My wedding album of John and Michelle's wedding is kind of on hold for a bit till I figure out the mechanics of it all.

What? you say. But...you didn't go to their wedding...?

I know. :)

Bwahahahaha! I've been fiddling with it on and off over the past month or so and it's not working right. Could be my lack of photo program skills. Probably is. Heh.

Rob tells the world about me backing into his car. Of course my car doesn't have as much damage; Subarus are much more resilient than Mitsubishis :) Besides, had he parked his car in his usual place off to the side of the garage instead of halfway behind it, I wouldn't have backed into it. Plus, he could've made me coffee that morning but no-o-o, he chose to go back to bed after waking up to tell me he wasn't going to work. If I had had coffee, I would've probably been more alert. So technically, it's all his fault.

Men.

The new trailer is here :) :)

Math class - dropped. They sent a text book with a CD in it that wouldn't load on my PC. It did, however, load onto my laptop. Then I found out Thursday at 630AM that the first assignment was due at 9AM and said "Screw it." There is only so much I can tolerate in the academic universe, and knowing that math is going to be hard for me, I was not at all interested in starting the quarter a week behind the rest of the class.

I do hate quitting though. :/ There are only two freaking math classes between me and my transferable AA.

Computer Science, Survey of Computing, does not scare me at all. In our first lab, we learned how to use a keyboard and a mouse. :) How I wish I had taken this class earlier, as it is so embarassingly simple. Our final project will be to write a 3 page paper describing a computer we would like to buy. :)

The other night when Rob and I bought games for the X-Box, I saw the super-duper deluxe new edition of The Sims :/ It made me hunger to control my little gangs of families again, and so while I am posting here on the blog, my main PC is running Unleashed. Earlier, after creating a handful of auction items for the little game, I turned on Superstar on the laptop while hunting 45 victims in SWG to get money. I kind of like this two-computer thing. Now I see why Rob has two on his desk; it's a way to have twice the fun! Only my desk isn't big enough for the laptop to sit on, so it is literally on my lap. Maybe my dream computer will be a gaming laptop so I can use both this laptop and that one in the living room on the wireless network Chez Sheep! Bwahahaha!

On the drive home tonight, Rob and I reminisced about the various local establishments he's managed to shut down since he's been here. The latest casualty is a Tony Roma's near the mall.

This is the same Tony Roma's where Melani, Blonde Tracey and I were having supper one night when Chad the waiter, desperately flirting with Blonde Tracey instead of paying attention to my comment that I wasn't done with my dessert, started clearing the table and grabbed hold of my skillet hot fudge sundae. So I stabbed his hand with my fork till he let go. (A couple nights later, Melani was with her grandma and dad at a different restaurant and was telling them the story, when their waiter's eyes grew large as he backed away saying, "Oh, my god...you're one of those girls from Tony Roma's...I heard about you from Chad!")

Anyway, Rob's also closed The Keg (a steakhouse), Rose's Highway Diner (it burnt to the ground) and two movie theaters. In the case of the movie theaters, it was pretty funny as we'd gone to see a movie one night, and the very next day it was closed for good. The other one, Rob went to go see some slash and hack movie, and the next day it too was closed for good.

Not that this trend of Rob closing theaters and restaurants stops us from going out. He's playing on his new X-Box, which he got this weekend, the Munch's Oddysee I got on sale after we had dinner at Applebee's. If X-box or Applebee's goes under, now you know who to blame :)

I took photos for Lefthanded Staircase. This is my son Chris' band, and they are pretty darn good for that headbanger stuff :) I keep thinking, of all the genres of music that I listen to, I've never been into this heavy rock stuff. Of course that would be exactly what my cherubs gravitate toward.

Anyway, now I'm exhausted from having edited over 150 photos (they wouldn't all fit on webshots) and putting them onto a CD for the band's webmaster to deal with. They have their very own domain name, although the website hasn't been completely transferred over from their geocities spot. I'm really proud of Chris, he's been very proactive in working to get the band real recognition. His friend Nick, the lead guitarist, is awesome. When they're all famous, you can say you know the bassist's mom. Wheeee!

This would also be the first concert I've gone to where one of the bands playing talked it up to the audience, "Yo! How many of you have homework due tomorrow!? And how many of you haven't finished it yet!?" :)

School for me starts tomorrow night. :/ And I read the math syllabus for the on-line class. Yucko. :( I hate math.

Rob says we are going to watch Survivor tonight :/ One of my GMs, who lives in Canadia eh, says that it was pretty good. I can't believe I'm going to watch it again, knowing how busy I am for the next few months.

So, some of the things I'm going to do are:

1. Finish two more classes (technically, a full-time load although for financial aid purposes, considered three-quarter time).

2. Be the new editor of the WSPA newsletter (first issue due dates are 10/15, for 10/31 publication. Aieeee)

3. Get in gear to sell condo next March.

4. Rob's brother is coming to visit. I don't have to do anything but be cute, which I can't help.

5. My son's really cool band, Lefthanded Staircase, is doing a show this weekend for which they will get paid. Whee! I'm the band photographer, so I have to take pictures with my digital camera :)

6. Work, work, work on the little game. We are planning some interesting events (miss you, Lynn!) and my sister is building me some awesome areas!

7. The Holidays. Dare I botch another Alton Brown turkey this year?

8. The school paralegal association -- I'm the kind of past president and I offered to help out. But will I have time? :/

9. Lael in SWG is working toward being an architect. And I'm enjoying the process. And now I'm rich cause I stumbled into a bunch of players the other night and one of them trained me in everything for free! Wheee!

Etc, etc. It doesn't seem like a lot, but everything has all these little subparticles that I need to fret over. Plus learning more about work. It stresses me out to not know everything, but on the bright side, I know several really smart people who can help me out.

Oh! And tonight, I added more memory to my computer. With the new video card Rob put in over the weekend, I was able to run through the busiest part of Coronet without staggering and freezing. Yippeee!

Only it's Survivor night and so I can't play.

Yesterday morning, I dreamt that ChrisWho and I worked at a construction company. A gentleman from France stopped by to complain about something, and I marveled that 1) ChrisWho could understand anything he said and 2) that she expertly unraveled his problem (whatever it was, since I couldn't understand him). When I woke up, remembering the dream made me smile, cause that's what ChrisWho has always done for me...no matter how bizarre my issues are, she explains to me what to do or finds someone who can do something to fix it.

Rob started calling her ChrisWho because he'd hired her as his AGM and said that even though he knew she was a she, when she came up to introduce herself to him at SimuCon one year, he blanked out and thought his assistant Chris was a male, so he responded to her greeting, "Chris Who?" hehehe

Well, he's rushing me out the door now and I better go before he talks about me, TracyWho? :)

Rob bought and installed for me a new video card after observing me chop-chop pause-freezing my way through a town in SWG last night. He also ordered more memory for me, after noting that even with this here Radeon 9800 Pro and mucho memory it doesn't come up to the price of an XPS. Which, of course, is where I've been stalling because while I want way cool new stuff, it's spendy and I couldn't see where the rest of my PC really needed to be replaced anyway.

I'm sure the cherubs beg to differ as they eagerly await each new PC I get so they can take over my old one.

The other weekend at Fry's, Rob and I bought an ice cream maker, after admiring the one on Good Eats last month. :) My first run of ice cream was literally a run. I didn't remember to make the stuff the night before to let it chill before putting it into the freezing compartment, so it never would freeze and was a bit grainy the next day. Last night, I cooked up another batch and it froze nice and smoothly. We had some for dessert tonight. Poor Maggie couldn't decide who would be finished first (she gets to lick the bowl), so she waivered between me on the floor reading the newspaper and Rob on the couch, playing Mario Golf. Maggie chose poorly; I finished first and she was still eyeing up Rob, then giving Mittens a dirty look as he got to my bowl first.

These are bad habits the Robert taught the cats. Prior to his moving here, I wouldn't let a cat eat off any human food dishes, but he's trained them to sit and beg, like dogs.

Got home about half and hour or so ago from an all day WSPA conference. My charming husband cooked dinner for me :) What a nice guy!

After the seminars on how to do legal research and all, Renee and I attended the WSPA board meeting, which is always held immediately following the conferences. Renee is working on the committee that handles events, and I am now the newsletter editor. This is what happens when one sits in on board meetings; I must remember to not do so again ;) I'm a flattered that they'd be willing to let me do this, especially as they've no idea whether I can write or dot an I or anything. And the last issue just went to press, so I have two months to mull over what I might do as the editor, for the next issue. Bwahahahaha!

Let me get to my supper before it gets cold. After all Rob's hard work at cooking it (we have peas!), it would be rude to not eat it. He's such a treasure :)

The other night I got caught up on some of my Tivo shows on Princess Diana :) I don't make Rob suffer through them with me, just as he doesn't make me sit through endless The Outer Limits or Stargate with him. I do kind of like Babylon 5, although I'm sure he gets tired of telling me who's who, and who's dead, and who's not dead yet in this episode.

I've been enjoying Ratchet and Clank a lot, too. Indeed, I enjoyed it so well that Rob whined at me to play SWG, but I was too busy picking up nuts and bolts to come back to the PC. Tonight of course I wanted to play SWG, but we have our weekly meetings in the little game. This Tuesday night tradition always reminds me of Suz; we still hold our meetings in her office and always have. I've never had a desire to hold the meetings elsewhere as it's convenient, we all know the room number, and I like feeling close to her like I do in her old office.

Every day at the law firm it's pretty intense. I'm busy from the moment I arrive until I make my escape to ride home with Rob and his boss. This morning, I patted myself on the back for realizing my attorney hadn't completed one of the pleadings he needed for his court session today, in time for him to complete it and me to make fifty gajillion copies. That felt pretty good, that I had enough knowledge to recognize that it was missing. :) If only every day had something like that, instead of me feeling overwhelmed and worried all the time.

I dragged Robert and the cherubs to Fry's today. They opened up a store in Renton and after reading the reviews and talking to a couple of folks who went, I decided we needed to go there, too.

The boys wanted to look at video games; I wanted to look at computers; Rob wanted to drag me around and look at everything. He dragged me by the hand over to a table whereat they were taking names for a drawing (a big SUV, like we need one). One of the helpers pipes up to Rob, "Both you and your wife can sign up for the drawing!" I turned a frosty eye on Rob and said, jerking my hand from his, "You didn't tell me your wife is here." The poor helper got flustered, "Er...you and your...girlfriend...I'm sorry...." Hehehe. I may have to do that again sometime. :)

Anyway, my new ice cream maker is in the freezer, in preparation for a day of making ice cream. I printed off some recipes and we'll give it a go. We also got Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, and a Lupin the Third DVD. Robert looked at PCs and determined that with all the bells and whistles I want, I need to whistle up Dell and get the XPS. It'll be spendy, but worthwhile.

After all, now that I had to go out and get my own SWG account so we'd stop fighting over the one copy we bought originally, I need a PC that won't turn my runs into any town into choppy and freeze-frame screen shots. Right? Right! :) Although, with school starting back up in a couple of weeks, I may put off getting anything till December. I'm taking introduction to computer science and intermediate algebra. The computer science doesn't scare me; it's the algebra. ::sigh::

My mother returned safely home and Rob and I were so exhausted in the aftermath that we both fell asleep early last night :/

For me, it's an emotional thing. My mother, previously the Strongest Woman Alive, can barely walk. She repeats herself. And, in something that rather upset me over the weekend, appears to be reinventing her history. Which of course means that my history is changing too, and having adjusted to the past as I know it, I'm reluctant to embrace a new past.

Then again, what difference should it make to me that my mother retells stories that I grew up hearing, only now they are different -- with different motivations, desires and outcomes? I'm still who I am, and a lot of who I am is because of who I believed my mother to be as I was growing up, yet it should't affect me now to hear that things I'd thought were true maybe weren't.

How do the rest of you deal with the past if your parents changed it after you grew up?

Overall it was an enjoyable visit, but filled with stress. I can tell that I'm not patient or kind-hearted enough to deal with my mother on a daily basis, should her health fail and she need to live with someone. :/ I won't soon forget leaping out of my bed in panic with her at the bedroom door calling me, only to find that her midnight emergency was that Mittens had pooped in the hallway and she had stepped into it (fortunately while wearing house slippers) in the dark. As I stumbled bleary-eyed around picking up the mess and Resolving the carpet, she announced, "Luckily I cleaned most of it up," then disappeared into her room. I was filled with resentment and anger that she could say that while I was still cleaning -- and then I went into the bathroom and had to mop the floor as she'd apparently been on her way into the bathroom when she'd found Mittens' little gift. It seemed to me that if she lived with me, this would be my life: cleaning up after her when she'd felt she'd already taken care of everything and went serenely on her way, leaving me in a trail of bitterness in her wake.

I miss my mother as the Strongest Woman Alive. She gave me the strength of mind to do stuff like rewire lamps, install new faucets, replace car air filters and change the innards of my toilet tanks without thinking that a man might come along to do these things for me. Also, I suppose some of it is worry that I'll grow older and turn into her and I kind of like me the way I am now.