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Well, I’ve made it. Thirty posts in thirty days. I hope you weren’t too bored by the experience. It was harder than I thought it would be, as I was never sure what to write to keep people reading. Finally I just gave up and decided to write what was in my head (even if it made me look insane) and hope that people found it entertaining. Or at least intriguing enough to come back the next day. I’ve gained new readers since I started, and I hope you all stick around, even when I’m not posting daily. I really like this contact with the outside world, so I’m definitely going to keep up with it. Thanks to you guys I have recipe sites up the wazoo (gluten full AND gluten-free, thanks!), full canisters on my counter tops, many many ideas on what to try and make next, 4 new cameras to look into, and a whole mess of blogs I’m addicted to. It sounds cheesy, but when LL tagged me for my first meme, and I got all sorts of new hits to my blog, I got a little overly excited. Truthfully, that feeling hasn’t gone away yet, and I surely hope it doesn’t for a long while. I’m enjoying this, and I hope you are too!
So for my final blog of NaBloPoMo (don’t worry, I’m only taking a couple days to rest my brain and then I’ll be back) I decided to tell y’all a little about my name and how I got it. Aren’t you excited?
Denora is my real name. Not something I made up for online purposes, but the actual name on my birth certificate. It’s pronounced, amazingly enough, exactly like it looks. Deh-nor-ah. For reasons that I’m still unable to understand, people cannot pronounce it (or are too lazy to try). I have been called many MANY different names like Donna, Deborah, Dolores, Darla, Dendra, Deanna, Nora (which I HATE), Laura, and Darlene. Yanno, because Darlene looks AND sounds like Denora. Yeah.
I used to hate that it was unusual, because, aside from it apparently being unpronounceable, I could never get anything that was personalized unless I sent away for it. You never ever see Denora on the key chains or mugs in souvenir shops. My parents, completely sapped of all creativity after naming me, named my younger sister Jennifer. The most popular girl name, according to the Social Security Administration, from 1970 to 1984. That’s just the years it was number 1. That’s not counting the years it was in the top 10. Also according to the SSA: “Denora is not in the top 1000 names for any year of birth in the last 100 years.” Not so coincidently, I’ve never met another Denora. Ever.
So how did I get such a fascinating name? Could it be a wonderful ancestor’s name, passed down over generations complete with legends attached? Could it be in recognition of an unsung hero somewhere in my family history? Nope! My dad and his drunk college buddies made it up. I kid you not. The story goes that dad and his friends were a wee bit intoxicated (read: completely shnockered) and were mocking and meshing people’s names. My name, believe it or not, is a drunken smooshing and slurring together of the names Dorla, Liora, and Lorian.
Dorla + Liora + Lorian = Denora? um, huh?
But that’s the story. A few years later when my mom got pregnant with me and they got married (yes, in that order) Dad suddenly recalled this smooshed together name, and suggested it. Mom loved it, and voila! Here I am. I think if I was a boy I was going to be named Corey, which is ironic as I LOVE that name…for a girl.
So, I’m Denora, and my sister is Jennifer. My dad has 4 younger sisters, the youngest being 8 years behind him. He was allowed to name his youngest sister when she was born. He picked Jennifer. That’s right ladies and gentlemen. My dad has named 3 kids in his life, and 2 of them are named Jennifer. Creativity is apparently not his strong suit. But I now love my name, since no one else has it. I’ve often considered dropping my last name altogether and doing the Cher or Madonna single name thing. Alas, I was too lazy to do so, and have since found that changing your name is a pain in the ass. So I’ll stick with this one.
So there you have it. I am Denora. THE Denora, as I’ve never met another. Of course, should I meet another, I’ll still be THE Denora, since…well, it just sounds cool to me.
- One of my favorite Friends episodes was on tonight. “Meet Princess Consuela Bananahammock!” Have I mentioned my intense love for Friends? Some episodes never fail to make me laugh so hard I cry. It doesn’t matter that I’ve seen them thousands of times, or can recite the entire episode. Friends is just the greatest show ever.
- I saw August Rush tonight and I think I’m in love with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Those eyes. That accent. Oh he’s just lovely. It was a fairly good, fairly predictable little movie. I really like Freddie Highmore, and I’ve always thought Keri Russell was gorgeous. Jonathan, however, was a new find for me, and boy howdy he was worth the price of admission (OMG $9.50 for a movie on a Thursday night? Thieves!). I’ve always thought Irish accents were sexy as hell, but I seriously could have sat there and listened to him read the phone book for hours. Good dreams tonight!
- I start bowling again tomorrow night. I’m a little nervous, since it’s been a year and a half since I last picked up a ball. But it should be fun. I hope. It’ll be much more fun if I don’t suck, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
- I need a fashion makeover. I need one of those reality shows to come into my life and closet, throw out everything that’s ugly, and start me off fresh. Kelly and I went into a couple shops this evening before the movie, and it was glaringly apparent that I have zero fashion sense. I found many cute things! They all just looked hideous on me. I need to learn to shop for my body type, and not for the body type I’m never going to have. But, I need help. And, money. Anyone offering either of these is asked to e-mail thedenora at gmail dot com. K Thanks.
- My dresser is coming Saturday! The one that we ordered TWO MONTHS AGO. Yeah, that one. Saturday! Yay! Except the house is a big fat mess. And I was just informed that I will be the only one cleaning it. Because the other member of my house is “working all day” tomorrow. All day being 11-6. Meanwhile, I’m working 9-7 then bowling from 9-12. So apparently in the two hours between those two, I get to clean the entire house myself. Yay.
I suppose I should go start cleaning now, since it’s ten minutes to midnight, and I didn’t want to sleep tonight anyhow.
I have this craptastic digital camera that I bought almost 5 years ago when it first came out. It’s not actually a crappy camera, it just doesn’t work for what I want it to work for. I hate HATE the delay that comes when you press the button to snap a picture. If I’ve pressed the button, I want the picture taken then, not 2 or 3 seconds later when the camera feels like it. Mia doesn’t sit still long enough for me to wait for the delay, and to get a good picture of her. All of the pics I’ve taken of her are a blur, since she’s constantly in motion. I’ve also wanted to get into a little amateur photography, and this camera just isn’t working how I’d like it to. So, for a while I’ve been casually looking at new options to replace it. Duke recently got back into photography and bought a Nikon D80 that he let me use when we were in Arizona. I decided right there and then that I MUST have one. It’s fantastic. Comfortable to use, takes great pictures, and has all sorts of fun options to play with. So I started looking into pricing, and lenses and packages, and holy hell photography is expensive. The D80 and all it’s wonderfulness was going to cost me upwards of $1400. I have a bad BAD habit of impulse purchasing (see Wii, iPhone, etc.) and I wasn’t entirely sure that I really wanted to spend $1400 on something I may or may not like. I kept looking, and asking around, and reading. And then I found out my longtime friend Mario was a photography enthusiast, and he hooked me up with some fantabulous websites with more information than I knew what to do with.
Once my brain stopped leaking from my ears, I was able to ask him some fairly dumb questions about lenses, bodies, etc. It’s still really hard to decide what I want. I’m settling down on the Nikon D40 with a couple options for the lenses. Do any of you have a D40 and can give me pros and/or cons from your experience? Or do you have a different camera that you love that you’d recommend? I mainly want it to be able to take pictures of my wiggly little pug, as well as some landscape shots. I’m big on cloud formations, ocean/beach settings, fun stuff like that.
Also, if anyone knows of a camera supply place that has good deals, that’d be good to know too. I’ve found excellent deals on Amazon, and therefore asked for gift certificates for Hanukkah and Christmas (yeah, I do both). But if somewhere else has a better deal, I’m SURE I can find something else to use my Amazon certificates on!
So I’ve had this post lingering in my Drafts folder for quite a while, but hesitated actually revealing it to the world, as A) it’s a hard concept to explain and B) it makes ME look a wee bit insane. But since I’ve nothing better to write today (I’m saving my crazy camera search for tomorrow’s post), let the insanity begin.
I have this theory that some people are just biologically more computer friendly. I know that sounds crazy, but hear (or read) me out. I’m responsible for fixing the computers in my office when they crash, or freak out, or when one of my coworkers does something stupid. There are a lot of people in the office that are computer literate right up until the computer does something unexpected, and then they have no idea what to do. I’m here to help. So they run into some software bug that trips them up. Most of them try whatever they were doing again, and still run into the error. That’s when I come in. I always ask them to retry whatever it was that they were doing, so I can see what caused the problem. They try it again..and everything works fine. Moments ago nothing worked, now that I’m standing there, everything works just fine. It used to frustrate the hell out of me. But then I started making a joke of it and said it was my "computer friendly aura," as lame as that sounds. It wouldn’t have been anything I’d bother thinking about, except it happened a lot. We’re talking 90% of the time someone called me, I’d walk over, and everything would be fine. And it wasn’t just at work. My mom, who’s pretty competent when it comes to computers, would run into an issue she couldn’t get past. I’d go over to see what happened (30 miles out of my way, mind you), and whatever the problem was would be gone. My sister, same thing. Friends of mine, same thing. And I’m not the only one this happens to. I know others who’ve had the same experience. Yes, it could be (and probably is, I admit) just a massive cosmic coincidence. But…what if it’s not?
What if there’s a connection between body chemistry and interaction with electronics? We all have an energy field around us, right? What if some people’s field just reacts well with the energy emitted from a computer? It would make sense, right? (Provided it didn’t sound absolutely ridiculous). We know a strong magnetic field will erase a hard drive. We know a power surge can fry a mother board. What if a light amount of properly balanced magnetic energy can cause whatever is out of sync in a computer to get back into sync? Ok yeah, it’s far fetched. And I’m not explaining it well. But, I still sorta think it’s possible.
Or I’m crazy. That’s always a good possibility.
I am SO glad to be home. Not so much glad to be back at work again, but glad to sleep in my own bed, use my own bathroom, eat my own food (of which, it appears, I have none) and just crash on my own couch. So so glad.
We got home last night at like 1 or 1:30. I really wasn’t paying attention to the time, as it was taking all of my energy to drag my body and my suitcase out of the car and into the house. My suitcase landed on the floor just inside the bedroom, my jeans, sweatshirt, t-shirt, bra and socks in a big heap right next to it. (I can’t begin to tell you how happy I was to get out of those smoky smelly clothes.) Somewhere between the end of the bed and the pillow I found a nightshirt, and was asleep within 4.7 seconds. I’m not sure Jas was even all the way in the house before I was snoring.
I woke up at 4am when Jas punched me in the face. Yes, punched me in the face. You see, Jas is 6’5" and about 275lbs. While we have a King sized bed, he still takes up an awful lot of it. To top it off, he’s quite the floppy sleeper. Picture a fish freshly caught from a body of water, and trying desperately to get up off the ground and put itself back in the water. That’s how Jas turns over in his sleep. Arms flailing, legs thrashing, great gobs of fun. Sometimes in my sleep, my face or body dares to get in the way of this procedure, which is what happened at 4am. He almost never wakes up when he hits me, and I’ve stopped forcing him awake to yell. Yelling to his conscious self, as it turns out, doesn’t do a damn bit of good when he’s asleep. So, I take the hit, turn over and attempt to go back to sleep. Only this is never something that actually works. I have a hard time sleeping. Always have. It usually takes me forever to fall asleep, and then I have trouble staying asleep. So last night, I fall asleep within seconds, for the first time in a VERY long time, only to have my dear darling husband pop me in the head, so that I can be forced awake to lie and stare at the ceiling for another 3 hours. Isn’t marriage great?
I was quite crabby by the time I got to the office, but I think I managed to hold it together well. I felt much better by the time I got off work, so I went out to dinner with my sister on the way to pick up my dog. We also went shopping for more kitchen supplies, since my kitchen is sadly lacking in cookware. I got new measuring cups and spoons and a cute little cookie dough scooper thing. I also got canisters. I’m not entirely sure what I will put in them, but I know that all kitchens I’ve been in (where people actually cook) have canisters, so I thought mine should too. (Sidenote: anyone know what to put in them? I have 4, so I was thinking flour, sugar, brown sugar, and <insert random recipe ingredient here>. Any ideas?) Jas is pretty sure I’ve lost my mind. But he also says I can’t make cookies, so what the hell does he know?
Mia is so happy to be home. Mostly. She’s currently a little pissed at me because I’m typing a post and not paying attention to her. But doesn’t she understand that it’s NaBloPoMo, and I have to get this posted by midnight? PRIORITIES, PEOPLE!
First, thanks to the lovely people at Apple who came up with the iPhone so that people with no lives like me can post useless drivel on their blogs while sitting in traffic on the way home from vacation. You guys rock.
Second, I think NaBloPoMo might actually be a bad idea, since it’s really just encouraging me to post crap, and not quality writing (assuming there was some quality writing in me somewhere). But, I set a goal, so I’m going to keep posting crap. At least until the end of this month. Any crap after that is not intentional, and I apologize in advance.
Third, I hate people. I know that comes as a shock, seeing as how I’m such a happy cheerful person all the time. But seriously. If there are 2 lanes of traffic doing 20 miles an hour, is it REALLY necessary for you to fly down the shoulder doing 65? Do you think we LIKE going 20 mph? We want to be home relaxing just as much as you do, however, there are these pesky little things called LAWS that we’re supposed to abide by. Those LAWS prohibit us (and YOU, by the way) from driving down the shoulder. They’re in place to keep everyone safe (supposedly). It drives me crazy that some people have this sense of entitlement that makes them believe they’re exempt from these laws. It does not say "It is unlawful for a vehicle to be driving down the shoulder on a highway. Unless your name is Joe and you’re driving a 2006 Silver Honda Civic." There are no exceptions to the rule for the general public. Is that SO hard to understand?
Ok, I’m done. I’m going to sleep until we get home. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll have something worth posting.
As often as I might complain about Jas, I really do love him. He’s so cute. He and his mom have been playing Roller Coaster Tycoon for the last THREE HOURS. She’s never played something like it, so he’s teaching her. It’s so funny.. She’s just like me when I play it. Who cares about big attractions when you can change the colors of the hats in the hat stand! He’s far more patient with her than he is when I watch him. I’m like “Balloons! You need more balloons!” and he just snickers and ignores me. She mentions balloons one time, and suddenly he has 5 stands of them. And she’s very protective of his little virtual park. The “vandals” broke some of the benches and she wants to hire someone to “knock their heads in.” It’s hilarious to watch. I’m going stir crazy just sitting here watching them, but my abs are getting quite the workout as I try to muffle my laughter.
In my excitement to be on vacation and to come visit my in-laws, I completely forgot about the one part of Utah that I don’t like. Babies. They’re everywhere. Young moms and their various stages of pregnancy, or infants, or toddlers, or all of the above. I don’t begrudge them their children. For the most part, they’re well behaved and freaking adorable. It’s just hard for me to be immersed in crowds of women in their early 20′s who all have kids or are pregnant, while I’m 28 and not even close to being pregnant, no matter how much I want to be. It just sucks.
On a semi-happier note, I did find great deals at the outlet mall we went to. I came back with lots of sweaters and long sleeved t-shirts that should keep me comfortable in the ice bucket that is my office. The outlet mall here has much better deals than the one we have at home, so we always spend way too much money on new clothes the day after Thanksgiving. I even bought 2 scarf sets that come with matching hats and gloves. I won’t have much use for them in California, but they were cute and on sale. I mean, who needs a baby when you can buy yourself useless items of clothing, right?
This shall be short, as I’m not on my computer. Hi! I’m in Utah, yay! I absolutely love it here. I swear if we could work it out someday that we could move here, I’d be in heaven. It’s gorgeous here. A little too cold for my taste, but that’s what heavy blankets and sweaters are for, right? We had spaghetti for our Thanksgiving dinner, and it was great. I always enjoy staying with my in-laws, and today is no exception. Tomorrow my MIL and I are going to a craft fair, and then we’re off to the outlet mall. One of the great things about Utah is that the shopping centers aren’t half as crowded as they are back in California. So shopping on Black Friday is no big deal.
I hope you’ve all had a lovely time with family or friends or however you decided to spend the day. Happy Ugly Fat Bird Day!
Vegas, in case you wondered, is much more fun when you’re awake to enjoy it. I know that info probably comes as a shock to most of you, as it completely blew my mind.
We were supposed to leave at 11am. I packed while his Royal Laziness was sleeping, and then went to the chiropractor at 10. When I got back at 10:45, Jas hadn’t finished packing, but proceeded to inform me that we couldn’t leave until he went to the doctor and got blood drawn (something he was supposed to take care of last week), and then drive 40 miles in the COMPLETE OPPOSITE DIRECTION to pick up his paycheck. The paycheck thing wasn’t his fault, as his employers were being dicks and holding it for stupid reasons. But still, it was a pain in the ass to deal with. So, our 11am departure turned into a 3pm departure. Traffic. Yay.
We got into Vegas about 7, which wasn’t TOO terrible considering the holiday traffic horror stories I’d heard in the past. (12 hours to go 287 miles? Insanity.) Jas gets on the phone with his stepfather to tell him we’re here, and figure out approximately what time we’ll be to Utah tomorrow. This, for some unknown reason, takes an hour. An HOUR, people. We’re seeing the man in less than 18 hours, is this conversation really something that couldn’t wait until then? Ok, I know I was cranky. I didn’t sleep well in the car, I hadn’t eaten since 10:30, and I just wanted him to get off the damn phone so we could have dinner.
Dinner was yummy. Super excellent steakhouse inside the Tropicana, and I highly recommend it. And then I was ready for bed. I didn’t care that it was only 9:15. But I wandered around the casino for a while anyhow. Lost my $40 to the Monopoly machine…again. And now I’m upstairs in my hotel room at 11:30 finishing this post while Jason plays poker. I might be only 28, but damn I can party like a 60 year old!
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