Before bed I make my stand...

I just have a few things to say before I go to bed tonight.

I am SO lucky to have the parents I have.
I am SO lucky to have the best friend that I have.
I know that things can get better, even if I can't see it right now.
I know that people support and love me.
I can't give up on myself or my future.
I can't stop trying to better myself.






oh yeah... and I read this today... if you have a chance read it. PLEASE do NOT leave me hate messages. This is for casual reading and interesting to say the least. I WILL delete your comments if you are rude or offensive, trust me in this.
http://frwest.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-than-100-reasons-to-vote-against.html

woooohoooo!

Phillies WIN!!!
Phillies WIN!!!!
PHILLIES WIN!!!

PA represent!

I accept!

Time for writer's workshop! Mama Kat does a fine job of creating thought provoking writings every week, so here we are!

This week I choose #5- You've been hired as a writer for "Late Show with David Letterman." Your first assignment is to come up with a witty, nonpolitical Top Ten list for him to read on air.

The Top 10 Things I Do at Work... Besides Work!
10) Read my horoscope in the newspaper
9) Daydream about being somewhere else
8) Figure out what I'm going to have for dinner
7) Clean out my purse
6) Pretend I'm working while doing a sodoku puzzle
5) Quickly get up from my desk and hurry into the other room like I have something very important to do very suddenly.
4) Write disgruntled letters to the owner of the company that I never send
3) Chat with my co-worker (who sits about 8 ft. from me) online about all the annoying things happening around us
2) Check my email and print out all the Border's coupons I get on company letterhead (oooo classy!)
1) BLOG!

I'm chosing to accept it, because I should!

I've decided to jump on the Mama Kat bandwagon and start doing one of the weekly prompts. I'm picking #4... write about a Scrabble game that takes an ugly turn for the worst. It's not an actual happening to me... but trust me when I say, this is a true story....

(NOTE: the dialogue contained herein is a rough translation as there is no universal Cat->English dictionary currently available.)

Bubbles laid on the couch catching the late morning rays of sunshine dancing in the window. Fall was approaching, and with it, colder weather, so she and her companion, Jasper spent more of their days inside now staring at the newly snow covered mountains or, if their owners weren't there, playing Scrabble.

Scrabble doesn't come easy to cats; they aren't the best spellers and, let's face it, even WITH thumbs those tiles are hard to pick up. Yet, Bubbles and Jasper had played for years and with time comes skill. Still and often they would bicker about the correct spelling of words, but who doesn't during a Scrabble game?

As Bubbles lay purring in the sun Jasper was on the prowl and ready to play a serious game of Scrabble. As Jasper swatted at Bubbles' twitching tail she woke and grumbled, "what do you want? Don't you see how happy I am laying in the sun?" "Oh get over it, let's play Scrabble!" Jasper quipped, "The humans are gone and it's been almost all summer since we've played!" Bubbles stretched out as she stood and washed her face. "Ok, but it's your turn to get the board out from under the bed."

She watched as Jasper bounded off towards the bedrooms to headbutt the box from under the master bed. Being old pros at this, by the time Bubbles reached the bedroom, Jasper was just finishing pulling all the pieces out of the box. "Wooz turn ish it to go firrsh?" Jasper said with his mouth full of tiles for the bag. "Mine, remember you lead off last time with 'burdz'?" "Oh yeah!," Jasper laughed as he tossed the last tile into the bag, "that was a hard start!"

The two cats took turns drawing their letters and carefully placing them on the holder in front of them. After their letters were drawn Bubbles hunched down to take a closer look at what she had to start with. "Well," she thought, "I'm definitely going to win this one with letters like these!" and quietly started off the game with n-o-m-z. "Good one!" said Jasper as he took a look at his letters. He gave out a little sigh of a purr and resigned to playing the only vowels he had to put c-h-e-e off of the "z" creating "cheez." Turns went back and forth and as it always does, the board filled up and became challenging pretty quickly. Unlike human brains, kitty brains love odd letters like "x", "z", and "q". These are always in high demand and valued even more by kitties than their human counterparts.

After 45 minutes Bubbles was far in the lead and instead of worrying in between turns, she took the time to give herself mini baths and polish her beautiful dark fur. Jasper, on the other hand, didn't like the predicament he was in and fretted and hissed at his letters between turns.

They were down to the final 20 or so letters left and as Bubbles cleaned her tail, unknown to her, the tension was reaching it's peak. "WILL YOU QUIT THAT??" hissed Jasper. Bubbles' fur stood up on end as she jumped up ready to attack. "What the hell is your problem Jasper? You've never cared this much about a game before, what's the big deal today?" "YOU are the big deal! Sitting there like a queen, cleaning your fur, acting like you are better than me! What's YOUR problem huh Bubbles??" Bubbles didn't even know what to say to this so she swatted Jasper in the face for the first time in their lives. "'Sitting like a queen indeed!' You can take your stupid letters and go play by yourself in the litter box for all I care! I'm finished here!" She went to run out of the room past Jasper but he was as fast as she was and, with outstretched claws, lunged at her neck as she went by. It was a flurry of fur and claws. Hissing and fitts filled the house as the tumbling fight made it's way down the hall, down the stairs, and into the living room. Jasper had the upperpaw for most of the fight but he came on fast and strong and was starting to wear out. Bubbles wasn't as strong but the old girl had some fight left in her and she was going to see it out until the end.

Suddenly, and they both heard it, there was a car in the driveway. Jasper lept to his feet and up to the bedroom yelling "STALL STALL STALL!!" all the way up. Bubble's didn't have time to fix her mangled fur but planted herself right in the doorway. As soon as the door opened up and the humans walked in there she was, purring and rubbing against the legs of both humans trying to get bast this furry blockade. "Meow? Meow? Meow?" she called up to them, "please think I'm hungry and go into the kitchen with me!" she thought. It worked, "ok sweetie, let's get you some food! Where's Jasper, is he hungry too? Jasper!! Come here my sweet little boy!!" The humans called as they followed Bubbles to the kitchen. Suddenly Jasper showed up at the door of the kitchen too and Bubbles knew that he had, at the very least, shoved everything under the bed until it could be put away more completely. After filling their food bowls the humans went up to change into the pajamas that the cats so loved to snuggle up to them in. Just as Jasper and Bubbles were about to claim their spots on the couch they heard from the bedroom, "What is this Scrabble tile doing in my slipper??" They looked at each other and laughed a laugh that only a kitty could understand. All was forgiven because the joke was on the humans.

THE END

My year in review....

You may be saying to yourself, Taylor, it's not the new year yet, how could you possibly do a year in review?? Well my uninformed friend, yesterday marked my one year anniversary since I packed up 2 suitcases and moved to Colorado. What a year it's been! I can't believe how fast it went. In this time I've had 4 jobs (one temporary, 2 part time, one full time), bought a car, moved twice (within Boulder and then to Westminster), had countless visitors come to see me, and have totally lived up my fair share of free tickets to events through my work.

I've kept all my ticket stubs in my checkbook since I've moved here... I've taken them out today to start over, let's see how many I've accumulated!

Colorado Rapids (soccer)- 5
Colorado Avalanche (hockey)- 10
Denver Nuggets (basketball)- 13
Colorado Rockies (baseball)- 10
Colorado Mammoth (lacrosse)- 1
Concerts and shows - 10 + both days of the Mile High Music Festival
Avenue Q
John Mellencamp
Eddie Izzard
Blues Traveler/Live/Collective Soul
Sheryl Crow
The Peking Acrobats
Bon Jovi
Billy Joel
Van Halen
The Nutcracker

If you're adding all this up, that equals 51 days of events! That's one for every week I've been here... well minus one, unless you include the Av's game I'm going to tonight! Yay! I think that's pretty impressive especially if you consider that all of the Nuggets, Av's, Rapids and Mammoth games were FREE!!

Anyway... everyone at work is at the LDI convention in Las Vegas except me, the shop guys, and the ladies in accounting. LAME! This morning and early afternoon have been pretty crazy for us but I don't mind. What I hate is the fact that I was invited to go in March and then I was told that I wasn't going! What a bunch of shit. Pair that with evyerthing else that's been going on here lately and if I didn't know better......

Hey everyone look!! We got grapefruits at work today!! Thanks Uncle Stan for getting us fruits that are completely impractical to eat at your desk... or anywhere that doesn't have extensive knifeware for that matter!! See our office gets a new fruit every Wednesday during the month of October. Peaches, Pears, bannanas, now grapefruits... we were doing ok until now. What's next week Uncle Stan... whole pineapples??!? Honestly...

.

My first Cheers and Jeers!!! (here)

I think it's finally time for some CHEERS AND JEERS!!!
For those of you new to Taylor's world of blogging allow me to bring you up to speed... every week or so I make a list of recent cheers and jeers, often crowning a cheers of the week and jeers of the week, followed with runners up.

Now... on with the show!

WINNERS!
Cheers of the week goes to.... BEN! Without Ben there is no way my party would have come together the way it did. From decorating to running to WalMart to just helping with... everything!! I appreciate it SO much!!

Jeers of the week goes to... THE PEOPLE WHO SAID THEY WERE COMING AND DIDN'T COME!! I was really disappointed in the people who backed out at the last second including the one I talked to just a few hours before the party started and said they were coming... lame

RUNNERS UP!
Cheers to all who came to the party. I had a great time and it seemed like everyone else did too!
Cheers to my food... it was pretty rockin'
Jeers to my roommates for being complete ass wipes in general
Cheers to rainy weather that made me feel not guilty about coming home from work and crawling right into bed.
Jeers to the lady who set her dog on fire after tieing him up... there is no excuse or explaination for that type of cruelty.
Jeers to the BoSox for losing it last night.
Cheers and Jeers to whoever brought Krispy Kremes to work this morning. It tasted great, but made me feel mucho guilty.
Cheers to seeing my family in just a little over a month.
Jeers to being too poor to see them more often.

Well, that's this week's version. Look for me next week, same bat time, same bat place!

mmmmwha!

I throw one hell of a party

So last night was my awesome Halloween party. Despite the fact that SEVERAL people who said they were going to come (not "oh I might show up" a full on "yeah I'll be there") didn't, those who were there had a good time. There was a brief moment pre-party when I started acting crazy like my mother throwing a party, but I stopped it, thank god because that's one part of my mother I don't need to inherit. She gets so stressed out about her party that she can't calm down and actually enjoy the party once it starts.

I had all the food/cooking finished before noon and then just had everything else to do, including carving my jacko-kitty

I of course got all sorts of cool lighting equipment to make my house look awesome.

I also had a strobe and blacklight in the landing between the first floor and the basement. I also had a smoke machine which first tripped the breaker and then set off all the smoke alarms in the house despite having taken the batteries out of them....

My house looked so awesome, even from the outside, that we had kids coming to the door to look inside. Ben let some in to look around, but when a little girl came to my front door with a ZIPLOCK BAGGIE and said "trick or treat" I had to put the cabash on that shit. I told her the grownups were having a party, this is not trick or treat night. I'm sorry, but when I'm drinking beers, the last thing I want is little kids running around my house thinking they can get some free candy outta me.

We really did have a good time. Ben helped me set up all day (I don't know what I would have done if he wasn't there!!) Courtney and Matt were the first to arrive and then Steph came after she got off work. Susan and Keith finished out the group a little later. It wasn't a big party, but it was fun and I made some great food. The cupcakes were a HUGE hit and Courtney couldn't stop eating the pretzle hershey kiss things I made! (I finished them off this morning for breakfast). Thanks to everyone for coming and having a good time.

Costume breakdown (becuase, duh, it's a Halloween party!)
I was an 80's glam cat complete with fingerless gloves, leg warmers, and ginormous hair.
Ben was the ice cream man that you wouldn't let your kids get ice cream from!
Courtney and Matt were Peter and Louis Griffin from Family Guy
Steph was... someone who just got off work from the post office
Susan and Keith were a 1920's Flapper/Gangster couple (very hot)

Well, here are some more pictures, but I need to get ready to head to the bar to watch game 7 of the Red Sox/Tampa Bay series since TBS doesn't come in with bunny ears. Until next time... GO SOX!!!

SPIDER CAT, SPIDER CAT.....