* I'm sorry, but Thanksgiving Day Parade can suck it: the Rose Parade is the best one. THEY MAKE IT ALL OUT OF FLOWERS! How is that not amazing?

This year they had snowboarding bulldogs and a teenage girl designing her own float in which an origami dragon is brought to life. AWESOME. Lucky SoCal folks, to get that opportunity. One of the things I learned via my job is that Pasadena City College kids get credit for working on the parade. Yeah, I'd like to have done that in college myself. Floats done in this town are just not quite the same (plus I was doing fashion design instead).

* In keeping with the whole "DON'T SPEND MONEY" thing, I am trying to use up the last of my stripey yarn (which I previously used on a long coat and a sweater) on a sweater that it would be good with. The sweater size required 1100 yards, I had 1180 or so yards, shouldn't that work?

Hah hah hah, maybe not. I had to redo the sleeves because the pattern came out short by two inches, and now I am not sure if I'm going to get it done with the yarn I've got. (Though I did finish one sleeve with half the yarn I've got left, so yay, some relief there.) Either I miraculously find new yarn at the place where I've been getting it, or I take out the sweater I did a few months ago with this yarn (it really just makes me look fat, plus I cannot figure out what to do with a short-sleeved sweater. If it's cold enough to wear a sweater, shouldn't it have full sleeves?), or substitute in some plain purple yarn I found that might work to at least fill out the hems. Argh.

Also annoying: I could have had this thing finished during break, were it not for the yarn issues and having to start the sleeves over from scratch (if you want to make them longer, you have to add it in at the START, dammit).

* I am starting to make a list of Stuff I Didn't Buy. Specifically, stuff I would have bought if not for having the anvil of future unemployment and current pay cuts hanging over my head. Maybe seeing a list of how much money I saved can be some kind of reward for me emotionally, because otherwise I don't know how I'm going to do it at all. I'm trying to rank how badly I want stuff in my head and if it's not a 10 or can't be justified for practical use, I won't buy it. So in the last few days I found things that were a solid 7-8, and I still want them, but I didn't get them. Half of them were on sale and if I didn't get them now I probably can't ever get them. ARGH, I hate this.

Trying to outwit my urge to spend is a bitch. I go shopping when bored or stir-crazy or I want to see something new, or need entertainment, or something to do with Mom. I generally can't go back to the place where I found the neat thing should I change my mind, so I have to decide RIGHT NOW if I can live without it or not. I almost always use and enjoy the new stuff I got. There is no enjoyment for me in saving a few dollars, and I'm purely doing it for impending stick rather than carrot.

Ugh. I don't know if I can keep this up for a year or more.

Oh yeah, and I have to pay for con registration soon, and the dentist is coming up and god only knows how many cavities I'll have again. My insurance money will have been re-upped by then, thank goodness, but it sucks to waste it all in January because I am genetically predisposed to having horrible teeth.

* I like people's retrospectives of how their lives have changed over the last ten years, but mine really hasn't had that much drastic change. Had one boyfriend during the decade (sad), dying dad issues for most of it, I've been employed in the same place for most of it. Not exactly a Lost Decade, but I pretty much wasted my 20's. Oh well, I didn't know what to do with them anyway, and was kind of hampered at that what with the dying dad and all.

Mentally I kind of live in two realities. Part of me is well aware that the next decade will probably be pretty much the same as the old one, I may be at Mom's house in 2020 and still just as lame as usual at age 41. And then sometimes I think things will be drastically different in a few years. If miracles occur, anyway.

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