Having To Go To Work Today At 4AM Sucks! Happy New Year!

Is it just me, or is Sam Champion a much much better weatherman and overall person than Mike Barz? I never really did like him. He reminds me of the stupid frat boys I used to know in college (I'll be writing more on that subject in a bit). It looks like Good Morning America has relegated Mr. Barz to barely once a week on air time with far away from New York assignments. Today he is at a military base in Georgia, and his segment is on at 8:45. He's in the tenth circle of hell for major news network guys who used to be on at 7:08 every day. What did he do, I wonder to get that kind of demotion?

Because I work at Target, I fucking hate Christmas. Yeah yeah yeah, I know, it's about celebrating the birth of Jesus. And that's a good thing (yawn), but because I have now worked various retail jobs for over six years now, I will give myself permission to be a scrooge. For every one person who is an asshole to me in the store, there are five people who are incredibly nice and understanding and don't hold it against me personally if we don't have anymore Nintendo DS Lite's in stock. So I guess I can't complain too much. And the added stress level that accompanies a retail worker this time of year cannot compare to the stress level that goes with a person who has your chest open, your beating heart pulsing in their hand, and is valiantly trying to patch it up, but THOSE PEOPLE don't make SEVEN DOLLARS AN HOUR, and there are days that I swear to God I don't make enough money to put up with this BULLSHIT!

I didn't have any special holiday plans. We went to the Home on Saturday to see my oldest son and gave him his presents. The actual Christmas Eve and Christmas Day was split between my folks and my boyfriends's folks. Just like it always is. Maybe one day we can try to plan a vacation at Christmas, like Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis did in Christmas With The Kranks and decide to cancel Christmas like they did, only to reinstate it at the last minute. I dunno. It's all I could stand to just get thru this one, let alone even try to THINK about future Christmases.

Best Movie I Saw This Week:There were several, but let's start with American Dreamz. And can I just say that Hugh Grant is now my most favorite guilty pleasure actor? In my mind he will always and forever be Daniel Cleaver. The guy you KNOW you shouldn't sleep with, but you do anyway, and regret it later, or maybe not regret it at all! There is a Daniel Cleaver is my past, (and I know that most girls have at least ONE skeleton like that) and strangely, I don't regret it. AT ALL. If he called me up today, I'd be happy to chat. Oh I wouldn't fuck him again, don't worry, I've got a great man that I love, but I should hate this "Daniel" for what he did (slept with my best friend at the time and a host of other bad boy antics) and I don't for some reason. Hmmm. Interesting isn't it? Anyway, American Dreamz was a funny and satirical take on American Idol and the media and politics. The President in that movie was clueless and bumbling but portrayed as actually being a really nice guy caught in the wrong job. The similarities between this character and our real president were absolutely meant to be real, but George W. Bush in real life isn't that much of a sweetheart. Every press conference I see on TV (like the one yesterday) he comes across as snarky in my opinion. It's painful to watch. But the bright side of this movie is that Hugh Grant, in a blatant imitation of Simon Cowell, is iminently more fuckable than that asshole!

I also watched Pride And Predjudice. The newest one. Oh man did I love this movie! Talk about fuckable! Just like Lizzie, you hate Mr. Darcy in the beginning but love him in the end, and after it was over, I leaned over to my boyfriend and said "Is it all right if I call you Mr. Darcy for the rest of the nite?" Ooh! That brings me to the last film I want to talk about which is Cool Hand Luke. We watched this last nite. Sigh. Oh Paul Newman, you adorable scamp, you! With a body that looked carved in stone to match... How could you not love this rascal in the movie? But that's just it: you know you shouldn't fall in love with somebody like that either, and you do, anyway. The guys in his bunker did, that's for sure. And in the end, The Man killed him because he escaped prison something like four times and they kept catching him. Sad, but this was the kinda movie where you knew that something like that was going to happen anyway.

Best Song I Heard: Red Light Special by TLC. Come to my door, take off your clothes, and turn on the red light... I hadn't heard this song in ages, but it popped up on my Ipod the other day, and I totally got into it. As I was washing dishes and/or cooking in the kitchen and drinking St. James Wine (jeez, it tastes just like grape juice, seriously) I had to drop the green and yellow scrubber and sing along as loudly as I could:

I'm a woman
A real woman
I know just what I want
I know just who I am

Book I'm Reading This Week: Pledged by Alexandra Robbins. Okay, so it's not a historically important work of non-fiction like The River Of Doubt, but it is a book about the secret life of Sororities. There is an entire Prologue in the book about the backlash that Ms. Robbins received after it's first printing, where she feels the need to defend herself. First of all, I don't think she really needs to do that because she can write whatever she wants to write, and second, I don't think she paints a picture that is all that bad of what that kind of life is all about. Oh sure, there's the required tales of eating disorders, drinking and drug use, catty bitchy fighting, and the spoiled rich girls and their materialism (and even blatant racism sometimes) but who didn't already know this? I think that this book is really a lot tougher on the MEN. The date-rapers and the cheaters and the I'll call you tommorrow and then you don't hear from him types and the commitment phobics she portrays here are what's the most interesting to me. But not because this is something new to me either, but with the possible exception of Tom Wolfe's book I Am Charlotte Simmons, I haven't read anything that skewers these assholes quite so succinctly!

Top News Story: Britney Spears is gonna tell ALL to Vanity Fair soon! Yeah I know I could talk about the war or politics, but eh! I've got more to say on this topic, and I know I'm not alone on this one. More people read Perez Hilton than Abcnews.com, probably. Plus Vanity Fair is my mag, and I'll be one of the first to get my hot little hands on it. I'll tell you what I like about her: I don't think she tries to be anything other than herself. She's a what you see is what you get celebrity and I don't think there's many of those out there today. She absolutely follows her own rules ( I can be pregnant out to here with my belly sticking out of my shirt and hot pants and wear Uggs and have a cigarette dangling in my right hand and I don't give a shit what you say, I think I'm COOL). Do I think she's dumb? Yeah, but so what. I 100 percent feel sorry for her. She picked the absolute worst kind of man to marry and the whole world knew it except for her. I know what that's like. Now, this dirtbag is trying to get as much money as he can out of her. Ick. So she is going on the offensive and telling all to Vanity Fair.

I survived Christmas. Barely. Today is the wretched day after. A retail hell day if there ever was one. As I sit here to finally finish this post, it's only 2:30 in the morning. I mean, jeez, I only gotta be at work today at 4! Do you know what my bitchy 11 year old daughter said to me after we had finished opening presents yesterday? "Oh mom, are you heartbroken that he didn't give you a ring this year?" Well, no, I'm not heartbroken. A little disappointed maybe, but not heartbroken. I can live with whatever happens. If we get married, great, if not that's all right too. Is it normal to feel this ambivalent?

This year had a lot of highs and lows, and I look forward to going thru all of it in my next post to give you a play by play. I can do that because of the wonder that is this blog. Till next time... HAPPY NEW YEAR!