Wow, it’s been awhile…

Well, for the few readers that I have, I apologize for not keeping this up to date. I will try to do better. Since graduating college and getting a job, I’m finding alot more things to occupy my time. I did get the job with Pinnacle. Even if they are a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner, it is a good place to work. I like what I do, I like the people and I like my paycheck. What more could I ask for? Not too much. Oh, and got a new car. It’s not exactly new, but it is new to me. I purchased an ‘02 Honda Civic. Last time I filled up I did the math and I’m getting 29.9 miles to the gallon. Not too bad.

Rat-a-tat-tattoo

I did it finally! I got the tattoo that I've wanted for a long time. It's the theatre masks (comedy and tragedy). They are on my left shoulder blade. The happy one is yellow and the sad one is blue. The lady drew if free hand so it will be (mostly) unique to me. One of Steve's friends was having a tattoo party. I guess it had been planned for awhile but he didn't think Steve would be interested and said something to him jokingly. Well, Steve isn't/wasn't but he said that I could get one since I've been bugging him so much about it. Actually Steve called me and said that he found a college graduation gift for me. I ended up paying for it, but oh well. Apparently, I was supposed to be in more pain or something cuz the lady that went before me made the comment that I didn't have the same look on my face as she did. It wasn't exactly a pleasant feeling but it didn't hurt either. It was kind of more annoying than anything. I was able to carry on a conversation while she was doing it. I was just afraid to move and mess it up. Because it was spur of the moment, we didn't take a camera but Jim (Steve's co-worker) took during and after pics that I'll be sure to post when I get it.      

Stray Dogs, Old Flames and Mandriva

Last night, while the kids were out in the yard, a dog wanders in. Of course, the kids go nuts. It’s a friendly dog. Looks to be some laborador/retriever mix and is still very much a pup. We walked him around the neighborhood a bit in case his owners were out looking for him without any luck. Steve thought we should just let him go and he’d go home. I said that we should keep him safe until we found his owner. It has a tag from the shelter with an ID number but the shelter was already closed. So we shut the gate to keep him in the back yard overnight. However, it was gone this morning. Then when I walked the kids to school, low and behold there he was at the school. I brought it back home and tried the shelter again but they don’t open til nine. For now, he’s shut in the garage until he can be returned to his owner.

Update: I contacted the shelter and got the phone number of the dogs owner. Called and left a message for them. Let’s hope they call back because I’d hate to turn it back into the shelter and we just can’t keep another pet (per Steve the big meanie).

Now onto the juicy stuff. Ran into an old flame last night when I took Bryce to wrestling. Normally wrestling was Tues/Thurs but this week they met Tues/Wed and that’s why I hadn’t seen him before because his son was wrestling Mon/Wed. Damn, he’s hot and a real sweetheart too! Met him at Homan Lumber where I used to work years ago as a cashier and he worked out in the lumber yard. I always was fond of him even after he dumped me for his now wife. I think because he was upfront and honest and didn’t lead me on. He just said that I wasn’t right for him. Can’t really argue with that. (I think I was too much for him if you know what I mean.) There’s an email floating about that says something along the lines of men every woman should have and one of those was a lover that she’d take back…yeah he’d be the one…mmmm. What could’ve been. I can’t really complain, though, about how my life turned out. I’ve got a great guy. Anyways, I’ve heard about another side to this guy but don’t really know if I trust the source. He was always a gentleman to me but I suppose people can change. It was nice to see him again. I see him every once in awhile and we catch up. I had to rub it into him that I have a motorcycle…hee hee.

Mandriva, Mandriva, Mandriva….I like to say that name. I was looking for a distribution of Linux to install on my laptop. One other that Fedora but still easy to install and maintain and one that didn’t require a bunch of configuring so I settled on Mandriva. It’s based on Red Hat. There is also a distro of Mandriva like Knoppix that can run off of CD and with an installation option. I considered that but it’s still beta and I’m not quite that ambitious (or patient). My second choice is Debian so if I’m not happy with Mandriva, I’ll try that. Debian just isn’t as fun to say. Anyways, I got the 64 bit .iso files, I just need to burn them now to CD and install Mandriva. That’s my goal for today. That and catch up on my Operating Systems homework. I know what I need to do, I just need to sit down and do it.

Rantings

Well, I’m declaring my laptop dead. I’ve tried running Knoppix and it still locks up and then shuts down. It’s got some sort of hardware problem and I don’t really care to try and fix it. I have been telling Steve that it needs to be replaced for several weeks now. We went and picked up our taxes yesterday and were discussing what to do with the refund. I guess we are going to split it 50-50. Holy Laptop, Batman! So now I”m agonizing over what to purchase. It’s making my head hurt.

I was in a really pissy mood last night…when aren’t I? And then my sister called to let me know that a guy that goes to our church died. I guess he had a temp of 109 degrees and had a siezure and is now brain dead and will be taken off life support soon. It’s one of those instances where the person isn’t close enough to you that you are grieving for them; rather it’s a wake up call. All I could say was WOW. My mood softened alot towards Steve. I felt bad for feeling angry with him when I had no good reason.  I don’t remember ever feeling this way before we were married.  Why did we ever get married? It seems so hard now trying to merge two families  into one. Even worse, we used to get along great – until we were married and lived together. Nothing was wrong with our relationship before. I had my house and he had his. We were neighbors to make it even more convenient. Don’t get me wrong. I do love him. I just think we got married because that’s what you do after you’ve been together for so long.

Back to our taxes…the other thing that gripes me is that on the tax forms I am listed as the spouse and his name is first. I find that irritating. He is my spouse just as much as I am his. I hate being known as Mrs. So and so.  I am Amanda. I didn’t lose my identity when we married. I contemplated keeping my maiden name (I took that back when I divorced). And I still have that name as far as the school is concerned since I want my diploma to have that name. So I bounce back and forth between the two. If they were’t such odd surnames, I would hyphenate them but that would be horrid and my initials would be A.S.S.