Visitor

Happy Thursday!  We have a visitor this week who is my niece Ainsley!  What a fun time we're going to have once I get out of school for the weekend! 

I don't know... what happened this week?  I feel like it's all gone by so quickly.  Last week I had off, right?  So probably what it is is I got back to class and then forgot about what it was like to do anything else.

School's good, though!  When I got there I was like "oh yeah I don't know any of this," but a few days later now I'm all supa pro at this section and feelin pretty good about it.  Reading the manual actually helps a lot, too.

Wow, what an update.  But I don't know what else to say and I should be getting to sleep, so catch ya later!

OH no, also, one night we made fish tacos, which were the best.  I'll make them for you.

-Steph

Oh yeah, and we rode bikes on a newish bike trail in Santa Paula on Father's Day, and went to the barn museum that was there and looked at all the old tractors.

Summer Vacation

Happy Thursday!  How have your summers been?  Mine's been a bit overcast, but on the other hand I've had all day every day to enjoy it, so it kind of evens out.  Back to school on Monday, though.

This week has been all video games and sleeping, not gonna lie.  Spent allllll weekend watching the Major League Gaming League of Legends tournament live stream.  What a weekend. 

Now I'm watching the Justice League and building a tower defense adventure map in Minecraft.  Because I dreamed it!  It'll be an open-ended fully customizable objective-based map you can play with friends.  Competitive mode would be a capture the flag type team battle, where you raid the other towers and try to destroy their flags and put them up at your tower.  Cooperative mode would be a creative "build your own castle" adventure with additional goals like finding specific areas and rebuilding certain structures.  The world that I finally settled on spawned some pretty cool mountains and stuff, and there's sooo much ocean in every direction.  I think it'd be pretty fun to play when I finish setting it all up.

Most adventure maps for Minecraft are all jumping puzzles and awkward stories related through in-game signs or text files.  And they usually have "don't break any blocks" rules to force you through the map in the right order and so you don't bust up any wiring behind the scenes.  My map would be Minecraft at its most basic, where anything goes.  If you can tunnel through a wall to achieve your goal, by all means go ahead and tunnel.  It'll be like a sandbox map within a sandbox game.  Mineception.

Saw the Avengers again with Carolyn, and worked some more on our cosplays.  By worked I mean I watched Doctor Who and Carolyn worked on our cosplays.  Avengers was still pretty good second time, not as outrageously funny because the surprise element was gone.  Thor was my favorite.

That about sums up my week!

-Steph

Out and About

Happy Thursday!  What a cool week I've been having.  Cool as in, incredibly warm out.  The internet tells me I can look forward to this summery weather for at least a little while longer.  I can't imagine living in a place where I could count on summer weather all summer long.  That's a dream I will continue to chase.

Got another chunk of The Man's monies comin my way, so watch out baby, Imma buy me a tank 'o gas.  Bwahahaha.  Actually, I want to be more environmentally aware.  Any ideas?  I already recycle cardboard boxes and Dr Pepper cans.

All this week I seem to have been out having adventures.  Dawn to dusk out of the house, kinda different.  The other day me and Carolyn and Jacqi and Alex went hiking up at Arroyo Verde.  It could have been better planned, but impromptu things always come across that way.  But we got to the top of the hill and it was just so magical.  Like two hours before sunset, all this wavy golden grass and the shine of the sun just sitting a little farther up on the ridge, everyone in front and above me just mysterious silhouetted pathfinders. 

It was a very "why don't we do this every day??" moment.

We were going to go again but we didn't.  I need better shoes for it, anyway.  And some new pants, I broke a pair.  :/  Maybe gas can wait.

But me and Carolyn got started on our AX costumes, which are a secret.  I can tell you we're going from video games.  And it's going to be so so cute.  I have ALL NEXT WEEK OFF so probably try to get it done then, you know, before the day before comes and it's not done.  O-ho-ho what wacky dreams I have.

Yeah, so between school, Carolyn's house, Green Forest, Carolyn's house, Starbucks, and the park, and shopping for the AX I feel like I've hardly been home.  I just sleep here.  And play video games.  OH ACTUALLY.

All Sunday I watched this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxIQiCAvnko&feature=plcp which is a Minecraft map designed to be played as a team deathmatch in the manner of the Hunger Games.  I mean, the video is of the Yogscast hosting said deathmatch on this map that somebody else made.  But the magical part is that each team has their own video of events (since everyone pretty much split up at the word Go in order to not be instantly slaughtered by a rival team) and you can watch them also on Youtube.  And each time through you learn something different about reality, but it's a totally organic, non-scripted adventure.  I'd recommend it just as a psychological experiment, really. 

(One of the underlying themes is that of paranoia.  Of course everyone knows this is a team deathmatch and that anybody you come across is likely to want to kill you.  So the perception is that everyone else, out of sight, is constantly and aggressively plotting your destruction.  Only the thing is, that's what every single player is perceiving, meaning that every single player is, in fact, not plotting anybody's destruction.  Rather, they are just running fearfully away from anybody else.)

The other great thing about is is the chat in Minecraft automatically logs such information as player name and manner of death, so if you're watching Simon and Lewis play first, at some point you see "hybridpanda45 hit the ground too hard."  And then when you finally get around to HybridPanda's video of the event, and he starts climbing up the side of the tallest building on the map....it almost feels like dramatic irony.  Totally fun.  Intense map, too, must have taken ages to design and construct.  Check out the video just for that, if you have to.

On the other end of the visual media spectrum (the humdrum side) we also saw Snow White and the Huntsman.  That's all.

-Steph

I told him to his Facebook

Happy Thursday!  Are you guys having the best summer weather?  Some of you are having hurricanes, though, I'm aware.  Win some lose some.

Have you played League of Legends yet?  I've won 7 pvp games, but lost 8.  Working on it.

Supa tired today, stayed up way too late.  School's going fine etc.  Caught up with the current Doctor Who and now I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.  Still got a last several seasons of the old stuff, though, but between you and me it's probably not worth it.  But who knows?  That's why I keep going.

Helped Steven swap out Carolyn's motherboard over the weekend.  Helped my dad diagnose a dead computer, too.  Getting my government $$$s so maybe I'll build that Minecraft server machine after all. 

Memorial day was chill.  We walked a whole beach and back in Oxnard, took forever.  Should do that more often.

My Doctor Who shirt was supposed to come today, but it didn't.  I found some cool 80s songs last week.

I hope you like my blog.

-Steph

Networking

Happy Thursday!  How about this summery weather we've been having?  Too bad I'm spending 8 hours inside everyday (and then another 4 inside at home haha)!  School is still going on.  I don't know if or when it will set in that I'm literally spending my life there.

Weekends are so nice!  This last one I had an adventure followed by a day of internet.  Both were rather exhausting.

In school now I've moved on to the Networking section, and once I'm done with that (10 weeks) it'll be study study time to pass the exams.  Networking is a little bit tougher because it's a greater percentage brand-new information, not like software and hardware which was mostly intuitive.  But I think I'm proving myself right, in that I always thought that I had enough interest + enough dedication I could do it.  And I still think that's true.

Reading the first three chapters, though, that was slow going.  But!  I'm consistently impressed by my torturous study methods of awareness-read + copy down summary & glossary + in-depth-note-taking-read for each chapter.  Because the first time through I'm always ugggghhh what does any of this mean it doesn't make any sense I'm never going to learn this cry cry cry.  And then I copy down the summary and the definitions and it's like I'm not even paying attention to what I'm writing and my hand hurrrrrts so bad.  And then I have to go and read the chapter allll over againnnn........... but by that time, suddenly everything seems to have a context it didn't have before, and a logical progression, and I'm copying stuff down that, hey, doesn't that sound familiar?  And by the end of the chapter I feel like I actually took a step forward.

I still have to look up three or four answers on the homework out of the book... but that's 25 other questions that I just know the answer to.  I'm sort of looking forward to re-reading all these books and just scooping up all the things I missed before.  And then I'll be fully armed.

Other than that it's all Doctor Who and League of Legends all the way!!!  Nerd+ is me.

-Steph

I was about to go to sleep and everything

Happy Thursday!  Hello folks.  I was nanoseconds away from shutting down my computer and becoming unconscious.  What a disaster that would have been!  But now you're just standing in the way between me and that dream of mine, so shove over.

This weekend was the MSi Battlegrounds tournament hosted at Green Forest.  I went to help Jacqi out, and I signed people in and handed out raffle tickets and shirked my duties to watch LoL matches and got free drinks and played Pokemon Pinball on my rad berry pink Gameboy Color.

This week at school things started coming along because I didn't have to read that stupid book anymore and was mainly installing and configuring stuff.  Yesterday and today I researched components for a theoretical computer--but I was looking for stuff to build a rig to host my Minecraft server, so if I find some 300 bucks I can totally construct it.

So it was a fun week!  I made friends and progress.  And watched most of season 6 of Doctor Who in one day, WHICH IS AMAZING.

In other words:  sleep time.

-Steph

Tech Talk

Happy Thursday!  I feel like maybe I didn't explain my school well enough... ever.  Lemme tell you about it.

So it's an adult education type place that's a part of the county public school system, actually.  The program I'm in is called Network Support Techn..ician, which is what I'm evidently training to be.  Everyone in the class is doing something different, what NST does is it trains you to pass the A+ and N+ certification exams.  A+ is like for entry level PC repair; software, hardware, use, maintenance etc.  N+ is for networking.

It's set up as a at-your-own-pace come-in-and-study thing.  I've got a computer and some books and some exercise sheets and basically I just have at it.  The first segment was Windows Fundamentals, which was DOS and the A+ exam Software book.  Now I'm in repair, which is the Hardware book and a set of installation tasks.  After that it's like five sections of networking, which seems to be what everyone else is stuck in the middle of doing.

I made great time in the Software book, even through reading it twice and taking notes that are just for my own sake.  Windows is intuitive, and when you've spent as much time as I have using it, learning it isn't so far out of reach.

Hardware book, though, man.  The RAM chapter was sloooooow going, RIMMs and SIMMS and DDR2 DIMMS and SRAM and DRAM and SDRAM which is not a combination of the two.  I'm definitely going to have to read that whole thing again cover to cover in a few month's time.  For now I'm just slogging through to get the homework done so I can move on to the installations.

Because the books are great, they're very informative and laid out in an easy to understand way, and there's troubleshooting guides and tips and all sorts of INFORMATION that's going to be on the exams.  I don't learn too well in the abstract, though, so I'm reading more for awareness than full understanding at the moment.  Did I know what DDR stood for before?  No.  Could I tell you if you asked?  Maybe.  If I studied it again, would I remember?  Yes. 

At this point, for this half-baked information, I'm setting it aside in a half-baked pile.  In practice, when I research RAM or install RAM or have a conversation about RAM, it might come up, and in discussing it, the concept might very well become a little more baked.  And that's real learning.  The complete absorption of information.  Something you just know.  For me, it takes a lot of passes to get there.  And I do feel I have the time, and the general practice of dealing with computers is going to help it solidify a lot faster than just trying to read the same chapter fourteen times in a row.

Like muscle memory.  Only real memory.

Only like, not random access memory, like in my brain memory.

Yep.  So I've basically finished the Hardware book, too, only I spent all today and yesterday reading it, and I'm super burned out.  Like reading the same sentence for fifteen minutes without seeing a single word.  So I'm going to do something else tomorrow!  And that's the nice thing about at-your-own-pace, is you know what you need to achieve, and you have the tools to achieve it, but you can chose your method that suits you best.  And do it in your own time, and satisfy your own standards.

In conclusion, I have about two books worth of computer info in my head that I didn't have a month ago.  I've got a cute tool set and I know how to use 'em.  Onwards and upwards.

-Steph

Week 3

Happy Thursday!  Wish I was asleep right now.  Getting up at 6:30 is perfectly doable, I know you know, but for me the trick is getting to sleep early enough to survive it.  Not a morning person, this one.  After the first semester of college I smartened up and never again had to be anywhere before 9:30.  I like some sleep.

The other day I dreamed about a scorpion, but it wasn't a scorpion at all, it was a little red crab with a scorpion tail.

And LAST NIGHT.  Beth got me a Justin Bieber singing toothbrush for Christmas, right?  So that's fine.  Then all of a sudden, and quite hauntedly, he breaks out into song at like 3:45 AM.  And I'm like, I don't know what it is; there's two songs on it, Baby and something else I've never heard of, so it was super surreal.  Some grainy yet impossibly loud nine year old squawking about in the bathroom... I had to go execute him.  Twice, because the first time didn't take.

So that was an adventure.

Finished the first section of my schooling this week, a week and a half ahead of schedule.  Moving on from software to hardware, and I'm back at chapter one all over again.  Yesterday I was dead tired and nothing made any sense, but today I went over it again and now I feel alright about it.  Book reading is just slow going.

But seriously guys, all I want to do at any time is watch Doctor Who.  We just started season 5 with the new guy, and now we've only got four left.  Sweet baby James I love him.  This new season is like a mini reboot, but the new Doctor is hands down the best part about it.  What a fun time.

Yep.  Time for the sleep time.  Catch ya later.

-Steph

Booky

Happy Thursday!  How about this cray cray weather we've been having?  It was summer hot last week, and then it got real foggy, and then there were thunderstorms!!  And today we almost had a bit of each.  No thunder, but you never know what's coming next.

In my estimation, I'll be finishing this first segment of my schooling at least a week ahead of time.  And that's not staying late or anything.  Just reading and reading and reading.  One chapter left in the first book.

Um yeah!  So that's doing great.  People are starting to have names, and I've passed two tests.  I know all about taking notes.  I'll keep you updated.

Started the next season of Doctor Who!  Matt Smith!  I was on edge about starting a new Doctor, but I'll be happy to spoil you that I think he's just fine.  Charming and manic and ridiculous, but most of all he suits the new direction.  Tweedy bow-tiey fun.

On the other hand, we all went and saw Cabin in the Woods last week, and that was not as dreamy as I might have hoped.  Opinions do differ, though, so don't let me keep you from seeing it.  I just didn't see the point.

Now I'm playing LoL with Carolyn and Steven, and that's my week in a nutshell.

-Steph

Blog, then sleep

Happy Thursday! Guess who is going to bed in like five minutes! It's me! Guess who has a real-life weekend coming up! It's meeee! So school started this week! Getting up at 6:30 is like... who am I anymore. Get an hour for lunch, and that's a great time for naps. Leave at 4, come home and play video games until the sleep time. It's not bad.

The first couple of days I learned how to do stuff in DOS. So if you ever need to make a bootable floppy disk or, say, create a batch file, I can do that for you. It's all typing, like a typing game, and I love keyboard commands and all that, so it's actually pretty fun if you know what you're doing. Not going to use it in everyday life, but it'll come up.

So they say. It's at your own pace style classwork, right? So I've got two weeks to master DOS (done) and read chapters 1-5. After slogging through chapter 1 and trying to do the homework and realizing I still didn't know half the answers, I got pretty down. I generally don't absorb information the first time through, at least not so that it'll stick. So I said, you gotta read this twice anyway, so just take the pressure off and just read it for the abstract information.

So I spent the last two days just reading through chapter five. Then I went back to chapter one, read through the homework questions, noted which ones I had no clue about, and then set in to take notes. Re-reading and transcribing, lodged a bit more knowledge in there. This is working.

 Got through chapters 1 and 2, started chapter 3. So I'd say I've got two or three days more work ahead of me to grasp all this stuff, which puts me at at least three days ahead of schedule.

So that's the plan. I guess after this software book there's a hardware book, and there may be other books, and there are projects on the computers in different areas and about different tasks. But that's my strategy for right now, and I'm a student again.

 I got this. -Steph

Compter,d

Happy Thueday! I'm back! Although not entirely, but you wonldn't know. You mihgt, if my spelling's real bad. Right now I'm plugged into the flatscreen in the living room, and everything is reeaaaaal small from down here. I'm pretty sure I misspelled Thursday.

Yeah, so everything is up and running, other than it's the wrong room, and I don't have the video card or firewire card or blu-ray drive in yet. The important part is that it works! I swapped out a motherboard and reseated a CPU and somehow I didn't botch it up in the slightest!

We did have to reinstall Windows (twice) and copying over my gigs of media took all evening, but just about everything is in working order again, and that's what matters. I can play video games that aren't Bejeweled again!!!

Many thanks to my helpful big bro who talks about all this tech stuff like he came pre-loaded with wikipedia or something. Looking forward to sounding like that myself one of these days.

Pivotal week, this was. Aside from all the video gaming I didn't do (I baked and I read Shakespeare and I made potato salad and I went for walks and went to sleep in the same calendar day as I woke up etc etc) Tomorrow I've got a financial interview at the tech school so hopefully next week I might start? I mean, worst case scenario it'll be the week after that, but in either case it's srs bsns all o' a sudden. I also sorta am on unemployment, but I have to do the phone interview to say yes, I am going to a training school so I can get a real job and start contributing to society again, please and thank you.

But look at all this stuff I learned already! I know know how to use a multimeter to test a power supply... and other things! It's amazing! My intellect knows no bounds. I take the computer infos in one ear and I spit it out the other side. I have no idea what I'm saying anymore.

What I mean is, I think I'm ready for this.

-Steph

Computerless

Happy Thursday! This one will be quick because I'm battling raging infection in an open wound (!!) and it's just the very slightest bit uncomfortable to type.

This week I did important things like file for unemployment and also an amended tax return. The good news on the latter is, $$$! The bad news is, when I add a 3 and a 6, I'm apparently unfazed when I see the result is 7.

Speaking of par for the course, in Vegas somewhere there's a precious little indoor minigolf course. Themed like KISS. Everything glows in the dark! I made at least two holes-in-one, but lost by missing the last ramp (which was Gene Simmons' face belching smoke) all but entirely.

Speaking of Vegas, they have the best Chinatown. It's like, the variety of a huge city in the space of a small town. In the middle of a desert, to boot. Pretty much my style.

Oh and then I got back and my computer had died. On the upside, it being dead gave me the chance to discover that poor math skills situation. It also gave me the opportunity to break open my fix computers! workbook and teach me how to test a power supply. So that's alright, I guess. I'm using my mom's right now. Say hello, Mom!

OK then. More fun, more snacks. Another day.

-Steph

free bird

Happy Thursday! Hope you guys are watching better tv than I am. We're watching Blackpool, which pits illogical plot points and spontaneous karaoke numbers against David Tennant, and I'm not sure which side is winning.

A good show, however, is the Catherine Tate Show. Look it up on YouTube, it's a comedy sketch show so just watch whatever comes up first. It's amazing!

So today is...the third day of freedom. Of unemployment! It's like being off school. Except according to the plan I'm due back there soon enough. School, I mean. Not work.

What a good time.

-Steph

Yo!

Happy Thursday! What's been going on with you guys? I've been soo sleepy.

Yesterday we went to see Casablanca for its 70th anniversary showing at the theater! That's one of my favorites, but I was so sleepy it was hard to pay attention. I've seen it so many times, though, too. It was sort of like listing to that cd you've had for ten years, you sort of look up and it's been over for half an hour and you just heard it all without really listening.

Then we watched Margin Call and it was just as dull as it seemed it would be.

Saw Drive, which was a nice nap I had.

Saw What's Your Number, which was fairly shoddy.

Saw David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing which was AMAAAAAAZING. Seriously. I've seen the Branagh movie a few times, and it's always good for a laugh. But this one was a stage recording from last fall, and it was all hip and modernish and just outstandingly hilarious. Tell your friends.

So watching that and then watching all these so-so movies just frustrates me. I'll say it, I have standards. Movies that appeal to the lowest common denominator need not apply.

In other news, just a couple days left of work! W00t!

-Steph

laugh laugh laugh

Happy Thursday! Looks like it's finally going to rain this weekend, my phone says lightning. My phone doesn't know much about weather, though, so we'll have to wait and see.

Today I got up at 7:45 IN THE MORNING. In my dream I met a cat and I lived in a dorm. I often have "moving into the dorms" dreams but I think this one was because I had a 9 o'clock meeting at a school. LOOKS LIKE I may be re-enrolling. Computer systems. Networking. All that cool geek stuff.

In my previous dream, I'd asked them about the final exam, and they showed me a slideshow on camp activities like rafting and zip-lining. I said "I don't want to do that. Can I bring a doctor's note?" And they said that would be fine, so I think I have this final exam all wrapped up.

So we'll see how that goes. Gotta put some paperwork through and sit in on a class to see if I'm sure, but it's a way forward that isn't a) being unemployed or b) living the rest of my life in retail.

SPEAKING OF. One week left at the 'buster. FINALLY. UGH. Shoot me now.

OH, lol, that's right, I just had a birthday! Want to hear about that? (I just had a piece of cake can you tell??) Did you see the pictures of my masterpiece? Let me tell you about it.

I used Betty Crocker's recipe for like a nice family dinner cake, in that the recipe ends up being a single-layer cake. Remember tea time tea cake, for example. The first one, though, I dumped in (not quite enough) strawberry extract and the perfect amount of red. Second I did as directed, vanilla. Third I left out a touch of flower and tossed in a quarter cup of cocoa powder.

Between strawberry and vanilla was a strawberry frosting, between vanilla and chocolate there was a vanilla frosting, and on top of the chocolate and all over the damn thing was a big mess of dark chocolate ganache that was quite hilarious to apply. My goal was to hide the fact of the neapolitan interior within the guise of plain chocolate. It worked? Also, I dreamed of it.

In THAT dream, I'd entered a cake in the fair, but it was a box mix and can frosting, and the judges were highly unimpressed. You should have made THIS cake, they said, pointing to the neapolitan one. I woke up. Challenge accepted.

Yeah and we went to a museum and out to teppan dinner and stuff, too. I got a Dalek.

-Steph

Well now what

Happy Thursday! How are y'all? It's a little cold here tonight, but we just had some cheesey cheese cake that I made so it's all fine! (It was literally a cake made out of cheese and some gelatin. oreo crust!!!!!)

So Saturday is my birthday! Gonna make a cake because I dreamed about it!!! Never going to finish that cheesecake because of it though!! Too many sweets!! Too much sugar!!!! Beth also brought me home a coffee like half an hour ago!!!!!! We played word puzzles with my dad!!!!

So work only has two weeks left or so, which is ABOUT TIME. Gonna go do something else soon.

Oh geez, I'm sorry blog. You're like an elderly old pet that no one cares about any more. Dozing in the back yard under a hammock, every other day someone comes out and looks at you to see if you're still breathing.

You are. :<

-Steph

Toki

Happy Thursday!

Today was a nice day off. After a full eight hours of unpacking movies yesterday, it was nice to, you know, not have to do that any more.

Me and Carolyn hung out and watched TV and rode bikes. Went over to visit Jacqi at Green Forest-- go there and try the Lich King's Revenge or their new slushes! Um we rode back in darkness, it was great. Found a neat old movie on Netflix called "Alakazam the Great" which is an anime movie from 1960 with Speed Racer as the voice of the monkey king. It's bizarre but actually amazing.

Then me and Beth went to Toki, the ramen place across town. I had the curry ramen, which was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. And a green tea mochi ice cream for desert, so all round it was a fantastic idea to go there.

Now we're probably going to watch Airplane II: The Sequel. Did you know that Beth had NEVER HEARD OF IT???? So we watched the first one .. last night? What a good movie. So much fun.

-Steph

Blogging

Happy Thursday!

You know, blog, I don't love you anymore. You make me guilt-trip when I don't have anything fun or productive to report at the end of the week. But you know what, blog? You belong to me, and I can write whatever I want.

This week I played Minecraft and watched Doctor Who nonstop. I worked a bit. I ate half a pizza. I biked with Carolyn and right now I'm jamming with my band, which is amazing. I haven't heard anything back from Fry's in case you're wondering.

I started writing a crazy idea I'm calling "Barbara Rider: Woman Journalist" and the twist is it's set in medieval times and it's highly preposterous and I love it.

So it doesn't matter if that's all I did this week. You're just a blog.

-Steph

Ugh

Happy Thursday. This week I cleaned my room.

-Steph

Coming up roses

Happy Thursday! What a nice week this has been, on the whole. Weather's still good, Doctor Who is still good, built some good dinosaurs in Minecraft. Gonna be getting a decent amount back from taxes.

Let me tell you about Fry's.

I was going to apply there, I really was. I have an application all filled out (and dated - last month) but I never got around to going down there. The other day my parents went down and skulked around, came back with a fresh application and a tip about an opening in the Computer department.

So I go down, just to hand the application in, maybe talk to the guy if he's there. He is, turns out he's doing interviews at that very moment. I wait my turn, I'm the last one there.

The interview was a quiet one, two parts me waiting around and one part him explaining what the job would be. When I did say anything, it was largely about how confident I was in my ability to sell. After my third chunk of waiting, he took me in to talk to the store manager, who basically just asked if I wanted part- or full-time, I said whatever and he signed me up for full-time.

Then I left and drove out to the drug-test clinic, and once they get back to Fry's, Fry's'll get back to me and let me know what time to come in on Monday.

I don't know if it's just me, or actually, I don't know if it should be this way, but sometimes things just seem to be too easy. I thought job hunts were supposed to be hard and take forever and be soul-crushing. Never in a hundred years did I expect to walk out of there with a job, not on my first try.

It's going to be crazy different, and probably a lot harder than I expect. But I'm trying not to think about it, and let it just happen how it happens. Not that I don't care what happens, but whatever does I'm just going to have to deal with it, because this is what life is. If I do well, then I'm pretty much set for a good long time. Level up.

The crazy part is that I'm already working six days this week at Blockbuster, and if I do get full-time at Fry's I'll be doing five days there next week...and the other two I'll be putting in back at the old storefront. So basically, as of this Tuesday, I'm working at least 13 days straight, and beyond that indefinitely.

$$$ I feel so mercenary these days.

Oh! But also the other morning I baked a cake for tea time. :D

-Steph

Rocky

Happy Thursday! First off, I'd like to say the weather's holding at a nice springtime temperature. I don't know what's going to happen when spring actually gets here, but I'm guessing we're getting a snowy summer.

Kind of a rough week, all round. I got sick/allergy invasion because of the rain? because of the wind? because of the heat wave? that all happened over the course of two days. So my brain's been rattling around and every day I think the next day I'll be better but I'm not yet.

Had some pretty shoddy sleep the last couple of days, too. And I keep waking up all beat up from like, sleeping wrong. I don't know what I'm doing but whatever it is it isn't right.

Work is like, the dumbest waste of time, but if I'm there I can't go out and look for other things. Or if I'm not there, I'm crazy sick every day this last week. Or it's Sunday. On the other hand, my W-2s finally all arrived, and I think I'm technically in the next tax bracket up from last year, but I still should be getting some $$$ back once I go through it properly.

My birthday is next month, and I want to do something incredibly geeky. But I don't know what? For my 18th I went to a sci-fi convention in Pasadena, but there isn't one this year. There is WonderCon, but I don't know anything about that other than that I have some friends who are exhibitors at it. Just something having to do with sci-fi or even the larger geek world, comics or whatever. I want to identify more with that side.

We just watched Fright Night. "Watched" is a loose term. The fast forward was heavily employed. The best part was the introduction of David Tennant as what I like to call Pirate Jesus. It was pretty terrible.

Speaking of Doctor Who, did you see the cookies we made? Carolyn got some Portal cookie cutters, so you can make portal and portal guy and companion cube and turret cookies, so we did. But we had a bunch of extra cookie dough so she was all "you should make the Tardis" so I tried. And I tried to make a Dalek, too. And we iced them by hand which was both fun and hilarious.

And then I built some dinosaurs in Minecraft. That's all.

-Steph