23 posts tagged “friends”

I'm in a mood.  It's gotten better since last night when I was laying in bed trying to think about narrow ruled notebook paper because it was the only thing I could hold in my mind that didn't run off down some dark tangent.  I love narrow ruled paper.  It's smooth, neat, and full of possibilities.  Ug, I hate these dark moods though, when even the happiest memories hurt because my brain instantly takes me past everything sweet, straight to a bitter end.  Bad brain.  Bad, broken brain.  ...  Narrow ruled paper is really nice.

It's been a weird week.  Craig picked up some germs last week, and came down with a nasty cold.  He's one of the healthiest almost-never-sick people I know, and this cold kicked his ass.  I got a touch of it, but nothing like what he had, which is also strange because my immune systems S-U-C-K-S!  I get sick ten (or more) times as often as Craig, and I'm pretty sure I've always had colds worse and longer than him too.  I just got a touch of this one.  It didn't settle in my chest (for a change) like his did.  That usually means steroids for me and my asthma.  I got off so lucky this time!

Craig actually went to work Monday and Tuesday, but he came home at lunch on Tuesday, and stayed home all of Wednesday.  He needed the extra sleep, low stress, and the rest for his voice and throat.  We passed the time by busting out the PS2 and playing Champions of Norrath ...for a day and a half.  It was good, quiet, lazy fun, and a nice start to cold weather gaming season.  We don't play video games in the warmer months when there's so much to do outside.

We were supposed to have guests Tuesday through Wednesday, but I had to cancel.  Neither of us were up to entertaining company, and I would've hated to have given Meagan and Greg colds in the middle of their vacation.  Canceling was definitely the thing to do, but it seriously bummed me out.  Hopefully they can come stay with us for a day or two around the holidays.  *fingers crossed*

I'm loving the cold turn in the weather.  We had our yearly furnace cleaning/tune-up on Monday, and it couldn't have been better timed.  We just left it on at that point, and it's been running intermittantly already, keeping our house comfy right as the weather turned.  It would've made that whole being sick thing even more miserable if the furnace wasn't on yet.

Looks like we're going to be getting a new furnace next year, ...or sooner, though we're hoping it'll make it through this one last winter.  *knock-on-wood*  The technician told us it's officially 25 years old, and the life expectancy on that furnace is an average of 18 years.  heh.  Good furnace!  Nice, warm, lovely furnace!  We love you so much!  The technician told us Lennox is raising prices on the parts for our model, since it's old and they're trying to phase it out.  He showed me a few examples of typical parts that have doubled in price, and suggested that if anything broke, it would be most cost effective to buy a new one rather than repair the old.  They've kept that puppy running smooth for us for the ten years we've lived here, and I do know that furnace is old, so we're going to trust the technician on this one.  He also told us there's a 30% tax rebate(?) offer on high efficiency furnaces through 2010, so it definitely makes sense to do all this within the next year.

Ok.  I've rambled on quite a bit more than I'd inteneded to.  When I sat down to blog, I had two things on my mind, my dark mood and one thing in particular that's eating at me today.  That second thing is a serious lack of compassion from a whole lot of people.  It's disheartening to the point of making me think maybe we, as a species, deserve whatever doom we're settings ourselves up for.  ...  We definitely do.  I have a particular example that's hurting me personally this morning, but I don't really want to get into it.  I just wanted to state somewhere that I'm feeling it right here and now, but I'm noticing it everywhere, and it sucks.

Friday my brain shut off about mid-afternoon.  I've been trying to remember what I did the rest of the day, and I just can't.  Thank the gods for weekends!

Saturday though, was ...weird.  First, I finally upgraded my laptop's OS.  Now I'm only *one* version behind the current standard ...I think?  [checks Ubuntu forums]  Ok.  I'm now running the latest LTS (long term support) version, though there've been two more "stable releases".  LTS is good enough for me.

Saturday I was supposed to go to a friend's birthday party, but the closer it got to go time, the crankier I got.  I hadn't slept well the night before thanks to allergies, and wound up taking some meds in the early morning hours, meds which usually kick my ass and take my lunch money.  I wanted to go wish Tiffany a happy birthday, but I was dreading the hour-plus drive, and I was having some social anxiety over being at a party.  I dropped her an email to tell her I was wussing out and apologize, and I let Craig know we wouldn't be going.

Craig, being the thoughtful husband he is, had let me make our Saturday plans.  If I wanted to go to Royal Oak, he was going to take me.  When I changed my mind about that, he decided he wanted to go to his 25 year 8th grade reunion.  I thought that sounded absolutely miserable!!!  I'd just cancelled plans with my friend because I didn't feel like being around people!  What could I do though?  He'd been so willing to forgo his plans for mine, so when I canceled mine, I went along with his.  It was only fair.  So, I wasn't going to be spending the day in my jammies reading and napping like I'd planned after all.  Saturday totaly pwned me.

The reunion wound up being pretty darn fun, despite my reservations.  A few of the girls in his 8th grade class went to high school with me.  Yes, I, who HATES school reunions and refuses to go to any of mine, wound up at a mini reunion anyhow, and on a day when I didn't want to be around people. 

It was interesting.  I spent a long time talking with one of the nicest girls in my class.  I always saw her as one of the popular kids, one of only a few who would take the time to talk to me like I was an equal.  She's still as sweet and warm as I remember her.  I always felt like I was invisible to most of my high school, teachers included.  Such is the fate of an introvert.  I even tried to get involved whenever I could, and still people couldn't remember me.  That was the case with the other three of my classmates that were there for the reunion.  :)  They smiled at me briefly with a look in their eyes that told me they had absolutely *NO* idea who I was, and then they went off to the other side of the room to talk amongst themselves.  To be fair, I didn't make any effort to talk to them either.  I did talk to other people there though.  The food was good and the conversation was better, just as it should be at any any good party.  It was a nice evening and I'm glad we went.

Sunday was a bit of a blur because I was so mentally wiped from Saturday's party.  We went out for breakfast, bought the week's groceries, Craig did yardwork and I did housework...  I don't know what else.

So now it's Monday and time to put in another week's labor.  Work is going to go well this week.  I'm finally getting everything in order and up to date.  That feels better than I can express.  Seriously.  I feel like I'm doing the impossible.  *flexes*  ...*flexes brain*

I have lots of more fun things planned for this week too, lots of personal projects that I'm excited about.  All work and no play, you know.  ;)

All right.  A cup of coffee and then it's time to get this party started.

I had a HUGE crush on Michael Jackson back in his Thriller days.  As someone who *LOVES* dance and all kinds of music, I found him so innovative and magical.  He never stood a chance at a normal life, what with his family life and the greedy yes-men around him telling him time and time again how awesome he was.  That's not an environment conducive to growing up or maturing or doing anything but festering in your own ego and always hungering for something real that you can't quite identify.  His fortune and fame weren't worth that price, and through all the crazy stories and accusations and possibly even crimes, I always felt bad for him and wondered how different he'd be if he'd had to live in the real world.  He was gifted though, and the world seems a whole lot less glamorous and magical without him.  -My blog, my feelings.

I've been dreaming *A LOT* about loved ones in the past week or so, both people I've lost touch with, and people lost to this world.  It's been nice visiting with everyone ion my head, even people I don't think I'd actually get along with should we run into each other again.  ...I have to admit, it has me rethinking that.  Who really is the same person they were years ago, or even last week?  I know I'm sure as hell not.  We all live and learn and adapt.  It's been good food for thought.

I'm procrastinating starting my day.  Yesterday was a complete loss.  I'm at the end stage of a project, and tying up loose ends gives me a hell of a lot of anxiety.  My performance anxiety has nothing to do with crowds of people or approval, but EVERYTHING to do with the integrity of my work - knots must be tied impossibly tightly, ts crossed, every last scrap of data accounted for, ...  I get so nervous when I see the finish line, it sometimes makes me physically sick.  I'm trying so hard to change my thinking.  My daily affirmations this week have been all about trying to rewire my brain into having faith in my own work.  It's not working yet, but I'm not giving up until it does.

Been very much in the mood for singing cowboys lately.  I do love a deep warbly voice.  "The Highway" on Sirius radio is pretty decent, but not quite hitting the mark.  I wish I could tune in the local country station.

Ok.  That's enough.  I had more thoughts I wanted to jot down, but they don't seem as pressing right now.  Time to give Jasmine her meds and get some work done.

I'm twittering.  That is to say, I've created an account.  I'm currently thinking I'll only be following at the website, since my phone is off 99% of the time and I like it that way, but I may some day opt to tweet *shudder* from my phone or my kindle.

I gave in because of Caitlin Kiernan first.  She held out against twitter with all the confusion and contempt that I had for it.  And then recently she opened an account seemingly out of the blue and started twittering her newest book, one sentence a day.  I have the book on pre-order, but I still wanted those sentences ASAP!

So I was thinking that maybe I should give in too.  Not only was I wanting to follow one of my favorite authors, but one of my nearest and dearest is about to have a baby, and I'm way too many miles away from her.  She twitters, and I'd long ago considered that I might sign up when her due date got closer so I could get the baby info ASAP.

Still, I procrastinated.  And then Algernon admitted to twitting this morning, and I thought, "Everyone really is doing it."

I'm really starting to feel like I'm missing out on a modern phenomenon.  I held out against LJ at first too, and MySpace.  ...I was right about MySpace though.  I'll be deleting that soon here.

So there I am now.  Will I use it?  Probably.  Often?  Maybe.  *shrug*  Like I said, I don't keep my cell phone on, but then again, since I don't use my phone, I have a ton of time banked up on it that I could use.  I probably won't be following too many people because I don't need another major distraction, but again, who knows?  I'm currently planning on using it first as a micro-blog, for big thoughts and things that can be shared in few words, and secondly to extend outing invitations to local friends and hopefully get more quality time with my peeps while still being able to make spontaneous plans.

So, yeah.  Twitter.  Seriously.  I'm still skeptical, but we'll see how this goes.

When I was creating my account, it told me my name was too long.  My *legal name*.  HA!  I KNOW!!!  :)

AGirlofGlass

Don't feel obligated, seriously, but there it is if you wanted to know.

It's annoying enough to find yourself stirring to a bright sky and a cacophony of birds at 6am, but it's most aggravating when it wakes you in the middle of dreams where you're visiting with loved ones you only ever get to visit in dreams any more.  Though they say we only remember the dreams we are woken from, so I guess without all this early morning bright and busyness I wouldn't remember these visits I've been enjoying for the past several days.  But then, I wouldn't be starting each day with this bittersweet melancholy if I couldn't remember these dreams either.  I've heard it suggested that visitors in the dreaming usually have a preferred time for visiting, and now I'm wondering if I woke up every day at 6am how many similar dreams I'd remember.

I managed to get back to sleep yesterday, and actually got a couple of hours of sound sleep after a night of tossing and turning.  That meant a late start to the day though, which meant yard work later in the morning than I'd planned, ...which meant more intense sunlight beating down on my shoulders.  I was an idiot and didn't put on sunscreen.  I only meant to be out for about fifteen minutes, and that turned into about thirty.  And then I spent some time in the sun hanging laundry on the line yesterday too.  By the end of the day, my shoulders were a pretty good pink.  You'd think, with my fine Irish skin, I would learn to always sunscreen-up before going out, especially this close to the summer solstice.  But even now I'm thinking if I go out early enough, I won't have to put that goop all over my skin.  *sigh*  I will put it on though.  I hate it, but I know I need it.  Mean, mean sun.

So I finally got my old flower bed cleared of waist-high wild growth and filled back up with compost on Sunday.  Earlier in the season I'd planned on laying out a perennial bed and planting according to plan.  It's been so damn humid though, and it's so very unpleasant to be outside in it, once the bed was ready for planting, I just randomly sprinkled all of my flower seeds in there.   All of them.  I put in the packets I bought new this year and anything I had left from previous years, including some large packets of wildflower mixes.  It's my mystery garden now.  Tiny green bits are already peeking up.  I've very curious to see what grows.  I'm going to have to weed it *VERY* carefully as things start growing.  Fortunately, I'm quite familiar with all the weeds I just finished pulling out of the ground there, so I should be able to identify and evict those.

I've also started digging my garden for misfit plants.  I hate it when all of your seeds germinate and you have to cull the herds.  I also hate pulling plants growing where they aren't supposed to, especially when I'm curious as to what's growing.  So this year I'm clearing out the mess that used to be our blackberry brambles, and putting a misfit garden in.  I've already transplanted some stuff there.  This will be another fun experiment, seeing what survives the transplant, and what becomes of it all.  I'm pretty sure I have some pumpkin growing from pumpkin guts I composted last year.  I'm going to have to move some zucchini and cucumber over to the misfit garden this week too, as all of those seeds decided to try growing this year, and there's just not room in the veggie garden for them all.

As for the blackberry brambles, they've migrated into the tiger lilies by the garage, which is the perfect place for them, since the lilies are abundant and I won't have a weedy mess growing under painfully sharp brambles.

The tiger lillies by the kitchen window are back this year after being choked out by morning glory vines for a couple of years.  I got tired of that damn non-flowering vine choking out my lilies last year, and asked Craig to spray the vine with a topical poison.  It worked perfectly.  The vine is gone, and my cheery orange friends are back and blooming this year.

Enough yammering about my yard.  I'm going to go have a seat out there in my favorite spot and enjoy a bit of this morning, as long as I'm up, before it gets too hot and sticky out.  Don't know if I'll do more yard work today or if I'll give my shoulders the day off to fade a bit.  That would be the smart thing to do, but the siren song of progress is so hard to resist.  For the moment though, iced coffee, seed for the birds, my favorite seat and a few more minutes thinking about loved ones (much loved!) I sadly don't get to see anywhere but in dreams any more.

I spent yesterday reconnecting with one of my classmates from grade school.  We had a great time!  It was really cool not only having someone to share childhood stories with, someone who actually remembers the same stuff I do, but to fill in some gaps and learn so much about her that I never knew.  It was a great visit, and I look forward to many more.

We hit up the community garage sales yesterday, and I collected some treasure.  Garage sales are so much fun! I really shouldn't bring more junk into the house, but to be fair, when I garage sale it's to pick up inspiring bits and pieces that want to be crafted into something new, so garage sales are my "artist date" and my inspiration.  And I have so many ideas now!

I'm trying to decide what to do with today, ...now that it's noon and I'm finally feeling awake.  :)  I think I need to put yesterday's inspiration to work.  I want to paint or draw or maybe start a doll.  ...I also want to put a blanket down under the tree in my yard and just stare at the sky until I nod off.

What I really want to do is visit the lake.  However, I don't want to drive all that way, especially not knowing how crowded various lake shore places are.  Today would be such a nice day to be out on the lake though.  Some day, I may have to get a sail boat.  I should start looking into charter sailing cruises on Lake Erie.  That would be awesome.

Ok.  I'm not going to waste the whole day sitting around thinking about what I should/could be doing.  I need to give jasmine her meds, paint some of the trim work in the kitchen, sprinkle some seeds in my new flower bed, and then get up to my elbows is something colorful and messy ...preferably something I can do laying in the shade outside.

I feel pretty... oh so pretty...  I got my hair cut today.  I went in and told my stylist to do whatever she wanted.  She must like my hair the way it is now because she left the length (which is unusual for her) and just cut lots of layers into it.  She curled it for me too, and it looks pretty darn cute right now.  I'm much more low maintenance though, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like tomorrow, without any product in it and air-dried.  :)  I have enough natural wave in it that I think it'll still look super-cute though.  It's very nice to have it cut enough that I don't have to pull it back to keep it from hanging in my face once again.

Last night we went out for dinner with friends to celebrate a dear friend's birthday.  Good times.  We went to Sakura for Japanese yummies, and then to DQ for dessert.  :)  Lots of great conversation and laughter was had, as always.  Love my peeps!

I'm working on day two of a pretty bad headache.  Yesterday it was trying to push over the line toward migraine status, but I managed to keep it from getting there.  Today it's just been thumping against my skull all day.  ...*ALL DAY*  Like from the moment I sat up in bed on.  I don't know if it's weather related, if I haven't been hydrating enough, maybe eye strain, allergies are likely, possibly even the tiniest bit of a cold that I thought might be coming on at the beginning of the week.  This is really annoying though, especially given how bright and wonderful the weather is, and how very much that brightness is paining me as I hide in the darkest room in the house.  :/

I picked some dandelions for the bunnies this afternoon!  I'm so grateful for the growing season and all the readily available bunny food.  I have some parsley coming up in my garden already too, so we have dandelion, parsley and plantain lilies for the buns to supplement store-bought produce.  Once I get my garden planted and growing, we'll have carrot tops, lettuce and spinach too.  YAY for free food!

argh.  I need to take off my glasses and close my eyes for a bit.  Stupid headache.  ...But YAY weekend!!!

Monday night we had dinner with a few people from Craig's amateur radio club, very good people.  I was at ease with them instantly and really enjoyed getting to know them.  ...I enjoyed it enough that I'm considering getting myself a basic, technician class license and joining the club too, just so I can keep meeting with them without feeling like the odd man out.  So that's something to add to my already spilling-over plate in the near future.  *rolls eyes*  Can you say "masochist"?

Tuesday I had my mom over for lunch and a movie.  I had "The Secret Life of Bees" out from Netflix and wanted to watch it with someone who was truly interested.  (Craig said he'd watch it with me, but it was totally for me and not because he wanted to see the movie - still, points for him for offering!)  That was one of my favorite books within recent years, and I was excited to see how the movie was done.  I enjoyed it quite a lot.  They stayed pretty true to the story, but they left out some of my favorite elements and scenes, the ones that took it from just a feel-good, self-discovery type story into something touched by magic.  Very enjoyable all the same but, as usual, the book was better.

Wednesday was art class.  We did water color under pen & ink.  Well, they did.  I spent the whole class just putting down the watercolor.  I still have to put some ink over it.  I always forget how much I love watercolor until I've got a paint-laden brush in my my hand.  I think I have to dedicate some space in my room upstairs specifically to watercolor, so I never have to do more than get a fresh jar of water before sitting down to paint.

We got some sad news though: our teacher's position is being eliminated.  Not only is she a great teacher, but she's my kind of people.  I'm hoping she and her fiance' have a little room in their social circle for us.  We're the same age, we share a lot of the same hobbies, from knitting to scroll-saw and lathe work to hot glass even, they don't want to be parents either, they like to travel, her fiance' is a technology geek, ...  I just love talking to her, and I'm hoping we can keep in touch.

Thursday was our monthly "writer's group" meeting, where we get together and talk about anything but writing.  heh.  Always *LOTS* of laughter there.  Good times!

So now it's Friday and this introvert is worn out from the week full of people and socializing.  I'm not as cranky and exhausted as I expected to be though, which I attribute partially to spring-time energy but mostly to the excitement of reconnecting with a bunch of old friends on Facebook.  It was the weirdest thing, but when we were rearranging furniture recently, I had to move all my memorabilia and old photos, and after quickly flipping through some photos, I got to thinking about some of my old classmates and high school friends and wondering what they were up to.  Well  almost everyone I'd thought about has popped up on Facebook this week, even my BFF from grade school who moved far away and I never expected to hear from again!  I've missed all of my old friends, but life has a way of taking you in different directions and you sometimes just lose touch.  Things get busy, you meet new people, next thing you know it's been years and you don't know how to get a hold of anyone or (in my case anyhow) just feel awkward about it.  I've been working on my social skills this year, reminding myself to check in with people and trying to reserve more energy for get-togethers, and now I'm so happy to have some old friends back in my life, I'll definitely be working to stay in touch with them all!

And speaking of Facebook, I find the uproar over the new layout kind of amusing.  Yeah, I think they made some bone-headed decisions, but things change, and not always for the better - that's just life.  *shrug*  And, it's a free service anyhow!  ...I don't know... I 've gotten used to it already and don't even remember how it worked/looked before.

So, tonight is the two-hour final episode of BSG.  Bittersweet.  *sigh*  Like many others, I've long been worried that it'll end with some damn cliff-hanger that won't be resolved until the movie.  I probably ought to remove all throwable objects heavier than a pillow from arm's reach, just in case.  But yeah, that's what we'll be doing tonight.  Craig says after it's over, we're pulling out the DVDs and starting over from the beginning.  It's all happened before, and it'll all happen again.  ;)

Craig and I rolled out of bed this morning, straight into the shower, and then out the door.  He took me first to breakfast, and then to my very first hamfest (amateur radio enthusiast swap meet).  That was ... weird.  It looked to a non-radio person like myself as if a bunch of people had ripped the electronic components out of everything they could, thrown it all in Tupperware containers and laid it all out over a huge hall full of tables to try to sell.  Craig seemed to enjoy looking through it all, and I had a belly full of pancake, so I was content just to walk around holding his hand.

We did run into a couple of the guys from his local radio club, and I got to meet their wives.  They're all very nice people.  There's a club meeting tomorrow night and I had no plans to go until the ham-wives (oh gods, I'm a ham-wife!) told me everyone always goes out to dinner before the meeting and I should come along.  So I'm looking forward to that tomorrow!

After the hamfest, we went book shopping (picked up a book on pen and ink with watercolor) and then for coffee to kill a little time, and then out to my cousin's farewell gathering.

I had a great time hanging out with my family.  I talked semlore recipes and travel with my Swedish uncle; tv, travel, music and Facebook with my cousins; and crafts with my aunties.  Craig and my uncle talked amateur radio the whole time, so that was cool, that they each had someone to geek with.  :)

I'm very grateful for Facebook today, first because even though my cousin is moving many states away, I'll still be able to keep in touch easily.  I also came home tonight to find two new friend requests, one from an old grade school and then college classmate, and another from an old high school friend.  I do really love how small the internet makes the world!

Also in people+internet news, someone joined my "Lampwork Addicted" Twine today!  :D  It's not exactly popular, with only us two members, but I'm tickled they even found it since I haven't made an effort to promote it yet.

I'm looking forward to this week.  We've got the ham club dinner and meeting tomorrow night, my mom is coming over for lunch and a movie on Tuesday, Wednesday art class resumes, Friday is the 2-hour finale for BSG, and Sunday is a baby shower for a couple of dear friends.  ...Which reminds me, I really should get back to my knitting!