Saturday, April 9, 2011

This Week's Babble...

Surprisingly, this week wasn’t so bad. Of course, the two days Mom had off I did sleep like in the noon to six or seven in the evening, only really catching her in the mornings and for a lil bit on Wednesday evening (Thursday, she was asleep when I woke, le whoops or not). Wednesday, had its ups and downs for me, but thanks to words from friends, I wasn’t allowed to succumb to full on sadness and more remembered happier memories of my brother. Thank you Issi and Sarah.


Mom mentioned she heard him call out for her. I don’t know (and she doesn’t either) if she dreamed it or what. If it was more than a dream, I wish he’d tell her to live her life again. Actually, no. I pray he tells her, cuz she doesn’t listen to me. Maybe she did hear him though. Why not? When I get sad about him and close my eyes, I see his smiling face or can hear (as in remember hearing) him saying his Mooom’s or Daaaad’s while making that face of his. Maybe that’s him. Maybe that’s God trying to cheer me up. And of course I’m blessed with dreams of him looking happy more often than bad dreams. I pray both my parents are blessed with those happy moments I have with him and any unhappy ones swept away from them.


Anywho… I’m sure there are more ups and downs to be had this month as his birthday approaches. I will still have to be careful not to crack those eggshells and remember not to mention his name in her company. More on that later I guess…


Mom got a package from work. Her new phone system, which she was looking forward to since Pixie chewed through her old headset wires and forced her to use the phone handset. FYI, in case no one knew, holding the phone between head and shoulder hurts…worse for the woman with many slipped disks up and down her back and neck and who has to do so for most of eight hours a day. But alas, even though I set up the wires correctly (according to the diagrams they sent), the phone or the power box doesn’t work. Two separate days they’ve tried to fix it. Today (a.k.a. yesterday cuz it’s still today for me but technically a new day), a younger or less experienced tech guy even tried messing with settings on our router… Genius… Got both of us disconnected… Well no. Our computers said we were connected but internet couldn’t be access… Moron… And he kept like forgetting what he was saying. Seriously, if the head tech guy who tried on Tuesday failed and said he’d send new wires, why on earth did this guy think he could do better?? I kept whispering to Mom (as she had me listen on speaker cuz I speak better tech than she does not that I’m an expert) that if he broke our router he is sooooo buying us a new one. Anywho, he put it all back the way he found it.


As a result of his meddling tho, I had to restart the laptop along with hers several times and so I finally gave up on turning on Y!M…. HAD I had it on, I would have gotten the e-mail from Geek Squad this morning (a.k.a. Friday morning). But ah well, now that I think of it, it would have done no good anyway... But here’s the e-mail I’ve been waiting for! :-D




With plans of picking up my baby this weekend, this week should have ended on a high note. But noooo. Our toaster oven died. It’s Friday and since I can’t order pizza I like to enjoy my French bread pizzas, which we throw in the toaster oven rather than the big oven. Mom had had one earlier in the afternoon with no problems…. But alas that was the last to be toasted. I smelled something funny like chemical or plastic but couldn’t find the source while the pizzas were in… I even checked the lil oven too! But after the timer dinged and I went to get my grub, which I was already waaay too hungry for. And I was bummed to see they were still mostly cold and far from cooked. Again WAAAY too hungry to wait for the oven to heat up, so I had to resort to microwaving them. I don’t recommend it. Had I not been hungry and already tossed the wrappers I’da saved them for another day. Bleh, most unsatisfying. So this weekend has two errands now…. Gotta find an inexpensive toaster oven now. Microwave needs replacing but still works and is too expensive, but surely I can find a cheap toaster oven, right?


Since I’m updating files I copied to here to move back to the fixed desktop I found the pic of my Angels Mickey. Well it’s not a pic I took, but it’s just to show ya what he looks like. :-D




Also came across the screenshots I took of my fb addiction… CSI: Crime City. :-P I made the main one look as close as I could to look like me. The second one I made (yes I made an alt) look like the vampire agent Sarah and I joked about. :-P Dad jokes he’ll have to make one, but he’s already spending more time on it than I ever thought he would. Le whoops! Sorry for giving you an addiction Daddy!!! But to be fair, you gave Mom and I way more addictions. Hehehe…


(I'm at level 56 now thanks to a game adjustment)



And cuz this blog isn't long enough... Here's something I saw on someone else's blog that I had meant to share long time ago:


“Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.


Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.


She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.


Buy her another cup of coffee.


Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.


It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.


She has to give it a shot somehow.


Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.


Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.


Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.


If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.


You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.


You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.


Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.


Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”


- Rosemary Urquico

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Eggshell Season…

Nope. I’m not talking about Easter baskets and plastic eggshells stuffed with hidden treasures. Today marks two years. I knew his birthday would be a sad one as Tata’s birthdays were always full of sadness or general foul moods. But I guess I kinda hoped we wouldn’t be that family that annually marked the day we lost him.



Mom took off today and tomorrow but I’m sure she would have taken the entire week if she could have. I’m pretty sure she will be taking off the Friday before his birthday and possibly the Monday after again if she has the hours. Dad too is taking time off, but then he was planning on taking off the end of the week anyway I thought cuz he worked straight through the weekend.



I mean it’s not a nothing day. It’s still too fresh in our memories for that. But in giving it more attention than the passing sad reminder it would have been if life continued normally just seems like taking a step backwards. His birthday will probably always be sad, like Tata’s is for Mom. But I don’t want to think about THE day. It brings up WAY too sad memories of THE day and the days that followed other than just being sad for the loss, like forcing me to relive a car wreck or something.



So while I’ll try and live this week as normal as possible, I have to walk on eggshells. Can’t bring up him. Heck, I’m even afraid to mention the name even when it’s not in reference to him. Part of me thinks now would be a really good time to go off on a solo adventure. Yeah right. Today I’ll sleep most of the day, which will do the same thing….reduce the hours I’m around her while she’s awake. Tomorrow, we’ll see. But there’s no movies I’m willing to blow cash (okay movie pass) on and unless I wake early enough, doubtful I’ll go to Dis to take pictures. I’ll try to be the good daughter when we’re both awake and do as she asks without delays or complaint, but mostly I think I’ll spend this week hiding (even more so than usual) in the computer and in my movies. Maybe if I don’t see her obsessing, I won’t be reminded of what she’s obsessing over.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Too Late for March

Eeeks!!! I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last blog! For shame!!! My poor neglected blogger and my poor deprived followers. The sad part is I put up more facebook statuses now and I thought I wouldn’t be all into that cuz like what would I post? If I had anything to say, I used to put it here…. So, bad me…



I know there was stuff I was gonna share, but it escapes me now. So, alas, highlights are all you’ll get if I remember that much. It was more than likely nonsensical filler anyway (not that there still won’t be some of that)…



Okay, so what’s been up with me? Issi and I had our last Dis day a couple days before she moved to way far away England. That night while helping with some packing, I saw those spiffy space saver bag things in action. Seriously gotta get us some of those! Left her house with another load of books, an Angels Mickey (which I’d show ya but the pic’s on the other comp) from Issi, and a couple Mickey hair clips I bought. What I didn’t leave with was the laptop she was giving me. Le whoops! But hey, we were tired and it was late.



The details of Daddy Days and Target Tuesdays are mostly blurred together in lots of fun and silliness. We did work on our records for getting home (either to his place on DDs or my place on TTs or DDs) super late! Last weekend we hit the all time high of not even getting to his place until what 6:30pm? That used to be the time we’d be getting ready to leave to head back to my place! :-P TEEHEE!



I did eventually restore my computer all by myself. And it was a successful failure. It was done successfully but failed to fix the problems. But at least now I won’t be so scared if I should ever have to do it again next time. After a week of more crapping out, I gave in to taking the thing back to Best Buy’s Geek Squad to fix it. So last weekend, we took it in and after an overnight analysis they said the hard drive was bad. Joy. So my baby will be gone for weeks. Same weekend, Dad took me to Issi’s to pick up the laptop (and it’s blue! :-D ). After adding memory and virus protection, here I am again. :-D So thank you Issi!!! Thank you Dad!!!



As laptops run hotter than desktops or at least the ones I’ve ever used (old one and this one), I won’t be leaving it on so much. Which means I’ll be doing…gasp…non compy related stuff like….reading!!! :-o I’ve already read 40-50 odd pages or so in the past few days (not counting what I read over the weekend, Dad). And I’m catching up on tapes and movies. Weee…



Have I mentioned I love snail mail? And international mail seems more fun for some weird reason. I am happy to hear Sarah got her card in time (especially since I didn’t send it out as early as I had planned). And I got an awesome postcard from Issi! Snail mail in general is fun, so I may have to break out the stationary again. :-D



An interesting lil event took place just the other day (Tuesday morning). My old neighbor from our last place needed security clearance for his job so he put down references and I was among them since we knew him for a couple years. So the lady from whatever official defense place she came from came to my house for like a ten-minute interview on him. Seems like an awful waste of gas to go driving around for a couple of answers, but whatever. It was interesting and I was glad I could help. He’s a super nice guy so I hope all goes well with his job.



Anywho…. Meant to get this up before the month was up so March wouldn’t be all bare, but ah well… More blogs to come later. Hello April!