Hi everybody. This is my new attempt at blogging like a normal person. After finding a nice template and doing a little tweaking (yay html!) I got something fairly attractive, so I am happy.

And now that that's out of the way, I'm going to go play Makin' Magic.

Note to VSC: you did not fail your moral test. Remember our theme is "Taking care of yourself." If you don't look out for number one, you can't look out for anybody else.

And as for helping strange men working on cars in the middle of the night, I have four words for you: Silence of the Lambs.

I think you chose wisely.

Onto other topics, the nightmare known as Christmas shopping is officially over--almost. The only thing left to buy is Dad's annual bottle of booze, and we don't usually get that until we trek over to Dublin on Christmas eve, because that's where BevMo is. It's important to have traditions.

The shopping was actually not that bad this year--neither too crowded, nor horrifically taxing on the budget. A little last-minute, yes, but it always is. And it didn't help that our plan to make most of the gifts didn't pan out. But we know what to do for next year--start earlier.


Since I have not posted very much lately, here's some news on how my life is going:

I'm more of less done with school. I'm done will all of my classes (4.0 last quarter, yay for me!), and I will graduate next quarter (sometime in April) as long I can get off my butt and do 80 hours of internship.

I've given up coffee, and, for the most part, caffeine. Alcohol is on it's way out, and the cloves haven't done anything good for me lately, so I think I'm just cutting them off completely. But coffee is the big one. I can't even drink it anymore--makes my tummy all gurgly. Go figure.

Okay, I was going to write more, but it's 12:30am, and we have a big start-of-the-holiday day tomorrow, including midnight mass, probably (exactly what is is about the darkest time of the year that makes people feel the need to stay up to midnight for religious observances?) So I'm checking out for tonight. More factoids next time.

Okay, here's the deal: my wrists have been better for a while now. They were in a lot of pain for about two weeks, and I wore the braces all day long. After that, they started feeling better, and have been doing better since. They still get achy if I do too much--especially too much mousing--but they are basically okay. I'll survive and I won't have to give up typing. I'll just have to be more aware.

As soon as I was able, I switched desks (back to our original WalMart special computer desk, which had been banished to the closet) so that my keyboard and mouse are lower and more comfortable for me. Now the monitor is too high, and I will no doubt give myself permanent neck problems, but what the hell. I compensated for this by stealing Shorn's chair, which has a tendency to lean backwards. Now, when I want to type, I pull the keyboard down onto my lap, prop my feet up a little, and lean back. This lets me look at the monitor without craning my neck, plus is makes me feel all badass, like some sort of cyber-lowrider. I rule.

All of this is leading up to my explanation that I didn't mean to neglect my blog for so long. The problem is that after a dramatic entry, such as my last one, I always feel the need to explain things. I can't just jump in and start babbling. If there is a break, I have to give my readers a good explanation--even if all of my readers know the explanation in real life. I want the blog to have some sort of continuity. But I'm not always in the mood to write that filler part, so the entire blog gets put on hold until I am. This is one of those tendencies that I'm trying to overcome, but I seem to have a hard time remembering that when it's happening.

Wednesday was a good day (a bazillion batches of cookies, with mom and Rita Celestial), yesterday was even better (up at 4:30, day spent in Yosemite, night spent watching Return of the King), and today I am deservedly tired. So I am going to leave you all with this, my "filler" post. Hopefully this will free me up to post with reckless abandon from here on out.