When we moved in here a little over a year ago, our doorbell didn’t work. The maintenance guy was actually the one to discover this. He came to fix something else a day or two after we moved in, and he ended up standing on the doorstep a good five minutes or so until he finally tried knocking and I came to let him in.
He fixed the doorbell right away. It was just a losoe wire or something. I wish he hadn’t.
The light is growing dim outside.
Soon our doorbell will start ringing as greedy goblins come begging for their annual sugar high. Poor kids; the best candy is already gone. We swore we’d stay out of it this year, but somehow the peanut butter cups have all disappeared from the bag of mixed hersheys, and the sour patch kids have fled from the other bag.
We be pigs here in this house.
Oh hey; it’s Monday again.
Positives:
I forgot to set my watch back over the weekend. Somehow I didn’t notice this, despite looking at it several times, and so it came to be that I was reading in the library between classes and looked and saw that it was almost 1:30 and so time for my next class.
I rushed to class and went in and the room seemed just a little too full. I looked around and didn’t recognize anyone. People were putting a pile of papers on the podium in front; had I forgotten about an assignment?
I wandered back out into the hall wondering if I’d forgotten my own schedule.
I’m embarassed to admit just how long it took me to figure out that my watch was wrong. I probably wouldn’t have noticed at all had I not had such a long break between classes and been so absorbed in my book that I wasn’t sure of the hour. Usually I just glance at the minute hand.
I spent all yesterday messing around then was up all night reading and got no studying done. So what do I do today?
Go to the library and get more books, of course.
I also got The Drawing of Three by Stephen King, but that doesn’t go in the list because I’m not going to read it. Really. I’ve read it before, and I didn’t like it, so there will be no trouble staying away from it. I got it for M who felt like re-reading it.
I was up most of the night reading Interview with a Vampire. Foolish me; of course I had homework and studying that I should have been doing.
It was such a good book though. It haunted me, drew me in, and held me captive.
I hadn’t planned on reading it right now exactly. I wanted to over the summer, but every time I went to look for it, it was checked out. I kept thinking that I should reserve it, but for some reason I never did.
M. rented Queen of the Damned a month or so ago. It was a pretty bad movie, but intriguing enough to rekindle my interest in Anne Rice. I telneted into the library and reserved Interview with a Vampire at once, but then later thought better of it. I had too much homework to do, and there were other books I would rather read in what little free time I had.
I never got around to canceling the hold, though, and then I got the call that the book was in. I took it out with the intention to return it immediately unread, but M picked it up and started in so the book stayed. Yesterday, having finished all the other library books I had out (almost finished anywas - I still have a couple stories left in Alice Walker’s You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down), I picked it up with the intention to just read a few pages here and there to see if it was something I wanted to read later when I had more time (such as during Christmas break) before returning the book and starting in on the program I need to write this weekend.
As if that ever works for me.
You all know what happened next. I’m paying for it now, but it was worth it.
I think I’m in trouble yet again thanks to the evil seduction of the written word. I really should re-instate my ban on the written word, but I just can’t right now. The Vampire Lestat is calling my name.
We had some snow last night. Not much; just enough to coat the roofs and stick here and there on the grass. Maybe there was more earlier. I didn’t get around to looking outside until just now.
That was just taken from my office (home office, that is - I don’t have a job or a real office right now) window. See the snow scattered on the hillside?
It’s not really the first snow; there was some mixed with rain a few weeks ago that stuck a bit on the grass at the university but not at all down here.
Last week was cold and deary. The week before I was happy to be outside in short sleaves and no coat again.
My wish is for rain - rain so hard I feel like I’m drowning even as I sit safe and dry in my home. I want the rain to pound down so loudly I feel it in my bones. I love the sound of nature - the rain and the wind and the storm - but the winters here are oh so silent.
I have a V key again! I pulled the key off, poked a pen in and messed with the little thingy under it in the keyboard, then put it back on, and it worked.
Life is much easier with a V key. Typing is, anyway.
I’ve solved my email program by giving up on Eudora and switching over to outlook. This sucks because I really liked Eudora and really dislike Outlook. Oh well. Such is life.
Um.. I also fixed the new design, which I hadn’t realized was broken in IE 6 until WM kindly pointed it out.
Because I only had about ten million more important things today, I made a new skin for Halloween today. If you neer (sorry.. still no key between c and b) chose a skin before, you should be seeing it as the default now (you might need to hit refresh).
If you hae a different skin selected, you can go here to choose the Halloween one.
If you don’t like the Halloween one, go here to pick a different one.
Let me know what you think 
My “v” key has suddenly quit working. I just told you that by finding a “v” in text someplace, using ctrl-C to copy it, then using the edit menu to paste it in here because I can’t actually type the damn letter.
Fortunately, it’s not a letter I used that often, except for when I am working on a design, which unfortunately I am doing now. Then I use ctrl-that letter I can’t type to paste things all the time. That and wheneer I try to type “<div>” it comes out as “<di>” which really isn’t the same thing at all.
This is such a pain.
I did spill a bit of water on my keyboard earlier, which is how I ruined my last one (or maybe it was soda that time), but it was many hours ago and it was on the other side of the keyboard (the number pad) and just a drop, so I don’t know why it would suddenly stop working now.
They really need to start making waterproof keyboards. Either that or I need to learn not to spill.
It really does help if I not only set the time at which my alarm is to go off, but also turn it on so that it actually will go off.
I woke up this morning about fifteen minuts before my chiropractor appointment. That is one of the few nice things about this town; it’s so small that it doesn’t take long to get anywhere. The chiropractor is only two minutes away, so I was able to jump out of bed and into my clothes and run a brush through my hair and make it on time.
He sprays this cool liniment stuff on my neck after snapping it back into place. I smell like menthol now, but it’s all cool and tingly and neat.
Pulling out of the university in a real pea-soup of a fog, I can see the car behind me only because he’s practically right on my tail.
“Turn on your lights, you moron,” I tell him, glaring at my rearview mirror.
He does.
I love it when they listen to me.
If anyone has tried to email me lately, my email is down 
Or rather, I don’t think that my email is actually down, but something weird is going on with my computer so that I can’t get to it.
I got two postcards from Kellyne, who is still in Europe, today. The second one is a picture of the rear end of king Wenceslaus. She writes that she didn’t know he was a real person. I didn’t either.
And Kell, if you happen to stumble across this, I’ve some free time tonight, so geuess what I am _finally_ going to get around to getting started on
Okay, I’m in a much better mood now. Largely because I just read this parody of The West Wing.
Too funny.
Read last night’s entry first.
I wasn’t going to do the naming names thing. I wasn’t going to draw attention where attention doesn’t belong.
Last night before I posted the entry, I quietly removed a journal from the links on the right.
This morning I found out from the forum where this whole thing started that the journal now had a disclaimer at the top stating that the people involved weren’t real.
So I guess I am doing the linking thing afterall.
It’s four or five months too late, and I hope that Ana or Lasha or whatever her name is currently feels like utter shit, because that’s what she is.
There’s a new entry in the journal.
Sometimes I find myself doubting the worth of the entire human race.
But there really are good, wonderful people out there. I just wish they created half as much a stir with their wonderfulness as the scum do with their scumminess.
It’s not Friday anymore, but it’s been a while since I did the Friday Five, so here you go.
1. How many TVs do you have in your home?
One.
2. On average, how much TV do you watch in a week?
Two to four hours (usually two) during weeks when new episodes air, virtually none in other weeks.
3. Do you feel that television is bad for young children?
In excess.
4. What TV shows do you absolutely HAVE to watch, and if you miss them, you’re heartbroken?
The West Wing and Buffy
5. If you had the power to create your own television network, what would your line-up look like?
Lots of sci-fi.
Speaking of TV, I missed Firefly tonight. I’m quite sad about that. I’m one of the few people who really like Firefly, and it looked like tonight was going to be a good episode. I just got very involved in what I was doing (working on a new design - yes I am certifiably crazy) and didn’t even notice the time until half an hour after it ended.
Oh well.
And here I am skipping class again. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing, except I do it all to frequently.
I’m going to pay for it later in both guilt and stress. I’m paying for it now even.
I don’t know why I do this to myself.
I am back from midterm hell.
I had two yesterday. The first one was insanely easy, but I don’t even want to think about the second one. I’m currently praying for our tests to spontaneously combust then go out before they do damage to anything else. That would be good..
Before the prof has a chance to mark them, of course.
Mine wasn’t pretty.
The first midterm was statistics. Everyone had been bombing the quizzes, and the midterm was worth thirty percent of our grade, so I studied and studied and studied until I couldn’t study anymore.
The test were three of the easiest questions I have ever seen. Most of the class was done within ten minutes. I would have been done in five except I redid each problem three times just to be sure, which was a good thing because I discovered I’d made a small decimal error and was off by a factor of ten on one.
I left shaking my head. I can’t beleive how long I spent studying for that test. All I needed was maybe a quick fifteen minutes of study before the test and I would have been fine.
My other midterm was only worth fifteen percent of the grade. I was worried about it, but slacked off on studying anyway because I was so nervous about stats. Then I was trying to study quickly before the test, and I was so tired and frazzled that nothing sunk in. I’d gone to bed early the night before (well, midnight) but hadn’t been able to sleep. I finally drifted off at seven fifteen in the morning, only to have the alarm go off an hour later.
I bombed it. It was really bad. Gore and blood all over the place.
Oh well. So it goes.