You’ve changed me. Already. I’ve learned that the idea I’d had in my mind about love was amazingly insubstantial compared to what I’ve discovered. I’ve always known that I have a great capacity to love, and I’ve known what it’s like to love and be in love, but what I’m learning day by day is that this capacity goes far beyond anything I ever could have guessed. It’s out there at the edge of my comprehension, smiling at me, encouraging my mind to follow it, but knowing that it will never be able to fully grasp it. I hope to continue growing and discovering exciting and new things that make me smile like a madwoman when I should be thinking of other things. You complement me perfectly in so many ways, and bring a fire and life to me that I didn’t know I possessed. All paths have been leading to this and where they lead from here can only be somewhere amazing.

Even though I’ve heard this song literally hundreds of times, I’ve never actually listened to the lyrics before. I’ve just realized it describes my situation perfectly and I want to have it at my wedding someday in some capacity. (Unfortunately Billy Corgan can be a little difficult to understand at times so it may have to be a multimedia presentation of some sort so people can see the lyrics.)

You and me
Meant to be
Immutable
Impossible

It’s destiny
Pure lunacy
Incalculable
Insufferable

But for the last time
You’re everything that I want and ask for
You’re all that I’d dreamed
Who wouldn’t be the one you love
Who wouldn’t stand inside your love
Protected and the lover of

A pure soul and beautiful you
Don’t understand
Don’t feel me now
I will breathe
For the both of us
Travel the world
Traverse the skies
Your home is here
Within my heart

And for the first time
I feel as though I am reborn
In my mind
Recast as child and mystic sage
Who wouldn’t be the one you love
Who wouldn’t stand inside your love

And for the first time
I’m telling you how much I need and bleed for
Your every move and waking sound
In my time
I’ll wrap my wire around your heart and your mind
You’re mine forever now
Who wouldn’t be the one you love and live for
Who wouldn’t stand inside your love and die for
Who wouldn’t be the one you love

I guess if I had to describe this weekend in one word it would be Exhaustion. I was unbelievably sleepy the whole time and I didn’t sleep well at all. I was restless and distracted a lot. Friday night the guys came over, which was cool. We played some DDR and Brian spilled the beans about his new girlfriend. :-D I’m so happy for him, he’s been so sad for so long and it’s great to see him a bit happier. I didn’t sleep very long that night…I was having this really involved dream about riding in a car with the Aussies. Ross was driving, Jules was in the passenger seat, and Rose was in the back with me. We were in Oshkosh and headed to a bank. Jules had a really tricked out ipod that he didn’t even need to touch to control, he just waved his hand in front of it and it responded. Most of what I recall is him being really excited about it and showing it off. But the interesting thing is that yes, I awoke twice during this dream, but both times when I went back to sleep, the dream continued on. Hmm. I got up for good at somewhere around 9 AM after waking up at least once before that.

I chatted with Ross until I had to get ready for Justin’s wedding. Brian came to get me and we bought some cheap DVDs and had lunch together (I had my $6.66 meal) before rushing to the wedding. We were a minute late and the bride was already going down the aisle. It was the quickest ceremony I’d ever seen (~20 minutes!) Brian and I listened to the Tripod CD in the car on the way there and on the way to the reception, and he seemed to quite like it, which pleased me since I really enjoy it. We stopped off at a mall for awhile because we had some time to kill and Brian took some pictures of me dressed up (since it happens so rarely) so if that interests you, you’ll have to go digging for them because I’m not going to link them here. XD The dinner was pretty good and we got to talk to Jeff, Erin, and Rene quite a bit. When they began clearing out the tables for the dance, I began feeling increasingly restless so Brian and I left. When I got back, the PS2 -> USB adapters had arrived so I spent the night trying to get them to work properly with Stepmania. I had limited success and eventually gave up in frustration.

Again, restless sleep…I awoke several times before finally getting up. Talked to Ross again until Jon began bugging me to get over to his house for chicken. I called Will and woke him up (or so it sounded), referred to Hiroko as “Ryoko” by accident, then Brian dropped by and picked me up. Jon’s sister was having her high school graduation party so there were cars and people everywhere. We hung out in Jon’s room for awhile, had some delicious food and some extremely delectable custard cake and cheesecake (Jon laughed at my orgasmic sounding yummy noises as I ate it) then got Stepmania going on his laptop. Worked just fine with a different version of SM so we decided my version was teh suck. After a bit more hanging out I was falling asleep. The room was extremely warm and I’d been drinking wine coolers so it was a perfect environment for a nap. I suggested going to supper so I could get up and move and try to shake off the sleepiness but that didn’t work too well. We went to Nakashima’s and had a crapload of sushi. It was soooooo yummy. :3 We taught Hiroko the correct way to pronounce “orange” as the waitress didn’t understand her when she ordered orange sherbet for dessert. It was somewhat late when we finished dinner so we drove around looking for a place that was open, and nothing was. The sky was absolutely gorgeous so we found a relatively open area for me to take some photos of the sunset and clouds. Will said “It should be a crime for the sky to look this awesome.” We did an exchange of goods; Will gave Jon a memory stick for his camera and gave me his old Dreamcast and the book “Pattern Recognition” that his roommate Jon (not to be confused with hachiJon) has been recommending to me. We parted ways with promises of hanging out again soon. Jon is going to YAPC in Buffalo this week and Peter is on vacation with his family so it will probably be sometime next week when we get together.

When we got back to my place Jon helped me figure out what was going on with my computer and Stepmania…and as it turns out, upgrading the version of the game and moving the adapter to a different USB port fixed the problem(s). We talked about his business cards and then he went home. I played around with the Dreamcast a bit and found myself utterly lost as everything was in Japanese and I couldn’t figure out what was what. I got one of the games I’d downloaded to work, which was cool, but I had to figure out everything by trial and error as I couldn’t read any of the text. I chatted for a bit before bed and then fell into a restless sleep in which I experienced a quasi-nightmare about being in Fleet Farm (a farm supply store located in the Midwest US) and someone was following me with a knife. Also, because I was feeling really angsty about not being able to understand the text on the Dreamcast, I was getting afraid I’d have to give Will his DC back. But I dreamt I found the language option and then I was able to sleep somewhat decently, for a few hours at least. I could barely pull myself out of bed when my alarm went off, and after my shower I began searching the DC options to find a way to change the language from Japanese to English and was overjoyed when I located it. whew

So many exciting things to do now, but I’m so tired. I hope I can get some restful sleep soon…this is too hard on my body.

The weather went from ungodly hot and humid to comfortably cool and rainy in the last two days. My roommates and I are discussing getting an air conditioner, which would really rock.

It’s been a pretty lazy couple of days…I really haven’t done a helluva lot. On Monday my mom emailed me to say a package had arrived from Ross, and I was planning on having dinner over there on Tuesday night so I had to endure a day of anticipation before I could go and get it. It was very sweet actually…he’d sent me a necklace he’d found at an airport as well as a sterling silver pendant in the shape of Australia. That was something I’d asked him to keep his eyes open for just in case it was around somewhere…it’s one of those items you know exists, but you’re not sure where to find. In any case, it was a very pleasant surprise and caused me to grin like an idiot for a long while.

And dinner with my parents was very nice indeed…we talked about my childhood–in particular my unwillingness/inability to sleep. I guess when I was an infant I would never sleep unless my mom or dad was holding me. The second they’d set me down in the crib I’d wake up and call out to them. Eventually Mom would just get herself a book and read while she held me as I slept, because no matter what she did I wouldn’t cooperate. When my brother was born and they brought him home, she was astonished that he’d sleep on his own in the crib. smile I guess that just shows how much I’ve always needed human contact, closeness, and intimacy. And that I’ve never been interested in sleeping. XD

Other things of interest…I guess I was really colicky when I was little, so I cried a lot. I must have given my parents hell. o.o And Mom said I used to jerk in my sleep a *lot*…you know the kind of thing that happens when you dream you’re falling and you jerk yourself awake? Even today, I do that a ton. Someone suggested that this is what happens when you astral travel and you re-enter your body suddenly. Hmm, it makes sense to me. Also, I had an imaginary friend named Pato (pronounced Pat-oh) who apparently I used to talk about all the time. My parents said they never heard me talking to him but I used to mention that he was hanging around all the time. Sadly they didn’t record any of the things I said about him, because it’s normal for children to have imaginary friends so they didn’t think about it too much. There’s a theory that imaginary friends are guardian angels/spirits and this also makes a lot of sense to me. My brother’s was named Gocha (Go-cha). These names are too bizarre to just have been made up. I don’t think we would have been that creative.

I really like hearing stories about what I was like as a child during the time before my memories began, because it seems that a lot of my traits have carried on the whole way. The whole conversation actually began because I asked my mom if my brother and I were ever obnoxious as kids (particularly in public.) I don’t recall ever misbehaving or causing a scene in public, and rarely at home (except, of course, the physical fighting I did with my brother) and she said that except for the sibling rivalry we were some of the best-behaved children she’d ever seen, and that she and Dad could take us anywhere in public without having to worry about us causing a ruckus. The majority of children I’ve seen in public have been whiny, loud, irritating, and obnoxious, and as my mom said of the kids she’s seen at the library (where she works) “They are enough to cause a person to want to become celibate.” They really are…I mean, these kids really turn me off from the idea of ever becoming a mother because sheesh…having these little things running around the house, destroying everything and causing mayhem…that is not attractive. I just picture what it’d be like to have my studio all set up and have them wanting to play with my art supplies, or even worse, to ruin my paintings in any number of different ways. shudder I do not have the patience nor the willingness to sacrifice my freedom required to raise children. Maybe one day I’ll feel differently but I seriously doubt it. I play the mother to so many people in my life that the nurturing instinct in me is fulfilled already.

Last night I napped for a bit after work, then went grocery shopping. My parents let me borrow their microwave for the summer, so I was able to “cook” again. XD Had some rice and a sandwich and some wine. Half a bottle to be exact. After watching a couple movies I did voice chat with Jules and Ross and Rosey. That was wonderful even though their connection was a bit dodgy, so there was some garbling and cutting out, but overall it wasn’t intolerable. Their accents are so yummy, but strangely they all wanted me to repeatedly pronounce the word “Crap” because for some reason they find it very cute. I don’t see anything cute about it myself, but it must sound odd to them or something. Ah well, as long as it tickles them the way it does, I’ll keep doing it. I wanted to stay up and talk to them but it was getting really late and the wine was making me sleepy. Ah well. I went to bed and had an incredibly active and motion-driven dream and woke up drooling like mad. I wonder what the dream was about…?

It’s not even 10:30 and my stomach is growling like mad. My coworkers and I are going out to lunch today, which we’re all excited for, and I think that’s making my stomach dance with anticipation. Mmmmmm.

Holy CRAP it’s humid outside! My bedroom has once again taken on the properties of a greenhouse, and therefore I’m sleeping in a bath of my own sweat. :-( Gah. It’s great that the weather is finally warm, but jeebus! The walk to work this morning was majorly uncomfortable and my hair is frizzing out and sticking to my neck. One good thing about this is that they’ve finally turned the heat off at work (sheesh) and turned the AC on. So rather than working inside a coal chamber, I’m in a walk-in freezer. Oh well, that’s cool (literally) because it’s easier to work in a cooler temperature than an insanely hot one. I have a hooded sweatshirt here after all.

Last night was really wonderful. The weather was beginning to change to the crazy humidity that it shows today, and the house was very hot. I brought the fans out and set them up, which helped some. I was going to toss a pizza in the oven for supper…I had it all unwrapped and had the oven preheated when I decided I really didn’t want to eat something that greasy when it was so hot out. So rather than trying to shove it back in the packaging that I’d already thrown in the garbage, I cooked it anyhow and made myself a turkey sandwich. I had one slice when it came out but put the rest in the fridge. Not sure when I’ll eat it. My food options are a bit limited at the moment as Erin took the microwave with her when she moved out. I mean, cooking food is no problem on the stove (it takes longer but meh) but it’s the reheating I’m worried about. I can never eat everything I cook in one sitting, and it’s such a waste to heat up the stove to reheat some rice or pizza or something small. Hopefully we’ll find a solution to this soon.

Anyhow, I sat out in the livingroom and finished reading “The Journals of Eleanor Druse” (Kingdom Hospital book) and had a little nap. I found that the temperature outside was rather decent so I sat out there and read a “Red Dwarf” novel until it started to get dark and I saw a gigantic spider building a web right next to my head. I played Stepmania for awhile on my keyboard until my thirst for actual DDR became overwhelming. Did DDR till I was thoroughly dripping and took a relaxing shower. I chatted online until sometime after 1:30 AM and woke up majorly exhausted this morning. Guuuuuhhhhhh. Going to have dinner at parents’ house tonight which will be really nice. If the weather isn’t too crappy Alisha and I will likely go rollerblading.

Hmm. It’s been quite a week…quite a week indeed. The weekend was pretty relaxing, as I didn’t go anywhere outside of town. My set top DVD player stopped responding to the remote on Friday night, which really irritates me because there are features missing from the box like “FFWD” so I can’t skip through previews that some bastard DVD companies are putting on the beginning of discs. :-( There was much sleeping and reading and rollerblading and messing around with Stepmania. No one was really around most of the time so it was rather quiet. Saturday night I had dinner with Alisha and Big Bri at a Chinese restaurant. I didn’t eat anything breaded or fried, and my digestive system didn’t complain, so all was well. The three of us did the Ouija board, Alisha read Tarot cards for me (she’s just started learning) and then we played some Warioware and I did pretty shitty (if shitty is equal to dominating the game then losing at the last second because of a really lame minigame…gah.) I chatted online a bit and decided to sleep after two of the guys in the channel duked it out for the right to marry me. (O______o) But I couldn’t sleep so I came back online for awhile.

I’ve been fairly excited lately thinking about the move to Portland. Will’s going with Hiroko in 2 weeks (according to current plan) and Peter will accompany me in October. I’m probably going to get a hitch installed on my car so I can tow a UHAUL trailer. I’m also considering a roof rack but that’s not for sure. It would be nice to have extra toting capabilities but it’s probably overkill. The roof rack will be nice for transporting my paintings though, once I don’t have access to a truck anymore. I dunno yet; I’m looking into it. From the looks of it, they’re pretty expensive. As a side note, I LOVE my car. :-) It’s absolutely perfect for me, and everything I’ve ever wanted in a car. Plus it’s gorgeous, and it packs a punch, making 25 mph a very difficult task (it wants to go faster than that all the time…)

Brian and I are going to Justin’s wedding on Saturday. He’s the third member of our class who graduated in Computer Science to be married. That both astounds and delights me because it defies the stereotype of CS geeks being inept where women are concerned. It’s strange but awesome at the same time. I also feel kind of strange when I imagine myself in the position of getting married at my current age and think “Waaaay too young!” This usually happens when my 19-year-old mentality is in the forefront, which is pretty often. But the more I think about it, if you’re certain you’ve found the right person then the idea of being too young will not cross your mind. In the moments where I feel more like my true age I’m able to admit to myself that if certain circumstances were slightly different right now, I’d likely be planning my own wedding for real, not just in my head. Marriage at the age of 22 or 23 is not a bizarre or unnatural thing.

I’m the first to admit that I’m enamored with the idea of marriage, and always have been. I suppose that’s probably a very common thing for most women, and a lot of them have a good portion of it already set in their heads before they even meet the right guy. I shift back and forth between wanting a traditional wedding and one that’s pretty off-the-wall. I think it’s likely that mine will be more bizarre than traditional, just given the type of person I am, and the type of man I’m likely to marry. I’m inspired by my classmate Jeff who had the wedding he wanted, complete with being dressed as a Jedi and having the ceremony performed by one of his best friends (who was ordained over the internet.) He said he spent a lot of time during his long shifts at the plastic factory thinking up cool and unusual ideas for the wedding, some of which his wife shot down, but others that she was clearly cool with. That is how it should be really. What is tradition but a set of rules and guidelines designed to be followed blindly, without understanding?

I’m pretty sure my metabolism is speeding up because I’ve been a lot hungrier lately than I normally am. tummy growls

I’ve been bringing soup to work for lunch every day for the last four weeks or so and enjoying the yummy simplicity of vegetables, chicken, and noodles in broth. Mmmm. The tempting aroma has prompted numerous comments from coworkers, usually in reference to how hungry it’s making them, and now they’ve begun bringing in their own soup. Heh. First I get them all to not only get used to working in the dark, but to actually prefer it, and now the soup. What an influence I’ve had on these people! XD

Mmm. Speaking of good food…after dinner last night I began to think about my body’s reaction to particular kinds of food. I went out to Applebee’s with some of the roomies (Big Bri, Tiff, and Courtney, who just moved in and is subleasing from Erin for the summer.) Normally I would have ordered the chicken and broccoli pasta alfredo but after consideration I realized I probably would get sick from that and ordered a stirfry with rice and grilled chicken instead. I didn’t get sick. So that brings me to the point that I don’t think junk food (ie, really rich or fried foods) is my friend. Something I’ve lived with my whole life but never really paid too much attention to was that whenever I’d eat that stuff, it would always upset my digestive system to the point where I had to head to the bathroom about 20 minutes later (almost without fail.) I could never eat the cafeteria style food they served in the commons in college because it had this effect on me, and twice I even got food poisoning. So throughout college I always bought the meal plan that let me do a la carte meals from the student union, which served higher quality but more expensive foods. To me, it was worth the tradeoff.

So ever since the beginning of May when I had that week of non-eating (due to stress) I’ve begun to rethink what I’m feeding myself. I’ve switched over to almost all non-fat or low-fat, low-calorie foods and pretty much stopped drinking milk (I’m giving soy milk a try, though I don’t know if I’ll be able to stick with that because I don’t like the taste.) I’m exercising a lot and getting a decent amount of sleep, plus taking vitamins. I feel a ton better, and have lost about 10 pounds as a result. And my body has become even less tolerant of greasy foods than it was before. I guess that’s generally good, because it makes me less apt to eat them, but sometimes there isn’t an alternative. shrug I’m becoming more and more concerned about keeping myself healthy and energetic because my quality of life is so much better. The one major downside to all the rain we’ve been having lately is that I can’t go rollerblading. Oh well. I bought myself a new foot support for DDR so hopefully I’ll be able to do that for longer periods of time now without pain.

I ordered some PS2 to USB converters for our DDR pads this morning, so once they arrive we’ll be able to hook our pads up to my computer to play Stepmania songs. It’ll be a nice alternative to DDR, and will offer a lot more options than the 50-some songs that are on each PS2 game. I’ve wanted to get one of those converters for a long time because I’m getting tired of doing the same songs, and because Stepmania is open source and easily programmable, you can make up steps to any song you want. Woohoo, that’ll be great. I don’t think I’d be any good at coming up with dance steps though.

Was a pretty destructive weekend where Ann met technology. ~_~ I was burning some CDs to clear up some space on my hard drives (mainly getting the several gigs of Six Feet Under eps off since I’ve watched them all) and when I was done with a disc, Windows popped up the notice that you get when you unsafely unplug a device (usually a scanner or digicam or somesuch…an external USB device) but this was for my internal IDE burner! WTF? So I thought Windows was just being buggy because I hadn’t rebooted in 3 weeks or so, but after rebooting and giving it another try, it told me that both the burner and my DVD-ROM were unplugged! Scanning for new hardware brought them both back, but after trying to burn a third disc, it did the same thing again. Augh. So I took apart my case, removed both the drives, and cleaned all the dust out. There were literally these giant balls of dark gray dust collected all over the place…it was so dirty and gross. My fingers were black from touching it. I also disassembled the burner and the dvd drive and removed the dust from them. The burner worked flawlessly after I put it back in the computer, and even started burning discs at 16x again (it had been dropping to 8x for the longest time) but I must not have assembled the dvd drive correctly because the tray no longer moved. Uh oh. Then I found a spring and this other round piece on the floor. :\ So I took the dvd drive back out and proceeded to lose the spring somewhere inside it. Guh.

I decided then and there to just go buy a DVD burner to replace it…then I could get rid of the need for two separate drives. So I got a Sony burner that supports dual-layer discs (cool!) and put it in. The thing even came with a replaceable black faceplate so it matches my case! Anyhow, after I got it in, I tried to turn my computer on again, but it didn’t work. I checked the wiring to the power switch and one of the wires had broken off. After checking it some more, the other wire broke off in my hand! GUH!!!! So I desperately called hachi and after not getting ahold of him after three calls, he finally got back to me and calmly suggested swapping the jumper on the motherboard for the one connected to the reset button. I was so worried and overreacting I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it, but I figured it out easily and it worked. whew Sheesh. I burned an audio CD to listen to in my car, and when I popped it in, after track 3 the car deck ate the CD. Fricken….! That was on the way to my parents’ house, where I learned that their computer blue screens now whenever it tries to load Windows. MEHHHHHHHH.

So aside from those debacles…the rest of the weekend was pretty good. Friday night I had dinner with my family then went up to Green Bay with Brian and Jon (I’m not going to call him hachi anymore as I’ve decided I don’t like his online persona) to visit Peter. Much gaming ensued including lots of pinball and a bit of Warioware and Tetris (I brought my lovely gamecube along). Melissa brought over this Pacman game that was a board game type setup for the PS2 but I didn’t find it very fun and I did really really bad on it. Peter seemed to be in this “make fun of everything” mood, which included me, and after he won and gloated, Melissa punched him pretty hard, and I must say it was rather deserved. I might have punched him myself then if I’d felt violent.

While Jon and Brian were playing pool, Melissa and I wanted to play with that gigantic playground ball they have down there, and Jon tried to keep us from getting it. I was on the ground trying to pry it out of his hands and Melissa was tugging from above, and she gave him this cute little slap on the arm…it just came out of nowhere and was so funny and unexpected that he just let go of the ball. I got quite a laugh out of that. Heh. I played pinball by myself for a long time, and got my score up over 26,000,000 at one point (it’s never been that high before and prolly never will again, what a fluke!) I don’t think Brian was having very much fun, which is really a shame. He doesn’t know Peter or Melissa very well (despite the fact that he met them a few months before I did) and he’s not really the type to be forward so he kind of just sits to the wayside while the rest of us entertain ourselves. We always try to include him but a lot of times he declines the offer. :-( The more I get to know Melissa, the more I like her, which I didn’t really expect because at first we didn’t seem to have much in common. But it turns out we actually do. So that’s cool. Peter buzzed his hair off again and it looks really good. He can pull off that look really well, whereas a lot of guys can’t. His melon is the right shape I guess.

Saturday was pretty much a nothing day…I don’t even remember what I did during the day. Oh yeah, I went grocery shopping. In the evening I did DDR, and after showering I sat down to crochet and watch X-Files, but at about 8:30 I was so tired I decided to take a little nap. Well, the nap went until 2:30 AM when I awoke and was suddenly wide awake. So I read for a half hour or so then went back to sleep and didn’t wake up again until 8:30 AM. Sheesh! I cannot believe I slept almost 12 hours. It has to be the rainy weather that’s making me so tired, there’s no other explanation!

On Sunday I set to cleaning out my computer case and purchasing a new DVD burner. Then in the evening I went over to my aunt and uncle’s house with my family for a pizza and movie night. We watched “Timeline” which was pretty interesting. They worried I might be a little confused since I hadn’t read the book but it was pretty understandable. When I got back I played Warioware with Tiff for a bit before bed.

Monday was Memorial Day, and the first day I had off from work since I started the job. I chattered online for a bit before going to my parents’ house where my brother was grilling out. I drove through a giant puddle on the way out, and I was really afraid I wasn’t going to make it across it (it was really deep) but Mitchell did a good jorb (that’s my car’s name.) In the afternoon I watched “Gothika” and worked on crochet patterns in Illustrator for Ross’s and Peter’s blankets. Both will be a bit more complex than anything I’ve tried before. I have yet to begin on Will’s pattern, but it’ll be very similar to Ross’s so once I have that grid done, it should translate easily over to Will’s. whew I had dinner with the roomies as stated before, then crocheted and watched “Anger Management” in the evening. Meh, I really don’t like Adam Sandler at all, and I couldn’t get past that fact in order to enjoy the movie. Oh well. I showered in the evening, which I haven’t done in a long time (showering at night, not simply showering!), and went to bed with wet hair. Alisha came back from New York (she was there for the weekend!) so I can’t wait to hear her stories. Erin said she saw Al in the background of the Today Show on Friday and indeed it was she! Heh, how cool.