Saturday, January 31, 2004
Today was a good day. I got out and did some shopping (got my groceries, now I can create! I lack only two things: pesto and asian five-spaice blend. I shall find those somewhere, I am sure.) and then later I went to the coffeeshop for a while. It was slow, but I had something to drink and some cake, and then drank many glasses of ice water while I talked to my sister. I hadn't planned on staying the two and half hours until closing but she called up Daley (I guess that's the spelling) and we decided to hang out after she got off, and it seemed silly to drive back to N. Augusta only to come back out to Augusta in a couple of hours, so I stayed. We ended up going to becca's place and watching Pirates. Second time i've seen it. Decent movie, not a wonderful movie though.
It was good to hang out with people though.
And Robert (the owner of the coffeeshop) seemed like he might be interested in hiring me. Wouldn't be many hours or great pay, but it's something, and something is better than nothing and I can always find something better. But having income at all is good. And since i'm living rent free right now, a little something is good. And sooner is better than never. :D
So, i'm taking my resume there tomorrow. I'll still hit the streets next week and apply at other places, places that might offer me health benifits and such things that I need much.
I just ordered my Christmas present! Mom and dad bought me the Two Towers EE DVD set but I already had it so she returned it and said I could get something else. So I went to Amazon and found out that I could get Fiddler on the Roof AND My Fair Lady for just $4 more. Now that she's gotten the refund I finaly got around to ordering the replacement gift tonight. Yay for that. And free shipping, too! So in about a week I will be the proud owner of these two wonderful movies. :D Yay for movies.
I have been offering to do small things around here and for becca. I know why old men do this sort of thing all the time. It's because they have retired and so they have nothing else to do and one needs to have something to do to feel useful. So they offer to do odd jobs around the house and such. Tomorrow I will be replacing some flood lights at Becca's place and replacing/re-placing a light in my grandmother's yard. I'm also going to see about a power cord in the back yard that got knocked down by a branch in the ice storm this week (not a power line, a cord, big and very important difference there!). I'll probably see if I can find anything else to fix while I'm at it.
Also becca told me about some bluegrass music that'll be at a club downtown tomorrow afternoon. I shall likely check that out, as well. Yay for bluegrass.
Goodnight.
Friday, January 30, 2004
Now I have to get on the ball with revamping the main site, photography site, and kitchen. I need to decide if I'm going to keep the kitchen setup with blogger or if i'm going to go through and change it BACK to regular HTML (after having to change it to work in blogger in the first place. Of course a lot of the changes carry over, I just have to add BRs to everything since blogger translates that on it's own, and go back to a directory based structure (which will probably be easier to manage when I get a lot of recipes than the backwards date based structure that I use with blogger (each recipe, index, and page takes up one "day" which I started at the date that I created it and worked backwards (I'm to November, I think) by changing the date of the posts. Which means that while it's all nice and orderly and divided by category on the kitchen, it's just in a long string of posts which will get longer and more random as I add stuff. I think I'll convert it while it's relativly small, yes!!)
I am not sure that any of you quite know the extent of the change that has come over my mental state in the past day, or perhaps it's the past week and the past day has just been the... culmination of that change.
The past two months, indeed, the past eight months (since I graduated) could be summed up this way: They were a slow, continuous descent into depression and despair. The combination of suddenly not having something that has been a steady part of my life for five years be there, slowly getting more into a state of "brokeness" financially, not being sure on the direction of my future, and especially, not feeling like I should be at my church anymore drove me deeper and deeper into this state. And the move back to my parents was sort of the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.
Of course, this move is also what initiated the change for good. It gave me a viable reason to quit the church, and I couldn't say that it wasn't what God would have me do (coming from the free-will side of my mind, not the free-grace side, of course, the two are still battling it out) because He made me broke in the first place (and there's the free-grace, God totally in control side coming back). It's also what allowed me to pull up roots and be totally mobile, ready to go wherever I could on a moment's notice. Of course, at the time that I moved home I saw no immediate way out, and became all the more hopeless and depressed at my situation, and the new $50 a month bill for student loan repayment that started up in January didn't help matters any. Neither did the constant going on about the sorry state of the job market from any and all news media sources (American, at least).
But now things have changed, again. Since I was free to go wherever I pleased and my sister got her house and moved out of the bedroom at my grandmother's house I had the option to move into said room. I knew this was an option but in the depressed and hopeless state of despair I was in I didn't really realize how easily I could do this and how immediately it could be done, so I had planned a short one week trip to visit my sister and see the opera. It wasn't until my mom mentioned that I could move here on said trip that I realized that I most certainly could do this. And so I have.
And so I return to a place of civilization with operas, a symphony, choirs, countless other classical performances I may attend, clubs, bars, coffeeshops, and cafés with live music, and all the other wonderful things that come with such a place. No more rednecks whose entertainment involves highschool football, hunting, and burning crosses.
And I just know that when I start looking for a job next week a dozen places will want me. Ok, maybe that's getting my hopes up a little too much, but that's just a side-effect of the change that has come over my mental state in the past week or so.
Also it's great to be near my sister again. I don't know how she feels about it but I believe she is almost as excited to have me near again. For pretty much all the years from highschool until now Becca has been my best friend and I have been close to her, able to hang out whenever we wanted. But then for the past seven months or so she lived nine hours from me in Augusta, making friends and having fun, while all my friends were graduating and moving away and I was unemployed. Now I'm near her again (and she's made friends, I'll just hook up with those friends and not have to do all the hard work! I did it for her in college now she does it for me, I guess!) And it's good.
It's also nice to be spending time with my grandmother some (even if she does scare me on the road, she almost ran a red-light tonight. Mom said she did run it when they (She, my sister, and the twins) went to see the Nutcracker. I imagine it was the same light... Almost got rear-ended by a bus tonight when she slammed on brakes after Becca made her aware of it. I was just going to let her run it as there was no one coming and there was a very large bus behind us... You always take your life into your own hands when you ride with my grandmother) and being able to go to things like the opera with her.
So, things are better for me, and I am in a much better mental state than I have been in for at least eight months, and really, the depression started to set in probably two months before graduation, as I realized what would happen upon graduation. Now I need to find a job and figure out some more concrete plans for graduate studies.
To everyone who has been praying for me for the past eight or nine months, I thank you very much and know that your prayers have helped me to survive the dark times, and I hope you will continue to pray for me as the dark times are not over, there is just more hope for me at this time. I still need a job and direction for graduate work, though, so prayers with that would be appreciated. And prayers that I survive my grandmother's driving when I can't talk her into letting me drive, and her eccentricies (a word which I apparently made up, as it is not in Webster) while I am living with her. I love my grandmother, but as most of you know I am odd and it's apparently a genetic trait that was passed to me from both sides of the family, and it comes out in different ways in each person.
Hmm... I vowed to try to use "well" less to start my posts and it doesn't seem to have worked. I shall have to try harder...
Thursday, January 29, 2004
And here is a treat for everyone, six black and white photos that I just scanned! They're from this summer and then this December. Three (The two in Charlestown and the one of the twins) need to be re-scanned at a higher res, but that's all you get for now! Look for more photo updates in the semi-near future! But for now I go to bed!!!
I'm in North Augusta now! I have moved everything into the room save the two boxes of books that I will be putting up for sale online soon. I have my computer set up, with two monitors, printer, and a scaner (!!!). I also have my grandmother's computer setup so that it can be used it someone wants to use it (to placate her, though she never uses it, and so mom has a computer with an OS and setup she is familiar with when she is here).
I also seem to have gotten the subdomain for this fixed... See if it's still working tomorrow, eh!
Plans for tomorrow? Go see Becca's house and then go to the opera!
I am so happy to be here, yes, it's not as comfortable, physically, as the apartment was, or even as my parents' house was. But it's a better place for me to be.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Well, I'll be heading out in the morning for Augusta! Got most everything packed. Some stuff mom is going to bring over when she comes for her trip in two weeks.
I would just like to say how annoying my parents' monitor is. The colours are way off and I can't get them to look right. If I get enough blue in the blues then the greys look purple. If I make the greys look properly grey the blues look grey. It's really, really weird.
Monday, January 26, 2004
my site is back up! Billy is wonderful! I think the problem all along has been a reset password that I never got notice about and never guessed the right password (I thought it might have been reset, but I couldn't remember what the default one is). Soon the blog and recipe book will be moving over there.
Well, it's a good thing the trip was delayed. It started sleeting and icing in Augusta today and I wouldn't have known about it untill I hit Atlanta. Becca is up in Blairsville waiting for it to stop icing in Augusta, the weather in Blairsville was sunny and nice and she had no idea untill mom got ahold of her. We found out from my grandmother. Becca called Jen (her roomie) and found out the power was out and she was cold and the roads were nasty. She called the shop and the lady there told her not to try to come back untill the roads were safe.
Anyway, it's good that I didn't go today. I will probably wait untill Wednesday to make sure the roads are safe again.
Sunday, January 25, 2004
Well, I'm back from Nashville! We got a bit of a late start, Mike and I. I got there 20 minutes later than my original ETA, but then he had to mess with this Phone Tree thing and get it set up before we left, so it was really closer to 1:30 when we left the church. When we got out to the cars he realized he had left his symphony going clothes at his house - 25 minutes away and out of the way. So we got those and got on the road, 2:15.
Somewhere outside of Birmingham we recieved a call from becca and Mike (4:30) informing us that they were in Nashville at 5:30 as we had asked, having forgotten that Nashville is on CST and not EST. I had reminded them both of this, though not in the context for arival, so they didn't notice I guess. We told them we'd be another three hours.
We got to the hotel about 7:10 and changed quickly, after a slight sock fiasco which can be read about in the Springstead's blog. (There's a link in a post down there somewhere, about searching for my name on google.) We got to the location and found close, cheap parking quickly and got inside. We then found out that our row C tickets (which I actually thought we had gotten F) were not third row but front row looking at the players' feet!! Well, we couldn't see much besides the chamber orchestra that plays with the baritone and tenor, the mentioned baritone and tenor (DON FRAZURE!!), the conductor, and the children's choir, but we could hear everything very clearly and it was very well balanced, surprisingly for being so close.
The music was wonderful... I knew it would be but... Man... It's like a million times better than any recording, even when it's a recording with Fischer-Dieskau. The tenor was, of course, absolutly wonderful as he always is. The bass was pretty good too, though he looked like death (quite fitting as the role of the bass and tenor and chamber orchestra in this work is that of the victems of the war) with his head and eyebrows shaved and a scar on one side of his head, sunken in eyes and large lips... His headshot looked just like that so I assume the shaven neo-nazi look is his normal look... His bio said he does a lot of musical theatre and it was aparent in his vocal style and his expression. He would make a very, very effective villian.
The organ was played on a Korg. Sounded like an organ but was a bit quiet, we heard it fine, not sure how the back of the room heard it.
I first heard this work durring my freshman year, I was poking around in the listening lab at school and found a recording of it (the fischer-dieskau one) and it looked interesting so I put it on. I was much impressed and soon bought the CDs, even though they were $40 at the time. It was worth it. For some reason I never thought I'd have a chance to see it live. But I did. Oh man, did I ever.
Well, after the concert was over we went in search of food for springstead and myself, as we hadn't had time to get dinner. We looked all downtown but either there was a lot of covercharge and scantly clad women, or there was no parking, or it was closed. We ended up eating at a Burger King. In the drive through we were greated by about a dozen or so small furry rodents. Ok, not so small. Yay for rats! They were running across the street to Capt'n D's so I assume that every night about 10 they start getting into the trash of the various resteraunts there.
That night we sat up while mike and mike played guitars. Ok, becca laid down and drifted in and out of consciousness I believe, but the rest of us were sitting up. 4am we went to bed.
The next morning after some showers and food we sat around playing penny whistles, harmonicas, and mouth harp. All in various keys, at the same time, and randomly since the Springstead is the only one with a little bit of practice on these things. The maid knocked and asked when we were checking out so she could clean the room, we interpret this to mean, "Please to go away, you are loud." So we packed up and left (it was close to checkout time anyway). We sought food and found an Arbys and were about to go there when Springstead spotted, next door, a little mexican resteraunt and sugested that we try it. He was much impressed with the Mexican-ness of the place and we were all impressed by the food. Mmm good food.
Now I am in butler (I refuse to call it home most of the time). I had planned on moving to Augusta tomorrow, but it will not happen I have too much to do. It will happen Tuesday, or perhaps Wednesday. It has to happen by then because Thursday I go to see the opera!
I'm so excited about moving to Augusta, I can't wait. There is a church there that I have visited a couple of times and love (First Pres, Augusta) and there are always all kinds of concerts, free and otherwise, and my grandmother likes to go to them so I will probably accompany her often. There will be projects to occupy my time: Searching for a job, e-bay selling, putting my photos in albums (and scanning them so if I ever DO get my webspace back I can put up stuff), and running speakers for my grandmother. Those are a few, I am sure I will come up with others. Not to mention the friends becca has already made that I will get to hang out with (always nice to send a scout ahead of you to make friends and find things, so when you get there you can just plug right in as if you always belonged!).
So, yeah, i'm much less depressed about life at this moment in time. But man, I have so much to do, gotta figure out what to take!!!
Klasinc&Loncar Duo (Just trying to help it get picked up by Google spiders, I maintain it for them)