o/` Dido – Isobel o/`

I feel better this morning.

As I have been complaining about lately, I am depressed. I’ve considered seeing a doctor about this depression, but honestly I don’t want to become one of the masses of zombie anti-depressant takers. I always get over it eventually anyway.

So yesterday was a lousy day. I woke up around 6 am and took a shower since I needed to drive to work with Myk so I could take the Jeep to Pep Boys to get it looked at (it’s been making this ticking noise for about 2 weeks or so). It was snowing, I am not a big fan of driving in the snow, but to avoid traffic we took mostly back-roads, and people there seemed to take care driving, which I assume is because most of them were driving in their own neighborhood… and everyone knows the only place you need to be careful driving in is your own neighborhood! Anyway, the roads werent too bad actually, Myk drove into work and I drove from there to Pep Boys. I went to Wawa around 7 to grab something to eat. Wawa is like a gas station without gas pumps (well, some of them do have gas pumps.. but this one didnt), and the amazing thing, that I have mentioned before, is a great number of them dont take credit cards! All I had was $2 and a $20… and of course the total came to something stupid like $2.14 so I had to break the $20 that I kept meaning to put in the bank, and what really bugs me is I have something like $10 in change here at home that i always neglect to bring anywhere. Anyway, I sat in the Wawa parking lot (which is actually the same lot as for pep boys) for about an hour listening to NPR before my appointment at Pep Boys at 8… it would have been silly to drive 20 minutes home, sit around home for 20 minutes and drive the 20 minutes back you see…

I get to Pep Boys for the appointment, and STRESS to them to check the oil before they did anything ’cause we assumed the noise was attributed to an oil problem, so an hour later they come back and say that the oil was very low and is either leaking or burning pretty bad. I sorta expected this, and so the suggested they do an engine diagnostic to see exactly what was going one, $85 *ugh!* $85 before they could even START work on it! Oh well… an hour later they came back and told me that there was some oil thingy broken, which also caused the meter in the dashboard not to work (I HAD noticed that), they said fixing that would be $75. No problem! That’s not bad… but then they suggested a tune up and cleaning of the fuel injecter thingy (yes, that’s a technical term %P), I told them to fix the oil thingy and I’d get in touch with Myk to see if he wanted to do the tune up. The tune up and stuff ended up costing around $240, eak! But the Jeep needed it so we went through with it. It was about noon by the time they finally got done, luckily I had brought a book so I wasnt terribly bored. I get up to pay for the work and the credit card was denied! I called Myk to ask what I should do, and he wasn’t at his desk (I had his cellphone for the day) so I left a message, and wandered around Pep Boys for a while, about a half hour I guess, then finally decided to put as much on the card as I could, and pay for the rest out of my savings account. I did that, and it really bothered me, because my precious savings was now down to $100 %( But it’s work that needed to be done, and my money really was for situations like that. I was going to go get some lunch after that, but I was just too upset. (turns out the credit card company hadnt processed our last payment yet, after 2 weeks, so we didnt have enough to cover it, but we would today! bastards…)

I drove home, got home around 1. I found a notice on our door about us owing for the water bill. This upset me ’cause I remember writing that check out, I walked up to the office and had them check their records and they admitted a mistake on their part and apologized profusely. UGH! Then I get home from the office, and notice the answering machine had a message on it from the health care insurance peop
le who I had called the previous day. Now these people are VERY hard to get ahold of, you wait on hold forever, assuming you dont get a busy signal when you first call, which I usually did, and I wasn’t home for their call back! So I had to do the whole thing over just to get them to answer a stupid question I had, this time I agreed to stay on hold. But calling 3245 times, FINALLY getting through, THEN being put on hold for 15 minutes did nothing to improve my mood. After that was all straightened out I went out to check the mail and we get a thing from blockbuster video saying that we didnt return a DVD. I remember specifically returning this dvd, so I was upset %) I called them and I get this kid on the phone who mumbles that it has been “taken care of” … no apology or anything! Gah. By this point I was ready to crawl into bed and just cry, so many mistakes by other people that are coming to bug me! And of course it all has to come on one day *knocks on wood*

But instead of crying I decided to go grocery shopping. I used my money ’cause I wanted to get the shopping done asap, and I needed to do something to keep my mind off how crappy I was feeling. Luckily the shopping trip was fairly uneventful. I went to pick up Myk from work around 3:30, and while driving out there I notice that I can still sorta hear the ticking in the engine!!! Now talk about wanting to cry!!! Myk got into the Jeep and I said “i am so sorry, it’s still making that STUPID noise!” And of course as I usually do in situations such as this I start blaming myself and how I cant even do a simple thing like taking the car to get it fixed. I guess I was sorta freaking out ’cause Myk asked me to calm down. We started driving home and he assured me that the sound wasnt nearly as loud at it had been, and on a whole the Jeep sounded and was running much better, he said it might take a while for the ticking sound to go completely away because the engine was almost completely without oil and it needed to be all oiled up again, or something, car engine functions are not my forte %). I guess I was fairly wound up when we got home, it’s just difficult to relax, and I KNEW as soon as I began to relax I’d fall asleep because I was so tired. We ate dinner around 4:30 (i had neglected to eat lunch in all my frustration) and then around 5:30 I sat on the couch to read, and started falling asleep. Myk and I decided to “lie down for a little bit” so I slept til about 8:30 %) Naps are bad! Luckily I was able to go back to bed around 1ish and get a decent amount of sleep… although I am still tired. To top it all off I had a headache most of the day yesterday. I think it was a combination about being outside with the sun and glaring snow and being stressed out %s

And now it’s today. I am sure I had a bunch of introspective things I had planned to write about when I went to sleep last night, but as with most nighttime ideas that I have, I have forgotten, since I didn’t think to write anything down. Bleh, I am tired.

Oh! I did get the guestbook finished on wallaceandgromit.net, so now it’s all pretty. I guess I am a bit down because I have accomplished much of what I set out to do in the past few weeks. I wanted my IRC bot to have a mysql database, so working with Perl DBI I was able to do that, I made guestbooks and polls for my sites using php and mysql, and I even went further to create a password protected site for users to access the IRC Bot’s mysql database from the web %) It’s really cool looking too, unfortunately I can’t show everyone since the whole point is it’s only available to certain users, lol. Oh well, it’s a table that looks like R2-D2 with the info inclosed in the “body” of the droid. It’s cute. Maybe I will just work on my site this afternoon, basic html pages to pass the time, I have tons of sections I began working on and never finished. I need another perl, php, or mysql project!

Anyway, I need to go do morning things noew.

I had a bad day.

o/` Portishead – Wandering Star o/`

I seem to have trouble with dealing with people at times. Like this recent (past few months) tendancy to get upset at people and not forgive them. You see, I am a very forgiving person, to the point of being taken advantage of time and time again, so a few months ago Myk told me that I should really take a stand with certain people. Which was wise, since I even let people who have hurt me in the past come back and walk all over me over and over again. But I guess I took it too far. This one kid pissed me off one day by kicking me from a room on irc where I had ops. Then he got all pissy with me and acted like a total jerk… so I figured I should just take a stand and not forgive. And of course it turns out that this made these new people that I started chatting with in that room think that I am a terrible person who never forgives anyone! They told me to lighten up *sigh* So as my new years resolution this year, I am going to try to better deal with people concerning forgiveness and their behavior, because although being walked all over “keeps the peace” in most cases, it’s certainly not the way to go with pathological liars and the like… I am reluctant to say “if you betrayed/lied/were an ass x number of times…” because different problems may upset me more than others… and I hate quantifying people like that *shrugs* I will work on it.

So yesterday it snowed, and I wasn’t feeling so great, but we were home and I was snuggled with a good book and quite happy. Then a friend of ours, Nita, gets on IRC and asks if we want to go to the movies. We said “no” about 50 times, but she was fairly persistant, so finally, against our better judgement we said “ok, but you are driving.” Now it’s not like we were going to see a move that I want to see, we were going to go see “The Gangs Of New York” … yes, driving in the snow to see a Dicaprio movie, I dont know what I was thinking either. So Nita came to pick us up, and her car was sliding A LOT, so Myk said “ok, we are taking the Jeep”, we drove back to Nita and Mike’s apartment and then they tell us we need to stop at Mike’s work. Ok. We drive out there and wait for 20 minutes or so for him to get what he needs, THEN we needed to drive into the city to pick up our friend pinkee. Now we expected to do this, but what we didnt expect was spending 45 minutes at her apartment setting up a computer. By this time it was after 7, and we were unsure we’d be able to make it to the movie on time because we were hungry and NEEDED to get something to eat before we went to the theater. Myk ended up getting a little upset, and I really wasn’t feeling well to begin with, so we just told our friends that we wanted to go home. We dropped everyone off at Mike and Nita’s and went home…. it was something like 2 1/2 hours after we left home. 2 1/2 hours of us driving (like we said we didnt want to), terrible road conditions, waiting, and frustration, it was just too much. We probably would have stayed with our “no” answer if we knew it would be such a complicated LONG trip, heh.

I am depressed again. I guess I have been for about a week now, first it was just the typical depression that I get, but then I spoke to my friend Eric. If I were to list the “3 best friends of my life” it would probably be “Leslie, Myk, Eric” … so obviously Eric and I are very close. Well we hadnt had any contact for almost a month because he has been so insanely busy with school, so finally last week I caught him on messanger and was able to talk to him. Apparently he has been very sick the past few weeks. I won’t get into details but it’s fairly serious, and the signs are indicating it might be a difficult to treat form of cancer. There are a few more tests they need to do to rule out certain things or confirm cancer suspicions, but I am worried. I love Eric so much, and if anything were to happen to him… I don’t really want to think about it, but it has got me down. I am just hoping it is not cancer.

I got some work done yesterday on WallaceAndGromit.net … t
hat always cheers me up, I was able to put a Poll up, like the one I have on Princessleia.com, so if you have seen the wallace and gromit movies you can go vote now %) I am afraid my wallace and gromit site doesnt get too many hits… maybe I should promote it more. Then again I am sure the hit count will go up in… 2005 when the full length movie comes out in theaters %) Oh gosh that’s a long time away, hehe. Anyway, I think I am going to put together a guestbook this morning/afternoon on the site.

I guess I am going to go get some stuff done now, god I woke up too early %s

o/’ Miranda Sex Garden – Sunshine o/`

Last night we FINALLY went to go see The Two Towers, it was good, but so long! I love the ents, I think they did a really nice job with them… And the battle scenes were not as bloody as I was lead to believe…

We got home from the movies around 8:45 (went to a 4:10 showing to avoid the crowds, the crowds at movie theaters around here are unbelievable!), and I went to bed around 10, no kidding. I slept until 11 this morning, LOL. I am not sure why I slept that long… it was weird tho, I probably would have slept longer if Myk hadnt gotten up.

Yeah, sleep.

Today I spent a lot of time reading, I just started book 9 of the wheel of time, yay! Book 10 comes out this month, I am trying to be good and patient enough to wait for it to come out on paperback, but I am not sure how sucessful I will be, I guess it all depends on how long it takes to get to paperback, hmmm. I also got my Terry Pratchett books I ordred last sunday, unfortunately the Beauty And the Beast dvd is coming separately, hmmm, I guess I never mentioned buying that… well I was going through my disney movies last week, and realized I didnt have that movie (when I moved out of my parents house we sorta divided up the disney movie collection), and I LOVE that movie, so I bought the dvd… not the 2-disk special edition one, but the old boring one, I wasnt about to spend another $10 for features I didn’t really care much about %) as much as I love the movie. So despite me ordering them and saying they should “ship together” i am getting that one separate, barnes and noble confuses me o_O this is the second time they have done this… oh well, as long as they dont charge for shipping I dont care, hehe.

We went to Uno’s this afternoon with Myk’s friend Bob, it was yummie %d … I got a chicken sandwich instead of pizza ’cause my stomach has been weirdish lately… although I did drink beer, doh… well cheese hurts my tummy more than beer! On our way home we thought about going to Best Buy ’cause they have R2-D2: Under The Dome DVDs %o! That’s a documentary, biography-style, it’s only 20 minutes long I believe, but the DVD is only $5 %) I was sorta pissed because in order to sell this dvd I think they took the quicktime version that you can view on starwars.com off, and tht isnt cool. But I love R2 … and $5 isn’t bad…. But we didnt end up going ’cause traffic on 309 was insane….Oooh there is free shipping on bestbuy.com, neat.

I got an email from a person who had visited my website through a search for Miranda Sex Garden today. It was pretty cool, she’s a pretty big fan but was looking for pointers on buying some of the newer cds and it’s apparently still very difficult to find fan-sites for Miranda. She also asked for a couple mp3s, so I put some in a directory on my site for her, and I sent her some lyrics she asked for. It was pretty cool %) It’s really cool to have people email me because of something they saw on my site, and I felt pretty knowledgable sharing answers to some Miranda questions.

I got my poll put up on princessleia.com yesterday afternoon, it looks really nice if I do say so myself… And yesterday I had hit number 8000! YAY! I love having a site that gets so many hits %) *hugs her sitey*

Anyway, I am going to go through some older files on my system and ‘clean up’ *wanders off*

The weather is terrible this morning… dark, rainy, icy… actually I like it, but it’s terrible to drive in I’m sure. If the weather clears up by this afternoon we get to go see Two Towers %D! YAY! … actually I wont get *too* excited, the weather reports arent looking very promising.

I was actually quite sucessful with my poll yesterday, all I am doing now is working on a page to display the results, I can probably get php to calculate percentages fairly easily, maybe I can even make a sort of bar graph, that’d be cool, all sorts of html fun…

Yeah, so I am going to go do that noew *wanders off*

o/` Something Corporate – Konstantine o/`

This song depresses me, I should not listen to it.

I took down the christmas decorations this morning, it was also depressing, I guess I am not having a very good day so far. It’s also Myk’s first day back to work after 12 days off AND I barely got any sleep last night, of course all this adds up to me having a crappy day. I guess I am just slipping into the post-holiday winter depression again, and that’s not cool. I dont understand it, since I really do like winter, and it’s not the lack of sun thing, I never like the sun %) *shrugs* I think I just tend to feel hopeless around this time of year… and maybe particularly this year because it marks an entire year of me living here, and although I have made staggering progress with the computer, I just don’t feel like it’s enough, I mean, I even know how to cook now! But I still feel like a failure. I guess it’s because I don’t have a job, no matter how muchI glorify my acomplishments at home, I still feel like I am still ‘leeching’ off Myk, and I wasn’t taught to be like that at all *sigh*

I am going to cheer up now, or at least turn this entry in a more positive direction, dwelling on suckiness never helps, and I really am happy in life as a whole, I shouldn’t be depressed.

I have new years pictures YAY!:

Time (Myk) and Relic (the cat)

small . large

Time and Relic again %)

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Grant in his seat near the fireplace

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mct (Mike) in his corner spot

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lost1 (Nita) drinking, YAY!

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PrincessLeia2 (Lyz) drunx0rd

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So I want to make a php poll for my website, using mysql as the database to store votes of course, and I am thinking about how to begin going at it. And while I was thinking about this I realized there was an interesting pattern to all my projects:

1. spend 3-5 weeks talking about it
2. finally get down to business and diving into what I want to do, ignoring IRC, closing browsers, focusing all energies on my project (usually this is on a wednesday or thursday).
3. about 4 hours into it get so frustrated that I complain that I will never get it done and that I’m stupid
4. around hour 5-6 making a major breakthrough and thinking I can finally do it
5. day one ends
6. don’t get much sleep that night because I am thinking about how co
ol the end project will be and how awsome it is that I am being sucessful
7. wake up early the next morning, pouring all energy into the project again, fixing bugs, and ‘making it pretty’
8. finishing the project mid afternoon on that second day

It’s quite funny actually, I have gotten better at #3 tho, I sometimes laugh at myself now when I get to this point… hehe

So I was at Eckerd’s Pharmacy on new years eve to get some soda and chips for the party, and the woman at the counter that is always there when I go asked me if I was ever going to submit my application. This surprised me because last I knew they were already hiring someone and submitting mine would only do me good if that person “didn’t work out” … so I sorta told her that it turns out we might be moving soon so I wasn’t sure I needed a job anymore. She was all sad and said “awww, that’s terrible! We need an assistant manager, and I told my boss I knew someone who would be perfect for the job, you!” … Gah! Assistant Manager? That must pay better than just a normal clerk, but there was a line at the store and I
really think we are going to move within the year, so I didn’t ask how much it was. *shrugs* why do jobs like this come around right before I move? I won’t be too quick to call it a curse because I DO move quite often ;)

Ok, I am going to go try to get something done today.. *wanders off*

Got so drunk last night, *everything hurts now*. Lan party awsome, we played lots of Unreal Tournament 2003 %) YAY!! My friend Nita and I made strawberry daquari mix + vodka slushies, they rocked. I ate lots of junk food too, hehe. We have pictures of the party on our digital camera, I’ll post them tomorrow probably, once we get the pictures uploaded to my site. Anyway, I am going to go back to bed for a little bit, need to give advil time to work, hehe. *winces as she reaches up to click the submit button then wanders off*

We’re going to a lan party this evening… it should be a nice New Years %)

The lan party is going to be great, usually we go to this couple’s house and since they have dial up it’s not online, and that’s fine, we have plenty of fun. But this one is at a friend’s house who has a T1 %o … so we’ll be online with a T1 AND he is going to borrow some cisco switches so we can have a fiber lan, YAY!!!! It’s going to be so nice. And it looks like about 10 or so people will be showing up at least, yay! Anyway, i gotta go take a shower and head out to the store to pick up snackfoods for the party… *wanders off*

o/` Patrick Doyle – The Price Of Success o/`

I actually did get some work done today despite my earlier post %) When I made that I was tired and thinking about wandering off to read with nothing but my email being checked and some chatting done to constitute as my daily acomplishments. Eventually I came back tho, and typed up a couple book review to start:

Coldfire Trilogy Book 2: When True Night Falls, By C.S. Friedman, 617 pages
This book is the sequel to Black Sun Rising and continues the crusade to save the world from the evil taking over. The characters this time are across the ocean on a continent uncharted and basically unknown of by their home. Their adventure against the fae-borne evils in this book are exciting and clever. The last 100 pages or so really bring this book together and make the whole book worth reading, as it takes the reader on a rollar coaster of emotion, revelation, and excitement. Again I am impressed with Friedman’s blend of science fiction with fantasy. I was much more impressed with this book than the predecessor, and I’m glad I kept reading this series.

Snow Crash, By Neal Stephenson, 448 pages
I first heard about this book a couple years ago, and it interested me, but I never really had the time to read it until recently. Often compared to William Gibson’s Neuromancer, this book takes a look at what the futuristic Internet might look like. The Metaverse, world of 3d, reproduced in front of your eyes, a world you can become lost in, and as the book tells, a world you can become hurt in. It’s the tale of Hiro Protagonist, and his efforts to deify himself and save the Metaverse from “Snow Crash” a virus that infects a ‘hacker’ and causes real physical harm. This exciting book takes place in fragments, between several characters and in the real world and the Metaverse, and explores a cult, some ancient Sumerian history, and paints a picture of a society ruled not by laws and countries, but by corporations. Even if you are not into “cyber-type” novels, there is really something for everyone in this book. I loved it.

1984, By George Orwell, 267 pages
This was my third time reading this book, and it was as good as I remembered. It tells of a future where the government has complete control over it’s civilians, primarily through around-the-clock survelence. Every word you say, movement you make, expression you show can be watched, and scrutinized. This book tells of two rebels, Smith and Julia who vaguely think they can cheat the system, but quickly learn how futile it is. But the plot is really secondary to the message, and warning, of this book. The message makes this book a nightmare, more scary than a Stephen King novel, and what makes this book so wonderful. When the government has complete control, your thoughts, your feelings, your soul, is not your own. Humanity as we known it today ceases to exist. If you haven’t read this book than you must, it is vital for our time, and an absolute classic.

I actually was feeling VERY lazy, since I had read 3 books since I last wrote a review, then looking back I realized it had only been 12 days, hehee…

After writing that short blog about the possibility of cutting my hair, that *very night* before I said anything to Myk, as if as an omen, this occured in #13thHour:

* Rubicant looks at Time….Has she cut her hair?
-@PartyTime- PrincessLeia2003 has always had long long long hair.
-@PartyTime- 8)
-@PartyTime- I like it.

(we have our new years nicks on, so PrincessLeia2003 is me, and Myk is PartyTime… of course)

Hmm, so maybe I wont cut my hair, I think still consider it tho.

In addition to finally getting those reviews typed up I also … don’t be shocked! Actually did a bit of work on the Recipe section of my site, YAY! … it’s even almost ready to be shown to the world, hehe.

I spoke to my Granddad this afternoon (my father’s father) .. I gave him my phone number with the Christmas Card I sent them, it was nice hearing from my grandparents, I have been a very bad granddaughter, hadn’t spoken to them in over 3 years. He wasn’t upset, just glad to hear from me finally, which is good, since I was paranoid about the phone call. Him and my grandma seem to be doing well tho, and they want to see me (of course) “we’ll buy you a round trip airline ticket!” … i might take them up on that offer in a couple months actually, heh.

Anyway, I am gonna go noew, prolly go make some dinner ’cause I’m hungry *wanders off*

i am so lazy