a long hiatus…

…aw man, someone made a joke about hiatuses the other day, and now I can’t remember what it was.

Anyway, my blog title has been appropriate enough for these past two months. It would seem that I really have had a severe case of writer’s block. In some ways I have…my journal is a lot thinner than it used to be. My life has been a blur, and I don’t feel like the same person anymore. When I can gather my thoughts in a somewhat coherent fashion I’ll try to tell you about it.

(…and do music tastes come in cycles? Because I was listening to Family Force 5 this time last year, and here I am listening to them again. For some reason their music is great to design by. My only fear is that I’m going to suddenly break into dance moves at 2 pm in the office.)

the waiting game.

On my way over here (makes it sound like I drove to my blog or something), I didn’t realize that I talked about impatience in my last entry (if you can call one paragraph “talking about impatience”). Impatience is on my mind again. I must be the most impatient person there is. I’ve realized lately that it is nearly impossible for me to enjoy the moment or “seize the day” because I am constantly looking forward, wondering what I will do in the future, where I will go, who I will be with.

Not long ago I was at the beach with a friend. We watched the sun fall below the horizon and wash the sky with plum and gold while we dug our feet into the sand. A breeze carried murmurs of conversations (and a Taylor Swift song from a few spots down…the only thing that marred this experience) and the sound of waves finishing their laps at the shore. I felt compelled to immerse myself in the moment and take in all the details, breathe the air in until it hurt, remember everything. It would only be fifteen minutes until the sky grew dark. Fifteen minutes.

Instead of taking everything in, I noticed strangers I was jealous of. I thought about how I don’t live close to the beach and how I wish I did. I worried about my future. I wondered if I would ever get a stable job. Then I chastised myself for how I would eventually look back on this moment and wish I hadn’t worried about these things.

That’s how it goes. I keep looking forward, but when I get forward, I look back. I’m not satisfied with what I have. I don’t know how to enjoy a moment. I don’t know how to be thankful just for today, and the fact that I have today, that I’m breathing and walking and functioning normally (I guess “normally” depends on how you look at it, but for the most part, yeah — normally). I act like I have years and years ahead of me when I have no idea how many years I have, or if I even have that long. I could be gone in two months. I could be gone tomorrow. What then? I die wishing I had more, that I were somewhere else?

Every time I leave home I am reminded of how much I take for granted. My family, the familiarity of my surroundings, the people I associate with, my friends, my routine. I don’t want to take these things for granted anymore. I don’t want to take anything for granted anymore. I want to live fully in the here and now and trust God for today.

The same friend who accompanied me to the beach said something the other day that struck me. “Stop worrying TODAY.” Not tomorrow; not a week from now; not when I feel ready. TODAY.

Earlier this afternoon I flipped over to Psalm 25 since, well, today’s the 25th and I like reading Psalms and Proverbs that correspond to the day. I can’t tell you how much this passage encouraged me.

³Indeed, none of those who wait for You will be ashamed;
Those who deal treacherously without cause will be ashamed.

⁴Make me know Your ways, O LORD;
Teach me Your paths.

⁵Lead me in Your truth and teach me,
For You are the God of my salvation;
For You I wait all the day.

Later in 25 comes the part that I’ve been memorizing, that, oddly enough, I had totally forgotten was in Psalm 25 — it’s so cool how God works these things.

¹⁷The troubles of my heart are enlarged;
Bring me out of my distresses.

¹⁸Look upon my affliction and my trouble,
And forgive all my sins.

¹⁹Look upon my enemies, for they are many,
And they hate me with violent hatred.

²⁰Guard my soul and deliver me;
Do not let me be ashamed, for I take refuge in You.

²¹Let integrity and uprightness preserve me,
For I wait for You.

Lord, teach me to be patient.

I’ve been to the dentist…

“You’re a good patient,” he said, pulling the cotton pad out of my gums and unhooking the weird spit-sucking tool from the corner of my mouth.

“I’m an impatient,” I replied. Then I corrected the grammar in my head. 

I don’t really like this song because of the subject, but I like Owl City, so here you go. 

Dental Care - Owl City

I freak myself out

Lately I’ve been having this recurring dream where I go back to the country club to waitress again. It’s so realistic, it freaks me out. In one “episode” my dream-self was at work contemplating what status I would post on Facebook when I got home (yes, I am aware of how utterly sad that is). It was going to be something like “Rye can’t believe she is back at the country club again,” because I couldn’t believe it. I mean seriously: I go to school so I can leave the country club, and then I come BACK to the country club? No way.

I woke up thinking it was real and that I had actually started waiting tables again, but then realized that two or three of my coworkers in the dream had been fired several months ago so it couldn’t have taken place.

But it keeps coming back!

At least I’m making money in my dreams, I guess…

No.

CareerBuilder “job match” email:

Email: Can you sell?!

Me: No.

*hits delete without reading rest of email*

Since when did showing interest in graphic design jobs turn into a steady stream of employment offers from companies wanting to hire salespeople? I tried to think about what I could possibly sell someone, and the only thing I came up with was Firefox, which isn’t sold anyway, so that makes me an…I don’t know what. An activist?

It might be kind of fun to set up a roadside booth and pitch a browser, though. Kind of like the boiled peanut guy. (Boiled peanuts are disgusting, however, and you should not try to sell them in Florida in the dead of July. Just so you know.)

Don’t throw it out!

For the past year, I have been trying to learn how to play guitar. Emphasis on TRYING. I haven’t gotten very far. My callouses have formed, gone away, and come back. I learned three chords, forgot them, and then learned them again (along with a few others). Most of the time my guitar collects dust that falls from my bulletin board, and that’s about it.

However, lately, I have resolved to try and play more, since I got a teach-yourself DVD three months ago. I’ve been stuck on lesson one ever since. I might as well admit it: I’m really that bad. THREE MONTHS! Okay, admittedly, I haven’t played an hour every day like I should have, but the fact that I’ve been stuck on the same lesson for a quarter of a year has me wondering if I should even be trying to learn this instrument.

Today, I got my confirmation that yes, I should be trying to learn.



See that sticker on the bottom there? It is an image of a trash can with an “X” over it. It means DO NOT THROW THIS GUITAR AWAY. No matter how bad you are, you CANNOT get rid of it. You are stuck now. You must play. You cannot give up.

So obviously, throwing my guitar out is not an option. I have no choice but to go forward and try to switch chords faster. I feel like weeping when I read ahead in the DVD’s companion book (maybe I shouldn’t be reading ahead), but since that sticker is on the back of my guitar, I know I can’t quit, and I might as well find out what I’m getting myself into.

Press play, hit stop

I’m supposed to be working, but…I found an Owl City music video and now I’m not getting anything done.



(check out the stop motion at 1:15)

Too true

I love this.

Jasper

Jasper doing his thing
(white shirt, center)

My sister and I visited St. Louis last month, and during our short trip there we visited the Gateway Arch, an upside-down silver U that towers over six hundred feet into the air. We were kind of bummed that we didn’t get to take a ride to the top because all the tickets were sold out, but at the same time, after seeing how staggeringly high the thing was, we weren’t so sure we could stomach it.

After perusing the underground museum (full of strange animatronic people that winked), we went back outside, where we saw this guy performing at the south end of the Arch, surrounded by lots of people who were cheering him on. I couldn’t tell what he was doing. It looked almost like some kind of dance, only he remained in one place. He ended his show and then started to leave, but his exit route took him right past us. He zeroed in on me and stopped at the bench where Hannah and I sat to ask if we had seen him. I said yes, and asked what he had done.

He proceeded to sit down right next to me, introduce himself as Jasper, tell me there were seven billion people of all ethnicities on the planet (for a solid five minutes), and then launch into a beatboxing session. I wasn’t sure how his beatboxing and hand motions were supposed to be connected to unity and the earth. (But as Hannah said, “he was a really good beatboxer.”)

I sat there half-watching him and half-watching my pockets to make sure he didn’t take my wallet. I was pretty sure I smelled alcohol on his breath. His right eyebrow was shaved through a quarter of the way from the edge, and he had hazel eyes that shone against dark skin. But he didn’t try anything weird. After he finished, he just walked off. That was it. Over. Done. Hannah and I looked at each other in puzzlement and then turned to watch him disappear down the path into the sunset, “before the cops” stopped him (apparently he has a history with the police department there, but we didn’t see him get caught that day). We ultimately concluded that he was probably under the influence of something (or else just very…creative) and then made our way into a crowd where we felt somewhat safer.

In a way, it kind of reminds me of that story of the country mouse going to the city. I don’t know…maybe it’s common for random guys to approach people and beatbox for them in national parks? (and did I just refer to myself as a mouse? ugh.)

Meh

It’s June…

I got that lame e-card from myself…

I’m going to go crawl into a hole and wait for inspiration to strike.

Goals, are you there?

It’s one of those nights where I know I need to sleep, but I can’t. My eyes are going to drop out of my head if I don’t close them soon. But hey, that’s why I took Mavis Beacon, I don’t really need to see the screen.

I guess so much — and simultaneously, nothing at all — has been going on lately (reminds me of the quote from MST3K that goes, “it is everything…and nothing!” to which one of the riffers asks, “could you be a little more specific?”…yeah, I’m getting off-track already) that I feel like my mind has either been overloaded or completely devoid of anything to say. So right now I’m staring at a dim screen, listening to the rain tap the ground outside, and wondering what to put here, bcause I haven’t posted anything in a while and the last few posts have been pretty uninspired. I haven’t done much writing lately (aside from journaling of course). So there goes another goal sheet to the trash can. At the prompting of a writing book that I once worked with every day, I sent myself an e-card about a month and a half ago and scheduled it to arrive on June 1 to congratulate me on the completion of my novel. *cough* Come June 1, I won’t be anywhere near my inbox…

I can’t figure out what it is that keeps me from reaching my goals. Yet at the same time, it seems totally obvious: it’s me. I’ve read so many books that deal with writing and creativity and what have you, but ultimately, it’s my choice as to whether I actually sit down and press the words from my mind. A while back I wondered if I was afraid of succeeding. Maybe I am. I don’t know. I think I expect every writing session to go really well and for me to love what I write, and when that doesn’t happen, well, forget that story. (I literally have boxes of unfinished stories, and a slew of their digital cousins on my hard drive.) So it makes me wonder, is getting published really a goal of mine? Because wouldn’t I work harder if it were?

Maybe I should come up with some seemingly unreachable goal and post it here instead of on a piece of paper clipped to a magnet above my desk.

Maybe I’ll go to sleep first.

Please don’t do this.

I just looked out my window and saw this. I can tell my mom drove my car today.


Does it bother anyone else when someone doesn’t stop the wipers before they turn the car off, or is it just me?

Go listen…

Rhapsody is streaming Mat Kearney’s new album. I can’t wait to get the CD…

Sweet

So Kevin, Matt and I recently found out we got an honorable mention for this ad campaign we created last year as part of a class project. Woohoo! All those hours spent reading the impossibly long manual and videoconferencing for maps didn’t go to waste! Since I’m sure you would love to see the creative process, I present to you the Ad Journey.


Behold my lowly first sketches, created after our teacher handed us the twenty-plus-page competition guide (no kidding — these people are serious about their ads). Since the target demographic was young to middle-age women (at least, I think it was), we went for the “have too much stuff? need a bigger closet?” approach, which meant I didn’t really use any of my first drawings.



This was one of three comps I came up with after the sketches proved useless. We chose to go with this approach, and revamped it dramatically to get the following…



Kevin worked long and hard to create some nice maps (no Google Map stealing here), and Matt drew our carefully-targeted woman-in-need-of-a-gigantic-closet. I worked on the layout and copy. This is the full-page ad.


And in case you couldn’t tell…this is the half-page ad.

Last (and probably least) is the Internet banner, which was created near the end after everything else so it didn’t get as much work…thus the semi-confusing tagline. I really like the dots though…

Car wash = rain.

Today I found out that we are in the middle of one of the worst droughts we’ve ever had (well maybe not “ever” as in the history of the state or something, but a bad drought nonetheless). Lo and behold, I helped yesterday without even knowing: I washed my car. See, whenever I wash my car, dark clouds gather in the distance and point at my driveway and say, “hey! Let’s go rain on that freshly washed and waxed car!” It never fails. So when I went out today, I drove through a smattering of thunderstorms, and my tires got to play in the puddles. I would stop washing my car in order to avoid this but then it would probably never rain.

I predict a lot of car-washing this summer. I like thunderstorms.

Quotes

I had some screenshots for this, but Blogger isn’t cooperating.

Anyway, these are some random quotes I found buried in my hard drive that I retrieved from…actually I can’t even remember the site. Somewhere where you inserted a name, and then the generator spewed out a quote with that name in place of an actual word from the quote and you had to guess the missing word. These were my favorites:

Better to be king for a night than Ian for a lifetime.

The King of Comedy (1983)
(the missing word was ‘schmuck’)

I defy you! Come and kneel before Dad!

Superman II (1980)
(the missing word was ‘Zod’)

Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the Rye.

Star Trek: the Wrath of Khan (1982)
(the missing word was ‘few’)

No, Mr. Bond, I expect Hannah to die.

Goldfinger (1964)
(the missing word was ‘you’)

Play it, Sam. Play “As Cole Goes By.”

Casablanca (1942)
(the missing word was ‘time’)

You can expect something more original next time…

I would write a post, if I could think.

But I can’t.

Tomorrow I am going kayaking.

Mayhap (I love that word) I will come back with some really good stories.

(By good stories, I mean ones where I don’t speed over helpless marine life.)

Whirlwind.

I missed three meals and lots of sleep over the past couple of days, and everything is jumbled around in my head right now. You know how you want to fall asleep and let everything just sort itself out while you’re unconscious? I kind of want that to happen.

Pickup trucks and wood chips. I drove five hours to an interview yesterday and five hours back today, and eighty percent of the time I was behind some random pickup truck that leaked wood chips. ??? Made no sense. On the way there, and the way back, pick a truck and it would be dripping wood. I probably looked like a drunk driver behind said trucks as I veered from one side of the road to the other to avoid the wood that departed the jacked-up Fords (and they were pretty much all Fords).

Adrenaline. Is there an off switch for this?

Encouragement. I am thankful for the amazing friends God has brought into my life. Just one thing someone says can help turn your day around.

Attitude. I realize I tend to complain more than I do appreciate. It’s something I want to change. (Just thinking of blog topics: What annoys me? what do I hate? what do I want changed? yeah…that kind of mindset is something I’d rather do away with.)

Home. Five hours away is farther than I thought. Anticipation can be better than the real thing. Sometimes you realize that home is less about geography, and more about your family, your friends, the people you know and care about.

Need a fridge?

We really needed a new refrigerator. Our old one (probably at least fifteen years old), an ivory-colored side-by-side with brown door handles, was icing over and preventing the freezer door from shutting completely. I was out of town the week that my parents bought a new fridge. But I sure heard (pun intended) about it once I got home…

The fridge was a white Whirlpool that they got for a great deal; pearl white with French doors and a freezer on the bottom (I sound like one of those people on a home makeover show now…I’m really not that into refrigerators). My mom loved it. The interior was spacious. There was no icemaker on the door to freeze it over.

But then, there was the sound.

It started out as a low buzzing. We would sit in the living room with the TV muted and listen intently: “Do you hear that?” “Is that the refrigerator?”

The sound grew and grew until the refrigerator was constantly buzzing. Mom get fed up with it and called a repairman. When he left, the fridge started making another noise in addition to the buzzing. So Mom called a second guy. His helpful words were “all energy-efficient refrigerators sound like this.” (My mother found it hard to believe that all modern refrigerators hummed and buzzed like an old car on the brink of falling apart.)

By the time we got to the third repairman, Mom had visited a site that played malfunctioning refrigerator sounds (yes, such sites do apparently exist) and determined that our unit had a sound that none other had — and thus was a lemon. Repairman Number Three then informed us that Repairman Number Two had unplugged something that had made it louder. So Repairman Number Three kindly plugged the unplugged cord back in, and guess what? The fridge grew even louder.

At that point my mom was ready to take an ax to the refrigerator. An hour would not pass by in which she wouldn’t ask if you had heard the fridge, if that noise was new, if it was really loud or if it was just her, or some similar question.

The decision was made to return the Noisy Fridge to Lowe’s, and get a better one from Home Depot. HD would deliver the new fridge on Monday and Lowe’s would pick up the old one on Tuesday. We were supposed to get another French door fridge (this time an LG model, since my mom researched extensively and found out this was the best brand).

All went according to plan until Mom spotted a water dispenser on the side of the fridge as the delivery guys wheeled it in to the kitchen. They had not delivered the French door model she ordered. They delivered a side-by-side.

Panic ensued as Mom tried to make a decision: refuse the new one, or keep it? If she refused it and Lowe’s came the next day to pick up Old Noisy, we would have to learn how to make our own icebox of sorts, so she decided to keep it until Friday, when HD was scheduled to deliver the correct refrigerator.

But guess what? Lowe’s didn’t come today (Tuesday), so we still have two refrigerators in our kitchen. Two twenty-six-cubit-foot refrigerators. I hadn’t realized before just how large refrigerators are. They are the size of at least two people width-wise. They are very hard to walk around. They are cold and steely and massive and have long cords that dangle from them like tails.

We had our internet upgraded today, and I can only imagine what the service guys thought when they walked into our house and saw one refrigerator sitting haphazardly in the dining room and another in the kitchen. (In addition to the refrigerators, we also have a massive heap of beadboard and baseboards leaning up against the walls, a penciled line running three feet high all the way around the dining room, and no baseboards in the dining room in preparation for the beadboard we’re going to install.)

So while we may have two refrigerators for now, at least we have faster internet with which I can relay to you this incredibly confusing and crazy story. (And if you read this far and aren’t asleep yet, I commend you.)

Just take a fall…

You know the one thing you’re fighting to hold
Will be the one thing you’ve got to let go

MuteMath released their music video for Spotlight on Friday. Myspace and my internet connection have conspired against me to keep me from watching it. The first twenty seconds will play, and then the video player acts like the video’s done and swipes the screen with some jumping boxes that recommend related videos. I just want to see this one! Is that so much to ask?

Our internet speed gets upgraded next week…maybe then I can see the video in its entirety. Until then I’ll just post random MM lyrics here, I suppose. If anyone else can see it…tell me how it is?

Mr. Sketch.

I just had a really odd flashback.

It was the early nineties and I was at church with a bunch of other little kids, in the back hall, probably during children’s church. The teachers gave us coloring sheets and then pulled out the usual tin pyramids of beat-up crayons.

Then someone set down a pack of Mr. Sketch markers.

Mr. Sketch markers were packed side-by-side in a Styrofoam board, each marker with its own little indention in the board like a tiny bed, and then the board was encased in a paper sleeve. When you slid the board out there was a whispery hiss as the paper released the Styrofoam.

I didn’t know at the time that you could buy Mr. Sketch markers anywhere. I had seen these markers before, and only in one place: my dad’s sixth-grade language arts classroom. Instantly I knew where the church had gotten the markers and I was proud (hey, you would be too if you were the marker-bearer’s daughter). So naturally, I informed everyone that these had been my dad’s markers and that he had given them to the church, when of course I didn’t know that he actually had nothing to do with the purchase of the markers. I think the teachers didn’t bother to correct me and none of the other kids really cared. But it was a big deal to me.

Later on, when I was older and wiser (um…sure), I came across Dad’s sets of markers in his classroom and didn’t understand at first. The markers were still in his classroom? How had they gotten to church, then? Wait…oh.

It was a sad realization.

Mobile posting…?

I don’t want to click on the icon, because I’m afraid doing so will instantly set up some kind of mobile posting setting that I can never undo. Apparently Blogger has a mobile posting option now.

Okay, so I got curious and clicked on it. Now it’s waiting for me to send my confirmation code. Which I probably won’t. I have a QWERTY phone, but I’m not sure I want to suddenly start writing entries on a four-inch-wide keyboard…unless I’m bored out of my mind stuck on a road trip or something.

Hmm, maybe I’ll try it. Later on. When aforementioned road trip takes place.

Happy (Early) Resurrection Day.

When I was in tenth grade I participated in Bible quizzing (which involves memorizing a book of the New Testament and competing against other teams from across the state to answer questions about it). At the end of the year, our pastor asked the quiz team to share our experience with the church family. That year we had memorized the book of John. I remember saying that it had been the life Jesus led up to the crucifixion that stood out most to me, because you got to know Him and, since you knew what was coming, it became hard to read; you didn’t want Him to die. I didn’t want Him to leave. I wanted Him to stay longer. I told the congregation that I was thinking, “No! Don’t die!” (At which time my pastor interjected with, “but we’re glad He did!”)

And I am glad He died. He could have chosen just to come perform miracles or to share Himself, which would have been nice, but ultimately would have left us in the same place as we were before. Jesus came on a mission: He came to give Himself up for us so we could have direct access to God and know Him for ourselves. Jesus didn’t deserve to die and He definitely didn’t have to, but He chose to, which is incredible — and then He came back from the dead three days later.

To quote 2 Corinthians 9:15, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!”

Happy Resurrection Day.

Expect randomness.

My ISP is all over the place…literally. Several times now when I’ve checked my IP address, I’ve gotten results for cities at least two or three hours away. I wonder why. Oh well — this just means I can stalk people without them knowing who I really am or where I am really from…(well, except for you, faithful blog readers, because now you know.)

Today I planned to knock out some CSS and HTML books, but a headache knocked me out instead. I awoke with what I think can best be described as a migraine, and two ibuprofen failed to get rid of it, so I hobbled around for the better part of the day until it started to clear up and a friend adjusted my back and neck. (Seriously, you would think I twist myself into pretzel shapes all day with as bad as my back gets. One shoulder is always higher than the other and apparently I hold my neck at a really weird angle to compensate.) So with book-catching-up out the window, I ended up learning some basic jQuery…stuff? would that be the right word?…tonight instead. It was pretty interesting. (Here’s a very basic example if you want to see. jQuery controls what the last three links do.)

I also found a really nice layout in Sports Illustrated (not mine) that I want to try and duplicate for the web. The only problem is that this magazine has a sample fragrance of Emporio Armani Diamonds for Men fragrance inside, and while it sits on my desk it emanates a thick, powerful scent that smells like baby powder on steroids. The tagline is “Hard to Resist.” I suggest they change the tagline to “Hard to Resist Throwing Across the Room.” Ugh.

I should probably try to write a one-topic post next time. It seems I’ve fallen into the habit of writing about anything and everything in one fell swoop, so mayhap (my favorite word — getting off-topic again) I should change things up and try to keep one train of thought. (I’m not really this ADD. At least, I don’t think I am.) Stay tuned.

p.s. I knew I forgot something. Mat Kearney’s new album is available for preorder — I went off my budget and bought it today, and the instant mp3 download that comes with it is really good. Just saying. :)

Need an answering machine?

My dad’s cat (appropriately named DC) is a hard worker, as you can tell from the photo below. This morning the Cster, as we like to call him, was on answering machine duty, but unfortunately he didn’t get any calls and started to feel lonely. He sent this plea to Dad in hopes of getting the phone to ring at least once. (The photo editing makes a messy dresser look even worse. Just try to ignore it.)

Hello April

Why do I almost always fall for Google’s April Fools Day schemes? Last year it was about retrieving emails after you sent them (like days or weeks or even months after); this year it was CADIE, which was some kind of bot that would match your voice and automatically respond to your emails. I found myself nodding along to the description posted on the Gmail homepage and then finally realized at the end: oh. It isn’t real. Today is April 1. (It was worse last year; last year I think I believed the joke for about a week.)

My mom, sister, and I started a self-defense class today. Now I’m scared to park near vans, walk in parking lots by myself, or go out to the mailbox in broad daylight. Okay…maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. We learned about five or six techniques today, and I hope we never have to use them…for obvious reasons, plus the fact that I am probably going to forget them all because we still have six hours of training left in which we will learn even more techniques.

I realize I must sound like a total geek, but CSS is really cool, and today I made an amazing unordered list. (Well, with the help of that book I was talking about in the last post.) Hopefully the following isn’t copyrighted — I did code it myself, but with the book’s images — but I want to show it off. This is just an unordered list with some images. SWEET!



This has been a really random post. The following is a lot less random, and more on the serious side, so it seems kind of weird to end this way. But I digress. I read this Proverb this morning and wanted to share. It’s something worth chewing on:

For the LORD gives wisdom;
From His mouth come knowledge and understanding.

Proverbs 2:6

It just got me thinking…where do I usually look for wisdom? School, other people, the internet, books, television, you name it. Not that those things or people aren’t helpful; to be sure, they are, but where did they get their knowledge? Who gave them understanding? It struck me that I have never really considered God as being the One who has more wisdom than, say, a university (typing that out sounds ridiculous, but it’s what I thought!).

When I consider that God constructed everything — everything — it makes me realize that He has wisdom beyond what I can imagine. And He gives it! (Proverbs 2 talks about how you should look for it.) It’s a humbling and amazing thing. I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, and I don’t want to sound preachy, but I’m throwing this out there because this verse stuck to me today. Here’s hoping it sticks to you too.

Read, read, read

Behold my collection of library books. I’ve finished four of them, and have read four of them before, but because I didn’t get all the way through I checked them out again. That leaves me with fourteen to complete (I think? I’m not good at math).

Currently I am in the thick of the book second from the top, Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke, which has so much good stuff that I can never finish it in one borrowing period. It’s fantastic. (If you’re into web design, that is. If not then it would probably be useless.)

So yeah, they say you can tell a lot about a person from what they read, or something like that.

Not Always Right entry

So this is what I submitted to Not Always Right…not totally sure it falls within their guidelines, but it’s one of the more memorable stories I have, not to mention one of the more completely ridiculous ones. (This woman was in her sixties or seventies. GROW UP!)

_

At the restaurant where I worked as a server, we gave customers free cake and balloons on their birthday. One night we didn’t have enough balloons for all the birthdays so only one table got a balloon — albeit a very limp one because we were also low on helium — while another table didn’t. The following ensued at the balloon-less table…

Birthday Woman: I don’t have a balloon. You’re supposed to give me a balloon for my birthday.

Me: I’m sorry, ma’am, we ran out, we don’t have any more.

Birthday Woman (pointing to adjacent table): But THEY have one. Why did they get one?

Me: They reserved their table first —

Woman #2 at Balloon-Less Table: This isn’t right, you’re supposed to give her a balloon. This is so wrong. You’re supposed to give her a balloon for her birthday.

Me: I’m sorry. We don’t have any more.

Birthday Woman: This isn’t right. This just isn’t right. I can’t believe you won’t give me a balloon.

Mad Birthday Woman and her friends stay mad the whole night, even though they get free cake and champagne.

Then when the other table leaves, Birthday Woman goes over to the table, takes their balloon, and brings it back to her table.

It just sits there, barely hovering over the surface. She is smug in her self-satisfaction. I have no words.

_

Thanks for the suggestion, Dani. :D

Kayaking brings back memories

This morning I went kayaking with the Lees, and on our way to the headsprings, Mrs. Lee asked, “what’s that ahead of you?” I saw a covered dock with a sign and some boats inside, so I answered that it was a dock, and she said no, that thing right in front of my kayak — then Jessica congratulated me on pulverizing some poor innocent water creature. I guess I was fixated on everything except for what was right in front of me (which is not too unlike me). So, turtle or bird or whatever you are, or were, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to end your life.

On the aforementioned dock, I also saw an old couple that I used to wait on at the country club. He’s German, tall as a skyscraper and has an accent so thick that even though I served him once a week, I still had trouble deciphering what he said. I remember asking what his member number was. We would go back and forth:

Me: “And your member number?”
Him: “Aaayte-sihh-fwee.”
Me: “Eight sixteen?”
Him: “AAAYTE-SIHH-FWEE.”
Me: “Eighty three?”
Him: “AAAYTE-SIHH-FWEE!”
Me: “Eight six three?”

Then he would nod.

Eight six three, the magic number. I eventually got around to memorizing it to save myself the hassle. He and his wife were regulars in a table of eight that came to dine and dance, and they were picky, demanding, cheap tippers. One of the guys in the group thought he (not Eight Six Three man, but this guy himself) was really scary. He would always tell me to tell the chef NOT to put garlic on his mussels marinara, because if the chef did, he would go back in the kitchen and throw the mussels at the chef. He said this every time he ordered the dish. It got old.

Another guy in the group always asked if I had a date afterward, because I was supposedly serving really fast. (I had to hold my tongue because I really wanted to tell him that the whole reason I served him “fast” was so he wouldn’t complain about how long his food was taking or how long it was taking for him to get butter or another roll.) This greasy-haired man routinely ordered his salad with Romaine lettuce only and without dressing, so I would have to custom-make his salad every time, and…well, that sort of thing just gets annoying when the customer fails to realize you have made the salads just before the shift and have to take time out of serving other people to make their salad, thus angering the other customers, and then said custom-salad-orderer leaves you a 10% tip.

How did this just turn into a post about serving? Oh well.

My novel will finally get finished…

At the risk of sounding corny, I was inspired today after watching City of Ember (which was better than I expected — I’m going to read the book next). A handful of plot ideas wove themselves about my head and finally scattered onto paper, where they will direct the path of the story I’ve been patching up for the past couple of months.

“The story” is the 50,000-word novel that I birthed as the result of NaNoWriMo ’06, when I decided I wanted to get serious about my writing. Ah, what a month that was. I worked and went to school in addition to churning out 1,667 words a day, and because I didn’t plot ahead of time the story veered and jumped and stopped and started and basically didn’t make any sense. After November was over, I breathed a sigh of relief and stored the file in the swamps of my hard drive, convinced I would never look at it again because it was so terrible.

Then this past January, I opened the document — in a hands-over-my-eyes, make-sure-no-one-else-is-around kind of way — and to my surprise it was a lot better than I remembered; the voice, at least, and even some of the plot itself (it was so intriguing, even I didn’t know where it was going…).

It was then that I decided this poor abandoned story actually had some potential and was worthy of saving, polishing, and possibly publishing. The next step was to add to it — hence my newish daily writing routine — but the glitch was that I still didn’t know where things were going, so I wrote scenes that ultimately added very little to the plot and frustrated me to no end. And then today came along. (Today, oh glorious day!)

I guess you could skip all of what I just wrote and read this: the story has a new life and a new direction, and even though I don’t necessarily look forward to rewriting most of the 50,000 words I already put down, I’m excited about how it will turn out.

This quote, which I found on the web site of the author of City of Ember, seems like an appropriate way to wrap things up:

A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people.
—Thomas Mann

This is too good.

Pantone® mugs (and I’m not sure how that link will work because it’s laden with spaces), the truly geeky way to drink your tea/coffee/hot chocolate.

I’m into techno?

I just started listening to And Then There Were None, and I’m really quite addicted. It’s techno/dance music, which I am not a huge fan of, so I am kind of surprised the songs are stuck in my head.

Today was Mom’s birthday; us kids took her out to dinner last night, and tonight decorated the dining room with Happy Birthday signs and photos. Hannah threw together a cake, which we weren’t sure was going to happen because we had barely enough butter (do you know how hard it is to find a cake/brownie recipe that calls for no more than a half-cup of butter?). The frosting was AMAZING. It probably had about five pounds of confectioner’s sugar in it, and cocoa powder and cream cheese, and there was a lot left over that Hannah let us lick from the bowl. I had to tell her to put it somewhere else because I’d morph into a blimp otherwise.

Oh, and the restaurant Dad took Mom to tonight is the same place I went to for my birthday, where the menu is done entirely in Papyrus. The titles, the dish descriptions, the prices, everything. Papyrus bolded, italicized, and underlined. It’s a joke to try and read the thing. Needless to say the menu is headed for the I [heart] Papyrus group…

Snapshot of a Serving Shift

…yay alliteration!

I found this vignette of a day in the life of my server self in one of my writing notebooks, and it brought back a lot of memories. Actually, it may only be interesting to me; if you haven’t worked in a restaurant, you may be bored to tears by the following excerpt. Just warning you.

After reading this again, I realized that there’s a lot I miss (and a lot I don’t miss) about waiting tables. I need to write a post later on about some of the crazy things that have happened at the restaurant, such as an order for kahlua sour, the crazy Caesar salad woman and our customers’ obsession with birthday balloons. But for now, here’s the story…

……………………

The sugar bucket says “Rice” on the side, and even though I’ve worked here for three years, I still forget that it’s sugar. Inside the industrial-sized plastic bucket is a pyramid of sharp clear sugar granules, and there is usually never a scoop. You have to go to the ice machine and steal its scoop. Then you dump the sugar into a container. I’m not really sure how often they use sugar around here. All our desserts are frozen boxed things that come in a semi from Sysco. We pass them off as homemade. If you believe that stuff’s homemade, then you probably believe Bigfoot exists too. Besides a rare in-house dessert, the only other reason sugar might be used here is when an employee wants to turn their unsweet tea into sweet tea without having to rip open fourteen packets of crusty table sugar.

Today I am in charge of setting up the beverage station. I drop a packet of tea into a coffee filter, slide it under the dispenser, and flip the Start button. A stream of tainted water hits the bottom of the silver container. I move to the reach-in for lemon slices and spend five minutes moving salad dressing jars and tubs of mustard looking for last night’s lemons that I know I saran-wrapped. The kitchen must have used them. They always steal our lemons. The door bangs shut and I go to the walk-in for lemons. These are fat yellow ovals, uncut, bruised, still marked with white stickers. I take three and claw my way past the six-foot-high speed racks loaded with tonight’s salads.

Cutting board and knife in hand, I make swift work of the lemons and throw the pieces into a clear container that goes next to the tea pitchers. I deposit the board and knife on the dishroom’s glinting aluminum counter and head back to the server station.

This sidework is mindless, something I could do in my sleep. Grab a purple container of half-and-half. Stock saucers (half of which are dirty, half of which don’t match). Pull at least one rack of coffee cups and water glasses. Later, we will inspect the cups and glasses before we use them, because they usually have a pattern of Maybelline red on the rim. That’s why I always use a straw at restaurants. Disgusting, really.

Tonight is not going to be a regular night. We have VIPs coming in. Chef told me that I’ll be waiting on them — apparently a party of eight from hospital management, all a bunch of bigwigs. Our restaurant gets VIPs about as often as Florida gets snow. Being the senior server, the task of serving said bigwigs falls to me, and even though I’ve done it several times before I always get nervous. My stomach pumps itself into a frenzy, which is stupid, because these people are just people and not even that famous on a large scale, but management wants us to treat them like they are.

Sidework complete, I wrap my apron strings around my waist, tie them in front and hide the bow behind the front of the apron. I check my hair in the reflection of the stainless steel reach-in. My bangs have grown out to my cheekbones and won’t go back into a ponytail. They always fall in my eyes when I’m serving. I push them behind my ears for now, knowing they’ll come loose in about three minutes.

I grab a server’s notepad from the stack next to the computer and head for the hostess stand to get my tables for the night. Dining is by reservation only, so we know who we will have ahead of time (well — usually).

I scan the wrinkled piece of paper that’s been copied five hundred times and find my name. I have the VIP table and five others. It makes me think about how I’m going to treat the VIP table compared to the other tables. The non-VIPers will obviously notice the nicer food and better service the VIP table gets. Chef is even going to make an appearance at the VIP table — not once, but several times, because he wants to brag about (I mean, explain) his dishes. Fancy crab appetizers on the house and Caesar salads after that and then filet mignon followed by a butter rum cake slathered in chocolate from Switzerland. Oh, and the cake is free, because one of the VIPs is having a birthday and we give people free cake on their birthday. (For clarification, the standard free cake is a squat two-layer vanilla confection with puffy white frosting and sprinkles — courtesy of Sysco.) That’s not good enough for these people. I find myself irritated with the special treatment they’re going to get. All I can hope for is a big tip, but with half the meal literally being given to them, I doubt that will happen.

It’s fifteen minutes till opening, and steam rises from the soup pots and bread warmers and potato chambers while cooks and busboys hurry to fill them. The scent of roasting meat and baked bread mingle in the warm kitchen climate. The chefs redden behind the line, pushing their baseball caps up and wiping their foreheads with the back of their sleeves. I’m in black pants and long sleeves and I hate this heat, but I prefer standing in the kitchen to taking a post by the hostess stand, where people come to ask questions about everything not related to the restuarant and the phone rings all the time.

I hate answering the phone.

My comment box is back…

…or well, I guess it was always there, and Firefox just wouldn't load it. (I wish I hadn't downloaded Safari 4 beta. Practically nothing loads so I have to use Firefox, and it's like driving behind someone who's going five miles under the speed limit. I even tried to revert to Safari 3 [which for some reason checked itself in at 56 gb after the download — what the heck?] but it wouldn't let me.)

Anyway, there are much more interesting things to write about than browser woes…

Or not…

I don't feel creative at all today, so don't expect much from this post. (Not that I think you do, just expect less today.) My novel is staring pitifully at me from the NeoOffice window behind Firefox while I sit here and think about what to add to it, or what to take away. Random superhero shouts are coming from the TV in the next room…one of our cats is perched at the base of an oak tree out front, waiting for a squirrel to descend (I know she won't catch it, she never can)…blue jays are screaming somewhere in the distance…

From del.icio.us today (to sound all newsy and stuff) comes a handy resource: 250+ stain brushes for Photoshop. During my final semester of school we had to make coffee map booklets. Mine had faux coffee stains that I made myself (impressive, I know!). I wish I had known about these brushes then…:P

Ooh.

I want this.

I hate writing, but I love having written.

I found this article today — really encouraging. I took a screenshot. Maybe it'll be my wallpaper.

I wrote ten agencies about possible job opportunities earlier today. My eyes are about to pop out of my head from staring at the computer screen for so long. My to-do checklist is halfway completed, so I'll be staring for another few hours until I get it all done…

Here's something crazy off my del.icio.us. (I used to be obsessed with the TV show 24.) Each time you reload the page, it turns "I'm Federal Agent Jack Bauer, and this is the longest day of my life" into something along the lines of "I'm Federal Agent Jack Bauer, and this is the most poorly spaghetti hoop of my life." You could waste a lot of time hitting cmd+r.

Ouch.

I ran into a shelf at Walmart tonight. I guess I couldn't judge where the shelf jutted out so my shoulder rammed into it, and now I have two long raised welts on the side of my arm. I didn't even find anything on the aisle I was headed toward. There were just a bunch of ugly shoes.

Sigh.

Yay!

Give a listen to Mat Kearney’s latest single — his new album comes out May 19. I have worn out the Mat Kearney CDs I have, so I’m really looking forward to the release of City of Black & White.

Stuck.

The flu loves me. I've been coughing and sniffling and dizzy and overall tired and weak for the past two weeks, and I'm ready for it to be over. The trees are turning green and the weather's not frigid anymore and I want to do something outside! But instead I stay tucked indoors with a box of tissue and a package of vitamin C drops. This makes the third consecutive month I've had the flu, since it carried over from February, and the third time is not the charm.

I developed a new writing regime for myself, and am quite happy to report that I am now writing six pages a day (more if you count the writing exercises and blogging I am now doing). The only problem is, in my quest for six pages, I end up following bunny trails that lead to weird story developments that don't fit in my plot, so it's a one-step-forward, two-steps-back kind of thing. But at least I have something to edit, which is better than a blank page. It feels good to churn out some words. It would feel better if I was actually excited about them. I guess this means I need to start plotting earlier and doing some research…

Speaking of research, and writing, and not procrastinating, and making a ridiculously long sentence like this one, I downloaded an application called Freedom. It's Mac-only, and I haven't used it yet, but it temporarily disconnects your computer from the internet and thus forces you to work on whatever you're supposed to be working on instead of watching YouTube clips or surfing Facebook. Then you have to restart your computer to get your connection back. Great idea, isn't it? Now if I would actually try it…

Overdue del.ici.ous post
Matmâta, the village in Tunisia otherwise known as Tatooine. (Star Wars geeks unite.)

Random quote on my Dashboard
There is nothing that cannot be achieved by firm imagination.
— Japanese Proverb

Bowling

I'm getting back into the habit of carrying a notebook with me everywhere I go. The following is a vignette from the bowling alley; I just went to watch and write, since I am physically unable to bowl due to what I think is RSI (and besides that, I'm absolutely horrible at the sport [is it a sport?] in the first place…I can't even break 70).

I'm in the middle of packing, so this is the unpolished first draft…you be the editor and I'll change everything up when I get home and realize I hate half of what I wrote. :P

Thunk, wham, Aaron hits his pin. "Something good my last round," he says, and retrieves his grass-colored ball from the carousel. Ian selects the same ball and sends it gliding over the tan lane to its destination. It hits seven pins.

Dad hikes up his shorts, steps up. He's got a Color Head Pin notice, so if he bowls a strike, he'll get a free game. And crap! He hits all but one, one lonesome striped pin laughing at him from under a canopy of fake fish and sea turtles.

New game. Dylan's ball is attracted to the gutter, and Dad pulls him aside to explain how to possibly hit a pin. Dylan rolls again and gets a double snaggletooth — a pair of pins on either side.

Aaron says, "I'll get this form down someday and show you all," then promptly drops his ball down the lane and watches it skid to a whole lot less pins than he wanted. He tells Dylan that Dylan is killing him. (Dylan is winning by one point.)

Dad claims "his" pin, the one on the far left, and sends the heavy orb away.

Someone is eating a Nestlé Crunch; the scent of the sweet and salty bar mingles with the stale air of the bowling alley. Two ceiling fans spin overhead. Bowling pins crash on impact in another lane.

A tall, stocky guy in jeans and a gray T-shirt laughs at himself as he flings the ball dramatically and watches it collide with the pins. His gray hair is cropped close to his head, and his belly rounds out firmly underneath his shirt. He walks stiffly from the lane to the snack bar and back again, curls a pale blue ball under his arm, kicks up his left foot and gives a good-natured laugh when the ball meets two pins.

Dylan's ball heads for the gutter again. Aaron and Ian talk about what sports teams used to be in St. Louis. Ah, Saturday night at the bowling alley.

All right, so I've edited this post upwards of five times now. I need to leave.

Delicious.

My first reaction to del.icio.us (dang it! that was a really cool name; apparently now it’s just “delicious.com”) was, who needs this? I can just bookmark sites in my browser along with the forty-two thousand other sites I have saved that I never look at…

But it wasn’t long before I signed up and saved everything to del.icio.us instead of to my bloated bookmarks bar, because using tags and being able to get to your links from anywhere is a good thing. The problem is that now, as with my browser-embedded bookmarks, I hardly ever look at the 43 pages of my del.icio.us bookmarks. My goal over the next few weeks is to dig up some of those links — mainly related to designing and writing, but with some other things thrown in — and share them with you here. Because I am feeling totally random right now, I am going to pick some random things for today’s postings:

 

Chief Happiness Officer — a blog about being happy while you’re at work. There was a really great suggestion a while back about holding a Ninja Day and having everyone show up for work dressed in black. I really wanted to try that at the restaurant I used to work at. (Well, we did wear all black, but we didn’t have swords or get to fight the customers.)

I Park Like an Idiot — how much fun would it be to go around sticking these bumper stickers on stupidly parked cars? I wish someone would pay me to do this.

Help for Writer’s Block — we all know who needs this one…

Running from Camera — you set the self-timer and run. And hope no one steals your camera in the middle of said run.

Winter cleaning

Oh, dear bookshelf and desk, so full of paper, notebooks, pens, journals, bookmarks, random receipts, manuals and who knows what else.

I grabbed my handy-dandy cameraphone (with the world's most annoying shutter lag…I can never keep my hand still) to document some of the more interesting finds: 

A drawing from the book I made when I was four, based off a birthday card image. I drew this girl a LOT. Don't you love the proportions? I think the arms are genius.

I had forgotten I won an autographed Tait CD booklet. (Yeah, just the booklet, not the CD…)

Paint Shop Pro 8! I remember saving up for this and buying it from Staples in 1999, then worrying that if all the computers went out in Y2K, I would never be able to use it.    

The aforementioned book containing poems and drawings by my four-year-old self. 

The girl loves her notebooks. (These are just the ones in my desk.)

Snow trees

It's 70º today; I love it. Goodbye winter (I hope).

A jaunt to the printer

I have an interview tomorrow, so I spent most of today getting my portfolio ready. (My overhauled web site doesn't match the portfolio at all, but, oh well. At the moment I don't have $100 to drop on a reprint.)

Ian drove me to the semi-local printer, OfficeMax (yes, sad, I know, but it's the closest place that will print 11x17 without making me buy 300 copies), so I could print a customized cover page for the portfolio. When we walked up, he noticed a sticker that said "HSM Security" on the window. Now of course, thanks to Calah, we automatically associate any instance of "HSM" with that obnoxiously bubbly and completely unrealistic movie "High School Musical." Thus we determined that OfficeMax was guarded by an army of off-key high schoolers who would jump off the roof and start singing and dancing if you stole something. 

Then we went to Kmart in the mall. Yes, Kmart is one of the mall's anchor stores, and it is…I don't even know. Creepy? They sell Nathan's hot dogs and fruit smoothies in a modified hot dog cart in the lingerie department. 

But don't worry, if hot dogs aren't your thing, you can choose from sixteen different kinds of beef jerky in the checkout lane:

If that doesn't tell you something about where I live, then I don't know what does.

When it's cold outside, make like a cat and sleep.

We're in for another cold week…it's forecast to be in the 20s, but, alas, no chance of the cold white stuff of which snowmen and snowballs are made.

I washed and vacuumed my car today for the first time in a long time, and squirted Turtle Wax interior cleaner all over myself when I tried to get it on the cloth. The directions say to shake and then put about a half ounce onto the cloth. (In small print it says, Yeah, good luck with that, sucker!) My dashboard looks better now though.

I've been reading several books on writing lately and I know I need to just buckle down and WRITE. I am the worst when it comes to procrastinating. "Write" has been on my to-do list for the past three or four days and I keep thinking of everything else I could do instead. Sweep my room? Read some books about writing? Wash a load of laundry? Wash my car? (heh.) Read MORE books on writing? Apply for jobs? Watch TV? Help Mom in the yard? Pick my sister up from work? Peruse random streets on Google Maps? And don't get me started on Facebook…that site doesn't help at all. (My new self-imposed rule is not to get on until after 6:00 pm. So far I've been able to adhere to it, but the problem is that before 6:00, I don't really get much accomplished.)

Looking out front past the trio of cars, I can see two snow trees just starting to bloom. I don't know what the tree's real name is, but I've always called them snow trees because their blooms are small white popcorn-like clusters. The trees themselves are spiny, scaly things that Mom hates, but when they bloom, they're gorgeous. I'm going to get some pictures of them to post later.

Songs stuck in my head

Slow Burn / Atreyu




Mind Over Matter / First Class Fever




Forget It / Breaking Benjamin




My Hippocratic Oath / Philmont




The Haunting / Anberlin




Where We Gonna Go From Here / Mat Kearney

Random thoughts

Why do dentists ask you questions when you are sitting there in the chair with forty-three things stuck in your mouth? (And why do they have to be questions like "Are you okay?" and "How does that feel?")

Why is it so trendy to drink coffee?

More later.

…and this is why you proofread.

Ian and I saw this poster at Walmart tonight. It was funny until it lost its credibility with this terribly obvious grammatical error…

Florida, I hate you.

My fingers are almost too stiff to type, my ankles are cold (I need to invest in a pair of really long jeans for this kind of weather) and my nose is going numb. Mom covered the outdoor plants with sheets, so it looks like we have laundry gone wild, and all but one of the animals are inside. My Dashboard reports that it is 38º (it was in the 20s last night). And guess what? Not a cloud in the sky. It is a sickeningly brilliant blue day, because naturally, when it gets cold enough to snow, every cloud within a thirty-mile radius moves away. It supposedly snowed here about twenty years ago (of course, right before we moved down), but since then the area has been remarkably snow-free.

Anyway…

I spent most of yesterday staring at the monitor until my eyes bugged out, working on the redesign for my portfolio site. I hate designing things for myself. It's really hard to pinpoint what you want, and then when you do get an idea (or at least when I get one), you see 42,000 other sites whose designs you like and might want to emulate. I have three pages of mishmashed sketches that proved totally useless. But at least something is up for now that looks better than what I had. Check it out, let me know what you think. (And please, please, PLEASE, if you're using IE, do yourself a favor and switch to Firefox. I think I might have mentioned something about that before.)

"Let's go randomly sing together!" — Dylan.

We watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers tonight, and watching it reminded me of when we first saw it 11 years ago. Dad saw it on TV and told the rest of us about it, and after buying it, we went to the library (then the only internet source) to research the movie. I remember signing in at the librarian's desk and then squeezing in with Mom between two thin partitions to use the computer. The monitor was one of those mile-long, yellowed CRTs, and you used either Internet Explorer (aah!) or Netscape. I didn't even know how to go back. I'd go to a page and get stuck there. (I told Dylan about that tonight, and he couldn't believe I didn't know how to use a back button. He's 11 now, the same age I was at that time, and knows how to do a heck of a lot more with a computer than I did at 11.)

I remember using a text browser at some point too. The screen was entirely black and the text came out lime green (early Myspace anyone?). 11 years and we've gone from text browsers, IE (unfortunately, it's still around), and Netscape to IE (yeah, someone do something about this), Firefox, Opera, Camino, and whatever other minority browsers that are floating around out there. (Side note, Opera is good. Except for when it crashes, freaks out on Apple's and Myspace's CSS styles, crashes, doesn't export certain things, and crashes. I jumped ship to Firefox.)

The day of the text browser was the time when I was into acting and singing, not long before my siblings and I were in local productions of The Sound of Music and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and… (insert other random 11-year-old memory here.)

We watched a lot of musicals back then.

Here I am, cheesy blog name and all

While recuperating from the flu on the world's coldest faux-leather couch this week, watching Fresh Prince, Cash Cab, The Cosby Show, I, Robot, the Comancheros (sp? some John Wayne movie that I almost boycotted because Dad predicted John Wayne's character would be killed off), What Not to Wear, and a zillion other highly educational late-night shows, I thought about things I haven't done:

• I haven't written a book (that's been published…I have written a book, but only I and the person who [rightly] rejected it have read it).
• I haven't started a blog. (I'm remedying that now.)
• I haven't visited New York City.
• I haven't gone on an extensive, relatively fun road trip.
  

(There are other things I haven't done as well [like learn how to cook, or whistle, or knit], but I didn't think about those things then.)

It's funny how when you're sick, life slows to a crawl and you suddenly have all this time to think about things you normally don't think about. I decided I've been putting my writing on hold for far too long. I'm taking a shaky step forward by starting a blog, and then I'm going to get to work on the bits and pieces of a novel I have buried inside my writing notebook (which I really need to replace, because that poor notebook has at least ten different stories in it plus poems and random snippets in the back — I don't have room to write anything else in it, so none of the stories are finished).

In other news, Ian is sitting next to me tapping his foot with an insanely skinny yellow baseball bat while asking me questions about Facebook and wondering aloud why bowling is so cheap.

Dylan is putting together a virtual baseball team.

An insanely obese cat (ahem) is curled up on my bed.

There is junk all over my couch, proof that I've been sick this week.

It's 44º according to my Dashboard and my feet feel like frozen bricks. I like cool weather, but if it's going to be cold, it should snow or just not be cold at all.

So ends my random first post.