Time... Flies...

Okay, so updating this thing is a little harder to keep up with than I'd like it to be. A lot has happened, a lot of it I don't remember.

So instead of trying to get it all down, trashing my brain trying to find the little bits of information I want to put here, I'll just type up what comes to mind. This will lead to what is most likely a hard to follow series of thoughts that won't make any sense to anyone.

Friday night I kissed the girl who I've deemed my current "problem girl". Nobody I know is happy that I did that. Nobody likes her. She is pretty attractive, and has an okay personality, but for some reason, everyone thinks I need to wash my mouth out with battery acid because of it. Okay, so I was a little drunk, I still made the conscious decision before. I'm not really all that happy about it myself, because the kiss felt a little... empty. Although she was into it, and I wasn't really very drunk, I didn't feel anything. It's a strange sort of disconnect, actually. You'd think there would be at least a little bit of feeling there, but no. There was nothing.

*sigh*

Well, I suppose it's not too bad. I mean, it's only the first kiss I can remember in 5 or more years. I guess it's better than nothing. Though, now that I have, it makes me feel a little more sure that I need to find the right person before committing to anything. In my desperation, I'd thought anyone would do, but not so. For that, I am glad, because it makes me even more sure that I'll find the RIGHT person, and not just settle.

So the rest of the night was a little strange. I had already stopped thinking about the kiss, so I had a lot of fun. Talked with a bunch of people I hadn't seen in about six months. Absolutely everyone was there. Everyone was happy to see me.

After a while, I ended up talking to this girl named Kendra, and ended up talking about being nervous, feeling out of place, and it was a nice long two-sided conversation. It was fun.

Then I got drafted into a beer pong team. Kicked ass with a guy who's left arm was nub just a few inches from the elbow. beat the reigning champs.

That was my friday night, Hung out with some people that I hadn't seen, had a few beers, kicked ass at beer pong, and kissed a girl for the first time in years. I'd say the night was a success.

The next day, however, wasn't as great. Started the day off at 12:30, played a little Army of Two on my cousin's PS3. A few hours later, got drafted into a game of Denver in a Box, which is essentially a ripoff of monopoly. Turned out Problem Girl had spent the night. Awkward.

I was the first out, followed by one of my cousins, then my aunt, then it was down to Problem girl and Asshole. Well, Asshole won, and was an asshole about it. No surprises there.

Watched a few horror movies. Everyone was there. Afterwords Asshole, Cousin, and Aunt took off, leaving me and problem girl alone. I apologized for my actions. She changed the topic. Awkward again. She needed a ride home. I can't drive, so I offered to walk with her. Three miles in the cold, not happening. She ended up finding a ride, and left without saying goodbye. I was sitting alone in the dark for about ten minutes. Nobody said goodbye, nobody said anything about taking me with them. So, Cooler Cousin gets home from the Avs game, and promptly went to bed. Alone in the dark... again. At least he said goodnight.

So I got online and chatted with people. So boooooooored.

Ended up going to sleep at 3 AM. woke up this morning at 11:30. Had a good breakfast. Izgud.

Let's see... Last Monday I went to go see Sex Drive with a girl I met in the DO IRC. We met at Noodles and Company downtown, then went to the theater afterwords. Was a great movie, I recommend it. Took the light-rail down to the park 'n' ride, where her car was parked. She drove me home, met my mother, hung out for a while, then left. Was a good time overall. The whole time it was awkward. She's exactly like me, so the blame rests on both of us for the awkwardness. It was a fun awkward though, and we laughed because we pretty much knew what each other were thinking in our awkwardly directed window-stares. I almost didn't go home when my mother told me I was breaking the plan. I didn't because I'm too obedient. But yeah, Mom likes her, wants me to do more with her, but I think she's going to end up as just a friend.

Uhm... So yeah, I guess that's what's happening in my life at the moment. I don't know if it's interesting or not, but there it is.

The Killers - Human

I'd like to say right now, BRAVO.

This is the first time I have ever been interested in an entire album by ANY band, let alone before I hear the whole thing. All I have from The Killers' new album is the recently released Human from their upcoming album Day & Age.

...Yeah, okay, that sounds like a plug, but it's not supposed to be. This is me on my feet shouting to the heavens that this song is freaking amazing. It's a disconnect from most of the Killers songs I've heard in the past. Mr. Brightside had an older feel to it, and All These Things That I've Done had a nice ambiance effect to it, but Human has an epic all-surrounding feeling.

It's got a strong beat, a powerful synth "oohh" behind the beginning, a strings ensemble behind the majority of the song, mixed in with a buzzy electro-synth.

If the rest of the album is half as awesome as this, I'm buying four. One digital from amazon, one for my car, one for my mother's car, and one to keep in a drawer in case either of the other two gets scratched. Yeah, you heard that right. I won't just copy the disc, I'll buy more than one.

Just. That. Awesome.

In fact, it's awesome enough to pass me by my most recent month and a half writer's block. It's inspiring enough to get my working on my projects again... and blogging. Need to do more of that.

The Good Guys

In literature there are often two kinds of "good guy". There's the singular, and the plural.

The singular good guy usually solves a problem with an internal debate, or gut reaction. He takes things as they come, either going through all the options in his head, or taking a leap of faith. These are fairly common, as far as characters go. They're usually in it for themselves or someone they love, and rarely do they think to the true scale of the situation.

The plural good guys are usually shown as either a group of acquaintances, or a band of adventurers pulled together by a force or common interest. Within the group, we see the same kind of debate as our singular good guy, but open to other ideas. Now the unfortunate thing is that when you're writing with a group of good guys, you tend to run into disagreements. These disagreements stem from the mind of the character you've created and can be quite a roadblock. Time and time again, author's have gone the now tried and true method of pushing the stick in the mud to grudgingly going along with it because he/she "Can't think of anything better.

I myself ran into this author's conundrum when dealing with the novel I started. It presented itself as a large roadblock, and put me off writing for months. Even today I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Now that I've moved onto a different project that I need to write for, I've started to think on some ways to avoid roadblocks like these. If you change the dynamic of a group from a forum of ideas to a singular decider, instead of a democracy you get a dictatorship. Unfortunately for me, dictatorships in this form are incredibly fake and unlikely.

So what does a person do in that situation? You make someone a bold idiot and go with whatever they'd do.


If you've noticed the Google Ads, I've placed them there as a test before I put them live on my newest project's website, as I'm going to need whatever income I can get. They should be gone soon.

Then, the loot post

My step-dad and I made an AWESOME haul today.

We set off this afternoon to the house of a guy selling four 250 gig hard-drives for $30 each. Just a few days ago, the hard-drive in our server decided to start making grinding noises.

Uh... yeah. When we got there, the guy talked with us a while about where he got the drives, some of the other stuff he was selling, and also stuff he wanted to get rid of. He mentioned
laptops. I asked if he had any memory specifically, as I'm looking to see if I can upgrade the Eee's memory. What he gave us surprised me.

We left his house with five laptops, a docking station for one, floppy drive for another, and dvd drive for yet another.

They are:
2x Averatec 6100 (Intel Pentium 4 3.0 ghz, 512mb ram, 60 gig HD, ATI Radeon 8600) missing one battery and both power supplies
1x Gateway 450SX4 (Unknown Intel Pentium 4, unknown ram, 20 gig HD, unknown video, two power supplies, doesn't turn on, docking station fits this one)
1x Compaq Presario R3000 (Unknown AMD Athlon XP-M, 256 MB ram, 60 gig HD, no power adapter, turns on but shuts off soon after using other power supply. Suspected on-board RAM issue)
1x Compaq Presario 3000 (AMD Athlon XP-M 2.8ghz, Unknown video, currently contains HD from R3000, ram from one of the Averatec machines, boots using power supply higher than rated, cuts off supply and dies shortly thereafter. Suspected working laptop in need of power adapter)

So that's the haul. We think the Averatec both work fine, but we have no power to test. Going out tomorrow to look. Not a bad deal for $30. At the very least we have five licenses for Windows XP, four home, one pro, that can be transfered to other computers. What WAS this guy thinking?

First, the serious post

So my mother almost died.

She was taken to the hospital a few Thursdays ago for severe back pain, and several hours later was found to have blood clots in her legs. They airlifted her to another hospital. I was scared.

It all seemed surreal. I was at home, watching my brother Joe while my step-dad and grandfather were at the hospital with Mom. They rushed her into surgery, and I didn't know. They put tubes and shunts in her legs, and I didn't know. They put a filter near her heart, and I didn't know.

I felt so out of the loop. All these things were being done to my mother and nobody was telling me anything. They'd mention that "the procedure" was going well, that "she's doing okay, but she's still not out of the woods."

But that's how it went. For a week I watched my brother. For a week, I didn't see hide nor hair of my step-dad. For that week, I didn't see my mother. I didn't want to be afraid. I wanted her to be okay. My sister had to be told, and it was MY job to tell her.

That week was the hardest. I learned a lot. I'm not ready to be a godparent to my siblings. Not yet.

I broke off a date for Mom's sake, though that one was a good decision anyway. The girl ended up not enjoying "clean" relationships (whatever that meant, I wanted nothing to do with it).

The last day she was in the ICU, I went to my sister's aunt's Hometown Days party. Had a lot of fun, sang some karaoke (there's video somewhere of me screaming the chorus of You Shook Me All Night Long somewhere out there in the world)

I came back home, and the next Thursday she was kicked out of the hospital. They had her on a few blood thinners and pain killers. The pain meds for her legs that atrophied during her hospital visit.

She lost nearly all the baby weight though, which made her happy, but she's still in bed without much moving-ability. The whole timeline is a little shaky, I don't remember much clearly.

Things are almost back to normal now, which is good. She's going to be okay. Apparently the baby had blocked blood flow to her legs which caused the blood there to clot, and when the blood was let back through, it got backed up by the massive clots. Chances are if one of those clots were to break, she'd be dead. They got them all out though, and the tubes.

Looking too hard for that happy ending

Everyone is looking for it. Every day, every action we take is a step. Whether it's a step in the right direction or not is debatable.

I always though I was stepping the wrong way. Sabotaging myself every step. Always screwing something up. I thought I was taking myself down a long road of loneliness and destruction. Well I got tired of the depression, of the constant nagging that I had already ruined my chances.

I'd felt that way since I started homeschooling, and it was about time to stop that shit.

So I threw a [/emo] into my code. I started taking steps to make myself less of a social pushover. I talked to people. Talking to people was the hardest step. I clam up around anyone I haven't been around for a while. It's my biggest downfall and I'm well aware of it. That awareness helped a lot.

Talking to people led to things like being invited to parties. Parties led to meeting new people. Meeting new people led to hanging out more. Hanging out more meant meeting MORE new people.

I think I might almost be done with my little shy phase I had going on there. I'm getting back to the social creature I was back in elementary school. It's strange to think that I had this life then, and completely lost my nerve after homeschooling.

So today I have the drive, I've taken the steps. I'm moving back to being as social as everyone else, and while being unique is nice, I can retain my uniqueness while being social. What I've done is a step toward the happy ending I so desperately strive for, but it has me thinking.

Everything changes so much, so often. People's opinions of you change. Your every action changes what people think of you. You take one rash action, a complete disconnect from the normal you, and depending on what you've done, it completely changes what the people around you think. People judge.

Is that happy ending really so hard to achieve? It seems to me if you can keep your head, not react so much to the things around you, think before you act, you don't have as many problems, you can do what you really think is right rather than what your instincts say to do.

I've patched this family up through fights by being the one to step back and think about it, while everyone else yells the first thing that comes to mind, do I yell? No. I think. I reason. I try to see all sides of the story. How it changes things for everyone. How the largest number of people can be happy with the outcome. It's not about who's wrong, because having the fight in the first place proves that it's gone too far. It's not about who's right, because if they were so, there wouldn't be a fight. Truth is, nobody is right or wrong. Everyone states opinion, and disagreements enlarge themselves into fights, and fights get large enough to excommunicate family members (in this family, at least). Is it right to excommunicate a family member?

Depends on your viewpoint.

The problem is that in this family we have two dominant personalities, that of my always-thinks-she's-right sister, and the always-has-to-argue-his-opinion stepdad. Their opinions do not jive. It always degenerates into a big fight that everyone is tired of hearing. How was it solved this last time? My step-dad banned my sister from the house. Even though it's a little extreme, it solves the problem in the easiest way possible. They can't get along when they're in the same room. He's not going to NOT come home. She can't just stay hidden the whole time. SO, if she stays at a nearby relative's house instead of here, there is no problem.

Note also that they both are happy with that agreement. Nobody feels put out except for Mom, who thinks my step-dad should just button his yap. I'd say it's my sister who should shut up. Even if she doesn't agree, it's disrespectful to him, the person paying for her trips here, for her to be yelling at him over some petty disagreement.

Kids these days have no respect.

To date, however, I've never had any kind of major disagreement because I THINK about what I'm about to say. I stop myself if it causes an unneccisary and destructive argument. On top of it all, I'm ALWAYS willing to admit to being wrong.

My long vacation

Heyhey, it's been a few days since my last post. Most reasons being that I don't have anything interesting to report, and also because I went on vacation for three days and nights.

Thursday night Mom had the baby (finally). Big Baby Rhiannon was born 9 pounds 11 ounces. Everyone was rushing around like those little ball-chasing ferret toys.

It was a nice vacation. Took off from work at 3 on Friday, stopped by home, packed up the little I needed, like an air mattress, two shirts, and swim trunks, and said my adieu to my grandfather, who was watching my brother while my mom was in the hospital with the baby. From there we went over to Hanzy's house to get his tent, as he wouldn't be making it up until 11 or later. From there it was a long drive to Glendo, Wyoming. We only stopped twice, once to get food from Wendy's and once because I had to use the bathroom (I can remember these things for some reason).

In the truck we had Tina, Mike and Alese, my aunt, her husband, and my cousin respectively. Hanzy and Sherry, accompanied by their little brat of a grand-nephew, would be coming up later. LONG drive later (two and a half hours) we arrive at the Reservoir. This place is AMAZING, you pitch your tent in sand right off the beach, sheltered by trees. The lake is gigantic. The beach is long and windy, with families having fun everywhere. Lots of hot babes in swimsuits... erm... yeah.

The first afternoon/evening is spent pitching tents and unloading. We had the misfortune of being there the same weekend as a ski group of around thirty people who very openly aspire to be pirates. While we were setting up they had a lively party, and stole our hammer. Those right bastards walked right up, grabbed the hammer from inside our truck, and vamoosed with it. I was very pissed off. Anyway, we get set up and take off to the beach to get some photos of the sunset, which is incredibly beautiful from there.
After that we hung out and waited for Hanzy, keeping the fire going and the food hot. They arrive around 11 ish, unpack a bunch of stuff, and we sit around the fire with marshmallows on sticks in hand. Now, Hanzy and Mike are both South-African, born and raised, so naturally, they speak a lot of Afrikaans to each other. It's a very confusing language.

That night I tried my damnedest to get some sleep, but the pirates were noisy. I'd be on the virge of falling into unconsciousness when some drunkard would shout "WENCH! WHERE'S ME RUM?!". Bluhg.

The next morning was great. I woke up, threw on my swim trunks and a shirt, skipped the shoes, and stepped out of my tent onto soft, cool sand... littered with twigs from the surrounding trees, of course. Ow.

We had breakfast. Eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon, ham. The Five Camping Food Groups. That passed pretty quickly, so Keith, the annoying prick, Alese and I, played a modified game of Ladder Ball wherein there are two ladders. We played for a while and I didn't do very well, but it passed the time until the real fun part happened, the beach.

Being steps away from the beach has it's advantages. You don't have to bring the coolers with you, for one. We were close enough to the shoreline to leave the drinks at camp and just set up the chairs and canopy. Spent the day there. Unfortunately I didn't spend as much time relaxing as I wanted to because Keith wanted to swim. He wouldn't shut up about it until he did, and he only did when someone went with him. I ended up getting out of the water to play Badminton with Mike. That was pretty much our Saturday. A lot of beach, not much else. Got an awesome tan though.

Sunday we went and rented a boat. Not a really fancy boat, just a pontoon boat. It was enough to keep us entertained for a day though. We drove down at 8 to pick the boat up. There was a hot girl working the desk that, as I found out through conversation about fishing and SCUBA diving, was 18. I got reeeeeeeeeal quiet. I thought. My biggest downfall, thinking, had struck again. DAMN MY BRAIN MEATS.

Rawr. I bought a pair of sunglasses while I was in there. Little did I know, I was going to lose my wallet in the reservoir.

I stuck my wallet into my back pocket and we tottled off to our boat, waiting in the marina below.

We hopped in the boat, navigated it out of the marina, and hauled ass to the other side of the lake where the Sandy Beach campground resides. I stood most of the time, unbuttoned shirt fluttering in the breeze. The spray of water from the force of the boat blasting it's way through the water. {/overdescribing}

It was time to pick everyone else up from the campsite. We got that out of the way and began exploring the lake. I remembered some good swimming spots from the last time I had been out there, so I navigated us in and we took a little swim. Unfortunately, when I got into the water, I completely forgot about my wallet, which was residing in the pocket of my trunks, without any way to fasten it in. Of course, I didn't notice right when I got in, and by the time I remembered, it would have either been carried by the current an untold number of miles, or sunk to the bottom, about twenty feet down. Yar.

Of course, no story involving annoying people can go too far without them. As I was attempting to board the boat again, I sliced my hand on an exposed screw. It's quite a nasty cut. Of course, Mr Mini-Asshole heckled me about my complete inability to board the high craft. That's not the worst part. He later called me an alcoholic because I had ONE beer while we were on the boat. ONE.

The end of the day we took the boat back. The girl was still there. I went to go buy a flashlight so I had something to see with, as Hanzy, who's keychain light I was using, was leaving. I reach for my pocket, having completely forgotten I had lost my wallet to the water, and sheepishly returned the flashlight to it's foam resting place in the little store.

Thankfully Hanzy had his wallet handy and sprung the $8 for the light. I'm now the proud owner of a little handheld 3 LED flashlight. YAY! -_-

Right, so we head back to camp, they pack up and leave, uneventful night. The next day, spend more time on the beach, grab a few quick snaps of the beach and sunset again, and a pic of me while I was at it.
And thus, that was my weekend in a nutshell.

Yesterday I managed to get to my bank and get my debit card re-issued with a new number, and managed to talk to the girl at the Philly Cheesesteak place. Turns out she's just about to turn 17. :D

Righty. That only took forever.

Until next time