Oh, my aching head

My head hurts. I’m plugging along in linear algebra all hunky dory and next thing I know we’re talking about spaces and subspaces and bases. I know how to do the stuff, I just don’t understand all of it. Atleast 24 is over and Steve will shut up now…that show bugs me. It’s way too intense for me and c’mon I don’t really believe all that stuff can actually happen in 24 hours. I find it an insult to my intelligence that the writers/producers think that I think that it can…pant… pant… pant….I think I may drink a beer and go to bed….

I did manage to get a good 25 minute walk in tonight. As Bryce would say I need to walk fifty laps to lose some of my fat butt…

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.

Too Early

Day of all days to wake up extraordinarily early, I woke up at 4:30 am and couldn’t fall back to sleep. The kids are off of school today and Monday for President’s recess and I could sleep in. I figure maybe I could get a jump on the day. I’ve got lots of laundry and cleaning to do, not to mention plenty of school work to finish (or start).

I think I may have figured out the problem with my laptop is bad RAM. I took the one card out after it shutdown on me twice this morning already. So now I’m running on 128 MB. Creepingly slow, but atleast it’s not “dumping” like before. Not yet anyways. I did tell Steve that I want to replace this thing with some of our tax refund money. I’m talking about a lowline one so nothing fancy. I got no response so I’m taking that to mean go ahead. Of course, I know that he does not esteem computers what so ever. But it is my chosen field and therefore I must possess tools of the trade. It could be worse–I could spend the money on my motorcycle…

Gotta Love It!

So I’m was on my way over to class on Tuesday (Feb 14) when the alternator in my car went out. There I was sitting in the road in my dead car bawling my head off like that would help the situation. I did manage to push my car into the gas station parking lot that I was so conveniently next to. Called Steve to come get me and his boss was a total ass about it. The last thing I needed was to talk to him. He did tell me that his wife works a mile down the road but she couldn’t help me. And he was sure to tell me that Steve needed to be back to work ASAP. I don’t make a habit of calling him home from work. Jerk.

We did manage to jump my car, let the battery charge up enough and drove it to the shop. Where it cost me $355 to have it fixed. That did include an oil change and new wiper blades.

It was nice, so I thought maybe I’d take the bike out.  I got my jacket on grabbed the keys. The battery was so dead that it didn’t even attempt to turn over. No click, no sputter. No nothing. I walked out of the garage in disgust and didn’t even bother to put the battery on the charger.

I’m in a pissy mood…

…it’s Monday morning, I left the house late, had a quiz equivalent to a final exam in operating systems and I’m still really far behind in all my classes…somebody shoot me.

The Party’s Over

Oh my gosh…it’s been a long time since I’ve felt so physically and mentally drained. All those kids wore me out! Two of them were out of control. Poor Bryce, he knew I was at my wits end and did his best to subdue them. They were better at the paintball field, but here at home. Holy cow! If they were mine, they’d be duct taped to the wall! I had to be on them constantly. That aside, playing paintball was awesome! I didn’t play, but I got to go out and watch them on the field. They got to play by themselves so they actually had a shot. I must say that my baby girl (really she’s 10) kicked some ass! She was on her stomach crawling on the ground from bunker to bunker making her way down the field. Afterwards, she said to me, “Mom, I gotta do this more often!” Altogether there were 6 kids so they played three on three. It was really funny because the kids would organize themselves out on the field and put together a game plan among their teams. Two HUGE thumbs up to the guys out at Elkhart Indoor Paintball! They were absolutely great. They were so helpful with the kids – giving them tips and tricks, helping me clean and refill their guns in between games. And I heard from a couple of them comment how good Olivia was. Towards the end one of the kids got tired and didn’t play the last game so they played two on three. Olivia and Landon against Bryce, Josh and Devin…Olivia eliminated both Bryce and Josh (not sure who got Devin). I’m pretty sure she eliminated the most out of all of them overall for the day. In the end, Bryce and his buds had a great time. I’m glad I did that for him on his birthday, but it will be awhile before I take on that brood of kids again! In the meantime, Bryce and Olivia are already bugging me about when they can play paintball next. I may have created monsters….

Oh, and Bryce got a hair cut today! A flat top no less. His dad called me this morning and asked if it was okay if he took him. Bryce asked for it himself. My philosophy is that there are much more important things to battle with your children about and their hair shouldn’t be one of them. Though I am a little disappointed because I like it long, I must say that he looks quite handsome.

B-man’s Big Day

So today is Bryce’s birthday party. He’s so excited. He came home from school yesterday and told me that he told all of his friends to come 10 minutes early. I’m like okay…whatever. I’m taking them to play indoor paintball. This should be interesting. All of the boys are psyched. I’m getting a little nervous about my sanity though. So far three boys have RSVPed yes and one no. I just have visions of sugar-crazed little boys running about the house…Olivia is going to be there too so she’ll help try to maintian order. Bryce almost told her no that she couldn’t come to his party until I gave him the evil eye. As sisters go, she’s pretty awesome. She always buys stuff for Bryce. Like when we went bowling she took her own money and bought him a soda. She always does stuff like that for him. He can be a little brat in that I think he expects that stuff from her now. He feels a sense of entitlement, I think. But that’s not the defining feature of his character though. We will see how this all goes down today.

Stuff

Here it is, 10 pm. I’ve been working on this stupid AI assignment all friggin’ day now. (With the exception of my second root canal.) It’s going pretty well. I think I’ve got it all written and now am debugging it. Imagine that – code that I wrote with a bug in it. Ha! I am still pretty far behind. I haven’t even touched my operating systems homework and that one is gonna be hopeless. I did get an A- on my drivel of an essay I turned in this week. Slapped together in about five hours on how literacy impacts culture and vice versa. It was total bunk.

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with a title for my posts because it’s such a hodge pogde of things. Like I’ve been pondering, whom all do I tell about my blog? The more people that know me, the more I have to “watch” what I say about people. That would hinder the expression of my true feelings here. I thought about telling my sister, but then what if I want to gripe about her?

Another question, I’ve been thinking about putting dreadlocks in my hair. I think they look cool, it would be easier to “do” in the morning, and well, there is the shock value of it. Steve likes my hair long, I like it short (because it easier to do), so I figure it would be a good compromise. I went in for parent-teacher conferences and Olivia’s teacher said, “Olivia told me that you were going to dreadlock your hair and homeschool her next year.” I laughed…way to go there little sis, make me sound like a hippie!

And on to yet another topic…Steve’s sister,Kathy, had rotator cuff surgery on Wednesday. She was really anxious about it because of the 6 month recovery time. So we went over there tonight, took a movie and some pizza just to hang with her. It was pretty fun. Steve was asleep on her couch before 8 pm. All I could do was shake my head. Steve and his daughter did not go to the movies because she had volleyball practice tonight. So the problem should be solved, right? Wrong. He thought that it should be and I didn’t really want to get into it. My whole point is that he doesn’t make me a priority. Let me say, that I do understand that I do not always come first. I can’t always be first, but sometimes would be nice. Like spending time with me is not a last resort but something that he does intentionally. Someday all the kids will be grown and gone and it will be just us. He (we) need to make each other a priority so that our relationship is still strong when that time comes.

Sometimes I wonder…we are from such different worlds. Jock meets Geek. I’m the geek. He talks about glory days playing football…well, I was in the band. I got good grades, and there was always that subdued rebellion against the norm.

I know what the root of my problems are right now….I can’t ride. When I ride, I have to completely clear my mind and focus on what I’m doing. The problem is, I didn’t winterize my bike properly. My dad even reminded me but I neglected to add gas stablizer and change the oil drain tube. So the result is oil leaking on the garage floor and condensation in the gas lines. I’ll cross my fingers when I go to fire it up for the first time. There have been plenty of day that I could have taken it out, but I haven’t wanted to go to the trouble of getting it out.

Okay, I’m tired of AI and I am tired of blah blah blahing so I’m going to bed.

Looking for Work

Just when it seems like I’m climbing out of this hole (instead of digging), I get smacked in the face with a grave-robbing shovel. So, I managed to get my Artificial Intelligence homework turned in. Working on my essay for Composition. Gonna start the the next AI assignment and then the Operating Systems. Yeah! I’m fired up….

Then I get fired. Got an email from my boss, who is also my brother in law. Here’s how it goes (keep in mind I only work on Fridays because of school):

Amanda,
Would you be terribly upset if we didn’t have you come in on Friday’s? At the present time, we just aren’t that busy and there is no need for you to come in and just sit. I hope you understand. If things pick up and we need you, I’ll let you know. You do a great job when you are here and you are very professional. I’ve told Jamie several times that I wish I had about 3 of you. Let me know if this decision creates a problem.

Okay, so I didn’t really get fired, but I’m still kinda bummed. I saw the handwriting on the wall several weeks ago when I had nothing to do but sit at my desk and surf the ‘net while waiting for the phone to ring. Last Friday I called in and asked if they really needed me and, big surprise, they didn’t. Now the question is, do I look for a part time job for now, while I continue looking for a permanent-post college graduation gig?

Now on to what is really stuck in my craw. My husband’s birthday is Thursday. He’s going to be 41. We don’t have kids this weekend so I thought we’d get to go out grab a bite to eat, maybe see a movie or find something else fun to do…but no. Friday night, his oldest daughter (13) wants to take him to a movie for to celebrate his birthday. They have a strange relationship. She writes him notes in school. When I was 13, I wrote notes to my friends – not my dad. Saturday afternoon, I am having my son’s birthday party with his friend. (We’re going to play paintball.) Steve’s mom wants to take us to dinner and the only possible night is Saturday night. The trouble is that Bryce’s party doesn’t end until 6. So looks like they are going to dinner without me. Sunday is out because my mom already spoke for that day. I let Steve know that if things go this way, then we won’t get to do anything for his birthday much less see each other this weekend. His response was “What do you want me to do about it?” I told him that the easiest thing to do is tell his wife no. In all seriousness, that is what is going to happen. That is what has always happened in similar situations. Well, I do see a solution. But seeing as everyone in the house (and Steve’s ex) lack the logic part of their brains and have to borrow mine, they can’t see it. Seems so freakin’ obvious….let see, he’s free Saturday afternoon while the birthday party is going on…maybe they could go see the movie then and we could have Friday night. But right now we are speaking…so there. (yes, I know that is childish and immature and I’ll regret it later.) Looks like I’ll have plenty of time to work on homework on Friday (all day and all night) and Saturday night. Oh poo!