Noooo! Broos! Another home improvement project which I may be forced to copy simply because you have the coolest ideas! Noooo!

At least I have LOTS of primer :)

Must study, so must dash. Out of curiosity, would you folks rather be in contempt of court or be involved in small claims court?

Yay, my posts from the last two days finally made it onto my website! :)

I've been contemplating the stresses of my life, which is a stressful exercise in itself. I wonder how folks get by when confronted with stress. Some people don't ever appear stressed, but they later say they were at the very time I was admiring them for being so together. That is not how my stress works me. For me, I become more animated and energetic, with a "do or die" attitude to force me to get things done. For example, today's to do list is rather lengthy. I know I cannot get it all done yet I am planning on diving right in because if I don't at least start, they won't get done at all. Other folks seem to withdraw and retreat, observing the situation and offering suggestions on fixing things that stress them, but taking it slowly so as not to stress further.

Yet I know other folks who cave under pressure and retreat. "Better to do nothing and succeed at that than to try and fail," seems to be their motto. And then there is a group which is similar but adds, "...and if I'm going to fail, I'm taking as many folks with me as I can." Those folks should be forced onto a desert island together. Gee, kinda like Survivor. But I digress :)

Lately one of the groups to which I belong has been having growing pains, a lot of them and all at once. The group leader is more of an observational retreater. As he retreated recently, my agitated DoRight stress kicked in and I started becoming more involved. A social event was planned with an award to be given; the awardee had been informed that he was receiving this award weeks ago. Yesterday was the social event and no award was given, even though the awardee had driven down to join us with his wife. I was horrified, mortified and agitatified -- for I had been offering to create the award and just yesterday morning, another person said she'd take on this task as the award itself had been her idea, and me, covered in stress, was thankful that she would relieve me of this responsibility.

Little did I know she is of the "take em down with me when I'm drowning" type. After getting home, feeling slightly dismayed, I found an email from this person to me and to the group leader, expressing outrage over the leader's withdrawl stance and pretty much saying, "Tracy and I" this and "Tracy and I" that. Horrifying to the extreme as it was certainly not the case as far as I was concerned! Argh!

And so, whereas yesterday started off stressful and invigorating, it ended being stressful and aggravating. Today I'm of the mind to sock this person in the face for taking a task from me and failing to deliver it for her own devious self-serving reasons. I think we're in the same class this afternoon. It shall take all my stressly DoRight instincts to keep me from telling her exactly how poorly I think of her now.

The past week I've had enormous trouble uploading my blog. I wonder if there is any correlation to Google apparently buying Pyra? Maybe they're converting something in the background? Or perhaps AOL, which is deep into my Netscape, is getting antsy and now doesn't want my blog to be updated? Have I been that bad? :)

So, I guess that means today's entry will not be seen till later, perhaps much later.

Tensions are high; my lip is starting a new thing, which is kinda amusing as I've spent the entire last year under a heavy, dark cloud of stress and managed to not burst into a lip thing once. This morning I woke up with a swollen lip so either my overall stress level has declined to the point where any introduction of stress (like the 3 midterms in two days) tips me over the edge; OR I'm so completely saturated with stress that one tiny minute thing more has done this to me because I can't contain it any longer.

I'm not sure what can be dropped from my life's schedule, though. Some days my mind rotates through all the things I must do to get ahead and make progress. I am now currently but a mere 5 classes from a two year degree. Of course, two of those are science and two are math, but hey, it's within sight now. :) My paralegal certificate is within two quarters. Next quarter I'm trying to get an internship to work in a corporate law firm that handles employment law. My fingers are crossed there! The quarter after that, I would like to do an internship with an in-house corporate counsel, as that's my ultimate goal. We shall see. Tis very stressful though, as it requires planning ahead not only for classes, but also to ensure that I can have enough hours in a week to complete the internships, which means I need to plan my classes so that I have long blocks of time to do the intern work.

And now that I am close to the end of the process, there isn't much for me to take so I'm pretty limited in what I can try to get. Argh!

Next quarter, I'm taking geology as my laboratory science. I could've taken computer science, even, but I'm afraid that might mean math. This summer, I plan to take oceanography. That's two. For math, I will likely take algebra in the summer again (what an idiot!) and my last math in the Fall. I'm trying to get the timing worked out correctly as there is one paralegal class I need that is only offered in the Fall and I skipped it this past Fall due to my heavy credit load. I can probably get by without it, but I want to take it as I think it'll be useful in employment law.

So there's my stress. Close, but twisty and tangly to get there.

Do you know what Rob has done to me?

First, he infected me with The Sims. After looking over his shoulder and wondering what the heck he was doing with them, I started playing and my life has not been the same since. I grieve to see they are coming out with yet another expansion. Sigh. I refuse, however, to be sucked into Sims Online. I've never been big on interacting in games and prefer to run around by myself. Plus it'll eat my life and I must resist. I will not be assimilated! Noooo!

Then, came the bowling, the golf range event and pinball. At least those are things I've been mildly interested in before, so it is nice to have someone handy who knows what they're doing.

But this latest trend is horrifying. He made me watch Survivor. And before the end, I was egging him on to fast forward through the commercials because.... SIGH... I needed to know who got kicked off first.

Aieeeee!

My car is at the shop. I'm waiting for them to call and tell me it's fixed. If I remember correctly, the things they are doing include:

Replacing the alternator
Replacing hosed something hoses (they were bulging and I forget which ones he said)
Replace/repair the CV joints (which annoys me, as this will be the second time I've had them replaced in three years or so)
Look at why the dashboard lights go out without warning
Install a new fuel filter. Or is it the pump? I think it's the filter.

An expensive little undertaking which my husband is underwriting for me. :/

Cheaper than getting a new car, though. Just frustrating and ill-timed. Luckily, one of my classmates has been very gracious about picking me up and bringing me home, as my car has been having issues since last Thursday. Argh.

On the bright side, once the car is fixed up again, the only thing 'wrong' with it will be the terribly oxidized hood. I am not sure why only the hood has gotten so ugly, but it would be a mere cosmetic fix and not one that affects the structural integrity or anything.

And for those of you not on the mailing list, there are new interviews at Billy Boyd dot net. :)

The item I'm calling "my birthday gift" isn't really for me, but I'm enjoying the heck out of it :)

I am so burning out on school. We have three midterms this week, each of them a different style of exam and so it's hard for my mind to switch gears from multiple choice to essay to something between the two. And I must get at least a 3.75 in each class, to maintain a high GPA, which is adding to my stress level. I consider myself fairly intelligent, but I'm plagued by laziness. I would rather read for pleasure than read a textbook (although I did enjoy reading our astronomy text last year). I would rather consider what sorts of events we can run in the little game than do legal research. Maybe I'm not called to this field at all as I thought I was. But I'm sure everyone goes through some angst about what career choices they've made along the way. All my prior jobs I sort of fell into; at least this one is my choice by inclination.

And I've finally found an area that really interests me: employment law. I signed up for the class on a whim, but it's really quite interesting. In May, there's a convention for employment law attorneys in Seattle, and I've volunteered to help at it, so that I can meet more folks in this specialty.

New photos have been added to my photo album.

Oddly enough, Blogger seems to be having some issues. It had issues the other day, too, but still managed to choke out my post. Not sure if it's going to work today or not.

I am pretty organized, although I do have time management issues. It bothers me when I feel my life spiraling slowing out of control and no time to do anything substantially fun. This quarter has been especially brutal as Monday through Wednesday, I don't get to see much of Rob as I'm evening classes. Next quarter's not looking so promising either, as there's a business contract law class I want to take and it's on Mondays and Wednesday nights.

When we do have some time we like to quietly watch our Tivo. The eclectic mix of shows we get is kind of amusing. On the one hand, Tivo notes that we like Food Network, so quite a few of its recommendations are cooking shows. Last week, I noted that we hadn't seen any of our favorite Tuesday night offerings, so Rob sat down and located them using the Tivo search feature. We sat down to watch the tail end of the first one, with me grabbing the control frantically to give it the requisite three thumbs up so it'll be recorded by the Tivo as it comes up.

On Tuesdays after my meeting, Rob and I like to snuggle together on the couch for a little bit of murder and mayhem. We watch The New Detectives and The FBI Files on Discovery. Rob chuckles about our gruesome little habit, but it's fascinatingly scientific. Plus we get to argue about whodunit: Rob sticks up for the husband/boyfriend who's always to blame when the wife/girlfriend disappears; I cheer on the detectives for locating those loser wife beaters. When my meeting runs too long, Rob will whine from the couch, "They're framing another innocent man and you're not here to watch!" which is my clue to try and bring the in-game event to a close.

Which makes me feel rushed. I want to take time with the folks who want to ask me questions or bounce an idea off the group, but I also want to spend time with my husband learning new ways to use Krazy glue.

I think it's funny that John R was looking up his Googleness :)

My visitors seem to be a more, shall we say, diverse group, primarily interested in things like naked chicks, Sims cheats and shoes.

Indeed, one of the more curious Google searches that ended up here was for, believe it or not, John Ratcliff. Whaddya know? :D

Time is disappearing on me. Every day ends with me wondering where the hell it went. This could be a good thing; I cannot wait for my 40th birthday year to end, which it will this Friday. Thank goodness.

I thought it would be a year-long celebration but instead it was such a downer. On the bright side, I mentioned to Chris that I'm turning 41 and he looked at me in surprise, "You are? you don't even look 40 yet." How nice :) A charming cherub, indeed.

Chris' band practiced Saturday and I went along to take photos with my digital camera. As I mentioned later to him, I'd never waste that many rolls of film on it, but digitally I used 65 or so shots. I'll have to upload some of them so you can see how great they look. I did take a little movie of them too, but the sound is garbled as I was standing too close to the speakers at the time. They do sound pretty good, even if I was wearing earplugs (the guitarist/singer Nick handed them out liberally before they started; I'm glad he did cause it was very loud).

This afternoon's schedule: Paralegal Beagle meeting at 4 (I've been nominated for president, heh) followed by my ethics class, and then running home for our weekly meeting in the little game. Tomorrow, volunteering at the courthouse all morning, class in the afternoon, research for a paper at the law library, then class tomorrow night till 9:30PM. Thursday, I'll be doing my work study job, provided my boss is in this week; she was out of town last week and had forgotten to tell me, so I sat around for an hour or so wondering where she'd gone. Friday, I'm the first session of our pre-employment seminar. It goes all day Friday and Saturday for the next two weekends. Oy!

Steph finds the most interesting quizzes. And is very mysterious to boot :P

You are blue. You are somewhat innocent, in the fact that your genius only extends to the physical world. You have a false sense of contentness. You are usually the quiet one, the genius. Everyone can count on you to help when they have problems, but you only fall short of being able to solve your own.

What inner color are you?

Rob keeps saying how he needs to update his webjournal. He should; his perspective is so different from mine, I'm sure it'll allow our readers greater insight into the strange workings of our marriage :)

The Travel Channel runs a promotional series called Vegas Week and we usually watch bits of it because it reminds us of how we planned our trip to VegasCon in 2000 and ended up getting married. This week usually fuels a latent desire for visiting a casino, and I always hear of how Rob won a million dollars (well, not quite) the time he spent Thanksgiving with Broos and Suz.

We went first to the local card rooms, non-tribal mini-casinos. Rob is looking for Let It Ride, but they haven't got it. We go to two different casinos near our home and come away having only lost $5. (I of course had it the other way 'round: we'd only spent $5, but Rob soon straightened me out on how to phrase it).

Saturday afternoon, we went to the big casino locally, the Muckleshoot Indian Casino. They have a non-smoking section, which I liked, although after a while I could smell the smoke even there. I played my usual high limit: $40. Rob is a bit more methodical so after he used up his $40 allotment, he went back to refill his little gaming card while I flailed and grumbled. We went to what passes for high stakes here, the $5 slot machines. I picked a machine after perusing the payout possibilities, as suggested by the Travel Channel. Rob played it. He won back his bet, so he cashed out. He asked me to pick a machine. I told him I already had, and pointed back to the same one. He picked the one next to it and lost his bet that time. He tells me to pick a machine and I flail and point to the one I picked the first time. He goes back over to it and wins a little bit more than his bet on the next spin. We glance at each other and raise our eyebrows significantly (we do this alot; eyebrows are so suggestive :>). He plays again, and finally cashes out when he's gotten back all his night's wagers so that on this night, we really did lose only my $40. We glance at each other again and chortle.

Rob says he's going to tell on me, how I'm unemployed and frittering away my grocery money at a casino. Not if I can tell about it first :)