o/` Stabbing Westward – So Wrong o/`

Aphex Twin does the soundtrack for my nightmares. I realized that recently when I was sorta zoning out listening to some Aphex Twin, and all of a sudden I was pulled out of my daze by intense fear. “Girl-Boy Song” was playing and that’s when I made the connection, this is what my nightmares sound like! It’s interesting to realize things like this, I never really noticed that some of my dreams have music in them, and I guess since I am not a highly music-oriented person… I mean I love music, but I’d never consider myself very musical, or something. Unfortunately I am now reluctant to listen to Aphex Twin because it’ll scare me, hehehe. Naw, I love Aphex Twin, I just need to avoid zoning out while listening %D

So yesterday, ah, I offered to morph my mirc tutorial to be pretty and used for #Deep13’s Website. I just needed to edit some of the screenshots and change the tutorial to have it connecting to psiblade (I meant to do this anyway, currently the tutorial is for going to scifi, ahh!)… it’s something to do anyway. I was also playing with MySQL a bit yesterday, I discovered the “limit” option, ahh! It lets you get results back, with a numbered limit, it’s nice, and will help a lot with the journal page I am working on. Speaking of which, it looks like livejournal generates their pages with perl, GAH! As much as I am fond of perl, it is slow and I dont think it’s the best choice for web development %) Oh well, I am doing alright even without looking into perl optinos, php is being good to me.

I got into a mutt vs pine and vim vs gui text editor arguement this morning %) This kid was using pine (which I stopped using because of exploits, you’d need to wait til the developers issued a patch, and it’s closed source!) and he said it was much better than mutt. Heh, NO! I love mutt, and it’s so much better and much more customizable than pine. Oh, sorry, mutt and pine are console email clients. Now mutt takes a lot of getting used to, the navigation is a bit confusing, and it just takes time to learn, which I assume is why this kid didn’t want to use it. Plus he said it “loved vi too much” … I explained to him that it could use other text editors as a background, but he said it was still “vi-like” … apparently he doesnt like “pushing five butons just to type a word” Hmmm. This lead us to vim. Anyone who has learned to use vim, and has gotten good at it *knows* that it is faster and much more useful than any gui text editor ever *Looks at her poor abandoned mouse* But again, I think this kid’s problem was he didn’t want to take the time to learn to use vim, although he claimed to “know the commands, just doesnt want to push 5 keys to insert a word” Heh, vim is not that complicated! Besides, when you ssh to other boxes and do so much stuff without a gui, knowing how to efficiently use a console-based text editor is priceless knowledge %)

Ah, it’s March 4th, it’s my youngest sister’s birthday today. She’s 14. *Makes an ecard for her* … I would have sent her a gift or something, but at her age there is probably nothing I could get her that she’d enjoy today and next month, and there is no way I am buying her a music CD, that girl has awful taste in music! Hehe, I fear what she spent that $20 gift certificate to barnes and noble that I gave her for xmas on. I should probably call her tonight, but I never know when she is going to be home, she has more of a social life than I have ever had!

I think I was just bored with reading, that’s why I couldn’t get into Children Of Dune at first. But now I am seeing all these ads for the movie on scifi, and a friend of mine told me yesterday that she’d tape it for me (yay!), so I am getting all excited for it (Comes out March 16th)… it is making me want to read the book %) I want to finish the book before I see any of the trailers… Ok, so I watched one yesterday (partially because I am so in love with watching quicktime movies on mplayer, hehehe), and it looked good *is so excited*
Gosh I’m a geek %)

Eh, so I was trying to keep my home directory under 1 gig ’cause we do backups nightly… backups consist of tar’ing up certain directories i want to backup, sending them across the lan to minute (it has 100 gig drive) and saving things there. Well sending over a gig over the lan is not good %) Takes a while… but dammit, I have a 40 gig harddrive! I hate feeling like I have to limit myself, maybe I should create a directory outside of /home/lyz that I dont want backed up (for temp downloads, etc). Hmmm….

I realized yesterday how lonely I’m becoming. Lonely you ask? Of course I have Myk, and we spend more time together than most couples I think, I mean he really does keep up with my needs for companionship, but I can’t help feeling at a loss since I don’t have many “real life” friends. I have Nita, but I barely see her once a month, and I guess Ed is my friend, and we chat online a bunch, but I havent actually seen him in months. And yesterday Nita was planning (in the channel i chat in with real life people) to hang out with a friend to do “girl things” and stuff, and I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous, JEALOUS! I hate that part of me, but it made me realize how much I miss social contact. Even the contact I got from just going to work. Myk is the only person I see on a daily basis, the only person I interact with regularly in reality. And I feel so bad for Nita, because there is no doubt that I talk her ear off each time we spend time together, just because I am so starved for socializing. The weirdest thing about this is I am *very* shy, and NEVER considered myself very social, I thought I could hide in a cave and become a hermit. Maybe this need for socializing is only because I see other people getting together and having fun and I want part of that? I dunno, I SO look forward to any social meetings of people, even PLUG! We havent been to a plug meeting in a long time, there is one tomorrow night “lightning round presentations” … small presentations from like 6 people, and it actually looks interesting, I hope we can go. Anyway, yes, lonely, I need social interaction! I have been chatting in IRC more often to compensate for this loss of real contact. But it’s just not the same, I want to go to a club, I want to go to the movies, I want to grab some food with people! *sigh*

Well I guess I am going go get working on this little mirc tutorial so I can zip it up and send it to who I need to for the site. *wanders off*

o/` Peter Murphy – My Last Two Weeks o/`

Hmm, about the depressing medical stuff I’ve been writing lately. I am honestly not too terribly concerned, it just helps to get my thoughts and speculations written down somewhere *shrugs*

I drank last night. But it wasn’t because I was depressed, I actually had a decent day yesterday. I’ve been reading Children Of Dune, but for some reason I am having trouble getting into it… maybe it’s because I read 5 books in the course of 2 weeks and I am just tired of reading? Maybe it’s the book itself? I’m not sure, I really enjoyed and flew through Dune and Dune Messiah. Anyway, I got sorta bored and saw that Myk was going through some boxes of stuff he had. He used to be really into music, so car stereos, normal stereos, all sorts of things like that were really important to him, and so he has *boxes* of stuff. He was trying to go through it and organize everything into all the proper boxes. So I decided to help. It cured my problem of being bored and make things more organized, yay! Myk showed me all sorts of things I never even knew existed, it was fun %) I even got a couple of my boxes down and put my computer stuff with his, I had all sorts of cables, even an old hub, floating around in my boxes, hehe. This entire project took a couple hours, afterwards we had dinner. Decided to have a couple beers with dinner… After dinner we went to play on our computers, Myk has been working with Sound Forge a bit, and I chatted some (what else can you do on the computer when intoxicated? Hehe *hides the root passwords*). Then we decided to go watch some TV… had a snack of cheese and crackers, mmm cheese. I guess I ended up going to sleep around 12.

But I did discover last night that I should get a hobby that I can do while drinking, hehe. Cant read when I drink, cant use the computer all the time while I am drinking, I’d like to relax by the fireplace and do *something* so I don’t fall asleep… instead of watching tv.

Ummm, today I will probably just read a bunch. We need to head out to the store to pick up some milk, bread, mayo, and chocolate *giggles* the important stuff! I should go make some.. *looks at the time* “breakfast” *wanders off*

o/` Peter Murphy – Seven Veils o/`

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome runs in my mother’s side of the family, it’s genetic. What is it? Apparently it’s male sex hormone overproduction in the body that causes problems (as you probably know, both men and women contain male and female sex hormones…). This possibly leads to less production of the female hormones, and those that make the ovaries function properly (as well as other symptoms like more body hair and greater sex drive). The end result of this? Infertility and if pregnancy is achieved, increased chance of miscarriage. My Aunt Mary Ellen was told she couldnt have children, but she had my cousin steve… the doctors told her not to try again however, as it might endanger her life. My Aunt Pam had a series of miscarriages, but managed to have two healthy daughters, unfortunately she was forced to have a hysterectomy about 2 years ago (at the age of 45). My Aunt Elaine has had this, never taken medication, and was able to have a healthy son, my cousin Chet, and has never had a miscarriage, currently she is not concerned about having more children so she honestly doesn’t know if she can or not, but she makes sure to get in to see her gynocologist every year to make sure things are ok. My mother is the only one of the sisters who has never had any problems, she had me and my two sisters, never miscarried.

What does this mean for me? This problem is found through irregular pap results. There i a very high chance that this could be my problem. Well at least it’s not life-threatening! And although there are reproduction problems, there are also medications, treatments to make it so women with this problem can have children. Of course this could also mean nothing, irregular paps are quite common, and not all women with PCOS have reproductive problems. I guess knowing that there is a problem that runs in the family makes me a bit more comfortable, I know there are problems, I know they are treatable. It makes me a bit less depressed than I was %) I am not as worried.

Enough of that health junk! I didn’t end up drinking at all last night. I realized as the afternoon progressed yesterday, that I really would be drinking because I was depressed, and I want to avoid getting into that sort of cycle, it’s not healthy. We had a decent night tho, Myk spent lots of time cheering me up, he’s so good at getting me into a better mood! We watched some tv, even tho it was sorta boring, ended up watching part of Volcano, and I brought a couple stuffed animals onto the bed to play our “Crow and Servo” (mst3k) so we could riff on the movie. That didn’t last long tho, the movie was just too bad, and there were too many commericials. I ended up reading for a bit.. went to bed around 11ish. I don’t think I slept well, I had a headache most of the night %\

So this weekend… um, I dont think we are doing anything (big surprise). I am kinda starting to feel bored staying home all the time… I dunno, I need more hobbies, spending all my time on the computer isnt good, and I can’t read for hours and hours without starting to get restless. I’ll figure something out…

Anyway, I am going to go see if there is anything to do, I should to find some breakfast too… *wanders off*

o/` Nirvana – Plateau o/`

Woo, I’m on the N’s. Speaking of which, Naru_Chan commented recently about changing my mp3 collection over to ogg. Well, ogg an mp3 strip different things from a cd song when they are compressed to the file format, although I might not notice it in most songs, the quailty would not be as good as it was. *Shrugs* I am not really concerned about saving space anyway, the few mb here and there that converting from mp3 to ogg doesnt matter to me (the reason for this mp3 culling was only to get rid of the corrupted ones, the ones that made funny skips or crashed my mp3 player). Not to mention I have almost 2000 mp3s, and converting them from mp3 to ogg on the 300 mhz server box where they reside would take WAAAY too long for me to be comfortable with ;) Don’t fear tho, as of about 6 months ago, all the music i rip from CDs has been in ogg format *points to her growing ogg folder*

Be careful what you wish for. Last night I was thinking back to when I was in high school, I have some *severe* depression, I’m surprised my parents didn’t take more invasive action to help me… but I suppose they had better things to worry about. I was never brave enough to kill myself, I think they knew that, and even the one day that I got very close to it (a story unto itself), I was never able to carry it out. Good thing too. But in my cowardly depression I did sometimes hope I’d die in other ways. I never saw much of a future for myself… I thought I was supposed to die beause everyone else seemed so well put together (I know better now, they were just as lost as me, but better at hiding it). So I’d be riding in the car with my mother, and hope for an accident where I’d die. All sorts of morbid thoughts, sometimes I’d put myself in a dangerous situation so that the chance of death was higher, so it could be called an accident. I then played with all sorts of thoughts of whether I’d go to hell or not, I did want to die, but it wasnt actually suicide, how would God view such a thing? I was only vaguely religious at the time, but it was enough to make me wonder if there was a place for people like me in christian dogma.

Eventually it seemed to me that it wasn’t people like me, people with no plans, who often died… but those people who showed “so much promise” those people who had “great plans” those people who actually seemed happy, that died in most tragic accidents. So I was just doomed to wander in a depressed state, my life was just going to suck. I watched my neighbor Nancy, a wonderful person who was like a second mother to me and countless others, a woman who gave and gave her entire life, die from cancer. I wished I could take her place, why let someone so great die when a little depressed nothing like me was allowed to continue my miserable life? At least then I could die in peace, people would remember me as a young, smart, pretty girl and they wouldnt have to see all that I was destined to fail at.

I wasn’t goth. I wasn’t anything. I was fairly morbid, and I used Disney movies and toys to escape into a place where I could survive. It made me a little wierd, but at least I am here today to talk about it, I’m not completely crazy ;) Now why do I dig up all this stuff now? The entire issue with these irregular test results is scaring the hell out of me. I am not dwelling on worry, I would make myself sick doing that, but at 11 pm when I try to go to sleep, or while we are watching commercials, sometimes the thoughts creep up on me. What if it is cancer? What if this has the possibility to kill me? What if it’s removable but takes away my ability to have children? What if I have to spend the next few years on therapy and medication? Where will this leave me with Myk? In any of these cases I’d definately have to give him the option to opt out of our relationship, I doubt he would… but it would hurt me terribly to burden him with this. And I can’t help but wonder if those “wishes” I had at a teenager are finally catching up with me
, now that I am finally in a happy point in my life.

Now I realize the chances that this is cancer are small, but cancer is a very scary word, and I am a very good worrier ;) I am scared because it’s been a year since the first irregular result, has waiting possibly damaged me some? *sigh* It’s all just very scary… Even if it’s not cancer it is quite possibly a problem that will need to be carefully watched, possibly something that needs to be surgically removed. Why can’t I just be healthy for once in my life?

I am not looking for pity, I’m way beyond that… this is just my weblog dammit, and currently this is a great worry of mine, hehe. I’ll move on now.

Last night Myk and I were both pretty down, luckily when we are both depressed we both spend all our time trying to cheer each other up.. so eventually a decent mood usually prevails. Unfortunately I find myself very happy that it’s friday, because on friday I can drink and not have to worry about sleeping well or getting up in the morning! Why is this unfortunate? Because I hate to drink because I’m depressed, when I drink when I am depressed I either melt further into a puddle of depression and feel absolutely terrible, or I get into this fake happiness that has absolutely no content to it what so ever, I have a terrible tendancy to talk a lot, and I find myself walking the fine line between happy drunkenness and being completely miserable.

Ok, I am really going to change the mood of this entry. I must think of happy things! So I went to a new irc server yesteray. It’s called nitrousnet.net. Seems to be like 16 servers, with a population of about 300. It lags, it splits, and I can’t see half the people join the channel, but it’s the new home of #brit-cit, a room that I was a member of for a bit. And hey, at least the services seem more stable than our crappy (windows!) ones on psiblade. So #brit-cit is pretty much the same, pretty slow actually… so I was wandering around other channels, found one called #linux … which seems to be dead despite the one person there, then there is #linux-help which is almost equally is dead, i had one person ask where I was from, then wandered back into oblivion. I don’t think I’ll stay on this server long, it’s pretty flakey.

That wasnt particularly happy. Ummm… Ah, I think I am going to expand on this php admin page for my site. Instead of having the php and mysql controlling just the updates section, I am considering writing more modules so it can control each of the menus too. I might never see the html of my index page again! Hehe. I helped my buddy from #goddess install the basic admin page last night… actually I didn’t exactly help, I sent him the package and he read the readme, apparently all he needed help with was making sure all the right libs were installed so php and mysql could talk to each other (sent me a screenshot of the php not recongnising the mysql commands), seems like he has everything working now tho… it feels so good to have someone using something I made! *grins*

So I don’t know if I have mentioned this (I just scanned through previous entries, doesnt look like I have), but this friend of Myk’s and mine, Ed (N-Tropy on IRC, we know him through real life tho) has been talking to me a lot lately. Apparently he has been working on a php admin backend for his site too, completely coincidentally I guess, but it’s been cool bouncing ideas for our admin pages off each other. He has more experience with PHP than I do and can sometimes help me out when I am stumped with a silly “i’ve been looking at code for too many hours” problems, hehe. Anyway, Myk seems to think that Ed is offering me help because he harbors some sort of attraction to me. Gah! He even asked me if I was “being nice to Ed” … well of course I am! I am treating him like I always have. Bleh.. even if he did have some sort of attraction to me (which I doubt), why should Myk be concerned? Does he feel a threat? Come on, Ed is almost 30, ca
n’t find a stable job (he’s into computers too, obviously), and he’s a bit weird. I mean he’s a cool friend, but DEFINATELY not my type, and definately doesn’t hold a candle to Myk %) Besides, I love Myk! Bah, he shouldnt worry so much. At least he’s not paranoid like my ex was “if a guy talks to you he likes you, so dont talk to him anymore” bleh, that sucked %)

Right, so that took me forever to write, hehehe, *looks at the time* Hrm, almost 2 and I havent done much today. *wanders off to begin working on her menu admin module*

o/` Massive Attack – Dissolved Girl o/`

So I was thinking last night while reading through the chatroom names on psiblade (irc.psiblade.net), and I came across #Vampires. This is a chat room that *tried* to move from irc.scifi.com (failed I guess, there is still one on scifi), and from what I understand, these people play a morphed-for-the-web version of Vampire: The Masquerade. So THAT got me remembering the fun I had playing Vampire, and since I didn’t have much web access, let alone a web log back when I played, this part of my entry will be a bit of “remembering” %)

I had played a little Dungeons and Dragons, but I guess I wasn’t interested enough to get into learning all the information needed to play a successful campaign. But Vampire was different. Vampires are cool! And White Wolf‘s Vampire “Mythology” is quite interesting… I found a copy of Revelations of the Dark Mother in a pile on our dining room table (at the time I was living with a bunch of roommates, stuff just got piled on the table when we’d clean. Anyway, the book is basically about Lilith, and although the book was fictional, it had some interesting truths to it that I was dying to weed out, it turned into a bit of a project, and while doing this I discovered the game that this book was a prop for. So the next time I went up to Syracuse, we bought a few books… a couple of our friends got REALLY into it.. our buddy Pat ended up selling something like $200 worth of Magic: The Gathering cards to finance his buying of tons of Vampire books so we could put together a campaign. My boyfriend at the time (the evil ex!) got into it too, and bought some source books, and stuff about one of the clans. I was content to just focus on Clan Ravnos. Ravnos is a clan that co-existed with Gypsies (in retrospect this choice on my part played a huge part in my real life too, I still can’t seem to settle down ;)), but were mostly wiped out during the Nazi Holocaust. Anyway, it was cool %) and fun! We were allowed to clean out the back room of the card shop we played Magic at so we could play vampire back there, we weren’t allowed to play in the main area of the shop because of the “violent and sometimes “adult” nature of vampire games” heh. Ah those were the days. Sometimes when the card shop was closed, or we couldnt get together for the scheduled time we’d have all-night sessions, where our friends would come over and we’d eat, play vampire, listen to music, fun stuff %) At one time we ended up playing two separate campaigns, one with people who could show up at the card shop, one with people who could come to our nighttime sessions. My ex headed the one at our apartment, and Pat was the GM (game master) for the one at the card shop… Once my ex killed Pat’s character for hitting on my character in his campaign… so the next day in Pat’s campaign he put my character into a situation where I’d die if I didnt drink the blood of my ex’s cousin (a kid about 3 years younger than me that had a very public crush on me)… My ex was furious, but it’s just a game, and humorous parts like that make it all the more memorable and fun %) YAY for geeky role-playing game! *PrincessLeia2 rolls the dice

Ugh, I hate it when I get all snuggley warm, with big comfy socks on and then I go into the bathroom and step in water, UGH!

Ah so last night was pretty boring, ate dinner, watched some tv, read for a little bit. But as always, boring is OK! We are supposed to get a snowstorm tonight! Well, it’s not exactly the normal definition of snow storm that I’m used to, not quite a north-easter (or anything like the last storm, that was *historical*), but they are expecting a good 4-8 inches, woo! I love snow!

So I discovered Celestia today. It’s a program that lets you “travel” around the solar system, and g
alaxy, it’s really great looking. Of course you need a decent graphics card to handle it %)

Ah! So I got my PHP page all done for my site! I installed it last night! My site doesnt really look any different, I changed the layout of the updates so they dont look like crap in netscape anymore. But you cant tell from the page that there is any php in use, it is much love! Hehe. PrincessLeia.com has gotten over 9000 hits now %) YAY! And Wallaceandgromit.net just broke the 700 mark, the number of visits there has been increasing steadily %) Makes me very happy! I love my websites…

I guess I am going to go try to get something done today, I’ve wasted most of the day already chatting and playing with Celestia, doh! *wanders off*

o/` Gob – Paint It Black o/`

I’ve been going through all my mp3s since thrusday, I’m on the G’s! Hehe… this is taking forever. I want to get rid of all the corrupted ones because they are annoying. Then I’ll regenerate my mp3 list, because it has changed a bunch since november.

So I never realized how easy setting up a wireless network in windows is these days. But I was on the phone with my mother the other night (she called me, amazing! It had only been two months since the last time I called her…). Anyway, she says she can get online with a “wireless thing” ..Eh? Well in the end I realized it was a little wireless network, apparently they are pretty much plug and play now, nice! So easy even my mother can do it!

I ended up calling a different doctor yesterday to get an appointment since i don’t feel like waiting the months to find out what is or isnt wrong with me, I have an appointment March 20th, yay!

I still have this cold, but it’s mostly going away, I’m still tired and I have this cough (i’ll probably have the cough for a while), but at least I’m hungry again, and my sinus congestion isnt as bad. I didn’t take any DayQuil all day yesterday! Only took NyQuil at night so I would be able to sleep. I felt sorta groggy this morning, but on a whole much better, yay *waves goodbye to her icky cold*

Anyway, I am in the mood to work on my site now, so I am going to go clean up that php script, make it pretty, and package it up for my buddy ph1gm3nt. And I’ll make mine specially pretty for my site… maybe add some more advanced content if i am in the mood.

*wanders off*

o/` Enya – No Holly For Miss Quinn o/`

The cold seems to be going away luckily, I woke up this morning and I still have the cough, but the sore throat and sinus congestion have mostly gone away, yay! Don’t worry, I won’t go out partying tonight ;) I am going to continue to try to relax to make sure the rest of this cold goes away.

I got some bad news today. Uh, if you read my web log for linux stuff and not for my “life” then I strongly suggest you skip this paragraph %) It’s not for the faint of heart! I had a gynecologist appointment last month, it was a bit stressful because I had an irregular pap smear the time before. But 4 weeks had passed and I didnt hear anything, so I assumed that this time it came back fine. Then this morning I get a call, irregular again. They want me to go in for a “colposcopy” I have to make an appointment soon *sigh* I got online as soon as I was off the phone to learn about what this was, apparently it’s not painful, and it’s a rather short precedure But it still scares the crap out of me, what will they find? One of the possibilities for this is just some sort of infection or inflammation, but since it’s been almost a year between visits i think that’s unlikely. It could be dysplasia, it could be just some harmless cells that are irregular (but good to keep an eye on), or it could be early signs of cancer. Cancer doesnt run in my family, and I don’t believe I have ever been exposed to anything that would cause it, but it still scares me. Especially since it’s so easy to look at a cancer victim and think that it “can’t happen to me” heh, well it can … I just called to try to make an appointment, all booked, dammit! I need to call next week to see if I can get an appointment, ugh… This definately has not helped my mood any *sigh* Before getting that phone call I was actually getting out of my depressive rut, but now I’m right back in it, I am a notorious worrier and this wait will not be good. I think I need to talk to a woman about this, I’m scared… any volunteers? Heh…

Ok you can start reading again ;) I am not sure what started me feeling depressed yesterday. It was just one of those days when I wake up and for some reason I am thinking of all the reasons I suck. I guess part of it is that I am sick, it’s like I’m *always* sick, even though I know that to not be true. I dunno, I hate feeling depressed, I really do have a nice life, but of course thinking “i have no reason to be depressed” inevitably makes it worse because I think there is something wrong with me. Bleh… stupid depression.

I’m doing pretty good on that php thing, I worked out a few bugs it’s almost done, I just need to clean it up, finish the readme, and get it all tarred up. I don’t know if I will do that this afternoon. I probably could finish it, but I think I am too depressed and not feeling like doing anything. But maybe working on it will get my mind off of things. And just a quick thanks to Teanah for sending me that mycathatesyou.com link, I was amused %)

So I am finally going to post all *5* book reviews of the books I’ve read in the past three weeks…

Guards! Guards!, By Terry Pratchett, 355 Pages
This, another book in Pratchett’s Discworld series, tells of a group of people who decide to cas a spell to raise a dragon. Of course things don’t go according to plan and we are introduced to that Ankh-Morpork City Watch. I really enjoyed this book. Not only was a lot of attention paid to the big dragon, but more than ever there is a great amount of time spent focusing on the small swamp dragons! I love the dragons. So Pratchett’s usual with, humor and memorable characters is paired with a story that will entertain all sorts of dragon lovers, a great book.

Homebody, By Orson Scott Card, 430 pages
As with most of Card’s stand-alone books, th
is one starts out fairly slow. It shows the read a quite normal situation, the characters are regular people, which allows the reader to feel a sort of kinship with them. About 130 pages into the book, the plot takes a turn for the strange. Don Lark, a master craftsman who specializes in restoring old houses, purchases an old mansion in a quiet southern town. His plans to renovate are quickly influenced by several strange occurances. A trio of old women from next door warn him of the house’s evils, a young woman is discovered to be living in the house, and some of his own personal demons come back to face him. I enjoyed this book, the second half I read almost in one sittings because I just couldn’t tear myself away from it. Another great book by Card!

Intensity, Dean Koontz, 436 pages
This novel tells the story of Chyna Shepard, a young, shy woman with a troubled past, who finds herself in the path of a serial rapist and murderer. I can’t say I enjoyed this book much, the story was gripping and of course I wanted to know how it ended, but I was frustrated at the “cheap” writing style of Koontz that keeps the reader interested, and turns a 24-hour ordeal into a 400+ page book. The ending was alright, but it felt rushed, like Koontz struggles with resolutions, or maybe he does this intentionally to satiate his impatient audience? Unless I hear awsome reviews from someone I trust I think I’ll stear clear of his books in the future…

Eric, By Terry Pratchett, 197 pages
This is another book in the discworld series, and it brings back the Wizard Rincewind! Eric is a teenage demonologist who follows in his grandfather’s footsteps by being terribly unsucessful. Instead of a demon, he summons Rincewind (who is stuck in another dimention, after events in a previous book, Sourcery), much to the dismay of the demon king Astfgl. Not believing that Rincewind is not a demon, Eric demands him to grant him three wishes. While executing this request, they travel on a humorous journey through time and space, and quite literally to Hell and back. I enjoyed this book, the luggage tags along as always, and Rincewind’s clumsy cowardice is as entertaining as is always is. Short but sweet!

Ender’s Game, By Orson Scott Card, 324 pages
I first read this book about four years ago (1999), maybe it wasn’t what I expected, maybe I just wasn’t ready for it, but whatever the reason, I didnt enjoy it nearly as much as I did this time. It tells the story of Andrew “Ender” Wiggins, a brilliant child who is chosen to be, with dozens of his peers, trained for military combat. The enemy? An alien race of insect-like creatures that attacked the human race decades before. Card is masterful when it comes to making the reader feel what the main character feels, and this book is no exception, Ender is so REAL, and even if you can’t relate to who he is as a person, you can understand him. The story is amazing, it’s sad, yet full of triumph, at the end you are not sure whether to smile or cry, but you don’t want to put this book down.

Yay books. Honestly, I don’t know why I didnt like Ender’s Game when I first read it, it’s a really awsome book… ok so my opinion may be a bit biased because of my known fandom for Orson Scott Card, but this one DID win the Hugo and Nebula awards %) I am going to start to read Children Of Dune tonight… hopefully I can find a friend to tape the scifi mini-series of it for us (we don’t have cable).

Anyway… wow it’s gotten late %) *wrote this entry on and off all day* … right, I should go do stuff *wanders off*

I am depressed, and I have no reason to be depressed… that makes it so much worse.

o/` Red Delicious – Bring You Down o/`

So Naru_Chan dropped into #13thHour this morning, it was an interesting time… and the room was unusually busy, which is cool. And earlier this morning neofreak dropped by, but was quite quiet ;) .. Ah I forgot to mention, MorganHorse used to drop by there “back in the day” when we were in high school *gasp* Oh so long ago that seems now…

I still feel pretty crappy today. Yesterday we ended up going to Unos with a friend of ourse, I felt ok… and as I always STUPIDLY do when I am feeling better I decided to take advantage of it and I had a couple beers *sigh* I came home after Unos and crawled into bed and slept for 2 hours. Woke up around 9 am and felt *awful* … a feeling that carried into this morning. Luckily I was able to relax by the fire last night snuggled in a blanket and finished Eric, great book, Rincewind is hilarious. I watched some CourtTV last night, from about 1 – 3 am ’cause I was feeling so crappy but wasnt exactly tired. I can’t say I slept very good, woke up with my chest hurting again *sigh* … S’ok tho a cold can’t last *too* long, and I have lots of time to rest.

I talked to my youngest sister Annette (13, well 14 in about 10 days…), I confronted her about her school problems, and she was pretty unresponsive, gives me the same “i dont care” answers as usual… I hope she knows at least that I’m concerned, and takes SOMETHING I say seriously. Then she started joking about being a white trash ho… like that is cool or something? Gah… she is utterly hopeless! And it makes me sad.

I guess I am going to go lie down ’cause i dont feel good. I am reading Ender’s Game again, since it’s been about 4 years since I’ve read it, and I am going to be starting to read the entire series. *Yawns and wanders off*