2008

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?
Lost a toenail lol

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolution was to learn ASL. I did learn some, but I feel that I could have learned a lot more than I did. I really didn't keep with it as the time past.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes. My cousin.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
None.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
That special someone

7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
June 16 - Chuck had quadruple bypass
Sept 13 - Ike hit Galveston
Dec 7 - J lost his hearing

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I didn't really achieve anything.

9. What was your biggest failure?
That I didn't achieve anything lol

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes, I had my toenail ripped off in March, slipped on a patch of ice on the stairs and fell in Dec.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
DVDs and computer software for ASL... and stuff for Missy ;p

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Helping Kevin plan his engagement :D I'm still excited about the outcome! My sister being home for Christmas with Lane. Eddie getting 3rd in a race. ...And other things I'm not allowed to discuss at this point in time >.> <.<

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry

Compared to this time last year, are you:

17. Thinner or fatter?
Not sure

18. Richer or poorer?
Richer, maybe, but not by much

19. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Bettering myself

20. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Procrastinating

21. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent Christmas with my birthfather and his family and with my family.

22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
No

24. What was your favorite TV program?
House, Eli Stone, The Office

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
No.

26. What was the best book you read?
I don't really read... but I'm trying to change that.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Not sure

28. What did you want and get?
To find my long lost friend

29. What did you want and not get?
Love

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Marley & Me

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Went to Eden and went to Old Town Spring for a ghost tour but the dude forgot he was supposed to give us a tour.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
A better job and love

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Comfortable

34. What kept you sane?
My close friends

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I dunno.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
I avoid politics like the plague. (ditto!)

37. Who did you miss?
A few friends that I've lost touch with. Dox.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Johnathan

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008:
That it's hard to see things and completely understand them from another's point of view until it happens to you or someone that you love.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

If everything turns into nothing, will you have anything to show
Will you be left alone
If this day were just a memory, how would you view it
How would you view yourself

We should live our lives the way that we want
It’s okay to think about yourself, if it makes you happy
We should treat each day as if we only have one
It’s okay to think about yourself

If tomorrow never happens, where will you find yourself at the end of today
If everything turns into nothing, how will you view it
How will you view yourself

We should live our lives the way that we want
It’s okay to think about yourself, if it makes you happy
We should treat each day as if we only have one
It’s okay to think about yourself

Too many people strive to be what others tell them to be
That means nothing
All those people misunderstanding
The point is, they should be themselves
Just be yourself

We should live our lives the way that we want
It’s okay to think about yourself, if it makes you happy
We should treat each day as if we only have one
It’s okay to think about yourself

Think about yourself

Word Libs are fun

Dear J,
I don't really know how to tell you this, but our romance is over. I think I realized it when your dwarf bit me in your car and I saw you sit on my boyfriend. I'm sure you're vexed enough to understand that we’re related. I'm returning our matching Snoopy underwear to you, but I'll keep your collection of butterflies as a memory. You should also know that I was interviewed about the car you stole and your cucumber-fetishism is weird.

Best of luck on the sex change
Chaz (formerly known as Amanda)

Funk

For some reason I have found myself in a funk now. I guess it's just because it's the holiday season and I can't help but feel alone. I have more than enough friends to keep me from being alone, but there is still a part of me that is. Every year I hope that by the holidays I will have found that special someone and won't be alone, but so far it hasn't happened. It almost happened once, but the sorry son of a bitch just ended up making me hate the holidays even more. *sigh*


I tear my heart open, I sew myself shut
My weakness is that I care too much
And my scars remind me that the past is real
I tear my heart open just to feel

Work sucks

So, work sucked big time yesterday. My boss was having a birthday party for her little girl and it ran from 12-3. First of all, Cynde, my boss, told Amanda that she could get off at 1 so she could make the party and added that if Peggy was working then she didn't have to work at all. Which pissed me off because Cynde doesn't work weekends and didn't know how fucking busy we were at the time, but still told her that she could get off. It also made me mad because, what about the other 6 people who were working? What makes Amanda so much more special that she gets to leave to attend the party? Greg, the second shift manager, was scheduled to come in at 2 so I figured I'd get the first two drawers counted before he got in so he'd just have to verify them then I could count the last two and hurry out to make the end of the party. Funny thing though, it takes Greg 45 mins to count two damn drawers. What's funny about that? I can have all four and the petty cash counted in 30. Thing is he was counting and then looking at the numbers I had down and wanted to "talk to me" about the discrepancies. I had to explain to him that the figures he's looking at were BEFORE I took out the deposit, which I thought was pretty obvious if you added it up since it was way over the $200 that we keep in the drawer, but I guess he's just not all that bright. It probably took 5-10 mins to finally get him to understand what I was saying. He tried to tell me how I'm supposed to count the drawer, which pissed me off. There is nothing that says "this is how you must count the drawers". Most of the managers use the same method, I chose not to. I like how I do it and they can all fuck themselves before I'll use theirs. So then I had to count the last two drawers, which I was tempted to say "Look, I'm already late I need to go and you can count the last two" but I didn't. After counting them he wanted to verify them as well. So I didn't end up getting out until 4 when I was supposed to get out around 2.

Today wasn't that bad. Deby called and woke me around 9:30 and asked if I could go in at 10 instead of 11, so I did. It started off pretty slow and being 66 F outside. Within and hour and a half it had dropped down to 47 F. My back was killing me today. I ended up having to take a vicodin because of it, so now I'm down to 3 1/2 out of the 20 that I got back in March for my toe. I got out of there today at 2, which I am thankful for. I'm taking a break right now then I'll be going to ACE to work this evening.

Hurricane Ike

Luckily my family and I had minimal damage thanks to Ike. We came home to trees and limbs down, fences knocked down, and shingles missing off the roof, and of course, the power being out. League City, Texas went 8 days without power. Luckily we didn't come home until the 7th day. Most people around here weren't as lucky. Many lost everything while some lost a lot. My apartment was perfectly fine and I'm thankful for that. A co-worker's apartment had the roof fall in and another had the roof of their house fall in. Business is good right now because of all the out-of-towners that are here to clean up and restore power and water and help with housing. I probably should have written something on here sooner for those of you who know me and know where I live and might have been wondering. I am ok. My family is ok. I did however just run across this article which is hard for me to read without tearing up. It just makes this whole ordeal that much more real. I guess for me it didn't seem so real because I didn't have much happen to me or my family, but when you drive down a road and see a yacht laying beside it, it kind of makes you realize just how real this all was. Anyhow, here is the article...

Islanders who insisted on staying died in Ike

By MONICA RHOR, Associated Press Writer Sat Oct 4, 1:58 PM ET

GALVESTON, Texas - The final hours brought the awful realization to victims of Hurricane Ike that they had waited too long. This storm wasn't like the others, the ones that left nothing worse than a harrowing tale to tell.
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George Helmond, a hardy Galveston salt, watched the water rise and told a buddy: I was born on this island and I'll die on this island.

Gail Ettenger, a free spirit who adopted the Bolivar Peninsula as her home 15 years ago, told a friend in a last phone call: I really messed up this time.

Within hours, the old salt and the free spirit were gone as the powerful Category 2 hurricane wracked the Texas Gulf Coast on Sept. 13, flattening houses, obliterating entire towns and claiming at least 33 lives.

The dead — as young as 4, as old as 79 — included lifelong Galvestonians firmly rooted on the island and transplants drawn by the quiet of coastal living.

Seven people drowned in a storm surge that moved in earlier and with more ferocity than expected. Nine others died in the grimy, sweaty aftermath, when lack of power and medicine exacted its toll. Eleven people were poisoned by carbon monoxide or killed in fires from the generators they used in their own attempts to survive.

Hundreds of people remain missing three weeks after Ike's assault on Texas. Local and city officials are no longer keeping their own count of missing residents, and the estimate varies wildly from one agency to another.

According to the nonprofit Laura Recovery Center, about 300 people are missing. Of those, about 200 from Galveston. However, the number "goes up and down by the minute" as people call in to remove or add names, cautioned executive director Bob Walcutt.

Some vanished during the evacuation of towns in the storm's path. Many were last heard in desperate, last-ditch calls for help.

Immediately after the hurricane, Galveston officials conducted door-to-door searches for survivors and possible victims. But the city is no longer taking an active role in the search, city spokeswoman Alicia Cahill said.

Instead, search teams of sheriff's deputies, volunteer firefighters and special K-9 search and recovery units have been using airboats and all-terrain vehicles to sift through debris fields, tangled and fetid marshlands, and the rubble left behind by Ike.

Bodies could have been tossed anywhere in the marshes, where thickets of trees are littered with the contents of houses. Refrigerators, office chairs, and television sets are scattered everywhere __ in the mud, in bushes, on treetops.

"We are definitely looking and are going to do anything we can to find them, but there may not be any answers to be given," said Galveston County emergency management spokesman Colin Rizzo. "There are definitely going to be people from Hurricane Ike that are never found."

_____

Gail Ettenger stumbled upon her house in Gilchrist by accident. But once she saw the site on the bay side of Bolivar Peninsula, she knew she would never leave.

Ettenger, a native of New Jersey, instilled the house with her own energy and style. The 58-year-old's garden bloomed with vibrant birds-of-paradise.

And Reba, an 11-year-old Great Dane hobbled by arthritis, was her baby. Ettenger loved to treat the dog to dinners of chicken and roast beef, recalled JoAnne Burks, Ettenger's neighbor and close friend.

Ettenger, a chemist at ExxonMobil, didn't evacuate, reasoning that her house had weathered Hurricane Rita in 2005 without a problem. She also did not want to leave Reba, who could no longer climb into Ettenger's Jeep.

Burks and her husband pleaded with Ettenger to change her mind. But she insisted.

Hours before Ike made landfall, Ettenger knew she had made the wrong choice. She called Burks and described the water pushing up under her feet, the propane tanks and other household items drifting by her windows, and wondered which would float better: her Jeep or her house.

Her voice was shaky with fear, Burks said.

Burks spent the next 10 days searching for her friend, calling local, county and state officials without success. She tried the American Red Cross, FEMA, even private investigators.

"I didn't want her to wind up like the victims of Katrina, who were never found or identified," Burks said.

Ettenger's body was found Sept. 23, tossed on a debris field in a Chambers County marsh about 10 miles from her house.

Amid the muck and remnants of homes, Burks found a pink leather collar. The name Reba was spelled out in rhinestones.

_____

At 72, George Helmond had ridden out many storms and thought he could take on Ike, too, neighbor Don Hanson said. "A lot of old Galvestonians are like that."

Helmond had been one of the first residents of Sydnor Lane, which overlooks a bayou on one side and a golf course on the other. A retired electrician, Helmond was a die-hard fisherman, a dove hunter and straight-shooter intensely proud of his Galveston roots.

Around 10 a.m., Helmond called Hanson, who had already left, to say the water had already slipped over the road and toward his house. The street — the only way out of the neighborhood — was already impassable.

At 9:30 p.m., Helmond and Hanson talked for the last time. By then, the water had pummeled through Helmond's garage, crushing the doors and submerging his Cadillac. Hanson begged his friend to grab a life vest at his house or to seek shelter there.

But at 2:30 a.m., for reasons no one knows, Helmond got in his pickup truck and drove off at the height of Ike's fury.

Neighbors found Helmond's body the next day inside the truck, which had slammed into the white golf course fence. The windshield was shattered.

Helmond's home suffered little damage. The water had reached above the first-floor garage, but not inside the house.

"If he had stayed home and hadn't gone out, he'd be OK, but he panicked," said Hanson, 66. "Life goes on, but I will miss a good friend and I will think about him."

_____

Even as Ike bore down on Texas, Jim Devine refused to leave his cream-colored house within sight of the bay in San Leon. Devine had moved to the fishing town after retiring and loved the tranquil way of life there, neighbors said.

The 76-year-old Devine drowned when Ike sent water barreling through his house, picking him off the second-story porch and dropping him a block away. Days later, Devine's empty home still bore the scars of the storm — shattered windows, twisted wood, and his boat, the Seabar, jammed under the front steps.

His daughter left a warning and a memorial in orange spray paint: "Jim Devine. No Trespassing."

_____

Port Bolivar held special meaning for 79-year-old Marian Violet Arrambide. She met her husband there during World War II. Many years later, he built the beach house where they could retire.

Arrambide, a retired nurse suffering the onset of dementia, lived with her daughter, Magdalena Strickland, and nephew, Shane Williams, in that beach house before Ike struck.

All three have been missing since the morning of Sept. 12, just as Ike began to come ashore.

"My sister said 'I'm walking out the door in a hurry. Everything's taken care of, I'll see you in a few hours.' That was it," said son Raul Arrambide, describing a 6:15 a.m. phone call.

Since then, Arrambide has had little luck getting help or information. Instead, Arrambide said, he's been passed from one agency to another.

"They send you back and forth until you're worn out," said Arrambide, his voice showing the strain of the last weeks.

After five days with no word and no answers, Arrambide borrowed a boat to search the area himself, but sheriff's deputies turned people away. He finally found a local contractor who is helping search for missing residents. That man found his relatives' vehicles, which had been washed off the road into a tree grove.

"I want to keep the hope that they are still alive, but by not hearing from any of them, that hope is getting smaller and smaller," he said. "They helped people all their lives. They did not deserve to go this way."

Triple Bypass for Father's Day

On 10 June my birthfather, Chuck, went to the VA hospital to have his left arm looked at because it was hurting. He had also been having chest pains and his blood pressure was high. Over the past few days they were able to determine that he has clots and that he had a heart attack. Three chambers of his heart are blocked. The blockages are 100%, 95%, and 75% so they have scheduled a triple bypass surgery on Monday, 16 June, the day after Father's Day. My sister is currently on a tour with the Navy, but is scheduled to come home ASAP because of our dad's condition. Everyone please keep him in your thoughts.

19 March

Yes, I know I'm a few days late... but just had to say that I'm 28 now.

Things I did for my birthday:
Went to see Kevin Fowler at the Rodeo.
Went to see Big & Rich at the Rodeo.
Am going on a ghost tour of Old Town Spring tonight.
Had to work on my birthday even though I requested off and was given the day off D:

March...so far

Well, March started off pretty bad. I was at Club Eden for their Foam Party and around 1am on the first I got my toe nail ripped off and went to the ER so I could prevent it from getting infected. It really sucks. The owner of the club did say I have life time VIP into the club, which is nice lol. But I HAD to work the next day and for those of you who don't know, I'm a Manager at a deli and am on my feet the entire time, so of course my foot hurt when I left work. Luckily the relief manager was able to take Sunday so I didn't have to, but I still had to work Monday and Tuesday. What really sucked is that I had a note from the hospital saying I couldn't be on my foot for 3 days, but I had to work two of those days. I hate my job, that's why I'm getting another one.

But on a good note. One of my best friends just called me up and asked if I'd like a pair of tickets to go see one of my favorite country singers in concert at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo :) I'm so excited. I so wanted to go see Kevin, but I knew I couldn't afford it. It will be weird seeing him in concert then not really being able to hang out with him after the concert like I normally do. Maybe he'll be doing autographs before the concert and I will be able to meet up with him and get my hug or as Kevin says, his hug.

Oh, and my birthday is fast approaching...19 March

Starting 2008 sick

Well, the new year has come and gone. It was hardly noticed except for my friends and I going to Club Eden and drinking and dancing, but then it was back to work the next morning. I didn't care though. I made sure I enjoyed the night. I had been working three weeks with hardly any days off and dammit, I was going to have some fun. During the midnight balloon drop I managed to get two VIP tickets, a free Eden t-shirt, and a $25 bar tab. I was pretty damn happy.

Unfortunately, my new year has started out with me being sick. Everyone has been coming into work sick and one lady brings her baby in when she is sick, so it's no surprise really. Right now I just feel like falling over.

Oh, on a side note I have started learning sign language.