Merry Christmas!

On Thursday we rented a car to head to Nebraska to visit the Boy Creature’s parents. The plan was to drive straight through the day and be in Nebraska late that night (the drive from Ohio to his parent’s house is about 12 hours on a good day, straight). Unfortunately we encountered a storm near Des Moines and got stuck there, so we stopped to spend the night in a hotel and got off in the morning. It wasn’t the greatest of circumstances, but we ended up making it to Nebraska around 4:00pm CST Christmas day.

So now I write to you from the middle of nowheresville, USA where my cell phone doesn’t work, I’ve not seen a Starbucks in 4 days, and there isn’t even a Wal-mart in this little town (however they have a gas station! Yay!). It’s colder than it has any right to be and there is so much snow that it might still be here come summertime. Celebrating Christmas with his parents was certainly different. I’ve not celebrated Christmas without my family…ever. It wasn’t honestly something I ever fathomed doing, but The Boy Creature wanted to have Christmas with his family, and we didn’t want to be apart, so this is the way it worked out.

Anyway, I hope everyone has had a lovely and safe holiday! I’ll see you in the new year!

Happy Holidays!

My Christmas Wish List!

Seems like I always make up a wish list for Christmas, but rarely get anything on it, but for some reason I still feel compelled to make the list. I guess it’s just because I love making lists, and making the list is fun for me, even if I don’t get anything on it! However, if you feel like getting me something on my list, I won’t say no!

-Wii Fit or Wii Fit Plus
-Wrist or Arm warmers! (want so much, always)
-Anything on my Amazon books wish list
-An ebook reader (sony reader!)
-Kinder Eggs (We can’t get these here, but I have an obsession)
-Anything Hello Kitty
-Super cute pink things!
-Legos (another obsession)
-Personal Trainer: Walking for DS
-Awesome 360 games that I don’t already have
-Microsoft Points!
-Post Cards, Stationary, Stamps, Pens, Pencils, memo sheets, rubber stamps (I have an office supply obsession)
-stickers!!! (Cute ones)
-cute kitchy long long strands of pearls
-Anything anyone thinks I might like!

And now for something completely different!

Last night I had a dream. I know I don’t usually share too much about me, and that my journal is mostly about gaming and craftiness, but I really would like to change that a little. So I’m going to tell you about my dream!

I was running through a forest, there were dense patches of fog hovering all around, and moss and rocks all over the forest floor. The trees were mostly tall and green, and there was a worn dirt path that I was running along. Emotionally, I was completely excited, and slightly curious, definitely not scared at all. I felt like I was running toward something, definitely not away from anything. Eventually after running for nearly 20 minutes, probably, I came to a tree that was huge, and right in the middle of the path. It had two words carved into its trunk. One of them was ‘Look’ and it was carved at eye level straight across. The second word was ‘Stop’ and it was scratched in much messier than look was, and it was diagonal at about knee level. I crouched down, and traced my fingers across the word ‘Stop’ and pulled out a knife, stood up and carved in ‘Don’t’ in between the two words. I then turned around, feeling completely satisfied and walked away.

And then I woke up. Upon waking I felt pleasantly rested (a rarity) and had no bad feelings at all. I’m not the type of person that thinks dreams are important, or send messages from our subconscious, but I can’t help but feel that I was supposed to take something from that, or that it had some meaning that I’m not understanding. Oh well. A dream is a dream! I just happen to feel like this was a particularly good one.

NaNoWriMo 2009

I’ve made the decision to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. It’s been 2 years since I’ve actually participated as a writer. I have participated every year though, in some form, and I really do enjoy it. It is one chance to just write. I love to write.  I know that isn’t really displayed here, but I’m not very good at blogging. I don’t like writing about myself much, and I have trouble with putting my own thoughts into words.

I love to write about other people. People that I’ve made up, preferably. I love shaping someone elses’ life and doing what I want to it. I also enjoy the pressure of NaNoWriMo. For anyone who doesn’t know what NaNoWriMo is, and doesn’t like links, it stands for National Novel Writers Month. It’s an annual creative writing project that takes place in November, encouraging participants to create a 50,000 word novel within the 30 days, ending November 30th at 11:59 local time.

My first year participating in NaNoWriMo was 2003, and I was a junior in high school. It was crazy, and stressful, and I tried so hard, and what I ended up with was a 74,368 word novel that I still can’t read to this day because it makes me want to pull my hair out. I’m sure it is terrible. I am sure it has mistakes, but it is there, marking the fact that in my life, I accomplished something that many never dream of. It is tangible and that makes me feel great. Years later when I was participating in my 3rd NaNoWriMo in 2005, I was away at college. It was again stressful, but instead of creating tens of thousands of words full of crap, I created my best writing to date. It felt absolutely amazing to have this book that I created, and have it actually be fairly awesome. I like that feeling.

That’s part of the reason I’ve decided I want to participate again this year. I’ve been in a bit of a…mood recently, and I think this is just what I need to get myself out of it!

So you can expect to hear more about that as it comes closer to starting time. We’ll see how this goes. I imagine I will be at least decently productive, especially since I have my super awesome netbook! Which reminds me, I should probably put word on it. It came with the disk, but I don’t have it on it, because I switched to Ubuntu NBR, ended up hating it, so I had to switch back to XP. So I need to get on that soon. Sticking it on the to do list!

yuckyfluflu

It’s that time of year again! I’ve been so sick for a bit over a week now. I’ve had a cough, sore throat, a stuffed up nose, a fever, and just generally being achy all over and fatigued. I am nearly over it now, but I am still feeling the effects of it, and still have the remainder of a cough and some sinus issues. Yuck. I am just feeling pretty icky.

My T-Mobile Sidekick!

I’ve finally decided it is time to make a post about my sidekick. Most everyone has seen a news article or something recently about the sidekick outage, and how terrible “living in the cloud” is, and how you should never trust a company with your information, and blah blah blah wank wank wank.

Whatever.

I love my sidekick. It is definitely the best phone I’ve had, ever. I actually didn’t lose my contacts like other people did, because I was smart enough not to freak out right away when I lost my G (means GPRS, has something to do with edge services, and I don’t really know. All I know is it means that if I lose it, I can’t surf the web or get email or chat on aim or any other cool ‘requiring data functionality things’). Instead I waited to see what was going on.

I was without data services for a total of 12 days, and even after that I didn’t get e-mail back until the 15th, making a total of 21 days with some type of outage for me. This is where my rant is going to come in. I’m a prepaid sidekick user. It is just the best option, really. I pay 30 bucks a month for unlimited data and unlimited text messages. I can surf the web, send email and texts, IM, and tweet, and hang out on Facebook for as long as I want, all the time. I like it. I don’t like talking on the phone so paying more for a contract just so I can have some minutes, doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.  But here’s where it starts to suck.

T-mobile doesn’t care about their prepaid users. Not one bit. I was reading some posts over at poweredbydanger and saw a post that said that during the outage, prepaid users weren’t having money subtracted from their account (prepaid users pay a daily fee of $1.00) by T-mobile, which I thought was odd, because I was still seeing the daily fee being taken out. So the boy creature called T-mobile for me and asked what was going on, and was told “to call back after my data service is fully restored to be credited according to how long I was without service.” So once I got service back, he called in for me. The rep from T-mobile said that prepaid users were only being credited $10.00 and that was that. So I’m kinda upset because that doesn’t even cover how long I was without service. But of course, T-mobile doesn’t really care about that.

Rant aside though, I still love my sidekick and really have no plans to ditch it and switch carriers. Where else am I going to find an awesome phone, with an amazing hardware keyboard, an interesting form factor, a fun OS, and a plan in which I am not forced to pay for voice minutes I don’t use, and can have unlimited data and texting?

Really?

Oh right, no where. Well, except for T-mobile.

So even though T-mobile doesn’t really seem to care about their prepaid sidekick users, I will still be sticking with my sidekick. It’s still my sidekick.

I got a new toy!

I got a netbook! It’s Pink!!!

I’ve had laptops before.  I tend to lean toward HP when I am purchasing any computer, so I’ve had multiple hp full size laptops and enjoyed them. After a not so great experience about a year ago with hp though, I’ve been going laptopless. I sort of enjoyed it. I mean, I was always on my more powerful desktop, with a bigger screen, but recently being tied down to my desk anytime I wanted to be on the computer really started to get on my nerves. I decided I wanted a laptop. Something that would be small and light, that I could use for internet, email, and work. At first I started looking at eeepc’s  because they are certainly small. Then for awhile I thought maybe I could get one of the higher spec’d Ibook G4′s! Then I could have OSX! That was exciting until I realized how hard it is to find one in nice condition.  Then I learned about hacintosh (hackintosh? I’ve seen it spelled both ways) and that some netbooks are really easy to put OSX on! Which got me looking at Dell mini 9′s because it seems to be one of the easiest. Dell mini 9′s weren’t quite what I was looking for though, so I ended up going for the Dell mini 10v which seems to only be slightly harder to install OSX onto. I ordered it from Dell on the 16th and it arrived on the 18th making me a very surprised and very happy girl! (It wasn’t supposed to get here until the 23rd and tracking never updated)

I still haven’t named it, but here it is:

So it’s really awesome. I like it a lot. It’s currently running XP which doesn’t really make me happy, so I may switch to ubuntu in the meantime until I buy a retail copy of leopard.

Also, part of my purchase ($5?) went to help find a cure for breast cancer.

I am of course, pro-boobs.

It’s my birthday but I don’t want to cry.

Happy Birthday to me!

I figured I might as well say it to myself. You know…just in case.

I GOT IT

Drew got me the camera I wanted for my birthday. HOW EXCITING IS THAT? Anyway It’s really awesome and I think I am going to name him François because I just recently beat Chibi-Robo Park Patrol and my favorite friend in the game was the cool marionette, François who eventually rose above the need for strings. So say Au revoir to Calvin and hello François!

Now with new found cameraness I’m gonna celebrate with a picspam!

This is our new puppy, Jingles! Isn’t he just so rediculously cute? Okay so I wouldn’t normally put a shirt on him, but whatever, The shirt is our local schools’ colors (Go Wildcats!) and says ‘Team captain. Drew and I found it in that dollar area at target! There were tons of different clothing like cheerleading outfits and such! Too Cute! Also Starring in this picture is Bo-Bo which is that silly toy from PetSmart (Which is not where the pets go of course, but whatever). Anyway isn’t he just anerable? Yeah you can’t handle it! Go Ahead and give his head a little scratchypoo with your mouse. I know you want to.

This is lunch. (Hey I said pic-spam, didn’t I?) Lunch Consisted of a Ham Sandwich on Wheat Bread with colby-jack cheese on it, and an extra half piece on the side. Also Munchies which after taking the picture I promptly picked out all the pretzels, mini doritos and sunchips and gave the cheetos to Drew. And of course a Welches Grape Juice. Mmmm delicious!

This is my monitor/360/computer. Basically this is what I look at when I’m on my computer or playing my 360. My monitor is sitting on an Allsop stand thing that Drew got for me at wal-mart. The 360 fits under it just right and it’s so nice.

Also peeking out are the altec lansing speakers I use and my thumb drive, some random cables or something and my lists. I’m a compulsive list maker. I love to do lists especially.

Not pictured however is my actual computer (the tower, it sits under the table) and my sub woofer box thingy (also under the table.

This is my stack of gaaaaaames!!!!

Halo 3, Tenchu Z, Guitar Hero 2 & 3, Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo (Still unopened, lol, had it forever), Beautiful Katamari, Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged, Viva Pinata, Rockband, Halo 2, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Sims 2 Limited Edition (includes night life and bon voyage). Oh and Can’t forget Office Home and Student 2007! That’s the best game in that stack! and of course Fruits Basket! 1!

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This is my awesome table. It’s where I eat, play games, compute, work, craft and basically do everything! It’s actually about twice as long as you see, but that all got cut off.

OOOOH MAIL! I wonder what if could be! It’s from hong kong! So far away!

It’s my supercard! I was super excited about finally receiving this in the mail, but then I was really sad because it doesn’t work. So now it has to be sent back to deal extreme and I have to wait forever again to get a new one. Drew emailed them about an RMA number but I don’t think he has heard back yet. So disappointing!

And now Puppehkins says Bye!

Still feeling bad, but I’m feeling a bit better.

Day 2 of the antibiotics. fun stuff. Starting to feel better though. I’ll make a post about our Christmas tree later today. I have a lot of work to do to day, though. Later!