Happy Festivus, y'all! For the occasion, I'll do some Airing of Grievances! (But I'll spare you the serious ones, for once.)

Man, the gym is pissing me off again! I thought I'd be over this in 2006, but apparently not.

Their winter schedule sucks. The only weightlifting class offered after work hours is once AGAIN on the night I'm volunteering. Not that that's their fault, it just irritates me since I can't find out the gym schedule before picking out what night I'll volunteer on. They used to offer weight classes 2-3 times a week at night- what happened to that? They're offering the Pilates and yoga classes (and as a person so inflexible in the legs that I might as well be a mermaid girl, I really hate Pilates and yoga) at 6:30 most of the other nights, so any of the classes I'd want to take don't even start until 7:45 and I'll have to wait around on campus until then. My dance class got moved to late on Mondays, and I won't be going to that much because I want to take crochet class, and the one night there's two decent classes offered is Thursday, when I was planning on taking another CC class. Now I'm wondering if I should just skip it because otherwise I'm not even sure if I'll work out at all.

And did I mention they moved all of the classes's starting times back EVEN LATER? I guess they wanted to offer some classes at 5:15 for the working stiffs, but speaking as a working stiff, it takes me fifteen minutes just to get OVER to that building, and I'd still have to go change clothes and sign up for class and not make it. Even if I rode a bike out there it'd still take me longer than 15 minutes to ride over there, lock up the bike, sign up, and change clothes. And since everything else starts later, I'm not even going to leave the gym until 9 every night. GRRRRRRR.

And they have offered classes this week, but they've all gotten canceled for total lack of people other than me showing up. Hell, even the TEACHERS didn't show up last night, which pissed me off (though my dance teacher e-mailed to say he's having a class in the other studio tomorrow and I can go to that). I hate waiting around on my ass long after I would have finished my normal workout just to find out that nobody's shown up. Now I've gone to classes during "dead times"- spring break, summer breaks between spring and summer school, holidays- and never had a class canceled. I wasn't a gym member during the holiday season last year, and I should have figured it out for myself that nobody would show up NOW though. Suffice it to say that next year, I won't waste my time going to the gym specifically to go to a class after the last day of finals is over.

And after all of that, I went home to watch "Home for the Holidays," which was supposed to be good. Um, no, it was not funny. It was not entertaining. Robert Downey Jr. was acting like a wolverine for no discernable reason. I figured watching nothing at all was better than continuing to give this movie a chance and stopped watching it halfway through. Yeesh.

And you know what makes me sad? Being asked specifically what I want for Christmas- and being asked to make a LIST, and hearing a lot of bullshit about how the list got printed out for future reference- and then two days before Christmas Eve, get Mom saying, "What movies did you want again?"

Um... I didn't want ANY movies, except Serenity (which she's not even going to remember). I especially didn't want her to do the same ol' crap she usually does, which is fish through the bargain bins at Target/Walmart/Wherever and pick up crappy movies that she hasn't seen and nobody actually wanted, because they were cheap. ("Have you seen the Fantastic Four?" she asked me. "I haven't, but I heard it was pretty crappy." "I bought it," she said. Guess what I'm getting for Christmas.) I wanted TV shows on DVD. Which, to be honest, is the #1 thing I'd like for Christmas because they're kind of pricey for my budget these days, I really love them, I'm pretty stocked on clothes, and nobody likes buying me books (nice aunt actually expressed a preference NOT to buy me a book this year *sigh*), and I figured, what's objectionable about THAT? How hard is that to remember?

I knew I should have gone home last weekend. If I'm not standing right there saying, "BUY ME THIS ITEM, I REALLY WANT IT," it doesn't happen any more. I told her to just pick out what she wanted to get me and ORDER IT ON AMAZON, where it's cheaper anyway, but she just couldn't manage the point and click, apparently. *sigh*

Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be all about what I give to people and not what I get, but dammit, don't get my hopes up by asking me what I actually want if you have no intention of paying attention to it.

And it just goes against everything to me to just go buy people cheap crap you KNOW they won't like just so there's a token gift at Christmas. Mom's doing that on everyone, not just me this year- she bought all of the relatives on Dad's side a bunch of board games this year. I have never, ever heard of these people playing a board game in my life. And even though I don't like half of these people, and god knows the odds are slightly higher than 50/50 that they'll just go buy US cheap crap they know we won't like, it BUGS ME that she deliberately chooses to get people stuff like that. Ugh. What's so bad about a dang dinner gift certificate like usual?

As for today, well, I wanted to sleep in and woke up at 7:30. Considering that I was up until 1 a.m. finishing Kristen's scarf, that took some doing. But in the end, it was probably a good thing that I was up before the chainsaws.

Chainsaws, you say?

Well, yes. Management here has been taking their own sweet time about fixing all of the patio fences, which have rotted on through, and one of my patios lost a wall altogether. They had scheduled a time to start construction on them...and then the rainy season started, so they rescheduled to next week. I distinctly recall them saying it would start on the 28th.

You'll note that's not today, eh?

I can kind of understand them moving it up, since today's the first day it hasn't rained in most of a month. But uh, they couldn't have at least left me a note on the door warning me that men with CHAINSAWS would be coming by in the morning right outside my doors and giving me a headache? (Good timing, considering I was almost out of Excedrin.) Because if they'd left me a note, I would have PLANNED to have been out of the house for awhile. Not to mention, I might not have gone to the movies on Wednesday so I would have had something to do out of the house.

I ended up going down to Crepeville and having a crepe and reading. It was surprisingly packed for the day before Christmas Eve, go figure. Then I went to dance class- much to my surprise, six people showed up for THAT. Then I went to the drugstore for more Excedrin and wrapping paper, because what's left of the foil crap I got may not quite cover the four gifts I have left to wrap. With my luck I won't even need the roll, but it was 25% off and I figured if I didn't buy it, I would need it tomorrow and not be able to get more.

And now I'm home again, still knitting.

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