So today my parents took me shopping. I had mentioned that I wanted some new church shoes, so we went to the shoe store with a coupon for 20% off the purchase.

I finally ended up with a black pair of Nunn Bush shoes that were $40, but while we were there, I looked at the New Balance tennis shoes (my favorite brand of shoes), and my mom convinced me to get a pair of them as well. The ones I picked were the 460's:



These are going to replace my 413's, because I've been wearing those to work so they look a little messy:



So anyway, it was going to cost around $100 for both pair of shoes. We fumbled around figuring out what to do about the coupon, and eventually decided to let my mom buy my two pair and another pair. The coupon ended up reducing both pair of shoes to $32 a piece. So I owed my parents roughly $65 instead of the $100 we thought they were going to be.

We also ran into Sam's Club, where my mom got me a new set of pillows. We went to lunch later, and then came home. It was then my parents decided to give me the shoes for my birthday!

In addition, a package came from my brother and his wife...with my pictogram on it! I won't open it until tomorrow, but that was suprising to see it there. Finally, before I go to work, I will be running to my grandparent's house, who want to give me their gifts today.

So despite today is the day before my birthday, I've already gotten some cool things!

I don't want this to turn into a big popularity contest, but I had an idea for a picture that I would like to draw on iScribble.

What I wanted to do is have Quad in the middle surrounded by many other deer who I feel influenced him and turned him into the stag he is today. The question is, who all do I include, and who is it ok not to include? I don't know how to draw the line there.

As of right now, I wanted to include many of the deer from this.

That would include:
Ephra - Quad's adoptive mother
Walter - Quad's adoptive father
Quamar - Old friend
Ghost - Old friend
Laruna - Old friend, but I also feel like he is Quad's mentor
Jen - Old friend/mentor
Whisper - A good friend
Cyric - Someone Quad looked up to
Sluggs - A good friend
Mazey - Quad's mate

But I dunno, how many people should be included? Does this seem fair or am I going to offend people by doing this if they aren't included?

I could always do a seperate one maybe with some of my close friends, maybe our little iScribble community.

You have money to spend and things you want...but you can't buy anything because your birthday is a few days away!! Gaah!!

There are four new albums out that I am dying to get, because they're all bands that I really enjoy and have been waiting to hear new music from, but I'm almost positive that I'm going to get at least one of them for my birthday so I can't get them yet.

Here's the four albums I really want right now XD (In alphabetical order so it doesn't seem like I favor one album)



The All-American Rejects - When The World Comes Down

I have been DYING for a new AAR album! My brother gave me Move Along for a road trip and I listened to it all the way. The songs are very fun to listen to. I eventually picked up their first selftitled album and loved it too.

You may know AAR as the band who did the song Move Along. Other songs that you may have heard include Dirty Little Secret and It Ends Tonight. One of the songs I like from the new album is Real World (we get to play that on Rock Band )



Fall Out Boy - Folie a Deux

I had a great Christmas! Here's most of the stuff I got:


Flag of Sicily for my wall


A Bambi Fleece Throw Blanket;


DVDs -
Hamlet
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Shooter

CDs -
Los Lonely Boys
Dragonforce - Sonic Firestorm
Seal - Soul

Games -
The new Chrono Trigger DS game


And Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare for the DS


A Li'l Guppy tool


Harvey Dent's double-sided coin


A chinese lucky charm with coins


Two wooden Tiki Guitars (for my Tiki Bar when I have my house)


a HMDX Audio portable speaker


A piece of Calcite


A Hard Rock Cafe pin from the Cayman Islands


An R/C Car


An Antique Colt figure


A John Deer Travel Mug (for when I go camping again)


A Tony Tony Chopper plush from One Piece

Hey Fledermaus, in case you were wondering, I was your secret santa. You should have gotten a package in the mail today, but if not then it should arrive on Friday. I tried to get it there on Christmas Eve so I don't know if you got it or not, but I hope you like it

I went into work at 8:00 at my grocery store. At first everything was ok - work was slow and I just had to bring in a few carts, but then after a little while, I got tired of that. I couldn't bag because we had a charity group bagging for tips.

Alrighty, so THEN it suddenly gets crazy. We get a lot of people, but I'm still pulling the same amount of carts from the lot. The carts slowly diminish as we have more people come in, and then I was working like crazy to keep them in. So after 3 hours, my manager comes and is like, "Hey, go cut 20 fruit cups and a bunch of party trays for Produce!"

So I go to Produce and start working on that. I get 3/4 of the fruit cups done when he comes again and is like, "Hey, we can't keep the carts in. You gotta go push carts again." The Produce Manager ended up finishing the fruit cups as I go back to the front and find out there are absolutely no carts available for the customers.

I then have to find carts off of the parking lot, and I'll find 5 or 6 at a time, and bring them into the store only to have 3 or 4 of them get taken immediately. Repeat this process over and over and over until it was time for me to go.

Yeah, today was tough. Yesterday was almost as bad, a little easier than this, but I'm absolutely relieved that I don't have to do that again (at least for a long time).

So anyway, if I don't log on tomorrow, I hope everyone has a great holiday. I can't wait for tomorrow - not only do I love recieving presents, but I also can't wait to see how my family reacts to what I got them. I did all of my shopping in October, so I can't quite remember everything I got for them, but it should be fun anyway. And this'll be Brandy's first Christmas with us, so I know she's excited too.

Also I'd like to thank Emily for her Secret Santa gift! I wasn't sure what to expect! XD

*grooaaannnn* can't sleep!! I gotta get up in 2 hours to get ready for work, and I haven't had any sleep tonight. I'm so excited about today and tomorrow - we're having our "suprise party" at home where we eat junk food and then get to bed for Christmas.

But today is also special in another way. Today is Brandy's 1st birthday!

Brandy and her sister, Delilah, were born on Christmas Eve last year. It's kinda crazy that I didn't even know she was in the world until February, when my brother called and asked if I wanted my own puppy.

And she's grown so much! From that crazy little puppy who wouldn't stop whining in her cage at night to a 15+ pound weenie who happily naps on my bed.











Happy Birthday, Brandy!

I don't think I've ever mentioned it to anyone, but I'm the altar server at my church. So today when I went, my priest handed me an envelope as soon as I walked into the door. He normally gives me a little money for Christmas, so I got $50. I feel just slightly rotten, though, because this year my job was constantly scheduling me on sunday mornings, so I tried to serve as much as I could but I missed a lot of sunday masses because of work.

So later today, I went to an old friend of our family's. She's an old lady named Helen who is friends with my parents, and every year we'd go to her house to exchange gifts. Well it slowly went from everyone going to just me going. I spent an hour at her house, us talking about what's been going on, and getting to meet her great-nieces and nephews. She gave me an envelope for the family, so when I got home there was $600 in there. We told Helen not to give us too much because she's been so good to us, but here we are accepting $600 from her. Anyway, I got $100 of it, so I've gotten $150 today.

Today we set up a table in the living room to put the presents on. We normally would put the presents on the couch, but since we have Brandy we don't know how she is going to react with all the stuff on Christmas Day. Other than that, I wrapped my last gift and we have it sitting on the table until Christmas.

So the big news about today is that it's going to go down into 28-30 degrees here tonight. We also supposedly have a 50% chance of rain. I'm praying that it rains, because I would love to see some snow. It's one of the unfortunate things about living so far south in the US that snow is rare here. I've only seen it twice down here, both times being in my childhood. Even just a little bit would be nice to see.

I released the link to a story I wrote a few years ago for anyone interested.

Check it out on the Shady Grove!

I'm going on a trip tomorrow, heading to visit my brother in Georgia. I'll be coming home on Wednesday.

Don't have too much fun without me :<

And remember...



Brandy's watching you >:D

*nuzzlespams everyone*

Edit - 12/16/08

Hey guys, been having fun up here. We went shopping on Sunday and then yesterday we went to the Jack Daniel's distillery in Lynchburg, TN. That place was really fun, and I enjoyed learning about how the whiskey is made. I didn't take a lot of pictures but I got a few to show off:


A statue of Jack Daniel


A machine that pumps the springwater into the distillery.


A display of "single barrel" Jack Daniel's bottles.

Today we're gonna run around and then watch some DVDs tonight. I'll be heading home tomorrow.

Oh, here's a bonus picture:


Delilah (Brandy's sister) sitting on my brother's boxers. XD