheep.


Create your own Friend Test here

I was out walking with my 4 year old daughter She picked up something off the ground and started to put it in her mouth. I took the item away from her and I asked her not to do that. "Why?" my daughter asked. "Because it's been on the ground, you don't know where it's been, it's dirty and probably has germs" I replied. At this point, my daughter looked at me with total admiration and asked, "Mommy, how do you know all this stuff? You are so smart." I was thinking quickly. "All moms know this stuff. It's on the Mommy Test. You have to know it, or they don't let you be a Mommy." We walked along in silence for 2 or 3 minutes, but she was evidently pondering this new information. "OH...I get it!" she beamed, "So if you don't pass the test you have to be the daddy."

You Are 76% American

You're as American as red meat and shooting ranges. Tough and independent, you think big. You love everything about the US, wrong or right. And anyone who criticizes your home better not do it in front of you!

In other news, got my receipt of app to naturalize. "You should expect to be notified within 450 days of this notice." Haha.....ha.

But fear not!

You are 100% Canuck!

You rock, you are an almighty Canadian through and through. You have proven your worthiness and have won the elite prize of living in a country as awesome as Canada. Yes I know other countries think they are better, but we let them have that cuz we know better than they do, eh?

How Canadian Are You?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

...now I want some Timbits :(

So, I'm 2 months shy of having been a permanent resident of the USA for 3 years. My residency and card were issued on 3/15/04. I think to myself, self, the requirements for getting a green card were kind of wonky and convoluted, so it might be wise to look over what's needed to naturalize so I have a couple of months to prepare.

While going through lists of photo specifications, documents, etc, I come across the following:

If you are applying based on 5 years as a Permanent Resident or 3 years as a Permanent Resident married to a U.S. citizen, you may file for naturalization up to 90 days before you have met the "continuous residence" requirement. For example, if you are required to be in "continuous residence" for 5 years before you naturalize, you may apply once you have been in "continuous residence" 5 years minus 90 days.

I could have sent in my application a month ago!!!

Of course, a month ago the $330 processing fee would have been harder to get my hands on than now, going into bonus and raise season, so maybe that's a good thing. Not to mention, most likely I'll also need to submit the biometrics fee and get fingerprinted again for some reason? I need to delve further, I'm hoping I can bypass that since I did it a couple years ago. But this means I need to get to work. NOW! It takes 6-9 months to process naturalization applications, they estimate. I could be a freakin' citizen by the end of this year! :o

Other stuff I need is mostly easy to get my hands on. It might take a bit to find our marriage certificate, but if I was smart I left it in the file with all the immigration stuff from my green card application process. The photos they have changed as well, which makes me happy! No more going into the photography studio and saying I need a passport photo but with this angle and these specifications; in 2004, they standardized it so that the immigration photos are the same as passport photos. THAT makes me SO happy! Documents to prove our marriage is cake, I had to have all of those together a year ago to renew my card and get the conditional status lifted. Really, the requirements are a lot simpler than I expected them to be. Me like.

...On the other hand, it's asking where I've worked for the past 5 years, and what dates. That one could prove a bit of a challenge. I have to say, though, I'm entertained by the "The follow questions are required by the FBI" statement. Haha. I keep telling people they're watching me!

So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend your cool...

Opening Credits: All You Want - Dido
"If you come back, I'll make sure you know all you want is right here..." o.O

Waking Up: Beautiful People - Tim McGraw
"They're just family, friends, and neighbors doing what they've always done..." Much better, ordinary people doing ordinarily extraordinary things.

First Day At School: Serenade - Sarah Brightman
Wordless, slow but playful, not too bad. Kind of an ethereal, outside looking in feeling.

Falling In Love: Joy to the World - Boney M.
Haha.

Fight Song: Cowboy Hat - Nickelback
"Don't lie to me." Yup. I don't take that well.

Breaking Up: The Wrong Band - Tori Amos
"Said there's something believin instead of just leavin." I didn't break up well... I think that's fitting.

Grad: Will You Remember Me - Jann Arden
Damn, now THAT fits way too bloody well. I swear I thought that exact phrase a dozen times at grad.

Life: Be Somebody - 3 Doors Down
"I'm trying to be somebody, I'm not trying to be somebody else... This life is mine I'm living, don't you know me? I won't ever let you down." Amen.

Mental Breakdown: Christmas Lullaby - Amy Grant
"Are you far away from home this dark and lonely night?" Considering the current holiday... Yeah. That works.

Driving: Limits - .hack//SIGN Soundtrack
Wordless, energetic, fun - actually reminiscent of speedy highway driving. Or race cars. XD

Flashback: Can't Buy Me Love - The Beatles
Er. Not really sure about this one, but all right.

Wedding: Immigrant - Sade
Initial reaction is: hahaha! Really, it's about struggle to fit in and find a place when you're different, which more fits dating before my wedding, but whatever.

Final Battle: If My Heart Had Wings - Amy Sky
"If love is the only answer, then why are we afraid?" A fight for love, I suppose?

Death Scene: Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming - Manheim Steamroller
I suppose that's a good lamenting death song?

Funeral Song: For the Sake of our Brother - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Right-o. I have too much Christmas music, obviously.

End Credit: The Moldau - Baby Einstein
Oh, right, and Baby Einstein too. But at least I have a good excuse for that one, I'd rather travel with it on my ipod than a bunch of CDs. It IS kind of a neat song though!

</td><td valign="top">OK, so maybe you ain't a geek. You do, at least, show a bit of interest in the world around you. Either that, or you have enough of a sense of humor to pick some of the sillier answers on the test. Regardless, you're probably a pretty nifty, well-rounded person who gets along fine with people and can chat with just about anyone without fear of looking stupid or foolish or overly concerned with minutiae. God, I hate you.</td></tr>

You are 10% geek

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

YES!

I don't care if you don't like the iPod. That. Is. HILARIOUS! XD

If I see that desperate cry for attention ... I mean, letter ... from Michael Moore one more time, I'm going to stab my eyes out. It isn't even that I disagree with (much of) what it says, but it's Michael freakin Moore.

In other news, I've been up since 4. Boo.

It's always nice, in an election, to see that everything you would have voted for is failing and everything you would have voted against is passing.

>.<

Edit: But at least Joe Lieberman won. Not that I could have voted in that one, but that guy is cool. And OK, I would have voted to give the Veterans' associations property tax breaks. So I would've gotten one. But still. Doh. I've got a political rant ... but I think I'll pass on it. Or save it for Soul. One of the two.

I was supposed to go to the baseball game tonight. It was going to be my celebration at the end of a very long, hard week.

I'm so sick I'm miserable. Headache, blowing my nose every 2 seconds, it would kill me to sit in this weather outside til midnight.

Crapass end to a crapass week. I'm gonna cry now and sleep the second Eric gets to bed.

He'll probably refuse to sleep.

Had this passed to me by a friend, called it mommy humor, I think it's hilarious. XD


"Ok so Makenzie and I were driving to KFC the other night to get a bucket of chicken for dinner.
So I asked her what a cow says and she goes mooo. Then I tell her we're having chicken for dinner,
she signs chicken, then I ask her what a chicken says and she looks at me all perplexed
and I say bock bock. Then we move on to duck, I ask her what a duck says, she again
looks perplexed and I say quack, she says NO, then I ask her ok then what does a
duck say and she says.....aflack LMAO!"

[I so need to update my LJ icon with a newer pic of Eric...]

- Received a plague for Salesperson of the Year.
- Am a perfectionist and rarely if if ever forget details.
- Reason for leaving last job: maturity leave.
- I demand a salary commiserate with my extensive experience.
- I procrastinate, especially when the task is unpleasant.
- Wholly responsible for two (2) failed financial institutions.
- Instrumental in ruining entire operation for a Midwest chain store.

I've been tagged!

1) Grab the nearest book.
2) Open the book to page 123.
3) Find the fifth sentence.
4) Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5) Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet. Just pick up whatever is closest.
6) Tag five people.

Well, the closet book was "What Tiggers Do Best," but didn't have 123 pages :P So I did "cheat" and grabbed the nearest grown-up book ;)

"The Simbul's Gift" by Lynn Abbey

Layzoril couldn't refuse. His daughter became a child again, throwing herself at him, wrapping her arms around his chest. He remembered when she had embraced his knees. It hadn't been that long ago.

Hmm... I'll toss it into a new circle of friends. I tag bronzemongoose, domynoe, mebelle (you're allowed to cheat and skip the kid's books too XD), oeil, and meiran.

I usually don't do these, but I figured hey, I'm bored. I picked 7 people on my list at random.

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
quietsong56 goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as a vampire.
bronzemongoose tricks you! You get a rock.
domynoe tricks you! You get a broken balloon.
jesskastar tricks you! You get a piece of paper.
lunarmagic gives you 15 orange tropical-flavoured gummy bats.
mebelle gives you 10 mottled green root beer-flavoured gummy worms.
rubyjuls gives you 17 light yellow passionfruit-flavoured jawbreakers.
segurant tricks you! You lose 28 pieces of candy!
quietsong56 ends up with 14 pieces of candy, a rock, a broken balloon, and a piece of paper.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

It's Christmas Halloween is Ignace and I got a rock. And mugged.

And in other news, Eric was in bed working himself slowly up to full steam wanting fed. He kept getting really quiet every time I went to get up, so out of laziness, exhaustion, and a silly hope that ge would just fall back to sleep (haha, right), I let him do his thing for a bit. He wasn't crying, just squacking a bit.

So John wakes up, and instead of the usual groggy questions about what's happening, he instantly offers to take care of him and let me sleep.

<3

As we do sometimes, the drive back from Kansas City last weekend turned into a major talk fest for John and me. We covered all sorts of topics shallow and deep. One of them ventured to my job and how I feel bad that I don't contribute near as much as he does - I have no idea how we got there, but I have no idea how we got to many of the places we went, heh. (I mean, seriously, his starting wage 10 years ago was $3 higher than what I make today.) Anyway, he was trying to make me feel better and show his confidence that I'm only going up and will make great strides in time, with or without getting a degree, and he says to me, "Face it, you already bumped one person out, in a few years you'll bump someone else."

...er...yeah. I know that was his idea of a compliment and total sign of support. Somehow, though, I don't think he realizes how bad I still feel about that.

(For those that don't know the story, I was part time and word came down that we were half a person over in our labor and that needed to be cut. So in the end they laid off our full time receptionist who'd been with the company for 7 years and bumped me to full time in her place. I felt absolutely horrid for weeks.)

A question to the guys out there:

How long must one be sick before it's justified to say "Damnit, I've got the plague, YOU get up with the baby"?

(And a side note for everyone: sucking out a baby's totally snotted up nose is an excellent way to wake them up. Unfortunately, when your baby has developed your immune system's habit of being most sick in the middle of the night, that pretty much sucks.)

Half dose of Nyquil = symptoms reduced, no other side effects.
Full dose of Nyquil = loooooooooooooooooooopy.

So we went to bed early, cause John is tired and I am getting sicker by the moment. 10:30 rolls around and Eric is awake and wanting fed. (He is also fending off illness, he ate at 5 and was asleep by 6:30.) I poke John, as he has said all I ever need to do if I want him to get Eric at night is wake him up - and we'd had a discussion about how the humidifier in his room needed filling but we weren't going to do that when he was asleep. He moans and grumbles and I ask if he's going to get up.

"You want ME to get him?!" ...no, I LIKE interrupted sleep when my throat feels like it's on fire.

"Well, that or you can fill the humidifier, your choice." I throw him a bone.

"I'll do the humidifier!" Wrong answer, but I did open myself up for it, and he IS tired. So I shove my glasses on and we both get out of bed. He gets the humidifier, I take Eric downstairs, make a bottle, and settle in with him. And John follows us downstairs and proceeds to mess around on the computer for the entire 20 minutes it takes me to feed Eric.

And he didn't feed him ... why? -_- I'm not angry, I'm not even upset. I'm just extremely confused.