I’ve been working on a short story recently, a “line story.” Basically, one person writes a sentence and hands it off to another person who then uses it as a basis for a short story of some flavor, working it in wherever deemed fitting. I used to do that a lot in high school creative writing classes and at one point even started writing a novel with a friend using this concept. Well, Jules gave me a great line which I’ve been trying to work into this story for awhile now. The whole idea is not so much that you have to stick to this line; it simply serves as a starting point to get your creativity going. The original concept I had for the story is completely different than what it’s become, but that’s perfectly fine because there are no rules or boundaries or guidelines. It’s creative writing!

One thing I’ve always been good with is language. I quite enjoy manipulating English, working my mad vocabulary skillz, and creating a set of words that flow and work together seamlessly. Thinking back on it, I rather enjoyed learning French in high school as well, and was rather good at it (apart from being horrible at the nasal accent)…once when I was going through some old papers from hs I found an award certificate for having the top grade in my class…two years in a row. @_@ I don’t even remember getting it…but anyhow… It’s always been the written part of language that comes naturally to me; speaking has always been something of a challenge for me considering I get nervous and flustered easily when speaking, and often don’t know what to say. One could call me articulate with the written word, but a bumbling fool with the spoken word.

I do really love to write though; it’s been one of those things that has been constant through my life. Beginning back in about fourth grade I started writing short stories and plays and kept journals of all sorts, and have continued up to now. I used to consider my journals deeply personal, as I would write things in them that I would be mortified for my family to read. smile If they read them now, I might be a little embarrassed by how silly they sound, as I often developed really devastating crushes on boys who always ended up turning me down when I’d ask them out (*yes*, I even did this back when I was 10 years old!) so there was a great deal of heartache and lovesickness within those pages.

Now, the medium has changed. I still log my life’s events, thoughts, and feelings, but it is no longer pen and paper, but bytes of digital data. While I do write a great deal of personal stuff in here, I’m aware that I have an audience, so I’m a bit more cautious about what I write. I’ve also become a great deal more comfortable with myself than I was back in the days of “omg omg, insertboysnamehere actually talked to me today, I think he might like me” so things I might have been scared to tell anyone back then don’t bother me anymore. Sheesh…I recall having a Magic 8 Ball and asking it “Does soandso like me?” 100 times and taking a tally of its positive, negative, and indifferent answers it would give me. (Sort of a “he loves me, he loves me not” thing) I was really lovesick my whole childhood and sadly naive but I always thought I was mature beyond my years. laugh

Recording my life is fun for me, a treat of sorts. I really love life and I love talking about the things that make it great, as well as the things that drag me down. It’s just therapeutic and freeing…and such a great way to sort out my thoughts. I’ve found that writing this blahg as though a stranger might read it helps me to explain things more clearly, and thus brings details to my attention that I could have overlooked. I’m really excited to have the comment system in place, as it gives people a chance to share their thoughts and feelings in reaction to what I’ve written. I still write primarily for myself, but I do take into account that this is publicly available material. Thus, in most instances when I talk about my friends I do not use their last names, and I don’t include information about them they wouldn’t want others to know. As a rule of thumb, if something seems somewhat questionable, or I would be embarrassed to have my mother read, I will choose not to write about it. That way things are personal, but not so personal it causes discomfort for people, especially the people I care most about.

Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the way I develop concepts and ideas in my brain. I’ve noticed that it seems to be fairly consistent across mediums and projects, that it’s more a matter of how my mind works than anything to do with writing or graphics or painting in particular. This is how it goes down: I will get a flash of a small piece of a solution, be it a character name, a subject matter, or one event or image I’d like to include. These are what I call “kernels” because they are not full-fledged ideas, but rather just snippets of larger concepts. Most often, I will be stuck with these kernels for a long time before anything else comes to mind.

Take my “Avatar” painting for example. Back in August of 2002, I had the idea that I would like to do a painting featuring the Cheshire Cat. I had a painting class in the fall, so I thought perhaps I’d be able to come up with something later on. It wasn’t until November that I started thinking about it again and began to do research into the inner workings of “Alice in Wonderland.” My first attempt at painting him failed miserably as I had no ideas…only images other artists had created of him and the text of the original story. Frustrated, I began to talk with my dearest friend Jules about it (he’s excellent for bouncing my ideas off of…we’re so often operating on the same level with our thoughts that things flow back and forth rapidly) and after some serious brainstorming, the overall concept whacked me aside the head. WHACK!!! It wasn’t the whole idea though, just the overall message I wanted to convey. There was still a huge piece missing. And it wasn’t until a few weeks later that the final part of the idea bashed me in the noggin. (I’m actually speaking literally here, as when the ideas finally come to me, I feel a physical jolt along with it.)

So really, what I’m describing here is my inability to work to a plan or outline. Ideas come gradually to me, in chunks that I often don’t fully comprehend, and often not in a very convenient time frame. If I start planning something out in too much detail, I end up angry and frustrated for two reasons: 1) In most cases, I simply cannot fill in the missing areas, and 2) I never stick with the plan anyhow. Like everything else in my life, I believe that things happen for a reason, when they’re meant to happen. Forcing them out is not going to help anything, it’s only going to cause irritation and disappointment. Perhaps I’m comfortable with this because I feel that when I’m being creative, I’m simply channeling inspiration from another source, outside of myself. I do believe I have a talent…that I’m sensitive enough to be a good medium for these ideas. I have been blessed with basic skills for creating art and writing and other creative undertakings, but all the ideas come from a place that is without me rather than within. I am in absolute awe of all my peers who can plan out an entire design or concept before they even begin the actual work of creating it, because I’ve tried this many times before and failed miserably. (There have been a few fluke cases of something working out in full right away but they are few and far between.) For a long time I thought I was just lazy or there was something wrong with me, but I’ve realized that I just work differently than most people. And because I’m now aware of that, I’m a lot more relaxed about brainstorming ideas. I keep a notebook with me at all times so I can jot down whatever kernels come to mind, knowing that when they are ready to be fully realized, they will be. I trust it now.

Since I’ve been thinking about fear so much recently, I’ve been considering doing a series of paintings based on my worst fears. More specifically, my worst irrational fears from childhood, since my fears now have more to do with psychological, “grown up” things like not having enough money or losing my friends somehow rather than the “monster under the bed” type of fear. So I guess this is a good place to start listing exactly what scared me.

• Seeing something in the mirror that shouldn’t be there (ie, ghost or ‘Bloody Mary’)
• Aliens standing over my bed when I’m trying to sleep, or being abducted by aliens
• A crab coming up and pinching my toes if I left them above the covers at night
• Anything reaching up and grabbing me from under the bed while I’m trying to sleep
• Falling into the septic tanks in the backyard of my house and drowning (my brother almost did once, but I caught him before he fell in)
• The sump pump in the basement (it was right below my bedroom and it always sounded like something angry and scary)
• The whispering voice in “Field of Dreams”
• ET screaming at Elliott in the cornfield
• A dream I had when I was 6 where there was this unspeakably evil presence named “Norway” that was a complete and utter threat to my life…it was years before I was able to hear the name of that country without getting lightheaded and covered in cold sweat
• Seeing ghosts

That’s really the extent of my childhood fears…you see they’re nothing like what I’m afraid of now. But a lot of those are real fodder for some good artwork, mainly due to the emotional and psychological impact they had on me for so many years. The worst one was probably that Norway dream when I was 6, which actually to this day makes me uneasy. I don’t remember having ever heard of the country before so I don’t know where the name would have come from. But I recall the first time I heard it talked about in reference to the country, I was sitting in the media center of my elementary school with my first grade class. We were in the TV area, where there was this plush burgandy carpet, and the teacher turned the lights out so we could watch a video and I remember being paralyzed with fear because she knew about Norway…how could anyone know about this character from my dream?! It was so terrifying to me. Norway was going to get me and I couldn’t escape it. I mean, if you can picture something that embodies the evilest of the most unspeakable evil in the universe, so black and stinking of death and suffering, that was Norway. I never got a good look at him, I just knew that’s what he was. I also knew he was sharp and pointy, sort of tree-like, and that touching him would mean instant death. He was all about death. Even now, I cannot think of anything that is more terrifying than the creature in that dream. shudder

Most of the rest of the things were a product of the shows I used to watch all the time when I was probably too young to be watching that sort of thing: “Sightings”, “Unsolved Mysteries”, “The Outer Limits”, etc. All of these “reality” supernatural type shows where the people on there were constantly being visited by aliens and ghosts and having all manner of weird, unexplained things happen to them. I used to read books about the supernatural all the time… Whitley Strieber’s “Communion”, books by Budd Hopkins, all the popular stuff, whatever the library had. So being inundated with all of this material all the time it’s no wonder I started to fear all these things happening to me. But of course, nothing ever did happen…or if it did, I’ve repressed it. shrug

A more realistic fear that I carry with me still is pyrophobia. I am absolutely terrified of fire. I’m really not sure what caused it, but I was burned several times in my childhood, a few times severely enough to cause blistering. But even now, the idea of lighting a book match makes my hands shake and I go all pale. I’m somewhat okay with lighting a cigarette lighter or striking a wooden match, but even those things make me nervous. And when my roommates mess around with candles and matches in the house, I get panicky. They tend towards the pyromaniac side, which doesn’t mix too well with my fear. Yikes.

I also have a fear of abandonment drawn from an experience I had in high school. There’s always this worry in the back of my mind that my friends will leave me for being me, as it occurred when I was 16. Fortunately, the friendships I’ve developed since then have been much stronger and founded in the idea that they love me for the way I am (and vice versa), they’re not just there for superficial reasons. That’s also strained my ability (and desire) to be friends with females, as it was a group of girls that brought on this fear. I’m very very careful about the female friends I choose, and am often times cautious or even suspicious about their motives before I know them well.

Hmm.

Well, now that I’ve shared all that information… ^^;;;

Yesterday was a lot better than Saturday. Brian and I went shopping in the afternoon. I got a shirt with Milton on it that says “Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler.” He showed me the apartments he and hachi are considering moving into. We had lunch at Victoria’s (mmmmmmm!) and I drank my glass of wine plus his (since he was driving.) When we got back the roomies were home and wanting to get drunk so I drank more while playing drunken DDR. It’s amazing how much of DDR is muscle memory (for me) because I was stumbling around the house, yet when it was my turn to dance, I was getting AAs and As on standard mode…it made no sense. I could feel my motor skills being affected but if I concentrated enough I could still dance quite well.

Later that night I did some voice chat with Ross, which I don’t get to do nearly often enough. Was very nice indeed. :3

I felt kind of crappy this morning so I slept in a tiny bit longer than usual. Today is a nice quiet day, so I’m listening to lots of The Gathering. Ross uploaded more of it, but I didn’t have time to transfer it onto my mp3 player yet.

Oh yeah, I also got the game Siren, but I haven’t tried it yet. I’ve been too into Fatal Frame to bother. XD

I also had a completely whacked dream the other night, but I don’t know if I have the energy to type it all out right now. I’ll try though.

Dream:
I was with a bunch of people in a large house that I didn’t recognize. We all wanted to play video games, but the video game system was in the basement. One guy had brought a PC game with him (I could see it was a PC game by the size and shape of the box it came in) that was some action/adventure multiplayer game. So we decided to try it out. We all went in the basement and someone handed out PS2 controllers and we all sat down in front of several TVs. (Somehow the game could show different players on different TVs, almost like it was a PC game.) I wondered how we could be playing the game on the PS2 if it was a PC game. So the guy who brought it told me to follow him and he’d explain it. So I went upstairs with the guy, and he pointed out that he had his XBox playing the game and transmitting it to the PS2 over wireless. I was really astounded because I didn’t know the hardware was that compatible or even capable of doing such a thing. He didn’t want me to tell anyone else about it for some reason, and before we went back downstairs, he covered the XBox up with a t-shirt or jacket or somesuch.

Back downstairs we got back into the game. I was playing as myself, and the view was third person. The objective of the game was to go around and stab the creatures roaming around this island as well as the other players. The major weapon that did the most damage was a huge hypodermic needle, but I couldn’t find any. All I found was blunt pencils. I came across another player who was just laying down in the sun with his shirt halfway up his chest. He told me the blunt pencils are a crappy weapon, but they’ll do some damage. The points you get for jabbing the other player with the pencils are the same whether you do it really hard or just tap them lightly, so I had mercy on him for explaining it to me and only jabbed him lightly in his pudgy, exposed stomach. There was also several minigames in the larger game. One was a practice range for War of the Monsters, where there were these girdered towers all over the place, so you could practice picking them up and throwing them so you could impale the other players. Brian got the hang of it and he wanted to try on other players but there was no one else around. The other minigame was this ball game. You had to hang onto this ball and pass it back and forth between you and your teammates while running over a footbridge that had a huge gap in it. If you could successfully get the ball over the gap in the bridge without falling through, you got to cuddle up with this green blobby creature with prickly hair. The guy doing the demonstration was doing awesome with the passing part of the game but when he leapt across the gap, he fell through. So it was my turn to try. I transformed into a tall anime girl with really big red hair and wide shoulders. I could run faster than ever before and I was able to get over the gap with no trouble, so I got to cuddle with the green creature, which seemed harmless, and it actually gurgled when I got close to it, as a sign of affection.

Haha. Yeah. I dreamt that all in the space of an hour too. XD My mind is seriously one of the strangest of any on this planet, guaranteed.

Grr. In a very annoyed mood right now. Everyone is gone and I’m here by myself for the night. I ended up watching romance movies that made me cry and then I started feeling really lonely. I got frustrated with myself for my need to be around people…the people I love. Being around my friends is not just something nice to do once in awhile, it is a necessary part of my happiness. I really shouldn’t be looking at that as a weakness but tonight it really seems that way. I’m upset, frustrated, and giving myself a headache…really…over nothing. So I’m by myself watching movies in my room, big deal. It is a big deal though. Why must I love and crave love so much? It’s because my purpose in life is to love and be loved, that’s why. I really feel like crying my eyes out right now, just to release this frustration.

I don’t scare as easily as I used to, it seems. I spent several hours over the last couple days reading about ghosts and other unnerving topics, then last night I played Fatal Frame for about an hour before bed. Typically that would at least get me paranoid that something was going to be watching me from beside the bed (well, the couch) or that there’d be something in the mirror behind me, but I didn’t feel any of that. I felt a slight uneasiness when I turned the lights out, but no fear. Hmm, odd. I wonder if I’m becoming desensitized to the fear associated with these things. I’m sure under the right circumstances it’d all come back full force, but I think for the most part I don’t scare myself much anymore.

Well, last night we went to Koreana…again. Had sushi…again. :D~~~~~~~~ Sooooooooo yummy. It’s such an expensive habit to get into….but it’s just sooooooooo gooooood.

Not sure what the weekend has in store yet, but I’m sure it’ll be something good.

So today I was browsing fark.com as I usually do, and I came across a thread labeled “Discuss: Does any Farker have a true ghost story to share?” so of course I went through and read it. Ghosts have always been a subject I’ve been very interested in…I’m equally afraid of and curious about the idea of them (what they are, what they mean), and I must say it’s the curiosity that wins out time and again. That, and I love to scare the shit out of myself. I consistently will read, watch, and participate in things that I know will scare me, simply because I get a thrill from the adrenaline rush of being terrified.

I used to have this love/hate relationship with scary stuff when I was younger, though back then it was mostly hate. I remember being in first grade and having the fourth grade girls shove me and my friends into the bathroom, turning off the lights, and making us say “Bloody Mary” into the mirror until we were crying and nearly pissing our pants in fear. I was so terrified by that that for the whole next school year I would never go to the bathroom at school and even at home I had to have one of my parents nearby. I guess it’s really no wonder that to this day I’m very nervous about looking at myself in mirrors. It isn’t my reflection that scares me, but the possibility that there’s going to be something looking back at me that isn’t supposed to be there. For some reason I always think the mirror is the place a ghost is going to show up if it ever does…hence why I only have a single 8″ diameter round mirror in my room.

I’m not sure I’ve really developed an opinion of what ghosts are or where they come from, but I do believe that they exist. I can’t for certain say I’ve ever seen one either, though I have seen something that wasn’t supposed to be there.

In my parents’ house, I had the room at the end of the hallway. It is a ranch-style house, so the hallway connects the kitchen to the bedrooms, and if you stand in the doorway to my bedroom, you can see across the entire length of the house. There were a couple instances where I’d be standing on the side of the room nearest the doorway, doing something by my dresser, and out of the corner of my eye I’d see a small shadowy thing moving towards me from the kitchen. It was quite small, like the size of a large cat or a small dog. Whenever I’d look directly at it, there’d be nothing there, of course. This happened maybe three or four times over the course of like 5 years, and I was both scared and exhilarated by it. At one point I decided I was going to test my willpower and the next time I caught it out of the corner of my eye, I was just going to continue watching it that way, rather than turning my head to face it. So I did, and I watched the shadow enter my room and come up next to me, almost like it was a little dog jumping up on my leg. I wasn’t scared at all; in fact I was actually very excited by it, smiling and laughing. I never saw it again after that.

That’s about the only ghost-like thing I’ve ever witnessed, and it wasn’t a negative thing so I guess that’s why I haven’t been totally scared off the idea. There were some interesting things I experienced through my roommate Alisha when we lived together in the dorm, but nothing as overt as that. Well, actually, there’s a story that goes along with that…

We used to use the Ouija board quite a bit when we lived in the dorms. We kept getting this entity that called herself Beth, and she was quite *strong*. She had a very commanding presence, and often wouldn’t allow any other spirits on the board, and was actually physically strong…there were times where she’d be moving the indicator around the board so fast and hard that neither of us could keep our fingers on it. It would just fly out of our grasp (then abruptly stop, of course.) In any case, Beth told us she was Alisha’s guardian spirit, which makes some amount of sense considering the strong personality Alisha has. Then one night after we’d talked with Beth for awhile, Alisha woke up in the middle of the night and saw a woman’s face a few inches away from her own face. The woman had mussy, curly hair and nasty crooked teeth, but she had a huge, happy grin on her face. Needless to say, Alisha was pretty freaked out–so freaked out she wanted to come down to the lower bunk and hold me (she was in the upper bunk) but was too terrified to even open her eyes or move. The next morning she told me about it and there was this rattling noise that kept following her around the room. It sounded like it was in the wall by her desk, but it moved over to the closets and then down the hall when she left the room. There were smaller things in the room that we kept finding in places neither of us put them, and the clocks in the room kept getting turned back about 15 minutes (including my watch, which I’d just gotten a new battery for). The next time we talked to Beth we told her she was not allowed to show herself anymore or move crap around the room or make scary noises, and after that none of the stuff happened anymore.

Anyhow, I could go on and on about Beth and Alisha, but there’s far too much to tell and I really don’t want any of the other stories floating around the net. XD

Reading all the ghost stories just brought all these things to mind…that, combined with playing Fatal Frame last night and watching Will play Fatal Frame 2 over the weekend just got me into a supernatural-type mood. Then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, I got a rush of creativity and started getting all sorts of ideas for paintings. I’m really sad Will isn’t awake right now because there’s one idea in particular that I want to bounce off him for feedback…. :-D I’d like to try out my airbrush but I’m not sure this would be the right place. Besides I really crave the smell and texture of oil paints right now.

It feels fantastic to feel this surge, this outpouring of creativity right now, because it really has been months since I’ve felt anything like this. I’ve been burnt out by my last two semesters of school for so long…I wasn’t exactly worried that it would never return…just that it might take a long time. And there’s no guarantee that it has returned either, by later tonight I could be returning to my restless state of “meh”…of just wanting to hang out with people I love and not wanting to express myself except through that love. Not that that’s a bad thing necessarily, but there’s been a big part of me missing since the burnout.

Feeling a mite strange this morning as I was up rather late last night playing 1kbwc with my roommates. And yes, because it was with my roommates, it was a drinking game even before it began. I know a bunch of photos were taken but I have yet to take a look at my camera. It was a good time. Alisha was in a really excitable and ridiculous mood.

Strangely enough, I actually feel less tired today than I have in awhile, and my body is a bit out of sorts because of the drinking. I’m sure at any given moment I’ll just feel the urge to nap but it hasn’t hit me yet.

Weekends always go by too fast. smile I realized on the way back from Green Bay early Sunday morning that I’ve gotten together with the GB folks every weekend since the middle of Febtober. It’s gotten to the point where it just seems wrong not to plan something with them. This week no one had overtly planned anything so Friday night when we were just sitting around, hachi said to me, “Where’s Peter?” and I shrugged and said “I don’t know hachi.” “Should we call him up?” he replied, half-jokingly. So I hopped online and organized a get together for Saturday night in GB. What should have been a 10-to-15-minute conversation dragged out for over an hour as I tried to communicate between myself and Will and myself and Peter over two different chat programs and ask hachi his opinion as he sat on my couch tinkering away at his laptop. All three parties were quite indecisive and slow to respond so it was highly frustrating for me as I’m total crap at organizing stuff like this. XD But in the end, it worked out perfectly so all is well.

Saturday morning was just gorgeous, so I went rollerblading with Alisha. When I came back I ate some lunch, then got together with hachi. I ended up driving his car to GB because he wanted to tinker on his laptop some more. The weather was absolutely beautiful…shorts weather! We played with Peter’s dogs for awhile, attempted to play hackeysack and fly a kite, then went rollerblading. I’m quite glad Peter took the time to locate his wrist guards because he ended up falling again, and they saved him from hurting himself too severely. Man, sometimes I just assume that everyone had grown up rollerblading as I had, so I’m surprised when some people my age are actually still beginners.

After a little while the rest of the people showed up (Will, Hiroko, Melissa, Don) and collectively we made okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake type thingie)…didn’t eat until 9 PM, but it was so filling I was stuffed. After dinner we played all manner of games, and just had a blast. The most fun was had with the pinball machine in his basement…I had never played a real, mechanical pinball game before (always a computer version) so it was quite addicting and fun. We also played a reasonable amount of foosball (also, which I’ve never played!) And the rest of the night was spent watching Will play through a good portion of Fatal Frame 2 and listening to Hiroko tell him how much he sucked (even though he was actually doing awesome.) We all probably would have stayed longer but Peter wanted to get to bed at a reasonable time so we left at like 4:30 AM. XD XD Then hachi and I searched out his dad’s car in some parking ramp in Appleton and I drove his car back to his house. What an awesome night.

Sunday was just wonderful. The weather was great again, but I slept until about 2 since I hadn’t gone to bed until almost 5:30. I took a trip over to my parents’ house then went shopping. I attacked Target’s clearance rack and got 4 pairs of cargo pants for $13 each. Also got a pair of sporty slide sandals for $6 that make a squishy air sound every time I step (but they’re sooooooo comfortable.) I got sushi from the grocery store and had that for dinner. In the evening, it was time for Tae Bo with Alisha and Big Brian, then I went out with Jeff and TR for wings. Great stuff. Got home after midnight, which was within limits, but I was still tired from the week before so it didn’t help any.

This morning it was still super windy outside, but the temperature is still just phenomenal. It’s perfect weather for just cuddling up on a couch and sleeping. Which is what I really wish I was doing right now. Ah well, having a job is a really good thing, and I’d rather be making money than sleeping. Speaking of which, I’m excited because Peter actually got a job! Today he starts work in Appleton, which is like a 45-or-so-minute drive from his place. (About halfway between Oshkosh and Green Bay) Yay! I’m even happier about it than I normally would be because it’s a result of a opportunity I passed on to him after I got my job. Yay for contacts and connections!

I really hope it’s still nice out this afternoon when I get home. Alisha really wants to get back into Tae Bo on a regular basis, which is great for me because it will (hopefully) mean that I won’t have to cajole and threaten and con and guilt her into exercising with me (which is what I’ve had to do a lot the last few months as it’s the only way she’ll move.) If it’s nice though (and not too windy or rainy) we’ll probably go rollerblading, as that’s more fun for both of us, and it lets us get outside.

Hmm. I was checking out my site’s statistics and came across something unusual. Someone found my painting Lich and posted it as the source of inspiration for a poetry contest. O_O I’m not quite sure what to think of that. I was slightly miffed that they hadn’t asked permission first, or even informed me it was being used, but they were kind enough to copy it onto their own server and give my site credit for it. It was amusing reading the poetry, finding out how other people were reading the painting, what was coming through and what was not. It seems the real meaning of the image is going to remain part of me. smile

If you’re interested, take a look at the contest. No one really caught what I was going for completely, but there were a few pretty good descriptions of what might be going on behind the eyes. There’s only a few select individuals who really know the story, so it’s okay if no one understands.

But wow…inspiration for poetry! I never expected that.

I just went outside for a bit and it’s absolutely beautiful out. I think I’ll go rollerblading after work. :3

Hmm. I read yesterday that Weird Al’s parents both died of carbon monoxide poisoning the morning of the day we saw him in concert. He actually decided not to cancel any of his shows and go on despite this. What a trooper. Al, you’re an awesome guy. I’m so glad to have seen him.

Got to talk to Ross and Jules for quite a bit today…always nice.

Not too much else noteworthy today. Oh…I beat The X-Files game on Saturday night. Despite the bad camera angles and poor object/collision detection it was a good game. I enjoyed it a lot.

I have almost all of my old blahg entries converted to the new system…still have about 6 months left to enter in. The colors in some areas are awful, I know, but I’m working on it. I’m really excited to have functionality for comments now, as that’s the major reason I wanted to switch over to Movable Type.

The weekend went by a little too fast for my taste. Strangely enough, it went by faster than most have in the last couple months, even though I did less. Maybe that’s why.

In any case, Friday night was pretty awesome. I went to see Weird Al in Appleton with Peter, Melissa, and Hiroko. He was playing at the new performing arts center, which I’d never been to, so it was cool getting to see it. Phantom of the Opera is coming there next month, which I’m hoping to see again even though I’ve already seen it 4 times. XD Any Wisconsinites want to go with me? I wouldn’t be against going alone but it’d be nice if someone wanted to go with me.

So anyhow, Weird Al put on a helluva show. I was a bit concerned that I wasn’t going to get to see the show since Peter waited until the last minute to get the tickets, but he came through in the end, so all was good (well, except for him razzing me about not trusting him to get the tickets…) :-P But yeah…Al was just so full of energy. He really seemed like he was having a great time on stage. I was most impressed with his costumes. He played a lot of his classics like “Amish Paradise,” “Fat,” “Lasagna,” “My Bologna” etc. He had all the appropriate costumes for each song…ahhh, so wonderful. He must have played for over 2 hours…the only breaks he took were between songs for costume changes, and during that time he had 3 video screens that played different video segments of popular media centered around him as well as short “interviews” he’d had with musicians. (These consisted of footage of actual interviews given by other people, with Al’s random questioning edited in between the responses.) Was great. His encore was “The Saga Begins” followed by “Yoda.” Ahh, great stuff.

Hiroko said she liked it quite a bit despite the fact she couldn’t understand everything (he sings a bit too fast for her at times) so that made me really happy. After the concert, everyone came back to my place to hang out and play video games for awhile. Hiroko rode back with me, and on the highway, a car in front of me dropped its catalytic converter and it nearly slammed into the front of my car, but landed safely in the center of the road between my tires, so luckily I didn’t drive over it or anything. The car spun off to the left, stinky and smoking. Close one.

So we hung out in my room for a bit. Hiroko got into the Cadbury eggs that were out on the kitchen table and didn’t let up. XD Peter beat The X-Files game as Mulder (with the unlimited ammo cheat on, which seemed almost completely necessary O_O) and then we played a couple rounds of War of the Monsters. Brian and hachi took off at some point and the rest of us checked out Fatal Frame on the advice of Hiroko. Very cool, I should give it another try. Funny thing was that even when the three of them left after 2 AM, Hiroko was still full of energy with no signs of the sleepiness she often displays far earlier in most evenings. XD

So Saturday was a kind of nothing day. I got up relatively early and cleaned my room, but by afternoon I wasl aready feeling tired, so I decided to take a nap. I slept for five hours, and woke up some time after 8 PM. So I went grocery shopping. I got a bunch of good food…as I suddenly came to the realization I was no longer a college student, so I didn’t have to continue eating like one. I came home and ate sushi for dinner and made yummy noises for about an hour afterwards XD.

Then Sunday was Easter, so I went over to my aunt’s house as usual. Joe was home from Madison so it was cool to talk to him a bit. Dinner was nummy. When I got back Alisha was home so I talked to her for several hours before we did Tae Bo. Then Brian and Tiff got back, so we all had supper and then watched “About Schmidt,” which was a “meh” kind of movie. Brian brought his family dog Choco with him for the week so we all took turns cuddling with him (the dog, not Brian.)

Hmm.

Well, last week went by really really fast. At this time last week I was tooling around the Australian store in Portland. Not having work on Monday really made the week short. I was so freaking tired all week though…I napped an awful lot as well as not exercising all that much. I hope to change that this week.

So I’ve been doing a ton of thinking about what the semi-near-future holds for me. Right now there are a lot of things that are working out really well for me. I have a fantastic job, a really nice car, and friends that I absolutely adore. I’m getting to have all sorts of really cool adventures now that I have time and money. And there are any number of things that could happen to affect what I end up doing after September.

My contract is officially up on October 1. The chances of it being renewed until at least December are pretty good, though not guaranteed. I really have no idea where the project is heading. The lease on the house I live in is up September 1. So that means for at least one month I’ll have to find another place to live. Hachi and Brian are likely going to get an apartment together in Menasha (a city about 20 minutes away) so I might be able to stay with them for awhile. I could move back home temporarily. Will and Hiroko could move to Portland as soon as June. So perhaps I could be moving out there already. O_O I don’t even know where to begin…the possibilities are just endless, and any number of things could happen between now and then. I really really really want to move to Portland. I just don’t want to do it alone. I know that if Will and Hiroko are already out there it won’t be so bad once I get there, but the getting there is what I’m worried about. It would be so great if I could convince Peter or Brian or hachi (or all of them) to come along…

That’s been all-consuming in my thoughts as of late. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been so tired. It’s not a bad kind of tired, it’s more of….”my life is really exciting right now and going somewhere exciting, yet I have no idea what’s going to happen or when.” :-)