Cookie frustration

I am baking cookies for our Christmas exchange this year but things are not going well... I wanted to make my grandmother's Italian wedding ring cookies but we seem to have misplaced the recipe. No problem, I thought, I'll just look it up online and then see if it is sort of like what my mom remembers. Wrong. No one seems to have a recipe that even sort of resembles the cookies I remember. They are no where to be found online, so when I get home I am going to tear apart the highly disorganized recipe file and find them and when I do I am going to post the darn thing here, with a picture because I find it hard to believe that I am the only one looking for her gram's recipe for these delicious cookies.

*frustrated

Coffee fool update

I finally ordered my coffee today. I can't wait for it to come. I will edit this when I get it and taste it and see how it is. :)

UPDATE!!

YUM! The coffee is really great! It came via fed ex the other day and I tried the cinnamon hazelnut flavor... wow. Damn good coffee.

Wish list

This is a linky link to my amazon wish list for you people who keep asking what I want.

sad

I am feeling really crappy about some things I've said and done recently. I wish someone would have told me what an asshole I have been. I just feel crappy and wish that I could redo the past few months. I'm sorry.

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Shelf lady!

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Goodbye Jack

I came home today and found out that we lost Jack, and the other fawn. Apparently there was a bear and they were laying too close to the fence. *sigh* I feel like I should be more upset but I really have been expecting this all summer. Until the pen is moved I doubt we will be able to raise any fawn at all.

Feeling melancholy and sad.

Tina to Chisa

I have decided what I want to change my cat's name to. I didn't like the name Tina very much and wanted to change it so I spent most of yesterday looking at names online. Then I got tired of looking and watched some anime. There it was, right in Magical Stage Fancy LaLa! Her older sister's name and one that I have loved since I first saw Lain. Chisa. Simple, pretty, and using similar vowel sounds to her previous name. So my new kitty's name is now Chisa. It is exciting.
^.^

better pic of Tina

Here is a better picture of my new kitty, tina. She is really sweet and loving and is rapidly getting used to my house. She likes Bill too, but mostly she follows me everywhere. Her favorite toy is this silly mouse bird thing on a string which she carries around the house mewing loudly to tell the whole world that it belongs to her. She is about three years old and has pretty bright green eyes and black and orange fur. She has this odd bluegray ring right at the end of her tail too.

Tina

Kitty!!?!!... No kitty. :(

My new kitty? Hopefully.

Update: someone else adopted my kitty before I did... No kitty for jessy :(

Very scary milk threatened us

Utena at otakon

Random pic from otakon. lots of Utena cosplayers all together.

Summer sucks

Summers are in no way relaxing for me. I can't wait til fall. Let me recap my month.

Went back to work after the forced vaccation, at least I got paid.
It has been so busy at the rest area I have had hardly enough time to check work email and traffic let alone my email.
I got highspeed internet at home but have used it maybe twice cause I am never home.
Jack is over in the big pen so it is even farther to go feed him. He keeps stealing milk from the does too so he isn't always hungry when I try to feed him.
Working at camp whenever I am not at the rest area but since I am just working off rent, I am not getting paid with cash.
Haven't done anything with bill in weeks because we are both so busy that even when he is here we don't see each other much.
attempted to make a costume for otakon but only managed the mask.

July sucked. and August doesn't look too much better. Though I do have otakon and bill and I are going to try to go to the shore one day... ha like that is going to actually happen.

I can't wait til september.

Forced Vaccation

Well I'm out of work. Saturday they kicked us all out of the welcome center and told us to go home. So I am on a forced vaccation of sorts, though without any pay. It sucks. I got stuff done around my house but i am bored. i really love my job and I miss it.

Jack is doing well, getting really big. He is full of mud right now because of all the rain we've had and his pointy little feet. He doesn't need the paper towel treatment anymore (thank goodness) and is down to three feedings a day with plenty of supplemental brush and leaves and clover and such. I spent the morning trying to cover some of the worst muck with straw and hay. Of course Jack thought that it all tasted wonderful, including my jeans. It helped a little but the ground is just so wet. Hopefully he will lay in the straw and not in the mud but then you never know.

I got an AC unit for my house yesterday. Not sure if it will install properly in my window though. It is just a little unit but anything is better than nothing. And of course, today it is cool, dry, and breezy so I don't even need it. Feh.

Baby Deer Full of Poo

JackJack again.

EDIT: I took this yesterday and sent it here. Last night was a bit of a screwup. I came home from Newton and brought Jack in the house like always. I was awakened late that night when my parents finally got home and noticed the box was missing. Apparently my dad thought that we'd be leaving him out last night. Oh well, no big deal, or so I thought. This morning Jack made his displeasure at being inside abundantly clear. At the end of it all, we had a Baby Deer Full of Poo (jack's nickname) a baby deer crate full of poo (and wet newspaper), a cardboard box full of poo, a daddy full of poo, and worst of all, daddy's truck full of poo. I think that Jack's first name was more appropriate even though he will not always be a Baby Deer Full of Poo. He was very angry with me this morning and very angry with dad too. But he is going to have to stay outside tonight because he has to get used to it sometime, and also we have run out of newspaper. An angry deer, even if it is a baby, is nothing to trifle with. My hand is very sore where he kicked it, sharp little hooves and strong little legs hurt!

Young Blue Eyes

Jack's eyes are still blue... it is really odd for a fawn to have eyes this color and I'm wondering if I should have named him Frank instead. Or maybe rain. Ah well, too late now. He is just starting to look up when I say JackJack and I don't want to confuse him. Last night we tried out the harness and leash. I think he was more confused that I was letting him walk around the house than he was by the strange harness thing. I guess it will be easier when he gets a bit bigger. I think the harness I bought is a little to large for him but he is growing so fast. He is a whole head taller than he was in the last picture. He is very affectionate now too... Hooray for imprinting!

Jack in the Box

The fawn has a name! After nearly a week of debate, I have decided to name him Jack after his grandsire. Jumpin' Jack Flash got his name when he was about the same age as the young fellow I have now. My younger brother and I were watching tv after school and the fawn was in a rather tall box in the same room. When my mother came downstairs she found the fawn laying behind us watching tv. He'd jumped out of the box without us even hearing him. Well this little fellow is exactly like his grandad. He isn't happy unless he can see what is going on and has jumped out of his box several times in the last few days. He also has the habit of popping his head out of the box when he hears me come in the room. So my new little fawn is Jack in the Box. He has at least doubled in size or at least it seems like it. He eats and eats and craps and craps and that is about all he does... ah well

My New Roomate

This little guy is my new roomate. We had to take him out of our pen because we weren't sure that his mom was taking care of him. Fortunately he is perfectly healthy with a very healthy appetite. We haven't named him yet, I can't think of a good name for a male deer. His mom's name is Plain Jane (I didn't name her) and his father's name is either Magnus or Thor depending on who you ask. The other deer are Sophie (mother of some other fawn that need names) Daisy, and assorted bucks with no real names that we can remember. This guy needs a good name. His eyes are really almost blue which is strange for a fawn, I'm not sure if it is because he is so young or because of some strange quirk of genetics. He is strong willed, almost obstinate and looks just like his mother, very rusty and light on his nose. Well, I guess I will have to think of something. :)

Quote of the day

Bad Jessy! No Blog!

Ok, now that I have that out of the way...

This morning when I came into work, a large white limo pulled into our rest area and expelled a gaggle of ladies on their way to NYC. A few moments later, I heard a loud thud followed by giggles. A lady's voice rose above the giggles and exclaimed "Apparently two glasses of Champagne is enough for me at breakfast!"

This has made my day.

Pic of me

Finally got around to finding a relatively recent picture of me. Not a very good one but there were not very many to choose from. I don't have many pictures of myself. This was taken in New Mexico on our last family vacation two years ago. 

Instant regret

Ever want to take back an email you've just sent?

I just sent an email that was very hard to write, and very hard to send. If it were real mail, I know I would have never actually put it in the box. Or if I had, I would more than likely take it out before the mail-lady could pick it up. Email does not give you that option. Once you push the SEND button, there is no going back. That is probably for the best in this case. The letter needed to be sent. I am partially glad I sent it, the part that isn't hiding in the corner anyway.

Some people say that the internet encourages dishonesty but I find it to be just the opposite for me. I am far more honest in text than I am in person. I find it easier to say an untruth than to write one. Strange. Text has always been an outlet for my innermost thoughts. I don't know why it is easier to write a letter to someone than it is to talk to them. Maybe it is because you can read your words over and change your wording. You can't go back and change the words you used in a conversation. Also you can say everything without interruption in a letter, whereas in verbal discourse you must pause to listen to the other person's comments. It is also easier to lose your nerve and change the subject when you are speaking in person. When I write, I am not nervous until I actually have to hit the SEND button. Often I get nervous after I hit it, which is pointless because it has already shot its way halfway across cyberspace to its destination, but nerves do not choose to obey logic.

I suppose there is always the possibility that the letter will end up in the junkbox or will not get read for one reason or another. That is also a nervewracking idea. For if you get no response, you have to ask yourself whether that is because your letter was never read or because the person does not wish to respond. I know that I will be kind of stressed out for the next couple of days at least.

I think I am glad that there is no UNSEND button. But if you ask me in two days I will likely have a different answer

Lonely and bored

I now know why few people move into a place by themselves. It is damned boring. Especially when you don't have any kind of television, dialup internet, and only about 45 or so DVDs all of which you have already seen a thousand times. I am very bored. I can't believe how much I miss Bill. I saw him on friday but this place seems so empty without him. When I come home from work I look in the computer room and half expect him to be here, tapping away at the keyboard. In the morning, i walk past his room and am startled that the bed is neatly made. I long to look in there and see a tangled mess of blankets and a rumpled pair of jeans on the floor. Every sound is strange when you know you are alone. If others are there with you, or even you live in a building in which others also live, separately, the noises that any house makes can easily be explained away in your head. The creeks and pops could be people moving around upstairs, or your roomate going to the bathroom or getting a drink. When you know that there isn't, or shouldn't be anyone else in the house with you, that is when you start hearing noises that don't sound like the house creeking or the ice maker running or the water heater kicking on. You start to hear sounds like a car door closing and the screen door opening, or the door knob turning. Bad sounds. Sounds you know that you can't be hearing because you didn't see any headlights and you know the door is locked. Yet, if you keep hearing them, you get out of your nice warm bed, pick up your extra large, extra heavy maglight, and walk silently down the hall to check and make sure that all three doors are locked and bolted and that there aren't any extra cars in the driveway and that yours is still there. I have only done this twice, and both times there were heavy winds outside. I have started shutting off the ice maker at night, and turning the radio on as soon as I get home from work and leaving it on, very low, all night. I am not frightened, not really. I simply don't want to hear the inexplicable noises. My over active imagination can definitely do without the fodder. Really, I am just lonely and bored. I have read more books in the last few weeks than I have in the last few months. I seriously need to get either television or better internet access.

One week

A week ago today, I moved in to my new house. I still don't have water on a regular basis but I am dealing with that. I thought I had posted something this week but I guess I was either blogging in my dreams or it got lost in the void. Here is a quick recap:

Last thursday: Got a bunch of crap together, threw it in my car, drove across the road, and threw it in the house. Then attempted to clean some of the construction dirt up. I learned that I had about two to three minutes of water before it was all gone.

Last Friday: The quest for the Bell. Billy and I went questing for a Taco Bell, and found one, after many hours. The caused major havoc on our systems. Badness ensued. I prayed for water but it did not come.

Saturday: On to my cousin's baby's first birthday party. Fun was had by all... except maybe my cousin. On the way home we stopped to attempt to make an Exalted character for billchan but it wound up being an all Red vs Blue evening. We left in time for me to be able to get up for work the next day.

Sunday: I worked. billchan got picked up at some point. I picked up more things and the snowdog.

Sunday night through now: I have been either working or unpacking for the last week. sometimes I have vegged in front of the dvd player. The lack of TV has been messing with my head because I have watched my pitiful collection of dvds again and again and I frankly don't care what is on as long as it provides background noise. It is way too quiet here.

So today I am going to get as much of my stuff out of the house as possible and also reformat my mom's computer. sounds like a plan.

Coffee fool

I am really just blogging this so that I can find the link later. This website popped up as one of the related links in my gmail. I love coffee. I am a fool. So I clicked, and now I need to buy more coffee. I am a spaz monkey, I know this but I really want some good coffee.

Yay! Coffee for me!!!


(house update: still moving stuff in. stole the kitchen table on saturday. Moving my bed over soon. Water is hooked up, i think. I don't know where I am going to put all of my crap.)

where do i put this?

I have been running back and forth between my house and my parents' house for this past week. I am trying to move things over in a reasonable and organized fashion but i have run into a problem. I don't know where to put all the stuff that i have. I don't want to just throw it into my car and drop it into the middle of the floor but I really have no place yet to put it all. Except in the kitchen. I don't have that much stuff to put in the kitchen and my kitchen is HUGE. So right now I am just working on putting away books and clothes and such that have obvious homes. It is frustrating because i really want to just be done with it all at once but that hasn't worked out. Every day off I have had has had something come up where I couldn;t spend the day moving. Now it is saturday again and I have a game tonight, at least I hope I do.

estimated moving date: some time this week

Cardboard and Platitudes

I have had just about enough of this house bullshit

This has been a disaster since day one. They said it would be delayed because of FEMA and would arrive two months later than usual. Fine, we expected it on December 17th. Then they called and delayed it again. It arrived after three days of rain and warm temperatures on the Thursday after Christmas. The morning it arrived the dealer's mother died.
It got stuck in the mud.
It got stuck in the middle of the road.
It took all day and our neighbor's logging truck to get it into the driveway.

Then we looked inside.

Almost all of one of the kinds of paneling had huge gashes in them some of which had been covered with some kind of sticky goo similar to the color of the paneling. It looked horrible. Also the paneling in the bathroom was half upside down and half right side up. The backsplash in the kitchen was so warped that it was two inches from the wall at one end and the kitchen floor wouldn't stay down. The company said that they would send someone out to fix it as soon as we had it on site and level with the heat and electric hooked up. When the ground finally froze in early January, we managed to actually get it on site.

The weather was not very cooperative and it took a week or so to get everything level and tied down. The electric and gas were hooked up and the heat worked, for about a day. We called them anyway and they came out to work on all the things that were wrong in the place. We got the heater fixed (they sprayed insulation into the fan for the furnace so it burnt itself out). First one guy came out, then two, then three. The first guy went back about a week ago and they said they would be done soon.

Last Friday they said that they would be back Tuesday and would finish up Tuesday or Wednesday. They didn't come back Tuesday or Wednesday. We called the company and they said they would definitely be here today. Well they are here but there isn't any way that they will finish today.

Tomorrow they might finish but this is getting ridiculous. I have packed and unpacked so many times since September when we ordered this thing. I am just so sick of this bullshit. I can't even pack anything else because I have nowhere to move my stuff to and no idea when I might be able to move it. I have off from work this weekend and I was hoping to move in then but I don't think that is going to work. I just want it to be over. I am so sick of and bullshit from corporate headquarters.

I just want my house.

Trepidation is the word of the day.

I am told that I will be able to really start moving everthing over to my new place this week. I am excited, really excited, but I am also really worried. I am a pretty chickenshit person. I am not sure how well I will do staying in a house with no one else in it. I have never spent any length of time living alone. There has always been another person living in the same building. I lived at school for a year, but I was sharing an apartment with three other girls. It didn't bother me at all when they weren't home because I knew that there were people above and below and just down the hall from me. In England it was similar. There were other people in the building all the time because it was a dorm. Even when I went to Glasgow by myself, I stayed in a hostel and there were other people in the same room, let alone the building. That was a little strange in itself but I was "other Jessy" for that weekend anyway so I dealt with it fairly well.

There have only been a handful of times I have been completely alone in a building at night. My parents don't really go anywhere very often and it is even less often that they go somewhere at the same time. There have probably been only a handful of nights that they have been gone that I have been home since my brother moved out three years ago. On those nights, I have usually slept on the couch, or practically forced my dog to sleep in my room. I know that I can take the dog with me for the first few weeks but I doubt that she will want to stay there for very long. She is very attached to my father and would miss him if she lived with me.

I feel pretty pathetic, 24 years old and I am not comfortable being alone in the house overnight. Even more pathetic that my uncle lives next door and my parents are across the street. I guess it is just that I don't have much experience with being alone in a building.

But now that I think about it, how many people really do? Especially young people. When you are a kid, you live with your parents. Most parents don't just leave their kids alone overnight until they are teens. Most teens even go to a friend's house when their parents go away. At most they would be home alone for just a few days. Then you go away to college. You are most likely in a dorm, usually with a roomate. Dorms are filled with people. Even on holidays when most people go home, there are still three or four who stay, and also RAs and such around. You might also get an apartment, but the same rules apply there. You may or maynot have a roomate but there are always downstairs or upstairs or nextdoor neighbors around you. Few young people have the money to rent or buy a house on their own. So there is almost always a housemate or partner involved. As much as I would like it, my boyfriend and I are probably not going to be living together for quite a while. So, from sometime next week until whenever we actually do move in together, I am stuck living alone. Most people don't live alone until they are either divorced, or a spouse dies. There are a rare few who choose to live alone, but that is their own choice.

Trepidation is the word of the day because I chose to live alone without really understanding what that means. I guess I'd better get used to it.

I love clouds

The sky was so beautiful the other day that I had to pull my camera out while in my car to take a picture of it. This was taken through my windshield at the off ramp on exit 12 on 80. The whole sky looked like a warm, nubby wool felt blanket. Like a blanket fort when grandma came over to babysit and moved a few dining room chairs and put a blanket over it and it was all warm and snug in your blankie fortress of solitude. It was as if the whole world was wrapped in a warm soft blanket, through which the soft light of grandma's living room shone through. I love clouds.

I suppose that is enough of that. I should probably get out of my own blankie fortress of solitude and face the day. 

My Billow

This is my billy. He's cute. He looks kind of stunned and lost here but I assure you that he is usually quite alert and awake... Well, he is if it is after noon or better yet two. Caffine helps but doesn't quite cut it before 10am.

Even if he isn't awake or alert he makes a good billow, nice and firm, yet squishy with a pleasant scent.

busy weekend

Some old friends are coming to visit this weekend. I am really excited but also kind of stressed as well. For the past several years I haven't really known what to say to them. We don't have very much in common, or we didn't when we were in school. Or maybe I just thought we didn't. Either way, I have become kind of on my guard when I am with them. I feel like I will say something or do something to make them realize that I am not the kid they remember playing with every day. That we only see each other a couple times a year and don't really have much contact inbetween visits. Again that is mostly my fault. I am really bad at thinking of things to say when I haven't talked to someone for a long time. I figure nothing I have done is particularly interesting. This time though, I am determined to be a normal person. I have been trying to think of things to say. I am going to bring my favorite ice breaking game, Apples to Apples. Hopefully the little part of my brain that actually has self esteem will come out and I might be able to talk to my friends again. Sad that I have to trick myself into talking to someone I think of as a sister.

My new couch!

Well, not yet but I am pretty sure that is the one I want. It opens out into a bed too!

Yay! Piano Squall!!!

PianoSquall.com | Game and Anime Pianist

Three times today something has come up that made me think of this guy, so I figured I'd better bookmark his site before something catastrophic happened to me. He rocks in an exciting piano sort of way. Very spiffy. So thank you, Think Geek, Picasa, and Box of Random Things From Otakon, you have reminded me of spiffiness. I just wish the line hadn't been so long to buy the cd at Otakon. hmm...

Random

I woke up this morning with the random thought that this is the first time in my entire life that I will be with someone on Valentine's Day. Kind of pathetic, isn't it. Yeah. All my previous relationships have begun just after, and not lasted all the way round. Or the relationship was in the "off again" stage at the time. So this year, hopefully, I will get my pretty fl0wer and my kiss and all will be well.

Meanwhile...

I hate packing. Hate it. I have way too much stuff and I know most of it is probably garbage but I can't throw it away. I feel like someday, I might need it. I haven't used most of it in at least three years but I reason that it has been so disorganized or buried in boxes for those three years that I probably had been looking for it and just couldn't find it. Two days ago, I found two dvds that I had written off as having been left at the ex's house. But there they were, safe and sound only a few feet away from my tv. But that is what happens when you are short. Tall people put things away for you, and you never find them again until you move. I am finding a lot of things. Lots of them I know I can totally live without but I feel guilty about throwing them away because they were gifts. I also have an amazing amount of things that have sentimental value. Stuff that I think I am going to throw together in a box and label "do not unpack ever" like my parents did. I have so much paper that I have to sort through. I am very tempted to throw it all away but I know that there is 10% important stuff in the 90% garbage.

feh! feh on packing, feh on moving, feh on holidays!

This is me.

Finally got around to posting pics. Silly me didn't look at the toolbar. Serves me right for abandoning my blog for two years. Will post house pics later. This is me and Boyfriend 2.6. We are all dressed up for a friend's wedding. (i think) We don't spiff up very often.

House is moved!!

It took all day monday to actually move it. And in fact they were moving it in the dark, but it is in. YAY YAY yay!!!!!

Ahem... anyway the house is on the site... now they just need to attach everything and make it level and such. Of course, right after it was set on monday night they discovered a huge water main break in the camp so my house has been put on the back burner for a bit. That is ok. I probably won't be actually moving in for another month or so, but the reality of it is starting to sink in.

We went out to look for couches too, and I still really like one of the first ones I saw. Somehow it always works out that way. Still haven't had time to really look at how to post pics though. Maybe later. Boyfriend 2.6 is sick and sniffly and needy so I haven't done much today. I feel pretty crappy but I think it is completely unrelated.

Housing Update

This morning they tried to move my house. Apparently the hitch on the tractor is too low or the crown of the road is too high. Either way the A frame of the hitch on my house is scraping the ground and they are afraid to keep moving it. We tried to raise the shoulder with stone but we don't have enough stone. We have stopped for lunch and to figure out what to do. After calling every hitch and trailer place in a 40 mile radius, we have established that a 3 inch ball raiser thingie that they were looking for does not actually exist. Now they are trying to MacGyver something to make it work. This thing is 25 tons and if you heard some of the sounds it was making when they were moving it... I was cringing non stop. I do hope that they can figure something out today because the ground is finally frozen and tomorrow it is supposed to rain and make it all muddy and soft again. I will post again this evening. Hopefully I will figure out how to add pics too!

Moving, Maybe

I am supposed to be moving soon. Actually I was already supposed to have moved. First I was supposed to have moved into the existing place in the spring of '04. That got delayed and delayed and delayed because the person who was supposed to be moving out didn't actually do it until fall. In fall of '04, we actually got to go into the place where I was planning on moving. I had lived there from about age 1 to age 7 and was planning on moving back in. Apparently the renter who had been so slow moving out had failed to tell us, the landlords, that there were problems with it. We knew about the electrical issues and wanted to fix them but she had so much shit in there that we couldn't get to the walls to take the paneling off. What she failed to mention was that since she failed to close the windows so many times, the floors were rotting out and also she didn't mention the crack in the floor of the shower which she had put a mat over. The crack in the floor let so much water out that everything holding the shower up was rotted away. Consequently, my move was delayed still further. We debated over whether it was worth fixing and decided it wasn't. Now we had to go about replacing the unit. My paternal unit declared it too late in the season to order a new one as it would arrive in the beginning of winter and the weather would be bad. heh. So we waited. Meanwhile, friends of ours determined that they could be a dealer for Liberty Homes. They began the process of renewing their expired license. The extremely obnoxious, drawn out, beaurocratic nightmare of a process that took months longer than it should. Finally their stuff went through. It is now the end of July '05 and I have been living half out of boxes for over a year. We get the goahead to pick floorplans and after waiting for them to send them, drive all the way out to central pa for samples that sucked anyway. By the time we figure out what we can pair with what and in what room of what floorplan it is the beginning of September. We submit our order. One week later we recieve a call saying that due to FIMA's order for Katrina victims and workers, our home will not be available for delivery for an extra month. So that puts the delivery date in the end of November. No problem. October comes and goes and no work has been done for the foundation. The old unit has not even been removed. In the beginning of November we get a call from the company again. The date for delivery will be the first week of December, then the second week in December. Suddenly they are spurred into action. They attempt to pull off the old unit. It makes it as far as the front yard. Work begins very slowly on the foundation. Second week in December, the arrival has been pushed back to the thursday after christmas. My father stays home to work on Christmas Eve though all he managed to do was break the backhoe. twice. Finally, just a day before the thing is scheduled to arrive, they get the concrete poured. It has been so cold for weeks that digging for the foundation was extremely difficult. It barely warmed enough to pour the concrete. Then, suddenly, it rains. It rains all day the night before the arrival date. It rains all morning before it arrives. The temperature has warmed enough that the ground is a soupy mess of mud and water. It arrives. The truck gets stuck in the mud several times just trying to get it out of the road. Finally a neighbor with a logging machine helps get it out of the mud and nearly runs over my brother in the process. My house gets as far as my driveway. The rain is still pouring down. The guys with the truck go back to PA. And that is where it sits. In the driveway, just yards away from where it is supposed to be. The weather has warmed up so much that there is no frost at all left in the ground. No one knows when the ground will be hard enough to move it. We don't even know what we will move it with. To top everything off, the water doesn't come out where they said it would and nothing else does either. So he had to make shift something and hope it won't freeze. Also, there are numerous problems with it. A shutter blew off somewhere between here and Central PA. There are cracks under all the windows, Scratches in the paneling in most of the rooms that were very poorly covered up. There are upside down panels in my bathroom and various other careless mistakes. Fortunately the company sent someone out to look at it who said he can fix it in under two weeks once it is level and has heat. Who knows when that will be. I am just hoping and praying for a nice long dry coldsnap.

Interesting coincidence

I have returned from my lengthy absence from blogging. I'm not sure why I have suddenly had the urge to record my thoughts and such again, but now just seemed like the right time. So many things are happening and maybe I just need the catharsis of writing to calm down my silly little brain. More about that some other time though.

I have an agenda. I have been trying to figure out if anyone else shares my somewhat skewed idea that the lyrics of Green Day's American Idiot parallels the events and themes of Neil Stevenson's Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I know, I know. It sound like a bit of a stretch even to me, but there is something there that bugs me... it just fits a little too well for me to discount it out of hand. It is primarily my fault for reading Stevenson's books during the same period that I was listening to the album all the time. I'm not saying that Green Day wrote the album so that it would match the books or anything like that (though I am very curious to know if they have ever read them). I just was surprised how well they went together. Listening to songs like "She's a Rebel" and "Extrodinary Girl" while reading Diamond Age gave both works a depth of meaning, at least for me, that I didn't see on their own. "American Idiot" and "Jesus of Suburbia" fit quite well with Hiro Protagonist's world in Snow Crash also. It isn't just the events of the books and the albums that struck me. Mostly it was the themes. Stevenson and Green Day both seem to have similar views of American society and where it's going and why. What I guess I really need to do to properly hash this out is to grab a copy of both books for myself (my boyfriend practically forced his copies on me when we first met and I fell in love, first with the books then with him). I already own a copy of American Idiot. As soon as I heard Blvd of Broken Dreams on the radio for the first time, I knew that this album would be one of the few I would actually own. I don't buy that much music. I own very few CDs and I don't have very much downloaded music either. I generally just listen to the radio.

Anyway I will finish this train of thought some other time. I need to sleep.