Category: general

I don’t know what my problem was yesterday. I got home from work and settled in at the computer, all ready to rip some .avis, but first I had to clear off some hard drive space. So I was juggling DVDs, shifting anime onto them, and while I was doing that Sean was talking to me about Macross and Asian politics. And I don’t know what my deal was, but I just couldn’t get interested in anything he was saying. In fact, I found myself getting more and more irritated that he kept plunking out these seemingly random facts. It was obvious that he was surfing around and telling me about what he was seeing, but for some reason that annoyed the hell out of me. I don’t know, we do this to each other a fair amount, so it shouldn’t have been that big a deal. Maybe I was just stressed out because I have a stupid, busy work paper due on Thursday–not that I was working on it. But whatever the reason, I really don’t have an excuse. I ended up just not responding to anything he said. Each comment made me more and more annoyed. Finally he said something like “Well, you’re AFK or something, so I’m going to go get lunch.” I responded, likely after he was already gone, “k. I’m going to take a nap.” And then I logged off.

Guiltily, I must admit that not being signed on was a relief to me. I finished off my backups and did finally fall into bed. I slept soundly until around 7:45 pm, and then I woke up, startled that I’d slept so long, and logged back on.

“Sorry about earlier. I was irritated for no reason,” I said to Sean.

“I’m pretty annoyed. I guess it’s something about today,” he responded.

That was my first clue that I’d hurt his feelings, but it really shouldn’t have been.

I mean, come on. I basically ignored him, and then took my first opportunity to leave while he was AFK, leaving him a terse note. You don’t treat your fiance like that. What was I on?

We had a few things to say to each other after that, nothing big and monumental, and then at around 10:30 I wanted to go back to bed to rest up for my shift this morning. I first asked, “When are you going to bed?” When he didn’t respond, I asked “Are you there?” Upon his affirmation, I said “I’m about ready for bed.”

His response? “Okay. Night.”

See, we have this thing. He calls me every night. Unlimited minutes after 9 on weeknights, and all day on weekends. We go to bed with each other. We’ve done it for months now, maybe longer than that. I find that at night I have a hard time falling asleep without him. His presence is calming to me, and it makes me feel secure and safe to be all sleepy on the phone with him. The fact that he wasn’t going to call, and didn’t express any sadness over that, told me that something was greatly amiss.

“You’re not going to call?” The question had barely left my fingers when I followed up with “Are you still mad?”

“I’m working on a post.”

“Oh.”

“And yes, I’m still pissed.”

“Oh. :(”

I still wanted to talk to him, so I tried to justify what I’d done, or at least let him into my head a little more. I basically said something stupid like “I read what you wrote, I just wasn’t interested in any of it.” Yeah, that was about the gist. Good job, Heather; 10.0 :P

Sean responded, “You’re making it easy for me to stay angry.”

“:/ I don’t want to make you stay angry,” I said. “We’ll talk later, okay? Because you’re busy?”

“Yeah.”

I hate it when he’s so curt and short with me. When he’s closed himself off completely. It shows that at that moment, he doesn’t feel that he can trust me with his feelings. And he had every right to feel that way. I’d treated him so badly.

So finally I wrote “Good night, sweetie. I love you.” Then I logged off without giving him time to respond, because I knew he wouldn’t say “I love you” back. Or at least, I assumed that. I didn’t want to see a simple “Night.” That would have been too much.

I got ready for bed, but found myself restless. I snuck back online, to the AMRN IRC channel (#amrn on irc.freenode.net), and opened a private window to Kevin. “Today sucks,” I said, or something to that nature. “HF’s mad at me.”

I went on to explain the problem and how it was all my fault. “He has a right,” I said. “I just don’t like it :P” Talking to Kevin about it helped a little…but not really. When things aren’t right with someone you really can’t solve it by talking to someone else. I wound up crawling into bed resolved to call Sean and at least tell him that I was sorry again, since I hadn’t reiterated that during my moment of stupidity. I wanted to hear the sound of his voice, at least.

The phone rang three times, and then his voice mail picked up. I hit “1” to avoid hearing his recorded message. I wanted the real Sean. “Hi, sweetie,” I said after the beep. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have treated you like that. I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you. Night.”

It still wasn’t good enough…but I didn’t want to bother him by calling back. I hung up, turned out the light, and lay there flat on my back under the covers, eyes closed, trying to fall asleep. My mind was full, and I couldn’t get comfortable. As I curled into the fetal position, all I could hear in my head was maybe he’ll call back maybe he’ll call back maybe he’ll call back…

If he did, I don’t remember.

Being stuck in limbo like this is some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I hate having him mad at me. I hate being the one who’s hurt him. Limbo is a cycle of despair. I need resolution.

I told Kevin that I was confident that things would work out. And they will, I’m sure. There is only a tiny doubt in my mind, and that’s enough to add to my misery, but on the whole I know that I love Sean and he loves me, and we’ll work through this and become stronger together. But the interim! The interim is what kills me.

Hopefully I’ll see him soon.

I hate busy work.

I hate busy work, and I hate classes that are full of nothing but busy work.

My Shakespeare survey course feels like something I could have taken in high school. I have a paper due on Thursday that is pretty much a rehash of what we’ve talked about in class, though we are free to “expand” on the ideas. I don’t feel like rehashing what we’ve discussed in class. I wish I felt like reading the material, but that’s another story entirely.

I’m getting very excited about my honeymoon. You may not realize this, but I love Japan. I love Japan! Did I mention I love Japan? Because I do.

We haven’t finalized any details yet, but we’re looking at Tokyo, Nikko, Kyoto, Nara, and Hiroshima. I would love to go back to Hakodate, but that’s way up north, so it might not be possible. We’ll only have nine days to do all of our traveling. That seems like such a short amount of time, but then I remember that I covered many, many cities in just two weeks last summer, so maybe it’ll all work out. Then again, I don’t want the honeymoon to be hectic like the school trip was. I’d like it to be comfortable and relaxing, but still allow us to see lots of sights. I hope it all works out.

Today, I’m going to begin the agonizing process of ripping all my VHS tapes (except the copyrighted stuff, of course) to .avi. I will then compress these nicely and burn them to DVD. It will be a joyous occasion, full of trumpets and streamers and other joyous things that joyous people use on joyous occasions. (I don’t know; I don’t go to parades.)

My Japanese textbooks are leering at me from across the room. I really need to get them out and start working with them again. I did a little bit over the summer, but not very much, really. The card table they’re sitting on is currently full of VHS tapes that I need to rip; I’m promising myself that once that’s done, I’ll dig into the Japanese. It’s such a daunting language, though. Three writing systems…oy. And it doesn’t help that the grammar rules are totally different from those of English. Still, if we’re going to be in Japan in March, I really should bone up on my m4d sk1llz, so I can at least order dinner.

すしをお願いします！ (switch your encoding to Japanese, if you haven’t already)

I want to watch a DVD, but not any of the ones I own. It’s a sad state of affairs. I should write my Congressman.

It feels like it’s been a long week…but one of my two classes didn’t even meet all week. I guess lethargy is just as tiring and obnoxious as having things to do all the time. Or maybe I just never have enough to do. I’m not sure.

In any event, I don’t know if I’m happy it’s the weekend, or if I’m annoyed at all the work I’m thinking that I have to get done. BLEAH!

Skaterboy: Hey, babe…you’re lucky to have me, right?

Girl: Oh, hell yeah! I mean, you’re on MTV!

Skaterboy: Yeah, that’s what I thought. So help me write this song about how lucky you are. There’s this chick I used to know who dissed me big time back when I hung around the park in baggy clothes doing nothing but skateboarding. I know she really wanted me, but her friends were all snobs so she wouldn’t date me. I bet she regrets it now, ha ha!

Girl: What a loser! I’d love to write a song about that! It’ll prove to everyone how dumb people can be and how great our relationship is!

Skaterboy: Good. Now finish giving me that blowjob.

Girl: Right awa–mphf.

The other day my aunt Evelyn, Dad’s sister, her husband Walter, and their granddaughter Sarah came over to the house with my grandma. The first three in that list are from Texas, so it’s not too often that they get to visit. Evelyn and Walter are the ones who put Sean, Ben and me up when we drove into Austin for that not-so-productive job lead with PCOrder (are they even still in business? what the hell is this?), when we met George and Suzanne and went out for cheap but quite good sushi. Sarah was only thirteen months old then, and she was so tiny that when she toddled around I wasn’t sure whether to be afraid she was going to fall or afraid she was going to float away. She’s going to be four this April. As has been remarked upon by many an aging aunt, uncle, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, neighbor, or Person You Don’t Even Know, kids sure have a way of making you feel old.

So after Connor overcame his debilitating shyness and became comfortable enough with our guests to run around screaming and yelling, everything went fine. We “visited”, which is what we call sitting around talking about whatever is on our minds at the time, which for Evelyn was this new business venture involving “pure” rain water. “It never touches the ground,” she said. Apparently it at least goes through a filter or something, to clean it. I’m not sure, but doesn’t water collect nutrients as it passes through the soil? Something to think about. But Evelyn says she’s been drinking rain water for over a month, and now she can’t stand regular water. And I thought my dad was weird for refusing to drink anything but imported spring water from Canada.

So while Connor and Sarah flirted and teased one another–purely platonic, I assure you, as they are cousins, though technically there is nothing genetically wrong with mating with your cousin, but I digress–us old folk sat around talking about kids, and little toy cats made out of real rabbit fur (“I wouldn’t have bought it if I’d known,” said Evelyn), and Connor and Sarah’s other cousin, Joshua. Connor picked various pieces of potpourri from a glass dish on the low, hexagonal table in the living room and brought them around for people to smell. Grandma snuck back to my room and slipped a check for $2000 under a marker on my desk, face down. My inheritance from Grandpa–I promptly spent it the next day on plane tickets to Japan. Sean and I will be going next March, for our honeymoon. I’m hoping that the cherry blossoms will come early.

We took lots of pictures of everyone, and then I ran back to my room to burn them to CD, only to emerge triumphant and discover that they had taken even more pictures while I was gone. Alas. Using a whole CD for a mere 40 megs is one thing. Using a whole CD for a mere 40 megs and then discovering that you could have put another mere 40 megs on it is quite another. I suppose I’ll be burning a second CD to mail to them. It’s a good thing CDs are cheap.

As the visitors slowly shifted from the living room to the kitchen and then to the office, it was apparent that it was about time for them to go. Evelyn, Walter and Sarah were leaving the next day for the drive back to Texas. As we all stood out in the office finishing up our conversations, Mom leaned across the half-wall and said, almost casually, “Want to look at my garden, Grandma?”

The look on Grandma’s face was one of light-hearted dismissal. “Oh…gardens. I’ve let mine go to the wayside…”

“I’d like you to see it,” Mom continued. “I even have some tomatoes that might be ripe, and you can have them.”

“Well…”

“Oh, you have to see my garden!”

It was like Mom didn’t hear a word Grandma said, and I didn’t understand it until I remembered that Grandma is Mom’s mother-in-law. I guess 30 years of knowing a person doesn’t change the initial form of the relationship. I don’t have that awkwardness around Grandma; I get her love unconditionally. But Mom is an outsider…and it seems she still feels that she has to prove herself, no matter if Grandma sees her that way or not. It was an odd realization.

And so they went out to the garden. I didn’t follow. I’m not sure what they saw there, but I was done watching.

I want Cheryl’s approval, but more than that I want to have a relationship with her. Maybe that’s what Mom wants with Grandma, too, and maybe the only link she sees is gardening. I don’t know that I have any link at all with Cheryl; when we have conversations she mostly talks and I mostly listen. I tend not to tell her when I disagree, unless I think I can get away with it. I’m an agreeable person anyway, so I don’t think I’m hurting anything. I’m certainly not promising her the moon and not planning on delivering, or anything of that nature. I’m not really promising much of anything, and she’s not asking me to, and I think that’s a good start for our relationship. But I wouldn’t call us friends, and really I don’t want to be friends so much as family…because you tend to see friends a lot, while family is in the special “always there, often taken for granted” zone which means you can avoid them like the plague if necessary and they’ll still love you.

But of course, as family, I really need to start buying her–and Reid, and Grandma Flo–Christmas presents. Oh, lordy. Compounding this is the fact that I barely manage to do this for my own immediate family members. Ack, and Connor’s birthday is in just a few days! The same day as my parents’ silver anniversary! My job doesn’t pay enough…

And yet, I can’t seem to wait for Christmas. I just love that time of year, whether it snows or not (though I would prefer snow, it just adds the right flavor to things). I love the lights, and the trees, and the stockings, and the baking. I love shopping for and giving gifts. I used to have a much easier time doing that, back in the Days Before Bills. I’d run around the mall looking at everything, and if something reminded me of a person I loved I’d buy it. I bought things for each and every one of my friends back then, and either took them to be wrapped free in the mall, or spent time making the package look perfect myself. Then I’d go home and bake Christmas cookies and pass those out too.

I love the traditions; I love all the handicrafts, like scented oranges, or strings of popcorn or cranberries, or baked ornaments; I love gingerbread; I love decorating the house so that a touch of Christmas is everywhere, ready to greet you with happy thoughts. Christmas has always been a happy time for me. I don’t know why it affects some people so badly; I suppose it might be resentment (“how dare this be a happy time of year, I’m trying to be depressed here!”), but that seems so lame. I think it’s much easier (and more fun!) to just go with it, to enjoy yourself. But of course, it took awhile for me to be naturally happy, so I should probably cut other people some slack.

Sean is coming here for Christmas, but I’m going there first for Thanksgiving, so I think it balances out. I’m not sure how we’ll do it in the future. It might be nice to just switch off each year. We’ll just have to see how it goes. I love getting together with family and sharing food and conversation. And I love entertaining! I can’t wait for the day when I have my own house and my own things and I can invite people in and serve them food that I’ve made and let them enjoy my house and my company.

It won’t be too long until I can do that. Come January, I’ll be moving to Georgia to live with the love of my life. I’m so excited! My life just keeps growing and changing in new and fantastic ways.

Testing. Attention please.

Feel the tension soon as someone mentions me.

Here’s my 10 cents; my 2 cents is free.

A nuisance, who sent, you sent for me?

So like…yeah.

I feel so stupid. I don’t know why I’m here or why I try to do things like learn Japanese. I am a slacker. I don’t work hard enough. At anything. Not even my trip website. The only thing I do a measurable degree of work on is unspacy.com. How ridiculous! I suppose if I were being paid it would be different.

Anyway, I just got out of Japanese language class. Maybe it’s a language class. We are always taught by someone a little Japanese, then we do something w/ IEC students. Today Imoto-sensei talked to us about the Japanese social hierarchy. I thought I understood everything that was going on. He was using examples to show the differences between J&A culture. For the most part it all made sense, but then it got weird at the end, and I wonder if wholesale nfl jerseys I actually understood any of it.

He drew the kanji for river, then drew the letter A, and asked what it was. I said it was an arbitrary symbol used to represent a sound phonetically. Then for some reason he said that the Japanese students could only hint about something, and the American students would have to guess. I cheap jerseys thought this was like before, like when he asked the Japanese students to explain “giri” (obligation). I thought we were supposed to realize that while the Chinese characters are direct representations, the phonetic sounds are still arbitrary. So I tried to explain that to my group in English. Then middle crane [Nakatsuru-sensei] came over and asked me if I understood what we were doing. I said no because the students didn’t know what I meant, so maybe I was wrong. She said the students were supposed to describe something and I was to guess what it was. cheap nba jerseys Sooo simple. I felt really frustrated and stupid for making it into some abstract philosophical discussion.

I can’t talk about philosophy with the Japanese. I can’t explain ideas that aren’t concrete. wholesale jerseys Even this morning when Otoosan was driving me to school, I saw the rain splatter on the windshield, leaving a clear circle around a big round drop. I couldn’t explain to Otoosan that I thought that – was beautiful, that I’d like to see it in slow motion to see how the circle of water spread out around the drop. So I didn’t say anything.

So apparently I was making more out of the discussion than I should have. Sometimes I do that too much. I can see cheap jerseys the underlying point a teacher is trying to make (or subconsciously making) and I focus on that instead of the practical side. My head is in the clouds. I can think “deep thoughts”, but I don’t know anything.

I guess I have to wonder, with my strange attitude towards learning, if I will ever amount Leapfrog to anything.

10:17
Well, while I was in the bathroom feeling sorry for myself, ich class started. For God, I’m turning into such a loser.