I'm in love!!!

Yeah yeah... Whateley... vows...'til death... whatever. No... I mean, sitting in front of me is a thing of beauty, a sight to behold, something that stirs love in even the coldest of hearts.

Yes, it's a new widescreen LCD monitor. *love ya!

My old monitor had gone fuzzy. Literally. I kept having hard time reading the text in WoW, and I thought, boy these designers sure picked an illegible font! Whereupon Whateley pointed out that it was perfectly clear on his monitor. Which then made me realize that things are not suppose to appear that fuzzy on a monitor.

So... I got a brand new monitor (it's so beautitful!) that's making Whateley green with envy. But per my suggestion, he's going to wait a month for his birthday and he can ask for gift cards to help pay for it. And let me just say, God bless gift cards!

It was a pretty good Christmas. It was weird going from Whateley's family Christmas in the morning (10 people total, including us!) to my family's Christmas, where it was three or four times that number. And that's sort of a low turnout this year. And we were the youngest people at his family gathering, but there were kids galore at mine.

My blog, my rules:

1. I don't respond to stupidity and name-calling.

2. Neither does Whateley.

Don't make me take further actions to stop your annoyance, Anonymous.

Can I get an amen from the regular readers (who don't post comments anonymously for one)? I mean, why is an anonymous troll criticizing my values on my blog? I wonder if s/he'd criticize me if I said work is my life and I value that and money above all else, including my family.

Geez. The least s/he could do was leave me a fake name or something. Not hide behind the Internet.

Audience + Anonymity = Stupidity (in exponential factors)

Ooh, flame war. Or is it Troll Wars: the Last Dope. The second poster, my the way, was Whateley and I have no idea why he posted as anonymous.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the first commenter was talking about, but he was rather snarky like I was whining about money. First of all, it's my blog, I can whine if I want to. Second of all, I'm not destitute. Hell, I'm not even in the working class any more, we're lower-middle-class! Almost.

Thirdly, and most importantly, who the hell do you think you are Mr./Ms. High-and-Mighty? Yes, I care about money, but y'know what I figured out? Money sucks if you don't have the time to spend it. And I don't mean waste it. Spend it. Because while two extra hours per day for an entire week may be nothing to you, it's 10-extra hours spent stuck at work when I could be out enjoying the rest of my life. A day has 24 hrs. You spend 8 hours sleeping, a half hour getting ready in the morning (skipping breakfast) and a half hour getting ready for bed each night, 1 hour commute (there and back... and we're the lucky ones!), 10 hours of work and 1 hour for lunch, and you're left with 3 hours, one of which will be spent on cooking/eating/cleaning up after dinner, and that's only if you go for something ridiculously simple (like boil some pasta, throw some sauce from a jar on it), and then you're left with 2 hours... two precious hours to do what you want to do for fun. And if you need at least a half hour of TV to wind down at night? Or heaven forbid you have to stop by the market?

Then there's Whateley's and my favorite pasttime (you know what I'm referring to) where to even sign up for a battleground you have to wait over an hour.

So let me ask you this, Mr./Ms. Anonymous, how worth it is that 2 hours of overtime pay, huh? Especially when you stretch that out to every day, 5 days a week, for 4 weeks straight (which it might end up being, like last time). How much is your free time worth to you? Cuz to me? It's worth a lot more than time-and-a-half.

Not to mention it doesn't give us time to go to the gym and my ass is starting to spread.

Two hours overtime today... and I think we'll be getting two hours every day for the coming week. Erg.

I remember when Whateley was going through a solid month of overtime in the summer. It sucked. Hopefully, it'll be better this time around cuz we're actually working together at least.

Christmas season is here! And so comes the gift-buying. Erg. Before, I would save up all my Discovercard cash back bonuses and turn them into Borders gift cards and then wait for Whateley's 40% off employee appreciation weekend to buy gifts. Pretty much, I'd end up only spending about $25 to $40 on top of that for all my gifts and I wouldn't feel any of the pinch come January. But now I've got in-laws to add to the mix. And Whately and I are no longer working for Borders. So while we may make more money now, we will end up spending more money on gifts for Christmas. D'oh.

That and I don't have any Borders gift cards from Discover for awhile cuz I took 'em out early and used them for a last-week spending spree at Borders during my... well, last week of working there. I talked about staying contingent there to keep the discount, until the manager told me I'd only get the discount on the days that I'd work there... and frankly, there's no way in hell I'd work a shift there, even a short one, after a 9-hr work day (minus lunch), and there's no way in hell I'd give up hours in my precious, precious weekends to work a shift. Sooo... the point is moot. I ain't gonna be a contingent, so no discount for me. (Or for Whateley, as spouses can get the employee discount also.)

So what do I want for Christmas? Well, I put these on my list for Christmas (which I have a slim chance of getting since it'd be pretty pricey): a flat-screen monitor (17" or bigger), a digital camera, and a Nintendo Wii remote and nunchuk controller, so Whateley and I can play Wii sports tennis together. If I don't end up getting the monitor for Christmas, I think I'd end up getting it myself since my monitor is crapping out on me. For the longest time I thought my eyes were going.

I think a lot of people will be getting gift cards this Christmas. Oh well, sometimes that's the best gift of all, a free shopping trip (except for the gas and maintenence on your car).