Surfing Cures Boredom

So it's slow today at work. What should I do? Surf the web of course! So as I'm visiting my favorite sites, I figured there might be an interesting blog in this. Or at least an informative one.

So here you go...some of my favorite sites to go to when I need to kill some time or just want to be entertained. Check 'em out yourself the next time you're wandering around the web with nothing to do.

www.tshirthell.com - In the mood to buy a clever t-shirt? Feel like reading some hilarious tongue-in-cheek extremely anti-PC newsletters? This is the place for you! These guys are the geniouses who invented the "I'm what Willis was talkin' about" and "I bought Christopher Reeves's wheelchair on eBay" t-shirts. If I had the money, I'd be buying a t-shirt a day from them. While you're there, sign up for their free email newsletter. There's always a hilarious editorial. But my favorite part is the letters from customers and non-customers, usually bashing them. Warning: this site is not for people who lack a sense of humor or are standing on a high horse. :)

www.shocklines.com - The world's best web store for all things horror. Browse for books, art, t-shirts...if it's horror related, Shocklines has it. Not to mention the excellent message board where many of the authors hang out. There's always lively discussions, and not just about horror. A great place to just hang and read, a better place to meet people and just BS. It's also run by one of the sweetest and coolest guys on the planet, Matt Schwartz.

www.hailsaten.blogspot.com - No, I'm not into devil worship now. It's not what you think. This is the blog of horror author and friend, Brian Keene. It's a lot more interesting than mine. :) He's funny, honest (brutally at times), clever, and always entertaining. Lately, because of multiple deadlines (I wish I had that problem) he's also opened it up to guest editorials. There have a been a couple good ones already. And his blog gets way more political than mine. He's not a chicken like me. heh

www.illwillpress.com - Home of the infamous "Foamy" cartoons! This one is better enjoyed by those that have a high speed connection. The cartoons can take forever to load otherwise. This has got to be one of the best cartoons I have ever seen! It's right up there with Happy Tree Friends! It features Germaine the goth girl and her pet squirrel Foamy. If any of you reading this know horror author Geoff Cooper, then you know Foamy. I swear the artist was spying on Geoff in order to create this character. My favorite character, however, would be Pillz E the squirrel. He has mental problems and takes lots of medication. Sound like anyone we might know?

www.pogo.com - This one might only be free to use for AOL members...I'm not sure. I'm a paying member anyway because I'm so friggin addicted to this site. It has more games than I have time to mention and is a great way to de-stress. AOL members can play just about all the games that members can. Non AOL members might have to be paying customers, I'm not sure. But it's worth the money, in my opinion.

www.horrorfind.com - It's probably the largest horror search engine on the planet. But it also has a great fiction section...for free. :) I've killed tons of hours reading some great short horror fiction there.

Ok, so those are the sites I visit first when bored stiff. I hope you enjoy one or two of 'em. Time to get back to work!

Blogging In A Fog

If one word could describe how I feel right now it would be "blech." I've been sick since Monday night with whatever flu is going around. My fever finally broke yesterday afternoon. I'm still hacking my lungs up and struggling to breathe through a clogged nose. Not to mention that whole sickly fog I'm in. But I'm broke and called out sick from work three days in a row, so I had no choice but to come to work tonight.

I almost feel like I've been detoxing. The last few days are a blur. Sleeping, shivering, sweating... Brought back some memories that keep me in check to this day. So, since my life is an open book, I figured maybe I should tell you a bit about the "good old days." Maybe I can prevent some curious teen from making the same mistake I did. Maybe I can convince a current user to stop. But mostly, I have nothing better to do and it's been awhile since I've thought about all this.

Picture it, Chatham, 1992. I was 15...a freshman in high school. My best friend and I had been smoking pot and snorting coke for almost a year. It got to the point where we needed it daily. We'd sneak into the girls' bathroom downstairs by the art room (it wasn't used very often) to do a few lines between classes. When we ran out, we'd buy more. When we ran out of money, we'd steal from our parents. When our parents ran out of money, we relied on our girlish charms to get some freebies from the guys we knew. Sometimes we dated the dealers. Bottom line, we got our drugs...period. The drugs came first, always.

We'd skip school, hitch a ride with the dealers down to Newark. We'd sneak out of the house on school nights to get lit with the gang down in Morristown's "hollow." We didn't care where we were or who we were with, as long as we were high. We were flunking out of school, our parents were ready to wash their hands of us, our other friends had had enough and left us long before. None of that mattered. We were getting sickeningly skinny. I was 5'3" and weighed a grand total of 93 pounds soaking wet. Our noses constantly bled, our skin was pale, we had dark circles around our eyes at all times. We didn't sleep much at all. No amount of makeup could cover up how hagard we looked. At one point I could put my finger on the outside of my upper nose and push straight through to the other side. I had burned a hole right through my cartilidge.

Now my best friend at the time was, how can you say, active with the boys. This fact really pissed off her boyfriend, who in retaliation, turned her in to her parents. I can't understand how neither of our parents figured out what we were up to until then. Maybe they were in denial. Anyhoo, her parents brought her straight to the hospital for a drug test and called my parents. Their theory was that if one was using, the other must be. So when my friend called me to tell me she was at the hospital awaiting a bed in their drug rehab unit, I rushed down to say goodbye to her. I knew she'd be away for awhile. What I didn't expect is for my parents to tell me I was getting tested too.

So I told them not to bother, I knew what the results would be. I admitted using and the doctors decided that I needed to be admitted into a 28 day program. So I was sent to St. Claire's in Boonton. Little Miss Tough Girl was terrified. The ward was co-ed and housed some bad-ass junkies. But that was the least of my worries. I woke up the next day, must have been more than 24 hours since my last bump, and I felt awful. We went on a morning walk around the hospital every day, and that day I didn't make it halfway around before I started vomitting. And that was my life for the next three days.

I didn't move from my bathroom floor. I would throw up, curl into a ball, sweat, then shiver, moan and groan in pain, pass out, wake up and do it all over again. It felt like my bones were shattering and it even hurt to touch my skin. I was hystercal, I don't even know what I babbled about. The other kids would wander in and just look at me. Occasionally one of the counselors would come in, wipe my face, and tell me that this was the easy part, and it would be over soon.

On the fourth day I was exhausted. I looked like a zombie, but I was able to get up off the bathroom floor and get into bed. I begged to call my parents and they finally let me. I cried to them and told them how sorry I was. I pleaded for them to let me come home. They held their ground.

I spent 28 days there. I learned how to live a sober life, the 12 steps and all that. You'd think that would have been that. But I wasn't out a week before I went back to smoking pot. And eventually I moved on to heroin. It wasn't until I became pregnant with my daughter that I decided to give it all up for good. And because of her I've never looked back.

Anyway, I feel today like I felt on that 4th day at St. Claire's. I never wanted to feel this way again. At least this time it wasn't caused by slowly killing myself.

There are so many stories I could tell you from "the good old days" but I haven't the time tonight. It's time to close up the bank. So goodnight all. Until next time...

Need To Kill 15 Minutes

I've been working without a day off since last Monday. I won't be getting a day off until some time next week...probably Wednesday. That'll be 16 days. I could definitely use the money, but I'm already pooped.

Anyhoo, so we start getting ready to close up shop here in about 15 minutes, so I thought I'd pass the time by blogging. I wish I had something really interesting or deep to say. I wish I had something funny to say. I don't really have much to say...as per usual.

I couldn't sleep last night for some reason, so I stayed up playing The Sims until about 12:45 am. That game is SO friggin addicting! Then I got ready for bed but still couldn't sleep. I was going to read, but something caught my eye. Sticking out from under my bed was my journal. I hadn't written in it in over a year and a half. I've always kept a journal, since I could write. I'm not sure why I went so long without it. True that this blog can be considered a journal, but there are so many things I just can't say in a public forum. Hell, there are things I can't say in a private journal either, but that's another post.

So I read through the old journal entries and realized how so much can change in a year and a half...but so much can stay the same. I have a son now, a new job, new friends, etc. But the things I bitched about are pretty close to what I bitch about now. Sure there are new problems, but they stem from the old ones. It was interesting reading, that's for sure.

Anyhoo, I wrote a new entry and hopefully I'll continue to do so. Blogging definitely helps me clear my head, but when I'm really down and out journalling is my saving grace.

Ok, time to close up shop. Sorry this wasn't very entertaining. Maybe next time...