Posts Tagged ‘movies’

I go back to California one week from tomorrow. Hooray! Our class tested out of Block III last night and I aced the test. My first test screwed up any hope for Distinguished Grad, but that’s okay. We started Block IV, which is all troubleshooting. Only two or three people can be in the lab on the equipment at a time, so the other two or three have to hang out in the break room and watch movies or play cards. It will be a long week, since there’s so much waiting around. I think it’s a positive thing, though, since I have tons of math homework to do.

Yup, I started my Linear Algebra / Differential Equations class last week. I’m on my own with it, but the book seems pretty good and it’s not troublesome yet. My instructor is good about sending me information and being there if I need any help. And I get to attend the actual class in another week and a half, so it can’t be too bad before then.

The weekend was really, really boring. Saturday morning Lance, Rick, Jesse and I went horseback riding on post, which was fun. We didn’t have to use a trail guide (because “we’re experienced horseback riders”), which is nice. I was a tad uncertain, seeing as I’ve only ever been near a horse once before. They’re pretty trained, though, and are used to just following each other around, so it wasn’t really a problem. Anytime I wanted the horse (“Ruby”) to do anything though, she wouldn’t listen to me. We were supposed to be out there for 2 hours, but they guys were bored of it after 1. We didn’t have any plans for the rest of the day, so I got dropped off at the mall to pick up a dress for next weekend (clubbing in Atlanta + Six Flags). I treated myself to a pedicure and a haircut and did some clothes shopping. The guys were all exhausted from little sleep the night before (to what was I not invited?) so they slept all Saturday. Jesse, Rick and I went out to see The Descent Saturday night. It’s the bloodiest movie I think I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t really all that scary, just startling and gory. It was nice to not be sitting around in the hotel room. Sunday we were supposed to go the Y (Rick was supposed to call …) I got a call Sunday afternoon from Lance while they were all ready at the Y (“oh, I figured you wouldn’t want to come …”) Hrmph. We got some dinner afterward at a sports bar and studied for the next day’s test. That was pretty much everything that happened this past weekend.

I’ve been downloading a lot of music, since I’ve gotten bored with the small selection I brought. I’ve been a slave to Last.fm‘s charts and forums lately. I’ve been enjoying some Medeski, Marin and Wood and Matisyahu for the first time this week. I’ve also been talked into the Loose Change hype. I know it’s old news, but I talk to many people who are adament about the whole 9/11 conspiracy. So I’m in the process of watching the Loose Change video, as well as the counter-arguments Screw Loose Change. So far so interesting …

Anyhow, now it’s time to get ready for school. More later.

So I've passed my half-way mark here in Georgia. Class is going all right. I'm in Block 3 of 4 and will test out on Monday. It's a little boring and way more information than I'll really need to know, but I'm getting paid to sit in class for a few hours a night. My days aren't terribly exciting. During the week I sleep in, go to lunch with the guys, run some errands, go to the Y, then to school. It's almost like clockwork. The first weekend here we hung out in Augusta. We ate at the Bees's Knees (one of my all-time favorite restaurants) and then hung out at the Soul Bar on "Disco Hell" night. I'm not much of a clubber, but it was a decent time (although I learned that Whiskey Sours and I are highly disagreeable.) The second weekend we drove to Charleston and back on Saturday. We found a really nice rooftop bar where we had some snacks and drinks while listening to two guys with guitars. Sublime and Grateful Dead covers. It was good. We found a touristy hot-spot called Wet Willy's, a daiquiri bar, and had a good time drinking and dancing. Needless to say, much of Sunday was spent in bed. This past weekend was a three-day weekend. Lance had planned to take the rental car up to D.C. to visit friends from when he lived there, and I got to tag along and get dropped off near Langley AFB to visit with Andrea. I slipped in silently at 5:00 Friday morning, was greeted by the cats, and crashed on the couch. Friday Andrea gave me the LAFB tour and then we headed over to Poquoson, our childhood hometown. We drove around and saw all our friends' old houses, passed by our elementary school, saw our church, and the old house. Some things have changed, but not too much. We attempted to explore the old woods in which we used to play (the parts that weren't replaced with homes), but they were so overgrown and overrun with massive spider webs, we didn't get very far. We had a half-off dinner at Chili's, where Michael works. We watched a bunch of movies (Howl's Moving Castle, Mirror Mask, The Jacket, Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider, Snake Eyes) throughout the weekend. The three of us played some Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble. Andrea and I hung out at Virginia Beach, soaked up the sun, had some frozen custard, and visited the haunted house. It was a blast! I brought hooks and taught her to crochet. She did quite well for just three days of instruction! Michael is apparently very good at origami and has taught her quite a bit, so she passed some knowledge along to me. We made Chinese dragons and cubes out of dollar bills, as well as cute patterned pigs and cranes. I have tons of great photos of the weekend, but for some reason I cannot get the card reader to work for me. It's been so long since Andrea and I have really spent time together, so the weekend was really nice to just be around her and gab. It was definitely worth the long drive. Phew! I finished my art class, though not as successfully as I had planned. I can be quite the slacker. I'm starting up my math class now, which isn't designed to be a distance learning class, but I'm communicating with my prof through the end of the month and will try to do it on my own. It's not so bad … so far. I was on a crocheting kick, trying to get a significant amount done on Mama's afghan. The past week has been sort of crochet-lazy, though. I still have to make two squares to mail out for my square trade. I received three squares since I've been gone, I just wish I were there to open them! That's sort of a long-winded overview of what's been going on out here in Georgia. It's not the most exciting, I know. The active duty pay will be nice and while I'm out here, the government pays me to eat out (and the Augusta restaurant selection dwarfs that of Lompoc!) I miss Matt terribly and cannot wait to see him. We chat every day, though haven't really been playing much Diablo II together. He has Jason and the cats and seems to be doing well enough. I'll be home on the 30th … I'm sure I'll have more to blabber about before then, though.

I've actually been avoiding posting since we returned because, while most of my posts are pretty lengthy, this one just seems like too great an undertaking. Well now it's time, so here we go!

Mel and Matt's Excellent Vacation Monday - We left the car in Santa Barbara in the C-lot … C for Conklin. We had a layover in Los Angeles, so we went and had chili at Chili's in the airport. It was 7 pm before we landed in Denver and Mama and Ron were there to meet us. We chatted in the car and pretty much crashed in front of the TV with some terrific Sloppy Joes when we got to the house. Not much of interest to report. Tuesday - Mama rented a car for us, which was extremely nice. She had to do some work, so Matt and I just sort of wandered around town a little bit. He picked out a new, "grown-up" leather wallet (to replace his dingy Linkin Park, Hot Topic wallet). For some reason, I couldn't do a name change on my driver's license last year unless I was at a Colorado DMV in person, so this was my first opportunity to correct my driver's license. Surprisingly, that took all of ten minutes. When Mama finished working, she took us to the Cave of the Winds. Well, actually she made a wrong turn and took us to the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. That was okay, though, since we had never been there before! We toured around the museum and the dwellings a bit, then watched the native American dancers, which was so cool! Afterward we went to the Cave of the Winds, but would have had to wait around too long for a tour, so we just left. In the evening Mama and I looked through old "kid things" that I might want to take back with me or have mailed. All of what I'd like to keep is mostly children's books, the rain stick Grandpa gave to me, and a box of old sketchbooks, journals, and yearbooks. We had a nice steak dinner with baked potatoes and spinach/egg/bacon salad on the back porch, followed by a rousing game of Balderdash! Ron and Mama are awesomely goofy with their definitions and Matt was really good, but that night I topped them all! Heheh. When Mama and Ron went to bed, we stayed up and watched some TiVo'd Animal Planet. Wednesday - What a relaxing day! We slept in and didn't do much in the morning. Mama, Matt and I drove to Gleneagle to meet Ron for lunch at Barracuda Bob's. What a cute little lunch stop! Ron took Matt back to hang out, but Mama and I headed to Black Forest for Yevgeniya's Day Spa for our massages and facials. We had our massages together first and they were so relaxing! Mama then had her facial while I hung out in the sauna and read magazines. When I went in for my facial she got a pedicure. The place was so comfortable and the people there were extremely nice! We spent most of the afternoon doing that, then headed back, a little oily and feeling refreshed. We had dinner followed by another round of Balderdash, which Matt won. More Animal Planet then bed. Thursday - Thursday I don't remember doing much of anything, which is wonderful. Mama and Ron had to work, so we just sort of lounged around as I remember. Dinner was really the highlight of the whole day. Mama and Ron took us out for a first anniversary dinner to The Melting Pot. Oh my goodness, it was so good and so much fun! We ordered the Big Night Out, which started with wine and salads (whoa, great salads), followed by a spinach and artichoke heart cheese fondue with rye bread, apples, tortilla chips, carrots and celery for dipping. How great was that! Mama and Ron split the Pike's Peak Entree (lobster, shrimp, teriyaki steak, chicken, New York strip, and ravioli pieces to cook) and Matt and I shared the Garden of the Gods Entree (filet mignon medallions, teriyaki steak, chicken, peppercorn pork, sausage, and portobellos). We traded our mushrooms for their ravioli Florentine! We chose to cook our meats in a Coq au Vin fondue, which is a broth with burgundy wine, mushrooms, garlic, spices and herbs. What I liked is that they made everything in pot in front of us: mixed up all the cheese fondue ingredients before our eyes as well as all the meat fondue ingredients. Now we can go home and do it ourselves! We were stuffed, but couldn't skip out on the chocolate fondue dessert. We chose a dark chocolate fondue with strawberries, pound cake, bananas, brownies, cheesecake, Oreo covered marshmallows, and graham cracker marshmallows. Overwhelming goodness! Anyhow, that was dinner. I can't believe I spend more time talking about food than anything else. It really was that good, though! Friday - Matt and I packed up and headed for Denver, where Mama owns a condo by the science museum. We went to the Cherry Creek Mall to wander around the Tattered Cover, grab some lunch, and pick up Oblivion for Matt. I don't know if it was just the heat (98 degrees that day!!), the lack of oxygen, or just laziness, but when we returned to the condo we pretty much just passed out on the couch for a few hours, unable to move at all. The condo is nice. Mama is redoing everything in it to prepare to rent it out to travelers on business. I think it'll be great! For our purposes, it was perfect! Comfy bed, a pretty shower, Internet, television, a pool. Hooray! When we finally got up off the couch, we met up with a friend of mine from Fort Collins, Matt (yes, another one!) He moved to Denver a while ago to go for a second bachelor's degree in industrial design. We didn't really have any plans, so we found ourselves driving around aimlessly, chatting and catching up. We found a pretty little lake and went for a walk around it. The walk was longer than anticipated in such heat, but it was still nice! We went to 16th St. downtown to wander around and found dinner in the Appaloosa Grill. Matt (mine) had the seared Ahi tuna to try for the first time, which we found neither of us really care for. What was terrific was the pomegranate pork with brie mashed potatoes! It was a relaxing visit of mostly chatting and "how-have-you-been"s. Matt was a really good friend to me a few years ago and it's very nice to see him again and introduce him to my Matt! Saturday - Renaissance Festival! Matt and I drove down from Denver to Larkspur to meet up with Mama and Ron at the RenFest. We got there first, so we wandered around the shops, took in some Puke & Snot, and watched a bit of the Washing Well Wenches. When Mama called, we met up for some corn on the cob and turkey legs. Mmmm… We checked out the batiks while we waited to shoot at the archery range. Matt and I stopped by the yarn shop and I got a spinning lesson (with a drop spindle, but also got a history lesson on the spinning wheel). Way fun! We bought a spindle and some wool for me to try out at home. That was enough of the RenFest for us. We headed back to the condo, did a little swimming, and just hung out some more. Then we got all dressed and went out on a little date to Benihana. Matt has never had Japanese food before, so I thought we'd go out to a grill with performing chefs. The food was okay and our table was un-talkative and seemed really grouchy. We went back to the Cherry Creek Mall afterwards to see Click, which was okay but not great. It's just nice to be out with Matt on a date. Sunday - Matt and I drove up to Fort Collins so I could show him my old freshman year stomping ground and meet up with some of the boys. Matt and I navigated our way through Old Town, where a busy Brew Fest was commencing, to Beau Jo's for some yummy Colorado-style pizza. The group of geeks I hung out with at CSU has sort of disintegrated over the years, so we didn't participate in a 20-person Outback dinner like we used to, but we definitely had to meet up with Tim at last. We arranged to meet at Joe's place and I, unfamiliar with the roads and foiled so many times by massive road construction, finally made it there after a few wrong turns.. Tim's hair is its natural color and much shorter. All the guys are looking great! Andy had just arrived home from hanging out with Peace Corps buddies in Denver, so Tim, Joe, Matt and I swung by his place to snag him. I haven't seen Andy since I joined the Air Force and he joined the Peace Corps in 2002, so it was really nice to meet up after all that time. Matt had all ready met Tim and Joe at the wedding last year, but we introduced him and Andy. We bowled two games at the Horsetooth lanes. Matt and Tim are tied for the win, Andy won the drunken bowling award, and well … Joe and I just kind of stink. :-p It was a blast, though! We went to Young's Cafe afterwards for some Vietnamese, which was pretty good. We went back to Joe/Dave's place to watch Tom Yum Goong, a Thai martial-arts flick. It was, well … amusing enough! The guys assured us that the previous movie, Ong-Bak, was much better. It was still nice to just hang out with the guys, though. We headed back to Denver around 9, but didn't really get there until about 11:30 because of horrible traffic! Oh, it was a mess. I think we watched the Simpsons then crashed. Monday - Got up and packed our stuff. Mama and Ron showed up around 9:30. We watched the Discovery Channel to kill some time before we headed to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to see the Body Worlds 2 exhibit. We had tickets for 11:30, but slipped in sneakily at 11. We saw all sorts of real bones, muscles and organs as well as real people posed so we could see all the nerves and muscles and whatnot. It was neat enough, but I guess I was expecting something more spectacular. It wasn't really gross or anything, either. Everything was plastinated (?) and we got to see a lot of cross-sections of people and organs and whatnot. I think the part that got to my stomach the most (but was still amazing) was seeing a uterus with an actual 3-month fetus inside or the cross-section of a pregnant woman. It's incredible, but still sad. I kind of felt like it was just like school. We had little placards tell us what the elbow is or the stomach. We kind of know a lot of that all ready. I think the most interesting was the abnormal stuff: the coal miner's lung, the gigantic liver with cysts all over it, or the cross-section of an entire 400-pound man and all the fat in the organs and whatnot. We sort of flew through it in about 30 or 40 minutes, though. It was pretty crowded and most of the stuff didn't require a lot of scrutinizing. Matt and I grabbed some McDonald's cheeseburgers and Mama and Ron took us to the airport. We said our goodbyes outside, then headed in to wait for a few hours. We got some TCBY yogurt and the guy who served us was also at our table at Benihana, so we chatted a little bit. We had a three-hour layover in LA again, so we returned to Chili's for some chili and chips. We read a lot. I started and finished Neil Gaiman's Stardust, which isn't terribly long (perfect for layovers and plane trips!) but I enjoyed it tremendously. It's a fun, fantastical fairy tale and I do so adore Neil. We got home just before midnight, downloaded the new WoW patch, and installed Oblivion before crashing. It was quite a nice trip. When we talked to the cat-sitter, Meredith, she told us that the had a wonderful time playing with Gabby, but she couldn't go anywhere near Tal. This was a shock to us, because Gabby is constantly terrified of Matt and Tal is the social one. I guess we'll never understand.

Wow, that was … lengthy! Matt wrote his own long overview of our trip at his blog, too. Other things have happened since we returned, but I don't feel like typing anymore! More later …

Jen, Matt's sister, spent some of her Spring Break with us last week. We only had four days with her, but they were a blast!

Day 1: Took some time off school to pick her up. Met the kitties. Looked through photos of her Martha's Vineyard internship. Listened to recordings she and friends did there. Cooked dinner. Watched Alias. Chit chat. Day 2: I had to go to school. Matt and her hung out and played Halo 2, Monkeyball 2, and some other games. Mystery Science Theater 3000. Went out to Sugar Magnolia's for dinner. Watched more Alias. Played with the kitties. Relaxing and more chit chat. Day 3: Turned in keys to the old apartment. Early Bird miniature golf special at Boomer's. DDR (man, are we out of practice!) Ordered pizza. Watched more Alias. Day 4: The self-proclaimed cat-hater falls in love with our kitties. Gabby didn't want Jen to leave (or she wanted to go with her!). Drove down to Santa Barbara. Walked along State Street. Watched some guy play the drums. Saw the beach. Strolled along the pier. Ate enchiladas and burgers at Ruby's. Saw her plane off. Spent half an hour watching the cool clock at the Santa Barbara Airport.

Jen is such a cool chickie. I wish we could have spent more time with her or at least see her more often. We'll fly out to New York for Thanksgiving this year, so we'll have some time then. Matt and I had an awesome time visiting with her. I think we're a little boring to come and visit, but she argued that we aren't. I'm glad she enjoyed herself. My mom and Ron are out on the east coast spending time with my sister and cruising around the little states. I'm so jealous. From the sounds of everything, Andrea and Michael are doing pretty well. Work is a bit of a strain on her eyes (being that she just sits and looks at screens non-stop), but it sounds like she enjoys it enough. Michael is working at Olive Garden now and it sounds like a good job. I found out what dates I'll have long weekends this summer when I'm down in Georgia so we can coordinate a time to visit. Andrea needs plenty of advance notice to apply for leave and I need to get plane tickets to Virginia whenever she gets it approved. I'm not especially looking forward to six summer weeks in Georgia, but having a weekend to visit with Andrea and Michael will be worth it! My classes are canceled today and I've been a bit under the weather anyway, so I'm taking the day off. So far I haven't done much: a little bit of math studying, chatting with my brother for a tad, updating my photo gallery, watching part of The Squid and the Whale, and hanging with the cool cats. It's nice to have lazy days. School is school. Still haven't heard back about my second math exam, though I don't have high hopes for it. I'm trying to get a head-start on the third exam at the end of this month because I hear it's the toughest and all this doesn't exactly come easily to me. It's getting more interesting/fun, though. I'm just having my doubts about whether or not I can handle future math classes. Physics is fun, as usual. The school is hiring a new full-time physics professor and they're in the interviewing stage right now. The picked ten candidates to do a short teaching demonstration of Gauss's Law. I attended three of them yesterday to give my feedback. It was actually a lot of fun. I'm not really allowed to discuss the candidates … physics teachers are just funny people. It was kind of neat because I aspire to be a physics teacher one day (high school preferable, then possibly moving on to college eventually) and I got to hear critiques of how all these teachers presented the material. It was pretty informative and hopefully somewhat helpful when I'm up there one day. Matt is almost finished with his first week of Airman Leadership School. He was really dreading doing this class, but it seems like things aren't nearly as bad as he had expected. The material seems pretty easy and he can get all his homework finished during class breaks. I wouldn't say he's making friends, but there are a few cool guys in there that he chats with and maybe could turn into something more. It would be nice to have some couple-buddies to hang out with. Today he had to attend in full service dress, which is very uncomfortable. It seems men have it worse than women on account of their neck ties, but they look much more striking than women do in blues. So he's at work right now getting choked, then in a few hours he'll have to do his PT evaluation. We've been pretty lazy lately and haven't run all that much, so he doesn't expect to do so well. But come the end of the month when he has his final exam, the difference will be quite significant. I'm sure he'll do perfectly fine, as he has long legs and is built to run; he'll probably just be sore this weekend. That's all for today. I'm off to download some more MST3K and lounge around lazily. Woo!

Last night was Girls Night Out. Missy and I had a little belated birthday bash for Carol. We went out to AJ Spurs for some yummy steak and pasta, then went out to see Last Holiday. It was a cute, fun girl movie. It's good to hang out with Missy, since we don't get up her way much (she lives almost an hour north of me). At least I'll see her at school starting on Monday (I think we'll have three classes together). Unfortunately, Carol's counting down the days until she leaves California for Nebraska. I'm happy for her that she'll be leaving the service and reunited with her husband, but I'll miss having a friend around. Melissa and I hung out today. We found a yarn shop listing in Lompoc on the internet, so we drove around town searching for it today, just to find it had empty window. Oh well for outdated websites. We went back to Walmart anyway and went on a little shopping spree. We picked out yarn to make our own crochet tote-bags, yarn to make a baby blanket for her 1-month old niece (though she'll probably be much older by the time it's finished :-\), a set of hooks and a case of her own, some cute buttons, and more random yarn, as well as more beads and a set of earring wires to make more jewelry. We spent way too much money, but it should keep us super-busy with craftiness for months! Melissa's been practicing her chain stitch this week and today I taught her to single crochet. She's catching on. I loaned her a beginner's book with good pictures in case she gets confused practicing this week. We'll be making awesome projects in no time! Melissa got a laptop for Christmas, so she brought it over today and we played around on there. She's never really been on the Internet before, but had heard of MySpace from kids at school. She was all excited about finding people online and putting up her picture and all. I think it's cool she's getting interested in the Internet, but we had to have that "there are creepy guys out there that like to talk to little girls" talk, because no one's really had it with her. We just got back from the theater; we went to go see Hoodwinked. It was goofy, but cute. She loved it. So Matt and I are heading out to Santa Maria to visit Best Buy and Michael's and have some dinner. Ciao!

Well, happy 2006! Yah, it doesn't feel too different. More laid back, I guess, but that's because I'm still on my super-break away from school. (20 Dec – 23 Jan break, woohoo!) Last weekend my mom and Ron flew out to Santa Barbara. On Friday they came up to see the casa de Conklin. We went golfing on base (Ooooh, I am so terrible! It's only my second time out playing 9 holes, though. Matt promises he'll really teach me.) and then out to a nice dinner at Lompoc's finest, Saletti's. Mmm. They returned to Santa Barbara and we drove down Saturday morning to join them on a whale watching expedition. Well, it's been ten years since my mother or I have set foot on a boat, and Matt's never been ocean-bound (Ron practically grew up at sea). The four-hour tour took us out to the Santa Cruz islands and three of us spent most of it asleep or on the verge of losing our breakfasts. We were so miserably sea sick and no one even saw a single whale. It was pretty stormy and rainy out, so maybe the whales were afraid to come up (and get wet??). It seemed like a great idea and we were all really excited about it, but just couldn't stomach it. No worries about not seeing whales though; we got four free, non-expiring passes to go do it all over again (this time, with Dramamine)! (( Whale boat pictures are up here! )) Saturday we also celebrated Matt's and Ron's birthdays. After recovering from the boat trip, we perused the (closed) stores on State Street until our 9pm dinner reservation. Still raining. The restaurant was great, though. We had a classy band and were seated on the patio (it had stopped raining by then, thankfully) and a terrific dinner! Matt's first experience with lobster bisque or filet mignon. Neither of us care much for lobster. Anyhow, it was an experience for Matt, but not really his style. We decided to celebrate his birthday Matt-style on Monday. Sunday was mostly just sleeping in, kicking back, hanging out. My mom and I went out to see Fun With Dick and Jane because the boys just wanted to sit in the hotel room with their new books. :p That's all right, it's nice to hang with my mom! Despite unfortunate weather and motion sickness, it was great to see her and Ron! Since then Matt's gone back to work and I've been playing it lazy. Well, sort of … I took down all the Christmas decorations and reorganized most of the apartment. I couldn't just be a total bum all week! Mostly I've just been crocheting, though. Last weekend my mom got me a Crocheting for Dummies book, and I've been yarn-wild since! Yesterday I finished my first project: a scarf. I didn't go by a pattern, just flew by the seat of my pants with it. It's hideous and I think I'll mail it to my sister. All day today I've been working on an afghan. I think it will take some time. I ordered the spring semester's school books online rather than bother with the bookstore lines. The arrived today and got me all excited! I have a piano book, a physics book, and a linear algebra book and they just get me all giddy to jump right in! It's not that I don't like sitting around at home crocheting and watching movies, but I'm just psyched about school. I looked up my fall grades yesterday. Bragging time. All A's! Well, I'm just pleased because it's my first 4.0 college semester. So now I want to see if I can do it all over again! I really need to work hard to bring up my horrific CSU freshman GPA — at least now my cumulative has broken a 3.0! =\ That's about all in the wonderful world of Mel. Today ends my "weekend" (so what if it was nearly three weeks?) I have to work tomorrow and Sunday. Really, my job seems interesting, and I'm sure it will be someday, but guard drills are the most boring things ever! I can't wait to get my security clearance and go to school this summer so I can actually do work and not just sit around once a month trying to look busy. Argh! I hope you all enjoy your weekends! :p Ciao!

I closed down my Xanga account and my MySpace account. Just tired of all that. I’m back home, now. It’s just you, LJ. (edit: When this was posted on LJ.)

Well, Christmas was pleasant. It our first married Christmas together, which is special. We were both a little homesick, though. It’s just hard to get in the Christmas spirit when you’re wearing shorts and a tank top and haven’t seen family in months. It was fun, though. We got a nice plastic Walmart tree and picked out cute ornaments for it. We went out with Carol on Christmas Eve to church and out to dinner. Matt and I debated whether to open gifts on the 24th, my family’s tradition, or the 25th, his family’s tradition. We ended up opening them very late on the 24th, but it wasn’t due to any of my coaxing! My mother broke Matt down. :p Carol came over on Christmas day to exchange gifts and cook a feast with me. It was all very nice. I’m thankful to have such a good friend as Carol. We’ve just recently grown closer, and now she’s about to move away in a few months.

Our Friday night parties have fallen apart; I guess it’s mostly my fault. I suppose I just feel that we’re being used by our new friends. I don’t know if I expect too much from my friendships that they’re hard for me to find, or if friendships just aren’t important enough for me to want to keep. With the exception of Carol and Erick, I feel everyone here has disappointed me. I feel like we just haven’t found the “right friends”. Maybe other married couples? Getting together with 18/19 year-old boys for movies and video games is fun for a while, but really shallow. I guess I’m just happy to hang out with Carol … I don’t need a gaggle of superficial friends.

My mother is flying in on Friday morning and I am just too excited! She and Ron are coming up to Lompoc that morning to see our home, hopefully meet Melissa over lunch, some golf, and a nice dinner. They aren’t staying up here because Tal would drive my mom crazy (she’s allergic), so they’re staying in Santa Barbara. We’ll drive down there Saturday morning to stay with them for a few nights and celebrate New Year’s Eve / Matt’s birthday / Ron’s birthday.

It’s been quite a relaxing break. Matt pretty much got two weeks off work for free without having to take leave. He’s on standby, but nothing really happens (except an early morning, random urinalysis today) where he needs to go in. It’s been nice to just hang out with him and not do much. We started new characters on World of Warcraft that we got up a little bit (he’s a druid, I’m a hunter, both night elves). He’s been playing Dragon Quest VIII, one of his Christmas gifts. We got weights and tennis rackets to play with. I got a CD from Matt’s parents, Gabby La La’s “Be Careful What You Wish For …”, that has pretty much been on repeat for the past three days (Matt really like it, hehe). I’m learning how to crochet (goofing around, I made a pretty blue bracer/arm-warmer/sleeve thingy). I’m going to attempt an afghan on this break.

Aside from all that excitement, I’ve just been burning a lot of CDs and dinners. Well, I guess the dinners aren’t so bad, but I’m still learning. Today is just cleaning and tennis and watching CSI Season 5. Woohoo! I love Christmas break! Just two more days before until family visiting, woohoo!

I don't know why, today is just sort of a down day. I skipped school today, half because I feel crummy, and half because I'm just not in the mood for it. I really wanted a day to be alone. It's not that I don't love Matt's company, or that of my buddies at school, it's just been a while since I had some time to myself. Granted, I've been doing housework and all day, it's still nice though. Tuesday I got my third calculus midterm back. I've taken the class before and I've done fine up until this point. I don't know if I've psyched myself out or what. My first two midterms averaged a 98%, but this one dropped my average a whole letter grade. I think I get the material; I did fine on all the homework and I studied. Maybe my brain was just saying "hey, you always fail at this point, so why should this time be any different?" It's silly and my grade is still fine, but it frustrated me so much. Classes are just getting me down a lot right now. I was looking forward to going back to school so badly when I wasn't able to, but now that I'm here, I just can't wait for the semester to end. So registration for the spring opened today. I had the choice to apply to transfer either in the spring or wait until the fall. I chose to get one more semester in at the junior college and just transfer in the fall. I'm looking at my classes for the spring though, and I don't have many options. My Mondays and Wednesdays I can all ready tell will be draining. I have a classes 9-10, 12-1, and 7-9:30 … What long days those will be. I have no choice though, I need them. Matt and I went out to dinner on Tuesday with "the gang". It's nice having a group to hang out with. Marc's introducing us to new people every week at our "Friday Night Thing", which is turning out to be way more fun than I had anticipated. Carol and Ian went with us to see Chicken Little afterward. It was cute and all, but I wasn't super-amused. Matt and I just got Mystery Science Theater 3000's 8th collection volume in the mail the other day. I haven't seen any of them yet and he's seen one, so I guess we're picking on that no one has seen for tomorrow night's MST3K showing. Hopefully it's a good one. I guess that's enough whining for one day. I'm off to bake a cake and do some physics. Mmm.

So uhm, I think I got poison oak … again. And I just recovered from the horror! I swear, I haven't been in the woods, I just think something in the apartment reinfected me. I'm sterilizing the house today … Since I'm finished with school, I'm just kind of hanging out. I didn't want to feel like a complete bum, so I've been living my days by massive To Do lists. It's kind of pathetic, but I'm so obsessed with gettin' 'er done and checking off my next task. My spastic running around has resulted in a very, very clean apartment, a detailed spending log of our dining out and groceries for the year (with pretty graphs!), an a pretty, organized filing cabinet, and a very freaked-out cat. I just haven't left myself with too much more that needs to be done. So I whipped up a webpage for one of my mom's real estate projects, CharterCraft Homes. It gives me something to do, and she paid for it in wedding cake, mmm. ^_^ I know, it's not gorgeous, but I do what I can! Other than that, I've just been playing City of Heroes with Matt in the evenings. Really, I'm having fun. I like that the character creation is really … uhm, in-depth. You really don't see two people running around that look alike. Matt was telling me about this guild that all looks like monkeys … you can tweak the size/shape of all the facial features and whatnot. I really only play one character (my ice blaster, Dreamsicle), but I have too much fun creating new ones. I just made one to resemble Blackwolf's soldiers from the movie Wizards named I Killed Fritz. I also made a character that kind of looks like me if I were to actually go and be a super-hero, complete with a little white-with-orange cat on my shoulder (Tal). And we made old people, too. Conk Daddy and Conk Mommy are all martial-artsy matching outfits little kick-and-punch old Japanese people. And yah, a bunch of other characters, too … So our old-man neighbor, Fred, just came by and dropped off his tape. This guy is some old Mexican man that just moved in a few months ago and lives by himself with his fat, tiny, fat, old dog Princess. He's very, very nice … but very, very annoying. Every time he "catches" us (and we do try not to make it so easy for him) he tells us the same old, long story … "Yah … I sing, you know? And I'm on video now, too. I do all my recording in the apartment. Yup, I hope it doesn't bother you. I'm really good. People tell me I'm just like some-old-musician-I've-never-heard-of. I'm in a band in Santa Maria, but you know … they aren't really going anywhere. I'm going to Nashville, though! I had some opportunities to get signed out there a few years ago … with Sun … you know, who Elvis is, right?… but well, they limited my creativity too much. I can't be stuck in one genre, I need to be able to sing whatever I want. I'm going out there soon, though. The guys there at the Grand Ole Opry loved my video and want me out there as soon as possible … I should give you a tape! I have a Latin tape too, if you'd like that. And you can come over and sing with me on video anytime … " Anyhow, I won't go on as much as he does. It's all nice and we're very polite and smile and nod … but he tells us the same story every single time we see him. Well, he finally came knocking and gave me a tape to listen to. The only cassette player I have is in the car, and Matt has that right now. I'm sure he'd love to listen to it with me when we drive to base tonight. I don't dislike the guy or anything, it's just well … he must be really lonely and have a horrible memory. And I don't think he knows a thing about us, he just like to talk about how wonderful he is. I feel bad; he must need some friends … but uhm, I'm hesitant to be that, I guess! I just hope when I'm old I'm not too obnoxious to the kids that are forty years younger than me. I'll let you know how his tape is, though!

Well, you haven't missed too much. I spent ten days absolutely miserable, you really wouldn't have wanted to hear me rant. Having poison oak is definitely in my top five worst experiences in my life thus far. It spread. So. Much. And really, it wasn't from scratching (the doctor I saw confirmed this), but from not showering and cleaning everything immediately following exposure (I had no idea for days). Remember this if you ever know you were exposed! I thought I could handle it. Oatmeal baths thrice daily, applying calamine lotion on almost everything from my knees up even more frequently, cortizone cream … no, they were no match for this infection. I finally went and saw a doctor. Prednisone has been my best friend. Really, it's that easy. I should have gone two weeks ago. I still have small, dry, red patches in various places, but I'm not finished with the medicine yet either. Thank goodness that's over! I know, I know, you wanted to hear all about it … So my father called me up this morning to remind me it's Jerry Garcia's birthday. He would be 63 today. Just, you know … so you know. I'm not baking a cake or anything like that, but I will put on CD and make a new LJ icon. ^_^ Last weekend was a good one. My (adopted) little sister just got back from a month-long out-of-state vacation, so we got together for an exciting Saturday in Santa Barbara. Real quick if you don't know, she's not really adopted adopted, just through the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. She's thirteen now and her name is Melissa, so it's a little confusing when we're introduced out in public. People are so silly: "Oh, you're both named Melissa? Wow, are you real sisters then?" What on earth? Anyhow, enough of that. We drove down to Santa Barbara and just kind of meandered around the shops on State Street. Then we headed off to the Santa Barbara Zoo. It's a very pretty zoo and I was psyched because I haven't been to one in ages. It's kind of small, so we didn't spend all day there, but we saw it all. Melissa's not too young where she wants to spend too much time looking at anything in particular, so we made it sort of a photo safari. She just got a camera for her birthday, so we'd go up to a cage "click", move on, "click", move on. I took a few myself for the fun of it which are posted hehe. The highlights of my zoo trip were the red panda (how cute! I'd never seen one before and he was way cool!) and the capybaras. I had no idea what a capybara was before Saturday, but they're pretty neat. Like 150-pound guinea pigs with funny legs. I loved them! After the zoo we went to go see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Matt took me to see it when it came out, but Melissa was dying to go, so I saw it again. I like it mostly. There's things about the first movie I enjoyed more, and the same with this one. I adore Johnny Depp in almost everything I've seen of his, but I personally enjoy Gene Wilder's Wonka better. I know, the movies were very different, but still, Johnny Depp's Wonka kind of irritated me sometimes. But it was a blast and I enjoyed it thoroughly anyway! Other than that, I've just been schooling still. I finished up my logic class and my human sexuality class. The logic I worked pretty hard for and got an A. I'm still very disgruntled about the teacher, though. And not just for previously mentioned reasons. He maybe knows his topic, but he's horrible at communicating (typos everywhere! Not just spelling, sometimes I wasn't sure he learned how to put together a sentence correctly.) And don't judge me, this is blogging not teaching, so I'm allowed to type improperly! :p And he had no idea how to use the online program. He just uhm, wouldn't post things correctly or post them five times or there would be delays because he couldn't figure out his computer. Sheesh. Okay … Sexuality, well that was okay. It was 80% test, 20% essay and I didn't really do so well on the essay portion. It's not that I can't write when I want to. It's that all his discussion topics (and they were set up to be class discussions) were pretty personal. And on some things, my opinion is the minority and it was just uncomfortable. I know it's part of the class, there were just some ethical/personal views that I didn't want to discuss with a bunch of strangers (or be called closed-minded or anything like that). So eh, it doesn't really bother me. The grade was good enough and I didn't need the credit for anything other than GPA points, and the class was somewhat interesting (though I felt our book was strongly biased towards certain moral views which I don't necessarily agree with). So, now all I have to work on for the next nine days is history. Oh joy. It's not so bad, though, I'm just not at all a history buff! Speaking of school, I guess now I'd better get cracking. Enough wasting time! Don't fret, you'll get another dose of my oh-so-exciting life soon enough!