Well, I'm in Plainfield for the week, meaning that yes, I did make a decision. I have an appointment to get my hair cut on Thursday in South Elgin. It sounds like a pretty nice place, and they even do before and after pictures and stuff. That means I have 2 days until short hair. Brace yourselves, folks, it could get interesting...

I haven't been posting this week. I really didn't have the drive to say anything, mostly because I have been so stressed. I know it's summer and that this stress is trivial at best and certainly unneccessary, but I thought I would tell you about it anyway. Nick has to go home to Chicagoland for end of the summer doctor appointments and to tie up loose ends and such, and he invited me to go with him. It seemed like a perfect idea, because I wanted to donate a foot of my hair to Locks of Love and there are several salons in the greater Chicago area that give free haircuts to LOL donors. Score one for me. BUT I also have a doctors appointment that week, my cousin's wedding, and I don't get paid time off, so I lose $200 or so in taking off from work. So I decided not to go, then I decided to go, then no, then yes, until my stomach rebelled and decided to tie my intestines in a knot to show me who was boss. I am seriously a blubbering mess. You might say, "why don't you just stay home?" and I would say "indeed..." but my mother is driving me nuts. She belittles everyone, we can't do anything right and "never help her", and we're apparently always "blaming her" for things that go wrong in our lives. It's tense. On the other side of the coin, Nick has 4 younger siblings who truly don't ever help their mother, and live in a state of carefully balanced chaos. So here I am, on the last day of work before Nick would have to leave, so I have to let them know today whether or not I'm going. I told my mother this moring that I thought I would go, and instead of saying something like "that's nice, I'm glad you've made a decision" it's "do you know how much money you're going to miss out on!?" So much for support. Now I'm a nervous wreck again. Crying before 7am isn't a good way to start the day. I'm going anyway, because neurotic or not, Nick's mom isn't mine and it would have to be some improvement to spend a week away from home.

I can't take the GRE before the analytical section is changing to a writing section!!! This is majorly not good, because the analytical section was my strong suit. No hope for me now...

Jatalk is almost ready!!! I had permission problems and had to get some help from Tiff to set them right. When I get the colors all changed over and the layout ready, I expect you people to post. I really don't have much else news. There are tentitive plans for dinner this weekend with the gang, and I may stop by my mom's crazy family reunion tomorrow. Oh! Nick and I are trying to upgrade my family's computer tonight too! Pray that 1) our processor isn't burned out from the last time we tried this, and 2) that we don't burn up this motherboard like the last one!

I went to the theater last night to see The Weir, an Irish play full of ghost story monologues told in a pub over pints of Guinness. It was lovely, spooky, tear-jerking, and homey. Live theater, it's a magical experience. So this play reinforces my feelings lately that I wish I was Irish. I bet it would remind me of WV. I'd love to go there for a vacation.

In site news, I may start working on jatalk again, due to popular demand. (Ok, so just one person liked it, but I'm going to work on it anyway.)

I have a new favorite restaurant in Lewisburg, if not everywhere. It's Julian's Restaurant, a wonderful European taste and atmosphere delight. Oddly enough, most of the restaurants in downtown Lewisburg are closed on Sunday evenings, a fact that Nick and I discovered last night while trying to find a nice place to eat as a special night out. I had wanted to try Julian's for a long time but I was unsure of their cuisine and pricing. Sure enough, it costs too much for my college student wages, but I like to splurge every now and then. It was so heavenly wonderful... I hope I have enough money to eat at nice places for the rest of my life.

Some days I just feel like my webpage is a meaningless, empty piece of fluff, floating aimless out in cyberspace to create more clutter than what's already there. This page was supposed to be my outlet, therapy for my soul. I am supposed to be able to say whatever I want here, but the fact that I want people to read it more than anything betrays the whole idea of theraputic writing. And so, I write empty attempts at wittiness that come off as just another blog from just another girl. Never do I truly put in writing what I feel, or who I am. Looking back at my archives, my blog has been nothing but a daily chronicle of my activities, and an edited one at that so as not to step on any fingers (as if anyone out there was reading anyway). So a year has passed, and there are but a handful of entries that say anything about me. I mourn for my lost ideals of what this site would be. May you rest in peace... I'll undoubtably tell you all about the events of my day tomorrow, thereby falling back into my old pattern and crushing my new spiritual blog growth back into cyberspace.

I've been discovering the joy of Stardock's neat little line of Window's skinning products. I've already discovered that I dislike DesktopX a lot, but Object bar and WindowBlinds are very nice. Cursor XP's pretty nifty itself. I'll be downloading skins all day... lol. Kazaa lite is such a lovely program, allowing me to download all this software and keygens for it all, and not tracking my every move... I'm just feeling all softwared-up today for some reason. Tis not a bad feeling; tisn't at all.

Nick resigned from CJ Maggie's, so he'll be able to come for a visit this weekend. Sadly, it's the second job he's had this summer and the second one he has quit. He had good reasons both times, but it does suck. Credit card bills will soar after we go back to school and buy books. I have to save money for my AGD and KP dues too, as well as my AGD jersey and the little extra's we get. *frown* I'd better start saving now.

I saw MIB II last night with Addison (my 13 year old brother). It was better than I had expected it to be, surprisingly, but I guess that's because I enjoy silly humor like Will Smith's cocky attitude and suspending my disbelief while watching tentacled aliens wreak havoc on New York City. Ah, movies... Now that we have the Starz Super pack on Direct TV at home, I'm watching a lot more of them. Helps to block out the loney boring after work time without my Nick... *must stop rambling* Ok, done.

"I'm sorry, we don't serve fish here."

I hate Hardee's. First of all, I hate going through drive-throughs, which I believe is somehow related to my fear of calling to order pizza and other related phone type things. Yesterday, my mom made me go through the drive-through to get my brother a roast beef sandwich, as dangerous as that could be from Hardee's. I got up to the little "Place Your Order Here" speaker, waited for the empty plastic greeting, and asked for two roast beef sandwiches, a small curly fry, and a small coke. The speaker replied, "You want a monster burger combo?" ARRGGHH!! "No", I said, "I want two roast beef sandwiches, a small curly fry, and a small coke." Then, "I'm sorry, we don't serve fish here." WTF?!?!? Me: "I didn't ask for fish! I want two roast beef sandwiches, a small curly fry, and a small coke!" She replies, "Ok, a small curly fry and a small coke?" "AND two roast beef sandwiches!!!!" "Ok, is that all? Your total is $5.91, please drive up." I had to wait an additional 10 minutes for the food after that. Who do the hire to take orders in places like these? I have a fairly easy to understand, loud, low-accent voice! I'd hate to hear her do that all day long...

We've been having mad crazy thunderstorms this week. We're under another severe thunderstorm watch now, until 8 pm, with the possibility of large hail. It's kind of cool, but at the same time, I don't have the insurance to cover any storm damage to my car, so that would seriously suck. I try to leave the window cracked a little bit so that my car doesn't roast me alive when I get in it in the evenings, but this invites disaster on days like this. Luckily, I never leave the driver's side window down any, or I'd have to swim home.

My freebie addiction is paying off. Today in the mail, I got a free Thermasilk hair wrap, Tresseme samples, and some other free junk I can't remember. In the last week, I got a poster of a bridge (which I don't remember asking for), a tiny packet of jelly bellies, SucksSkateboards.com stickers, Autotoys.com stickers, and a "revolutionary new cleaning cloth". Man, I love free stuff!

Happy Fourth of July, all. Brace yourself for the patriotic outpouring. I'll even be sporting my new Old Navy flag tee in screaming red. It'll be good times.

WHOA!!! Good weekend gone bad. My brakes started giving a warning screech Friday on the way to Buckhannon. Nick decided to take the wheel off and give it a look on Sunday. Why not earlier? We're not entirely sure. Anyway, one of the lugs broke off, and then would not come out no matter what he did to it. Not only that, but my brakes were worn horribly unevenly. Keep in mind that I've had this car for a month and a half, and Nick only had it for about 10 months. We never had any reason to suspect anything was wrong with the brakes before now, especially since his grandad had paid over $300 to have practically the whole braking system replaced last fall. Since it was Sunday evening by now (when I should have been leaving for home) all the parts stores were closed, like everything else in Buckhannon. This is material for another aggressive blog, so I'll leave that alone for now. I now had a broken lug and bad brakes, and I was late leaving for home. After consulting my dad and his, it was determined that 4 of the 5 would hold fine for the trip home, but I decided to postpone it until the next morning. The car did fine all the way home, except for the terrible screeching. My dad bought the brakes we needed and set to work on it. It took over 2 hours for something that shouldn't really have taken long at all. He said he'd never seen something so rusted and locked up in his entire life,and that there was no way that those brakes had been changed anytime in the last year. The reason they were so worn is that the pieces of the braking system were rusted together and couldn't slide as they were designed to. Dad had to file and grease everything thoroughly. I saved those brakes to show Nick's grandad. He's being taken for a helluva ride by that mechanic, and I'm the one now suffering for it with the car. Who knows what else could be wrong with it...

PS. I ate moldy cheese for lunch and didn't know until I was almost done with my sandwich. :X