My websites are down %( *sigh*

I am depressed, dunno why, I have a headache too, and I’m not sure which happened first, it’s possible that one caused the other, heh.

Went to the discount bookstore yesterday, turned out to be one of those ones where they rent an old store building and set up temp tables everywhere with cheap books on them. I found a few good ones, picked up Griffin & Sabine for $5, a book I was first introduced to in high school when I was doing an illustration and design class.. it’s really cool, a series of letters between two artists, you see the actual handwriting and postcards and you can pull out letters from envelops to read them (all fictional of course), a really great idea, and fun to read. I also got Shadow Of Hegemon, since it was inexpensive and I’ll be getting the rest of the series soon enough. Got Midnight in the Garden of Evil and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon as old library books, so they were like 2/$5 .. i’ve heard good things about them so it’s worth it. Also got a World History For Dummies book, to again expand my lacking history knowledge, repetition is the best for remembering %) And lastly, I got a big illustrated copy of Terry Pratchett’s The Last Hero … it’s a really cool book, lots of pictures of discworld things, cant wait to read it and check out the illustrated adaptations of them.

After going to the bookstore, my friend Nita asked what I wanted to do next, since we hadnt really planned anything else. I sorta shrugged and admitted that I really don’t get out much and had no idea what there was to do, and plus I really wasnt up for actually spending any money. So she suggested we go pick up her boyfriend’s sister and go to a mall. Sure, I had never been to the King Of Prussia Mall before. Now again, I am not a big mall fan, but I guess it’s ok to spend time at, I mean people are still annoying, but it’s better than sitting in a car and just talking, I guess I might have preferred going to someone’s house and hanging out *shrugs* don’t want people I am with to be bored %)

So walking around the mall, I went to the stores I liked, suffered through going to a few clothing stores (hehe), and while talking to friends I went with I got the distinct impression that I didn’t really belong. My humor generally dark, pessimistic and overall dreadfully sarcastic, they laughed a lot, but it’s a rather dry humor most of the time and out of place… There were also a few times when they were checking out guys… now I’ve never been the kind of person to openly “check out” guys and sit around and giggle about how cute they were, in fact, I am so oblivous that I barely ever notice! So each time the conversation went in that direction I was completely lost. And at one point we walked past this store with some nice dresses hanging in the window. Normally I wouldnt even have noticed them, but Caren pointed them out, and then they muttered something about how I have the type of body that would look great in that and they hated how they didnt. I wasn’t sure how to respond to this type of comment! Usually the *last* thing I talk about with people is my weight, I dont care much unless I see I am gaining, and I generally wear men’s clothes anyway so it’s not like I care to show anything off… so I mumbled something about how it has a lot to do with genetics, and just the other day I ate 14 cookies (when I was baking cookies). They stopped and looked at me. “What?” “You don’t hang around women much do you?” Well, no, I guess I dont…. “Saying that kind of thing will get you in big trouble!” Oops. %( I don’t exactly understand the problem, I mean I was just trying to demonstrate that I probably eat just as badly as them and so that I know it’s not *completely* a diet thing, and I’m just lucky. I guess this is what men mean when they say they dont understand women, I just hate admitting I dont understand women sometimes either %(

I went to bath and body works and got some bubblebath (finally!), and then we got back to the car around 6:15 or so. Nita suggested going out for dinner, but I didn’t want to go out without Myk, and we are trying to save money. But Nita insisted and said I should call Myk and ask if he wanted to go, Caren piped up and said “yeah! i wanna see Myk again!” So I used Nita’s cellphone and called up Myk, who suggested he call Nita’s boyfriend (Caren’s brother) Mike and see if he wanted to come out too. I told him that we were on our way back to our apartment and we could see what Mike said when we got home (yeah, two Mike’s very confusing, luckily when typing they are Myk and Mike, hehe). So we drove back to my apartment, turns out Mike’s T1 (they have a t1 in their apartment… he works for an ISP) was down and he has been really stressed out and didnt feel like going out. So we just picked up my Myk and ended up going out to TGI Friday’s. This was an interesting experience unto itself.

We get there, wait the customary 15 minutes to get a table, order our drinks and food, and start talking. It was fun, I mean you go to a restuarant in a situation like that to socialize with friends, sure we were hungry, but that is definately secondary. So it took something like 35 minutes for our food to be made, and I noticed at one point that that was a long time, but honestly I didn’t really care. Finally the food comes out and the waiter is full of apologies about how long it took, and we were like “oh, ok, whatever” and he was obviously flustered and taking it too seriously. HE ended up going to the manager and the manager came over to our table and asked if everything was ok. It was, my chicken sandwich didnt have bacon on it, I got extra mayo, I was happy. So the waiter comes back with a couple things we had asked for, and says “sorry again, and you should have told the manager it was horrible and took forever! It looks bad on me now…” WTF? Again we just sorta ignored and went back to eating… and the service actually got worse because the waiter was working himself up about this all and kept forgetting what we asked for. Oh well, in the end, again, I didn’t really care, I wasn’t there for the quality service of TGI Friday’s (HAH!)…

Anyway, the best part of the day for me (besides the bookstore) was when we got back from dinner. It was almost 9:30, and we all came back to our apartment, and congregated in the computer room. Now both Myk’s and my workstations are on linux, and the first thing Caren said when she walked in the room was “nice screensaver” .. about xsnow and xpenguins. I quickly explained what it was (she is smart, but fairly clueless when it comes to computers)… Then Myk pulled something up, and got a bunch of ooh’s and ahh’s about the multiple desktops. So he went into explaining what exactly multiple desktops were, and how navigation and keybindings worked and stuff. Then I showed Caren and Nita a few things (Nita has debian on her computer, but doesnt use it much ’cause Mike hasn’t gotten sound to work there yet. It was really a lot of fun, I love showing off R2 %) and especially to people who are truly interested, makes me feel smart too, hehe. I also showed how UT and UT2K3 run in linux, and how cool that is, and stuff. So in the end Caren looks at Nita and said “can you teach me about linux?” Nita laughed and I put in that I’d be more than willing to have a “chick linux learning” session with them… and they agreed that that would be fun. Both Nita and I are unemployed (for much the same reasons, actually, but she does have a car), so it would just be a matter of finding time when Caren was available. I’d be so happy to see both Nita and Caren running on linux near full-time.

The interesting thing about Nita and Caren’s limited access to the power of linux is that Mike is REALLY smart, a total linux guru. Maybe he’s just not a good teacher? Maybe he just doesn’t have the time? I am not sure… I mean Myk is busy, but always has time to help me out with my stupid problems, hehe… Maybe they have just not shown enough interest in it to make him want to take the time to teach… or maybe he doesnt want the added trouble of being tech support when things break, hehe…

Anyway, it’s friday, that means time to clean the apartment, fun fun. I should go do that now. *wanders off*