Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is one of those days when I start looking back at the year that’s nearly passed, and try to decide if it was a good year or not.. and also try to figure out what I should do differently in the new year to make it better. I’ve got some time driving to and from my parents place, and odds are Kristin will be tired on the drive home anyway, so I need something to occupy my head, or the little band that plays up there will just play the same few notes over and over and over again until I’m forced to slam my skull into the driver’s side window to make them stop. Anyway, this year was actually quite good. Looking back to the summer, I came to realize that this summer was amazingly good. At the time I wanted more, but at the same time I realized that it was all quite good. Looking back now I wish I had truly appreciated just how good it was, but I’m glad that I did at least recognize that many things were very, very good. So how do things get better? At this point, my best guess is to just keep doing what I’m doing, and wait for the breaks that gotta swing my way at some point. Got any advice?

I went with a group, including Tuuk and Adam to see Star Wars Episode II : Attack of the Clones in the IMAX theater. I can say without a doubt that it was very Big. Watching it while sitting next to Tuuk was also quite entertaining. (He seemed skeptical when I mentioned that Anakin could still likely kick his ass, whiny or not. Then Tuuk showed me a little Kung Fu and I quickly recanted.) The only drawback (besides the parts of the movie that weren’t good, and the parts where the special effects looked not so special on such a large screen) was that I was very tired, and my eyes where just burning the entire time. So afterwards, I went home, and went to sleep for a while. Then I woke up and talked to some people, including Steve for a while, then passed out again and woke up when it was today, which is now yesterday.

With the coaxing of Joel, and the thought of 3 new (or at least new to me)Zelda games, I went and bought a Gameboy Advanced. Now those sole 2 hours of the day that weren’t spent staring at a screen of some sort will be spent… staring at a screen. I am a moron. But I am seriously jazzed about playing Oracle of Season, Oracle of Ages, and Four Swords. And when the Gamecube version of The Legend of Zelda comes out, you can use the GBA for something (a map, I think), and that just sounds slick. (Slick –> A quality held by an item that makes those that own said item believe that the item is more valuable than they could have possibly imagined, and believe that those in charge of creating said item are to be praised. This same quality causes those that do not own said item to loathe and mock said item even more, and loathe the greedy bastards that came up with such stupid marketing ploys.). I’d like to reiterate that I will be coming down with mono around February 1, 2003. Please adjust your schedules accordingly.

So my Thanksgiving was spent out near Chicago with my extended family (Mom’s side). Good times. As always, there was much food, many card games, and at least 50% of my family members must have left with the distinct impression that I was born with a brain defect. (and apparently I lick my walls… who knows.) Got back around 10, and did some coding, and now that it’s about 1:45 i might sleep, or read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I think we all know which one I’m going to choose.

So anyway, hope everyone had a good day. Needless to say, the Lions suck.

So I got 0 hours of sleep last night. And yes, it kinda sucked. It wasn’t for lack for lack of trying. I spent a few hours just kinda laying there. I think I just completely screwed up my sleep schedule, and couldn’t adjust. So you add that to my normal sleeping difficulties and you get me just sitting in bed, staring at the ceiling for a while. Today at work actually didn’t turn out that bad though. Lots of coffee, and loud, angry music, and I was all set.

I just got done watching what may well be the worst movie (from a “quality” perspective) that I have ever seen: Going Overboard. For a clue of how bad it is, check this quote from Imdb:

Recommendations

If you like this title, we also recommend…
stabbing yourself in the eyes with a fork.

I suppose it’s a heartwarming story that after this, Adam Sandler can go on to make Billy Madison.(“Billy Madison was like..Punk Rock!”)

I think I’ll try to work on a new section for this site.

So I’m back home. Friday turned out to be a very long day. Woke up early, headed out to the airport, got through security, then grabbed some food at Burger King. (Croissanwich –> A Sausage, egg, and cheese Croissant. Burger King went through all the trouble of creating a short, efficient name for the thing, and worked their made up name into the vernacular, and now they refuse to ever call the stupid thing by the very name they’ve given it. It’s stupid. Order a “croissanwich” at Burger King sometime, and they’ll say something like “So you’ve ordered a Sausage, Egg and Cheese Croissant.” That’s like ordering a Whopper, and them saying “So you’ve ordered a burger with ketchup, mustard, pickles, thousand island dressing, onions, tomatoes, and lettuce on a bun”. Joel and I have had this discussion many-a time.) So having purchased breakfast, I found myself with a quarter. We were a few hours early for our flight, and there were plenty of slot machines… So I tossed the quarter into one of the slot machines, gave it a pull, and Bling – Bling – Bling. Sweetness. Won myself $8. So while I ended up down in Las Vegas, I ended up UP at the Vegas airport, and that’s all that really matters to me.

The flights back home were fairly uneventful, but long.. The mountains were amazing, and I just stared out the window like a giddy little schoolboy for quite some time, but that joy soon passed as the clouds rolled in, and I was back to pretending to sleep much of the time. I’ve been having some fairly Mind-Messing dreams lately. (Mind-Messing Dreams –> A dream that seems to be some sort of urgent message sent from my subsconcious to my conscious. Often times, for me anyway, it seems to be my repressed thoughts that I’ve either chosen to ignore or simply haven’t had the notion to think about suddenly coming to the forefront and demanding to be heard.) I’ve been having more or less the exact same dream almost every night for about a week now, and while the dream itself is pleasant, it’s the waking up that I seem to have the trouble with. This has happened before, though. About a year after my family moved from Ohio to Michigan, a move I was very much against, I had a series of dreams where I was forced to move back to Cleveland, and everything was kind of how it was when I still lived there, but I was completely miserable, and I missed all my new Michigan friends, etc.. And it didn’t take much detective work to figure out that I was glad we had moved, and happier (everything’s relative) here in Michigan than I was there. I seem to recall a couple of rather messed up “nightmares” shortly before breaking up with Julie that made that decision even easier than it already should have been. Nothing quite like a projected future to make you rethink your present path. Anyway, I’m now having these dreams that are making some stuff fairly clear, but the problem is I have no real clue what I’m supposed to do about it. It’s one thing to know that something’s true, and it’s quite another to then know what you’re supposed to do because of it. And if you think I’m going to just post what my dream was here, you’re even more messed up than I am. Ask me sometime.

So I got back Friday night, and then headed out that evening with Mindy, and we saw The Emperor’s Club. It was quite good. We were expecting a cross between Dead Poets Society and Mr. Holland’s Opus, but it really wasn’t. There were certainly portions of both other films in this one, but it stands on its own as a fine, fine film. One of those good movies where at the end you can’t say if it ended happy or sad, but you feel good about having seen it, and kinda wish it wasn’t over. Afterwards, we headed off to Fridays for some drinks and some food, and talked about everything. (Life, the Universe, Ed, Relationships, Work, and the people we know, and why we love or hate them.) Was good stuff. The entire time I still felt kinda out of it from jetlag and general out-of-it-ness. The fishbowl sized Long-Island probably didn’t help. Meh. Good stuff.

Today I slept. A LOT. Then I cleaned for a while to make myself feel better. Later on in the day, Josh and Dusty showed up, and we headed off and saw Die Another Day, which I found quite entertaining. A few gripes. First, I’m not a huge Halle Berry fan, so her inclusion wasn’t a huge thrill for me. I also don’t particularly care for the new Madonna song that’s the theme. It doesn’t touch the Garbage “The World is Not Enough” theme of the last film. I was pleasantly surprised by the car though. I had bad visions of Bond driving around in a souped up Ford Festiva, but thankfully Ford owns Aston Martin, so all was good. Afterwards, we headed off to Max and Ermas for dinner, and the lovely Tressa was working, so that made it all the better. After a lively dinner that involved some dancing in the lobby, some hostesses dancing in the lobby, some camp games, and figuring out how I’d tell my parents that I had killed a guy, we headed on back to my place, played cards for a while, then called it a night. Now I’m about to watch Rat Race, because I need to get back into my 4 hours of sleep a night routine, or this coming week is going to be hellish.

Okay, I’m in a session, but I think I finally have some time to write something slightly worthwhile (when compared to recent posts). First off, I’ve managed to get all the pictures caught up through this morning (and hopefully I can get all of today done by the end of today.. and yes, I know, there’s a ton of typos, I’ll get to them eventually). So I’ll try to type fast, and get out what’s been going on so far… I think most of this you can probably get by looking at the pictures, but oh well, I’m going to repeat it.

So Sunday morning I got up, and got ready. My sister, Kristin, headed over around 10, and Brian (BDF) showed up shortly thereafter. Kris was going to drive us to the airport. So we headed off, making a quick stop at Meijer to pick up a few odds and ends. After a few explosive Cream Soda adventures, we made it to the Airport. We got our tickets, and got our bags checked (mine got pulled out and searched through, no idea why). We headed on through security (My coat zippers always set the thing off. I also forgot to ditch my key-chain swiss army knife, and they looked at that for a long time, before giving it back to me. Sherrill showed up, and after a wait, we got on the plane. The first flight was uneventful, and I just read Harry Potter the whole time. We landed in Detroit, and had a 2 hour layover, which we wasted by watching the Saints v. Falcons game on one of the giant screens. The Detroit Airport was really slick. After the airport finally figured out what gate we were supposed to be at, we headed on to the next plane.

The second flight wasn’t all that kewl, cause my ears wouldn’t pot, and it made me want to die. I had the same thing the first flight I ever took, only that time I ended up passing out. This time it just hurt like hell, and I got really, really dizzy. After about 15 minutes, one of my ears popped, which was nice, but made everything unbalanced. After about a half hour, I was used to it enough to be able to see straight, so I could read. The other ear didn’t pop until about 2 hours into the flight. Beyond that, the flight was uneventful. I just read, and occasionally looked out the window. Usually it was just clouds, but I got to see mountains, and some major rivers. Very kewl.

When we were getting close to landing, I finally saw Las Vegas, and it’s just plain bright. It’s darkness everywhere, then a giant circle of nothing but lights. At first it’s just a blur, but slowly you could pick out distinct buildings, and colors, and then we were on the ground. Hopped into the airport, saw the slot machines right there in the airport lobby, then got our luggage. Hopped in a cab to Alexis Park. Got checked in, got our stuff put away, and since we were starving, we headed off to The Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. After dinner, we found the registration dealie for Apachecon, got all our crap (badge, book, bag, shirt, etc.), then headed back to our rooms. After a while, I headed out to try to get a web connection, and managed to get one after walking about half way back from my room to the main lobby. So I hung out on a step, uploaded some images, got all my email, talked to Deedre a short bit, then (as I was freezing to death by now) I headed back to the room.

Monday morning I woke up around 11. (yea.. 11 Las Vegas time, so around 2. It ruled). I had my XLST tutorial at 1:30, so we (BDF, Sherrill, and I) met up for lunch at noon. We ended up at the Hotel Bar and Grill, and we all grabbed the cheapest thing on the menu (Chicken fingers) and waters. After that was my tutorial.. so I headed off to what I thought was the right room. I got there a little early so I could get my wireless card working Linux. This is where I was overwhelmed by the sheer nerd level of the room.. yea.. they put me to shame. (though in a sort of reassuring way). After about 10 minutes after the hour, I started to get a bit concerned, so I checked the door label again, and sure enough, I was in the wrong room. So I went and found the right room, hopped in, and tried hard not to be noticed… After a little while I realized the man to my left was wearing a monocle, and I was fascinated. So I spent a little time during our break to position my camera just right to get a shot when he came back. I spent the rest of the session listening intently, because I was just barely keeping up. I was grateful when the notes showed up.

The night we hit the strip. And really, the pictures tell this story better than I could. Everything was BIG and Colorful. We made it basically from one end to the other, though we didn’t walk past the Excalibur, and thus we missed the Luxor. On the opposite end was the Stratosphere, which BDF and I took to the top. If you go to Vegas, you owe it to yourself to go up there, because the view is amazing. By the time we got to the other end, BDF’s feet were toast, and we were all kinda tired, so we grabbed a cab, and headed back to the Hotel. I spent the next few hours outside uploading all of those pictures I had just taken, then headed in and promptly fell asleep.

Tuesday was the first day of the open sessions here at Apachecon. So there was the opening keynote speech, which was introduced by the Monocle Man, who turned out to be famous. (and don’t I feel like a retard). Then it was a speech by Tim O’Reilly. It was quite entertaining, and then he dropped the F-Bomb, and the few that were not paying attention suddenly stopped typing at their laptops, and the room was completely his for the rest of his speech. After that, it was off to sessions. Sessions went fine, some more interesting than others. After sessions was lunch, then more sessions, then dinner (Read: Free beer). After dinner, BDF and I headed back out to the Bellagio to make our millions. After taking the contents of our wallets and placing them directly into the trash, we headed out to Caesars Palace, which was a disappointment. It’s like I said in the pictures section, all of these places look so distinctive and spiffed up on the outside, but on the inside they all pretty much look the same. So we headed from there to the Luxor, just so I could see it, then hopped a cab back. Again I headed outside and updated the pictures, eventually ending up in the computer lab they have set up here. Got back fairly late, and fell asleep instantly.

Wednesday is today… and today was pretty good. BDF and I headed out to Comdex, which was underwhelming. Afterwords, we were hungry, so we went to In-N-Out, because Joel raves about it all the time. The shakes were quite good, and the burgers were certainly filling. Worth traveling across the country for? That would be a No. Afterwords, we had trouble getting a cab, so we walked a ways, eventually ending up at the Excalibur, and we grabbed a cab there back to the Hotel in plenty of time for the next sessions. In fact, we headed back to the room, BDF took a nap, and I cleaned the room for a while, cause I’m both anal and retarded. Then was a series of underwhelming sessions that didn’t really apply to anything, and were mostly boring. After that was this session, which is/was (It’s a few hours later now anyway, and Ed just started) interesting, but not at all what was advertised. Afterwords, we ordered a pizza, and now we’re watching Ed. I technically have more to say, but this is already too long, so I have to stop. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get a bit more free time. Anyway, the pictures are interesting.

And Ed just finished, and it totally screwed up my entire evening. Imagine eating a very big meal, and you’ve just finished, and are lounging out on a nice big soft couch, and someone sneaks up from behind and hits you square in the stomach with a baseball bat. Yup, it’s kinda like that.

No time once again, as my battery is about to die. But I’ve put up the pictures from the Vegas Strip, and you should check them out, cause a few of them aren’t horribly blurry. Anyway, I wrote a nifty “Add Picture” Perl script today during an especially boring “Load Balancing” session today, so hopefully I can get all caught up by tomorrow, and post a long post about what all has been going on here. BDF and I helped support the local economy this evening, and we both feel especially good about it…. only minus the good part. But there was free beer at the Apachecon welcoming dinner, and we scored free drinks at the Bellagio. More pics are coming soon. The weather is here, wish you were beautiful.

This one will have to be short. We just got back from walking the strip, and now we’re all quite tired. Las Vegas is actually quite kewl. Lots of neon, and everything is big. Bdf and I agreed it was a bit like a fair that went horribly over budget, and nobody seemed to care. Yesterday we headed off to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, and our waiter said that while we were in Vegas, we had to 1.) Get Drunk. 2.) Gamble. and 3.) See Naked People. We haven’t gotten drunk yet. Anyway, enjoy the pictures(They’ll be there soon, this connection is flaking out), and hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a little more time (and a more stable connection) to fill you in on all the details.

Hey there. It’s 3:15 am, and I just finished packing a little while ago. Off to Vegas later today (in about 9 hours I guess.) I wanted to at least write a little something about my weekend before heading off to sleep though. The weekend turned out really good, actually. Once again the efforts to “be a better person” have paid off, though it was touch and go for a while, there. Friday work was just fine. I got a slew accomplished before lunch, which is always a good feeling. It was one of those magical things where you know there’s a fairly large thing you’re working on, and you think “heh, it’d be funny if i could just write these 4 lines of code, and have it automagically do everything I’m looking for… then you realize that it actually could, with just a few tweaks here and there… and thus a full day project becomes just a few hours long. Man, I love that. It’s up there with the time I was stuck on a particularly dicey project I was working on, and one part just would not work, and after working on it all night, I finally crashed, only to come up with the perfect solution in one of my dreams. I kid you not. I woke up, started coding, and the thing worked within 15 minutes. So if you see me sleeping at work ever, I’m actually working very hard, and odds are if would be good for the company if you just left me alone.

After work Friday, I headed on home, then swung out to my sister, Amy’s place, as it was her birthday. Kristin and I had gone in halvsies on a combo Birthday/X-mas gift for her, cause we wanted to get her something especially nice (read: $$), so it was kewl dropping that off, cause she was surprised (the good kind of surprised, not the “my car insurance just went up another $350” kind of surprised). Afterwards, I headed back home, and finished cleaning/doing laundry, etc. All the things that were supposed to get finished Thursday, but never actually got done. I restrung and retuned my guitars, then tried to figure out some Ashby Furlough and Guster songs. Later on in the evening I headed off to Calvin and hung out with Deedre, which was great. Any chance I get to hang out with her is time well spent, as I always have a good time. Afterwards I just kinda wandered around Calvin for quite some time thinking about just about everything, which was actually nice for once. It’s one thing to lie awake at night when you’re trying to sleep and constantly thinking about everything under the sun, and another to actively choose to just think about life, the universe, and everything. Anyway, eventually I realized I was freezing to death, so I gave my sister, Kristin a call. She was at my brother and sister-in-law’s place, babysitting my nephew, Steven, while Jeff and Rebecca were out watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. (I’m told it’s quite good). So I headed off there, and hung out with Kristin for a while, and then with Jeff and Rebecca as well, once they came back. Good stuff. Eventually headed back home, and fell asleep soon thereafter.

Woke up this morning, after a particularly nice dream, and ended up getting very little accomplished. It being a Saturday, I don’t know why I thought I’d get anything done, but I still thought I’d give it a shot. Headed off around 1 to have coffee with Jill, a friend of my good friend, Molly. They both go to Vet school out at MSU, and were roommates up until Molly got married this past summer. So she and I hung out (at Max and Ermas, of course) for a couple hours, and talked quite a bit. It was fun, and she was really friendly.. and helpful, actually. Then I headed back, and my old roommate, Adam, who now lives in Bay City, was in town. So Sven, Adam, Swac, and I hung out. We ended up heading out to Damons, and our waitress was quite kewl, so I guess my boycott of Damons can come to an end, as they’ve redeemed themselves in my eyes. Then we headed back to my place and played Medal of Honor for a while. Yea, I totally sucked. That’s what I get for playing as a Nazi, I guess. Then we blew a few hours playing euchre, which is always fun. Eventually they all had to jet, so I went back with Adam and Sven to Sven’s place, where my car was parked. When I got in my car, I suddenly had no desire to go home, so I just drove around for about an hour. It was kinda nice, actually. Ended up in GR (Shoulda gone to Mulligan’s, actually. nuts.). Eventually I headed on back home, and started packing. And that brings us up to the present. Only now It’s 3:50, and I’m exhausted. I should get some sleep. keep checking, I’ll add more pics as they get taken, and try to give a little update on my day (my gambling losses) while I’m away.

So I’ve been on this “good attitude” and “be a good person” kick for a little while, and so far, it has gone very, very well.

Tuesday at the Pickwick was quite good. Had myself a fine conversation with Tuuk about life, the universe, and everything (Life, the Universe, and Everything –> Women.). After a few attempts, we got our last pitcher, which was good to the last drop, then headed off. After dropping Tuuk and Mark off, I headed on to Joel’s, where I crashed for a little while. Joel and I had another fine conversation. We came to the agreement that we were good people (well, better than everyone else, certainly), and I was on my way. Got home, and started restringing my guitar, because it was very late, and I am very stupid. After a short while I realized I was lying in bed, and decided I may as well just sleep

Wednesday came with no getting out of bed spinning world adventures, and I was pleased. Work was work…nothing exciting that I can remember, though I did spend a fair amount of my lunch hour dinking around with my magnet poetry. (What were they thinking when they included “blood”, “knife”, and CarrotTop” !?) On the drive home, Dave and I passed crazy leg dragging scooter guy. As his name kinda suggests, he drives a scooter, but drags his feet along the road while he’s going… Just one of the colorful personalities that makes up my work neighborhood. (See also: Old man with a bat, Diane the Wendys lady, and Dave.)

Wednesday night was Ed! It was beyond grand. First of all, it was Ed, which makes it wonderful. Then you add Kelly Ripa, and it’s getting even better. Then you you add THIS, and you’ve got yourself the perfect episode. (For those of you scared of links, it’s a short clip of Dennis and Carol’s wedding, right as Dennis calls the whole thing off and walks out of the church, [hopefully] never to be seen again.) In the off chance that you’ve forgotten, we hate Dennis… and no matter how sorry you might feel for him, just remember all of season 2, and that he’s a complete ass, and you’ll suddenly feel a lot better about things. Meanwhile, next week’s episode will be wonderful beyond compare, and there was much rejoicing.

The rest of Wednesday night was spent playing cards with Jodi, Mindy, and Steve, which was great fun. The trick is to cheat, apparently. Finally headed on home, talked to Deedre about Ed for a bit, then headed off to sleep… after a few hours of TV.

So I prepared to do laundry today, because I need clothes to wear tomorrow. So I took all of my jeans, tossed them in the washing machine, threw in the detergent, turned on the thing, and…. nothing. After some time spent poking different things like a confused chimpanzee, I realized that it was broken, rendering me pantsless. Unfortunate. So a guy was supposed to come to take a look at it and, hopefully, fix it. Said guy never came… leaving me — you guessed it — pantsless. So if you see me tomorrow sporting a cardboard box and some trash bags, don’t laugh.. just keep on walking, and act as though you don’t know me. So all you women out there, behave as normal.(Thank you very much, I’ll be here all week! Tip your waitress.)

I’ve been working on getting all my video capturing and encoding stuff to work for a while now, and I’ve almost got it (as evidenced by my now adding video clips to this little dealio) For those of you that didn’t know, Microsoft stuff totally sucks. Don’t use it. Anyone with any experience/advice in video capturing, editing, or encoding, please let me know what you use, and if it’s good or not. Danke! Hope to get all my Ed eps on CD/DVD very soon.

I’ve got a busy weekend ahead of me. Saturday I’m having coffee with Jill, then my old roommate Adam is coming to town, which will rule. So I’m hanging out with him, and my cousin, Sven, the rest of Saturday. Then Sunday I’m off to Vegas… and I still have to figure out if and how I’m getting from Vegas to Toronto. I should get on that.

I hope to have my updated Poetry Generator finished soon, then I’ll be adding an Art section, where I can toss my bad poetry, mediocre photography, and my CAD rendered pictures (i.e. my pain, in picture form.). So hopefully I can get that up and running before I’m off this weekend.

I didn’t go to work today. About half way through work yesterday I started getting a petty nasty headache, and it just continued to get worse. So when I got home from work, I just hopped into bed, and rested/watched TV (watched Van Wilder and a number of episodes of The Oblongs) in the hopes that it would go away. I didn’t feel that bad when I was lying down, but when I stood up, it felt like my head was in a vise. Not pleasant. It started feeling a bit better towards evening, and after talking on the phone with Serita for an hour or two it was more or less gone… I thought.

I woke up this morning to my alarm, and scrambled to turn it off, as usual. Then I got up to head to the closet. I managed about half a step before I hit the floor. I do believe in the few short seconds I was standing up my room managed to spin about 50 times. My stomach notified me of its disapproval of the current situation. So I laid on the ground for a little while, figuring I was just really, really tired, and needed a few more minutes to wake up. So I got up again, and instantly felt the same funky spinning sensation, and fell into bed. Most odd… I gave it a few more minutes, and then tried a third time. This time I was determined to keep going, not so much because I wanted to go to work, but because my body was disobeying me, and that just won’t stand… well apparently, neither could I, cause things started getting really dark, and I felt about ready to explode. So I laid down for a bit, then called in sick, figuring a few more hours sleep, and I’d be good to head in around noon. Set my alarm for 10:30 and fell asleep.

When I woke up, the clock said something like 3:30, and I was confused. After a little while I remembered the morning’s adventure, and things made a bit more sense, except for the alarm not going off… I then spotted the alarm clock on the floor, obviously the victim of some pretty harsh abuse. I did some work for a while, then cleaned the house for a bit, then headed out and picked up The Lord of the Rings 4 disc set, Star Wars Episode II, and Pearl Jam – Riot Act. Thus far the PJ album is quite good, but I’ve only listened to 5 songs… I have little doubt that I’ll like the whole thing.

Today is Tuesday, and that means Max and Ermas, then pick up some Bugles and $, then drop off an Ed tape, then the Pickwick. It really is quite a nice routine I’ve got for this day.

In High School, there was a teacher that kept trying to convince my homeroom that life was almost entirely about attitude. The quote was something like “Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you deal with it.” I never bought into it then, but I’m starting to now… I think it might have been talking to Serita, or perhaps the fact that I just got 15+ hours of sleep, but something has happened to make me believe that despite the fact that things aren’t quite what I want them to be right now, things aren’t too bad, and they’ll continue to get better if I work at it. I hope this feeling lasts, because it’s a lot easier to do the things that are hard when you have within you the belief that these actions will lead towards a desired goal.

Ever wake up with something on your mind that you know will completely consume your mind all day? And within an hour of your waking, you already know that the day is not going to be a good one, because of this line of thinking you can’t possibly eject from your mind… and it’s not even as though the thoughts are unpleasant.. They might be quite wonderful, actually, but the thoughts all have to inevitably lead to some predetermined (often by someone who is not yourself) conclusion, and it’s that conclusion that is driving you slowly (or quickly) mad. No idea what I’m talking about? That’s alright. I just know today is not going to be that good… I think I’ll be listening to Pearl Jam – Black on an endless loop today.