February 2006 Archives

I'm heading out today to wind my way back to Fort Gay. My grandmother passed away yesterday morning. Please remember my family in your thoughts and prayers.

Full-time blogging will recommence soon. I just wanted to get something up here to say that. I've been working on a couple of entries for this week, but they all naturally got derailed for now. Take care, and be safe out there.

Full-time blogging will re-commence sometime this week, I promise. Right now, I'm in the midst of a whirlwind of activity, simultaneously good and sad and bad and rad. I'm just trying to stay afloat with it all, and while I figure out how to do all that, I'll hopefully get some aspects of my life much more organized than they've become in the last few weeks. The physical side of that starts, of course, by figuring out where all the random papers and trivial crap that's piled up in my room goes. Who knows where that will take me?

As I usually like to do with my first-entries-after-a-week-of-posting, I'll point you to a link. It's to a Roanoke Times article that printed this past Friday, an interview one of my English professors, who is openly gay. It's at first surprising to see anything regarding homosexuality in the Roanoke paper, but they did let him speak without trying to bias his words. His isn't a unique situation, but since I also grew up in a West Virginia small town and remember the ridicule that anything associated with the word "gay" was dealt, I can imagine the difficulties he faced. No matter your opinion on the topic, he is certainly a great teacher and an excellent writer.

Also, I'm taking bets on how long it will be before we start seeing bumper stickers with "Brokeback" as the adjective before a variety of location-specific and job-descriptive nouns.

Yes, it's Valentine's Day, but unfortunately I couldn't be with mine today (that'll come this weekend). So, I'm going to talk about a couple of other things.

The 3200B has caught Olympic Fever over the last few days. It was a lucky coincidence that the biggest snowstorm of the year (and one of the biggest in years) fell over the same weekend as the Torino Games' opening, because there was no shortage of good TV fodder while we were essentially stuck in the apartment Saturday and Sunday.

I guess I was otherwise occupied with school the last time there was a Winter Olympics, even though it was in Salt Lake City. However, the Games I most prominently remember growing up were the 1994 events in Lillehammer. I believe that also happened to be the winter where we had multiple blizzards that let us out of school for weeks, so I remember staying up late watching David Letterman's mom cover the lighter side of the Olympiad, and I remember names like Dan Jansen, Picabo Street and, of course, Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.

At any rate, I've enjoyed watching the extended coverage of Torino over the past few days. For one, I've rediscovered that curling is not merely to be ridiculed as an obscure addition to the games. It's very strategic and intellectual while still requiring a measure of physical fitness. I think I could be a curler; that would have to be my sport. That and innertube water polo.

Overall, it's still exciting to see the outcomes of all the events. I mean, where else but in the Olympics can you trash talk the Dutch during a speedskating match and actually care about the end result? Go Team USA!

Look out, kids, and make sure your pets are tied up, because I've been tagged! There's only one way out of this now.

Four jobs I've had:

• Journalist
• President of Wesley (okay, so it was a volunteer position, but I defy you to tell me it wasn't a job)
• GE Co-Op Extraordinaire
• Cost Analyst

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Garden State
• Back To The Future
• Office Space
• Pirates of the Caribbean

Four books I could read over and over:

(I'll do the ones that I actually have read multiple times, for one reason or another)

• The Chronicles of Narnia
• Harry Potter
• The Great Gatsby
• Catcher In The Rye

Four TV shows I love:

• 24
• Lost
• The new Battlestar Galactica
• Skating With Celebrities
• Just kidding about that last one
• Space Ghost: Coast to Coast

Four Three places I've lived (I'm still young yet):

• Fort Gay, WV
• Blacksburg, VA
• Fairfax, VA

Four places I've vacationed:

• Augusta, GA
• Lake Cherokee, TN
• New Orleans, LA
• Gulf Shores, AL

Four of my favorite dishes:

• Steak
• Fajitas
• Shrimp 'n' Pasta
• Tequila Lime Chicken

Four sites I visit daily:

• Flickr
• VT Homepage
• Navy Federal
• Personalized Google

Four places I would rather be right now:

• New Zealand
• Australia
• The Mediterranean
• Great Britain

Four people I am tagging:

• Brittlea
• PaaKow
• Nacho
• HokieExplorer

I've discovered another small key to sanity in this crazy world: keep your guitar close by you, and everything will be a little bit better. I left the case in here a couple of nights ago after I'd finished playing around a little bit, and it turns out that leaving it here as a visual reminder makes me want to play it even more. This in turn relaxes me like few other things can.

Another one of life's small pleasures is opening up my guitar case after it's been closed up for a day or so. The rich, woody smell that emanates from that case floors me every time. It comes with having a guitar that's made out of real wood instead of laminate, so I highly recommend getting one if you can swing it. Even if you don't play. Just to open it up once in a while. It's therapeutic. Honest.

So, with that in mind, I can hear the Taylor singing already.

Some tidbits for all you youngins out there:

• I wanted to try to participate in iTunes' billion-song countdown, so I could score a Nano, but naturally billions of other people had the same idea this evening. I haven't been able to access the store at all for hours. I hope Apple is happy. I mean, what if my life depended on me downloading Sly And The Family Stone's "Everyday People," and the only way I could legally get it was iTunes, and my computer was working properly, and I didn't already have an iPod? I'd be in trouble, that's for darn sure! Anyway, see if you can do it.
• I keep forgetting to study for the GMAT, but I'm going to be taking it sometime over the next few weeks/months, because I've decided to get my MBA starting next fall. Work's paying for it, so why not? Of course, this plan hinges on me passing the thing, but usually I'm not too worried about standardized tests. This one, however, is on a computer, and it can read minds.
• I've been realizing that I haven't been to a show since the Dave concert in Madison Square, mainly due to Christmas and New Year's and all the other holidays. I intend to correct that situation as soon as I can. Maybe I'll do it by going to see The Dan Band at 9:30. If you watched Old School and loved Frank's wedding reception band, these are the very same guys. They only play songs sung by women, and they rock it out.
• That is all.

First off, I had another great weekend in Blacksburg, and I can mark down another Midwinters dance. I'm sure Gina will have the pictures up at some time or another, if you want to see us be dancin' fools. Our group also met Steve the Pirate, who works at Kabuki's in Christiansburg. His mother was half-pirate, making Steve 0.25 pirate. Honest!

My computer has been sick for a long, long time. The culprit is no virus, however, nor does it have worms. The best analogy I can give you is that it is showing many signs of old age. You might recall me grumbling about the barking seal noises as far back as when I moved up here in August. After that, I played a cat-'n'-mouse game of trying to find out which component was actually making the noises, which led to a months-long power supply replacement scheme. With the barking noises absent since my parents were here, I thought I had finally given the ol' girl a new lease on life, but now I believe the hard drive is starting to croak. At the very least, it's not spinning up like normal, which leads me to believe either the power supply is faulty, or the primary hard drive is going bad (again - or rather, it's having a relapse from last spring).

So, I've just about had it. I could keep replacing parts, but now the only original components on this thing are the motherboard, CPU, the sound card, the floppy drive, and some of the input jacks. At some point, you have to say "Enough!" and take the plunge in getting a new machine.

Now begins the task of figuring out how to go about getting a new computer. I like the appeal of the do-it-yourself approach, where I order a bunch of parts and sling them all together myself, making a custom-built powerhouse. However, I lack the time and energy to do that correctly. That leaves going with a big company, which I'll probably end up doing, even though computer purists think they all suck.

I never said I was a computer purist. :)

Another downside that just came to mind: I don't really have the money to buy anything right now. Blast. Back to dreaming, back to square one, and back to pleading daily with my hard drive to not blow up before I can find another easy solution.

This week has succeeded in making me very, very tired. I'm not sure why, but I guess my sleep patterns are disrupted or something. The days themselves are actually going by relatively quickly, because I'm getting a lot more bits and pieces of work as time goes on. By the time I get home, though, I'm drained.

The solution? Do everything I can to get more sleep.

Here's the first heads-up, though it's posted all over the VT website now, too: the episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition set in Blacksburg will be on the teevee February 12, also known as the Sunday after this coming one. Do check it out, won't you?