Well I’m home.

I was greeted by snow, four worried cats, and a messy house.

Oh well.

I’m tired and cranky.. but I’m home again.

Tonight will find me at a hockey game.

I’m in a bit of a quandry over who to root for (and now I always have to laugh after I use that word since I found out the Aussie meaning of it). By some strange coincidence, the one game that the Portland Winterhawks are playing during our time down here is against the Prince George Cougers.. my home team. Prince George is where I live (for a little longer, at least), but Portland is still the home of my heart. So which team is my team?

The edge (which runs in an inch wide colum along the left side of the front page of the Oregonian’s living section six days a week) made me giggle on Tuesday. It’s finanly online now, so here it is. Enjoy.

I can’t count how many times since I arose Wednesday morning that I’ve logged on to post a “Merry Christmas” (or “Merry Late Christmas” yesterday) message. I’m not sure why I haven’t yet; I guess I keep getting distracted.

So here it is, two days late. Merry Christmas.

I had a pretty good Christmas. I really wasn’t expecting anything from my parents besides a few token gifts since they just gave me a lot of money a month or so ago and paid for both M and I to fly down here. Boy was I pleasantly surprised. They got me a new digital camera (sorely needed; my old one has been a good friend, but it’s ancient and enough of a nuisance to use that it’s rarely been used this past little while). M got a pair of binoculars. From them. I gave him a shirt and some cologne. He gave me nothing because we’re really short on cash right now and so I told him that I prefer to pick out my own gift and make sure that it’s something I really, really want.

After opening presents, we went for a walk and to look at birds. I burned through a set of batteries in my new camera because I was having fun with the preview display and didn’t turn it off as I should have.

All in all, it was a good Christmas for me.

I was just thinking earlier..

War and all that has always so far away. I’ve never really known anyone in the millitary or had any direct connection. I’m ashamed to say that this past year or so I really haven’t been following the news as closely as I used to, and so I’ve been rather uninformed as to what’s going on.

Then tonight something reminding me of a high school friend and I suddenly remembered that the last time I’d talked to her (1997) she’d told me that she was in Air Forece ROTC. She’d still be within the time she’d have to serve after graduating now. She’s probably not been over there at all, but I can’t help but wonder.

Did she really realize that she might actually be called on to go to war when she signed up? I considered signing up for a very brief moment back when I was starting college for the first go round and wondering how I was going to pay for it. I thought it would be a way to get some easy money for school and learn some discipline at the same time. That I might actually be called on to do something never seemed like an actual possibility.

Didn’t post last night because I was tired and annoyed with this stupid computer. I miss my own computer and my DSL!

Emcee came out to the Vancouver airport for lunch and to hang out with me between flights as planned yesterday. I’m so glad she did; that’s the fastest a layover in Vancouver passed; usually they seem undending. Emcee is wonderful, and Kim is a lucky woman.

Grrr..

So yeah. My flight leaves in an hour and twenty minutes.

I wanted to leave home by nine this morning (the airport is pretty close to home and it’s small so we don’t have quite teh same lineups going through security and stuff as in larger airports.). Guess what time it is now? Guess who isn’t home to take me to the airport.

M. slept a lot of the day yesterday, so he was up all night. He left around four this morning to go up to the school and do some work on his thesis saying that he would be home around seven.

My alarm went of at eight-thirty. He wasn’t here.

Of course I freaked.

I wasn’t worried that he’d been in an accident or anything had happened to him because I’m sure someone would have let me know by now if that was the case and he couldn’t call me himself. What I was worried about was that he’d fallen asleep in some funny place at school. I tried calling the cell phone. No answer.

Finally just a minute ago I looked up the number for university security and called to ask if anyone had seen him.

“Oh yeah. He just signed the key to the graduate offices back in a minute ago.”

Grrrrr. He is so dead when he gets here.

I should still be able to make my flight.. but I like having extra time and I wanted to stop at the store on the way to the airport (which he knew because I freaking well told him last night) and I’m just plain so pissed off at him right now.

Oh well. He should be here any minute now…

We were talking about how Juliet (our white cat) is obsessed with the bathroom and gets very upset when someone goes in there and locks her out.

Him: you want to know what happened?
Me: what?
Him: I was taking a leak
Me: wait - I don’t want to know.
Him: and I was staring at the wall
Me: Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!
Him: And all of a sudden, I realised that I wasn’t hearing it like I was supposed to.
Me (hands over ears): don’t tell me, don’t tell me, don’t wanna know
Him: so I look down, and there’s Juliet
Me: Nononono not listening, damn it!
Him: she’s all trying to drink it
Me: AAAAAUUUGGGHHH I told you not to tell me!!!!
Him: Well why should I be the only one who’s horrified?
Me: You’re my husband. You’re supposed to protect me from these sorts of things.

Now all the rest of you can be horrified too.

I will not be petting Juliet any time soon no matter how much she purrs at me.

I think I’ve mentioned in passing that I’m leaving tomorrow to go home for christmas. Before then I still have to

- do laundry
- pack
- finish some sewing (if I have time)
- print some stuff I want go over on the plane (which would be part five, if you happen to come across this Kellyne)

Why do I always leave everything to the last moment? I have managed to clean my computer room at least. It was a disaster before!

And ooh.. I get to meet Emcee tomorrow too! She’s coming out to the airport to hang out with me between flights tomorrow. Very exciting.

Hehe.. I neglected to turn my computer off/disconnect from AIM last night. This afternoon, I came into the computer room for the first time today to find this window open..

ryno: is such a cutie
ryno: shit
ryno: I don’t know how I opened this window but it was an aacident I swear and I am sooooooooo sorry:-[\

LMAO!!! Ry is too cute.

Drat it…

If I got UPN, I would have watched Buffy tonight. I don’t, however, get UPN, so I usually watch it on Thursday nights on a local station. If I miss that, YTV airs it on Saturday.

This Thursday morn I will be getting on a plane to head home to my parents for two weeks. They live in the normal-Buffy-on-Tuesday land. If I’d thought ahead, I’d have asked them or a friend to tape it for me, but I didn’t.

No Buffy for me this week

Damn it.. it looks like it’s going to be a really good one.

Kellyne sent me this link.

Too damn funny.

I can’t believe the guy who made that really think’s Bush is great…

I had my last exam today (technically yesterday; Friday).

It’s such a relief to be done, yet I wish I could just go back and start over again. I want to redo the entire term - do things right this time. I’m not looking forward to seeing my poor grades.

Tonight (Wednesday night) it was a nice change walking out of my exam knowing that I’d done damn well. Far cry from how my other exams have gone.

It was also nice walking out to find snow! Not enough to make me worry about driving home; just enough to make the dark night magical.

I’m still so worn down/burned out from the series of sleepless night’s I spent trying to get everything done at the end of last week and over the weekend. It’s really affecting me badly - it always takes a week or so to recover after I go through a period of constant business like that.

I had a final that started at six today. I’d planned to try to get all the necessary studying done by four-thirty so that I could have an hour and a bit to relax before the test; studying right up to the start tends to do more harm than good. I forgot that was my reason for wanting to finish by four, though.. and for some reason thought that I needed to be done by four-thirty in order to make it to the test on time.

At four-thirty I closed my book, still feeling very unprepared, and got ready to go. I left at 4:45, later than I thought I should have, and got up to the university at 5:05 thinking that i was a little late because I was so stuck on both the idea that I needed to leave a little after four-thirty and the knowledge that my final started at six that I thought it was six despite having checked the clock in the car and my watch about a zillion times to see how I was doing for time. I rushed into the university, checked the finals timesheet for the room number, and tore through the hall to get there.

I totally freaked when the room was empty.

I’m such an idiot. It only took me a moment to figure out my mistake, but still, I’m such an idiot.

From that auspicious (note sarcasm) beginning, you can guess how well I did on my final.

Oh well. Tomorrow night’s final should be an easy one, and I’ll be well rested and better prepared by the time my last hard one roles around on Friday.

I have now been at school for nineteen hours…

I wanna go home!

I’m never going to finish this

So we have this huge group project that we have (supposedly) been working on all term…

It’s due tomorrow at ten in the morning (yes.. on a Sunday.. don’t ask)…

I’m trying to put it together.. the other’s are already gone. One guy’s code is great; I have no problem getting it to work with mine/do what it’s supposed to.. comments are great.

The other guy’s code.. AAAAaUUUUGGGH.

No comments.. very confusing.. he’s got goto statements in there for goodness sake.. what kind of programming is this? I can’t understand it. I don’t think it does what it is supposed to do. He’s gone and I have no way of contacting him. How the hell am I supposed to get this to work?

That and I just wandered around to all three vending machines i know of on this floor (can’t get up to the other floors at this time of night) and they are all sold out of Pepsi.

Oh, this is going to be another long night. I got all of three hours of sleep last night and maybe four at the most the night before.

I wanna go home to bed!

This morning around seven as we pulled up to the university…

Me: I’m so damn tired…
Him: go get some coffee before your exam..
Me: I wonder if Starbucks or Tim Horton’s or anyplace is open. Oh well, if they’re not there’s still always Mt. Dew.
Him: Why would you do that?
Me: d’oh!

For those of you who don’t know why I sounded like an idiot there; there is no caffeine to be found in Canadian Mt. Dew. I’m not sure exactly why; I think someone once told me that there was some law against adding caffeine to a citrus beverage because they were trying to prevent over-caffinated kids…

I’m used to depending on Mt. Dew from vending machines for a lot of my caffeine load. So for the past few weeks of way too many late nights, I’ve been drinking gallons of the stuff. I thought it was helping me stay awake; I really did. I forgot it didn’t have caffeine. Guess it was just the sugar overload that helped..

Yes, I did have an exame at nine this morning on a Saturday. Whoever made this exame schedule up is completely evil. Totally unredeemable. Worse than Spike.

I will get around to explaining my dream notes from the other night one of these days.

Last night I dreamt we were driving and we went off the rode. There was a flood going on, and we ended up so close to the raging water that I’d been afraid for a moment that we’d go in, but we didn’t. Two other trucks I could see hadn’t been so lucky. I watched in horror as they the torrent swept them over.

I jumped out of our car and ran to the edge of the water. One truck, though now it was a jeep of some sort, washed close to the edge, so I waded in and grabbed it by the bumper and somehow (though even in my dream I knew that I shouldn’t be able to) managed to pull it out enough that I could see inside. There was no driver, so I let it go.

Then I saw him; a man floated face down caught in submerged brush a little ways from me. I ran to him and pulled him out. I knew I should try to breath for him - try CPR - but in my dream his face was so cold and so white, and his lips so covered in mud that I just couldn’t bear to touch mine to his. I was so ashamed of myself, that I’d let my disgust get in the way of saving his life, but I knew he was probably dead beyond help anyway, and I just couldn’t do it.

Suddenly, he started coughing and sputtering. Then he started to vomit, so I turned him over on his side so he wouldn’t choke (I remained amazingly sensible throughout most of this dream) and yelled for M to call for help. M called back that the cell phone battery was dead again, and I groaned. I felt so helpless.

Up until this point, my dream seemed so real and possible (other than me being able to wade into flood waters and pull out a jeep), but at this point things changed and the man turned into a cat who sat in my lap and purred. I rationalised this by thinking that he’d turned into a cat because he was so cold from the water and he knew the fur would help keep him warm. I suppose that at this point I should have realized that it was a dream, but I didn’t and so just pet the cat.

Now I wonder if one of the cats didn’t jump up beside me on the bed and start purring (they do that sometimes when they want attention) and so the sound got incorporated into my dream…

Pepsi Blue and vodka don’t mix. At least, they don’t mix well.

Yes, unfortunately I do know this from experience.

M went to a hockey game last weekend where they handed out free two-liters of Pepsi Blue. He can’t stand the stuff, so I’ve been drinking it despite not really liking it either. Today I sort of wanted a drink but there were no mixers in the house (there rarely are) so I got the bright idea of adding a shot of vodka to Pepsi Blue. Bad idea. Yick. It does’t help that it’s pretty close to flat now as well.

M is home safe and sound, by the way. Or rather, he returned safe and sound; he’s not actually at home right now. He just ran out to get me a sandwhich from Tim Horon’s because I was whining about being hungry and had been too lazy to go to the store while he was gone, so there is no food in the house. My husband is good to me.