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M: Sleepy WF: Low |
Wednesday, April 30, 2003 I apologize for the following; it was intended for one specific reader of my weblog (you know who you are): I HAVE COOKIES AND YOU DON'T!!! *WEG* *ahem* Okay, now that that's been taken care of... |
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M: Lazy WF: Low-to-middling (depressing) |
Tuesday, April 29, 2003 Got another hard drive today. It's a smidge bigger than the last one. It took about half an hour (give or take a bit) to copy the data over from my old (and, apparently, inadequate) hard drive, but I think most of the bugs have finally been worked out. I really don't like Windows. It re-lettered the drives so that what used to be drive E was drive D and the new drive (with all the data from the old drive D) was now drive E, so none of my shortcuts or programs worked. Fortunately, the old E didn't have any data on it, so I blew it away which caused the new drive to re-letter (again) to D. If that made any sense to you, I want to borrow your brain for a weekend. Anyhow, thought I should update on the crisis from Sunday. I prayed about it (for a long time) on Monday, and I think God is telling me that I need to learn to trust Him and wait for Him to reveal what I need to do. I hate being in the same room as that guy, and I certainly won't ever trust him again, but God's telling me that I can trust God to take care of me. I have to go out on a limb and make myself learn that God has power over everyone, so I don't have to be afraid of other people. It's really hard, trusting God. I don't trust anyone, not really. I pour my soul out on the web, here, but I still don't trust people. That's the paradox of my existance: I'm incredibly lonely, but I refuse to not be alone. Funny, how I can talk and talk and surround myself with a million people and enough toys to keep me company, and still be so alone... "Hungry, I come to You...." |
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M: Irritated WF: Medium (odd/scary) |
Sunday, April 27, 2003 Nightmares irritate me. This afternoon I had a dream about someone who rode in a wheelchair and could become invisible. He got hit in the head by someone and I had to take him to the hospital, but I dropped him... It was just bizarre. On an unrelated note, my nemesis showed up at church today. He didn't try to talk to me, which is good, but I couldn't concentrate on the sermon while he was there, which is bad. I feel bad because I can't just forgive him and move on. Every time I see him, I start hyperventilating. I mean, it's been six years since what he did to me, but I still feel like I'm the little girl he took advantage of and he's the father-figure with the authority and power to do it again. Anyway, I tried praying about it, and I just end up feeling guilty about the whole thing. I don't know what to do. I know that what happened wasn't my fault, and what's going on in his life now isn't my fault. I just feel like I'm supposed to ... I don't know ... be supportive of him or something, but I just don't want to. The guy made me decide to never trust men again, no matter how good they say their intentions are. I mean, I no longer believe anything good that comes out of a man's mouth. I certainly don't trust church leaders anymore. You'd think I'd have learned when my dad (who was a pastor) ran off with one of the (married) women from his church. But, no, I went out on a limb again with another guy who wanted to be a father-figure for me and wanted to help me overcome the bad stuff that had happened in my life, and then, with no warning, he turned into one of the biggest "bad things" that ever happened to me. *sigh* Why, God? Why, after all these years, and after everything I've discovered about him, why are you putting him back in my life? What am I supposed to do with him? At least if I knew what you wanted, I might be able to try to do it. As it is, I am paralyzed every time I see him... Help me... |
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M: Confused WF: Low |
Friday, April 25, 2003 I stayed home sick today because my bowels are tying themselves in knots. Not much going on other than running to the bathroom frequently. I'll probably head to my Mom's early this afternoon (once things in the lower quarters have settled down). I'm supposed to go to a birthday party for the twins tomorrow. Hopefully I'll feel better by then. Hmmm, what else. Ran my game last night. It was short, and I was tired and cranky, so not a lot got accomplished. Although one of the players stumbled onto (and then back off of) the solution to the problem they're dealing with right now. I doubt either of them read this log on a regular basis, but, if they do, I guess they deserve the hint. ;) I got a bunch of pictures that I've got to post pages for -- lots of the twins, as well as some of my family when we gathered for Easter and some pictures of duck butts. Don't ask; just check the Picture Page... Other than that, I've just been sitting around doing not much of anything. I'm just sort of tired and confused about life. I'm working on a philosophy page that discusses the nature of time, but it's not quite done yet. Maybe this afternoon. If I'm not sick all day. |
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M: Happy (one could say too happy) WF: Middling to low (scary/depressing) |
Monday, April 21, 2003 Ack! It's been DAYS since I've posted! For all of you who read my last post and thought maybe I was dead by now: Have no fear, I have remained in the world of the living for a while longer! Although I do have this death wish... But I don't worry about it, since it's really just a wish to be in Heaven, and I know it's coming eventually, and not on my timetable. Anyhow, I've gotten thoroughly obsessed with Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II. They're video games based on the D&D rules, and are very fun -- and very addictive. I also got my Mom a bunch of Lamb CDs (they're an old Messianic group that I've grown up listening to), and have been listening to that. It's very inspiring. I wrote a short fairy tale which is a cross between Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, but with a Christian theme. I haven't given it a title yet, and it could stand some editing. Feel free to send me title suggestions, though. Well, off to more Icewind Dale... |
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M: Depressed WF: Very High (scary/depressing) |
Tuesday, April 15, 2003 So, I'm driving home, and I start imagining that a semi runs a red light and hits me in the intersection and the whole place becomes a big triffic wreck with twisted metal and blood all over the place, and all I can think is, "It'd be a release." It's been like that for the past couple days. I don't know why. I can't figure out what's bothering me so much. I can't believe it's Tuesday. I don't remember Monday. At all. I just don't want to be here. I feel like I'm forgetting something, or that something is about to happen or was supposed to happen. I'm tired. I'm tired of what I'm doing and of how I'm living. I'm tired of my body -- the burning, the aching, the weariness, the sickness. I'm tired of my life -- the belief everyone seems to have that I am capable of absolutely anything, and the ensuing requests to be ... so much more than I have the energy to be. I'm tired of being confused about so many things -- not knowing what's right and wrong, or even being sure that there is such a thing. I'm so alone. So, so alone. And I don't want to be here any more. |
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M: Tired WF: Low |
Sunday, April 13, 2003 So... tired... Must... post... |
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M: Tired and cranky. Really, really cranky. WF: Low |
Wednesday, April 9, 2003 No sleep for me. I had to stay up doing maintenance last night, and didn't get to bed until 5am. Then someone called me at 5:30 (just after I woke up). I tossed and turned and had nightmares until noon. Now I'm sitting here in my PJ's, a grease-ball with bags under my eyes. Sometimes I hate my job. And what's up with the weather? It's April, for pete's sake! Why is there snow??? Here's my advice to people concerned about global warming: Move to Michigan. Here, you will realize that there is no danger of that whatsoever. On a positive note, I created a "Wishlist" at ThinkGeek.org. It's mainly MegaTokyo and User Friendly stuff. If you want to buy me stuff, contact me and I'll let you know which e-mail account I used. Otherwise, I'll just be saving up for stuff. I hope they get the MegaTokyo comic book in stock again soon!!! I got THOROUGHLY addicted to it over the past two days or so. Not sure why. I think it's just because I can identify with a few elements of the characters, such as being computer-gaming-aholic, liking anime and stuff like that. It's going on my daily comic list. Anyhow, off to download more free fonts until I collapse into sleep... |
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M: Depressed, with a touch of humor at the end. WF: Low |
Tuesday, April 8, 2003 Depressed day today. I'm thinking of coming up with a mood indicator and a wierdness scale for these posts, so that the unwary will not be dragged down without warning. Let me just put it this way: My manager-lady told me to take "something" tonight... She's right; I should. And I will. After finishing maintenance. It'd be a bad idea to reboot production servers while under the influence of Xanax... I've been reading more of the Megatokyo archives. Good stuff. Ya know, people that draw really well and come up with good characters and storylines... I always get a little depressed, because I just can't do that stuff. I wish I could. I've got a few lame attempts at stories... I don't know. Just wierd ideas that bounce around in my head, and no real way to convey them to people. *sigh* It better hurry up and be midnight so I can get the work over with and take a Xanax. *EDIT* ROFLOL (3rd panel) |
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Monday, April 7, 2003 Got another new Yoga video. Went through it. Want to sleep... Instead, I'm on Megatokyo reading the comic archives in an attempt to understand the term "l33t". Don't ask me why. Kinda just a lazy evening. That's okay. I'm going to bed now. *EDIT* Too funny and too true not to share: "<All men are fanboys. You need to stop being so prissy and learn how to benefit from it.>" (Megatokyo Strip #72) *SECOND EDIT* Okay, between the conversation I had with my Mom yesterday and a question in one of those "tell-me-all-about-yourself" questionaires that Jen sent me earlier today, there's something on my mind and I can't stop thinking about it, and it's been a while since I've spilled my heart out, so here goes: Back in High School, there was this guy. He was a real jerk. But, being a stupid High School girl, I ended up dating him. He really wasn't a nice guy. He was in Tae Kwon Do with me, and he was rough and insensitive and ... well ... just plain untrustworthy. Part of me just hated him. Another part of me was intrigued and found him dangerous and exciting, I guess. I brought him to church with me. I kept telling myself everything would be all right if he "got reformed" or something. He went along with it; showed up almost every week, went through the motions... He even took a Profession of Faith class and was going to join the church. One day, we were talking about love. He didn't seem to get some of the things I was saying about it, and I certainly didn't understand where he was coming from. What it came down to was that he didn't see a difference between "loving" someone and having sex. (No, no, I didn't have sex with him... Lucky for me!) Anyhow, I asked him how he could believe this. What did he mean when he told his mom he loved her? What did God mean when He said He loved us? How could that definition work? He just didn't see it that way. He argued that any other use of the word "love" didn't really mean anything. So, really, he didn't know anything about God, and certainly didn't believe in Him. How could he believe something he didn't even know existed? Anyway, it all came down to this: I couldn't change his mind about it; couldn't make him see a part of the world that was so huge to me... So much the only thing that made it worth living... It broke my heart. I cried. I sobbed. Loudly. He just sat there, thinking I was dumb, and letting me know that he thought that. I was hurt. Badly. And not because he disagreed with me or because he thought I was dumb. I was hurting because I really did care about him -- really did love him -- but he couldn't even imagine the feelings I had. He was lost. There's a part of me that may never be shown to a man again -- a part of me that loves to the point of breaking. So, that's it. That's a wierd picture of one of the bad experiences that leaves me lonely and aching. That's the part of me that I know was right and was true but that I never want back because it hurt too much. The rest of the story goes downhill, and it isn't really my story after that point -- it gets picked up by someone who got hurt worse than I did and in a different way. I guess it's not for me to tell. I regret... so much... I don't want to live this way. I don't want to live the way I lived back then, dancing on knives. But this... This grief... |
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Sunday, April 6, 2003 Not much happening today. I got to see Amy and the twins, which was cool. They got a puppy -- a Golden Lab which they named Cinnamon. She's cute, but she chews on everything (including fingers and toes) since she's only about 9 weeks old. Anyhow, Gabe's walking now. He and Trenton are both over 20 pounds, although he's still trailing Trenton by a little less than a pound. This evening, I saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean preview. I put up a page for it -- mostly links to Orlando Bloom pictures. Okay, all links to Orlando Bloom pictures. *sigh* I think I'm going nuts. Church was really good this morning. Pastor Andy did a good job on the sermon, and the point really drove home for me. It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately: choosing to follow God instead of pursuing my own comfort or happiness. As Larry Crabb points out in The Pressure's Off, God never promises us any sort of satisfaction in our earthly lives: neither physical wealth and stability nor health, nor emotional highs. We are told to follow God, not because doing so will make life good or easy, but because that's the good and right thing to do. It's the hardest thing in the world -- giving up everything of my entire self, every ambitious dream, every claim to the wealth with which I've been blessed. Yet, in this time of Lent, we are reminded that this is exactly what Jesus did for us. "If it is possible to take this cup from me ... but not my will, but Yours ..." |
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Friday, April 4, 2003 Well, back again at last! I got to my apartment around 4 and just didn't feel like doing another hour of driving in Friday-afternoon-rush-hour traffic (and, besides, I'm having cramps [grr]), so I'm hanging out here for the evening. It's been pretty productive so far: I've posted this week's log entries and created a few new picture pages from the trip (check out the Detroit page and the Disturbed page, to be exact). I'm getting pretty tired, though (even though it's only about 5:45), so I'm probably going to crash pretty soon. Wow, I'm glad this week is over. It wasn't bad, but it was stressful. Thank You, God, for getting me through that alive. |
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Thursday, April 3, 2003 Have you ever missed someone that didn't really exist? |
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Wednesday, April 2, 2003 Here I am facing my fourth night in Bloomfield Hills, and I haven't weblogged about it yet! Alas. Well, I'll make up for four days without by writing a very long-winded description of everything that's happened to me so far. There's a lot to tell -- I'm even thinking of writing up an H2G2 entry about the town. Should be interesting... Anyhow, read on: The trip started from my apartment around noon on Sunday. Most of it (distance-wise) was spent on long, wide highways (I96 and I696, to be exact) and passed without incident. I took a few pictures along the way (yes, while driving; don't tell my Mom!), but, other than that, nothing interesting cropped up. All the excitement was saved up for the last 2 dozen miles or so. At this point, 4 highways junctioned and split all at the same time. Fortunately, there were BIG, BLARING signs pointing out exactly which lane of which exit I needed to be in, and there was almost no traffic, so I managed to get off onto northbound Telegraph Road without a problem. This road is a lot like the East Beltline in Grand Rapids, which, of course, will only serve as a frame of reference for those who are familiar with the Beltline, and is entirely useless to those already familiar with Telegraph... For those of you unfamiliar with either of these roads, they are both mostly straight, multilaned, and residential. They both also tend to be pretty quiet traffic-wise except during rush hour. This was nice, because I felt like I was just in Grand Rapids instead of being on the other side of the state, and didn't worry so much about getting lost. The street after that (Long Lake) was amazingly similar, except that it runs roughly east-west. The fun part was getting from Long Lake onto Bloomfield Hills Parkway. The "fun" of this was that MapQuest had advised me to use Woodward (another amazingly Beltline-like road) to get from Long Lake to Bloomfield Hills Parkway. Unfortunately, due to some characteristics of Bloomfield Hills that I will describe in more detail later, the street signs for minor roads like Bloomfield Hills Parkway are written in yellow-on-brown, 10-point Arial, and only on the corner of the street itself (instead of being announced ahead of time on the other side of the road). This, coupled with the fact that (as I found later) Bloomfield Hills Parkway is sandwiched between the driveways of a few large office buildings, made me miss Bloomfield Hills Parkway entirely the first 3 or 4 times I drove past it. Yes, you read that right. I went back and forth on Woodward for a while, squinting for miniscule street signs and finally gave up on MapQuest's suggestion. I turned back onto Long Lake (which, from what I could tell on the untrustworthy map, eventually met up with the street I was looking for), and, sure enough, there was Bloomfield Hills Parkway. After this excitement, I started looking for the building whose address was 100 on this street. After driving up and down the street 3 times (and going through at least one forbidden parking lot), I pulled into a parking lot to study my map. I parked, looked at the map for a while (which was useless, as it had been generated by MapQuest and didn't tell me things like which side of the street the building was supposed to be on or which end of the street the numbers started on), and finally gave up on maps and decided to strike out on my own. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I glanced at the sign with the building's name: "Pulte Homes: 100 Bloomfield Hills Parkway". *sigh* At least I found it. The hotel was down another series of extremely-Beltline-like roads. The hardest part of finding it stemmed from the fact that there are three hotels with the same name within a quarter-mile from each other (Marriott, Courtyard by Marriott and Marriott Residence Inn). Randomly guessing that the Marriott was too tall and Residence Inn was too short for the price listed on my information sheet, I checked in at the Courtyard by Marriott. Lucky guess, again. I got to my room (number 214) and promptly lost my cell phone. After running down to the car and back up again (using both elevators), I finally found it in my room under one of my bags. *sigh* So much for excitement. I spent the rest of the evening in the hotel room, meditating on the mantra: "I'm not lost." At this point, I'll share some observations of Bloomfield Hills that I gathered over the next few days, since it will explain a lot of the details I include about my interaction with the townspeople and my opinion of the Police Officers in the area. I'd noticed a lot of Speed Limit signs on the way in, and the posted speeds were all pretty low (25-30 range, for the most part). They also had "SPEED MONITORED BY RADAR" notices on them, which I found rather ridiculous, since there aren't many other legally-binding methods for monitoring speed. One of the Veritas guys explained it the next day, as well as explaining the size of the street signs (which, as I've mentioned, are miniscule). Bloomfield Hills is a community "by rich people, for rich people". The signs are tiny so that no one can find the streets if they don't already know where the streets are -- this keeps out the riff-raff otherwise known as "the general public". The crime rate is so low that all the police officers have to do is pull people over for speeding. They even pulled over some British visitors that were attending a Veritas class because they were walking to the class (now there's odd behavior for you: walking around in a nice, well-kept, fair-weathered, safe neighborhood... *sigh*). Anyhow, my impression of Bloomfield Hills quickly became this: It is a rich community with an extreme paranoia of anything not-rich infecting it. This may have soured my outlook for the next few days. It certainly won't win points in the H2G2 review! Monday started off well, in that I did not get lost on the way back to 100 Bloomfield Hills Parkway. I did manage to spill something on myself when I was just about to walk out of my hotel room, but it had dried by the time I got to the car, and, since I can't smell, I decided to pretend it hadn't happened. Once I got into the Pulte Homes, I looked at the ever-helpful building directory which advised me that Veritas was using Suite 100 (which I already knew). No instructions were given about where in the building this might be, and, as it is a large building, I wandered back and forth for a while before a BIG, BLARING Veritas sign caught my eye (of course, about 10 feet from the entrance), and I found the classroom. By the time class started, there were 10 of us in attendance. To my amazement, there were two other women in the class. I've never seen any other women in any of the technical classes I've taken since college. Anyhow, at that point, class started, and I probably shouldn't describe it in much detail as Veritas would probably sue me, since the class normally costs about $3500 a person. I will say that we had the distinct ... honor ... of using the "mobile classroom" -- a collection of about a dozen laptops and half-a-dozen disk arrays -- instead of having equipment set up and ready to go when we got there. This meant that we spent a considerable amount of time unpacking, connecting, booting and reconfiguring machines before we could get around to actually doing the labs. At least they all worked on the first try. Within a few hours of the the beginning of the class, I was hacking the scripts of the software we were learning (for debugging purposes only, of course), so I'm feeling pretty comfortable with the course material. After class, I started the 2-day tradition of going straight to Applebee's after class for supper. It's in the parking lot of the Marriott, which is across a 5-lane connector road (that never has more than one lane in use at once, as far as I've seen) from the Courtyard by Marriott. One thing I should note here is the behavior of people in restaurants in this area. I'd been to a Burger King just down the street for lunch and noticed this as well. People looked at me like they knew I was from out of town and were wondering what on earth I could possibly being doing in their neighborhood and might be wondering what sort of guns I might be about to pull out from under my coat before mowing them all down. It's kind of funny, how paranoid they seemed. I was also a little surprised by this, since the restaurants are so near hotels. Why do they not expect out-of-towners?? Anyhow, that experience pretty much ended Monday. I hadn't slept very deeply Sunday night, so I drugged myself (Xanax -- by prescription), and slept pretty well. Tuesday was quite a bit like Monday, with the exception that I saw a heron fly overhead as I left for lunch. I tracked it down to a little pond across the street from the Pulte Homes and took a couple dozen pictures of it. I'm sure if there were any Bloomfield Hills cops around they would have arrested me for standing in the grass with a camera, but it was a risk I was willing to take. The only other notable event was that I spilled some Root Beer in the car. I got some on my pants (which I ignored, again), but a drop fell on my camera. On the shutter, of course. The shutter sticks when opening and closing now, and I'm not sure if I got the lens completely clean. I'll have to bug Melissa to help me clean it when I get back. Anyhow, if all the pictures after the heron pictures are blurry, that's why. That brings me (finally) to today: Wednesday. I overslept a little, but it all worked out as I have the drive down to 5 minutes (even following the speed limits) and the instructor never starts on time. The downer for the day was that my stomach issues came back full-force. They'd been toned down since I had the flu so badly a couple weeks ago, but I had to run out of class for them today. Not sure what's up with that. I'll have to start taking those fiber suppliments again when I get back to G.R. (since I don't have them with me). Anyway, we got out of class early today, and I wasn't hungry enough to get supper yet, so, here I am, finally weblogging. I might walk over to Applebee's later, and maybe to Dairy Queen after that (okay, so this hotel is in the perfect location). We'll see how ambitious I am. I want to do some walking, just to tire myself out, since I don't want to have to keep taking Xanax to get to sleep at night... |
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