Hey what do you know, it snowed.

I spent most of the day inside the house. I got bored and I wanted a soda so I decided to go out around 8 or 8:30pm. It took a while to clean the crust of ice and snow off my car. I live at the bottom of a small hill on a road that hasn't been cleaned off yet. I had to back up and get just a bit of momentum before I could go up the hill. The world outside was fairly active, there were several souls driving around looking for a sense of being somewhere. The Taco Bell was closed along with several of her cohorts. I ended up at a McDonalds Drive-Thru for a Coke and a cheap chicken sandwich. Now I'm back at home typing this in and thinking of how interesting this tale would be if I were a better writer. :)

Also today I slept in, wrestled with an incooperative computer, received and installed a new CD Burner in another computer and fired some bottle rockets across the ice encrusted snow.

One of these days I might just write a rant about some opinion I'm having and you'll say, "hmmm. he has a point there."

TTYL,
Dana

It's 12:39am here in VA. I wanted to be asleep over an hour ago. I've been to bed twice already but I'm just not that tired right now. I'd blame it on the caffeine but I only had one 12 ounce can of soda today and that was for lunch. I did have several pieces of chocolate but that was over 2 hours ago. Sure, that stuff has caffein in it but it also has sugar in it. Sugar, of course, gives you a quick boost of energy but then leaves you feeling deflated. So why am I telling you this? Well, what who else am I going to talk to now? Okay, there are a few people on my IM list that are up now. I don't know. I guess I just wanted to add to the old blog. Poor poor you. You have to put up with all my drivel.

Actually, it's not uncommon for me to be up until 1 or 1:30 in the morning. I'm trying to change that a bit though. You know, Early to bed, early to rise. Etc.

Oh well... Good night. I hope you're sleeping well these days.
Dana

"Did you have a good weekend?"
That's a question I'm not eager to field, unless the weekend was somewhat unusual. A usual weekend consists of spending too much time alone watching too much TV or just playing around on a computer not really accomplishing anything. This weekend is going alright I guess. A friend and I went out and got some food, hung out a bit and then went to see a movie at the cheap theater (which happens to be the best theater in town).

Saturday, on the other hand, was much less interesting. I watched TV and surfed the web till around 11 then I got bored and went for a drive. I ended up looking around at Lowes. After that I came back home and shortly thereafter went out again and got something to eat. Ummm I'm not exactly sure what I did for the next several hours. I spent some of that on the Internet again (looking at expensive computers and customised cases... what a nerd). I was tired for a while. I eventually .... oh well... I've already given you too much detail on a rather dull day. I hope Sunday is better. Maybe I'll skip town after church. Next weekend I might go visit friends and family in PA. That should be a little more interesting.

Sorry if I bored you with this one. Eventually I'll tell you what I think about something instead of what isn't happening.

oh, BTW I also did laundry today. Yippee.

Howdy Howdy Howdy.
Well, guess what. We got broadband here at the house so I don't have to bug my room mate for his AOL password to get online. I have a pretty fast connection at work so I didn't really miss not having it at home. The down side of that is I didn't have a connection available to me when I'm most likely to write in this here log. Now that I do have net access here, at the end of the day, you might just be hearing more from me.

I just got back from a costume party 15 minutes ago or so. It was fun. I originally wasn't going to go because it's the same night I have small group/house church. This week church started early and it was a short one so I was able to go to both. I feel a little bad for telling so many people so adamantly that I wasn't going. But then I was feeling a little bad because so many of my friends wanted me to show up and some of them put a lot of effort into the planning and cooking and decorating etc. I'm a bit asocial so big gatrherings don't thrill be too much but I thought I'd better show up at least for their sake.

Anyway, I left house church around 8, I came home and through together a costume. I had it 80% planned out ahead of time. I had a couple of ideas but I thought one might be in poor taste. Oh yes, I thought it'd be funny, but I could see how some people could be offended by me going as a black ghost (black sheet and an afro). I decided to go with an "evil clown" costume. I'm not really a fan of evil or of clowns or a mix of the two. I do have, however, a big yellow rubber suit (the kind used by people working with toxic stuff) and the afro wig an ex room mate left here. I didn't have make up so I made a mask using an old pair of ruined khakis (if you cut a leg off up at the thigh it'll fit over your head), some markers, some fabric paint and some oil pastels. The whole mask making took nearly an hour. I ended up making two because the first one didn't turn out right. The second one worked. It came out effectively freaky/scary. It seemed to intimidate people, but it got a lot of compliments. I think the entrance helped too. The party was outside and I walked up the long driveway and right past the main gaggle of people, not even looking at them. I walked right up behind some of my friends who were getting their picture taken. No one knew it was me until someone lifted the mask and saw my mouth and chin. Of course, since they didn't think I was coming they were a bit surprised to see me.

Anyway, it was fun. Shortly after I showed the party moved inside and I took off the costume. I put it on briefly for another round of pictures, but I'm really not a psycho-evil-killer-clown.

P.S. No alcoholic beverages served... It's not that kind of party.
P.P.S. I'm not super-keen on celebrating Halloween in general. I made an exception because of the people involved.

adios

I must admit I'm feeling melancholly tonight. Okay, I don't HAVE to admit it but I'll say it anyway. I'm not feeling particularly lonely but I do miss having a girlfriend to spend time with. Actually, you can't miss what you haven't had. I guess it's best to say that I wish I had a girlfriend to spend too much time with. It's so desert here. I'm sure I'm harboring faulty ideas of what goes on in healthy relationships. I'm sure some (or most) of what I expect in a relationship is misplaced or even completely false. blah blah blah... I'm whining again. My loneliness is a puny problem in the big (or even the medium) picture.

Oh bother...

Actually, things are going fairly well for me. I simply have a tendency to get blue when I'm tired.

good night.

Hello again,
I amaze myself sometimes. I'm not amazed at how great I am (or think I am). I'm amazed at how I can drag my feet on stuff, how I don't speak up when I should and how I see obstacles where others see potential. I'm not so bad that it paralyses me. I'm not phobic about stuff. I don't fear the air I breathe. I do marvel, though, at how I seem to make life out to be more difficult than it is. Actually, I'm sure there are things I over simplify or simply block out because they're too complex. I guess it's all just an elaborate coping mechanism that I've built for myself. It's flawed, I'll admit to that. Sometimes I feel that it may be a little debilitating... then again maybe I'm just being paranoid. ; )

[Me: I really like the way he lists symptoms of schizophrenia and then dismisses them with another symptom of schizophrenia]

[Myself: and I really like the way he speaks as different people when he's commenting on his jokes about mental illness]

[I: I'm thirsty... let's all go get a Vanilla Coke]

[Me: Nah, it's too late. I'm just gonna get a drink of water then go to bed]

[Myself: That's the best idea I've heard yet.]

Once again I am writing out of a sense of duty. A duty I have to tell you things via this blog. I don't have anything specific that I want to say. Actually, I do want to tell you why I haven't written anything lately. I have no great excuse for my silence (not that typing is that loud anyway) except to say that I do most of this kind of writing at night and I don't have a handy internet connection at home right now. This time I'm using my room mate's aol connection but since I don't know his password I can't use it at will.

I'm guessing that there aren't any regular readers of this blog anyway. If I want to develop a following (which I doubt I will and if I do I imagine they'll tire of it after a month or so... if not sooner) I'll have to write more often. I could do a theme. I could tell all that's happening in my love life but I really don't have that much to say. Besides I'd feel pretty wierd writing about someone who could read what I was thinking about her etc. Maybe that's just me being paranoid again.

Hey, I'm going to stop here. have a good day.

Well, I don't really feel like saying anything but I think it's time to add to the log. I'm a bit tired and maybe a bit down.

Do you ever get the feeling that you've been lying to yourself for a long time? I feel like that sometimes. I assume that I'm not good at something so I might not attempt it for fear of being or feeling embarassed.

Lately I've been trying some new things and finding that I'm not as bad as I thought I'd be. Most of the things I'm talking about are sports related. My bowling game is getting better. I found I can hit better than I thought I could in the batting cages (albiet just the slow pitch soft ball). I tried to play golf a couple of times and the guys I was with had some encouraging things to say to me. Well, at least the first time I played they seemed somewhat impressed. The second time, however, I played horribly. The clubs I was using weren't as nice as those I used the first time I played, but that couldn't be the sole reason for my poor performance. Saturday I went out and hit some tennis balls around with some friends. There are some things I'm naturally good at. Tennis and golf aren't in that category. Maybe If I were to learn some of the basics I'd find that I really am generally adept at those sports. I'm not inclined to invest the time required to find out.

Maybe I'm just turning out to be more average than I ever imagined myself being.

Am I not meant to have a blog? I finally got around to writing something. It took a fairly substantial amount of time to write (>10 minutes <1 hour). I had put some links in it (for over the rhine and paste music) then clicked on "post" and poof. Error message. I lost all I wrote. Luckily it wasn't much, but it was something.

Wow, it's been a few days since I've said anything. Since then I spent a day at an amusement park (Kings Dominion near Richmond, Virginia), worked, slept, spent time with a friend discussing possible business/project collaborations and watched too much TV. Oh yeah, I also updated my website and posted an incomplete but functional new 'professional' site.

At King's Dominion I had a good time. It has been years since I've been there. There are more roller coasters now, but they got rid of some of the fun non-coaster rides. That made me a little sad, but the coasters were fun. Since it was a Wednesday and not a holiday the crowds weren't bad. There were only 2 times when we had to wait 45+ minutes for a ride. One of those waits was for a ride that lasted 20 seconds or so. Yes it's disproportionate, but now I have an idea of what it's like to be launched from an aircraft carrier while straped to the nose of an F/A 18 Hornet :) Generally I think of myself as not having fun (as if there were virtue in being emotionally numb) but many of the photos taken on the coasters featured me with a big ridiculous grin. Now when people as me what I like I can say fast acceleration and speed. That's not to say I didn't get bored from time to time on some of the rides, but it was a good day.