Filler

Word of the day:  fill-er (noun) Journalism: Material, considered of secondary importance, used to fill out a column or page.

You know those times when there's a lot of stuff going on but it feels like there's nothing going on?  I'm kind of there.  Stuff has been happening in my life, as stuff is wont to do, but nothing has felt significant enough to justify a blog post.  But it is enough for me to share some random snippets of the stuff of my life of late.

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I was vaccinated yesterday.  No H1N1 for me.  At least I hope not.  My arm hurts more than I'd really like it to.  It's the kind of dull achy pain that is just kind of there.  And, as I was putting on deodorant this morning, I couldn't lift my arm above my head.  It's pretty much isolated to my left bicep but it's still sore and it's still annoying.

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There were a whole whackload of layoffs at Rogers last week.  900 people across the country, in all divisions.  Mostly middle and upper management, which is actually pretty smart.  My boss was part of the cuts and, I must say, I'm not too upset about it.  No more being micro-managed!  Thing is, if you have people who do the day-to-day work and you have people who do the executive-y work and all these people can communicate, why do you need a middle man?  The biggest shock, though, was that the editor-in-chief of Chatelaine was let go.  Her I liked and her I will miss.  But the plan is to make big cuts now so there are no cuts in 2010, so hopefully that means I'm employed for another year, at least.

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I'm almost done my Christmas shopping.  I just need to pick up a couple more things for my brother and get a Secret Santa gift and I'm finito.  I'm pretty excited about this, actually.  Now I can concentrate on making wrapping paper out of old magazines.  I have an idea in my head of how to make it work but that doesn't mean it will work.  I will share, though, whether it is a success or a failure.  I've also got ideas for gift tags.  And I need to become acquainted with the awesomeness of Mod Podge (not for my Christmas craft, but for other crafty plans I have).

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My beau has the sweetest cat in the world. 

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I have Secret Santa coming up with my friends in a few weeks.  This time around, I wanted to up the ante with the gift-giving.  We already have some basic rules: $20 limit, buy for anyone, no booze.  So I suggested that each person buy a gift that starts with the letter of his/her's first name.  While this seemed like a brilliant idea when I suggested it, I've now discovered that gifts that start with J are not necessarily gifts that reflect my, erm, unique personality and ideals of gift-giving.  That said, I also haven't put a whole lot of effort into finding something.  Being the brilliant person I am, I'm sure I'll be able to come up with something awesome.

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Otherwise, my life is the mundane thing it generally seems to be and I'm pretty much okay with that.