Work, work, play

I am slowly but surely chipping away at my many pictures that I have to upload. I'm just about done with the cosmetics and tomorrow I will begin work on the meat of it - editing the pictures and adding captions. It's a lot of hard work, but it's amusing even for me to go back and look at the pictures and read what I had written at the time.

I might get a little more done if I hadn't received a very unexpected surprise in the mail yesterday. My mom sent me an early Christmas gift - Guitar Hero II!!! I spent several hours this afternoon playing it, and I'm just about finished with the hard difficulty. It's fun, and the song selection is a little bit better than I had anticipated. Thanks Mom!

Plans for this week

I've got some ambitious plans for my website this week. I've got hundreds of pictures to publish, and I plan on getting them all up. It'll take me a while, but I don't have much else to do. I might get creative, too, but we'll see. So keep checking things out!

Happy Turkey Day!

It's Thanksgiving. Gobble gobble. Matt and I tossed around a couple of ideas of things to do today. We thought about volunteering at a kitchen, but we couldn't easily find any information on contacts for doing so. We thought about going out to eat, but we eventually decided to do a more traditional meal with just the two of us. We are combining aspects of each of our family's individual traditions. Matt has made pumpkin pie and chex mix and I've bought some rutabega and some olives and stuff for a mini relish tray. We're doing a turkey, too. We got the smallest one we could find but we're still going to be eating turkey for a long, long time. Tomorrow we're going to start decorating for Christmas. We don't have much in the way of decorations. We're going to buy a fake tree in a few minutes and some ornaments and stuff.

I'm a bit concerned that we're going to have way too much food, but I guess that's what leftovers are for. We'll see how it goes! We wish that we could be home with our families, but we're making the best of what we've got here together :)

Searching for warmth

I know I'm not going to get any sympathy from those of you in the great white north, but it has been uncharacteristically cold here in central Florida over the last week or so. Matt and I are trying to be stubborn and not turn on the heat, but I'm not sure how much more of this I can take. At night, it's been dropping into the 40s and during the day our highs haven't been above 70. The quilt is on the bed, I haven't been able to wear shorts in two weeks, we have to wear light jackets when going outside, and I also have to wear socks and a sweatshirt while inside!!

I'm generally chilly by nature, so this isn't pleasant for me. For the past couple of days, you can find the cats and myself in the one place that there is direct sunlight in the apartment. Our apartment is in the southeast corner of the building, so we only get sunshine in our bedroom for a couple of hours in the morning. During this time, it's not uncommon to find the cats and me sunning on the floor :P

My Playstation 2 saga

It has been a long, long road, but the day finally arrived last night when Matt and I went to Best Buy to purchase a brand new Playstation 2 so I could finally play Guitar Hero. It actually got to be funny toward the end. I'll share my story with you now....

I first decided to try and get a used one pretty cheap off of EBay. I bid for one, won it, paid for it, but never received it. After two months of badgering the seller and making a claim with EBay and PayPal, I got my money back. No Playstation 2 for me, though.

I decided that was just a fluke and decided to go the EBay route again. I found another used one, bid on it, won it and received it. Hooray! Problem - it didn't work. I ripped it apart, trying to fix it, but ended up far more frustrated than I began. Again, no Playstation 2 for me.

So, last night, we went out and bought one. (I'm not making this next section up.) We drove to Best Buy, but all of the entrances were closed off by police cars. There were helicopters circling it. Matt was getting a game that he really wanted (this was part of the deal) so we went to Target. They didn't have his game, so no Playstation 2 for me. We went to Circuit City. They never heard of his game. No Playstation 2 for me. We headed to Wal-Mart, passing Best Buy on the way. It was open! We went there, got Matt's game and my Playstation 2. It turned out there was a bomb threat. We went home. Hooray!

We got home, I plugged it in, put in Guitar Hero and it didn't work. I went online looking for possible solutions. Nobody had ever heard of my problem. I called Sony tech support. He hadn't heard of my problem and told me to send the Playstation 2 in. The turn around time was over a month. (Imagine how my face dropped when he said this). I asked if we could just take it back and return it. He replied "Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that." No Playstation 2 for me again.

We went back to Best Buy, returned it, exchanged it, and came back home. In the car, I decided that a small meteor was going to demolish my new Playstation 2 and that I should protect it. We got home, I carefully guarded my new console all the way up to the house. I plugged it in, and the same thing was happening!!! I did a little troubleshooting of my own, determined that it was a bad memory card, swapped it, and was finally playing Guitar Hero!!!!

The end.

Now, to work on Matt on getting Guitar Hero 2 (which we played in Best Buy and is even more fun, if you can imagine that...he says I can't get it until at least next year, though :)

If I could live in any period of time...

I would choose to live in the 1950's and 60's. I'm not sure the people that lived during this time realize the extent of the actions of those around them during this time. So much of the world was changing very rapidly. Technology was booming. Just look at all that was accomplished between the end of WWII and the 80's! Computers were developed, we put a man on the moon, not to mention the incredible advances in medicine.

But what really fascinates me about this time period is the turmoil that had developed in this country. The civil rights movement is very intersting to me. It's amazing to see how close-minded people were before the civil rights movement, and how in just 30 years, the kids of the people that were alive then don't even think twice about things like racism. The cold war was a time that must have been pretty interesting to live through, too. And the Vietnam War was another thing that I would have liked to have observed.

When I look at today's world, I often feel like things are just sort of stagnating. We haven't really seen any big technological breakthroughs in the past 10 years or so (the Internet aside) and there really hasn't been much done in the way of medical advances. The only political turmoil that we see is petty squabbling over controversies and the Iraq war. While this is probably all good, if you look at history it seems like you need things to be shaken up in order to move forward.

Is Halloween the new Thanksgiving?

I'm really trying to understand this whole holiday thing. The day before Halloween, there were no Christmas decorations in the stores. The day after, there were Christmas trees, lights, and holiday commercials on both TV and the radio. Did I miss the memo? Is Halloween the new Thanksgiving? Should I be doing my Christmas shopping already? It seems a bit ridiculous to me. We've seemed to have skipped Thanksgiving and fall entirely and jumped straight to winter. I can't even imagine how sick I am going to be of the holiday commercials by the time Christmas rolls around.

Let's go down Nostalgia Lane

For some weird reason tonight, I got a song from my very young television viewing days stuck in my head. So early that I think Jess and Tracy might not remember, but I'm sure you will, Mom, because the show was on every afternoon and ran for about 3 hours a day. Here are the lyrics:

Pinwheel, pinwheel, spinning around.
Look through my pinwheel and see what I've found.
Pinwheel, pinwheel, where have you been?
Hello, how are you, and may I come in?

By now you should have it in your head. I have no idea where the song came from or why I suddenly remembered the show. I looked it up online and found a site that has consumed my last four hours. http://www.retrojunk.com

This website has the introductions of virtually every show from the 70s, 80s and 90s. I have been laughing and do a lot of "Oooooh yeah"s to shows such as Small Wonder, Out of This World, Kids Incorporated and many, many more. I'm sure you'll find something there that you had watched but forgotten all about :)

Trade-offs

It seems like every decision we make results in trade-offs in a different area. I have seen this strongly in my continued search for a job here in Florida. I had a great career back in Madison with TDS. I was making a lot of money, especially for someone my age. I had a lot of potential within that company and was probably destined to go pretty far. I had a lot of great friends and I was having a lot of fun. But yet I was still very unhappy.

I traded everything I had there for happiness on a different level. Not working...actually, not being hired...is really starting to take its toll on my mental state and I can't help but question whether or not I made the right decision. Yeah, I did. Money and career success will only get you so far. After it's all over, what do you really have to show for it? A nice car and a nice house? It doesn't mean much if you don't have someone to enjoy it with. Loneliness is a powerful beast that can make everything else null and void.

I will keep applying for every job that sounds moderately appealing. I will get hired one of these days. I just have to keep reminding myself of what's really important :)

Trick or Treat?

This Halloween I was ready. I actually got into the whole Halloween thing. I bought some decorations. Well, it was more like one decoration - a pumpkin tablecloth. I bought candy for the kids. We bought and carved a pumpkin (hopefully the pictures will be posted soon). I baked the pumpkin seeds. I ate some pumpkin seeds. We watched horror movies on Halloween night instead of our regular routine. I saw the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time ever. I don't know what it is, but Matt and I both just can't seem to be scared by horror movies. We even watched the Peanuts Halloween special!

We were in the mood for trick or treaters and ready to dish out the candy. We got a total of...ready for this?...two kids. I was disappointed. Oh well, as Matt said, "more candy for us!"