Chaos Attraction

What Christmas Spirit?

2004-12-13, 7:18 p.m.

Well, let's start the week off on a cheerful note! Not!

My day began (after yet another night of not sleeping, because it's Sunday night and god knows I can't sleep on a Sunday night) bright and early with a meeting. Specifically, a meeting to demonstrate something that I do not work on and will never work on and really don't need to know squat about for my job, so I don't know why it was so bloody important that I attend it. Thank God for Palms with e-novellas already uploaded onto them that can be read in the dark.

Anyway, in addition to this, they told us the following depressing information:

(a) The office will be closed AND we do not get free vacation days for it, so you MUST waste yours, or "borrow against your time" if you got hired in the last few months (which seems pretty shitty to do to the new folks- God forbid you have something come up in January or February, because now you're not going to be able to take time off for it until March), or just not get paid. I dearly hope this isn't legal, but one way or another there's nothing much I can do about it.

(b) We are not getting a holiday party of any kind this year.

I'll have to explain this one: the office is officially open from 9-4. The part of the office that deals with students (not my area) has to have people on shift during those hours. This is why most of our all-office stuff goes on from 8-9.

They booked a conference room so that we could have the party from 8-9. But some jackass got mad at some other office having a party in the room when they wanted to have a meeting, so they reported them, and now the new law is NO PARTIES IN CONFERENCE ROOMS WHATSOEVER unless they are between noon and one. But nooooo, we can't do that without everyone there, and we caaaaan't close the office because we're closing for a week and a half and we just can't do that.

I can't help but think, "Um, why can't we just have a party in the downstairs in the morning the way we do every month anyway?", but for whatever reason nobody wanted to do that. So we are not getting a party. Instead we are getting, "Can't we have a January party? and a "progressive party," which is really "downstairs people might bring in some food or something, but since you're upstairs you won't even really know about it." Which I think is kind of ridiculous because (a) who wants to party in January when you're broke and dead tired from the holidays, and (b) they're not going to have one other than the usual January birthdays party.

I feel cheated. Dammit, I wanted an hour or two off during work hours to feel festive and dress up, (lord knows I don't really have any reason to do this the rest of the month) to eat and do White Elephant again. I found the perfect gift for it, and now I can't use it. Since nobody here'll see it, I'll tell you what it was: a card game called "Office Scandals." I figured it would get massive reaction from people here, so it would have been all the more fun to slip in anonymously. But oh well, it's mine now. I did want a copy of the game for my very own, but this is rather disappointing.

Anyway, I just don't have anything much festive going on this year. There aren't holiday parties thrown around here much, so I really look forward to the work one. The CC had a party Friday night, but it was really an auction party, and it's not like you could do much at it beyond watch bidding go on. I went to it just to have ONE thing to go to this time, but it was meh. Plus, the free shirts handed out were just not at all impressive or even interesting. I swear, they used to do such great designs (as demonstrated on the walls of the CC), but since I started there the shirts get crappier and boringer.

I miss having Christmas decorations. I can't find any of mine, as usual, and I don't have anywhere to put them, and even if both of those weren't a problem the kittens would probably slam headfirst into my tree and knock it over and break everything. (I kept yelling at them to stop wrestling ON TOP OF my craft stuff, but what good did that do? Not much.) I'm thinking it might not be a good idea to even hang up my Christmas tree suncatcher. And at work, other than one guy's cubicle (which was admittedly amusing), there's nothing up either. And as y'all know by now, we aren't doing any decorating at the parents' house.

It's just kinda like, what Christmas celebration? What anything celebration? Other than worrying about people's gifts, it's same old, same old around here. I had to restrain myself at the grocery store yesterday from buying more alcohol. I'm trying to lay off the stuff in preparation for a sober holiday (well, the relatives serve alcohol when I'm at their house, but only beer and wine, and I can't choke that stuff down no matter how bummed I am. Not when I can feel my taste buds screaming as they die.) season, because otherwise I'd be all too tempted to get a little bombed.

I'm trying to think of the positives going on lately, but there's not a lot going on. I'll have a good day or maybe two, and then more stuff happens to bum me out. I'm trying to cheer up. I'll break out the holiday jewelry later this week, I dressed up (i.e. wore a skirt to work, even if it's cold) today, I'm choking down holiday office chocolate (the main decor around here) till I puke, and I've been looking at horrible advent things (for more listings, check the blog sidebar). And I went shopping again- picked up a paperback I hadn't been able to find earlier and *cough* had an impulse buy of a pair of laceup black flats. I've been looking for a pair for ages and these are actually comfortable. I felt kind of strange buying them from a street vendor who was missing teeth, mind you, but he had great shoes.

And I'm still bummed out. Bleah. The only holiday things I've gotten to do and enjoyed so far this year are (a) collecting bad Christmas/Hanukkah music, (b) doing presents, because I'm not doing bad on that, and (c) posting links on the blog, which people seem to be enjoying. Oh, and I'm really freaking relieved I'm not spending the season arguing with Dave about how I won't spend the holiday with him instead of the parents. Listening to everyone else's trying to juggle relatives is making me all happy to be single once again. And hopefully this week (crosses fingers that she isn't jinxing things by saying this), other people's presents will be coming in the mail.

It doesn't help either that I'm listening to Air America as I write this and what are they talking about? "There's so going to be a draft by mid-2005." The only good thing on that score is that by mid-2005 I'll have had my 27th birthday, and unless they raise the age that puts me out of it. (Trust me, military, I have no aim and I can't even fire a BB rifle. Y'all don't want me.)

And I put in for a prescription refill for all of my anti-allergy drugs LAST MONDAY and a week later, one of them is still not ready to go. Which really ticks me off. It's freaking nasal spray, WHAT TAKES YOU SO LONG?

I also can't get my DSL modem to work. I went through every possible "fix it yourself" thing I could find online, and nothing worked. Apparently the problem is that my password works for every other site I use through them BUT the DSL. I e-mailed the company in hopes that they could quickly fix it on their end, but got e-mail back saying, "We can't fix it. Please call us in person." Which I KNOW is going to make me cry, because there's nothing like calling SBC tech help to make me cry. I don't know what they're talking about, and neither do they, and I don't follow instructions on something I don't understand from voice dictation well. If I didn't need to download some stuff that'll definitely time out on dialup soon, I wouldn't even bother right now.

Oh, and someone told me that instead of Dick Clark, there will be Reege and Ashlee Lipsyncer Simpson hosting New Year's Rockin' Eve. Ashlee fucking Simpson?!? For the West Coast, no less. Oh fraptious joy. Bad enough I have to be stuck at home with my family and nobody else for New Year's, but I'm going to have to watch THAT?

I'm tired of not enjoying the holiday season. I'm tired of everything sucking. I'm trying to muster up some spirit of something, but dreading seeing the family kind of overshadows everything. I'd like to think that 2005 would be a better year because 2004 has been horrific, but given the family situation and the political one, I can't really believe that anything will improve for me personally.

But hey, I can say at least one thing: at least my Christmas won't be as crappy as the Rochas and the Petersons's are always going to be.


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