Sort of, anyway.
One of the things that my mom told me the first time I got married was that one of the things that she always regretted was spending every bit of vacation time she had going to see family, especially once she and my stepdad moved us all out to Utah. We went camping (and Utah's a gorgeous place for that!), but we never travelled anywhere that wasn't with a specific family destination in mind. North Carolina for his parents and her mom, Canada for her side of the family. Every once in awhile, we got to see something new--my stepdad's parents wanted to go to Las Vegas once, and we went up to Yellowstone, but when my schoolmates were taking trips to New York, to Hawaii, to Europe, it sort of seemed small potatoes by comparison.
I'm 31 years old, and I have been to Canada only a couple of times--mostly to British Columbia, though I went to Toronto once. I've never been off this continent--so, no, I haven't been to Hawaii. Yet. Eventually, once we finally get our honeymoon, I think that's where we're going. I've never been to Mexico. I don't have a passport.
So...yeah. I really took what my mom said to heart, and Brett and I started seriously talking about that a week or two ago. I love my family, I love his family (and believe me when I tell you, it's such a relief to have such a good relationship with my in-laws--I just hope he feels the same way about my family, though I think he does), and while we'll still go to Seattle and Boston, which are both very worthwhile places to go, we want to broaden our horizons a little bit, too. I've already started making a list in my head, and am actually going to write it down one of these days.
The great thing about it is that it can still involve family--and friends, of course. Imagine--we tell my folks and his that we're going to, say, New Orleans for a week, and we'd love to have them meet us there. Or if we say to our friends, hey, we're going to Orlando for a week (and going to take a trip to Boca to see Vicki!), who's interested? Not only do we get time with loved ones, but we also get to go to new places, to see something new, and the great part is that it doesn't have to be everyone doing the same things at the same time, either. If there's something everyone's interested in, sure, but that's the point of rental cars and public transit--to be able to do one's own thing.
I'm really excited about this, whether or not people ever end up going with us. I have to admit, too, I'm not really sure whether I've expressed my thoughts on it very well, either. Even though I'm not talking about any sort of immediate plan, it's still exciting enough for me that I'm probably not very coherent.
Or it could just be the 5am shift talking. Or the hour and a half I spent on the phone between starting this entry and finally being able to finish it.
Shut up. :)
So, anyway. Leaving aside this Grand Plan above, I do have a question for anyone who's reading. Where's the one place in the world that you most want to visit?
(And yeah, if you're interested in the group vacation thing, stay tuned. I'll end up more coherent about that at some point. No, really.)
About half hour into the pilot for Dead Like Me, and oh my god, this show is twisted! I like it, but it's twisted!
"I want my life back!"
"But you weren't doing anything with it."
Heh!
Surprisingly, yesterday was not really a bad day, all things considered. Forcing myself to get up earlier than I really wanted on Sunday so that I'd be ready to sleep earlier in the evening was a good idea. Even though I didn't sleep terribly well, I still got up on time and got myself into work...and was just fine until about 9:30, when I was ready to go back to bed again. It'll take a few weeks, but I'm sure that I'll adjust to the new schedule.
Yesterday was the first day of the quarter for me, as well--I'm taking a public speaking class, mostly because I can, really. :) It fulfills a general education requirement, and anything that helps me get over the nerves I deal with when speaking to new people or in front of groups is a good thing. Then again, given the way the course runs, it may be that I'm a well-prepared nervous wreck, but still. We have to give six speeches over the course of the quarter, and I'm considering at least one hot-button topic, just to see whether I can cover the subject matter in a coherent matter. We'll see. The icky thing is that the instructor is going to tape us as we speak a couple of times during the quarter. Ew.
Oh, and the instructor guy (Alex, not Mr. Kramer, definitely not Professor Kramer!) sounds like Kermit the Frog, I swear. He split us up into groups of five as a 'getting to know you' kind of thing, and when I voiced this opinion to the group, two of the four of them agreed with me, and the other two gave me this blank 'I have no idea what you're talking about' look. Heh. I'm one of the oldest in the class, and was the oldest in 'my' group by about six years, but at least no one asked me what the Muppets were. I might've had to walk out then and there.
When Brett came home, he brought the mail up with him, and in addition to my payment booklet for my University of Phoenix student loans (heh, yeah, I have to make ten payments or something silly like that), there was a letter from one of the soldiers that we sent a package off to. He's from El Monte, California, and is in his early twenties, was extremely happy with the package that we sent, and kept on saying 'thank you' in his letter. It's the least we can do, we figure, but it was really cool to get a letter back--I have to think that he's writing back to everyone who sends him something, too. Knowing the volume of people who reply to the Books For Soldiers posts, that'd be quite the task. Regardless, it was great to get the letter, and that feeling of knowing you've made someone else happy is a damn good thing.
And now...I am back off to work. The sun should start to come up soon, I'll be able to watch as the sky starts to get lighter. That's the best part of the day for me, weird as that might sound--who knew I'd enjoy the sunrises so much. Guess I'm not the ultimate night person after all, not anymore.
You know, my job may drive me absolutely bug fuck insane, but at least I know that I'm helping people out at the end of the day. It may take awhile sometimes, but at least I know that my customers listen to what I have to say (eventually, in some cases) when all is said and done.
The docs guys, though...I feel for them. And for me, in some respects--my job would be a lot easier if people read the documentation, but they don't, and that's why I figure it'd suck to be in tech pubs. What's the point of writing a good, understandable document about a very complex product if you know going in that no one's going to read it and they're all going to call support anyway?
And what brought this on, you might ask? Someone asked me today how to enable SSL on their server. Which, well, if you look in the index at the back of the book, and look under S for SSL, hey, look, there it is! How hard was that?
Gah. :)
...but I've officially been sucked into City of Heroes, and it didn't even take very long. I mentioned to Brett at dinner on Friday that I'd been considering it, and that night, we went out to a Game Spot that's connected to a Barnes and Noble (because we knew it'd be open late), and poof, I was the owner of a shiny new copy.
I very quickly found that my poor computer is extremely low on RAM--it meets the minimum requirement, but good GOD, it can be so slow. I find it amusing, too--is this the reason I've never been able to run Neverwinter Nights since my old computer crashed and I got the Dell? My magic blaster (fire/energy) got up a few levels on Friday night, thanks to Brett, and it really is rather entertaining. Better than Everquest, in my opinion. Slicker, more user friendly, and the whole costume customization thing is amazing. I don't know the number of combinations, but it's entirely possible that you'll never run across anyone who looks exactly the same way you do, which is not the case in EQ. The skillset is fun--yay for ranged and area of effect attacks, plus a nasty punch if someone gets too close. Fun. :)
After a night of dealing with the slow computer, I figured that it'd be nice to get a memory upgrade, so I dutifully went to the Dell website to figure out what kind of memory I could use in my PC. Well, long story short, as it turns out, we can't use a 1 GB DIMM, which is what we both bought. Doh. So today, there'll be a return trip to Fry's to exchange the 1 GB for two 512 MB (for me, only one for Brett).
Naturally, though, I wasn't happy with just finding memory, I also ended up buying a new desk, which meant that I had to clean up the quarter of the room where my desk is at, and my god, I have a lot of shit. I mean, seriously. Just a lot of shit. Right now, there are several neat (and several not so neat) stacks around the room that I'll need to clean up. Maybe this would be a good time to get rid of some of this crap. The only bad thing about the new desk is that I don't have cubbies anymore--it's a glass corner desk very similar to what Brett has, but a little smaller--which turns out to be a good thing. The bigger one might not have fit so well in here.
So yeah. Sucked in by City of Heroes. I'm going to have to start allocating time to both MUSH and to game, not to mention school....oh yeah. Did I mention that I was starting classes at DeAnza again, this time on September 20th? It means I'll be on the 5am to 2pm shift, but hey, it improves my options, as far as class availability goes, and that's a good thing. Public speaking will be my first class--hopefully, next quarter, I'll be able to take the history class that I've really been wanting.
And that's about it. What's new with all of you?
So, on the recommendation of several of my friends, we've been watching this new Denis Leary show on FX, Rescue Me--everyone I know has been pretty well raving about it. I've really enjoyed it, too, but have always had this vaguely weird feeling about the whole thing. Today, I finally put my finger on it--Brett had it right when it seems like the whole thing is very much...well. Here, let's introduce these characters, get you to like them, then we are going to fuck with them in ways that you can't even imagine.
I really like the show, it's very well done, and I'll probably continue to watch it, but...wow. It's getting harder to do so every week, the uncomfortable factor rises with every episode. It's alway been really hard for me to watch stuff like Mr. Bean and the like--embarrassment humor, that kind of thing. Ow. Makes my stomach hurt to watch it sometimes, and I'm getting the same feeling from Rescue Me lately. Ow.
All I can do is just hope that it gets better. Eee. :)
Wow, I've...really neglected the blog lately. I've neglected pretty much everything that deals with meaningful writing, come to think of it, which is really not something that I wanted to do, but it's turned out that way anyway. Part of it, I think, is the fact that a lot of my time in front of a computer is at work, and while I know it's possible to multi-task and all that, I still feel a little bit guilty about it, regardless. And when I get home, it's just the last thing on my mind.
So...yeah. A little bit there about why I haven't really written lately, I guess.
A few random thoughts for today:
- I do have stuff I want to write, it's just a matter of getting to it. Old ideas are starting to resurface again, and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I've thought about doing Nano again, but I don't think that's a good idea, either.
- Why is it that checkbooks only have a couple of deposit slips in them? Why can't we just get a whole book full of deposit slips? Or is that just me? I'd think that they'd be used to people making deposits at ATMs now and help us all out.
- Drive safely, Chris and Melissa, who are starting off to Texas today, if I remember right.
- Today I send off my second package to someone in the service who made a request on the Books For Soldiers site. I have yet to actually send a *book*. I've sent several cards, and yesterday sent magazines and candy to Afghanistan. Today's DVDs for someone in Iraq. But seriously, if you have extra books or DVDs lying around the house, or if you don't mind sending a quick postcard to someone overseas, check it out. I know they really appreciate the support they get from back home.
- As a follow-up to that last comment, some people at the post office are complete tards. Yesterday, there was a line some 30-40 people long, with two windows open, and a cluster of six people who usually man counters standing around some new automated machine thing. Bah, I say! And hello, I'd think that people who work at the post office would be used to APO/FPO mail, but I guess not. I got a ton of crap from the guy behind the counter because my package didn't have a rank on it anywhere...except that, sending stuff to Afghanistan, it's not supposed to. Oy!
- We're going down to Pismo Beach for a couple of days this weekend for our anniversary. It's really hard to believe that it's already been a year.
- Boo that Team Canada scratched both the Sharks that are playing for them in last night's game against the US, but maybe that's because the US head coach is *their* head coach. But yay for Marco Sturm, who is Team Germany's captain. That rules.
- Oh, and we're going to Vegas for a few days in November, and I * think* we're making plans to go to Dragon*Con next year.
- Good thoughts to my friends in Florida, here's hoping that Frances goes elsewhere.
- Genealogy is turning out to be a new and interesting thing to spend time at. This is the one time I might wish that the names in my family weren't so common, though. I mean, *you* try looking for a Patrick Maher in Ireland, or a James Williams...well...anywhere!
And...that's it for now. I promise to try to write more from now on. Really!