True, That

Naomi handed out little cards at small group some weeks back. The cards contained this passage, of which I had only ever read the second half. The first half filled out the picture for me, and today it fell out of my Bible as I was reading. I need add nothing to these words.

"If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

--C. S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"

Pointless Brainwaving

My mind, right now, contains a perfect jumble of thoughts, all sort of tangled up in each other, and each too scattered to expound upon with any depth.

Anyone who so chooses can blame this fact on my having slept in, and slept hard, till eleven A.M. I normally don't do that, but since I started off this past week tired and never managed to recover, extra sleep had become necessary.

Here, then, are some of the random waves floating around in my head:

1. I'm mainly choosing to post at this particular minute because that celebrity lookalike thing is messing up my sidebar, which annoys me terribly. The faster I can write it off the front page of my blog, the better.

2. One of my coworkers told me the other day, as we crossed paths in the lunchroom, that he enjoys reading my blog, so hi, Dave! Honestly, I’ve been writing since I grew old enough to tell which end of a pencil makes the black marks, so it always makes my day when someone says they like to read my thoughts.

3. This post will probably not be a great example of good writing.

4. After waking up this morning, I finished reading Sense and Sensibility for probably the third or fourth time in my life. It had never been a favorite of mine among Jane Austen's books, but this time I thoroughly enjoyed it.

5. My family laughs every time we watch the movie Sense and Sensibility (the Emma Thompson version is a family favorite.) They say I am just like Elinor. I couldn't ask for a better compliment. I love her. Jane Austen said, in writing Elinor's story, that she had created "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like" but perhaps she underestimated her own flawless ability to create a likeable character even around traits such as reserve, seriousness, and carefulness in judgment. Or maybe she underestimated the likeability of such characters :-)

6. Three or four trips cover-to-cover through a book (not counting partial re-readings) sort of hits a median point for me. The book has passed acquaintance and early friendship, reached good friendship, but in most cases has not quite made it to full emotional intimacy.

7. That measurement can be misleading, though, as I've really only Genesis-to-Revelationed the Bible three or four times despite its many years' residence in my (almost) daily life. My shortest trip through the Bible, however, took me a year and eighteen days, while Sense and Sensibility took me less than a week. I've also had free access to Sense and Sensibility for several years, while my ten months' relationship with Harry Potter has, in its romantic fervor, inspired me to at least three or four trips through books 1, 3, 5, and maybe 6, and two trips each through two and four.

8. If 'they' (meaning whoever does these things) would make a Jeopardy! game show with only two categories, The Bible and Harry Potter, I'd stand a good chance of winning. Most people, not having been raised homeschooled and Baptist, tend to get a lot of the Bible's secondary characters and events mixed up. It always amuses me when the Bible comes up as a category, because I did grow up homeschooled and Baptist, so the conversation tends to go like this:

Contestant: "I'll take Bible for $400, please."
Alex Trebek: "Answer: 'He was the father of Gershom, Kohath, and Merari.' "
Contestant: "Who was Methusaleh?"
Alex Trebek: "I'm sorry, that is incorrect."
Me: "Levi! Sweet! I actually know the right answer to a Jeopardy question! ...or is it 'the right question to a Jeopardy answer'?"

Of course, the proverbial tables are turned as soon as Alex Trebek starts talking about the Simpsons, or Ancient Egyptian History, or... pretty much anything else.

9. No, I am not putting the Bible and Harry Potter into equivalent rank, either in my life or anywhere else. They're just the only two subjects I can think of right now on which I know decent amounts of useless trivia.

10. Cool Harry Potter trivia I learned in a recent re-read through book 1: The inscription over the Mirror of Erised, "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi" is actually an English sentence written backwards. Can't believe it took me so many re-readings to notice that :-)

11. When you wake up at eleven A.M. in November at the 48th parallel (I did have to look that up), you have approximately six hours of daylight. This makes it feel like the sun goes down just after noon.

12. Those eleven hours of sleep have apparently addled my brain, because at this point I'm even running out of random thoughts. Ah well.

Because I Found it Amusing

Having never been told I looked like a celebrity (probably because Emma Watson doesn't totally exhibit Hermione Granger's "bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth"), curiosity made me try this:





Left to right, top to bottom: Lisa Kudrow, Audrey Tautou, Norkys Batista, Jodie Sweetin, Woranuch Wongsawan, Hillary Clinton, Alexis Bledel, and Gong Li.

Generally speaking, I'm flattered; there are lots of beautiful women in that collage. But Hillary Clinton... well, it's not that she isn't beautiful. I guess as long as I don't wind up with her politics, or her taste in men, I'll accept that ;-)

Simon Cowell Goes to Seattle

I picked up a newspaper at work today and read this comment, made by acerbic American Idol judge Simon Cowell in regards to the recent AI auditions in Seattle:

"Seattle is going to be known for something other than coffee this year. They had the worst bunch of miserable singers I've ever seen in my life. It was two days of total misery. And the weather was bad, too."

Gotta know Simon would have something cheerful to say :-D I personally laughed out loud, even though I generally like and respect Simon. I know perfectly well that if they'd screen out all the terrible and deluded hopefuls that make 'good' TV... and awful noises... Seattle could hold her own. But perhaps the rain put all the screeners in a bad mood. He might have a valid point there.

American Idol, coming in January. You'll hear about it all here... provided Mom tapes the Gilmore Girls.

Because I Needed Another One

Some people collect stamps. Or china. Or memorabilia. Or those state-depicting quarters.

I, apparently, collect personal web pages. First the Blogspot (that's this one, in case anybody didn't know), then the Myspace. Now I have a Xanga, too.

The basic conundrum I faced is that if you want to comment on your friends' sites, and they don't use Blogspot, you have to have a login. When I created my Myspace login, I didn't realize it had made me a whole page (duh) till my best friend sent me a Friend invitation. And hey, if it's already creating a page, well... I figured I might as well get creative too :-D

This week, I finally decided I had too many Xangad friends to not have a login on that Cyberspace planet. So, "Library Lily" joined the Xangan ranks.

Fear not, however, fellow Blogspot-ites. This planet is still my home base and central communication port. You'll hear it all here first.

...sheesh... could I sound anymore dorky?

Just Finished Reading: Dickens' "Christmas Carol"

As a normal twentysomething American woman, I naturally love reading the British writers. I read them a lot: Dickens, Austen, Brontë (Charlotte), Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Rowling (of course), etc.

I have also seen multiple versions of A Christmas Carol, including Bill Murray's and the goofball play Scrooged. The memory of Jacob Marley dancing, chains and all, to ATC's "Around the World" still makes me laugh. As does the ditzy Ghost of Christmas Present slapping Bill Murray in the face while saying "Sometimes the truth HURTS!"

But... I'd never managed to sit down and read the actual book itself. Maybe because I generally think of it around Christmas, but not until someone else has checked it out from the library.

This year I managed to think of it early. And now I know why it's a classic.

It's just the sweetest, loveliest, most charming little story... ever. Just a simple redemption story of one man's soul. Just a word-picture of the difference life and hope can make to the coldest and bitterest of hearts. And to do Charles Dickens credit, knowing the basic progression and ending of the story didn't spoil it at all for me.

Yes, I do know that the Ghost of Christmas Present showed Scrooge many a merry sight of what Christmas ought to be, not what most people have. But if forever we sentimental fools try to scatter simple, honest happiness wherever we can, no one will be the worse because of it.

Finally: A Good Movie

After a year and a half, nearly, of mediocre stuff in the theaters--much of which didn't even catch my attention on the Blockbuster shelf--I have finally seen a good movie.

All right, Pirates II was pretty good. X-3 was okay. Neither of them quite lived up to the earlier series installments. I liked Elizabethtown; still haven't seen Cars, much to my chagrin. Failure to Launch and Queen Latifah's Last Holiday were both enjoyable chick-relaxation watches, as was The Lake House, once I managed to understand what was going on in that story.

Overall, though, Hollywood has had such a lame stretch that I've seen only maybe five movies in the theater since June of 2005. If that.

Saturday night, I bottled up my old fears of water and saw The Guardian.

Ashton Kutcher, who usually annoys me endlessly, showed a strength to his acting ability that I've never seen out of him before. Maybe I've watched the wrong movies; Newlyweds just didn't thrill me (actually, I thought it was boring, a bit disgusting and rather less than believable), and of course he played an idiot in Cheaper by the Dozen. This time he actually had a character, and he made something of it.

Kevin Costner did credit to the role of the weathered, tough-but-good, legendary-in-life Senior Chief. He played a man who had both great strengths and weaknesses; a man who had already learned to maximize his gifts and was now learning to minimize weakness and make good on mistakes, all the while dealing with loss.

The story brought out themes of honor, hope, greatness with humility, and the value of life... and besides that, it was just a good story. Well worth the watching.

Wednesday Nights

"I love this town," Naomi said to me tonight.

She might as well have read my mind just then. "Me too. The whole Bohemian, funky, offbeat soul of it."

We were standing in the wind and the dark downtown, waiting for a light to change. Our small group had spent the past fifteen minutes walking around in pairs, praying over the city. Praying aloud doesn't come naturally for me, but somehow conviction came over me in the act. Not simply conviction as in knowing what I believe, but conviction as in knowing that I fail in this town--fail to see the needs of others, fail to overcome my innate hesitations and act.

I'm not sure exactly what that means.

After prayer, we all headed into Stuart's at the Market, where I discovered they make superb hot chocolate and we hung around for a spoken-word-only open mic session.

This being Bellingham, I was prepared for pretty much anything, especially politically speaking. Although anyone supporting Bush probably would have been chased out of the market in a storm of fresh produce.

To my surprise, though, the participation didn't really come from the stereotypical angry twentysomething poet, twisting rage and obscenity into tortuous lines of chaos-themed free verse. Justin got up and read a couple of beautifully-worded pieces on the value of a human life and worship. Erland recited "The Road Less Traveled". A mother with her four-year-old son in tow read some of her own work on different themes, as did a girl of about eleven. One neatly-dressed man, obviously experienced at the whole open-mic thing, did offer a piece he'd written about refusing to pledge allegiance to "our blood-stained flag." Another girl, just a few years younger than me, spoke into a microphone for the first time in her life.

Generally speaking, I enjoyed it far more than I'd thought I would. And that piece Justin read called "She's Beyond All This" connected deeply with my heart. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening, though, and one of the most powerful moments for me, came through the words of a gentleman named Gary Wade, who recited a poem he'd written called "I am War."

I will clarify here that I am not a pacifist at all costs. I do believe that there is a time for war--despite the fact that the whole idea of shedding blood is absolutely foreign to me, heart and soul. But this poem spoke to me because it captured, better than most Christians have ever put it, the "wages of sin."

Gary Wade was kind enough to give me a booklet he carried of his poetry afterwards, and it contained the poem. I won't quote all of it (that probably transgresses copyright law), but here's a few lines:

"I am War!
I am the fruit of injustice
sown on fester-ground
where you had not the courage to weed...

I am your reward for tolerating tyrants
and disarming yourselves in front of them.

I am War!
I am your price for greed,
for hate,
for disdain,
for revenge,
and for not caring..."

He pointed at the audience as he spoke. Pointed right at me when he said "For disdain." Do I disdain? Sometimes. Perhaps more as a sin of omission, rather than commission. Perhaps I should have been angry, like a Pharisee, when he pointed at me. After all, he has no idea who I am, or what I've done. But it didn't matter. He might as well point at me; I'm human, I'm guilty as the next man, or woman.

Later, I drove past the Western campus. That school calls to me, begging me somehow to participate in it--the whole aching, rebellious, idealistic soul of it--bringing with me, of course, the Christ who died for every aching and rebellious and idealistic soul in town, starting with this one. And again, I haven't figured out entirely what it means to do anything about that. A lot of my feelings come from my own romantic reverence for the halls of learning.

Not having practiced much today, I had started singing "Panis Angelicus" in my car. As I drove by the school, the words struck me. I don't know Latin, but have researched enough to know that, roughly, part of the stanza works out to "Bread of angels, given to men... Oh, wonderful that the Lord becomes the food of the poor, the servant, and the lowly."

I'm not an evangelist. I can't go to school right now, and have no idea where to start in this town beyond what I already do. But if Jesus is the food of the poor and lowly, God grant me the wisdom and courage to serve to them. In whatever ways he asks.

Artistic Responsibility

Normally, I do not criticize the use of exaggeration in art; at least, not if it has some sort of meaning.

Advertising has become an art form, and I can understand that as well. To a point.

Mom recently emailed me a link to this short video on YouTube. As a teacher, she had taken it to school and shown it to her class. The video speaks for itself, so I won’t add to it, except to say as my mother did to her students: She does not exist.

The woman we girls compare ourselves to does not exist. The girl staring seductively out of the glossies into the mind of a man does not exist.

I knew there was tweaking going on, but I had no idea how much, despite having seen Photoshop and similar software packages at work in other situations.

Ladies, if you liked the Evolution video, check out this one too. Mom and I both cried.

I Stand Corrected

They're not jokes. They're facts.

No, not the ones about brunettes. The ones about Chuck Norris. And I have to say that the reigning king of the roundhouse seems to have both a sense of humor and a good heart, as evinced here.

So, does he pass on his skills? No girl likes walking to and from her car after the sun goes down. I could definitely use someone the dark was afraid of :-P

Almost as Good as Blonde Jokes

...with due apologies to all my blonde friends; the brunette jokes I've heard have been even less flattering to us than the classic blonde jokes are to you...

Chuck Norris jokes.

My personal favorite: "Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs."

What do you mean, you want to hear a brunette joke? If you must know, they range from standard retaliation (What's black and blue and brown and laying in a ditch? A brunette who's told too many blonde jokes) to rather creative (Why didn't Indians scalp brunettes? The hair from a buffalo's backside was more manageable... oh wait, that one might be true) to downright ugly, and as even I have to admit, funny (Why are brunettes so proud of their hair? It matches their mustache.)

Hah, well. "What do we live for," says Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, "but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?" I like laughing. Which is good, because I'm too tired to take anything seriously. I'm going to bed.

Something to Dance About

Ring the bells! Part the clouds! Strike up, ye minstrels!

At long, long last, I have home internet again. I can blog! And to put the proverbial cherry on top, I have a working soundcard on a home computer, after going without for at least a year and a half.

I thought about titling this post "It TOOK Long Enough" but there's probably enough impatience in the world.

And, were I not so thoroughly tired, I would probably try to stay up and write something. For now, though, the many blog ideas I've had since posting my last have jumbled inside my head, their clarity hazed over by my own personal internal drill sergeant, who is shouting gleefully in my ear "Get your sheets out of the dryer and go to bed, Olwin, that's an order!" I have no choice but to obey.

Ah, but I've missed this little journal. Be not alarmed. I shall return.

So, The Past Three Weeks...

I still do not have home internet. At all. The cable modem is supposedly coming soon. If it doesn't come by Wednesday, I'll call customer service at the cable company and ask about it (nicely, of course; I know what CS reps suffer at the mouths of impatient people.) The seven to ten business days they told me to wait have not gone fully by yet. But I feel like Inigo Montoya. I hate waiting :-D

Tonight, however, my parents have generously opened their home to me and my WorldWideWeb addiction. And my heart.

In the past three weeks, I have attended both a funeral and a wedding. Attended isn't the right word--I was involved. The grave holds the body of someone dear to my family and myself (I have been asked not to share details publicly) and I stood up as candlelighter eight days later at the marriage of a good friend.

I cried at the funeral and laughed at the wedding. Which might seem normal. But the terms are misleadingly dull. At the funeral, it took all the strength I had to merely stand still. I wanted to run, hide somewhere where I could burst out crying and not be a distraction or an object of pity or something that needed to be brought under control. Instead, I stood in place, able to keep from running or sobbing aloud, but not able to stop the tears from flooding down my face--highly unusual for me, as I rarely cry. And at the wedding, despite my love for my friend and her husband and my joy at their love together, I spent most of the ceremony choking back an untimely shout of laughter at the whole candlelighting experience, which is a great story. Maybe not quite as funny as the time I fainted off the back riser in the choir during the first performance of a passion play, but funny nonetheless.

What a strange, hilarious, terrible, beautiful world.

The sun shone with all its might today, turning the sky a rich blue. The fall crisp held in the air, and the flame trees have reached the height of their color--brilliant red with a few green leaves left on the lower branches. I couldn't stay inside today. I took a blanket out on my front lawn and read for hours.

Then, I went to see my boyfriend, and we broke up. It wasn't nasty, it wasn't a matter of overstressed emotions or problems with each other. It was the act of two people who cared deeply about each other, loved each other, really--loved enough to be honest and say "This isn't the right thing for us."

There's a strong tenderness in loving someone enough to freely let them go. It sustains me tonight; I know this will get harder before it gets easier. I don't look forward to that, but I know God has good plans for him. And I can't believe that for him without understanding that it must also be true for me.

And I have a rare gift: the ability to throw my laundry in a bag in my car, pack my toothbrush and drive less than an hour to my parents', where welcome unfailingly awaits. Tonight, I definitely needed my mommy and daddy and their new manic furball puppy. Seriously. That eight-week-old bundle of spastic energy disguised as a baby poodle reminds me of little children buzzed on sugar, or Mark Lowry's old song "Hyperactivity:"

"They can tame the wind, they can calm the sea
But they'll never harness my energy
I'm the poster-boy for hyperactivity
It's not my fault the world's not keeping up with me!"

So, the past three weeks... a lot of living for little Jennifer (whether or not a 28-year-old woman nearly six feet tall can be described as little.) I'll take things rather calmer in the next few, thank you very much.

But, given the option, what would I trade? Certainly not the moments of having loved what I have lost. As a Christian, I believe firmly that God wastes no experience, that it all "means something."

Nor have these weeks been all hard. Kathy got married, and I got to be there for her. I got to spend some time with Donna and Tracy, whom I love dearly and haven't seen in months. My small group has started up again, and we're reading Don Miller's Blue Like Jazz; I adore that book. I've spoken on the phone with a new friend, leaving me with the impression that I just might have a lifelong friendship building with two amazing people. And, spastic energy and all, it feels great to have a dog greet me at this door again.

I also have to admit that it felt great to have my hair done prom-queen style for the wedding. It took sixty-four bobby pins and an ungodly amount of hair product. It looked absolutely fabulous. If anyone ever needs a good stylist in the Edmonds area, Bree at Bellissimo knows her stuff.

How very odd... that sounds just like my recommendation line for photographers in Montana :-D

Coming Soon

More posts. And actual contact from Jenniferworld, if you happen to be waiting on that. I promise.

In a few days, hopefully I'll have my new home internet system up and running.

Till then, all internet access for me gets limited to my work computer and occasionally my parents'... but my work computer won't even let me on Myspace... big shocker, that.

Much as I like my job, I don't like staying past five-thirty--not even to send emails or blog or comment on blogs or otherwise feed my internet addiction. So... for now, I'm going home.

Talk to y'all soon!

Boots and Dragons

My roommate has finally gotten around to reading Harry Potter for the first time. She’s about to finish book 6.

Of course, I got jealous watching her have all the fun. So, tonight I picked up book 1 again—the one I carried everywhere with me for a week in my first experience with it, reading and re-reading, absorbing the power and humor and courage of the story, hating the very thought of taking it back to the library even to exchange it for book 2.

Reading it tonight, I got a sudden surprise. A line of Hagrid's reminded me of someone:

“Hagrid,” said Harry, panting a bit as he ran to keep up, “did you say there are dragons at Gringotts?”

“Well, so they say,” said Hagrid. “Crikey, I’d like a dragon.”

It made me laugh. Like children everywhere, I looked up very much to Steve Irwin—it wasn’t possible not to; he lived like he enjoyed life. And he ‘went out with his boots on’, doing what he loved; it seems that he’d have wanted that. It just happened way too soon.

It was good to smile at the memory of him tonight. And I have a feeling that had they lived in the same world, the tempestuous but gentle half-giant and the bright, wonder-filled family man from Australia would have found a lot to talk about in their love for their different monsters.

There it is again... that odd mix of happiness and sadness. That juxtaposition has apparently been decreed for me this week.

P.S. All right, Chris. No fair posting about Harry Potter when Blogger still won’t let me comment on your blog! Especially not fair putting up such a good post. I should have more to say later.

On Another Note… a great long belty one

I hear Clay Aiken has a new CD out. Which means that I now have to go get it. Which should be followed shortly by a review.

This album consists mostly of classic covers, if I have my facts straight; hopefully that means they gave him better songs than last time. Not one song on his first album was truly up to his incredible voice. Although I liked a couple of them anyway.

Nobody, I might add, has ever made a better Christmas album than Clay did. At least, in my opinion.

This ought to be good!

One Week

We’ve all heard that “The trouble with life is that there’s no background music.” But I can say from experience that having no background music is less weird than having your cell phone play the Can Can at an inopportune moment.

We’ve also all heard that there are seasons of joy and seasons of pain. But I have learned that sweetness and sorrow can be intimately and seamlessly blended into the same sensation; that fallen earth and perfect heaven occasionally meet, like lovers for a brief and tenderly passionate kiss; leaving a memory with an innate, gentle pain—a soreness carrying with it the reminder that we belong to something longer and wider, deeper and higher.

“…when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away… For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

September and Yellow Leaves

So… if they say in May that “Spring has sprung”, what do they say in September? “Fall has fallen?” “Autumn has got ‘em?”

Whatever ‘they’ say, the season of apples and pumpkins and yellow leaves is slowly but surely taking over here. I look out my window and even the flame trees—I call them that because last year they turned a fiery red and orange—are starting to change color. It won’t be long before the leaves can be raked up into piles for kids to jump into. Man, I miss doing that. My sisters and I used to rake the neighbors’ yard too, and then we’d have enough leaves to jump out of the maple tree into or bury each other standing up.

It’s incredibly hard to get the resulting knots out of one’s long hair afterwards, by the way.

Right now, I guess “late summer” or “Indian summer” fits better than “fall” as a descriptive term. All day we’ve had a breeze blowing, warm but hurried. It has sent every imaginable kind of cloud—other than funnel—through the valley: high, wispy cirrus; puffy and decorative cumulus; dark gray rainclouds, and fog.

I love late summer—that last holdout before fall sets in, when warm temperature still holds but change is in the very air. I love fall too; a last chance to fill up on color before the winter sets in and turns everything gray.

I hate the gray. Some gray is okay. Gray everything is not.

This year, I’m going in armed. I’m prepared to look for color, to gather it about me, to enjoy it wherever I see it. Maybe that’s why I fill my room with houseplants: the peace lily that Terry chopped half the leaves off last year, the dragon tree I found in Walmart and couldn’t resist, the poinsettia I’ve had for at least three Christmases already. My plants would make a good blog-post by themselves.

Ah well. For now, I’m off for a lovely drive through the changing colors. Life is beautiful right now—a gift I don’t dare not to enjoy.

Vacation

In several years of working, I don’t think I ever took a full week off of work. Maybe once. Other the time I took a week off regular work to help guide a whitewater rafting trip down the Salmon River in Idaho... that was fun, but it doesn't count.

No, I’m not bragging about my commitment to work. I was stupid. Should have done this years ago. Should have done it every year. Especially in 2004, the year I burned myself out being “committed to work.”

Ah well. At least I finally up-and-did-it. And it feels good. Since I didn’t go anywhere, it kind of feels like a week of Saturdays. I’ve done some much-needed shopping. I got through the Department of Licensing in record time—about two minutes. Yesterday I took a walk. Today I took a nap. I’ve watched Star Wars episodes 4 and 5 with my boyfriend. I’ve done some reading, though I ran out of new books to read on Saturday and didn’t get more till Brandon rescued me with Watership Down and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire last night.

All in all, a good vacation. But next time I take a week off of work to stay home, I am stacking up on reading material before said vacation ever starts. Because wandering around libraries on a Tuesday afternoon, unsure of what to look for and getting threatened with parking tickets after exactly sixty minutes, is a frustrating experience.

And, in the future, I will definitely avoid getting in trouble for talking on my cell phone in the library :-P

Anybody Want to Save Me a CS Call?...

I am online! Hallelujah!

Pity you all can't see the dancing. Well, maybe not.

Anyways, I have been absolutely and thoroughly annoyed today by my inability to access the internet. I'm on vacation, for crying out loud. Half the fun is being able to kill time online :-P

So here's my question: What happens is, I open my Internet Explorer browser and it says "Finding site..." for a minute, then gives me a "Cannot find server" message. I use wireless. Sometimes I have this problem, sometimes I don't. The network always says it's connected when the problem occurs. Sometimes switching to another wireless network helps, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes rebooting the computer helps, sometimes it doesn't. Closing and reopening the browser has never helped yet. I'm not using a proxy server; hopefully I'm not supposed to be.

This really puts a cramp in my blogging style.

Perhaps any of you who have worked in computer-related customer support (believe it or not, I have--just not with internet service) will want these facts as well: The computer is plugged in, I am not using the CD-ROM drive as a cup-holder, and there's no power outage.

I'm totally, helplessly mystified. If anybody has any suggestions, you'll be showing me an act of great mercy!

But on the positive side, I'm on vacation. For the rest of this week. More posts should be coming soon... provided I can get online :-D