(Note: A lot of drivel, not a lot of real content.)
* Woke up at 4am, couldn't get back to sleep, shuffled in to surf the web a bit. CNN's front page screamed BLASTS ROCK LONDON at me. I know all my UK colleagues are safe, as they're 40 miles outside of the city and no one went there today. I hope the same for my friends.
* I still hate packing a whole lot, but at least I feel like we're making some kind of progress. Maybe.
* Very excited about this weekend's trip, for all that it is taking away from valuable packing time. I got my dress last night, it fits perfectly, and looks lovely.
* Good on Tim Brown for wanting to retire a Raider. I'm happy to see that.
* I now think that the NHL and NHLPA are having fun teasing us.
* Last night, I stopped in to get my hair trimmed, because I love this cut, and the hairdresser I got was also at the Journey concert over the weekend. That's the first time I've ever had any sustained conversation with a stylist.
* It is mood swing city around here for me. I've noticed I'm not the only one, either. I feel very strange by saying this, but I sincerely hope that PMS is my problem. What is it about this year? Things were going well for awhile, now it seems that the celestial pie in the sky has decided that we all need faces full of banana cream or something.
* Go Lance. That is all.
* When I open a bug against the 9.3 version, for a client who is running 9.3, and confirm that it's also a problem for 9.4--but *only* in house...why is it okay to create a patch for 9.4 but not 9.3, which the client actually needs?
* Some people are so dumb that it makes me want to cry.
I got much more sleep last night than I did the night before, but even so, my brain has been slow all day long, and the smallest things have given me the giggles.
- "He hasn't even had his day in court yet, but Simon Wynne has been kicked off the ESU basketball team after being arrested and accused of driving a parked car while intoxicated." -- excerpt from a newspaper article. (My daily calendar funny.)
- Random thought: It amuses me far more than it should, and there's something so very wrong with this, but...given that the American Idol winner this year was a girl, am I the only one who thinks there's something just WRONG with the fact that the summer tour is being sponsored by POP TARTS?
Also, fun stuff of the day: CNN has a link to some of the Live 8 performances, and wow, I hadn't realized how many people were involved. Impressive.
Just as well that the promise I made to myself to try and update every day was just to myself.
With all the fanfic that I've been reading lately, I have started to get an itch to write some of my own--not necessarily fanfic, but just about anything. I have a couple of really good (I think) story ideas, but I'm having trouble translating that to paper...or word processor...or whatever. Add to that the fact that we're so busy in July, and though I really *want* to write, it's hard to find the time and energy.
My body has insisted that it's time to get up at 5am every day this week. I don't get it. Not only that, but all week long, I would swear that it's a day later than it actually is. My brain and my body are messing with me. Not only that, but AUGH, oh my god, could the days go ANY SLOWER?
I'm trying to find a Hawaiian shirt for my mom's wedding, but have also thought that it might be cute to find a dress, but that is turning out to be more difficult. I...no. I don't know why I want a dress, really. I just don't. But I think I found something that will be cute and fun.
I hate packing to move. That is all.
Moving sucks. Moving sucks a lot.
But.
It's also official--we *are* moving, signed the lease yesterday, and the place we're moving into is quite lovely, an independently owned townhouse. No more apartment living, woohoo! Three floors, a nice little courtyard out front, and just a ton of space. I just can't say enough good things about it. The only drawback is that the two non-master bedrooms are pretty small, but there are ways to work around that.
Even better, not only is the place just the coolest thing ever, the owners are also positively wonderful. They're both very nice, and the current tenants had a lot of good things to say about them when we went to take a look.
So, while the packing and moving aspects are just SO not fun, I am so excited to be moving into a lovely new space.
Dad: 'Maybe they should have looked in the trunk'
My heart breaks for the three families in New Jersey who lost their sons. Really. I can't even imagine what they must be going through.
But I don't understand this.
The father of one of the boys wonders why police didn't check the trunk of the car that was right near where the boys were playing. "That was the first place to look," he says.
Here's my question.
Your boys are missing. They were playing in the yard right next to the car. Why didn't *you* look? Why wasn't that somewhere the *parents* checked straight away? Why is it the responsibility of the police officers to do that?
Why blame the NJ police for something that, I would imagine, they figured had already been done before the boys were reported missing?
I don't understand.
Man, today is a bad day. I keep trying to focus my energy somewhere else, to try and make the bad mood go away, something, *anything* to get some kind of positive energy going, but someone out there is giving me the colossal cosmic finger, so I get none. It sucks. It's beautiful outside, nice and warm with a lovely breeze, and I am stuck inside having to deal with work, and people are being idiots, and arrrgh.
And I have to go to class tonight, too, when all I want is to go home and go to bed and just sleep until the crappy mood goes away.
Alas.
Sometimes the world of being an adult and living up to those commitments and responsibilities really sucks. A lot.
I should have remembered that, for me, non-drowsy and pseudoephedrine are mutually exclusive concepts, no matter what the cold medicine packaging claims. Especially after only eight or nine hours of sleep over two days.
This ought to be an entertaining day--at work while trying to hang on to some thin scrap of wakefulness.
Wish me luck.
How you turn my world you precious thing
I'm not sure what it is lately, maybe it's hormones, maybe it's the upcoming masquerade (eeee, I ordered my dress and got my wings, now I just need to find a mask!), maybe it's rediscovering a fandom that I loved and have sorely missed, I don't know, but I am seriously obsessed with Labyrinth these days.
I ought to watch the movie again, just to get it out of my head, but I'm not sure that will help. Listening to the soundtrack certainly hasn't.
Nor has reading fanfic--and...well, maybe this little facet of my personality isn't so well known as I thought, so I won't preface this with 'anyone who knows me very well,' and will simply say this: I have Issues with fanfic, so the fact that I'm reading any at all is strange in and of itself.
Why issues with fanfic?
Well, one reason really depends on the genre--I had to stop reading Harry Potter fanfic because I was starting to get the book canon vs the fanfic canon all messed up. If the writer isn't finished with the series, there's a big hazard that I'll get the worlds mixed up, and...yeah. I've tried very hard to stay away from HP fanfic, though for anyone who's interested in a Severus Snape mentors Harry kind of thing, I strongly recommend Aspen in the Sunlight's 'A Year Like None Other,' which is on skyehawke (archive.skyehawke.com, click on Popular Stories, hers is right at the top). But that one fic aside, I don't read HP stuff anymore--I can't. LotR is somewhat safer, as is Labyrinth, since the stories are finished, but...
The other problem I have with fanfic is that oh so much of it is written by either 15 year old girls who have no idea what life is really like, people who want to insert themselves into the story so make horrible Mary Sue-ish original characters, or people who have no command of the English language and refuse to get a beta reader so instead force their reader to try and figure out just what the fuck they're talking about because they don't know how to format dialogue and can't spell worth a damn and...arrrg. Yes, I am a self-admitted grammar nazi. Yes, I know I am not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but if your summary is full of AOL or l33t speak, or if you misspell names of the main characters, or forget that there are supposed to be spaces after punctuation marks, well, sorry. I won't read your stuff.
ANYway. So, I've been reading a lot of Labyrinth fanfic lately--all Jareth/Sarah, of course--and have had to wade through a ton of CRAP to find a few of the jewels that I have, and none of this has helped me solve the obsession. Hell, maybe it's caused it, for all that I know. But if anyone's interested, I can make some recommendations.
But I'll be there for you,
As the world falls down
This entry is pretty much devoid of any real content.
I'm amused, though. Last quarter when I registered for classes, my registration date was they absolute last day possible for returning students. My summer registration date, if I choose to take classes for the quarter, is three days earlier this time.
I guess I'm moving up in the world.
See? I told you it was devoid of real content.
I haven't written much recently, since the events of April 13th are still sort of burned into my head. I'm a lot better now than I was then, but there are still days when it creeps up on me without any sort of notice.
On one hand, I feel like an idiot--I didn't know the guy, I didn't witness the accident, so I'm kind of baffled that it still has a hold on me and my daily life.
On the other hand, that's not the kind of thing you see ever day, and not the kind of thing that you can just shrug and forget about.
Either way, that's been part of the cause behind why I haven't written all that much. I'm also up to my ears in dealing with classes--for all that most of the work in the English class was supposed to be *in* class, that hasn't turned out to be the case.
Today, though, I felt compelled to write, because in remembering what a friend of mine wrote not long ago, I had a good experience at lunch today.
When I walked into the Subway, the guy behind the counter looked like I feel at my job--bored, tired, ready to go home, not really caring about what was going on in front of him. I smiled at him anyway, and I think it startled him a bit, but he smiled back. I kept on all throughout the time when he was fixing my sandwich, and when he passed me off to the cashier, he wished me a good day and went on to help the next customer--all with a smile on his face.
As for me, I walked out feeling a lot better than I felt when I walked in.
Now if I could just *keep* that smile going, I'd be in business.
It's amazing to me just how quickly a good mood can evaporate when it's already tenuous.
I have been in a pissy mood since yesterday--day three of the headache from hell (now on day four!) was not helping, and other stuff conspired to just make me really angry and upset and frustrated with the world in general. No Wombat and dinner with Brett last night helped, but it carried over into this morning, when I woke up just cranky.
It started to turn around as I was headed out to my car. There's a guy on our floor who has a lovely black lab/retriever mix, and the guy is nice, but the dog is just incredibly friendly and always happy to see you if she knows who you are. They got off the elevator, she stopped by my feet with her tail wagging like mad, he smiled at me and wished me a good morning, and that really lifted my mood in a huge way.
It even carried over into the commute, which is unusual--most often, the dickhead drivers out here leave me frothing about some stupid thing or another by the time I get to work. But this time, that didn't happen, and I was really strangely encouraged by that.
And then, I got to work.
All it took was two emails, one from a developer and one from a client, to suck every last vestige of a good mood out of me and shoot it into outer space. Sigh. It sucks that it happens so quickly.
Good god. Now, with apologies to my friends in Europe, because I know that you guys also pay a metric assload for gas, but seriously. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
Today, I filled up my 16-gallon gas tank, and paid over $40 to do it. Brett paid almost $50 the other day while we were out for dinner. I was appalled the first time I paid over $30, then over $35, now I'm just kind of outraged--especially since the price of oil has fallen over the past couple of days, but the price of gas has not.
My commute is already only three miles, and I can go weeks without filling up, so I guess maybe I shouldn't bitch much, but still. It's seriously bend over and grab your ankles time.
One of the places that we're looking to move to within the next few months is within walking distance of my office. That will be sweet, then I'll barely use my car at all, heh. I've already had it for more than two years and haven't even broken 19,000 miles.
It's just lots and lots of suck.
I really ought to make a school sub-category, rather than filing it all under the general 'babble' category. Then, I could tag entries appropriately, and anyone who doesn't want to read about my college foo wouldn't have to.
But yes, intrepid freshman went back last night for second day of classes, and of course, this is when the real work started. Geography was interesting, we went over the basics of the study, got some numbers on how big the earth is, talked about the tropics and the poles, and...realized that our teacher is a bit of a fruit bat. She's funny, she's engaging, but she's also kind of pleasantly batty.
English, now...in the first class meeting, the Good Doc told us that we'd do a majority of our work in class. Those who felt they wanted to 'get ahead' by doing the reading and answering some of the study guide questions could do so, but it wasn't a requirement. And yet last night, she asked who had their speech and their ad--things we were supposed to look up during lab time that we haven't had yet.
I'm beginning to think that when she says that she's passing things out for those of who want to 'get ahead,' we should *all* be doing the work to 'get ahead.' So...it's not really homework, but it is, especially since 5 or 10 percent of our grade is a 'teacher subjective' thing, where she looks at our behavior, our class participation, and grades us accordingly. Doing work ahead of time falls under that teacher subjective thing, I'm quite sure, and it's going to be a *lot* of work.
By the same token, it's also very thought provoking and very interesting, so while I will have to bust my ass this quarter, it'll be worth it. I hope. If she doesn't send me off to the loony bin as a gibbering mess.
In other news...
It's been raining today, and very weird. Goes from dribbling to coming straight down in sheets, to blowing to the left, then blowing to the right...it's quite freaky. There's a break in the clouds right now, but it's probably another sucker hole, since I can see more grey to the west.
I am ready for summer. Or, at least, ready for warmer mornings where I don't freeze during my brief walk to the car because it's cold out and my hair's wet.
We'll be having visitors soon--I turned up with extra tickets to Jimmy Buffett, so some friends of ours are going to come down and go to the concert with us. Yay, JB next Saturday!
Work drives me nuts. Whiny people drive me nuts. Nothing is new there.
I'm also baffled by people who continue to ask for help with something, even though I've told them that I either know nothing about what they're asking for help with, or have told them that I won't answer their questions because they don't *need* help if only they'd expend a little bit of effort.
There's a gem show this weekend, but I'm not sure I'm going to go. Money's part of the issue, but I also think that I really need to start cleaning the apartment, and start in on packing. We're not even sure when we're moving yet, or where, just that we are, but...it would save time and frustration later if the non-essential stuff started now.
And...it's FRIDAY!
...is dominatrix, does that mean that the feminine of procrastinator is procrastinatrix?
It's utterly nonsensical, I have no idea why I was thinking about that this morning, and definitely no idea why I even mentioned it now, except that it's still kicking around in my brain. Y'all knew already that I was warped.
- School stuff
My first night of classes was last night, we'll see how it goes. It'll be interesting to be on campus until 10:30 every night, but this quarter, I have two professors who both seem to be very engaging and very interesting, so that's good.
The English writing class is all about (re)learning the lost art of argumentative/persuasive writing, which is something that really interests me. If last night is any indication, her teaching methods will make things a lot of fun, and will take something of a different approach. Some of the people on Rate My Professors have rated her poorly because she uses chakras to teach--this explains the colored markers/highlighters she asked us to get as part of our supply list.
- I cause controversy
One of the things that we have to do in class is to give a researched persuasive speech as part of our final grade. In order to prepare us for this, she had us right down three or four things we were passionate about, and she asked us to read some of them off.
Nope, not gun ownership rights this time, but instead...
"A person's right to die, and the fact that the government should *never* have gotten involved in the Terri Schiavo issue. It should never have been made a lobbying point for politicians or congress, whether republican, democrat, or anywhere in between."
By the horrified gasps from some of my classmates, I think that I will be the source of controversy yet again.
But it does have the makings of a great speech, doesn't it?
- I am horrified
My geography class was actually the first one of the day. By way of introduction, when she called the roll, the teacher asked us to tell her what we'd like to be called, and give her the name of a place we'd like to go but have never been to. When it came around to be my turn, I said, "Pompeii." She said, "Oh, want to see dead bodies buried under rocks and things? Lots of history there!"
Noting the blank looks of most of the rest of the class, she added, "Should we tell them what it is, or should we make them look it up?"
I laughed, but still, I'm also kind of horrified--I mean, I don't expect anyone to know the details about the place, but don't you think that's something they'd have heard of, even once? It was very boggle worthy.
All in all, though, I think I chose well this quarter, both for classes and for instructors. The English class might be a bit different than normal, but still, I'm excited.
As a general rule, I pretty much hate daylight savings time. Losing an hour of my day and having to completely adjust my body's internal clock every spring sucks. It also has some unpleasant associations--my paternal grandmother died just prior to it, so when I was a senior in high school, in addition to having to fly cross country and back while dealing with jet lag, I also had to deal with DST to boot.
This time, it's less stressful, it's just adjusting to the 8-5 schedule rather than the 5-2. It's very sad that waking up at 6:00am feels somehow decadent and sinful. This is only my second day at it, I'm sure things will change the longer I spend, but as it is, around 2:30 or 3 yesterday, I was ready for a nap.
Spring quarter starts today for me, so after work, I'm in class from 6:10 til 10:30.
I also need to get my shit together and start making and taking pictures of jewelry, and putting it all up on the website. There's a gem show this weekend at the San Mateo Expo, so I'm going to go up and replenish some of my supply, then I am going to start working on that more often, dammit. It's so easy to sit back and say, "Oh, I'm tired, I had a long day at work, I'll just do something tomorrow." Tomorrow turns into the next day, which turns into the weekend, which turns into next week, and so forth. I'd planned initially to have the website operational by the end of January, but...um...yeah. It's up! But has next to no content, nor can anyone shop from it. Not good.
An amusing side note from this past weekend: on Sunday, we went to the Great Mall to get a pair of sunglasses for my loving husband, and to see about getting a lightweight jacket for me. He was successful, I was not. We went to Dave and Busters for lunch, and on a whim, we decided to see how many 'Winners Circle' points we'd racked up--turns out we had almost 28,000. We were saving up for a digital video camera (...I know), but since Brett bought one not long ago, that fell by the wayside. We poked around briefly, and almost left without redeeming any of the points--though the GameBoy Advance caught my eye as we were getting ready to leave, and I thought about it. Then, doom.
Brett: "Hey, look, you could get an iPod Shuffle!"
So, to condense an already long story, I spent 25,000 of my D&Bs points and got myself an iPod Shuffle.
Now, if only I could get the )!#(*)^(&!)#& thing to work. Maybe it's the iTunes software rather than the iPod itself, but ease of use is not going to be something I recommend the thing to anyone for. At this rate, they'll be lucky if I decide to recommend it at all. :)
I was doing so well, posting more frequently. I'm not sure what happened over the past week or so, I think time just got away from me. That's something that describes the whole of my life really well--time just got away from me. It's almost April already, y'all. I can't believe it. Last quarter's class passed by in what seems to be the blink of an eye, a week removed from the course--it didn't seem quite like that during lecture sometimes. And seriously, just yesterday, I swear it was Christmas, and the day before that, I was freaking out over the craft show thing I did in November.
Time is such a funny thing. I remember being in school, measuring life in chunks of time that could roughly be classified as school year til Christmas, school year til summer, and summer vacation.
The comment made by one of the men who works in my building--or maybe used to work here, I haven't seen him for awhile--still rings in my mind a lot of the time. So much time spent wishing for the weekend, counting days, minutes, hours until it's time for vacation. He was so right when he said that we were wishing our lives away.
I've tried to be better about that in the days that followed, but I don't know how successful I've been. Maybe moreso than I thought, when I can sit here and wonder where the past three months have gone, wonder how they went so fast.
There's no point to this, really, just...feeling strangely adrift today, and I'm not sure why. Maybe I just need more sleep. :)
One of the really cool things about working the uber-early shift is that I always get to watch the sun rise. Well. Not precisely the sun, my window faces south, so I get to watch as the sky gradually gets brighter, but still, for some reason, I just love that I'm able to see it. It's been completely involuntary, but I've been made into a morning person. This morning it's really strange--this is the first morning for awhile that it's been clear out, and that it's so bright so early is really noticable. Had it been clear for the past week or so, I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed it the way I am today.
Today is my final exam for my government class, and because I am the ultimate procrastinator, I am finishing off some of my reading today. I will not be glad to see the back of this one, particularly for the book on California government that I've been subjected to. The subject matter is dry in the first place, though they try to make it interesting. Most of the problems would be solved by better editing, though--the grammar is atrocious, the sentence structure is horrible, there are a ton of spelling errors, and the type face varies from chapter to chapter--sometimes even from page to page. Add to that the fact that it's very obvious that the book was written by very left-leaning Democrats, and that one of the contributing authors is Latino who is very...angry. I get that it's a locally published book, but still, there has got to be a way to write and publish a decent, non-partisan and non-racially biased textbook on the basics of California government. I wish these people had found it.
I got one of the two books I need for next quarter, it was waiting for me when I got home on Wednesday. I need to call the bookstore and raise hell, since I only got one of them. They wrote on the slip that the other book was a late order, but I have no idea whether that means they intend to ship it to me when I arrive, or whether I'm basically SOL and will have to contend with the bookstore lines when the quarter starts. That would suck.
Today, my mom gets married. She got the beaded flower pins I made for her, and she'll be able to use them both. For some reason, that makes me happy--I can't be there, but I'll be thinking of her, and she'll be wearing something I made for her when they finally make it all official. I can't explain it, it just...makes me happy.
I know I wrote something in the recent past about feeling the need to get in touch with family, but I don't remember when that was, or whether it was here or in Livejournal. In the end, that part doesn't matter all that much, I suppose. I've started trading emails with my stepdad, though--more than just the occasional 'Merry Christmas' we've tentatively started sharing over the past year and a half or so, and...it's a good thing. I don't know how far it will go, or whether anything else will come of it, but even just this much provides me some sense of...balance or stability, somehow. That may be a subject for more writing at a later date, we'll see. For now, though, it's just another good thing.
Have you ever done something, or perhaps *not* done something you should have, as a manager, a boss, a game administrator, a friend, a loved one... Have you ever not done something you should've done because you felt that you didn't have enough information, or that you felt that you couldn't, or that precedent had you taking the path of least resistance, or even (or maybe especially) because you dislike confrontation?
And has that decision, especially that one to *not* do something, turned out to be the wrong one later? Months later, years later, it doesn't matter, because now, that decision you made not to act...now, it's causing problems for other people--people you care about, people you love, people whose friendships you value.
How do you apologize to all of those people for not doing something you should have? How do you deal with the overpowering sense of regret that it makes you feel? That paralyzing 'I could have, *should have* done something' feeling...or, even worse, feeling that all the reasons you gave at the time are now useless--things that are, in the grander scheme, nothing more than flimsy excuses.
Because I *do* regret now what I didn't do then. I hate that I backed down, that I gave up my opportunity to do something because it was easier for me. I hate that it's now up to someone else to do something that I should have.
Oh yes, I regret.
I bought my books for spring quarter today, and I am absolutely baffled. I'm actually getting off relatively inexpensively: two classes, two books, $84--including shipping. This is a far cry from last quarter, where I paid almost $250 for two classes, five books...some of which I didn't even get to use due to the fiasco that was my early American history class.
I'm approaching this quarter with a grim sort of determination, mostly because of the English writing class. I really need to just get it done (snerk, I have watched too much Blue Collar Comedy, because now all I can hear is 'git-r-done'), I've tried it at least three times, that I can remember, and it may be more than that, for all I really know.
I keep hoping that I'll win the lottery one of these days, so that I can go back to school full time. It would be nice to be able to do that, to be able to pursue my educational goals without having to worry about such pesky things as continuing to make a living and paying bills.
---
My mom's getting married on Friday in Texas--her fiance's dad is also getting married this weekend (Saturday), and he's going to be the one to perform the ceremony for Mom and Spouse-To-Be, so I guess it's sort of a kill two birds with one stone situation. I think they're also trying to make sure he doesn't have to travel this summer, when they will be having the big party up in Seattle.
I'm really excited for them, they've been together for more than 9 years now, and after a bit of a rocky start, I get along fabulously well with him. Not that my getting along well with him is really the primary criteria, but I'm sure it helps my mom that there's harmony in the family.
So...yeah. Excited. Bummed that I couldn't go to Texas to be there for the actual event, but the party in July will be teh awesome. :)
---
Today's snicker-worthy advertisement from my calendar:
ON SALE: Modular Sofas. Only $299. For rest or fore play.
Today is the last day of instruction for my American Government and Politics class. Originally, the professor tried to see if he could have us take the final exam today, but the administration wouldn't let him. I have to confess, I'm happy that it didn't happen--the thought that we would have had to cram four chapters (the executive branch, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, public policy) and an entire book (though small) on California government in two class days was rather daunting. As it is, we have to get through the judiciary, public policy, and California government today. We'll see how well that works. Something tells me that public policy may fall by the wayside.
I'm not sure how I've done in the class, exactly...well. That's not entirely true, I can gauge some measure of performance based on my test scores. My first test, which I was positive I had completely bombed, turned out to be the highest score in class. I'm sure my classmates just love it when one or two of us completely blow the curve. The second test, while I did quite well on the short answer questions, the multiple choice...not so much. It didn't help that I was in Tucson for part of it, so I missed two days of lecture. I did well on the short answer questions for the third test, too, and I'll see today how well I did on the multiple choice. Somehow, I'll probably wrangle a B out of the class--I can't get any higher, due to the professor's policy on missing classes.
I can see why it's required for graduation from any UC or SU school, but bleah. Though the professor is an interesting speaker, the subject matter is very dry. He also teaches international politics at San Jose State, and something tells me that one would be more interesting. Either way, though, since it's not something I have a lot of interest in, I've really had to work to not only keep attending the class, but to keep up with reading and make sure that I get a passing grade.
Next quarter, I move back to the 8am shift, which will be a welcome change. My classes are still on Tuesday/Thursday evenings, and I'll be getting home somewhere around 11pm those nights, but at least I'll still have plenty of time to sleep. I'm taking yet another stab at English Writing 1A, which I've signed up for god only knows how many times. I'm determined to get through it, though. I'm also taking a World Geography course, which fulfills one of my elective requirements, and should be interesting study--an overview of the world's geography, including culture, religion, region, etc.
Meanwhile, University of Phoenix keeps bugging the hell out of me, wanting me to come back. Don't have all the credits required to start your core program? No problem, we have another arm of our online university that you can go through! It'll still cost you an arm and a leg, but please, take out some more student loans and come join us!
Funny thing is, I don't think I'm going to be going back there at all, which is an epiphany I just came to recently, though it shouldn't have taken so long. I was in UoP's MBA-Management program, but it was only in an effort to get *some* kind of degree, not out of any true desire to actually make that my course of study, not to get a degree that I *wanted*.
So, what's the point of going into a ton of debt for student loans for something I don't want? Better to go do what I really want to do, even if it'll take longer, right? It may mean that I'm a student for the rest of my natural life, since I don't think I'll ever be able to go to school full time. All of that sucks, but...better that than being in debt for something I didn't want in the first place.
SJSU/SCU, here I come. Eventually. :)
Question of the day for today:
Why are so many of us always so concerned with what other people are doing?
I know most people do this, I know that I'm not exempt. Why is so much of our mental real estate so focused on other people? Things like, "Why is he doing that?" Or, "Why is she wearing that?"
Those are simplistic examples, really, and I know that sometimes the 'what the hell is going on' question is centered on how said other person's behavior affects us personally.
It makes me wonder, though...how often is that used as an excuse? How often do we tell ourselves that we have a right to be outraged, when really, it doesn't matter to us in the long run?
No, I really don't know what brought this on, I really don't. I'm sure it was probably thinking about something work related, but in the end, I have no idea.
Just more food for thought, I guess.
I had a ticket opened for me on Friday of last week by a client who I have been working with since his company first purchased the product, not too long after I first started working here. He was one of the first people to ever send a compliment about me to my boss back then, and was very effusive in his praise that I hadn't immediately fallen back on the 'NT sucks, reboot' crutch, but had tried to troubleshoot the problem instead. (He ended up rebooting, but at least we tried to identify the cause first!)
Anyway, yesterday I talked to him about the ticket he opened on Friday, and need to consult development about it. In the meantime, I told him to try something that I thought would work, given my current experience with the product.
Today, I asked him how it turned out. He sent email back: "Did what you said it would do, as expected as it came from you."
Aw.
No big thing to write about today, just a few random comments.
- I saw another snail this morning as I was headed into the office. It amuses me to think it was the same one I saw the other day, even though I know it's probably not.
- Rain makes drivers stupid.
- Also, if I am merging onto the freway, and if I have managed to get my car up to the speed of traffic *before* I have to merge, what's the point in speeding up just to pass me, nearly running me off the road because you can only catch up just as the merge lane ends, then flipping *me* off over it?
- Math makes my brain melt, even with the help of Excel.
- English writing 1A is on tap for next quarter, provided I can get into any of the sections. I'm also looking at a world geography course, and an intra-solar system astronomy course, just for fun.
- Sleep is a good thing. I don't get enough of it.
- And most importantly, today is Friiiiiiday! All hail the most wonderful of days, FRIDAY!
When I was fourteen, my stepdad sold the house we'd lived in since before my brother was born and moved us across the valley--to a place that only went the way of the dodo (for our family) when he remarried, which was many many years after I left. I loved the old house, it was two floors plus an unfinished basement, with a solarium from which we could watch the storms come in across the valley (until they started aggressively developing the neighborhood) and a huge back yard. If we'd stayed there, I'd have gone to high school with the man who's now my best friend. As it was, we didn't meet until after we'd both graduated.
The place we moved to wasn't a bad house--probably the nicest on our circle, though it looked like the smallest, since only the first floor was above ground; the basement was furnished, and in addition to his bedroom, that's where most of the family activity happened. The living room upstairs was a place to keep the sectional and to play host to the Christmas tree...sometimes. My room was the only one on the front of the house, and since it was ground level, I think my stepdad gave me ingenuity points that I didn't have, because there always seemed to be a lot of concern about whether I was sneaking out of the house and how. I never did.
Anyway, the walkway that lead up to the front door of this new house (which we almost never used) was surrounded on both sides by this weird ivy-like groundcover that didn't require a lot of light to grow--for the best, because there was not a lot of light the way the place was situated. It's so hard to explain in text with no pictures, but the carport was on the left, then there was a roof-to-ground fence, a small strip of this ivy ground cover, a sidewalk leading to the front door, then more of the ivy ground cover between the sidewalk and the house.
It didn't take very long after we moved in for me to realize that walking *anywhere* on the concrete, whether to the sidewalk leading to the front door, or from the basketball hoop in the driveway to the back door, was *not* a good thing to be doing after dark.
You see, after dark, the snails came out.
And it's not that the snails squicked me, because they didn't--I was one of those kids, even at fifteen and sixteen, I was picking them up and messing around with them.
No, the problem wasn't the snails themselves, but the sheer *volume* of snails that would come out at night. In the morning, the concrete was *covered* in that weird silvery goo they left behind, countless snail tracks, criss-crossing the sidewalk. It was absolutely impossible to walk to either door of the house without seeing at least two or three, sometimes more than that.
I lost count of the number of times I stepped on them. After the first couple that I stepped on barefoot, I learned not to go outside without shoes. After the next few, ones I stepped on even though I was trying hard to avoid them, I gave up and stopped trying to avoid them. Amusingly, after that, I didn't step on as many. I got so frustrated by it, though, that I wrote a poem about it for one of my English classes. My teacher was Not Amused.
They always made such a distinctive noise, though, that *pop - squelch* sound that always had me rolling my eyes. "Ew, gross. Stupid snails."
So, what brought this to mind today?
That would be the snail creeping across the asphalt in the parking lot at work...the snail that I very nearly stepped on, but somehow managed to avoid.
Probably just as well. As over-active as my imagination is, especially after something like the Lobster Incident, I'd hate to think what I'd be dreaming about tonight if I'd stepped on the thing. :)
Over the weekend, I went up for a long overdue visit with a new friend, who mentioned that all the people about whom he really wants to read never post anymore.
It goes in cycles for me--sometimes, I just don't feel like writing. I don't have anything to say, and it's happened to me before. Back in September 2002, I said the following:
I think I've figured out, in part, why I don't feel like writing anymore. The easy answer is that I've started to feel somewhat self-conscious: who cares what kind of bland shit happens in my life every day? I wake up, I go to work, I come home, I MUSH, I go to sleep. That's really about it, that's all there is to my life. I don't have kids, I don't have anything that sets me apart from any other unmarried, childless corporate drone out there, who slaves away for 8 hours a day to make a paycheck, then goes home and tries to forget about it. (And spends money.)
Several of my kick-ass friends replied to that post, and...well, they just reminded me that I have some really kick-ass friends.
The same thing happened this weekend, when I gave a similar reason about why I don't post--who wants to read about my boring life, anyway?
As before, I was humbled by the answer, and reminded that I still have kick-ass friends. And a kick-ass *new* friend, with whom I share a surprising number of interests (and by the way, since I figure you'll be reading, want to borrow the latest Dean Koontz book? I just got it back from someone else I lent it out to, and hey, Matt has a couple of my other ones), and with whom I am *certain* I will get up to a lot of mischief and fun with. I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens next.
But still, new friends aside, there's a big disconnect between my head and my fingers lately.
Part of it is the wacky work schedule and the general issues that I have with work, not to mention the fact that between stupid work schedule making me get up at 3:45am and class, I am simply exhausted and fuzz-brained.
Part of it is, strangely, MUSH related--I hate having conflicts with friends over stuff. I hate being made to feel second class and second best, even if it's accidental on their part (and believe me, accident or no, something that happened a few days ago really did make me feel like complete and utter shit--I'm still stinging over it). I hate that I feel like I have to limit my enjoyment of my character and roleplay with people that I enjoy roleplaying with because of things. (How's that for vague?)
Part of it is just feeling blah in general...but I'm sure that feeds back into the two comments above.
Sometimes, that disconnect is overwhelming, and I don't know how to deal with it. I should be happy. I *am* happy. I have a ton of reasons to be happy, and yet sometimes, it's hard to stay that way.
Disconnect.
Something.
But I'm still here. I'll even try to post more often, but it might not be anything more than a lot of music and book posts. No sports, damn the NHL and NHLPA anyway, damn them straight to hell! :)
Maybe it shouldn't be disconnect. Maybe it should be the goal, the *re*connect.
You know, I get that accounts receivable people are basically out to get their money and nothing else--I get that, I do. But gah, they're such pushy bastards.
Dell is saying that I'm past due on the payment for my laptop--which is news to me, given that my bank has already cleared the check, and the image that I can see sure looks like it's got Dell's information across the back of it.
I was going to wait until I had a hard copy of the check before I called them, but foolishly decided against that course of action today.
The AR person I spoke to told me that he couldn't transfer me to the person that I'd asked for--who had told me to ask for her when I called back. He said that there were too many people there for him to transfer me to anyone. I wonder why I'm supposed to ask for a specific monkey, then, when any poo-flinger will do.
Anyway, the long and the short of it is that they have no record of receiving my payment, it's my responsibility to put a stop pay on the check (which...hello, McFly, you're not listening--I can't put a stop pay on a check that has ALREADY CLEARED), and it's also my responsibility to pay them for both the past due amount, and gee, while I'm on the phone, why don't I just go ahead and pay next month's, too--oh, and guess what, there's a $10 service charge for paying via phone. No, you can't pay online, you can only send in payment via the mail.
Because, yeah, that's been oh so effective.
When all was said and done, I still had to pay the amount they say is past due, I'll have to pay the $10 service charge for giving him my bank's routing number and my account number over the phone, and gah, I am pissed off. His pissy attitude sparked mine, so I was a real bitch about the whole thing, but after explaining that I'd already paid the damn bill and they'd cashed my fucking check really annoyed me.
I think I may use some of the money that's left from my bonus to pay the damn thing off so I don't have to deal with this stupid shit anymore.
And I'll never finance anything through Dell again. Which caused the AR guy a fit ("Ma'am, this is just a misunderstanding, this is not our fault..." Actually, buddy, this IS your fault, thanks, now piss off), but screw it. This is the second time something stupid like this has happened with them. Not dealing with it anymore, do not need these ass-hatted monkey chickens destroying what positive work I've managed to do with my credit record.
Incompetent, poo-flinging, spastic monkeys, I swear to god.
- So tired. Trip was good, but I am glad to be home, and I am still really tired.
- Not going to have a good day today. One chronically ill co-worker called in sick, another's already scheduled the day off, two are on maternity leave... yeah. Not fun.
- Looking forward to real vacation in May. Woo, honeymoon.
- Probably moving around that time, too. The place is not running at a full occupancy rate, but they still want to raise our rent. We can rent a townhouse or even a real house for cheaper than that.
- Clients who call every hour on the hour for a status update drive me nuts.
- I love my XM radio.
- I am really pissed at the NHL/NHLPA. Have started writing entries several times about just *how* pissed, but realized that there's no point because they wouldn't listen to me anyway--I'm just a fan.
Who, you know, PAYS THEIR SALARY.
- I have too many ideas and not enough energy to put them all into practice.
- Got an A on the test I thought I'd completely bombed. Now looking forward to bombing my next test. Sad that I can only get a B in the class, because I was gone last week.
- I am hoping the soreness in my shoulder will go away. Do not want to have to deal with rotator cuff problems.
- The federal government is greedy. Also, the penalty for early withdrawl of 401k sucks.
- I got two packages from Donors Choose while I was gone. One of them, a kindergarten class, made a book for me to say thanks for funding the teacher's proposal for a water table. The kids had to finish the sentence 'a water table is ______.' One of them informed me that a water table is wet, and another relayed that a water table is a table.
I would die from cuteness, if I could.
- It should be time for sleeping now. I'd really like that. A lot.
And here I thought disabling comments would take care of the comment spam problem. But no, they're getting smarter, so not only do I still have my comments disabled for now (sorry! requires HUGE template change for me to fix it because the MT upgrade didn't auto-convert templates, so I'll get to it when I get to it), I'm also getting spam in trackback pings.
It never ends. :)
I've probably written about this before, either here or on Livejournal, but back when I was in jr. high or high school, the PTBs were running this thing called PACE - Positive Attitude Changes Everything. It was eyeroll-worthy even then, but all the little stuff they wanted us to do was just...laughable, really, especially for the social misfits like me. Give a compliment to someone you see in the hallway, find something to be happy about and pass it on, whatever. What they forgot was that some people were made happy by the endless tormenting of us misfits, but that's a story for another time.
Even though the whole PACE thing makes me roll my eyes, I also can't really argue with it. Negative attitude does the same thing, for me--if I'm in a pissy mood, even the smallest things will reinforce it.
Today is one of those days, and I had myself already worked up before I even got to work, thinking about...well, just crappy work stuff. My manager's peers and his boss are all in town today, and several things that have happened since the current regime (my boss's boss) took over still rankle, even though they happened a couple of years ago. It's made worse by things that have been said recently, too, and thinking about that this morning just got me all kinds of pissed off.
Now, all the little things that would ordinarily make me roll my eyes and move along are now just adding fuel to the fire and making me ready to snap.
... Like the fact that one of my co-workers removing the note in the group's calendar that she was late on Monday, even though...hello...she was late! She even called to say that she'd be in late!
... Like two separate clients of mine, who I've provided detailed information for, are pestering me for status requests, even though *I* am waiting for *them*, but I can't politely remind them that I've already asked for more information in order to troubleshoot their problem, oh noooooo, this has to be all MY fault.
... Like the fact that we're having a damn 'diversity' potluck today AT ALL, not to mention the fact that it's scheduled for noon, which means I can either eat late and starve, or eat at my scheduled time and skip the lunch (though at least I brought my dish, but that also pisses me off, mutter)--but, of course, skipping it means that my manager will get into trouble, because gee, the fact that someone has, oh, WORK to do is clearly less important than showing up and...
*cough*
See what I mean? It all just starts to roll together.
I'm trying to remind myself of the PACE thing--perhaps not the specific program at school, but of the general methodology and philosophy.
I'm trying very hard to find my happy place today. I don't want to be a snarly, black mass of annoyance and 'don't come near me' vibes today. It's far too exhausting.
If only I could have stayed home in bed.
Okay, this is likely to get me labeled as a completely horrible person by a lot of my friends, but I am quite annoyed at something, and given that this is MY webspace, I am going to rant about it. If you don't want to read me snarking, then go somewhere else and don't read this post.
Believe me, I have no end of sympathy for what happened on December 26th in Southeast Asia. I can't even begin to fathom the destruction, really--and my god, 150,000 people is just staggering to me. The entire population of the city in which I live is just over 100,000, I believe, so to imagine every single resident of this city--and another more than half on top of that--is just...well. Staggering, unbelievable, incredible--and not in the good connotation of the word, either.
Yes, I have sympathy. Yes, I've seen video footage and pictures of the destruction, I've read eyewitness accounts, I've followed a couple of news stories about a couple of specific families. It's heartbreaking.
However.
I'm really starting to get annoyed at being continually bombarded with requests for money. Yeah, actually, I *do* get that these people's lives have been pretty much destroyed, believe it or not. And hey, guess what, I made a donation to the Red Cross through Amazon on the first day they had the link up. I'm trying to save for school and a honeymoon and support myself as well as try to finance a home-based business, but all of that is really small potatoes, in the end, so how could I not give money? For me, it was a given.
I am, however, extremely tired of having to explain this part to the people who are constantly hitting me up for money.
There are links *everywhere*. Amazon still has theirs up, but it's not the full page thing. Weight Watchers has a link. CNN has a link. There are radio commercials for it all over the place. The local TV stations are carrying commercials as well, and the TV ads annoy me *almost* as much as...
...the group of 20 or so people who are on my college campus EVERY SINGLE DAY. The TV commercials show pictures of the destruction and the children and won't you please consider giving money, and here, let us show you all this stuff so that we can make you feel guilty for being what you are, for having what you have, for living where you live, because we KNOW that if you feel guilty, you'll give us more money. At least I can turn those off.
But the people on campus are even worse. They've also got pictures, but not only that, they've got sob stories, and they've got this way of looking at their prey that is designed to make people feel like they're utterly horrible if someone should happen to say no--and that's exactly what I feel like. Prey.
I've seen it happen to other people, I've seen it directed to me. 99 percent of the time, everyone who walks by says that they've already donated--and while I'm sure that there may be some who haven't but are just saying they have to make the solicitors go away, I think that, for the most part, people are being truthful.
Except that's not enough. "Are you sure you can't give more? Have you seen..." Cue the flashing of the pictures, and the horror stories about the children, or disease, or lack of food and shelter, or lack of medical care, everything.
The campus is still blanketed with them, and not only that, but there are a ton of them from different groups--and again, it's not enough that you gave money to the Red Cross, but no, Save The Children also wants money, as does UNICEF, and CARE, and Habitat For Humanity International. Each time anyone passes, they're solicited for a donation, no matter if they just said no to another organization not two feet away, or hell, even the SAME organization two feet away.
Worse than the ones who line the walkways are the ones that come into the cafeteria--three nights, I have been in the cafeteria between classes, and each night, the SAME WOMAN has made the rounds of the room at least four times in the 45 minutes that I sit there. Every single time, she hits me up for money, even though she's already done it before. I don't expect her to know that she saw me last Tuesday, of course--how could I? But that I'm sitting in the same spot in the cafeteria all four times she passes by? I mean, come on.
It's horrible, it makes me feel like an awful person, but jesus christ, it's enough to make me NOT want to contribute the next time anything like this happens, because I am just SO TIRED of this. If they were more polite, I'd be fine with it, but the presumption from some that I'm lying when I say I've already donated, and the flat out rudeness of others, it just galls me.
Ugh.
It's very odd to me that there is something about almost everything lately that reminds me of North Carolina. How's that for a convoluted sentence? But seriously...
It was James Taylor a couple of weeks ago, and today, it's the wild storm that's dumping a ton of rain, but has also brought brilliant flashes of lightning and booming rolls of thunder along with it.
We don't get thunderstorms very often out here--I have to confess, that's one of the biggest things I miss about both NC and Utah both. In Utah, living on the east benches as we were, I got to watch the storm clouds stack up over the Great Salt Lake until they were so heavy with precipitation that they were almost black. The lightning was a spectacle, but it was the thunder that really made an impression. It would roll in and echo off the mountains behind the house, roll *back* across the valley and echo across those mountains, and...the process would repeat itself. The sound would fade with each echo, yes, but it always seemed like it'd take forever for the thunder to die off.
In NC, the thunderstorms would happen pretty often during the summer, and I remember days when I'd be at home, and it'd be sunny when I went into the barn, and pouring rain when I came back out. The lightning was more impressive there--there were flashes that hit pretty close to the house that were just blinding.
I've been watching the lightning this morning--by now, almost an hour since I actually started the post, it's gone--and it just...reminds me.
Memory is such a strange thing.
You'd think, with all the bullshit going on inside the NHL (and don't even get me started on that) that I'd actually have something approaching free time, since there's no season going on, wouldn't you? The strange thing is, I feel like I've been busy for a few months now, even though I know that's not true. Weird.
It's about to get even busier, however--winter quarter starts today, and I officially start classes tomorrow. I still want to pursue something from University of Phoenix (for the time being), but I need to finish up some elective work before I can do that, so back to DeAnza I go. This quarter, I have:
History of the United States to the Early National Era. United States civilization to early National Era. A survey of the social, cultural, political, economic and intellectual development of the Colonial Era with emphasis on the era of the American Revolution, the development of the Constitution, and the role of the major ethnic, social and gender groups in the American experience.
American Government and Politics. Critical examination of the contemporary and historical struggle for the development of democratic political institutions in the United States at the state, local, and national levels. Particular emphasis given to the conflict between traditional elite's versus historically disenfranchised social groups (women, people of color, and workers) in the conduct of U.S. political life. (You know, I think my concerns about this class may be valid, and I haven't even attended yet.)
Not only that, but I'm hoping to get my business up and running--gone live, so to speak, within the next few days. I kept telling people that it'd be after the first of the year, and well, this is after the first of the year, to be sure. I just need a few more pictures, then I think I may be set. I'm sure there are a ton of things I've forgotten, but I'm sure those will be taken care of in due time. The question will be whether I can handle all that without freaking out.
But wait! There's more!
I've waffled about getting back into dealing with horses--riding, driving, whatever--for quite awhile. Being back in contact with Ann again has fueled that desire even further, so I've finally gone and done something about it. There's a farm on the way to Casa de Renfaire that I admire horses from every time we pass by--well, they're Morgans, I found out, the same breed I used to spend my summers with. I sent them an email just to see what's involved, so I may end up with that on my plate, too.
I also have a trade show in Tucson that I'm headed to in the first week of February, and we are fiiiiiinally taking our honeymoon--Kona Village the first week in May.
All while trying to work a full time job, not to mention spending time with my wonderful husband and my equally awesome friends.
I think I may just be loading my plate a bit too heavily. We'll see how it turns out. School and work need to take first priority, of course--I really do need to get my ass in gear, as far as school is concerned. I've made so many attempts to go back that it's just laughable now.
In spite of all of that, I have no resolution for the new year, really, except the desire to make sure that this year is better than last, but that's well within my realm of control. I just have to be sure to take it.
Remember the other day when I was hoping that the person I found on Classmates was the person that I wanted it to be?
It was.
I spent an hour on Thursday night talking to my stepmom, catching up, and we've been exchanging emails rather frequently since then as well. It makes me so happy that we're back in touch again--words can't even describe. It was a great Christmas present.
Even though I had a lovely holiday, I'm also rather glad that it's over for another year. There wasn't even a lot of stress involved--everyone's gifts arrived with no problem, there were no shipping mishaps, everyone loved what they received, I love what I received, but...I'm just glad it's over for another year.
This week brings New Year's Eve, and more dinner and good conversation with friends, and closure on yet another year. In looking back on it, 2004 was really pretty good to me, all things considered. I made some new friends, I got in touch with two people I've really been missing, I've learned a new skill, and I've put myself back into college for what's probably the fifth or sixth time, but hey, who's counting?
Here's hoping that 2005 is even better.
I've been listening to a local station that's playing only Christmas music this week--it's okay, the reception in the office isn't great, and I'm really freaking tired of Mariah Carey, but it's kind of nice.
This morning, James Taylor's version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas came on, and...well, I didn't really hear that song. As soon as I heard his voice, a different song was going through my head: Carolina In My Mind. It's on his Greatest Hits CD, and I can't tell you how many times I heard it while I was growing up.
In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina
Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moon shinin'
Ain't it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind
I don't know what it was, but I couldn't get around it--all of a sudden, my mind was flooded with the last Christmas I'd spent there, in 1990. My grandma's last Christmas, though we didn't know it at the time. She wasn't doing well, though, which is the whole reason I flew out there for it, rather than staying at home in Salt Lake City.
The weather in Raleigh was balmy by comparison to the bitter cold and snow I'd left behind; I remember sitting at the kitchen table in that house I'd always secretly hoped to inherit someday, with the sliding glass door open and a warm (for me, then) breeze blowing through. I could hear the sounds of the horses in the barn carried to me on the wind, and remember shaking my head a lot over the fact that my dad and stepmom's only tree was a tiny little Norfolk Island Pine that they'd put a few lights on.
Karen she's a silver sun
You best walk her way and watch it shinin'
Watch her watch the mornin' come
A silver tear appearing now I'm cryin'
Ain't I goin' to Carolina in my mind
Nothing makes me more homesick for that place than thinking about my grandparents and spending time in their house, or spending time on the farm--what my stepmom called it, even though all they had were some really lovely Morgan horses and a barn full of polydactyl kittens.
Grandma's house was always decorated well for the holiday, even then. A huge tree that was covered in lights--more lights than ornaments. Garland, sometimes, and an angel on top. And maybe it's that the Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas always makes me think of my grandma, that's why I started this little trip, I don't know. I'd give anything to be able to sit in that kitchen again, on one of those horribly uncomfortable wooden barstools, with a half full jar of dry-roasted peanuts sitting on the counter, and the mingled smells of bread, coffee, and fig newtons in the air. There was always a pot of coffee on, and always a pitcher of iced tea--southern style, of course, so sweet you could stand a fork up in it.
There ain't no doubt in no one's mind
That loves the finest thing around
Whisper something soft and kind
And hey babe the sky's on fire, I'm dyin'
Ain't I goin' to Carolina in my mind
Not that I didn't love the farm, too, because I did. Raleigh's suburban sprawl hadn't managed to claim it, the last time I was there--I'm hoping that it never manages. It's close enough to the city to still be urban, but far enough away that there's not a lot of light pollution. It's horse country up there--most of the families who live there have barns and horses, and when I was learning to drive the cart, it wasn't all that uncommon to see another person doing the same thing.
When he and my stepmom split up, they sold the house to some friends of hers, and she moved away. I've missed her ever since, I've always regretted not keeping in touch with her. (Break for picking jaw up off the floor--she's registered with Classmates.com...oh, please, let this be the right person. Please.)
(Edited 5:45pm 12/22 to add: It is her. I feel like I've been whacked upside the head with a board.)
In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina
Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moon shinin'
Ain't it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind
It's always my grandparents that I go back to, though, especially now. The need to go back and pay my respects is always there--sometimes more pressing than others, but never truly gone. It's always in the back of my mind. I want to just sit there and tell them about all the things that have happened to me, all the good things going on in my life, even though I'm sure they know already. I want to apologize to my grandpa that I never got a chance to say goodbye. But most of all, I want to tell them both how much I love and miss them, how I think about them every day, and how the strangest things can spark a memory of them that's strong enough to bring tears to my eyes.
Dark and silent late last night
I think I might have heard the highway calling
Geese in flight and dogs that bite
Signs that might be omens say I going, going
I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind
But inevitably, when I think about my grandparents, I also think about my birth father, too, and those...those are always the bittersweet memories, because it's not that there aren't a few good memories here and there, it's just that there are so many bad ones. There's so much anger and bitterness, even now.
And yet...in spite of all that, there's a part of me that would like nothing better than some sort of reconciliation. I think that's the little girl in me, the idealist, the one who thinks that everything will be okay. The one who desperately wants a dad, chronological age be damned.
With a holy host of others standing 'round me
Still I'm on the dark side of the moon
And it seems like it goes on like this forever
You must forgive me
If I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind
It's what my grandma would've wanted, if he's to be believed, but that's where the cynic in me kicks in--he isn't. He can't.
But that doesn't help me to want it any less, sometimes.
In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina
Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moon shinin'
Ain't it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind
I'm so disappointed that I didn't get any of the pictures I asked for, after my grandpa died. They took a picture of me with my uncle Gary, their youngest son, standing in front of the huge oak tree in their backyard. I'm maybe three or four years old, standing in front of him--his arms on my shoulders. We're both giving the camera big, cheesy grins, because we've just managed to feed one of the squirrels in the tree. The birdbath is in the background, and even in black and white, it's so easy to tell how green it is there, how lush.
But when I put my mind to it, when I sit back and forget about the distractions--the phone, the computer, the TV, the chaos and clutter and hectic pace that my life can take sometimes...I can almost smell it. I can feel the filtered sun on my face and the breeze that rustled my hair as I sit on one of the lounge chairs in the shade of that tree. The screen door opens and my grandma steps out, with that smile on her face that she only ever had for me, the first grandchild, the first girl. I can smell the tea in the pitcher she's carrying, I can hear grandpa still in the house, telling her to wait for him already, goddammit, he's only getting his beer.
And right then, though I miss them so much it hurts, I'm at peace.
And gone to Carolina in my mind.
My mom turned 50 earlier this week. I didn't really give it a lot of thought--I sent her a birthday card, of course, and I knew it was her birthday, and while I knew, somewhere in my mind, that it was her 50th, it didn't really hit me until last night. I'm not sure why it happened then, either, why it didn't happen earlier, or why it happened at all.
I've never been a good judge of age. It's never really been part of how I identify myself, but not only that...well. I've mentioned before, people were mistaking me for being in my late twenties/early thirties when I was 18 years old, so I'm sure that didn't really help any. For me, it's easier to just assume everyone is my age, but the funny part is, a lot of times, I have to remind myself that I'm 31 and not 21.
It was even stranger to think about my mom, though. It doesn't help that I think she acts younger than she really is, but in my mind's eye, she's just my mom. Ageless isn't the right word for it, but the vision I have of her is a younger picture than the one she presents now. It's...I'm sure most people think of their parents as ageless--or maybe not even ageless, but that they'll live forever, that they'll always be there, that it's always Mom, just Mom.
Add to that the fact that I remember when my grandparents turned fifty, or thereabouts, at least (no, my parents weren't young when they had me, why do you ask?), it's just strange.
It reminds me, sometimes, that time really does pass, even though it doesn't always seem to.
No, the entry's not about mushrooms, but today...well. Let me backtrack a little bit. In the Las Vegas airport, we met a wonderful couple named Troy and Margot Brown. They're husband and wife, were in town for the Big Smoke, and live in Boulder Creek. Troy is the author of the Portabella Mushroom cookbook, as well as owner/creater of Califa Foods, which makes some very delicious sauces, several of which he sent Matt and Mom home with (which Matt then ordered for us). They spent a good hour and a half or so talking with us, and during that conversation, I remember Troy telling us how the word for the mushroom has changed from portobello to...portabella. The way he said it just doesn't translate in text, but it just sticks with me, and it occurs to me that Italian is a beautiful language. Porrrtabellllla. "Big and beautiful," he said.
This morning, it was foggy when I left for work, which was a bit unexpected. It's not as dense as it could be, but then, the dark probably mutes that somewhat, so I can't tell the true extent of it. Sharp edges are now soft and fuzzy--life through refracted light, almost, and it occured to me that I would hate life if my vision ever started to deteriorate, because I imagine that the fuzzy halo surrounding the traffic lights is probably what it's like to have blurred vision. In spite of the weird vision thoughts, but most of all, in spite of the dark, it was beautiful.
It still is, as I sit here at my desk. Across the street, the lights atop the buildings are surrounded in that same halo. The outlines of the trees behind them, usually revealed in sharp relief by the glow, are distant shadows instead.
Beautiful.
My commute is short, I was in the car for ten minutes, at most. Creed's Higher came on while I was in the last fraction of that--I got through the first verse and first chorus before pulling into my parking space at work. But the opening guitar riff was what caught me. I couldn't explain the tears in my eyes, the huge smile on my face, all I knew--all I *know* is that today...today is good, and it's not just the bonus I got from work, today is just *good*.
I am blessed. I have a wonderful husband and amazing friends. I have a business that appears as though it will do very well, once I finally get my ducks in a row. I am content, I am happy...I am blessed.
Life...life is beautiful. Big and beautiful. Portabella.
Trouble with the elections in the Ukraine, small plane crashes which sports broadcasters miraculously walk away from, soldiers still being deployed to Iraq, six hunters killed in Wisconsin, deadly gas explosions and mine collapses in China, and yet...
Someone has still taken the time to calculate how much it'd cost to buy everything mentioned in the 12 Days of Christmas song.
And they put the link to it on the CNN front page.
I swear, the things that pass for news around here. It boggles the mind.
"5% MORE!" the diet dr. pepper bottle assured me. When I got close enough to read the small print, it said, "than a 20oz bottle."
Which meant that, hey, instead of 20 ounces of soda, there were a whole 21! Isn't that great?
Snerk. Stuff like that always amuses me, in a weird sort of way. The small deceptions that companies use to get people to buy whatever product or service they're offering.
---
Also on my mind this morning... why, why, why have people already started writing fanfic about Lost? It's been what, half a season, if that?
I've already found some really horrible examples, too, which is really very sad. Not quite to the extent that I've found really horrible Harry Potter fanfics (and lord have I--and so have other people...headache-inducing, eye-bleeding stuff), but there are some bad ones out there just the same.
And, much like the Harry Potter stuff, I'm going to have to just not read it--not only to spare myself from the crapulence, but also to make sure I don't get the fanfic universe confused with the 'canon' universe. Something like that, anyway.
But yeah. Makes me very sad. Leave the show alone for a season, would you? Or wait til the first season's over and we're all in withdrawls or something... :)
Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.
Red sky at night, sailor's delight.
My stepdad was the one who taught me that, he said that it was a pretty good way of telling whether a storm was on its way.
This morning, for a few minutes, when I looked out my office window, the sky didn't look black, or red, or pink, or grey, but...lavender. Probably just a trick of the light and the (I think) tinted glass, but still an interesting sight, nonetheless.
I'm happy to report that I did pretty well at the craft fair. Better than I expected, at least, and I made some pretty valuable contacts. They want me to come back in April.
There are other potential things on the horizon, as well, but I'm keeping quiet on that until something actually happens. Just...keep your fingers crossed for me, and think good employment-related thoughts.
Once again, the month is nearly 10 days old, and I have not written a single word for NaNoWriMo. Bad me.
But on Friday, we are leaving for Vegas for a few days, to meet my mom and her fiance, as well as my aunt Leslie and her partner Chris (and Leslie's kids, I believe). Woohoo. Viva, Las Vegas. Can't wait to go to a bar, get drunk with my mom, then stagger back to the hotel to play dominoes.
Death to all blog comment spammers. Thanks ever so much for leaving me with almost 200 comments to delete. Yay for MT Blacklist, because otherwise, I might have to hunt these people down one by one and beat them with wet noodles.
I don't get the point either, really. All the crap they post is on all the older entries, why bother? Not only that, but unless my blog is suddenly reaching a wider audience than I'm aware of (though, eep, a co-worker mentioned the other day that his girlfriend had found my blog, and believe me, wasn't *that* freaky), most of the people who read it are my friends, and we're all smarter than that anyway.
Bah. Hate. So much hate.
I am still very freaked out over this whole business thing. (And yeah, if that bores you, skip this one.)
Brett is right in that it's not as if I've invested my life savings into this, and stand to put myself in the poorhouse if it fails, but it's still a bit...well.
This has been a dream of mine for a while, you see, and now it's starting to become reality, and that scares the hell out of me--especially since I have had issues with following through on things for most of my life. No, what I'm doing is real, this time. I have the business license, fictitious business name statement, resale permit, business cards (got those yesterday), and bank account (got that today) to prove it.
Holy shit. What the hell am I doing?
Agh.
Amusing side note: my weekly Cainer horoscope for the week starting last Saturday said that I was overthinking something and that, really, everything was going exactly as it should and that I should calm down. Yeah, I realize that trusting one's entire life to a horoscope is probably not the best way to go about things, but still...I also believe that there are times in one's life where you get a swift kick in the ass just when you need it, and I think I got one.
Now to just believe what I'm reading... :)
Someone on my Livejournal friends list posted something about this last night--how memory can be such a funny thing. Smell is one of the big ones, but sound can do it, too--and it happened to me this morning.
The first thing you have to understand is that my mom is the one responsible for a lot of the things about me, especially my love of music. She tells stories about me, four years old, standing up in the back seat and singing Hot Blooded. And let's not forget that John Denver classic, Tokey Oads.
What, she's my mom, of course she tells embarrassing stories!
But then, there was the time she was in town for my high school graduation, and driving me to my last day of school, Rod Stewart's Forever Young came on, and I remember the two of us in the car, crying. She was trying to tell me what the song meant, from her perspective, and just couldn't do it. It was the first time she said she was proud of me, in spite of everything, and the last time I heard it for a good seven years or more.
Or the first concert that I remember going to--Moody Blues at the Huntsman Center in Utah. How she arranged for one of my classmates to babysit my brother, and she and my stepdad went with me, and our seats were so good (even though they were toward the back of the floor section) that we could see the jewelry they were wearing.
She was the Cool Mom, too, the one who volunteered to take me and two of my friends to see Def Leppard. Their parents never knew that she went because she *wanted* to go--and the girls, well, they thought she was just the coolest ever for that. When she agreed to smuggle in film for our cameras along with her, well, that was just the icing on the cake. Most of my pictures didn't develop well. I wish I could remember what happened to them.
So anyway, there's always been a strong connection with music for me. And, perhaps amusingly, none of these things are the reasons why I thought about her, either--not exactly.
On the radio this morning, I heard Jack and Diane, and though I've heard the song a lot since, for some reason, *this* morning, it prompted another one of those memories I'd forgotten I even had. There's a part in the song that says, "Hold onto sixteen as long as you can," and I remember... I was probably 12 or 13 at the time, and very proudly told my mom that I was going to find some way to do that. I'd claim to turn 16 when I turned 14, and claim to *still* be 16 even when I was turning 18.
It wasn't the claiming to be 16 at 18 that bothered her, really, but the thought of me acting like a 16 year old when I was 14. I don't even remember what she said exactly, except that I shouldn't be in such a hurry to grow up.
For some reason, it strikes me funny, thinking back on that, and on the trip I took back to North Carolina the summer I turned 15. I got stuck in St. Louis for a long layover, and ended up with one of the airport's employees hitting on me. He made me take his address and phone number with me when I left--at 15, what was I going to do? I was too pole-axed by the whole thing. It wasn't until I was safely in the air that one of the girls who I was sitting with commented that he thought I was 18. Oops. :)
Swarovski is having a trade show in Tucson the first week of February, that I'm seriously considering attending. That two week period is huge for bead-related activites anyway--five major shows, plus the Swarovski thing, so I figure it'd be interesting/fun to go down there for a week. A few extra days to go to some of the other shows, to see what's down there.
The Swarovski portion is four and a half days, held at the Omni Golf Resort and Spa, so I know it's going to be expensive, and I'm hoping that the trade show people will either be able to get a (really goddamn good) group rate or be able to make recommendations about where else to stay. Just for laughs, though, I checked the Omni website today to check for availability and cost.
Holy shit, almost $350 a night. So, for seven nights, that's...uh. Way more than I want to spend on a hotel to go to bead shows, thanks. I'll just look into other options--preferably before registration for these classes, because if I can't find anything cheaper than that, then there is no trip to Tucson for me.
Ow. $350 a night. Jesus. For that, I should get a toilet that'll wipe my ass for me, and a massage every night. :)
As I've mentioned before, this whole craft fair in November thing is making me really nervous. It's hard to explain why, but I think I summed it up best when I told a couple of people yesterday (both at different times) that I'm the Queen of What If. As in...what if no one buys anything? What if everybody hates it? What if I'm the only booth where people don't stop? What if, what if, what if. And never the positive what if question, never 'what if everyone loves my stuff and I run out of stock while I'm there,' noo, never that.
Figures.
I feel like I'm becoming boring, though, like this is the only thing that I talk about lately. That's not entirely the case--I had a big, long post all drafted up the other day, but figured that no one really wanted to read me ranting about the disgustingness that is the ladies room here at work. I've mentioned that before, but this time, it was just horrible. I figured that I ought to spare you all the agony of it, though--it was really, really nasty.
Oh, I meant to add, I'm really seriously considering the NaNoWriMo thing again this year--even though the past two years have been pretty much miserable failures. Last year, I didn't even get an idea til the month was almost over. Agh. I've had one for awhile now, though, so...we'll see. If I get that far, and if anyone's interested, I suppose I can make it available for viewing, with the caveat that 50,000 words in a month does not make for concise plot lines, tight dialogue, or generally anything that resembles *good* writing. Plus, it'll be fanfic, sort of (but not HP or LotR), so...I don't know. If there's interest, let me know, I'll think about it.
See? There really is more to life than nerves and beads. Heh. :)
Note to self: not such a good idea to take the bead bag to work anymore, really. Bad idea. Really, really bad. Right now, in the bag, I have all the loose Swarovski beads that I own, and...urrh. I counted up how much money's in that bag, and holy crap. No more taking the bag to work. No, no, no. I do not want to lose $700 in beads. Bad. Bad!
In other news, I have two more lovely bracelets, two (soon to be four) new necklaces, and eight pairs of earrings. I am the beading machine. Ack. :)
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!
You know...I seriously wouldn't mind donating to firefighter funds and things like that, but jesus christ, the guy who just called me was a right pushy bastard. Yeah, believe me, I know that it's a worthy cause, and yeah, I'm sure that they would appreciate knowing that there are people out there who support them wholeheartedly in what they do. I'm sure that the troops serving the US overseas and at home would like the same thing.
So, yeah. I don't object to the idea that someone's calling me to ask for a donation for the firefighters.
I DO object to the fact that the telemarketer spiel is specifically designed to YANK the guilt/heartstrings into soliciting donations.
I also DO object to the fact that the guy was such a pushy asshole and kept interrupting me when I was trying to talk. YES, I get that it's a worthy cause. YES, I get that they appreciate it, blah blah blah. SHUT UP and LET ME TALK. Asshole.
It's tempting to call these people back and tell them that I *had* intended to donate, until their telemarketer turned out to be a prick and the sales spiel was emotionally manipulative.
Gah.
Bwah.
The first named storm of the hurricane season is named after my sperm donor parent. Sadly amusing, considering that it's also threatning the Carolinas.
Yes, I am amused at strange things. I've never claimed otherwise. :)
And yeah, this post is pretty much pointless.
Early next month (probably), we're planning a gathering at our place, the first time we've really had anything organized since New Years, I think. Today, I started making a list of the things around the house that I'd really like to get done before this happens.
I'm doomed.
Actually, that's not true. For some of this stuff, it doesn't really matter *when* it gets done, and rationally, I realize that the goal of having it ALL done before the August gathering is just not going to happen in this lifetime. For some reason, though, now that I've made the list, it feels like it all has to be done NOW NOW NOW.
I think, realistically, the cleaning-related stuff for the public areas will be done before August, but some of the rest of it really won't. My friends are not going to care whether my closets are well organized, for example, nor are they really going to give a shit about whether our CD changer is finally finished being loaded, or where the bed is in our bedroom.
I wonder if part of the reason that I just haven't been interested in writing lately is due to all the chaos in my living space. I keep telling myself that maintenance would be ever so much easier than having to do a major cleaning every six months, and I always make such plans about how this weekend, I'll start making an effort at that, rather than just letting things go. I'm getting better about it, but still... Anyway. Cluttered living space = cluttered mind, perhaps. I do know that there's stuff inside me, but it seems pretty directionless right now.
It's really bad when the list of things is so long that you get all glassy-eyed when looking at it, and just feel completely overwhelmed and don't know where to start.
However, I've already got one thing on that list finished, and managed to do it in less than an hour after I got home from work, so...I know it's possible! I just have to keep focused on the smaller goals on the list, rather than on the whole thing.
Someday, maybe, I'll master that technique.
I know I said I'd try to post while I was gone, but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought while I was on the way there, and while I was there...I just didn't have the time. So, anyway, I bring you the first segment in notes from the road--I'll have another one or two of these to make, as well as notes on vacation proper.
Highlights: Victoria BC, Pike Place Market, and the symphony conducted by Howard Shore.
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7/10/04
8:30pm
Gold Beach, Oregon
So, I'm having to make this entry on a later date because I'm staying at a Motel 6 in Oregon that has no high speed access. The only way I could've gotten access at all would've been to go up to Coos Bay, which is another 100+ miles, and after leaving the house at 8:30am (got up at 6!) and driving around 460 miles...yeah. It was time to stop.
An early start this morning, especially after the (fucking awesome) concert last night, but it was nice to leave early. Part of why I got up early was because I wanted to avoid traffic on 880, and it turned out to work.
Before I get too carried away, I should mention, for those who've been following the Sirius radio drama, IT WORKS! Brett exchanged the antenna for me last night, and apparently they didn't even really check it very well. It's my fault the thing was broken in the first place, and...anyway. I got the antenna mounted and the car kit taken care of this morning, and it's alive. Woot.
Also. Sirius fucking RULES. 80s channel, hair band channel, classic rock, weather, comedy, traffic, sports...you name it, I can get it. It turns into a 'name that 80s/classic rock/hair band tune' kind of game, since I don't want to look at the display too much while I'm driving. Yeah. Love it. Seriously love it. I should've gotten it ages ago.
Random notes:
- Prince is DIIRRTY. Yeah, okay, I know that's a big 'duh' moment, but I actually listened to the lyrics of The Look today, and wow. 'Your body's slammin, let's get to jammin.' Yeeeah.
- 880 / 580 / 101 is THE way to go. I passed by the exit leading to the Novato Faire about an hour and 15 minutes after I left. Not bad at all.
- Gas in Novato is expensive. 2.35 a gallon, compared to 2.16 a gallon at home.
- There was an Amber Alert while I was on my way up that was displayed on one of those flashy signs on the side of the road. Handy things, those--it gave the color, make, model, and license plate of the car.
- Oh, hey. For my co-workers, one of the trucks that I passed by today was for Consani Racing. I think Jole may get a kick out of that. :)
- There are a whole lot of old people in Healdsburg, I found. I stopped at McDonalds there to pee at one point and the place was full of senior citizens.
- It's too bad that I don't like wine, there are vineyards all over the place down there. I almost wish I'd had time to stop.
- The traffic got really light after Healdsberg, not quite like driving through Nevada on 80 west, but still pretty light. After Willets (further north of Ukiah, mentioned below), it got light like it is in Nevada. It's also really weird to be driving on 101 when it's a 2 lane road, as opposed to the 8-10 lane freeway it is in the bay area.
- I stopped briefly in Ukiah to get a soda, and saw the following on a bumper sticker:
"Save a mouse, eat a pussy!"
I sat there for about five minutes just cackling so hard I couldn't drive.
[Ugh. The room upstairs just became occupied, and it's like being at home, there are elephants upstairs.]
- Sherrie Austin (a country singer) is an evil, evil woman. Go look up the lyrics to the song called Streets of Heaven, and you'll see what I mean. It made me think of Moonie and Sophie. Sniffle.
- Stopped for gas in Fortuna; I was only at 3/4 of a tank, but I figured that I probably better stop. I got 370 miles on that tank--and put only 13 gallons in. That's freaking awesome.
- Hit Oregon about 6:00. Brookings is the first town that you pass through, and immediately after that, there's a rest stop. I'm thinking that all the rest areas in Oregon are going to be a whole lot nicer than the ones in California.
Eventually, I'll make a post here about the Avenue of Giants, which I passed through on my way north. It's...amazing, though, and there's no way that I can even put it into words. The pictures I have don't do it justice, but I hope they'll be able to convey at least some of the beauty, and maybe some of the awe that I felt just being there.
Hmmm.
Do I want to deal with customs, even though I don't have a passport? Even though the website says that ID and birth certificate should be fine? Because taking the Victoria Express from Port Angeles (though, holy crap, a 3 hour drive from Mom's place, maybe not) or the Victoria Clipper from Seattle to Victoria BC to see things like Butchart Gardens (where I really want to take Clay, because I bet the pictures he'd take would be stunning!) and the Royal British Columbia Museum...that sounds like it might be a whole lot of fun, too.
I'm arriving on Monday night, and trying to figure out what to do for Tuesday and Wednesday because we're doing the whale watch thing on Thursday...
Hmmmm. :)
I mentioned this before, somewhere, but I can't remember where--I asked Brett to take me to Monterey on Saturday the 3rd, so that we could spend some time together, and I could see the latest in Windstone designs. We have far too many already, but that didn't stop us.
Friday night, Matt came down, and there was much fun to be had at dinner. He stayed overnight and went to Monterey with us the following day. He'd never been to the aquarium, which we also wanted to see, because they've got a new exhibit out there--all sharks, all the time.
Mistake #1: "Oh wow, these convenience fees are killer. Let's just wait and buy tickets when we get there." Never, never again will I say that, for reasons which will become apparent.
Mistake #2: Going to Monterey *at all* over the 4th of July weekend. When we
finally got there, there was no parking to be found near Cannery Row or the aquarium, so we had to park downtown, deal with the Great Race foo, and take the trolley to where we wanted to go.
Ah yes, the trolley.
Imagine, if you will, one of those cute little trolley-bus things, that's probably ideal for seating maybe 20-30 people. Imagine, next, said trolley with every seat full, and another 15 people (including us, me first, after dealing with the family who thought that, even though they'd got there last, they were entitled to get on first) climbing on.
It's already a cool day out, perhaps maybe 65