What I Did on My Winter Vacation

After being off for 12 days, getting back to work was super fun.

Most people were saying to me, "Oh, but aren't you glad to go back? I'd be bored out of my mind!"

Two words: Piss off!

I LOVED my vacation. I would've been happy to have another couple of weeks off. I pretty much got paid last week to play on the internet. I have a feeling I sort of looked like this:

I started a new blog on Tumblr in an attempt to stop irritating the fuck out of everyone with talk of Sherlock and Teh Cumberbatch. I've gained 80 followers in like...6 days. Took me almost 2 years to get 119 over here.

Apparently I've been writing for the wrong demographic. 17-year-old fangirls think I'm hilarious. So there.

(Oh, shut up...:P)

I've also done some fiction writing. I haven't done that in quite a few years, just sat down and wrote about something that didn't happen to me. It's nothing of any import, but I'm lovin' it. (I sound like a McDonald's commercial)

I had a rough few days there last week when my co-worker Hannah died, so all of these things were a nice escape. I still don't think I'm quite right about it all. I've still been sad a lot. For a lot of reasons.

So I am happy to be back at work where all my friends are. We spent the last couple of days laughing a lot. Well, I spent the last couple of days trying to make everyone laugh and succeeding. Yesterday morning I had all of my makeup cried off (from laughter) by 8am.

I think they missed me. It's nice to be missed.

It's also a good thing I'm back at work anyway, because I think I was starting to turn into a man. A filthy, lazy bachelor. If I could've grown a beard, I would've.

I kept forgetting to eat because I was on the internet so much (I really need to market 'The Internet Diet'...had my hands in so many tech cookie jars, that I didn't have any time to stick them into real ones).

Anyway, at one point I thought I had better tear myself away from the computer for some victuals or starve to death, and I found myself staring into sort of an empty fridge.

We did have a large bowl of cold roasted leftover potatoes and onions in there. I was too lazy to put them in the microwave, so I stood there in front of the fridge, eating cold potatoes out of this giant bowl with a fork. There may or may not have been cold gravy involved as well.

So yeah. Not much exercise got done last week. But with the forgetting to eat (and also the cultivation of a serious tea habit) I think everything got balanced out.

It's really died down at work, traffic-wise. Occasionally you can hear crickets if you listen closely.

Kind of nice not to be run off my feet the first two days back, but the days seem loooooooooong after what I was used to for the last few months. I shouldn't be surprised, it happens every year and I've been there for four years.

But, you know. I suppose it's like a having a baby. You go through a lot of pain, and then promptly forget how much pain you went through so that you can do it all over again next time.

I just compared bookselling to having babies. Wow.

Anyway, thought I'd give you an update on Kyna. You know, just in case you missed me. ;)

Sexual Innuendo Magnetic Poetry Monday

Warning: Serious Kyna Ahead

Went to a funeral last night for the first time in 10 years. Last one was my dad's in 2002.

A girl named Hannah that had been working with us at Barnes & Noble (usually I don't say the name of where I work, but since most every other bookstore is gone I might as well, right?) for the last few months died in a car wreck last Friday.

She was riding in the car with her boyrfriend late that night and they turned around at a really bad spot in the road (car accidents happen at this particular intersection all the time)  and the passenger side where she was located got plowed by another car. Her boyfriend lived and she died at the hospital she was taken to.

Extremely sad. The girl was only 21 years old.

Last Saturday, Chuck and I and a bunch of B&Ners went to a concert out in Atlantic Beach (I mentioned it a couple of posts ago).

While Chuckles and I were driving, there was a lull in conversation. I was silently looking out the window at the darkness, watching the beach houses go by. For no particular reason, I started wondering what would happen if one of us at B&N died. What if I died, actually.

Would the company send flowers? Would they close the store for the day? Would my co-workers show up for my funeral?

Yeah. Exactly. Why the fuck would I be thinking this? We were driving up to see a fun concert and hang out with friends. I guess it's just one of those uncontrollable things that brains do when they're bored.

Anyway, we get up to Atlantic Beach, and Chuckles and I stop to get a couple of subs to eat before the show.

I had to pee, and while I was in the bathroom my phone went off with a text alert in my bag hanging on the back of the stall door. The venue for the concert was in the same parking lot as the sub place, so I thought maybe one of my friends saw us drive in and wondered where the hell we were.

It was a text saying Hannah had been in a car accident the night before and had died.

Talk about a punch in the fucking gut.

I came out of the bathroom in total shock. I had just been thinking about the death thing on the way up there, and then I get this text?

Yeah, I know. Coincedence. Synchronicity. Or maybe I just felt something. I don't know. It all gets chalked up to 'freaky'.

I'm not going to pretend Hannah and I were best buds or anything. She hadn't worked at B&N for very long. If it had been one of the people I'd known there since the beginning, you'd be scraping me off the floor with a spatula right now. I'd be completely non-functional.

But Hannah was a sweet and lovely girl, and only 21...there one minute, and gone the next.

Do you know how relieved I am that I was nice to her the last time I saw her?

Last Wednesday (the night before my vacation started) she was my person for customer service and I was the manager for the evening.

Hannah had been having a very bad day and was not herself. Normally the girl was like sunshine personified...like a happy puppy (and I'm not saying this just because she's dead, she really was one of the most positive people I've ever met) but she was just so sad that night.

She asked me around 7:30 if I wouldn't mind her going home. Since it was pin-drop quiet (I normally would use the term 'dead', but in this case that's inappropriate) in the store that evening, I said sure and that I hoped she had a better night. And she died the day after that.

I'm so glad I didn't make her feel bad about asking me to leave or anything like that. Not that I'm a fucking doucheface all the time or anything, but at work sometimes we can all get under each other's skin and say things to each other that we don't mean when we irritate each other. I'm glad this wasn't one of those times, because I would've felt like an asshole forever.

B&N is my family. We all love each other like family. We get on each other's nerves like family. We fight with each other like family. We spend more time with each other than we do with our 'real' families.

Last night, pretty much everyone that didn't have to work (the store did indeed stay open through the funeral...I think maybe if she had worked there longer, there may have been other arrangements made) went to the service. B&Ners took up two whole rows of seating. I was proud of us.

There was an amazing amount of people there to pay their respects. We stood in line for about 30-40 minutes to file past the open casket to the seating area.

Poor Hannah did not look like herself. I know it's a cliché thing that people say when viewing a dead body, but she just didn't. The effects from the accident were very apparent.

I didn't think it would affect me that badly to see her. My heart started beating really fast. My knees and hands started getting all shaky and I started tearing up. She was just so fucking young.

And they were playing what I assume were some of her favourite songs while we were waiting for the rest of the people to file in. The girl loved classic rock, and apparently she had a huge vinyl record collection. We remarked to each other that a few of us would have to alter our iPod playlists. I can never listen to 'Break On Through' by The Doors or The Beatles' 'Yellow Submarine' again without thinking of Hannah lying there in that casket.

It's amazing how much you learn about a person at their funeral. Oh, I know it's all the good things about a person and never the bad, but that's ok. I think all of us deserve a time to have wonderful things said about us, that everyone can hear.

I don't think any of us at work knew just how talented she was. She loved music and art. They had quite a few pieces of it on display. She was very mischievous and fun-loving and what Southern people like to call 'wide open'.

Even though I wasn't close with her, I lost it twice. The first time was when they played 'Come Sail Away' by Styx in between eulogies. Jesus, I don't know why that one got me, but it did.

And the second time was while they were describing what kind of person she was. Independent, different, spirited, living life to the fullest, was always trying to make people happy...I felt like I could be sitting at my fucking funeral. That's what I imagine people might say about me. That took away the rest of my mascara...

We all had to hug it out in the parking lot afterwards.

I came home with no makeup and a headache. There's nothing like facing down your own mortality to give you a good one.

The day before the funeral, I also got a text saying that a good co-worker friend's sister had died on the way to the doctor that morning. Two death texts in one week. Jesus. I'm afraid to open my phone now.


Some good news though. The dude that was in the band that we went to see? Bennie? He became a father that very same day.

Two lives end and another one begins.

Yes, by all means, cue up 'The Circle of Life'...

I'm going to really need a new damn dress though. I wore the same dress to two weddings and a funeral in the past 6 months.

Two more weddings, and I'd have a Hugh Grant movie.

Anyway, I just had to get that all out. Writing really clears my head.

I know I'm not normally this serious, and I don't like bringing my readers down. But y'all are also my friends, so I figure you wouldn't mind a non-happy, nearly pictureless post once in awhile.

Sexual Innuendo Magnetic Poetry Monday

Take Me To Your Leader. Oh Yeah, Right. It's Me.

I've just created a Twitter account (yes, IG, I know. I know. You don't even have to say it.)

I now have a Twitter account (edit:@FreakyKyna, in case you're interested), a Facebook page, I'm running two blogs, I'm juggling a questionably massive Cumberobsession, and multiple people have roped me into playing Words with Friends on my Nook.

I have so many windows open on my computer and have my hands on so many mobile devices at the same time, that I feel like I'm at the helm of Mission Control at NASA.

Or as my friend Nick put it, "...like that god on The Simpsons who's deep underground working a load of computers... That exists doesn't it? I feel like it does. I hope I'm not imagining it..."

I feel like I've taken over the world.

True story, I actually shouldn't have even been born you know. After my older brother Kurt was born, my mum got herself fixed. And it didn't take.

And here I am! *waves*

So you see, I'm destined for greatness. Call it delusions of grandeur if you will. Haters gonna hate.

It's either take over the world from my desk chair, or my head explodes from having my hands in too many cookie jars. ('Cause 'cookie' works in tech puns, dontcha know?)

I'm putting my money on 'take over the world'.

I'd be an awesome world leader. Epic.


~You'd get to see my gorgeous face plastered all over town squares all over the world on giant propaganda banners. My glorious visage will warm the hearts (and the trousers) of all my countrymen. (I don't know if my countrywomen will be happy about it, but tough titty. I'll win them over by giving them all their own private diamond mines and chocolate factories. Just call me Wilhemena Wonka.)

~My worldwide televised addresses to the public would be entertaining, never boring. People will mark the dates on their calendars to watch me do impressions of Sean Connery or Christopher Walken every week. And to occasionally bestow such leaderly wisdom as 'Be excellent to each other.'

~There would be no war. How can anyone blow other people up whilst they're busy laughing so hard at the banter of their witty, visually stunning leader? They can't, it's impossible. My shining charisma saves lives, it doesn't end them. The only acceptable bombs in MY world will be F-bombs.

~My first order of business would be establishing bizarre paid global holidays. Finally, we'd all be properly compensated for 'Sit on Your Porch and Have a Beer Day' or 'Talk Like a Pirate Day'. (Arrrrrrrrrr! Cha-ching!)

~I haven't quite figured out how to eradicate famine as of yet, but I'm fucking brilliant so I'm sure I'll think of something.

Let us pray to the BlogGods for guidance.

Where Can I Find a Free Baby on Short Notice?

First day of a twelve day vacation.

Woo-hoo!

I don't know what to do first!

Ok, naked cartwheels, but what about after that??

Twelve whole, wonderful, sweet days off. Twelve days that I know will go all too quickly.

January might seem an odd time for anyone to go on vacation, but for me it's the most wonderful time of the year.

I started working for my company 4 years ago in February, and I have to take my vacation time before the end of January every year. The company is actually very generous with sick time, vacation and personal days allowed, but they don't roll over into the new year worked if you miss them.

I used some for my 30th birthday extravaganza last year, but still had quite a bit left over.

Also, almost two weeks off after the Christmas rush is over? My shattered feet are singing my praises right now.

If you put your ear to my heels, you can hear tiny hallelujahs. Like shells at the beach. But weirder.

(PS: Never type 'sore feet' into Google images, you'll get 'feet with sores'. Bleurgh.)

The other nice thing about my vacation is that Chuckles is finally back to work.

Sounds mean, but it isn't. Ok, maybe a little. He was involuntarily off for two and a half weeks until a couple of days ago. It always seems to be tough for drywallers around Christmas (Chuckles and I have had 8 Christmases together), no one is building much of anything for a few weeks.

But some houses are finally ready for Sheetrock. Finally. Thank the sweet baby Jesus in the manger.

I swear, Chuckles is never allowed to retire. He was so depressed by not working, it was driving us both batshit.

He was bored, angry, bored, worried about money, and bored. I had to call him Chuck for two weeks instead of Chuckles, because it just wasn't fitting.

But he's back to work now, conveniently on a house being built just down our street. He should be popping back home for lunch any minute now.

And of course, in Kyna-fashion, I'm starting off my vacation sick. I made it through the whole Christmas season at work without getting ill, and now it's finally happened. But at least I don't have to drag my sorry, sick arse into work.

So what to do first???

I think I'm going to allow a day of sitting-on-my-ass-doing-nothing time. Drink some orange juice. Blow my nose. You know. Sexy stuff.

Then maybe...

~Take down Christmas decorations
~Do some writing
~Clean the house
~Do Sherlocky things (The second season finale is next Sunday, and they'd better not kill him off. I'll be PISSED.)
~Go out for a night of live music...a co-worker of mine plays in a band called Valient Thorr (he's the beardless one in this picture) and they're playing at another co-worker's fundraising event this Saturday. They're actually sort of famous in Metal circles...I've heard a few people ask Bennie for his autograph while he's at work in the bookstore...very hilarious. I like to give him shit about it.

-Cook some real meals. Awesome meals. Chuckles bought me an enameled cast-iron dutch oven for Christmas, and I'd like to make a nice gumbo in it.
-Clean out my garden
-Have some more sit-on-my-ass-and-do-nothing days. Just because I can.

Oh, and I should probably make room for exercising.

Last night, the newsstand delivery guy at work asked me when I was 'due'.

I said, 'Nope. Not pregnant. Just fat.'  I think he felt bad, but maybe it's for the best. Men need to learn that they shouldn't congratulate women on their pregnancies unless the woman mentions first that she is currently pregnant, or unless they are watching a baby's head pop out of a woman's vagina.

I envy girls that gain weight in their asses instead of their stomachular areas. Not only is there a male fanclub for that sort of thing, but no one's assfat has ever been mistaken for a pregnant ass.

I joke, but it really hurt. It's not the first time in my life that it's happened, and every time it does, it takes me by surprise. And makes me cry a little. Just a little. I mean, there's just something in my eye, give me a minute...

So, guess who's gonna be scheduling time for the ol' exercise bike?

But not today. I've plan on doing a lot of nothing. If anyone congratulates me on my pregnancy before I start exercising, I'll tell them it's Benedict Cumberbatch's baby. Then I'll end up on the news. And then I'll be infamous. And then when the time comes to produce a Cumberbatchling, I'll have to steal a baby.

So you see? There will be plenty of work for me to do later.

For now?

Whole. Lotta. Fucking. Nothin'.

Sexual Innuendo Magnetic Poetry Monday

No Sheet, Sherlock

Someone got her grubby little North American hands on the new episode of BBC's 'Sherlock' that aired in England on Sunday.

If I wasn't obsessed before...

Well, I was of course. But now it's progressed into a full on '12-step program' type of problem.

If you haven't listened to me and watched 'Sherlock' yet, what the hell are you doing sitting here reading this blog post??

Fucking brilliant. This season's started off even better than the last.

Irene Adler is introduced, and she's a trip in this version.

Takes 'crafty bitch' to a whole new level.

Crafty naked bitch.

I've said it before, but it has to be said again. The writers on this program are genius. It's ridiculous.

They even found a clever way to get Sherlock into a deerstalker cap for a second.

Oh, and as you can guess from the title, I got to see a nearly-naked Cumberbatch. I can die happy.

Phwoar x 1000000000.

GO. WATCH IT.

NOW.

Edit: I decided to start my own Tumblr blog to feed my Ben-addiction. Please visit Cumberbitch Sandwich if you suffer from the same glorious affliction.