Good news, everyone!

I was able to update my shipping address on most websites. Amazon now has my correct address.

My wishlist, should you care to buy me a birthday or Christmas gift, is http://tinyurl.com/ya7d7vd.

The new apartment's effect on my birthday

Given the hassles I had with my old apartment, my new apartment is FANTASTIC. I love having Ben as a roommate, the construction is all new and pretty, I have a nice peaceful little "lakelet" view from my patio, and I'm within stumbling distance of one of my favorite bars.

However, I also have an unforeseen difficulty. Since the complex is so new, most websites do not recognize the address as valid yet. The USPS recognizes it, but most websites use a verification database that updates periodically and doesn't have the latest information.

This presents a problem because, even if I can get a rep to manually change my address in an account on a given website, the address is likely to get challenged during checkout when purchasing anything requiring shipping. This is especially unfortunate right now, because it impedes people's ability to buy me birthday gifts from my wishlist.

There are a couple of workarounds I can propose for out-of-town folks who would like to send me something for my birthday this month:

• Send it to the address on file and hope the United States Post Office forwards it without hassle. Success rate in the last month has been 50% with a sample set of two packages. :(
  
• Come visit me!
• Buy something from my Kindle wishlist.
• Look through my regular wishlist, choose something you'd like to buy me, and send me a personal gift of funds via PayPal to jess%narcissica!com (you know what to do to make that a valid address). Make sure you put in the payment note that it's for my birthday, and tell me which item from my list I am supposed to buy for myself.
  
• Send me a personal payment via PayPal for something fun and not on my list. If you're sending me enough to cover an intended purpose, you can even earmark it for something specific by adding a note telling me what frivolous item I'm supposed to buy with it (e.g. "Get yourself a pedicure", "Have a pitcher of beer on me", "Go see The Devil Makes Three at the Slowdown on Friday", etc.)
• Send me money to put toward one of my car payments for the car I had to buy to replace Strongbad when he croaked a couple of weeks ago. It's like the gift of stress reduction!

Bear in mind, I'm not pressuring anyone to get me a gift. My love for my family and friends is not conditional on the receipt of presents. However, if I would otherwise have a gift coming to me, I'd rather remove any obstacle that could prevent it!

Please feel free to post other creative solutions in the comments!

<3 Jess

Seasonal

We are Autumn,
Our colors riotous,
Joyous, spectacular,
Tenacious...
Twitching, swirling, descending,
Beautiful while we lasted.

Year in review: my 37th on the planet

So, my birthday's coming up in a few weeks. Birthdays are really important to me. I'm one of the only adults I know who still spazzes out over the importance of birthdays. I make a big deal out of other people's birthdays, because I want people to make a big deal out of mine. It's My Day. I want presents, and cake, and booze, and celebration... and most of all, I want to be treated like a princess.

And after the year I've had, I think I've freakin' earned it, ya know? Let's take a look.

I started my 37th year in the midst of a cancer scare. After 20 years of remission from Hodgkin's Disease, I had mysterious spots on my liver that showed up on two different types of scans. It wasn't until after three months of tests and waiting and fretting had passed and I was prepped for my biopsy and the surgeon wanted to do another scan, that he looked at both scans and discovered they were in different places. We were, literally, jumping at shadows.

Then my love-of-my-life relationship with Thomas crumbled into pieces.

Then I totally blew my progress on my New Year's resolution to read 100 books. I totally had it in the bag until then. F'realz.

Then I strained a ligament in my knee.

Then my car died. (RIP, Strongbad. I miss you!)

Then I ended up back in debt after climbing out of it this year.

All right, so granted, there's a silver lining for each of the above. I mean...

I didn't have cancer.

After breaking up with Thomas I became far more social and made a metric shit ton of new friends.

I haven't had time to read because I got into Rockabilly and Swing Dancing, and also found an awesome group of people that I hang with every Wednesday night solely for the purpose of drinking and wearing costumes.

My knee healed hella fast.

My car... well no, that still just kinda sucks. I mean, I have a new used car now, but I am not feeling the love for it yet.

The debt... well, I guess I did get out of debt this year just in time to field the car crisis, right?

So, I guess I'd rate this year 3 out of 5 stars.

Jess