doomy doom

While December was fraught with disappointment and unease, January and now February have held anything but those feelings.  Instead I now feel more hope and peace than I have in quite a while.  I had dinner with a friend recently who remarked that I seem brighter and more relaxed than I have in a long time.  Honey, I feel it.

The move into a new place went well, though I dragged my feet a bit in getting everything moved over.  It’s hard to motivate yourself to get out of bed in the morning when you have nothing substantial for which to get out of bed.  Regardless, I am now settled and living a quiet, solitary life out on a ranch in the country.  I’m ever so fond of it.  There’s a ranch cat who will occasionally grace me with its presence.  A Great Pyrenees lives out there as well, and she, Regret, will on occasion stop in to check on me.  The mule and horse that live there pretend that I don’t exist, but I think in the end we’ll become friends.  I might just have to make it my mission.  The other four horses that are staying there now know me fairly well and we’re all on good terms.  I end up feeding them more often than not, so what’s not to love about me?  So let’s see… quiet place to live? Check.  Acreage to roam and hike around?  Check.  Animals to befriend and converse with?  Check.  As few people as possible?  Check.  Gosh, it might just be ideal.  The biggest downside?  No internet.  Yes, dear Reader, I have no internet out there, hence my lack of timely updates.  It was called to my attention recently that I left you hanging with the depression that dripped from the last posting.  My apologies.

The job situation has been handled.  I am now working for a friend, or for someone who has now become my friend, and am enjoying it rather well.  I can only hope that I can maintain such positivity for long periods of time.  I do enjoy how resourceful I can be when I put my mind to it and am quite glad I was blessed with such will power.  I am also glad to have wonderful friends with whom I can share my life and my skills with in order to benefit them as well.  I never exactly expected all my random skills to come in handy, but I tend to surprise myself with how forward thinking some part of my brain is, however hidden from the forefront it may be.

I spoke with Linda a week or so ago to keep in contact.  She decided to quit after all.  They had continually disrespected her and she felt no need to keep herself in such a situation.  It was affecting her health, her mental state, and her life; it wasn’t worth it.  Too often people will sacrifice themselves for money and wonder why their life isn’t as satisfying as they think it should be.  She wasn’t one of those people, but it is a common thread I see among most people.  I am only glad that her integrity was able to withstand the poison and allowed her to free herself and move on, hopefully, to better things.

Say what you want and keep moving forward.

This year seems to have flown by.  I wouldn’t say that it’s been a great year by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s definitely been a learning experience.  Kind of like jumping out of a moving vehicle to see what it feels like to land on your face on the street.  Painful.  Educational.  Educational to the degree that one now knows what not to do in that situation. 

I listened to my bosses (they’re a couple) tell the story of how they first met.  It was cute, as stories like those tend to be.  It was, however, kind of painful on one level – the one where when the Short One walked up to her future husband and tapped him on the shoulder to see if it was indeed him that she was supposed to be meeting (blind date and all..), and his response to her later was that he knew from that moment that they were going to get married.  She doesn’t believe him, but he sticks by it even to this day, 16 years later.  I think a little part of her really does believe it, but that she’s just being stubborn like always.  A nice story.  That’s the short, short version.  The sad part is when I had to agree with Tami, the other lady I work with, that his feeling could have indeed been real and that the Short one not believing was just silly.  There are feelings like that that one can get when they meet someone, and in that instant, they know this is the person they want.  Some of us just deal with that realization better than others.  Some of us embrace it and can recount the story 16 years later.  Others run like mad, scared to death that this person might actually get in through the huge, huge walls we’ve put up to keep the world out.

 Moving right along…

All in one day, I got laid off from the Scrap Metal yard, and had a horrible argument at home that left me with the option of moving out sooner rather than later.  I tend not to deal too well with people telling me where I should be, or what I should be doing – essentially, being at someone’s beck and call – unless they’re paying me, like at work.  So, arguments arise, and we decided it was best that either I move out, or find a new roommate.  As I would like to have internet and other nice-ities, I’m looking to move out.  (Internet’s not available in our neck of the woods.)  Needless to say, it was a rough couple of days.  It’s gotten better though, so no worries.  The couple I’m working for wanted me to work more days, so it worked out fine, actually.  I wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that they really, really appreciate having me around.  I show my boss techniques in our graphics programs that he’s unaware of, and he shows me how to use the nifty machines we have in the building.  It’s a love-love relationship.  heh..   We’re graphics nerds.. it’s awesome.  It’s also quite nice to work for a man that isn’t afraid to ask questions from a woman, or take tips/suggestions on how to do things better/differently.  Refreshing.

Okay, I’m nearly done with the project I’m working on here, so I’m gonna clean up and head on home.  Hope you’re all doing well and having a good year so far.  I’m hoping next year looks up a bit.  I made this one entirely too rough on myself.  I think I just like hitting my head on my desk/wall/etc.  *shrug*  Masochist.  Maybe if I find all the hard ways to do things, I’ll end up figuring out what the easy ones were…

1. added more header images. my friend commented that i had my cat in the headers, but not any of me.. so i added a couple of me.

2. trying to ignore the conflict of having header images messing with the font/roll overs in the header. might try to code it to be different, but until i am that snazzy, no dice. so, depending on what image is up there, you may or may not see either the title or the rollover buttons. this is me shrugging. *shrug*

3. i think i’m going to stick with this layout/style until i find something better. i went through nearly 50 themes yesterday to see what i liked, but i didn’t find any that made me nearly as happy as this one. there was another one that i might use in the winter season, as it is wintery looking, but until then, i like the randomized header and the functionality of this theme.

4. as you can see, there are journal entries already here. i imported my Blogger journal into here since it is the nicest [in terms of language and content] journal i have online.

5. i have it set so that the page only shows five entries at a time so as not to make you have to scroll for days. if you want to see more entries you can either go to a specific day on the calendar to the right. the days that have entries are highlighted. otherwise, you can go to the archives tab and sift through those.

6. i went through all the entries and tagged them so they all fit into categories. so if you’re looking for a post about something in particular, try looking through the categories, and if you want to get more specific, i have the live search turned on and it will pull up entries with the keywords of your choice. if you have any problems with the functionality of something, let me know and i’ll see if i can fiddle with it to make it work.

i leave you with a picture from the fire escape on the Monarch hotel in SF. enjoy!

currently playing with the code around here.   loaded some images for the header.  threw a style over the whole thing so it didn’t look so sterile.  will continue updating until i am satisfied.    and will keep you updated on the updates. haha..

i like how these aren’t a consistent record of what’s going on, but instead are just sporadic update type posts. Most of the stuff in between isn’t that interesting anyway, lemme tell ya. it would go something like ‘oh hey, today I got a cool orchid plant from work. I get to take home the plants that aren’t doing so hot since we can’t sell them. So I have a yard full of half-dead plants. But this orchid just lost its flowers, so it wasn’t in so much need of love, just maintenance. ‘

see? terribly boring.

Anyways.. haven’t heard back from the phlebotomy thing yet. they’ll call if they want to do an interview. still working at the yard and at the shop. might work at the Volk winery in september during harvest season. long hours, lots of overtime, and a short stint of madness. it’ll allow me to save up some money, which would be fantastic. dad’s in the hospital for his shoulder surgery. went in on monday, but is still there since he’s a bit disoriented. not good. trying to figure out what i can do about this.. we’ll see.

ok. back to work. i’m really hungry.