At 5am, tv becomes a mental wasteland

If I watch one more informercial, I'll scream. You know things are low when you watch the Girls Gone Wild informercial and try to calculate the total gross IQ of all the girls featured. Ain't pretty.

The only product that I know that is still advertised in an informercial style that I know works is Bare Minerals, because I bought it through Sephora. Bare Minerals pretty effectively turned me into the makeup junkie that I am today.

The reason that I'm up is that I fell asleep on the couch again soon after arriving home from Bryant Park. Mum and I went to lunch at Celsius, watched the ice skaters, basked under the heat lamp at our table outside, and then walked around and browsed at the kiosks there. We took a brisk walk over to the tree at Rockefeller Center (even after I warned her that it would be very busy there), stayed for five minutes (at most) because indeed, it was crowded there, and then walked back to Grand Central to catch the train home.

When we got home, I promptly fell asleep on the couch (around 7:30) and woke up at 2:30am... it's now nearly 6am. Will I fall back asleep again? Probably not, since I got a full night's sleep already. I've got my macbook on my lap in bed, and will shortly shut it off to try to sleep. If it happens great. If it doesn't, so be it. The last day of 2009 might be off to an early start!

artsy people...

...should not be allowed to get away with being flaky. ESPECIALLY if their art is also their business.

I'm surfing the Internet the other day, reminding myself of all the goodies I helped Jackie to order for the store. And then I am reminded of all the goodies that I LOVED that we never received because the artist flaked on us. It is especially annoying when I am helping to buy stuff both for the store and for myself.

For example, I adored these Earthgirl bags, but we never received them. We even e-mailed the company to follow up with them, but they never responded.

Bah humbug. There goes my Yule gift I was going to give to myself. Maybe it's just a sign that I really didn't need another bag in the first place.

update

Working hard, or hardly working? Isn't it funny that some days you work your ass off, only to turn around and look back at the day and feel that you've accomplished nothing? Yeah, I'm feeling that kind of frustration right now, and my NaNoWriMo novel didn't survive that kind of work pressure. At the very least I might revisit what I accomplished with it (which is 20,000 words thus far). To more exciting news:

I attended this tarot workshop this past Saturday, and it was awesome. I'm sure I will blog about it more on my tarot blog at a later date. I seem to always be refilling my tarot business cards whenever I'm at Whimsies, so I'm taking that as a sign that there are more people out there interested in my readings than I originally thought. I'm just putting that positive vibe out there, and seeing what comes back from it. I wore my pentacle again for the workshop on Saturday, and it just felt right putting it on, and leaving it on. I'm not fighting that kind of feeling. I'm just meant to wear it again. I'm going to take it as a sign that I need to be reminded of my spirituality more at this time. And that's okay with me.

tarot, nanowrimo, and other assorted side-projects

It's been awhile since I've posted. I think I might be slightly insane for making the pact to do National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) again. I also might be insane for creating an entirely separate blog to write posts about tarot (tarotspell.blogspot.com), however I figured it was the best solution to the problem of Geocities closing down on October 26th. Geocities was where my small little site about tarot resided.

I've been inspired by a few different blogs I've seen lately about tarot, and I wanted to share my own thoughts on the cards. Add to the discussion, if you will. I'm also going to a tarot workshop in December, and am psyched about it. Even the name, "Throw out the fucking book!" appeals to all my senses!

Anyway, that's it for me right now. I'm going to take a shower and try to head to bed. I'm behind on my word count for Nano already, so will have to make up for it tomorrow. Eek.

American Gods

I read this essay tonight (or this morning, rather), and now it's simply just not an option anymore. I have to read American Gods. From just the briefest description of what Gaiman says American Gods is about within the essay, I'm itching to have the book in my hands right now. Alas, 'tis not so.

Reading his essay got me to thinking about this. Being a first-generation American is a strange experience. Or I would imagine so. Since it is my reality, I guess I don't find it so strange, but perhaps it would be if I was an outsider looking in. I haven't really stopped to think about it in great detail until this week, when my cousin came to visit. He was in New York on business, so he took the train up to our sleepy little town. My boyfriend came over, and it was the first time he got to meet anyone from my extended family. I've been dating Dave for over two years now. His family is in the same county, state, oh heck, country. Mine is an ocean away, and has been for my entire life. So I've met at least 2/3 of his extended family, and he's met about .000001 of mine.

All these people that I've been introducing to him as my aunts or my cousins are not, in fact, relations by blood. When you have an ocean separating actual kin from kin, you learn to make do with what you have. We carved out a family in America made up of very close friends. Do I find it weird that I probably have cousins that I don't even know about? Sure.

It just seems that we all get caught up in our everyday lives, and the people that you constantly make the effort to interact with are the ones that will continue to be a part of your life. And the ones that don't make the effort or you don't make the effort for simply fall away as the time passes. I'm not sure of whether this is negative or positive. It simply is.

these dreams

I dreamt of Malaysia last night. I couldn't tell you why; I've never been there before and anything I've ever seen of Kuala Lumpur I saw in the movie Entrapment.

I was floating down a river, and at one point I was in a store buying crystals and a green-stoned multi-strand bracelet, and the saleswoman there asked me what my zodiac sign was and how old I was, and I said, "Thirty." Dave was there with me. Perhaps a future trip? I've never expressed traveling to Malaysia before. Very strange.

musings when I should be in bed

My altar has turned into a temporary catch-all surface. It is now covered with not only my pagan spiritual items (wand, incense holder, candles, crystal ball, etc.), but with my old pair of eyeglasses, bits of paper that I wrote notes on, and most of my jewelry.

Methinks I need to have more respect for my religion by making my altar... hmmm... perhaps the sacred place that it should be by definition.

Fuck it. I need to clean my entire room.