Styxx!

I'm currently reading "Styxx" by Sherrilyn Kenyon. I love her Dark Hunter series and this is the newest installment of that series. I'm about halfway thru the book. It's a rather thick book too.

The story is engaging and descriptive. It has Greek and fictional Atlantean gods running about terrorizing the lives of the mere mortals who worship them. This story zeros in on Styxx, the son of the King of Didymos. He's also the Twin of Acheron (who has his own story and book).

Through out the story of Acheron I had a roller coaster of emotions floating about in my head. That is the sign of a good story and a good author... She gets you hooked into the story and becoming somewhat emotionally involved. It is the same way with Styxx.

All he wanted was the love of his parents and his sister Rissa. His Twin brother was born with "God eyes" that set him apart from the rest of the family. Acheron was shunned by the King as a freak who should die. Styxx just wanted to spend time with his brother but somehow always got him into trouble. The king was always pulling Styxx away from Acheron. They soon learned that they couldn't "get rid of" Acheron... as his life force was tied to that of Styxx. Whatever happened to Acheron was felt by Styxx though no one understood that connection. Styxx was just thought of as a wimpy brat. His own sister thought he was jealous and vindictive when all he wanted was to be loved and to help his brother. He just didn't know how to. His father was King.. He was threatened by that King who was his father. As both boys grow up the one comes to hate the other while one still craves the love of the other.

Enter Bethany, the Atlantean Goddess of Wrath and Misery. She is sent to the mortal lands as a blind girl to look for the son of the Queen of Atlantis. He was sent to the mortal world to be raised mortal to hide him from his father who wanted to kill him because of a prophecy his half sisters told their father. While in the mortal world she meets "Hector" and falls in love... only to find out later that "Hector" is the Prince Styxx.

That's really paraphrasing the story... I didn't want to go into much detail of what goes on. Right now my emotions are running on Anger at the Gods who think mortals are play toys and frustration that his family abandoned him during his life. His father is a pompous Jerk of great enormity. The sister comes across as a whiney witch towards Styxx. She basically believed he could do no good despite all the good he had done. She never knew or saw that he was trying to protect her from their father.

Still I can't seem to put the book down no matter what emotion is raging at the time. I got the other half of the book to finish... I hope it has a similance of a semi-happy ending for Styxx, Acheron, and Bethany...

No longer the "Toy Lady"

I use to work in the Toy Dept of the local Wallie World (Walmart). I am no longer the "Toy Lady" though I think I will still always be the Toy Lady. I am now a Cashier. I get to talk to peoples .. alot... while scanning their food. I'm still not use to standing in one place for long periods of time... I'm constantly walking around my cash register area.

Being a cashier is okay... not my favorite job but for now it's a break. It's a bit less stressfull. The stress level had gone up some over the years as I worked in toys. Many of the customers think it's a step up to be a cashier. I'm not so sure.

We are kinda tied to our registers... We aren't supposed to leave them for anything. And sometimes it's hard because I know where something the customer was looking for. I wanna just run and get it for them but I can't. I seem to be one of the few in the store that knows where most of the stuff is. I get people (including other employees) asking where stuff is. Though I'm becoming lost in the store. I don't get to keep up with what is going on or where things are moved as much now. It kinda irks me to say "I dunno" sometimes now.

Little Z's all over

Wow... "Z" Clan Cousins are having little Z's (well technically the Momma's were "Z"s but now have other last names.. I think)...   Anyway.. Cousin Jennifer is having a boy this summer sometime... she's having fun getting baby stuff... And Cousin Sara is having a boy too or so I've been told. This will be her second child. She has a little girl already. And Cousin Brian is new Daddy to baby girl Zenna..  Which makes Xia a big sister now...

It's all soo kewl...  And it's really kewl that I can see most of the babies grow up from a distance on Facebook. I'm on the west coast and most of the "Z" clan cousins are on the East Coast. I hate being sooo far away.

My Niece is a Young woman now and my nephews are teenagers. Well except one but he's heading into that teenager stage soon. I haven't really been able to be around much while they are growing up. Think it's been at least 10 years since I've seen my niece. I haven't seen my sister's kids for like 5 or 6 years... I just don't always have the money to fly out there.

ACM to XYZ

In the last few months 2 of my cousins had babies.  :)

My Cousin Alex and his wife are both Military or were. His wife Courtney just gave birth not long ago to a little boy. It looks like they are keeping a naming pattern going for a 4th Generation...  

          Grandpa - A. C. M.
          Uncle (Alex's Dad) - A. C. M.
          Alex - A. C. M.
          Baby - A. C. M.

I think that's kewl. Mayhaps Uncle Alan and Grandpa are smiling from where they are... It's sad that they aren't here to see him. I saw pictures and he's a cutie!!  :)

Then there's my Cousin Brian. I remember when he was younger and now he's a DADDY!!  Woo hoo. His "Special Lady" Jeanine gave birth not long ago to a little girl. Her initials came out as X. Y. Z.     Kewl names with a bit of the family weird humor... Though gotta know the Clan to understand what I mean.

She's a cutie though... And she's gonna have her daddy wrapped around her lil finger...  LOL...   Note to future boyfriends... Mess with one "Z" Clan and you're gonna end up with all of them on your case... and there are enough of Brian's cousins all around the same age range.....  And that's not counting the Uncles and Aunts!!!

I'm currently working on some cute lil felt booties that are a kewl matching color for this cute lil outfit I found. The booties are easy enough to make.. it's the embroidery that takes some time as I'm doing it all by hand. I also have a crazy idea for a pair of "Joke" Booties... for Brian's lil girl.

Brian is a Graphic Artist who likes to use a lot of bright colors. He does posters and advertising for many little or big music festivals all up and down the east coast...  Music festivals, culture festivals, ... you name it he's probably designed a poster for it...   He's also into music himself.... He plays and writes his own music if I remember right.  So I have some left over faux patent leather looking material and some brightly tie dyed looking fleece scraps. I thought about altering a bootie pattern I have to look like a loose version of black boots with the bright fleece on the inside.... I'm hoping it comes out kewl.... might have to make some more!

I just gotta get this done before she gets too big to wear this stuff....   girls are so much easier to figure out stuff for than boys...

Disney Memories

A friend recently posted a mini Video they took when they rode the Tower ride at MGM Studios at Disney World in Florida. It reminded me of when I rode the ride. Of coarse I was alone (not recommended at Disney World) and rode the ride with a buncha strangers. What made it really bad was I was in a row with a bunch teenage boys.... Luckily I was on the outside and had a sorta handle to hold on to....  and boy did I hold on to it....  I also had my eyes closed half the time....  

For those who don't know... The ride looks like a elevator in a hotel that takes you up really high then drops you a few feet... then pulls ya up some and drops you again.... it does it a few more times...    So you never really know when it's over until it's over and you are going thru the doors.... back into the wonderful world of the twlight zone... The props all over the place were awesome though....

I've been trying to get my pictures up online so I can share... the main problem is I've been busy with work and I have like 1000's of pictures... and that's from 4 different parks.. plus the 80 or 90 pictures the park photographers took for me....   I've been trying to organize them... I'm getting closer... I at least have them organized according to the different parks...

Now I just gotta weed thru them to figure out which are too blurry or something I really don't want... I took a buncha pictures are MGM Studios and Animal Kingdom because Mom hasn't been to them... I wanted to show her what I saw... to get her excited enough to want to see it herself LOL....

Somewhere I even have a few lil movies I took.... there was an interesting band at Epcot..  It was a mix of rock, Celtic (scottish/irish) and something else totally different. I'll try to get those up too... If I do I'll try and post them here!!

Footnotes

I've been playing with my Geneology again lately. I recently traced my Grandmother's family back. I found out my Great-Grandmother was part Cherokee. She and her family were listed on the Dawes Rolls.

On a website called Footnote.com I found Eastern Cherokee Applications for Citizenship. The website actually has  scanned copies of the images of the applications. It's so kewl....

When it hits the...

When it hits the fan.. I mean truck floor.. you get a yucky mess!

Work was awful tonight. We only had 4 people on my shift... a 1700 piece GM truck to unload and no supervisor. We opened the truck door and found a big huge mess of shampoo and mayonaise all over the place.. We had to clean up before we could even attempt to unload the boxes. We had such a mess to clean after the truck was done. We had syrup all over the back of the truck also... we were covered in the stuff it seemed like.

It was like the truck driver slammed on his/her brakes when backing up to our dock doors. Everything was thrown forward. Two cases of mayonaise were thrown forward and dropped breaking the lids off most of them and splattering it everywhere. A few boxes of shampoo broke and the caps broken. So we had the shampoo all over the boxes and it had run under some boxes way back in truck. We had to clean it up and mop before we could get on with unloading the truck. And as I meantioned eariler there was syrup all over the back of the truck. It had run under several palettes so they had to be placed on other palettes to keep them off the floor.

We didn't get done with the truck before our lunchtime. We stopped to take our lunch though about 6:30pm. Our Asst. Manager wasn't too happy but what could we do. State Law in Oregon is that you have to have your meal between your 4th and 5th hour. Violating it can get you into trouble. One of our team had to go to lunch or violate so we all went together. While on lunch, our Grocery truck showed up... And there wasn't anyone to unload the palettes except asst. managers. When we got back the palettes were everywhere... I was told to work the breakpacks while the other 3 downstatcked Grocery palettes...

Okay Downstacking Grocery involves a lot of carts and/or empty palettes. We have to take certain palettes full of grocery and pull the stuff off and send down the line. It's then seperated into the aisles the food goes to... example: cookies and crackers go to aisle 5. So all those are put on a cart or palette together. We have to do this for 3rd shift who stocks the Grocery.

Breakpacks... a recap... they are foldable boxes that are worth about $.75 to the company. They have flaps that close without needing tape. They usually come from Warehouse mixed with many depts in them. They hold the onsie/twosie stuff we need to fill holes on the shelves. (Empty places where product should be) I have to go thru the boxes and sort the stuff into the depts. So all electronic stuff goes in one box, etc etc. Usually I also do processing but I dind't get to that tonight.

We took our last break and came back to finish grocery/breakpacks. Only we get sent out in the rain to bring in carts. Our cart pusher went home sick. So basically 3rd shift had to finish the grocery and breakpacks. We got back in time to clean up and do all our claims.

Claims are all those broken and yucky items from the truck. So all the mayonaise, syrup, and shampoo. We didn't get out of there on time. We were like 15 to 20 minutes late getting out of work. Which means we have to cut the time our next work day... It's a pain in the neck!

Looks at the Cobwebs

Oh My Word.... It's been a long time since I've been here... Look at all the cogwebs everywhere... Sorry! I have been rather busy with work and school. And then there is finding time to do homework and sleep.

I have been getting myself out of the house occassionally. I have a friend whodragged me (easily enough) into a table-top Role Play game. We are playing Palladium's Heroes Unlimited. I might see about another game when I can do it. There just happens to be a new shop in downtown main street area. It's a Gaming store. It's really kewl. The atmosphere is kewl. They have games going on whenever someone wants to play card games like "MAGIC". Or at night when the shop is closed they have table-top Role Play games. They have tournaments and other events. It's still in the process of getting the shop together but it's kewl that they are still open. We get to see the changes to the store as they build them...

I'm still working at the Local Wallie World (wal-mart for those who don't know). Some days I like it but lately I'm mostly hating it. They've been on my case for one thing or another. And the whole structure of how the store is run is getting changed all around. The people don't like change so they either grumble about it non-stop or quit. A few get fired for variest reasons. I'm waiting to see how it's gonna affect me. It may end my tuesday night gaming... gee I hope not... I like hanging out with the guys...

I'm still doing my schooling for Graphic design. Currently I'm in Life Drawing. Oh and I finally got myself a Laptop. It's one of teh reasons I haven't been on here. I had to look up my info because I forgot it. I haven't transfered or copied my links from desktop to laptop yet....

Well I gotta go for a bit. I'll try and get back to my little hole in the blog world...

Show me the Money!

Well it's tax season again. And again I was able to do my taxes ASAP. I just had to remember my password to get in to see my W-2 from Wal-mart. And I had to wait for a certain form from my college. 

I had some new things on my W2 I've never had before... a retirement plan and 401K. I wasn't able to claim Earned Income Credit this year. Which I guess is a good thing. It means I'm slightly above the poverty level.. though any extra money helps.

One thing I'm happy and surprised about is I get a Education Credit this year. So that added some money on to my refund amount. I got so much I wanna do that I don't think all the money will cover it all...

I need to upgrade the memory of my computers. I need to pay off some of my school expenses. I need to pay off or pay on my Doctor bills. And I want to go to Las Vegas in the summer to see some cousins who are going to celebrate their 21st birthdays. Would love to get a laptop computer. And I need to get a scanner/printer combo that works with MAC and PC. I want one that uses 2 cartridges instead of one. A little more money for extra cartridge but I won't be using both all the time. As it is I only have color. So anything black and white is also done with color.

Oh well I'll figure it out when I actually have the money... I know I want to get the "Pen and Tablet" thing for drawing on the computer. I'll eventually need one for class I think... I think it'll be kewl...

Child of 80's

Oh my.... I haven't been on here since before Thanksgiving. I've been very busy though. We had the Thanksgiving madhouse. Then the Christmas Rock-a-way days. Then there was the mad dash for the party supplies for New Years Eve. Just when we think we'll have a Holiday break... think again. There is the Superbowl party stuff, Valentine's Day stuff and now Gardening is starting to get in the Spring time stuff to sell.

Anyways.. I'm on my 3rd class for College. So far I've gotten a B+ for my 1st class and an A for my 2nd class. The class I'm taking now is Perspective (a drawing class). We will be going into our 2nd week already in a few days. 

Okay on to the topic at Hand!!

A friend of mine sent me a neat little application request on Facebook (FB). These little applications are kinda kewl in they let you send things to your friends on FB. This particular application was about 80's Toys. It brought back sooo many memories of when I was little.

It's even funny to talk to some of the others who were young about the same time period as myself. We start talking about growing up in the 80's and what we played with or what we watched. I'm definitely a child of the 80's.

- I never really had a RUBIX CUBE myself. I think my brother had one though. 

- I had a CABBAGE PATCH KID doll. It was one of the newborn ones. I didn't like the ones with a small patch of hair. Mine was bald as I thought it should be as a newborn.

- I had a baby STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE doll. When you squeezed her belly she smelled like strawberries.

- I also had the smaller STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE dolls. Though I had a few I can only remember strawberry herself. I had her little white gazebo house and a tons of clothing. I was always trying to get my older sister to play dolls with me. She's about 10 years older than I am.

- I got a baby MY LITTLE PONY set while in the hospital after one of my many surgeries. It came with a diaper, bottle, rattle, necklace that said baby, and a playpen. I also had the girl doll Megan with the pony that came with her. I may have had other ponies also but I can't remember.

- I had a ton of BARBIES or barbie knock offs. Hey we lived in West Virginia for a time period. We were sorta poor then. So I was happy with the knock offs. I had a ton of clothing. My favorite thing was to dress them and fix their hair. Later I had some Barbie furniture. I had the kitchen set, the dining room set and the bedroom set for the style that was about roses. The headboard of the bed snapped off and could be turned around to Bows. The comforter turned over to be white with pink bows instead of roses.

- I played with LEGOS. I had this huge bucket of hundreds of legos. It was something I could entice my older brother to to. He liked to play with legos also. I have pictures of this tall tower we built out of legos.

- I never did have a RAINBOW BRITE doll but I had a Rainbow Brite quilt that my Mom made me. I did like playing with my friends dolls though.

- I even had a few Smooshees. Those cute little soft dolls that you smooshed into the little plastic accessories that came with them. I had one that had blonde hair that had a little backpack. I can't remember if that was what ya smooshed her into. I had a baby that smooshed into a stroller. And I had a cat that smooshed into it's own little rounded basket looking home.

Agg remember those GARBAGE PAIL KIDS collector cards? I even had a few of those. They were so gross that we were intrigued.

I watched Thundercats and Transformers. 

I watched He-Man and She-Ra. I eventually figured out they were sister and brother but I forget if they ever explained how they got separated at birth.

I watched the Teen-aged Mutant Ninja Turtles. I loved the movies.

I watched the Smurfs. Baby Smurf was my favorite. 

I watched the Carebears. 

I remember watching JEM. I so wanted one of the dolls.

I don' think I ever watched Fraggle Rock until I was older and saw it during a trip to Texas with a friend.

I watched Sesame Street back when there was a huge furry dog named Barkly on there. I don't know if he's still on there.

I watched My Little Pony Tales.

I watched Muppet Babies and Gummie Bears.

I watched the Jetsons.

I can't remember if I watched the Wuzzles but I know I knew of them.

http://www.80scartoons.net/ looks promising.. It looks like it has a lot of the 80's cartoon info including some of the theme songs.

Oh and those good ole 80's movies....

Let's see there was 16 CANDLES, PRETTY IN PINK, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, SAY ANYTHING, THE KARATE KID movies, THE GOONIES, ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, BACK TO THE FUTURE movies, THE BEASTMASTER, BEETLEJUICE, BIG, CAN'T BUY ME  LOVE, CLUE, COMING TO AMERICA, THE DARK CRYSTAL, DIRTY DANCINE, FOOTLOOSE, FLASHDANCE, and many others...

Try this website for other 80's Movies... it's really informative and has like 540 movies that were made in the 80's.  http://www.fast-rewind.com/

And to me the kewlest 80's movie is one not a lot of people have seen or heard of... check out Electric Dreams at the website. For an 80's computer related movie it's kewl. It has really good songs by Culture Club. Also Human League's Phil Oakey sings the theme song written by Georgio Moroder.