Work was awesome… Huge exaggeration. Considering I spent the day working on my new manual. Which was oh-so-exciting. I ended off the day with 10 full pages of text and no photos yet. I attended a meeting. I spent an hour talking to assorted people about whatever. So, nine more days of work and thirteen more projects to complete. While I’m looking forward to being done work and going back to school, I’m not looking forward to attempting to pull a horseshoe wrapped in four-leaf clovers out of my ass in a wild attempt to get this stuff done. It also doesn’t help that I’m forced to play musical computers and am constantly forced to move, despite the fact that they recognize that my work is “also very important”. Yeah, sure.

I found out today that my family is all jetting off to see the world and leaving me all by my little lonesome. The problem? Not all three of them are going to be gone at the same time. There is always going to be one person staying home with little Michelley who needs to attend classes. For one week in October, my mom and sister are going to the Grand Canyon.  For a month (beginning of October to late November), my dad is going to be gone. For two weeks in November, my mom’s going to be gone (and joining up with my dad).

Yes, that’s right, my dad booked a plane ticket for himself where he will be gone on my birthday. And I mentioned this. And he had this blank look on his face. Kind of like “What do you mean I’m not here for your birthday?” and then I saw the moment it dawned to him that he really wasn’t going to be here on my birthday and he just gave a little shrug and went ‘okay then’. So I’m just learning how important I really am to my dad. And the thing is, I’m really torn about this. Am I happy that he’s going to be out of my hair for a little over a month or am I’m upset over the fact that he forgot about my birthday? Or both? Do I get pissed over the fact that he forgot his own daughter’s birthday (actually, he technically forgot two of his daughters’ birthdays since I share my birthday with J)? What am I supposed to do with this? Do I get upset? Am I happy? Do I ask for something incredibly expensive and extravagant for my birthday? Because right now the most extravagant thing I can think of is my tuition and the pile of textbooks that I need to get my hands on sometime in September.

Went shopping today with C, S, R and J. It was fun. We went downtown and walked along the street for several blocks on both sides before we finally went into Blendz because I wanted something to drink. I ended up getting mango iced green tea. It was pretty nice, very refreshing. Then we went into HMV. I ended up buying Avenue Q: The Book ($10) for my sister and I got The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants dvd ($6) for myself. We went into a very nice (and very expensive) store. I ended up falling in love with this gorgeous Burberry coat that was possibly around…. $1600 more than I was willing to spend on it. Sigh. I need cheaper taste in winter coats apparently. But it was gorgeous and black and such nice material. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love. Too expensive though.

So while I’m busy lusting after the coat (I’m currently looking at the lovely photos of the Burberry coats online)… I’m watching my lovely new movie on my portable dvd player which is set up right next to my laptop, go me, eh? I took a photo of my awesome setup to post it but it was too blurry due to the fact that my laptop monitor is set to incredibly bright and, well, the room I’m in is very dark at the moment.

Other things done today is go to the post office to mail a registered letter (cost me arm and a leg to send something to Ontario, ie $7.77). I went to the bank and stabbed at the buttons for the ATM, that was awesome too.

Twelve projects in eleven more days. I’m pretty sure they expect me to get at least the first draft of everything done. Which is great, they don’t expect it to be all spic and span and absolutely wonderful. But at the same time: twelve projects in eleven days. I cannot touch 5 of those projects until the 25th because D decided to go to Florida (on business, but still). He’s the critical key component of those five projects and he left. He didn’t read any of the documents over before he left. And seriously? So not helping with any of this. Three of the manuals that have passed the first-draft stage aren’t going to be reviewed again until the 27th when M comes back from his 2.5 week vacation, so I will be spending my last five days at work scrambling to get 5 procedures done and 3 manuals completed. Great, I’m just so excited for that, you cannot even being to comprehend it - I can barely comprehend it.

Also, I came home and ate dinner. I got yelled at by my father because I am “incapable” of taking my video tape out of the vcr (I tape General Hospital so I can watch it when I get home) by myself. I also got yelled at for putting my feet on the couch (please note, we don’t wear shoes around the house like some households do). Oh, and to top it all off, I go downstairs to turn on my laptop and I notice that the chair has been lowered and the keyboard cover that I put to keep the oils from my fingers on the keys from getting onto my laptop screen is off to the side, and lying flat. Whenever I open my computer, I roll it up and set it to the side, it was on top of my printer instead. So I just checked the history in Firefox, there was nothing for today. I checked the history for Internet Explorer and, guess what, there’s stuff there! And I checked out the websites and it’s the sites that I know my father has been looking at lately (vacation stuff - please, someone take him away from me for a month or two!). And it’s also sites that I know that my father is perfectly capable of looking at on his own fucking computer. I questioned why he was on my computer and his answer was that he wanted to use a cd burning program that my computer has, which was bullshit because his computer has the exact same one (his answer was ‘No it doesn’t'). I ended up turning on the computer just to point out to him that he has the exact same program right on the desktop. I don’t know if I can handle 3-4 more years of this. 3-4 more years of having to live under the same roof as the man who’s so fucking bored that he has to go through the stuff in my room and use my laptop and go through my files and just question every single fucking thing that I ever do. I don’t know if I can do this anymore. People say that blood is thicker than water and I just laugh at that right now. Who the fuck cares if it’s thicker than water? Blood is blood is blood. It doesn’t give him the right to go through my things because he’s going on a ‘hunch’ that I have something to hide. I’m not twelve. I’m eighteen. I’m not having sex, I don’t drink in the house, I don’t drink excessively, I don’t party, I don’t have a fake id, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs, I don’t do anything illegal beyond jaywalking so I really don’t see how there’s a ‘hunch’ that I’m doing something wrong. My father needs a hobby. One beyond ‘going through Michelle’s things’.

@ Bonnie, I finished reading Prey last night. I thought it was incredibly good, I liked it a bit more than her usual books (the difference between Prey and the rest of her work is that there is no one who is ill). It’s a little edgier than, say, her One Last Wish series and at the end (and this is not a spoiler, not really), you don’t really know who to feel sorry for.

So today I went downtown with the sister and with K and I got my ears pierced! It was a lot pricier than I had originally expected it to be, but it was an early birthday present from the sister. Online, the place looked great. Sterile work places, scans of certifications. The actual place was even better. The places where they did piercings (and tattoos as well, I’m guessing) were very clean. There was a serious doctor office feel to the place. There were boxes of latex gloves, disposal for latex gloves, sterile instruments, sinks, framed certifications on the walls. It was all very professional. I had a guy named Cory, who said that I looked scared and K was like “That would be Michelle!” He asked some questions like how old I was, what I did (mind kind of blanked so I mentioned writing manuals, go me). But overall it was a very easy experience. The anticipation of it was the worst part of it all. He did the left side first and I was just thinking to myself ‘That’s it? All that and that’s it?!’ so the right side was even easier. So I walked out with studs in my ear, with an even higher appreciation for sterile instruments and then we went shopping.

Shopping consisted of the idea of going for shoes for K and a housewarming gift for my sister’s friend (party tonight). K ended up getting clothes and the world’s best looking watch in the whole wide world (I should have taken photos with my cell phone, but I didn’t - it was $4 and from a dollar store, surprisingly it was labeled as water resistant). Sister ended up getting an awesome magnetic silicone pot rest (kind of like a cooling rack, just made of silicone). And the packaging said it could be used as a pot holder and as a jar opener. Only the pot holder didn’t seem so awkward. I ended up going home and spent the bus ride texting Clay. I corrected him on something and then this happened:

C: You’re such a smart apple.
M: Apple? Seriously, I’m an apple now?
C: The apple of my heart.
M: Cute.
C: I try.

Only my mother has commented on my ears (she thinks they’re uneven). My father hasn’t yet. Yay parents for being oh-so-awesome.