The Velvet Inquisition (original) (raw)

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out. (:

1. FIRST NAME:

Jennifer - I was named for the Donovan song Jennifer Juniper. Which, apparently, was playing while I was being "conceived". I came very close to being named Juniper, because my dad was a hippie and my mom grew up in the sixties. Fortunately, my mother decided to be different than all the other ex-hippies and gave me a normal name.

My online identity has been Velvetnc since...well...since the Internet basically. The "velvet" comes about because when I first picked my IRC username, I loved wearing velvet and Blue Velvet was (and still is) my favorite movie, and I don't remember what the "nc" stood for. One would think that it was because I live in North Carolina, however, I picked that username years before I decided to move out here.

2. AGE: 28, which isn't that old. However, I seem to be turning into my grandmother. I refuse to wear clothes that are too tight around my neck, and I find myself uttering phrases like "I just can't stand him."

3. LOCATION: Kannapolis, NC. Kannapolis is about 20 miles north of Charlotte and is considered part of the Charlotte Metro area. I absolutely LOVE living here. I'm 5 to 45 minutes from wherever I want to be. Grocery shopping and dining are right down the road. Work is only about 30 minutes away and Mom is close enough to be close, yet far enough away that she has to call before coming over. I moved to NC in 1999 from Northern California. People always ask if it was a culture shock. It was, but not in the way they think. I come from a very small, kind of backward, country town and going from that to a metropolitan area was a lot to get used to. Before moving here I had a lot of misconceptions about the South, but its way different than non-southerners think.

4. OCCUPATION: customer service rep/admin assistant.shipping clerk/scapegoat at United Promotions Inc. UPI is a high volume production photo lab for professional photographers and independent photographic business owners. We print everything from schools and daycares to sports to weddings. Occasionally one of the daycare photographers will throw a dirty picture in the middle of a job full of small children, like we aren't gonna see it. When this happens, all work stops for about half an hour while we all gawk at the picture and run around the building telling people they HAVE to go look at it. Keep this in mind folks, if you have someone take a professional dirty picture of you, there are 50 people in a lab somewhere laughing at you.

I do a lot of things in my job, I answer phones, I file invoices, I research problems to figure out if it was our fault or the customer's. I give lots of photography advice, even though I have never taken a professional photo. I do a lot of listening, because professional photographers tend to a) be full of bullshit, and b)not know when to shut the hell up. If they have a question, they can't simply ask it, they have to tell you when they thought of the question, what made them think of it, why they decided to call when they did, and so on. Sometimes I get lucky and they don't realize I'm not listening and I can totally zone out for awhile. Sometimes, I answer the question and they don't like the answer, so they ask the same question fifty different ways in the hopes that I'll change my answer. In addition to my customer service and clerical duties, I also work in the shipping department, I pack boxes, bill orders, invoice orders and sometimes I take boxes to the UPS hub when the regular driver comes too early.

5. PARTNER: Ryan and I have been together for 7 years and married for 4. Sometimes he's an idiot, but thats just cause he's a man, and they're all sometimes idiots. He's a super sweet guy (usually) and I totally love him. He never actually proposed, I don't think. We decided to get married one night when I got really drunk. I drank about a gallon of wine in less than an hour, and as you might guess, thats a bad idea. He had me bent over the arm of the couch and was going to town on me and I had to stop him because I was about to get sick. After several hours of me worshiping the commode, I was in bad shape. Mostly cause I missed the commode a lot and had puke all over me, it was all over my clothes, all in my hair, it had somehow got underneath my clothes. Ryan of course wanted to continue where we had left off, but I had to be cleaned up first. He kindly stood me up in the shower and hosed me off, which was no small feat as I was incapable of standing up on my own at the time. Since I was totally drunk, I was crying that he'd never want to see me again, and he said that he planned on marrying me in two years anyway. He probably thought that I wouldn't remember, considering the state I was in, but I did and he's stuck with me.

6. KIDS: Ohgodno. I'm sorry, I just don't care for kids that much. Some of them are cool, but mostly they're messy and they can't speak properly and they make that high-pitched squealy noise that makes your head vibrate. Besides, if I had kids, I'd have to, like, keep the house clean, all the time.

7. BROTHERS/SISTERS: I have two half-sisters that are a lot older than me. I don't associate with them because they don't associate with me unless they want something. Sometimes they'll be on Step 8 of their court-ordered 12-step program and they'll call me and ask me to forgive them. Then they call a couple weeks later wanting money or something, I just don't answer their calls anymore. I also have a step-sister, but she doesn't really contact any of us since my parents quit sending her money. Besides, she's with some guy that deals drugs and beats her, and she doesn't think she can do any better on her own.

8. PETS: Oh my babies!

Marley is our yellow lab. He's somewhere around 7 years old. He was named Marley two years before the book ever came out. He is my sweet baby boy. He's the perfect dog, he never does anything in the house (unless he just can't help it), he's really lazy and never ever barks. Sometimes he takes too long to find the perfect spot to poop in, but other than that he is the most loveable, cutest, smartest, bestest doggie in the whole world. Before we got him, he was hit by a car and his old owners didn't take him to the vet for two weeks. They maintain that he "hid his injuries" from them. Long story short, he has a fake hip. Sometimes on a cold morning, he's a little stiff, but once he gets moving around he's fine. Other than that you wouldn't know that he's had a hip replacement.

Padme (named after Darth Vader's wife in Star Wars) is about four years old. She was our first cat and boy did she teach us a few things. When we first got her, Ryan said we would only keep her for the weekend and if we couldn't find a home for her by Monday then we would have to take her to the Humane Society. She was such a itty bitty teeny thing. She only weighed half a pound and her ears were the same size they are now. That Sunday I caught him laying on the couch with her curled up on his belly and he was petting her and cooing "you're daddy's baby girl, yes you are." Padme is definitely an owner only cat, in fact, I think she merely tolerates us because we know how to open cans. She absolutely HATES other people. When we have friends or family over, she runs and hides and if someone manages to get within ten feet of her she growls and hisses and looks very scary. Her file at the vet has a big red stamp on it that says "CAUTION-AGGRESSIVE". She's also very overweight. Something happened after she got spayed, I think it was because my old vet made me wait too long. Anyways, she's supposed to weight around 8 pounds but she actually weighs around 15. She's has been on a very strict diet for two years now and hasn't lost any weight. But really, how do you go about making a cat exercise? She also pukes on my bed when she gets mad at me. She's definitely her daddy's girl.

Helo (named after Carl "Helo" Agathon in Battlestar Galactica) is my two year old male cat. He's solid black and is a total boy. He likes to knock things over just to hear the noise and he claws at walls to get our attention, he eats like a pig and he LOVES chicken. He's very affectionate with me, cause he loves his mommy. Daddy, he's not too sure about. He loves aggravating Padme and chasing the laser pointer. We acquired Helo from the same people we got Marley from. Helo was a mere .7 lbs when we got him and nothing by skin and bones, now he's a strapping 18 pounds but he's not overweight.

Ripley (named after the character in the Alien series) is around 3 and is the latest addition to the Guiney menagerie. She was a stray that slept under our car for several months before suckering me in. Compared to the other cats she's very small, about 7 pounds. She's very affectionate and talks to us by making little noises at the back of her throat. Her and Padme do NOT get along, but Helo is learning to tolerate her, as long as she doesn't interfere with his cuddle time.

9. LIST THE 3-5 BIGGEST THINGS GOING ON IN YOUR LIFE:

1 - Ryan's job is very uncertain. This is very scary because he makes 60% of our income, and without it, we could possibly lose our house, which would kind of suck. But all we can do is our best and soldier on. As long as we're together and we have our babies, nothing else matters.

2- Christmas dinner. We're having about 12 people to the house for Christmas and aside from figuring out where we're all gonna sit, I'm cooking a big turkey dinner.

10. PARENTS: My parents were divorced when I was 10. My mom married a great guy named Joe. I love my mom and stepdad. Once I became an adult and let go of some of the teen angst, our relationship has gotten very close. My dad married a woman that was, well, sort of psycho. She was very abusive towards me because she was jealous of the place I had in my father's life. Luckily, my dad got out of that marriage and is now married to a lady that he dated in high school. I haven't met her in person yet, but she seems really sweet and I can tell that my dad is much happier. I'm also glad that he has someone to take care of him, as he has a lot of heart problems.

11. WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS?: I'm not very good at making friends. I'm not shy, just incredibly awkward. But, there's my husband, of course. sadieko is my bestest friend from jr high and high school and everything that makes me weird, is all her fault and I am supremely grateful for it. There's Cliff, who is my husband's best friend and also one of mine, and Joy, who is Cliff's sister and the person that introduced me to Ryan. Joy and I went to college together and now all three of us work at the same company together, I'm sure we'll all end up in the same circle of hell together. Oh wait, we're already there! There's also Mark, who is Ryan's boss and a fellow geek.