Hooplah.Org

I’ve actually been holding off on posting for a few days… only because it’s all too typical that when I get into my web pages again I suddenly flood and spam it with posts, as if that’s going to make up for leaving it barren for months. There’s nothing monumental going on in my life at the present time, anyway, except for the little thoughtful moments I like to document every now and then. If I don’t write for the next few days, or even the week after, it’s because I will be both cleaning the house and then spending time with Matt. Maybe I’ll find time while he’s here to jot down a quick entry, but I remember back in the summer I regretted doing it since I always take 1-2 hours to write a decent entry. Oh well… maybe if he takes alot of naps I’ll write some.

And, now, for some of the thoughtful moments as filler content for this entry:

Sunday night was the season finale of Sex and the City. I was sad about it, but in that detached way I seem to be towards everything. It ended in the way I wanted it to, and I do hope the rumors are true about there being a movie as a real parting gift for the series. As resolving as the final episode seemed to be, Carrie’s true fate is still left cloudy and as unstable as all of her other relationships have been. I dunno… I’d really like to see her get married. Or, hell, even see Samantha get married. I’ll miss the series dearly, either way… think it’s been my most favorite so far, even topping my Real World obsession through the mid to late 90s.

Yesterday I was feeling somewhat adventurous, and randomly decided that I would bake some meringues. I had been thinking of making them for Matt while he was here, and I figured getting practice couldn’t hurt, considering they’re somewhat temperamental to make. I found a recipe online for Chocolate Meringues (hoping my mother would try one if they were chocolate) and started working on it shortly after dinner.

When I had finished adding in all the ingredients, it became obvious that someone had just posted the recipe without ever having tested it… because the batter was no longer light and fluffy like it should have been, but had turned very watery and dark. I got my mother to confirm that it was ruined, and I had to clean everything and start over from scratch.

The second time went somewhat better… all I had done was lessen the chocolate from 4TBS to 2TBS, hoping that would help, but the final product was still weighed down and ultimately incorrect for meringues. While they were baking they had fallen and spread out across the trey (real meringues would have stayed in whatever shape they landed in when I glopped them onto the baking sheet) and the surface of them looked like a cracked sidewalk. I tried one this morning, and it wasn’t horrible, but something was definitely amiss. I threw the rest of them away. Only the top parts of them edible while the bottoms were a hard chewy mess.

Yesterday I also made the first real steps toward possibly going to college for a bit to help me get a job. I timidly called Strayer, and talked to the counselor. I ended up calling her 3 separate times within an hour, because everytime we got off the phone I’d think about how I should have pressed for more information on such and such, or been more clear, or asked about costs. She was trying to get me interested in a bachelors/associates degree, which I can’t blame her for, but there was nothing she really could have said to make me feel that I’m capable of investing that much time into education at this time in my life.

I was actually still feeling somewhat hopeful, despite her telling me that I would have to spend nearly a year and a half to get a certificate to put on my resume. But when I called back about the price, my heart completely sank. She said that each credit hour was $245.50. There were 12 classes in the typical certification, and that equaled out to be about 54 credits. Aka… $13,257. That’s an impossible sum for someone who can’t get any financial aid or can’t afford to have anymore student loans hanging over their head. When that has to come almost completely out of pocket… it no longer becomes an option.

She gave me a reference to a job company she heard of that was willing to fully fund furthering education after 3 months of being employed… but when I went to the site, that offer was only available to people who had graduated less than 18 months ago. So, me, going on 36 months this June, is just a tad bit over that cutoff.

Then, Delores (Strayer counselor) called me back. She made a little joke saying how she was bugging me now, since I had promised on my third phone call that it would be the last time I bothered her. She told me about a certification she had almost forgotten about… CIS. Truth be told, this was the same certification I had originally requested information on, but I had been lukewarm about it because the description to me wasn’t anything like what I was really looking for. It’s only 6 classes, which, if my math is right, should run between $5,892-$6,625 (only because I can’t remember if each class was worth 4.0 credit hours or 4.5) and it’s actually exactly what I wanted. It focuses on office support positions and administrative assistants. I was really thrilled by this, and Delores told me where in the handbook she was sending me to get more information on the classes and what not encase there’s any additional information than what’s online.

Though that’s still alot of money to shell out, it can be paid in like 2-3 payments if I space out my classes in 2-3 semesters. And spacing out the classes wouldn’t take much longer, since they run quarterly semesters. Even though I was a little disappointed to read somewhere that the market was already flooded with CIS degrees and certifications, there’s still been plenty of employment ads in the paper for people looking to fill those very positions. Maybe in large cities there’s too many of them, but out in areas like this might be the best place to get jobs for work experience and references.

But, oh, listen to me. Talking it up and getting excited over something that will probably blow up in my face. Gotta stay humble, gotta keep my feet on the ground… because I don’t think I could take myself being anymore of a failure than I already am.

Pretty bored ATM. I would otherwise do some more hinging in DAoC, but in less than 10 minutes they’ll be taking the server down, and I don’t really want to waste time getting all setup when it won’t last long. So… I’m making a post here.

I figured I would answer the Friday Five questions to kill some time, but they’re not the best of questions to be asking someone like me.

1. When was the last time you went to the doctor?

I think it was probably sometime back in June of 2002. At the time I was mainly going in for tests at the hospital… I guess I went to a doctor a couple of months before that so I could get a reference for the tests, but I don’t remember going.

2. When was the last time you went to the dentist?

Heh… It’s probably been 4 years, and I won’t go again for the rest of my life if I can manage it. I could be the poster girl for why you don’t give braces to 8 year olds… I have tons of cavities from the experience, but I’ve learned to live with them. The last thing I need is the “help” from a dentist that will gladly schedule (and charge me) for 10 office visits to fill 1-3 cavities at a time. I’d rather they knock me out for for 5 hours and do them all at once, but apparently that’s not possible. So… for now they just give me another reason why I should lay off sweet stuff

3. When was the last time you filled your gas tank?

I think the last time I filled a gas tank was the day before I went to my first job through the employment agency. Or maybe I did once sometime while Matt was here back in November? Can’t remember.

4. When was the last time you got enough sleep?

I’m actually having the problem of getting too much sleep lately.

5. When was the last time you backed up your computer?

I don’t really back up my computer… ever since my zip disks started erasing on me for no reason, I stopped trying to kid myself that it’s ever possible to keep all the data you want.

Sigh. I’m actually really looking forward to feeding my axolotls today, and waiting for when my mother gets home to do it so she can watch… just cause I like her seeing them Cayenne’s leg is growing back nicely (not sure if I ever mentioned it… but when I put Kasey and Cayenne in the big 20 gallon tank, I guess Kasey got so hungry beyond his control that he felt the need to bite Cayenne’s arm off. I had hard them splashing, so I guess I discovered it right after it happened) and as they’re getting bigger, it’s becoming more and more obvious that Cayenne is a boy… though Kasey I’m still not 100% sure about. They’re responding to the cow liver moreso than the shrimp, so hopefully they’ll grow alot more in the coming months. No matter what sex they end up really being, I’ll always refer to Cayenne as “she” and Kasey as “he”… simply because they look that way to be by their coloring and personalities.

I had had Cayenne in the big tank for a while, but the filter I was using broke a night or two ago while I was trying to get it to stop making such a rattling noise. I kept trying to figure out what it was hitting up against, but now I’m just accepting that it was old and it was a crappy filter anyway. I couldn’t keep Cayenne in the tank after it broke, since she was depending on the filter to put air in the water, and I wasn’t sure that she’d be able to swim to the surface with her bad leg. Plus, big quantities of stagnant water just gets freaking nasty after a while. I’d really like to get a canister filer for the tank as soon as possible… But they’re in the range of $45-65. I’ve told my mother about it, and she tried to convince me to cash my state tax return check and use that money… it’s only $50, but I had wanted to keep that for when Matt came here. I had given my $144 check to my father, since the union at my mother’s work is planning on going on strike sometime in late March, and they’ll need all the money they can then (since my parents don’t understand the concept of saving, they have 0 saved up for emergencies such as this). So… yeah. My mother wants me to talk to my father about buying a filter for me, but I don’t see how he’d ever say yes.

Matt will be arriving here in a week. Doesn’t seem like that long ago that he was here in November. I guess most of this week will be spent cleaning this nasty house again, though it never ends up looking all that great… but clean > dirty I guess, whether it’s a visible difference or not.

I took the past two days and finally finished transferring all of my journal archives to MT, all 1069 of them, and set up an archive system that would have been virtually impossible 6 months ago. I feel so accomplished right now… I love the rush of being able to make something I’m proud of. Now all I need to do is make the guestbook, which is both easy and a general pain in the ass. We’ll see if I’m motivated enough to get to it tonight.

I’m treading myself to strawberry short cake for the 10+ hours of work I put into this since yesterday.

On a side topic… just like this time last year, I’m finding myself completely uninterested in DAoC. Or… I just got so sick of my issues with it that I actually feel better not playing. I logged off before RVR started on Monday night, and have not been back on since. I’m just getting so sick of being online all freaking day, and never getting an invite to join guild RVR. No one ever wants to include me solely for my company… I have to offer something that serves them, otherwise I might as well not exist. On the days when someone openly says in /gu that they’re starting a group, I send them a tell to secure my spot and get my ass out there asap. But on days when RVR is by tell invite only… I’ll spend all day doing nothing, just like I did Monday, all the while getting more and more upset about this boundary that keeps me from having any fun. I considered trying to form my own group, but what’s the point when all the support classes that are online are already in the first group. Maybe part of my frustration is that I’m jealous they have good friends they can group with. The two friends I came to Iseult with don’t play there much anymore. Though I try to be friendly with everyone… I’m having a hard time turning any of the acquaintances I’ve made into real friends. At one point I had group security with 7 other people, but they we were all basically drafted into the group, and they were all people I couldn’t see myself getting that close to. Some of them I had tried to be friendly with in the past, but it went no where. I ended up opting out of the group for those reasons, and for disliking the route they were taking the group (primarily 8v8 only). I knew I was shooting myself in the foot when I did it… but I was going to be unhappy with the situation either way, so I figured I may as well take the route that would allow someone else to have fun in my place.

Last year when I quit it was because I was just tired of the game. To me then, it had ran it’s course in my life and it was time to move on. Now, I have a class that I love, and I’ve only just begun to start enjoying the game again… but I find myself not being allowed to enjoy it as much as I could. I’ve tried arguing it to try to fix the situation… but to no avail. There are so many great people on that server… yet I am a late arrival and I know I will never ever really fit in. So many of them already have their circle of friends, and are no longer accepting anyone new. So many of them have assumed certain ideas and truth, and will not even consider the possibilities of them being wrong, or accepting the bad that eventually comes from them.

I barley have contact with my RL friends anymore. I have not seen or spoken to Lindsay in a year and a 1/2. I talk to Carl once in a blue moon, when I happen to be awake at 5AM and feel talkative enough to IM him. I had wished Sandy happy birthday on 01/27, but before then we had not had any real type of conversation in probably 6 months. I saw Stephen last week, had dinner with him at Joe’s Crab Shack and walked around some stores… but I had not seen him before that since October. I have not seen Sandy since June 03, Lindsay since August 02, and Carl… since September 01. Vince was last seen in fall of 01, and Brian… not since my junior year of high school.

Sometimes when I break my life down like this… I really do feel ashamed. I feel like the horrible person I am for how I’ve treated all my beloved friends. And, sadly… it is mostly because of DAoC. I’m also starting to wonder if it’s no longer sad that that is my reason… or if it’s just plain sick.

On a lighter note… I am highly considering taking some courses at Strayer to see if a certification of some sort to help me get my foot in the door for the office jobs that I want to have. I’ve been trying for a year with just myself to offer, and that doesn’t seem to be very appealing to potential employers. I had filled out a form online to get an informational packet since to me, but as I clicked submit I watched as magically the “contact me by phone” option selected itself. The next day I got a call from a counselor at Strayer. I had not received the informational packet I requested, but I’ve received 2 phone calls. I hate getting involved with counselors… they’ve never been any help to me other than trying to convince me to do something I don’t want to. But.. I guess if I have any hope of getting any information out of them, I’ll have to deal with it for just a little while. Maybe she can direct me to a class that would help me achieve my goal better than the class I had originally found. Who knows… I guess I’ll find out in the next few days.

Herbie died tonight I had actually been thinking of writing an entry about how well this month has been going compared to the beginning of the year. I read over the last few entires I’ve made and it’s embarrassing how much I seemed to be “woe is me” and crying all the time. I guess the only times I chose to write are either when I’m upset or angry…

I pretty much know why Herbetta died, but I can’t even say it. It would have been two years ago on valentines day that I got her, though she turned two years old sometime last month. The poor thing is dead and it’s all my fault. I am so, so sorry.