Crazy busy again… but I kinda thrive on that. :) I’ve got three projects going at work, which is nothing short of a miracle. Maybe if I rack up a few good overtime checks, they’ll decide to hire me for real…. maybe. But then, that would make sense….we can’t have that!

The capture card is going to have to go back to Josh’s computer– there are no drivers for Windows 2000– the update they have only works if you’ve previously used the Win 98 drivers, which I didn’t. So…. until they decide to get it in gear (or until Josh’s attempts to hack the registry come through), the card will reside in Smoshy’s box. *sigh* Guess we’ll have to switch machines periodically so I can yank footage from the video camera….

OMG! Can’t believe I almost forgot about this! Monday night we BURNED THE FURBY!!! Yes, the evil, evil Furby has now gone to Furby Heaven [Hell?]. We filmed the whole thing, so hopefully I’ll get some streaming video up on webgravy before too long. We pulled the barbecue grill out to the middle of the lawn, carefully placed the furby inside (so as not to wake the evil creature), and then Matt fired a paintball gun at him to wake him up. Then Josh torched him… we’d doused him in lighter-fluid-gel-stuff first, so he blazed up quite nicely. He burned for an astonishingly long time, and it really surprised us how long he kept talking and ‘dancing’ while burning…. After a while, the batteries exploded, sending bits of charred, ooey-gooey-melty furby allllll over the yard. Yum. There was nothing left but a pile of ooze in the bottom of the grill, and the charred circuit card. Muahahahaha!

I did get some pics back, but most of them look awful. Very dark. There is one good one of Laura and Brett, which I will scan as soon as I get the chance…. I’m sad that the rest turned out so poorly. I need a real camera– one with manual focusing capabilities. Once the capture card is installed, I can attempt to pull some stills from the video we took…. hopefully there are some good shots there.

OH! One more thing before bed… Steve posted some pics he took at Dripping Springs during Dome on the Range up on the Texaliens page! Mine won’t be back until Tuesday (yes, I procrastinated again), but I will post some then. There are two wonderful pics of Brian dancing with sparklers…. thanks, Steve! :)

I love riddles! The more elusive, the better… [from Zannah– who just got married Saturday… Congrats to her and the James!]

I just spent the past seven hours tweaking a Flash animation for work… but I’m finally done, and everything works as it is supposed to. =) It gets tedious sometimes, but it’s always worth it in the end.

Must go to bed… would rather stay up and surf, but that might make getting up for work a bit difficult. Like it is *every* day. ;) Ah, Monday. Gotta love Mondays.

Everything seems to be running smoothly so far… I’m now using the old hard drive just for storage– in fact, I don’t even have ICQ installed yet on this drive! I think the only things I’ve installed so far are WinAmp, Photoshop, and drivers for my scanner– I sent Dad a scanned Polaroid shot of the tattoo. His reply: “Yes! The LARGE tattoo! I like it okay, I guess. Looks pretty neat! It is LARGE! Thanks for e-photoing it.
No, no loss of respect, dear daughter. I love you very much.” He didn’t seem too thrilled about the *first* tattoo… now, jokingly, says he’ll bring his belt sander for removal of this one next time he sees me.

Is it odd for me to need his approval like I do? I have this intense need to make my parents proud of me… to make sure I don’t disappoint them; I am not even really sure where that came from. It doesn’t rule my life or anything, but is just one of those things that is always in the back of my head. Maybe it is a matter of just falling into old roles, the roles we played [child-parent] for so long while I was living there. I’m really not sure. Where did I develop this need to be perfect for them? They aren’t over-demanding or overbearing– they very much let me lead my own life and have always encouraged me to be my own person. Maybe that’s why– because I know they trust me enough to be who I am, I worry that I am not good enough to live up to that trust. ??? It’s crazy to even get into this stuff– I know there is no definitive answer…. it just results in those horrible mind-loops. In the end, it’s of no consequence. It’s just how I am.

My parents are wonderful… my whole family is wonderful. I just absolutely adore all of them, and feel so lucky that I am able to count them as friends and family all in one. It’s hard being so far away– I’ve missed them all so much since I moved down here. It’s already been seven years since I left home. That’s hard to imagine sometimes… time goes so quickly.

I should quit typing now– I’m just rambling.

I’m craving coffee.

I’m getting ready to go meet Laura for chai… mmmm…. we’re both in need of a major thoughtspill, and of course, this is best done with the help of coffee or chai. We’re meeting at a Starbucks– a bit lacking in the environment category, but a shorter drive than our usual IHOP meeting place (not that IHOP scores a 10 for environment–eeeka!).

After that, Josh and I are installing Windows 2000 on my second hard drive (8.5gb) and I’ll eventually move all apps over there, and only use my 13gb for storage. I have a lot of clean up to do still– I have so many apps that I don’t even use. I need to burn all sorts of obscure stuff to cd for archival purposes, too. It will be nice to start with a clean drive again, and hopefully, it won’t crash quite so frequently. :)

I just started using deepleap, and I have to say that I’m just entirely too excited about the bookmark feature! I can now bookmark things at work and access them from home without trying to retrace all the sites I’ve surfed for the day in search of a link. Woohoo!

Chai time…

Shan gets the keys to her apartment today… I know she’s excited, and will be happy to be out of the House of Chaos. I love walking into an empty apartment– it looks so big, so clean, so empty– just waiting for you to make it yours, to make it home. There’s something to be said for rolling around on the carpet of an empty room– especially if it’s new carpet! Avoid diving somersaults, though… it’s easy to misjudge wall placement in a new environment. ;)

There’s been a lot on my mind for the past few days, and much of it is very confusing to me. Life has felt heavy… and existence is enough to wear me out.

Is it possible to want two different things for different reasons, and want them both equally as much? The two can’t coexist… it has to be one way or another… but a decision between the two seems impossible. It’s such a strange dichotomy– there are pros and cons in both directions, and there is no right or wrong answer. Everything is a shade of grey. I’ve never dealt with something quite like this before– I’ve always had a preference one way or the other, even if only marginally so.

For so many reasons, I want Josh and I to live together after this lease is up. And yet, for so many other reasons, I want my own place. It’s all so complicated and convoluted…. and because emotion plays such a big part in the decision, nothing is as it first seems. Fortunately, I have a few months to decide; however, I feel like I need to decide before that time comes– I don’t want to spring anything on Josh at the last minute. Ideally, this would be a decision he and I come to as a couple. I don’t want him to think I’m trying to distance myself from him– I’m not. There are just some things in life that one needs to experience, and I think living alone is one of them. I’ve never done that before… and I think it would be an invaluable lesson. On the flip side, we would probably end up spending most of our time at one place or the other, and it makes a lot more sense financially to live together. Again, I’m thankful that I don’t have to decide right away. There is a lot of talking to be done…

I’ve been avoiding posting, and I don’t know why. There are things I need to say, things I need to write about so they’ll quit pummeling my brain… and still, I resist. I’m so good at this game– putting up walls and hiding behind them, then denying that I ever put up a wall in the first place. My mind is a strange place to live in…

Josh rocks. I knew this before, but he has proven it again: two color gameboys and three sets of games showed up on our doorstep, courtesy of Josh. Yay! I forsee many, many hours of Tetris in my future. Thanks, Smoshy!