Archive for January, 2008
You probably haven’t may have noticed there haven’t been any updates in a few days. Well, that’s because Zack and I are up in San Jose visiting my brother & his wife, and I’ve been busy enjoying my last few days of freedom before the next semester starts. We’ll probably be leaving tomorrow, and then I’ll be back online. Hooray for visiting family - good times!
This morning, I got an e-mail from Dreamhost stating that I owed them $119.40, which had been past due since 2008-11-20. Umm..yeah. Well, before I hit “send” on my reply to that, I thought to check their status blog, because for some reason they seem to like posting stuff there rather than e-mailing everyone. They had billed everyone for December 31, 2008. It doesn’t appear that my card was charged, and they say they’re refunding everyone’s money, but what?! They can’t double-check their stuff before billing all their customers, for a total of 7.5 million dollars?! “Oops” indeed.
I think complaining about it made my teeth hurt worse. Is that possible? I’m going to make a dentist appointment tomorrow.
So, I logged into my BlogMad account today and was shocked to find a message stating that I’d been voted Blog of the Day. This is odd for three reasons:
- My blog is not very popular, by any means.
- My blog rank on their page is 0.
- The awards page they directed me to does not have me on it.
So, maybe they just select a blog at random and make it Blog of the Day? Well, I guess an award’s an award, so…yay!(?)
My teeth are driving me crazy right now. The very back tooth on the bottom right hurts when I eat or drink anything cold. I really need to get to the dentist and have that seen about. I wish I could afford to go to the orthodontist, too. My bottom teeth are starting to get all crooked in the back. I still wear my retainer every night, but still, they move. It also happens to really hurt when they’re trying to shift. I’ve had my braces off for 10 years now, and I was told I wouldn’t have to wear the retainer very often after the first year or two. What a lie.
We’re thinking about going up to San Jose later this month to visit my brother and his wife. We went up there in August, and I really wish that we could go more often, but money is tight and it makes it kind of difficult for us to travel much. I know, San Jose isn’t that far away (about a 5-6 hour drive), but it still gets kind of pricey between gas, food, and entertainment once we’re up there. Last time, big bro pretty much paid for everything, we rode up with Katie, and my parents paid for our flight back. It was so much fun! We went to a Verbal Abuse show, and went to Pier 39 in San Francisco. Hopefully we’re able to work it out so that we’re able to go up there again soon. If we lived up there, maybe I’d look up San Francisco cosmetic dentists or orthodontists to fix my crooked teeth. I think it’s way more important for me to go find out if I have a cavity back there or something though.
After I picked Zack up from the college last night, we went to the dollar movies and watched American Gangster. Why did we choose to see this flick? Well, we didn’t look at the schedule first, and it was the only thing that was starting when we showed up. We would have had to wait an hour for anything else to start, and we didn’t really have anything to do for an hour. It seems like every time we go see a movie at the cheap theater, I notice a ton of mistakes in it. During American Gangster, I saw the boom mike 17 times. That doesn’t count the time that I walked out to use the restroom, or when I fell asleep for a few minutes (I say it was 10, Zack says it was more like 30, but I don’t think I missed anything. Maybe I’m giving the filmmakers too much credit here, thinking I couldn’t miss a half hour without missing some important plot points.) Zack thinks the theater is somehow projecting the movie incorrectly and thus showing the boom mike more than they should, but I think if it had been properly filmed and edited, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But anyway, bloopers aside, it was actually an alright movie, but waaayy too long.
I’m going to start trying to eat healthier and get more exercise, not so much as a diet or New Year’s resolution, but just to get healthier in general, and, well, also to lose some weight, but I’ll probably be more likely to stick with it if I don’t try to think of it so much as “a diet.” Fast food and San Diego banquet rooms are obviously not part of the plan; veggies and the elliptical machine are.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about some of my old friends. I don’t really talk to any of them anymore. A while back, I messaged several of them on Myspace, but only one replied. I don’t think I’ve seen her in seven years (since we graduated high school.) She actually expressed interest in hanging out with me and catching up and all that, but I never really followed through. That was a couple months ago now. We texted each other once after that, but it was just inane, meaningless conversation (”How are you?” “Fine.” That was basically it.) I don’t really “get” Myspace. These people are my “friends” on there, yet we aren’t really friends anymore. I remember when I used to actually hang out with a different one of them, after high school even. At one point she lived with some old lady, providing in home care for her. Every time we tried to go out, she would get a phone call from this woman bitching her out about something-or-other, or needing something, and we would have to go back to her house so she could take care of it. I don’t even know how one gets hooked up with a job like that. I think it was through the paper or something, rather than in home care listings or anything like that. She’s moved away now, but we had basically stopped talking well before that.
I don’t know what it is lately that makes me feel sort of nostalgic for the days when I was friends with these people, even though they weren’t always great friends to me. I guess it probably has something to do with the fact that I don’t really have any friends now. I was sort of friends with some of my coworkers from my last job, but we never really talked outside of work. Well, except for one Monique, we went over to her apartment once, a long time ago, and we texted back and forth a bit on Christmas. I don’t know what it is that makes it so difficult for me to connect with people. I have Zack, and he’s my best friend + so much more, but it would be nice to have some other friends, and maybe even some female friends.
I dropped Zack off at the college an hour ago, and I’m just chilling here, waiting for him to finish his math test. No calculators allowed on this one, how crazy is that?! I don’t think I’ve taken a math class that didn’t allow calculators since grade school. Speaking of math, it’s almost time to do my FAFSA for next year. I’m not quite sure how that works, since I didn’t work at all last year (not even work study), so I don’t think I really have to do my taxes this year, since my only income is SSI and student aid. Am I supposed to report financial aid? I did pay a whopping $18 in interest on my student loans last year, which I don’t think makes much of a difference. I’d ask somebody about it, but two years ago, the only time I ever had a professional help do my taxes, I was charged $60, which was more than I got back. They even charged a $4 “mailing fee”, and I had to mail it myself and provide postage! WTF? I don’t think I’ll be going back there. If I lived farther south, like I wish I did, I could look up San Diego accounting and see if I could find somebody who could help me and not rip me off. 
I’ve been getting kind of lazy with my blogging lately. I don’t update, I don’t read and comment on other blogs that much anymore. I tend to sort of go through phases where I’m really into it, and then I just sort of quit for a while and go back to it later. When I started this particular blog, I swore to myself that I would keep it updated consistently, unlike past projects. Well, I guess I lied to myself. But I’m back now, and at least it’s only been a few days, as opposed to a couple months, like I waited after my very first post when I started this blog. I’m going to try to be better about it, at least for a while (hey, I’m realistic, I know I’ll end up taking a little break again sooner or later).
My mom’s little bichon has been driving me a little nuts. Well, her and our cocker spaniel, Gilligan. It’s not like this is anything new, but geez, how difficult is it to get a dog fully potty trained? These guys are lost causes now, I think. Sammy is 6 and Gilligan is 12, so I think they’re pretty set in their ways at this point. It just gets old having to clean up after them all the time. 
Today was my brother’s birthday. His wife is in town on business, so he has to spend it alone, which sucks. But the birthday gift I bought for him arrived today, wrapped and everything, which is great! Perfect timing, although I’m a bit disappointed that I paid $4 to have it wrapped before they sent it out to him, and he said their wrapping job was not impressive. But he still got the thrill of being surprised and getting to rip the paper off! The gift was the Simpsons movie with a t-shirt, in case anyone was wondering for some reason. 
