Mamarati

I swear, some days I cannot even believe that Charter is my Internet service provider. What the hell are they thinking?

We got one of those letters a while back about them sucking up and selling all our private information. I seriously thought it was some kind of joke. Boyfriend just sent me this from the Washington Post that says that they are going to stop it… but I don’t believe it. Sounds to me like they are just going to look for a way around it that doesn’t “possibly violate federal law.”

Charter also pisses me off because in Firefox, you can use the address bar to type in one word — like Nabisco or Dayrunner or any other damn word — and it will automagically take you to Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” result. I like this feature because I’m lazy and now, after God knows how long that I’ve been using it, it’s a habit ingrained in me harder than brushing my teeth or flushing the toilet. Now, however, Charter has HIJACKED MY BROWSER and instead of getting lucky, I get a gigantic page of worthless crap:

I mean look at that. How many damn sponsored results need to appear before something actually relevant that I might actually WANT. If what I WANTED and EXPECTED happened instead, I’d get the Wikipedia results for just putting in the word chocolate, and that suits me just fine.

Oh, but noooooooooooooooo.

So, I know there has to be a way to disable this EVIL, HOSTILE TAKEOVER of THE BROWSER THAT I PREFER AND INSTALLED ON MY COMPUTER instead of my request being REROUTED TO ADVERTISEMENTS on a SERVICE THAT I PAY $130 A MONTH FOR… But I haven’t found it yet and so I’m using the BlockSite add-on to manage this so I don’t have to see the AD RESULTS PAGE AND START THROWING THINGS AT MY COMPUTER MONITOR. Now all I see is this:

I know, I know. I could get another ISP. The only other real choice where I live, however, is the NSA AT&T.

And you know, if Charter were providing a free service, I might say, OK, fine. Serve me up your little search results page. I’ll play along for a freebie. BUT I PAY FOR THIS BULLCRAP AND IT AIN’T CHEAP!

It’s not even that great otherwise, either. Dismal upload speeds, constant downtime (including 2 hours yesterday), the digital phone service sounds like crap if anyone is doing so much as checking email or looking sideways at the router and the DVR is doing this absolutely annoying pixelization thing on everything that we record unless it’s in HD. Even if we’re just watching a show and we rewind it, it will be pixelated from then forward unless we fast forward to live TV.

Anyway, I just installed Firefox 3. The beta kept crashing on me, but so far this seems stable… so hopefully with all the new features, I will be able to find a work-around that helps me function like I used to rather than just using BlockSite. (A good add-on, though, and has password protection if you’re trying to keep your kids away from any sites or whatnot… And of course, if you have Charter, just put in http://*.charter.*)

Grr.

Well, something has gone wrong in the date keeping area of my brain. And it’s been going wrong since I gave up the use of my DayRunner. Actually, when I was using my Mac exclusively, I had iCal and there’s this thing about a Mac… it’s much like opening a book. When you open it, everything is visible and working in just seconds, so it’s like having a paper calendar. That worked for me.

On Windows, not so much. Back in the 90s, I tried to get used to using the Outlook calendar and others. But when you want a quick reminder of what’s on your To Do list and your computer is asleep, it’s a much bigger fiasco. There’s more chugging and churning and time passes so slowly. Like a watched pot that never boils, so were those systems on Windows trying to awake from sleep and open programs without giving a blue screen of death.

So, I ditched any Windows-based calendars and stuck to the devil I knew, which was my DayRunner, classic edition, one page per day.

When I got my iBook a few years ago, iCal took the place of my DayRunner quite nicely.

Then I fell off the roof and had to get the Windows Vista so I could do accurate speech recognition / handwriting recognition. Since I was functioning at a bare minimum anyway during the months and months of recovery, a calendar really didn’t do much for me. I wasn’t making any appointments, going to any meetings, driving. I had to depend on everyone else around me for my scheduling needs.

Now that things are back to normalish and I’m needing to be more productive (I’m back in school full time and working as full time as possible, doing the normal mom things) I’m finding that I can’t seem to get my ducks in a row. My system has been all jacked up and all my habits broken (both good and bad) by the time I spent on bedrest.

In writing all this out, I’m wondering why I feel the need to justify or rationalize my decision to buy a DayRunner refill. Do I feel guilty because I like paper? Do I feel like it’s an oddity since I’m such a computer nerd and yet I crave hard copies of parts of my life? I’m not sure, but I just know that this is not the year for me to be unproductive. This is the year I get it all done.

On top of that, after some hemming and hawing and much complaining about the way Vista behaves and after counting in my head all the hours that are wasted on extra clicks, clicks, clicks, clicks… After realizing that my system is loaded with more RAM than Vista can even handle and has way fast processors and still it is just so slow and clunky… After thinking about all the ways Vista is not intuitive and after way too many times thinking in my head, “If I were on my Mac, I would just do x, y or z and this whole thing would be overwith, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO here I am still waiting on Vista,” or, “Why did Vista just do that? I did not tell it to do that. I did not tell it to reorganize my desktop icons or save that file there.” I decided to just break down and buy a MacBook.

So, I look forward to joining the ranks of the productive again. Some time around the 14th, I will be there. Until then, I will continue to curse, throw my hands in the air, bang my head on the keyboard and sigh exasperatedly at this piece of crap machine.

In other news, I did not take many pictures at Camp Baby. I was too busy talking and well, I was just tired the whole time I was there. I did manage to snap this shot, confirming that I am the master of Wii Bowling and that Heather is a looooooser. Actually, I’m not that great at bowling on the Wii. Jacob is way better and beats me all the time. Somehow on this night, however, I managed to get like 5 or 6 strikes in a row. Odd.

Also, the lasagna of last night… I really love the food saver machine. I really am contemplating doing more bulk cooking. This will probably be doubleplusgood when the new computer gets here since nightly cooking tends to break into my most productive work hours. I’m on a roll between 4 and 6 — in that hyperfocused zone, you know?

Just got home yesterday. What a trip it was. Will have to write more about it later…

J is still doing great after his surgery, as if nothing ever happened and he’s breathing great and feeling outstanding. Yay.

I finished my classes, though grades haven’t been posted yet. Am waiting… But they’re done and next semester doesn’t start till January 14th so I have a bit of a breather here to catch up on work and get the house and my desk organized. It needs it, after the accident I just let everything go to hell in a handbasket, basically. So my desk is just out of control.

I am cleaning out my email as well. What a joy that is, to see emails I haven’t answered or dealt with in months. Whatever. It was a hard year, so everyone can kiss my ass.

Meanwhile, for the first time in a long time, I feel almost normal. Sane. Relaxed. On track. All those things that had been stripped from me for a while.

I feel like myself again. I don’t feel like I’m being driven by strange outside forces that are foreign to me. I feel like I’m behind the wheel again.

I’ll end with some humor from cleaning my email out. One I received recently from my boyfriend while he was at work:

Subject: ultra nerd

“So I just felt that I had a big zit/bump/thing on my lip but didn’t feel like going all the way back to the bathroom to get it.

So I fired up the iSight, checked it out and popped it right here at my desk.

Oh yeah. Sweet relief.”

We need to get this battery situation under control.

Over and out.

So, I have finally given up on Apple Mail.

There’s lots of giving up going on around here lately, no?

So, anyway, I recently got a Dell because of the superior voice recognition software that came loaded with Vista. After the accident and still on my worst days or parts of even my good days, it is a miracle.

Switching over from my Mac, however, was not a blessing.

Jacob was excited about it, because that meant he got the Mac, which is a little iBook and it pretty much rocks. Read the rest of this entry »

So, I need to write about this more, because it’s been pretty consuming for a long time. And off and on throughout my life since the first time I heard about dolphins swimming into six-pack rings as a child or watched the commercial of the Native American dude crying about the litter. I grew up in Oklahoma… Trail of Tears, y’all. Making Indians cry is not farkin’ cool.

Living more green. And stuff. Not just green, because that’s the fun, crazy buzzword of the day. But other stuff, too. Stuff that may or may not be green or good for the planet, depending on how you look at it. Stuff that people who know me say is just part of me being a hippie. But I was born in the ’70s, so technically no. But yeah, OK, a little bit. Read the rest of this entry »

I just saw this on Boing Boing as I sipped my morning coffee and enjoyed the complete and total silence that signals that school has started for my wee boy…

And wow, does that bring back memories or what? I don’t think I have ever realized just how much damn television I watched as a kid. I recognized nearly every logo clip except the local ones. Go through it with your eyes closed and you can even see the logos in your head… the one for ITC — that’s totally Muppet Show, y’all. I must have seen and heard that a million times in my life. Read the rest of this entry »

So, I keep blaming the slow-ass Internet this week on E3… you know, tons of video game nerds downloading all the video and such of what’s up and coming… I figure the concentration of gaming nerds on the Internet has to be higher than the concentration of Mac geeks, and when MacWorld rolls around, it can definitely be felt. It sucks the life right out of this great series of tubes I call home. Bandwidth be gone. So E3 has to be worse… and with video usage at an all-time high… oh yeah.

But then again, maybe it’s all because of this guy:

Jacob gets so mad when something goes wrong with a game or something on the computer… I keep thinking this is what I’m going to walk in and see one day:

so, I cannot believe (as usual) that it has been that long since I’ve written… and I didn’t even finish writing about the wii campout???? Nuts.

Needless to say, we did get a perty little pre-order done and Brandon and my boyfriend and I went at Midnight and picked the Wii up this weekend.

Since then, David and Brandon have come over and Jacob came home and it has been non-stop gaming since.

More on all this later, just wanted to update really quick before I throw myself into work.

The surprise: Tennis. The farkin’ Wii Sports Tennis game is the favorite of everyone, except my boyfriend, of course, who just wants to blow stuff up on grand theft auto… but even he was having fun playing some of the Wii games. And he was sitting on his MacBookPro sending email to the Wii while we were playing stuff.

NERD.

I have no idea where my cord is. Damnation. My camera cord, that is. I took some pictures recently and I know there was one that I wanted to get on here.

I will worry about it later.

I am going to have to get up and get my little blog-about cheat sheet…. but the cat is so cozy right next to me and I am all wrapped up burrito style in my fish blanket…

Maybe I can get the boyfriend to go in there and get it for me. He’s up doing laundry anyway.

That or in 11 minutes when my battery is out and I have to get the power cord, I will get it.

I heard a cute exchange between two kids about 5 and 6 today at Lowe’s. The boy says, “Aren’t these things supposed to be in the jungle?”

The girl: “What are you talking about?”

The boy: “These chimpanzees.”

The girl, rolling her eyes in the most exasperated girly way: “They’re called pansies not chimpanzees!”

I just thought that was too cute.

I also saw a cute exchange between a girl and her grandma in the bathroom… it was like a freezer in there and the girl was telling her grandma to stand under the vent to feel how cold it was and she was so enthusiastic about it (the grandma) and hooping and hollaring standing under it. Then the little girl was using the hand dryer and making her hair do crazy things and the grandma was just laughing at her, like serious belly laughing. And then they trotted off together arm in arm to find grandpa and look at cabinets.

It was really sweet.

I miss that I didn’t have ties like this to family ever. A little with my grandma when I was very young… she would take me to garage sales and I had a lot of fun at her house, but then…

nothing. Nothing really after about the age of 7 or 8.

OK, had to get up to get my cord, so got my cheat sheet…

Not in any specific order…

We got a TV. I would link to it, but I really don’t know the specifics of it like say… the boyfriend might. He’s been researching this TV forever. It was like 3 grand or something the first time I think he showed it to me and he’s been threatening to buy it for a while. If it ever got below a thousand dollars, he said he’d buy it.

So we’re sitting here on a Saturday morning and he’s going through the sales flyers and low and behold, he announces that we have to go to Fry’s because the TV is $999. (Well that is below a thousand, right?)

I am beside myself with anguish. Oh what horror. Fry’s. I hate going there, please don’t subject me to that trauma, I say.

No, that is not at all what I say. I say something more like, let me just call David and get some clothes on and I’ll meet you at the car.

I love Fry’s. They have much fun geek stuff there and it is like a very special field trip. We’ve been going to a fancy one lately that has coffee, so that’s even more of a bonus.

So, then we discover that it’s cheaper at Best Buy, so we decide to go there. We go to one near our house, but they only have the display model, so we have them look at another one and they find one that is reported to have two in stock so we head there. The two they have in stock are also floor models, so we head to yet another, after confirming that they have one in the damn box.

We waste some time sitting in massage chairs, first, though.

Then we get to the third one and low and behold, it is there, in a box, fresh and shiny and new and waiting for us.

We have it hauled out to the car and find that it won’t fit in the back of the Outback. They cut the top of the box off and it goes in. Boyfriend drives and David rides in the front and I have to ride smooshed up against the back window. I felt like a kid again. You know, back when it was not against the law to throw your kids in the back of a station wagon…

We decide we need a cord of some sort to ensure proper installation of the TV, so we go to Fry’s anyway. I don’t care if we really need the cord or not, I’m just happy that we will be going to Fry’s after all.

We pick up the cord for way less than seems possible and I pick up Kirby Canvas Curse for the DS (which is completely awesome) and David picks up a game as well (I can’t remember what game it was that day… there are so many game buying days, aren’t there? We’re really pretty bad about that.)

We go outside and…

The car won’t start.

For real. The car that holds the 190 pound TV is sitting in the Fry’s parking lot and won’t start. And it’s hot and steamy in the car. And I’m pissed.

Here is the deal with my car. Someone who owned the car before me installed an anti-theft system. And it’s like a little code.

To start the car you have to first pull on the brights, push in the clutch and then turn the key. The brights have to be pulled the whole time this is going on. Sometimes, it trips if you don’t do it just so. It’s very finicky. Once it’s tripped, you have to reset it and try again. Resetting it is a mystery. It involves…

I’m not really sure. Sometimes you can mess with the door locks and the ignition. Sometimes you can roll the windows up and down. Sometimes you can mess with the hatch. Sometimes you can disconnect the battery. Sometimes you can say a special prayer and light a candle. Hell, I don’t really know. I mean, at one time or other, all of those things have either worked or not.

It’s like my car runs on Windows.

It’s just that evil.

So we go back into Fry’s and leave the battery disconnected (this after my boyfriend had to go back in to buy a set of sockets to even disconnect the thing in the first place) and I drink the rest of my coffee and we mess around with the massage chairs. (The massage chairs at Best Buy were way better, fyi.)

We go back out and it doesn’t start after hooking the battery back up, but then my boyfriend starts bouncing up and down on the hood and I turn the key and it starts. Yay.

I get back in my smoosh position in the wayback and off we go.

We get home and carry in the thing, which takes all three of us and my boyfriend has a good time hooking up all the wires, because that’s what he lives to do… drive fast and hook shit up…

And since then, I have had some of the best video game playing moments of my life.

And we got to watch Lost in HD this week, which would have been good, except it went so fast that I hardly had time to notice all the little things like how you can really see Kate’s freckles.

So there’s the TV story. It’s so monstrous in our little living room, but holy cow it’s a beautiful thing. I’m watching way too much TV these days.

And we’re getting a DVR because I’m all addicted to Grey’s Anatomy and Lost, of course, and now, thanks to David and a marathon where I stayed up till 5:30 in the morning watching on DVD two entire seasons that I missed: The Office.

I have even sunk so low as to buy the episodes I’ve missed this season on iTunes. I even watched all the episodes with commentary. I love this show.

It’s scary, the Dwight character… OMG, he is so my brother. My brother is just a freak who is totally not in touch with reality. I see Dwight doing stuff and I am like almost sick to my stomach with how much he is like my brother. It’s nuts. Especially since my sister and I were just going on and on about how he’s so unlike any person we’ve ever known in our lives, and how we were glad, though, because it means there aren’t other people like him out there… because that would just be truly scary.

And now, I realize, there has to be someone out there that is just like him because they’ve modeled an entire TV character after him.

I don’t want to know who that is, but I feel for all the people who are forced to interact with him.

I wish I could “expose” myself here and point you to my brother’s blog. He doesn’t know I know where it is… but you would just double over at the asinine stuff he writes in there. And he works in customer service for a computer store (not Fry’s, btw, thankfully or I would have to stop going there knowing they hired jackasses like him) and he writes about his customers in his blog like they are the lowest form of life ever.

Now, I totally get those tech support blogs that talk about the insane phone calls they get from people… but this is different. Different because he thinks he actually knows something… it’s like the highest form of hipocrisy I’ve ever seen.

Bleh. I don’t even want to get started on that. I could go on for days.

Other news… [protect]

Jacob… he’s done some funny stuff lately.

First, there was the lunch issue. He’s been on Adderall for a couple of years. There is a long entry to come about that whole issue, but I am not ready for it yet… suffice to say it will come.

At any rate, I’ve been worried about his weight for a while because it decreases his appetite and he’s such a small guy anyway. Now, I’ve taken him off the meds and wow, is he a different child. Miracle of all miracles and I’m so glad. Like I said, more about that later…

So, now he is eating like a haus and he’s tired of all the bagged lunches and loves the school food. I’m not extremely picky about what he eats, either, since he weighs like 5 pounds and you can see every rib he’s got. So if he wants to eat the school food and he will eat it (key word being WILL) then I’m all for it. So I tell him that I will put money in his account and he can eat school lunch every day. He’s excited about this.

So, there’s this system online where you can pay and it will email you when the balance reaches whatever you set. I set it at like 8 and 4 bucks. I get an email that it’s at 8 bucks… but I’m confused, because I just put 35 bucks in the account like a week ago. Then, the next day I get an email that it’s at 4 bucks.

I’m like, what the ?

So I go online to see what the deal is and I see where you can be all Big Brother like and check what your kid is eating. I look, and every day he’s got his lunch on there which is like 2 bucks and then he has alacarte [sic] which is $1.

?

What is he buying every day in addition to his lunch that is $1? It doesn’t specifically say…

So I ask him what he had for lunch that day and he’s like, pizza or burritos or chicken nuggets or whatever it was that day… and I’m like, is that it? And he’s like yeah.

So I ask him again when we get home and he confesses that it’s cookies.

But not just any cookies… these are the best cookies ever. They are crispy around the edge and soft in the middle and they’re “even better than yours” he tells me.

Nice. That’s going to win my heart and mind. That’s going to make me want to let you spend an extra dollar every day.

So I go to lunch with him that week to see about these cookies and I don’t know if you’ve ever had my cookies, but let me tell you — they are delicious. And these are not my cookies at all.

He tells me that I just came on a bad day.

Mmmhmmm. I tell him to stop buying so many damn cookies. One pack is 50 cents, and that’s as far as I’m willing to go.

So that’s settled, right?

Until he comes to me the other day with $3 of his own money and gives it to me and I’m like, what is that for? And he tells me that it’s for cookies. Because he “may have” gotten more than he was supposed to on a couple of days.

Funny.

I don’t care about the actual cookie consumption, I mean, I know he eats the rest of his food, too… it was the budgetary thing I was concerned about… so I thought it was cute that he knew to bring me some of his own money and take responsibility for that act.

Now, the online system has changed and is actually showing what they buy… I guess I wasn’t the only parent who was curious about how the funds ran out so quickly… so here’s the rundown:

09/07/2006          Lunch - $1.75  

    2 - 1oz cookies - $0.50  

09/08/2006          Lunch - $1.75  

    CHIPS/CRACKERS - $0.50  

09/11/2006          Lunch - $1.75  

    2 - 1oz cookies - $0.50 (x 2)  

09/12/2006          Lunch - $1.75  

    BAKED CAKE - $0.50 (x 2)  

09/13/2006          Lunch - $1.75  

    ICE CREAM - ALL TYPES - $0.50 (x 2)  

09/14/2006          Lunch - $1.75  

    ICE CREAM - ALL TYPES - $0.50 (x 2)  

09/15/2006         Lunch - $1.75  

    2 - 1oz cookies - $0.50 (x 2)  

09/18/2006          Lunch - $1.75  

    2 - 1oz cookies - $0.50  

09/19/2006          Lunch - $1.75  

    2 - 1oz cookies - $0.50 (x 2)  

09/20/2006         

    Lunch - $1.75  

    2 - 1oz cookies - $0.50 (x 2)  

09/25/2006      Lunch - $1.75  

    ICE CREAM - ALL TYPES - $0.50  

09/27/2006        Lunch - $1.75  

09/28/2006        Lunch - $1.75  

    ICE CREAM - ALL TYPES - $0.50  

09/29/2006      Lunch - $1.75  

    2 - 1oz cookies - $0.50  

10/02/2006          Lunch - $1.75  

    2 - 1oz cookies - $0.50 (x 2)  

10/03/2006          Lunch - $1.75  

    2 - 1oz cookies - $0.50  

10/04/2006        Lunch - $1.75  

    2 - 1oz cookies - $0.50 (x 2)

I hope the pre tag works… I have no idea if that is still compliant these days…

Ok, so then last week, he comes out of school and he’s been crying… he’s so upset and I ask him what’s wrong and he says that he has detention.

I say why, and he says that he got his name taken twice and he said something he wasn’t supposed to.

JUST GREAT, I think.

Yes, I cuss like a sailor, (I’m working on it!!!!) so, of course I’m wondering what it could have been that he said… did he say clusterfuck? bullshit? bitchass? hot diggety damn? jackass? I mean, there are so many options here… my mind is just racing.

So I say, well, let’s go talk to the teacher about this so I know just what it is that I should be concerned about…

She says that he said buttload. Buttload.

Phew. My mind is at ease. I can handle buttload.

He also constructed one of those paper popper things (learn how to make your own here: http://nerds.unl.edu/pages/sciencedemos/paper%20popper/pics.htm)

And he was popping it after the teacher had told him to stop. That peeves me way more than buttload, I have to say. Not the popper part, because those are cool and paper manipulation helps him express his creativity and further hone his fine motor skill. No, it’s the doing something after someone told you to STOP IT that I am concerned about. This is a problem we have been working on since like, the dawn of time.

I noticed that while I was talking to the teacher, she seemed to be smirking a little at telling me he said buttload. I note this and promise self to get full story from Jacob when we get in the car.

So here is how it went down…

They were taking these benchmarking tests (in math) for the oh-so-lovely TAKS and the teacher asked him how he thought he did and he said “I think I probably missed a buttload of questions.” The teacher told him that wasn’t appropriate. No big deal.

But then, later in the day, in English class, the teacher asks the kids if anyone can name a compound word. So Jacob volunteers and she calls on him and he says, of course, “buttload.” And the class busts out in riotous laughter… and she takes Jacob’s name.

I resist the urge to wet myself laughing in the car and tell him that if a teacher tells him it’s not appropriate to say, then he shouldn’t say it, blah blah blah on and on. He says he didn’t mean to say it again, but he always likes to get his hand up in the air first and then when she called on him he was on the spot and it was the only word he could think of.

He continues to cry and freak out thinking that his Dad is going to like, kill him over this, but even though his Dad can be a bit uptight sometimes, I know that he will find this very humorous.

And he does. He was cracking up. Thankfully, because Jacob was really torn up about it.

So I grounded him from his video games for 3 days and he served his detention and there you go.

Of course, it doesn’t help that he overheard all four of his teachers laughing about it in the hall because even they thought it was funny… but whatever.

Fast forward, or slow forward really, to the very next damn day… and he has detention again. (sigh)

But whatever, I mean, this is a kid who got kicked out of kindergarten three times and had detention almost every day of second grade… right? I’m trying to be optimistic…

So he doesn’t really know what it’s for, the detention… so I say, well, let’s go find out. He knew that one time his name got taken was for turning around in his desk when he wasn’t supposed to and he’d been told to face the front… so we just had to find out what the other offense was from the librarian.

So, we get to the library, and she’s all… well, ummm… you see… I really hated to do it, because I don’t generally like to give detention to kids for… umm… READING… but he was reading… and umm… he was supposed to be watching the movie.

My thoughts? Well, it is a library. And well, how about you don’t let them check out books that they are all excited about and then make them hold them on their laps while they are supposed to be watching a movie. How about check the books out after the movie? But whatever. He should have some self-control, right? So I say thanks and look at Jacob all stern like I mean it and we leave.

So I say, what was the movie about? And he’s all… it’s about the Dewey Decimal System. And I already know all that stuff and I was bored and I had a WWII book and…

Yes, nuff said. I mean, this child is no stranger to the library, right? And when I homeschooled him last year we went all over the Dewey Decimal System and he knows all the numbers and where to find everything and… so I can see his point.

But still, he should have listened to the librarian. She has a master’s degree, you know? Haha.

(I don’t have this on my list, but I need to talk about that, too… school. my school, I mean.)

So he did his detention and continued his groundenation and there was that.

I just thought it was so rich that he got a detention for reading in the library. Who does that happen to?

This is turning out to be the longest entry ever, eh?

So, one more thing about Jacob… this really pissed me off. I would have given him detention for this… Brandon comes over and he’s my Big Brother (the TV show) buddy. But he hasn’t watched the season finale yet. So we’re sitting here and Jacob is sitting with us and I’m like, OK, so you don’t want me to tell you what happens? And he’s like, NO, I don’t want to know who won because I haven’t seen it yet.

And Jacob blurts out, “Well, Mike won it.”

Just like that.

I thought I was going to smack him down. OMG. So I sent him to his room and was apologizing profusely to Brandon… ugh. I hate that. And we’ve talked about this since the dawn of time as well… about not ruining a movie or TV show for someone when you’ve already seen it. He’s turning out to be one of those talkers, and I can’t have that! You know, those people who talk all through a show or movie, who are all, where’s he going? what did she say? or when they’ve already seen it, they’re like… oh watch this it’s so funny, he says blah blah blah and then the place blows up. Or like, he’ll describe an entire movie or book by its ending. Oh, the book where the man flies off to the moon in the end and leaves the whole world behind? Is that the book you haven’t read?

I’ve got to break him of this habit or he’s gonna be “that guy.”

No one likes “that guy.”

On another note, I’m really sad that James didn’t win Big Brother. I liked him a lot. I liked his game. He was funny.

—-

I see on my notes I need to talk about Christina’s computer. She has Windows and she has also lived with a few guys throughout the life of this computer. These guys like to look at porn, and so of course, as a result, her computer is just littered with spyware and all manner of maliciousness. She brought it over for the boyfriend to fix and we’re going through and getting rid of all the crap she doesn’t need… and we find a folder on there that belongs to her ex-boyfriend… this guy lived with us when we were roomies and when my boyfriend was staying (not ever going back to his apartment) and it was like… a hell, all of us in that apartment, because he’s one of those loud, know-it-all fratdaddy types… and also because no one knew how to clean up after themselves or load a dishwasher correctly… but whatever. I digress… It really wasn’t that bad, but it was just like — not much square footage and lots of people and animals and everyone with a different schedule, etc.

So, like, I know this guy, is what I’m saying.

Or I think I do… My boyfriend opens up one of the movies just for shits and grins and it’s a dog and a woman… OMG, I about flipped out. You hear about these things, and it’s shocking enough to hear about them and know that this goes on in the world, but this was the first real, moving picture moment that I ever had of some barnyard porn and it freaked me out. I wanted to go scrub my eyeballs. It was horrifying.

And then it took a minute for it to sink in that this guy used to live in my apartment. Ick. Eww.

And the titles of all the movies were out there and there had to be over a hundred of the things.

And I’m not one to like… rag on someone else’s taste in porn, because everyone who looks at it has their own special flavor or whatever, no? But animals? Come on.

It was kinda funny though.

—–

Two more neighbor child stories… that I forgot to mention in my other neighbor child entry.

First, there was the English thing… I think I mentioned that I don’t really want Jacob to play with them too much and so every day after school he just says he has homework. Which is generally true, so that’s OK. He’s not lying.

One day, he was inside doing his homework and the kids were out in the front and he’d already told him he had it, and so the child with the grill was asking me when he would be done and I said I didn’t know. Then he asks me what it is that he’s doing.

Me: Math, Language, etc.

Grill: Language? What language?

Me: English.

Grill: English? Like they say over there? (And he’s pointing across the street from me, which is where my Hispanic neighbors live.)

Me: Huh?

Grill: Don’t they speak English?

Me: Ummmm, well, actually they speak Spanish.

Grill: Then who speaks English?

Me: Ummm…. you?

Grill: Oh, I don’t know.

Yeah, me either, sometimes. (sigh)

—

The other thing is this… the 3 year old… something has to be done about this and I don’t know quite what to do. He tends to not be supervised so much. Like, he’s always out in the yard by himself and he goes out in the street. And he crosses the street to the other house that they own that is mostly empty. (That’s another long story…) and he goes back and forth. Back and forth.

So, if this were any normal neighborhood, I would just go next door…

No, if this were any normal neighborhood, there wouldn’t be 3-year-old children running free in the streets with no parental supervision.

So, like, I can’t go and just say to the mother or grandmother to watch the kid. Because that would be an assault on their person. That would get my house burned down or my car keyed or, I don’t even know…

And if I call CPS, then they will for sure know it was me because I am… I just look like one of those judgmental mothers that would call CPS on someone, you know?

And if I do nothing, this kid is going to get run over and that will be so wrong and I would never live that Karma off, you know?

The other day, he ran out in the street and a big honkin’ SUV had to slam on the brakes not to hit him.

It has been better lately since I let them in the house, though. He’s been going over across the street a lot less and has been just going back and forth between their yard and my front door. Constantly. So maybe that’s a good thing. Although it is really getting annoying since he wakes me up at the asscrack of dawn banging on the door to come inside or ask me why the cat water has bugs in it or why there are so many spiders on the door or how come there is a bottle of motor oil on the porch.

I don’t know the answers to all of these things little boy. Please go back to your home. And let me sleep.

I want to put a Head Start flyer on their door. He’s old enough to go… and then he would be in a safe learning environment for at least part of the day.

—

I love Sharpies. I love the way they smell and the way they write. Especially when they are new. MMMMMmmmmmmm. Sharpies.

(that was seriously on my list, btw. Sad.)

—–

Since getting the HDTV we have signed up for Netflix again. I like movies. I like them even better on this TV.

Although now that we’ve decided to get the HD box and DVR, I’m kind of wondering if I can justify the cost of Netflix.

I don’t know.

My boyfriend says… well, we don’t get any movies on the HD box, though… we don’t have HBO or anything.

I guess that means he wants to keep Netflix and I will not worry about it any more.

—-

I am so excited about the Wii coming out. OMG I could wet my pants at the thought of downloading all those old games and all the new stuff that is going to come out.

Although, I am a bit disappointed at the Paper Mario thing. It is not going to be an RPG like the old versions of Paper Mario… it’s going to be more like the walk-through version of Super Mario Brothers.

Now, this is not to say that I will not buy the game. I will. You can be certain of this, but I will be pissed off the entire time I am playing it that it is not like my old Paper Mario… and I pray in my heart of hearts that they will come up with an RPG version…

I don’t remember if I ever told the story of Jacob erasing all the memory files on the GameCube. My mom got him this honkin’ card that holds like, more files than my hard drive, I swear… and so we have a lot of games and we’d played those lot of games a lot. LOT. Lot. And then like the dumb, easy button-loving person that I am, I let him get the Action Replay. You know, it loads cheats. Invincibility. All Shine Sprites found. Invisible carts. 999,999 bells. So on. So forth.

And then one day he’s messing with it and he erases all data on the memory card.

Everything.

Including the Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door file that I’d spent like a bajillion hours (with no cheats and no guide) working on. I was up to the final boss and hadn’t beaten her yet… I’d even cleared the Pit of 100 Trials.

It was a sad sad day in our house.

Because of this, I kind of had a sour taste in my mouth about starting a new Paper Mario file. Why, I don’t know, because it didn’t take me but like five seconds after the disaster to start winning back courses, characters and cars on Mario Kart, right? In fact, I think David and I sat down and did the whole thing in like a day…

But still, I was bitter about that single file.

Until we got the big TV. And then I’m all gung ho about playing and I stayed up several nights going through everything and it was the most fun I’d had playing a video game in a very long time…

So that’s kind of why I’m a little bitter about the Wii version not being an RPG. I want that badly.

In other video game news, I really need to play Katamari on the big TV more. I bet it will breathe new life into that one, too. All I have left on that one is a million roses. Psh. Like that’s going to happen.

—-

I have quite a collection of DS games starting…

Kirby Canvas Curse

Mario Kart

Big Brain Academy

Brain Age

Mario and Luigi Partners in Time

Animal Crossing

and Jacob has:

Starfox

Mario 64

Mario Kart

Nintendogs

Brain Age

Top Gun

So those are fun…

And he got Lego Star Wars, now that the new one has come out and it knocked the old one down to below $20. Yay. And we have been playing the crap out of that together. It is a hoot. So cute all the little Lego pieces… and if you hit your partner a few times then he can play with his head knocked off and that’s just funny.

—–

OK, so my school… the other night, my boyfriend and I were talking about what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives. It didn’t come up quite like that, all serious, but it ended up being that way.

And I have to admit, I haven’t really thought about it too much. That’s a lie. I’ve thought about it, but every time I do I start to panic and then I go into a shame spiral and have to eat a lot of chocolate and take a long bath to recover. I’m such a baby like that.

It’s school.

I have this huge chip on my shoulder about school.

I don’t even know if I’m ready to relive this whole conversation/nervous breakdown again…

It’s making me tense just thinking about it even though everything resolved quite nicely.

So..

I am so hot.

I will go cool down and then I will return to write about this. It’s the last thing on my list and it might just be deserving of an entire entry.

I remember this. I remember how writing about things is therapeutic for me because I can relive it inside my head and then I’m over it. This is what’s good for me about writing. I have to remember this every time I think I am too tired or whatever to write. That it is good for me. That it helps me move past stupid crap that is getting on my nerves way more than just talking about it or thinking about it.

It’s like once it’s written down it’s out. And then if I need to to back to it I can, because it’s there. Somewhere. Away from me and my mind. It gets it out of the rotation of thoughts that I can land on at any given time. And that’s nice. Nine times out of ten, I don’t have to go back to it. Or I may go back to it at the same time the next year or something and then it’s nice to look at it and have some different perspective. Some time, distance between me and the situation as it happened.

Remember Sammy Jenkis.

You know? I need to tattoo “write” on my body somewhere.

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So, we went to Ikea, and now I have the nerdiest desk ever. I love it. It’s called Jerker.

I had no idea till we got it home, but apparently I’m not the only nerd who loves it.

I also got a new chair (hopefully, no more back pain) and have the dual screen thing going on. It’s rockin.

I might actually be able to write something worth two shits at work now. Woohoo.

And my boyfriend moved his desk in here, so we’ve got dueling desks. It actually looks pretty good, a lot better than I thought it would, and I think we’ll both be more comfortable in here.

We’ve officially declared this side of the house (with the bedrooms and office space) a dog-free zone, since every time we moved a piece of furniture there was practically another dog underneath from all the shedding. UGH.

More later, I’m tired… have more to tell