Here we go, another list of stuff I'm sad and happy about. This is a long one. And there's a lot of links in here - most of them are pictures!

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5 things I'm upset about:

-- 1. We had to take my cat, James, back to the adoption agency :o( He's had a couple seizures and we couldn't afford to have the tests required given to him to figure out exactly what it is. We'd only had him a month - he had one soon after we got him but we waited to see what would happen. Then it happened again sometime during the night and we decided taking him back would be best. The woman there really reassured me, said they'd definitely take him back and get him to the doctor and have tests done, and I gave her my email address too and she said she'd keep me informed, so that made me feel a lot better. But I miss him :o(
-- 2. I got a job. Well I'm not necessarily UPSET about it, but I'm still nervous of course, as it'll be my first one (save for having worked with Dad). I'll be stocking Hallmark cards at Walgreens. Seems simple enough and I'm sure I'll have fun, but yeah I'm still nervous. But I'll be putting this under the things I'm happy about as well, ha! :D
-- 3. Still real heartbroken about James.
-- 4. I've got my period. Lovely, eh? Now there's something never to be happy about (although Always seems to think otherwise - "Have a happy period!" WTF?? WHO ARE THEY KIDDING?!). It's actually almost over, but this was a pretty bad one.
-- 5. I hate summer - it's hot. No, no. It's really. really. dayumed. HOT. I hate this place. I do love the summer storms though... they've been awesome and that's a huge up side!
-- 6. I've got a sty under me eye. Heh. Sounds like some kind of disgusting rhyme... but UGH. Haven't had one of these in a long time, I hate 'em. Dad brought me stuff to put on it though so it feels a bit better. Though, when the stuff gets in my eye a bit, it makes things blurry since it's oily. Yucky.
-- 7. I'M OUT OF PUDDING. NUUUUUUUUUU!!! NOT ZE PUDDIN'!!!
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Well,that's all I could come up with. I was gonna make this a 10/10 but I guess I'll make it a 7/10 because I really couldn't come up with more than seven things I'm upset about. But then, that's a good thing!

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So here are....
10 things I'm stoked about:

-- 1. I got an iPod Nano, thanks to Pops 'n' C.!!! I'm really excited with it, it's awesome. Takes some getting used to (especially since they don't really give detailed instructions with it, which I found kinda odd - you'd think they would give you a telephone book full of advice like they do with cell phones), but I've pretty much got it figured out now. I've added all my favorite albums too it... ALL of my Skynyrd, lotta Southern Rock, all three PotC soundtracks, a bunch of Country, and a bunch of Classic Rock.
-- 2. I GOT A JOB!! Yeah, see? I'm really happy about it too, LOL! I just went in a couple days ago and filled out the final, third part of the application (which entails giving my SSN again and date of birth so they could run a background check - I told Dad this and he said something like, "Well you'll never pass it, you're a criminal." ha). Well I did of course, so, I start on Monday! My aunt Cyndi will be taking me in for four hours every day this week and I'll be paid for it as training too, and then I think the week after that I'll be trained by the official trainer lady... or something like that. I got some new clothes for the job too - a pair of black pants that fit great (which is awesome because I'm so hard to fit in pants, but I found these pretty much right away), and three cute shirts.
-- 3. I finally found hair clips that hold my hair GOOD and without discomfort. I've been searching for this my entire LIFE, and then BAM, I find the perfect thing for three bucks at Walgreens. I just got two more, because knowing my luck, since it's something I like, they'll stop making it a month after I start using them. I used to try to wear those hair claws, but I could never get them to stay in. Then I found the more curved kind, and those were all right, but they were too curved length-wise and ended up digging into the base of my skull. So I tried using a smaller one but it wouldn't hold all my hair. BUT NOW I'VE FOUND THE PERFECT ONE. It's called an octopus clip, and it really does look like an octopus. It has eight teeth that lock together and are curved a bit strangely, which makes them look like octopus tentacles. I'll probably start calling them Kraken clips, LOL. They hold my hair perfectly without budging a BIT - not just because of the shape, but that they're lined with rubber on the inside too, so it won't slip. I can put half my hair back and leave the rest down too, and just use a smaller one. I love them.
-- 4. Got new sunglasses. Well, I got them over a week ago but they're still new to me. They're the perfect shape, really comfortable, and look great on my head. Got these adorable little metallic flowers and vines on the sides (A.E. says the designs look "phallic"...). My red ones are still my favorites, but the new ones are gorgeous.
-- 5. I've been taking lots of pictures and having a lot of fun with it. My favorites are close-ups...like flowers, lizards, and feathers. Love taking pictures of the sky too, I guess because it's always different. I also found this teensy baby frog, baby gecko, and some unidentified type of spider a few days ago.
-- 6. I finally took a photo of me with my fairly-new life-sized stand-up of Barbossa. Heh. I've been told we're a cute couple by more than one person, LMAO. And I couldn't help but hold his hand...I mean it was just hanging there in front of me, begging for me to hold it. It really looks like I am too, I love it! Barbossa's my new interest...if you've not noticed... No, I can't really offer an explanation for this phenomenon, so you'd best not even try to understand.
-- 7. I'd been sick for the better part of a month, and my cough is finally almost all the way gone. YAY!!!!! I swear, what would be a normal, 3-day cold for most folks always turns into a bad sickness lasting at least 2 weeks for me, complete with fever and bad cough. Really, it happens every time, so I'm quite used to it. Everybody always urges me to get to a doctor every time and tell me that I sound so bad, but it really is the norm for me, ever since I was a kid. I know antibiotics or whatever won't be of much help, since it's gonna run its course anyway, so I just stock up on ibuprofen and cough syrup and wait it out.
-- 8. Whenever I get over an illness, I suddenly get this incredible urge to clean everything in sight. It never fails to happen. So a couple weeks ago, I cleaned both the PC room and my bedroom top to bottom. I feel really accomplished, even now still :D. I changed around a lot of stuff and threw out a giant trash bag full of crap from my closet (gave a bag of clothes to Nancy, too), dusted everything, vacuumed underneath the beds and all around, and redid the north wall of my room which had all my posters on it. I had quite a few Band of Brothers posters up... which it killed me to take them down, I still feel guilty about it... but they'd been there for 6+ years and it was time for them to go. I replaced them with two posters from PotC: Dead Man's Chest, as well as a poster of a guitar in a swamp which was used as the cover-art of the Skynyrd album, "Then & Now". It's the same "swamp music" picture I use all over my MySpace. It's just the picture, the original art, and says below it "Freebird on the Bayou". It goes really well with the PotC posters, and all of them coupled with the glow of the little lanterns hanging from above gives it the perfect effect. I also moved the middle shelf up five inches to accommodate the swamp poster (which I'm proud to say the shelf is hung PERFECTLY LEVEL), and have two pictures from PotC: At World's End hanging above that. Here's a picture of the wall.
-- 9. I've been cooking a lot more lately, and as opposed to before, can actually say that I enjoy it more. Though I don't make a whole lot, anything I have made has been pretty good. In all those stupid (but fun) MySpace surveys that I'm always taking, whenever I came across a question asking me if I could cook I would say 'no'. But I guess I can start saying 'yes', now :D. I must give kudos to Nancy for giving me a bit of inspiration on it and making me wanna try cooking more new stuff!
--10. I LOVE TRANSFORMERS. Really. LOVE IT. It might not be everybody's cup of tea, but I really, really enjoyed it. I grew up watching Beast Wars, which was a tad different, but it mostly had the same characters so I already knew who most of them were, and besides that I was already acquainted with the general idea, background, and atmosphere of it. Am I the only one who finds machinery sexy? LOL. I LOVE BUMBLEBEE. And I know A.E. will enthusiastically agree that Optimus Prime is hot, but I've always thought that trucks and airplanes and tanks had something appealing about them... and I can't really explain it. And don't get me started on the Terminators... Reminds me of the Kenny Chesney song, "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy".
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Well I'll end this now. I'm sure I could find more to write about but if I keep going I'll never stop. I've been sitting here for half an hour all wrapped up in my Rebel flag bath towel, and my hair all up in another one like a turban, hee.