On to Valentine's Day!

Yup, that's right, one major holiday down! Now only New Years stands between me and the ever-important Valentine's Day! I could put in some informative (yet boring) bit about the history of Valentine's Day, or something controversial about how people who celebrate Valentine's Day are all anathema-ed, or how it's a gimmick by the card companies, but I don't care! It's a holiday, and my husband will actually be here for it! That, my friends, makes it the greatest holiday of the year! So let us ring in the new year with all it's joyous promises of reunion and goodness! But do not linger on this day of newness and change, for the real joy in the new year is the daily process of living in that year. So pass quickly, dear New Years, and let us get to the living out of your promised fortune. Bring on Valentine's Day!

Actually I graduated yesterday...

but even with the college degree I still don't know how to change that ticker thing. I'm really looking forward to Matt coming home, and then clinical laboratory science school. It will be good to finally be doing something that has a more meaningful application than just how it will affect my GPA. I will miss my classics professors a lot. Even if I was a biology major, I just never knew my science professors as well as my classics ones. Maybe it's just harder to integrate stories about your kids into discussions of microscopic processes. I'm glad I went to Italy, that was a good idea. And I'm glad I got married, that was a good idea too. I'm looking forward to being married again. I know I am married, but it's not the same. When Matt and I talk about those 4 months we had together before he left, we describe it as "when we were married." Who knows what we'll call it after Matt does get back... maybe "the first time we were married." Christmas... it may be a nice distraction, it may be more difficult than either of us anticipate. Valentine's Day, now that's the holiday that we need to get to. I already know what I'm getting Matt, but he doesn't know what it is. Haha. I am dreading the month after Christmas when I'll have nothing to do but attempt to decide what of my stuff I can fit into my car. I hate stuff, but I hate even more that I need my stuff. And my ankles hurt from wearing my ridiculously high heels to graduation (but it was so worth it, because apparently my shoes were visible from the nosebleed section) and then driving all over the place. So, the one thing that all of these sentences have in common is that they are all my thoughts upon graduation from college.

"Oh, we don't have anything like that; you're gonna have to go to the dealership."

When you hear those words, you know something very very bad is about to happen. Let me start at the beginning...

My generally reliable windshield wiper began leaving an unwiped stripe right in middle of my field of vision. Simple, you say? Just go get a new wiper blade, you say? That is what I said myself. So off I trot to the ever reliable (i.e. cheap) Wal-mart, and $12 later, walk out with my brand new wipers! Problem solved, right? Wrong! Nooooo, I have a shmanshpanshy new car with new-fangled wipers! Back to Walmart, return the wipers, and now for that trusty old stand-by when Walmart doesn't have it: O'Reilly's. They're great, you say? They have everything, you say? But NO! They don't! The guy goes out and looks at my new-fangled shmanshypanshy wiper blades, and that's when it happens. He says, "Oh, we don't have anything like that; you're gonna have to go to the dealer's." My heart falls in my chest. That's trouble. Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with D and that stands for Dealership. Now, there are plenty of reservoirs of evil in our society, places where evil lurks and snatches the souls of the unwarey. Bars, strip clubs, liquor stores, televanglism... but the dealer is perhaps the worst of them all. So with a very appropriate sense of dread, I turn my high-maintence car towards... the Dealership. *scary music* Unfortunately, I know where the parts section is by now (alas, the drama continues!) so I park and try to prepare myself for what's ahead. Now, I don't have any issues with the parts guys. They're just good honest folk trying to earn a living. They just happen to work for the devil himself. They have the wipers in stock, so he gets them from the back, places them on the counter, and reads me the total: $62.79. *dramatic pause* Yeah. That's right, apparently my car requires wiper blades that cost %500 more than normal wiper blades. Are you freakin' joking?!?! But, I have no choice. The Dealership gets it's grubby hands on my hard-earned money. But, not one to put up with such baldfaced extortion, the minute I get home I'm scouring the internet for anything better. Surely I will not be spending $30 a wiper blade for the rest of my life! And then, I find it! $17.88 at Advanced Auto. But wait, if they don't have it at O'Reilly's surely they don't have it at Advanced Auto? My next final isn't until Wednesday, so I jump in the car and head out to investigate. There they are! Right there on the shelf, the advertised product! I pull one out and look at the attachment joint. Darn! Not the right one! Alas! But before I get too far into my lamentations, I am approached by a woman who is with a company doing advertising research. She offers me a $20 gift certificate to give her my opinions on Advanced Auto's potential new lines of commercials. I'm such a sucker for surveys. I'll say yes every time. I'm not sure if it's because I'm flattered that someone would ask my opinion, or if I feel like I'm assisting the scientific community with research or what, but I almost always do them. So yup. I watch the little video, tell them how I feel, and get $20. Then the nice Advanced Auto man shows me that the wiper blade NEXT to the one I picked up, does in fact go on my car. So not only do I get TWO wiper blades for the price of one (well, almost) at the dealer, I also get to use my $20 gift certificate!! YES!! What a very productive visit to Advanced Auto! Whoohoo! And now I get to take back the other wiper blades! So I drive down to the evil Dealership, back to the parts store where I have been once before already today, slam the wiper blades down on the counter, (wait for the guy to notice me... oh wait, he's on break, wait some more until the guy on break finally figures it would be a good idea to mention that their is a customer to the guy in the back who isn't on break) and exclaim, "I'd like to return these wiper blades!" Oh, it was priceless! The look on his face! "But you can't get these anywhere else," he says. "Yup, I got 'em cheaper somewhere else," I reply triumphantly, barely containing my glee. "Really, and they're the right ones?" he asks. "Yup, the guy put 'em on my car for me and everything." Take that, punk face! Hahahahahahahaha, hahahahahahahahah, hahahahahah!! Stick it to the man! That's what I like! Hahah! And then he charged me a $12 "restocking fee." *sigh* That's what I get for walking into the Dealership. I'm just glad I came out with my soul. Even with the restocking fee, it was cheaper to buy them at AdvancedAuto, and that was before the $20 gift card, which was just icing on the cake. Very nice, tasty icing, mind. Ah, it was a good day.

Light Wave!

That's what Matt wants for Christmas!

Now back to studying...

Matt's edit:

Lightwave is a piece of software made by Newtek (www.newtek.com) and is one of the 3 leading 3D animation tools in the industry (it was used to make almost all of Jimmy Neutron as well as all of the special effects in all of the Star Trek series... well, the ones that used computer graphics, anyway).

Here's the important part: the latest version can cost almost $1,000 from Newtek! I'm planning on buying an educational license which can be found for as little as $400. If someone out there is willing to spend $400 on me for Christmas, then an educational license of Lightwave v9 is the way to go.

if you're not interested in spending that much money, though, I won't blame you. If you're interested in going the "Matt's a computer geek" route, you can just get us a $50 giftcard to Best Buy or Circuit City or something. But I do have other interests. Helen's more detailed list below is a great guide for Hurley Christmas shopping.

Now that I've told you what I want, you have to tell us how to find out what YOU want!!! It's only fair ;-)

The Spirit of Christmas...

is giving! If you've been bitten by the Christmas bug, here are some helpful hints for gifts to the Hurleys:

1. When evaluating a potential gift, ask yourself "Would I want to move this item 3 times in the next 2 years, loving stashing the box away in the closet, or under the bed, or behind the couch, or stacked in a corner with all the boxes that I can't throw away because I need them to pack all the other stuff that I own that might possibly break in transit until we pack up our beloved items on 3 seperate occasions in 2 years?" If there is any question, you might consider something more... edible.
2. Edible is good. We like to eat. Or something that can be used up in a reasonable length of time would be good too. Use your imagination there.
3. Avoid items that fall in the "stuff" category. For some reason, music and movies don't seem to qualify as "stuff." I'm not sure why that is. Nor do clothes, but those could be harder to pick out.
4. Some specific items that would be welcomed:
-specific random computer parts (see Matt for details)
-those cute little holiday boy-short undies from Target with the little reindeer on the green one in the back, size small
-The Office
-Monk
-that great idea you had a month ago but have since forgot, that would be perfect
-nothing. Really, this is an option. It'll be like you are helping us pack for the rest of our lives!

I'll try and add more stuff as the thoughts come to me. I do have finals this week, though (for the last time! Yay!) so it may get lost in the shuffle.