Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Here we go again?

Well, T has decided to go with one of her last boyfriends on his truck for the next few days. Perhaps as part of that, she now says the only reason she isn't back with her ex-husband is that he doesn't want her. I don't know if this is a normal thing, all I know is she seems to be running away from me yet again. Every time I get a little close to her she starts up saying she "doesn't know" or some such. This time around, she proposes that I start dating other women. Just not the ones she doesn't approve of, evidently. Why? So I can find out if she's really "the one" or not.

I'm just tired of the games. I'm tired of being told I'm such a great guy, then the next minute get yelled at for being such a crappy guy. One minute she's talking about "our house" and the next minute she's not sure if she ever wants to leave her drama-enriched county.

Friday, August 01, 2008

An Uncle - Again!


Wednesday, my sister-in-law delivered a healthy baby boy over at Davis Hospital. He was 20.5 inches and 7 lbs 6 oz with a healthy bunch of blond hair to boot!

I went to visit Joshua Carter Jones and his parents but didn't hold the baby - although I'm sure tonsillitis at this point is not contagious it can't hurt to be too careful around a newborn.

T got to see pictures of the baby but had to work on Thursday so she had to drive back home earlier in the day. Now she's psyched up to come see the baby as soon as possible - good news for all of us!

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Another Panic Attack

Well, it happened again. When I got back from Vegas last Tuesday all was well - relatively speaking. I'd had a rough day because my best friend had asked me to pick up some medical records for his kids and the person with them was completely unfamiliar with how to get to her hotel then after about an hour of driving around Vegas and finding her hotel she hadn't bothered to step out of her room! My soar throat wasn't helping matters but life could have been worse - I was going to see T and was looking forward to a soak in the hot pots that night.

We're at Walmart and S calls up. To make a long story short, she had been having issues with anger and depression because of our breakup and some other issues in her life. She lays into me hard, and I start getting a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. She threatens me with legal action if I can't get her computer returned within 2 days in the state it was in when her ex-fiance started using it. At that point, I feel my legs going out from under me and I had to hang up the phone. T was with me and made me hold onto the cart while we checked out quickly. I got worse and worse, to the point where we couldn't go over to T's mom's house because I would lose it again and couldn't even talk straight. Between T and my best friend in Arizona, I made it through and calmed down. In short, I'd had an intense panic attack. I've set up an appointment for counselling today (Tuesday) and hopefully it'll help me figure out how to avoid future attacks.

What Happens in Vegas....

Well, I said there were a few things that happened. I wasn't lying was I? Starting last Sunday and ending Monday (I thought it ended Tuesday - doh!) we had Dragonrider 2008 - a place for members of my guild to meet in real life and get to know one another. Five of us showed up for billiards on Sunday afternoon - four of us continued to play tourist Sunday and Monday.

I showed up at Excaliber on Sunday afternoon with my computer and luggage. Baggage isn't usually set up to handle full gaming rigs but the manager was kind enough to put my computer and one of the monitors (the other was stowed in my suitcase) behind the desk while I checked in. For those with similar plans I suggest checking in then getting your rig - it saves aggravation for everyone involved. I was able to check in around noon and get everything up to the room.

Once the computer was set up ($12.99/day for internet access - they didn't mention THAT on the website!) I went looking for everybody else. We met at a pool hall around 1pm and played two games in about an hour to an hour and a half - yes we all sucked that badly. The only reason it was two games was Zemus sunk the 8-ball early on (the first ball to go in the hole that day lol). It was fun to meet some of the people I've been gaming with for almost a decade now.

After that, we headed up to Prediant's room and played Texas Holdem with our new poker chips until close to dinner time - Tournament of Kings. To keep it short - excellent show! I would strongly suggest not getting the first row however since you risk dirt on your food if the riders get too close. We cheered for the Dragon section of course. It was a blast to just unleash everything and have fun in the moment. Afterwards, we went back to the room to digest and play some more poker before turning in. I had two Mike's Hard Lemonade Pomegranites.

The next day my throat kind of hurt and I figured it had something to do with the Tournament the night before. We hit the Valley of Fire with Prediant's rented Hummer. Kendryck and I tried some basic bouldering and we had fun as a guild. Mostly we talked about life and about WAR. We had lunch at the buffet and did some walking around before convincing Zemus to go see Fantasy with us that night. We hit up the Star Trek Experience since it's going to be closing in September. We did both the Borg Experience and the Klingon ride. Most of us thought the Klingon ride was better than the Borg 4D thing.

Just before the show, we had dinner at Dick's Last Resort - a bar in Excaliber that features extremely rude servers. I got carded (yes, I'm 32) and we enjoyed the service overall. Great atmosphere and the way you're treated kind of encourages you to let everything go.

The short (kid-friendly) review of Fantasy is it's a great show, nice theater, great format. The girls look great (yes, I was thinking of T the whole time) and the music choreography was well thought out. The comedy interludes were nicely timed and we all had a lot of fun.

Anyway, long version short on Tuesday I was planning on just kicking back and relaxing. That didn't happen for a number of reasons. By Thursday night it became obvious that I did not just have a sore throat and I ended up going to the ER. There I found that I did NOT have strep throat but instead had a "severe case of tonsilitus", for which they gave me a shot of... something I have to assume was an antibiotic and a prescription for Amoxicilin (875mg twice a day). So I have to keep taking the antibiotics and ended up missing work on Friday because of the throat and threat of contagion. That and the medicine made me drousy on the drive home...

T and I - back together

A few things have happened in the short week (a week?? yikes!) since my last post. I'll split it between two posts.

First, T and I are back together. On the 18th, something happened while I was at the movies with her. We went to go see Dark Knight (excellent movie by the way). I don't know if it was the mood or if everything we'd experienced just kind of came to a head but we looked at each other and knew that we wanted to be together.

She still doesn't know how to tell her ex-boyfriend that we're together again and he quickly dumped her when she asked him for some time to think then came back to try to get her back. We're together and I'm trying not to screw things up this time by moving too fast or committing myself prematurely. I know I love her though, and that makes it hard to keep from pouring everything about myself into our relationship.

With the change in our relationship, I broke the news to S. She... didn't take it well and broke down crying and angry. I tried to talk to her, comfort her but she believes that she was just being used to make T jealous. It just isn't true, I never intended for things to work out this way. She's started to forgive me, even said she still loves me but realizes that I have to follow my heart. I guess we'll see where our relationship leads us - to happiness together or to misery. My main worry is that T will be too afraid to commit herself to one relationship and will end up hurting both C and myself.

Friday, July 18, 2008

I'm back!

I haven't added anything to this blog in ages. So much has happened.

Let's see here, I got divorced last November when the wife decided she was lesbian. Yes, I'll probably post more on that later. The legal stuff didn't seem difficult and we ended up doing it ourselves - that didn't work well in the long run but I'll get to that later. Short version is I get Ben (Sam isn't mine legally) every other weekend from Friday 6pm to Sunday 7pm and we trade holidays.

I met a girl (I'll call her T), fell in love, broke up, made up, broke up again, and now she's getting married to another guy while wondering if she is making a mistake. Yes, I live in a soap opera world.

Meanwhile, I started dating her sister who used to be engaged to my best friend who is also T's unofficially adopted dad. We started out as friends while I was trying to talk her through coping with her breakup and things just sort of... happened. We aren't planning anything long term but she is moving in with me in August - something T really doesn't like since she's not entirely certain that she and her fiance will work out and wants me as a "backup" of sorts. And during all this, I have mixed feelings about which one I really want to be with depending on whether i'm listening to my head or my heart. Both of them seem to love me and I love both of them, I'm just tired of getting hurt by the one and I'm not sure if the other one (I'll call her S) is really ready for a relationship or just looking to get out of the area she's in. Am I just making a big mistake either way? I'm trying to move on with my life and it seems like every step I take hurts somebody.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Anybody Need A Cheap Computer?

Need a cheap file server, Linux machine, or emailing machine? How about a refurbished 700MHz Celeron for $47.91. It's really bare-bones, with only 128MB of RAM, a 10GB hard drive, Windows 2000 (not installed), onboard Video and Audio, two PCI slots, one AGP slot, and four USB slots.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

New Computer arrived!

It's finally here! After just over 3 months of problems and waiting, my new computer arrived last week. Of course, I had to insure that it did indeed POST and had all the hardware that it was supposed to have (it did). After that, I installed 3dMark06 and had it take my new gaming rig through its paces. The score (if you don't want to follow the title link) was 7208. Yes, there are machines faster. Yes, I could probably optimize that and overclock the rig and get a better score. Oh, and yes the score will go down now that I've installed anti-virus (Grisoft's AVG Anti-Virus Personal Edition). I've also turned off the integrated soundcard in favor of a Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeGamer with accompanying speakers (thank you Newegg!).

So why haven't I tweaked it? Well, first of all I had to get the sound system configured. I still don't know what was going on, but for some reason the speakers were only outputting this barely audible scratchy whisper on some of the speakers and nothing on the two peripheral front speakers. Then a couple of reboots later (and disabling AMD Live) it worked just fine! Second, my keyboard still isn't working quite right - it seems to lag a bit in DAoC. I'm thinking it's probably because it's a wireless so I need to change out keyboards and see what happens. Third, I want to rerun benchmarks and see what they look like now. And fourth, I haven't found a game yet that really takes my computer and hits it hard. I'll have to wait for NWN2 for that I guess.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Complete Free iTunes Downloads List

Tired of searching thru iTunes for the latest free downloads in the iTunes Store? This site collects them all on one page, separated by category (songs, TV shows, short videos) and provides an RSS feed for updates. Since I use Anapod Explorer for most of my iPod-related needs, this page is awesome - it lets me know when I have to fire up iTunes!

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