Category: Life and Times

Restless

It’s been a strange day, in that I feel motivated but haven’t really done anything yet. I need to do laundry and tidy up some of the stash that has been accumulating around the house, as well as make lunch and decide what I want for dinner. There’s quite a few sections of reading that I still need to do before making study notes for my exam on Monday. It’s funny that these are the ones I haven’t read yet, since I know from watching the videos that it’s all philosophy of religion (one of my main areas of interest). On the plus side that should mean that it’s pretty much all review and I won’t have to learn much.

I want to make a new theme for the site, since this one is pretty much like the other one I had. Other than the colours and images I didn’t change much. I even used the same dimensions for everything so that I wouldn’t have to mess with the CSS. The plan is something violet, but not overwhelming and tacky (as I am wont to do). I’ve got a couple books from the library on web design and CSS, as well as accessibility and cutting down on loading time and such. Especially since I’m on dial-up here it’s becoming important to set things up so that it loads efficiently.

I have learned something from looking at other people’s sites. Almost everyone uses white space. I have also learned that I don’t like doing that for my own sites. I understand that it’s good for things to be open for readability, but I like colour too much to do leave so much space “blank”. Of course, I do have another idea for a theme using plenty of white space and a lot of colour if the violet one flops. Considering I’m making these as I learn it may take a while for them to be implemented, but they will be coming at some point.


The Art of Breaking

I spent two hours today poking around Hespeler Rd. trying to find a copy of the latest Thousand Foot Krutch album before giving up in frustration and returning home. It seems that even though many of the retailers were supposed to have it (according to TFK’s website, that is) none of them had it or knew what it was. The surprise though, is that I don’t think I want to get it anymore. I could be superstitious like my mother and say that not finding it is a “sign”, but really that’s not it.

When I got back I decided to try the iTunes music store and see if they had it. They do. The whole thing. Before buying though, I started listening to the samples of some of the songs. This was quite the effort and took some time since streaming audio on dial-up is not the best way to do this. Even so, the songs just didn’t seem heartfelt. They had a generic quality to them that I didn’t like. The whole album seems to be a lesser version of Phenomenon, and even that one I was slightly disappointed with.

I hate to think that the guys are starting their careers with songs that are just turning into lame rehashings of their other stuff. Their first album wasn’t like that. It was incredible. Even though I don’t have that one (I didn’t know much about them then, I’d heard of it from a friend), I have Set It Off (both the original and remastered) and really think that they’ve gone downhill since then. Where did the enthusiasm go? The spark of originality is fizzling out and I’m having a hard time with it.

I love these guys. They’ve got amazing ideas and have written some of the best songs I’ve heard. They put on fantastic shows. But the newer music is just sub-par. I hope it gets better. I don’t like being disappointed with them.

As consolation, I’m listening to Switchfoot, who have only gotten better over the years.

Edit: Now that I’m out of that jaded state of mind it seems better. We shall see what I think once I’ve gotten it. I’m also considering getting the new Bedouin Soundclash album. It’s interesting.


Eggs

There’s a lot of eggs here and only two people to eat them. Any suggestions for what to do with them would be greatly appreciated. My thoughts for today are poached eggs with french toast. The only other things I know how to do are fried or scrambled.


The Dark Tower

I’m very addicted to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I’ve been reading them all week. It’s funny. I’ve had access to the books pretty much my entire life (through various libraries and such) but I’ve never read them or felt compelled to. Though I do remember that I felt “out-of-the-loop” book-wise for the first time when Wizard and Glass came out. Even people that I’d never seen reading before were scrambing to buy that book. For once I was not the only person carrying books everywhere like a teddy, since everyone around me was attached to that book so much.

In some ways it felt like a failure, to not have read the books the first time I had the chance. For someone whose passion is books, it was something of a slap in the face to fall behind on this one. There was a valuable lesson for me in those circumstances: that no matter how many books I read, no matter how much time and effort I spent trying to keep ahead of the market, there was no way I’d be able to be on top in every case.

For that matter, the popular books are by no means the good books. Some of the best ones I’ve read are ones that no one else has even heard of. There are always going to be the huge bestsellers like Harry Potter or The DaVinci code which the world goes nuts over, but it is important to remember that there are many more books of equal or greater merit which get left behind when the focus is solely on the hugely popular ones. There is still such a thing as literature, and it is important that it is not forgotten in the quest for the “easy-fix.”


Summer Bussing

Busses make me sick. I mean that literally. Especially the ones with annoying impatient drivers in Waterloo who wait until the last minute to stop and then slam on the brakes as fast as they possibly can. Sheesh. It’s hot, there’s not a lot of air in the packed busses. The last thing we need is driving like that to upset people’s stomachs more. I’m not the only one that thought so. I heard some others complaining and had the person next to me ask if they’d been driving like that the entire time. Yes, they had been.

The driver of the Ainslie Street bus was grumpy and didn’t want to renew my transfer, though he did it anyway. What is with the drivers lately? It can’t just be the weather. I ride the bus more in the summer than any other time and it’s usually pretty nice. They have a/c and usually are pretty cool unless there’s too many people in them. It can’t just be that.

This time I didn’t have any creepy people gravitating towards me, which was nice. One person smiled at me and another said hello, but just in passing and nothing weird. I guess it’s either weird passengers or strange drivers for me. I can’t seem to have an uneventful time of it.

I bought a bunch of bus tickets on a “duh” moment today, since I got 15 and there’s no way I’d end up using more than 5 all summer. By Septermber I’ll have a bus pass so what the hell was I thinking?! Ah well. There’s a person that is willing to buy the extras off me, which is nice. I’d hate for them to go to waste just because of my absentmindedness.


Cut Your Teeth Socks

Today has been productive. In a relaxing way, which is good. I finally finished the worsted-weight blue cotton socks for my mom, and am making some real progress on the Cut Your Teeth socks from Knitty. The first one has been done for a while, and a few of the squares for the second one, but I’ve been caught up with school and cross-stitch and website stuff and haven’t really finished them.

I’m pretty sure I’m making them for my sister. They seem to be something she would like, unless she’s getting to the point where she cares if people think negatively of what she wears. The mostly-orange colour scheme would go really well with THE REJECTS shirts that we have. I’d make more for all of us, but I don’t really care for most of the other people that have them. Kyle is decent, he can have some if he wants. Though I doubt he would, seeing as they are a bit on the “girly” side. I guess me and Steph shall be the only ones to get reject socks to go with our shirts.

Sometimes, I don’t know. I know she likes the aqua colour yarn that I have, and the variegated stuff that matches it. I’ve been teasing the idea of making her these socks out of that. Maybe I’ll make both, and let her choose. The matching idea is just my fancy and isn’t really grounded on anything concrete. Giving her socks that she would actually like and wear would be much better.

It’s really hot out. It doesn’t bother me too much but I do have the A/C on. Bones is getting all lightheaded and weird from the heat and it’s bothering me. Especially since I know he has air in his car. Maybe that’s why he’s not really going to work much lately. Too much heat. Though if that is part of the reason I am pretty sure that it’s not the only reason. He drinks entirely too much. He doesn’t really give a reason other than that he likes the buzz. He said he prefers it to being high. Alcohol is his drug of choice.

People wonder why I don’t drink, why I don’t smoke, why I refuse to try any kind of drug. Did it ever occur to any of you that I have watched these things completely destroy people’s lives around me? That I have lived with rampant substance abuse around me pretty much my entire life until I moved to Waterloo? Maybe I’ve seen what can happen and would rather avoid that kind of thing for myself.


Tired

I’ve been playing quite a lot of DDR lately. It’s a difficult and addictive game, for all it looks silly. Kitty keeps getting mad at me for playing it and ignoring him. He decided to get my attention today by laying down right in the middle of the dance pad, which didn’t go over too well since I didn’t see him at first and he got his tail squished a few times. He’s a very silly cat. He went and tattled on me to Dean after that.

I keep getting sleepy pretty early (by that I mean 9ish) and refusing to sleep until around 11-12. I don’t tend to sleep past 9:30 in the mornings, so I suppose I really should go to bed earlier if I am tired, since the majority of the time I am up around 8 and can’t get back to sleep. It seems like such an old-lady thing to do, going to bed at 9pm. Which is why I don’t. Come to think of it, when I was on a schedule where I went to sleep that early, I was out and about all perky and whatnot at 6am! I much prefer sleeping through those hours, even though it is kinda nice when people aren’t around and it’s still all nice and cool from the night. Okay, there’s obviously too much indecision over something as silly as sleep time. Enough of that.

I’m trying to figure out how to make a theme for this thing, rather than just trying to find ones that others have made that I actually like. Most of them that have an interesting design usually have appalling colour-schemes or code that doesn’t quite work. I found a theme with colours that aren’t too bad which could probably be modified [rather than having me start from scratch] but I’d have to go through and find the mistakes that are making it break up and look like crap in Firefox. Really, if it’s only made for IE it’s something I surely don’t need.

I’m really happy with the way this whole having-my-own-site idea is panning out. It seems to be working nicely, and is complicated enough that I can be happy tweaking it and making things work. On that note, there are now archives! Apparently I’d set up the permalinks and site URL in such a way that I managed to crash the archives and posts. I’m not sure if the comments and stuff are working, and I’d like to learn to set those up as pop-ups (if they aren’t already) but that will have to wait. I’m more interested in getting an overall theme at this point. It shall be fun.


My Fears Have Worn Me Out

I’ve been listening to a lot of Switchfoot and Korn lately. I think it’s a good thing. They make some good points in their songs, and still manage to keep the serious stuff fun. It helps with perspective. There’s a lot of opportunity to think about who I’d like to be, and work towards that. People think you need to plan your life, but you can’t really. The only thing you can do is improve yourself and let life take its course.


Wonder of Wonders

To be honest, a large part of me had never thought that this day would come. I can honestly say that I am engaged to the most wonderful person I have had the pleasure of getting to know.

I’ve spent much of my life feeling detached and inferior to those around me, unworthy of occupying the same space and time. It’s taken me quite a few years, but for the last three or so I’ve been feeling more like a person. I wouldn’t call what I was before that an actual person, since that requires some sense of equality with other moral thinking beings, and I certainly wasn’t feeling equal to anyone.

Sometimes I find myself reverting to that former thought pattern, but the funny thing is that I have grown enough since then to be able to dismiss those thoughts for what they are: fleeting doubts. It does nothing for my self-worth to encourage the belief that I am not worthy of things that other people have.

Even writing this is a bit of a regression, though a parting one. I do not want to spend the rest of my life wondering if I should have the things I do. I do not mean this in any materialistic way. Those things don’t matter. But personal relationships do.

I am very much deserving of having friends, a husband, a family. These things are not something that can belong only to the privileged few. They are mine, or can be mine. I have plenty of family. For all the grief they cause, sometimes I wish I didn’t, but at the same time my life would be pretty empty without them.

Something I learned as a child always comes back to me when thinking about this. The only reason why I am bothered so much by my family is because I care about them. I really do. They don’t need to be around, or talk to me much, or care what I do even. Just knowing they are in bad situations or doing stupid things makes me frustrated or angry because I do care what happens to these people. I love them or I would be indifferent to their situations.

With that out of the way, I am starting to realize that finding the love of my life and knowing that he loves me just as much as I love him, that he wants to be with me for the rest of our lives, this is something I can allow myself to have and cherish. I look forward to waking every day because of the prospect of being with him. No matter how bad things seem they can always be dealt with. The knowledge that someone supports me and is with me in such things makes life so much better.

To be honest, I always expected to spend my life alone. Partially because I thought I didn’t deserve to be with anyone else, but also because I believed that no one would want to be with me. After accepting this, I decided that the only person I had to live for was myself.

This is important, because it was this belief of being alone, of only having myself to depend on, which actually enabled me to begin trusting myself, and acquiring the strength to continue on my own. I would not be here today without this.

I understand that this is rambling all over the place, but basically I am trying to explain how that lost and lonely person became able to become the one I am today.