Let's get some SHOES!
Went to my grandmother's yesterday for the duel birthday celebration - my birthday is on the 13th, and my mother's was yesterday (the 23rd), so since I reached my teens and stopped doing parental-organized birthday parties, we've tended to have a LOT of familial double celebrations.
I'm 23; my mother's 43. Happy birthday to us, I guess.
I gave my mother copies of Teach Yourself Visually Crocheting (if she figures it out, she can teach ME!) and Hollywood Knits Style. (Which has two pictures of Lisa Edelstein in it, wearing an example of the author's knitted halter top pattern! Startling.) She also got some sort of...bag? And I lost track at that point, because I was opening my own stuff. Heh.
I am obviously THAT person, the one that's impossible to buy for, because for years now all my "gifts" have come in envelope form (not that I'm complaining), and this year was no exception:
-$25 from my aunt. (In a card that instructed you to press the button to hear a message from "Marvo the Marvelous Talking Flea" or somesuch. It's not really a button, just a colored circle on the paper. Then, when you open the card, it says, "OOPS! Too hard! You squished him!" I LAUGHED HYSTERICALLY. It's so easy to amuse me, I swear.)
-$50 check from my grandmother.
-$40 gift certificate for Chapters from Aunt Dawn/Uncle Scott/Brennan (my cousin)
-A monster named Colin (too cute - his hands come out of his pockets, and his hoodie hood comes off) and a $40 gift certificate to Payless from my mother.
(Nothing from my sister, Nicole, but as I COMPLETELY forgot her birthday this year - caught up with work and school - that's fair.)
...I'm particularly psyched about that last. I have NO SHAME. I'M GOING TO HAVE MOAR SHUZ.
Me: *waving around Payless gift certificate in cheesy packaging featuring snuggling het couple, "Always the perfect fit," bleh* SHOOOESS!
Nicole: Shoes.
Me: Shoes.
Nicole: Shoes.
Me: OH.MI.GAWD, shoes.
Nicole: Let's get some shoes!
[Rest of family: ...Bzuh?]
Nicole: These shoes rule.
Me: These shoes suck.
Nicole: These shoes suck.
Both: THESE SHOES SUCK! *gigglefit*
...
Mom: Well, it's nice you two are interacting civilly for a change...
Oh, but then she claimed that Chuck Taylors suit her better, so it was ON. I don't know why she always, ALWAYS has to say something borderline rude/insulting/inflammatory to absolutely EVERYONE. WTF?
It especially annoyed me because I couldn't wear chucks for YEARS as my feet grew so much faster than the rest of me and I had to catch up. My family made jokes about my being a collie dog. Yeah, a collie dog who couldn't wear shoes that fit long without looking like I was wearing FLIPPERS.
Speaking of chucks! My extended family apparently think that my new chucks (double-tongued hi-tops, chocolate brown and orange) are hot. YAY VALIDATION.
(It's almost impossible to find good pictures online, but they look basically like this but with a white toe, orange lining and "All Star" tongue, and uh...no camo on the first tongue. Just brown. My sister has classic all-black chucks like these ones, but low-top.)
Other fun, wine-fueled birthday discussions included hilarity around the table on the subject of Canadianisms vs. Americanisms. I've never been anywhere in the U.S. except...Chicago? not sure...on a layover, and I was an infant.
But other family members travel widely, and they shared the following:
-Toques in the south are apparently called toboggans. WTF? The potential for lulz here are seemingly endless. I think we were all a little drunk, but we laughed at this for about ten minutes straight while pretending we were all balancing toboggans on our heads. My aunt Heather was asked if she wanted one on a colder day down in the south, and, completely puzzled, she said, "Why? There's no SNOW here. Unless you want to pull me around in the dirt." Sadly, we didn't get a report of the reaction to that.
-"Washroom." Heather (again) says she asked for the washroom in the U.S. and got a blank stare until she said, "Bathroom? Restroom?" and then finally got a positive response at "restroom." (Although I'm sure "bathroom," works too.) She said, "RESTroom is what they use? I'm not going in there to REST!" We helpfully suggested she should have first asked for the lavatory, loo, or WC. LOL.
-Lots of amusement over fooling Americans into thinking Canadian Tire Money is actual cash, and other currency funnies.
-Ahh...stuff I'm forgetting. Because I was boozed, probably. BUT IT WAS FUNNY.
Actually, we had an involved discussion over American vs. Canadian money. I'm not sure why Americans are supposed to be the ones who think Canuck bills look like Monopoly money, because despite the fact that it's all the same color, American bills look faker to me. I guess that's because I'm not used to them...but they seem too small. I'm pretty sure they are actually ever-so-slightly smaller than Canadian bills.
So annoying. At work, we put American bills beneath the $20s along with $50s and $100s. Nothing is more frustrating than writing down the change for the till count at the end of the night, and then discovering AMERICAN ONES beneath the $20s. Fb*P$j@)nQyFUCK. Thankfully, with the summer over and the American tourists mostly gone, that happens less now.
(Also, apparently Aussie money is plastic? And washes well. Now THERE'S a country that's thinking.)
Everybody got to ooh and aah over my now-half-finished cat blanket...and Brennan showed off his 80GB iPod Classic.
I've been thinking lately that since my Zen is such a temperamental piece of shit, I ought to seriously consider something like an iPod - more and better tech support (whatever you want to say about Apple, Zens have essentially no tech support to speak of), PLUS iPods accept third-party accessories. And iPods have come down in price so much that it's totally doable, except that I have no laptop to get it set up on. So I'll be needing a laptop first, and eh...I just am not in a rush to spend that kind of money. So I don't know.
That's about it, I think. Mom's agitating for the computer.
I'm 23; my mother's 43. Happy birthday to us, I guess.
I gave my mother copies of Teach Yourself Visually Crocheting (if she figures it out, she can teach ME!) and Hollywood Knits Style. (Which has two pictures of Lisa Edelstein in it, wearing an example of the author's knitted halter top pattern! Startling.) She also got some sort of...bag? And I lost track at that point, because I was opening my own stuff. Heh.
I am obviously THAT person, the one that's impossible to buy for, because for years now all my "gifts" have come in envelope form (not that I'm complaining), and this year was no exception:
-$25 from my aunt. (In a card that instructed you to press the button to hear a message from "Marvo the Marvelous Talking Flea" or somesuch. It's not really a button, just a colored circle on the paper. Then, when you open the card, it says, "OOPS! Too hard! You squished him!" I LAUGHED HYSTERICALLY. It's so easy to amuse me, I swear.)
-$50 check from my grandmother.
-$40 gift certificate for Chapters from Aunt Dawn/Uncle Scott/Brennan (my cousin)
-A monster named Colin (too cute - his hands come out of his pockets, and his hoodie hood comes off) and a $40 gift certificate to Payless from my mother.
(Nothing from my sister, Nicole, but as I COMPLETELY forgot her birthday this year - caught up with work and school - that's fair.)
...I'm particularly psyched about that last. I have NO SHAME. I'M GOING TO HAVE MOAR SHUZ.
Me: *waving around Payless gift certificate in cheesy packaging featuring snuggling het couple, "Always the perfect fit," bleh* SHOOOESS!
Nicole: Shoes.
Me: Shoes.
Nicole: Shoes.
Me: OH.MI.GAWD, shoes.
Nicole: Let's get some shoes!
[Rest of family: ...Bzuh?]
Nicole: These shoes rule.
Me: These shoes suck.
Nicole: These shoes suck.
Both: THESE SHOES SUCK! *gigglefit*
...
Mom: Well, it's nice you two are interacting civilly for a change...
Oh, but then she claimed that Chuck Taylors suit her better, so it was ON. I don't know why she always, ALWAYS has to say something borderline rude/insulting/inflammatory to absolutely EVERYONE. WTF?
It especially annoyed me because I couldn't wear chucks for YEARS as my feet grew so much faster than the rest of me and I had to catch up. My family made jokes about my being a collie dog. Yeah, a collie dog who couldn't wear shoes that fit long without looking like I was wearing FLIPPERS.
Speaking of chucks! My extended family apparently think that my new chucks (double-tongued hi-tops, chocolate brown and orange) are hot. YAY VALIDATION.
(It's almost impossible to find good pictures online, but they look basically like this but with a white toe, orange lining and "All Star" tongue, and uh...no camo on the first tongue. Just brown. My sister has classic all-black chucks like these ones, but low-top.)
Other fun, wine-fueled birthday discussions included hilarity around the table on the subject of Canadianisms vs. Americanisms. I've never been anywhere in the U.S. except...Chicago? not sure...on a layover, and I was an infant.
But other family members travel widely, and they shared the following:
-Toques in the south are apparently called toboggans. WTF? The potential for lulz here are seemingly endless. I think we were all a little drunk, but we laughed at this for about ten minutes straight while pretending we were all balancing toboggans on our heads. My aunt Heather was asked if she wanted one on a colder day down in the south, and, completely puzzled, she said, "Why? There's no SNOW here. Unless you want to pull me around in the dirt." Sadly, we didn't get a report of the reaction to that.
-"Washroom." Heather (again) says she asked for the washroom in the U.S. and got a blank stare until she said, "Bathroom? Restroom?" and then finally got a positive response at "restroom." (Although I'm sure "bathroom," works too.) She said, "RESTroom is what they use? I'm not going in there to REST!" We helpfully suggested she should have first asked for the lavatory, loo, or WC. LOL.
-Lots of amusement over fooling Americans into thinking Canadian Tire Money is actual cash, and other currency funnies.
-Ahh...stuff I'm forgetting. Because I was boozed, probably. BUT IT WAS FUNNY.
Actually, we had an involved discussion over American vs. Canadian money. I'm not sure why Americans are supposed to be the ones who think Canuck bills look like Monopoly money, because despite the fact that it's all the same color, American bills look faker to me. I guess that's because I'm not used to them...but they seem too small. I'm pretty sure they are actually ever-so-slightly smaller than Canadian bills.
So annoying. At work, we put American bills beneath the $20s along with $50s and $100s. Nothing is more frustrating than writing down the change for the till count at the end of the night, and then discovering AMERICAN ONES beneath the $20s. Fb*P$j@)nQyFUCK. Thankfully, with the summer over and the American tourists mostly gone, that happens less now.
(Also, apparently Aussie money is plastic? And washes well. Now THERE'S a country that's thinking.)
Everybody got to ooh and aah over my now-half-finished cat blanket...and Brennan showed off his 80GB iPod Classic.
I've been thinking lately that since my Zen is such a temperamental piece of shit, I ought to seriously consider something like an iPod - more and better tech support (whatever you want to say about Apple, Zens have essentially no tech support to speak of), PLUS iPods accept third-party accessories. And iPods have come down in price so much that it's totally doable, except that I have no laptop to get it set up on. So I'll be needing a laptop first, and eh...I just am not in a rush to spend that kind of money. So I don't know.
That's about it, I think. Mom's agitating for the computer.