how do you live so happily while i am sad and broken down?

*sigh* Sunday night already? Really?

Um, let's see. Friday night was fun - gotta love trips to the ER! I started having abdominal pains that came on really suddenly, and I knew what it was from last time - kidney infection. So I called my doctor's office but the doctor on call said I had to go in because they can't diagnose that over the phone. Fair enough, but that meant four hours in the ER. It was at least humorous since the exam room they had me in was next to the nurses' station and I got to listen to them saying things like "Anyone know what happened to the pregnant lady in 36?" Apparently they lose people.

So Saturday was pretty quiet, because I was feeling kind of out of it, while the antibiotics kicked in. I was so muzzy-headed that I set off my home security system trying to go out to plug in my lawnmower! I haven't done that once in the two years I've lived here!

I took it really easy on Saturday because I knew I had a tennis match today, and I wanted to be able to play. My partner Claire and I were playing last, so we took the court around 4pm, and let me tell you, today was a warm day in Atlanta! It was low-to-mid 80s here, and so hot that I had trouble taking a deep breath on the court (hi asthma, thanks for showing up at inopportune times). BUT! Despite all that, we won! My goal for this season was to win one set, since last season (our first) my goal was to win one game and I did that. This season I have come close a few times but could never close the deal, and today was the last game of the season. So now I have won game, set, and MATCH! And I was playing really well today, so I'm pretty proud.

I was in such a great mood when I got home, I sat down and played my drums, which I have been woefully neglecting, for almost a whole hour! Now I'm trying to catch up on some housework - notice I'm doing an awesome job of procrastinating by blogging. Which I still feel like I don't do as much of since I got twitter. Ah well! Maybe I'll start trying to do one serious journal entry a week? I'll think about it. Feel free to share your thoughts!

Drums practiced!

Unfortunately, I didn't get any writing done today. Yet - the day obviously isn't over yet. I thought I'd go to the internet cafe that I like and write there, but their internet kept going out, and since I am keeping my writing in Google docs right now because I keep thinking my computer's due for a crash, I didn't get much done. I moved to a second cafe, but I was just too distracted.

Also, Atlanta's (well, the southeast's, really) gas crisis goes on. Gas is $4.29 a gallon, and about 1 in 3 gas stations is completely out of gas. Yes, Rest of the World, I know you pay more than this for gas. But the national average right now is $3.64, so we are paying a lot more than the rest of the country. Ugh.

And finally, ( I can has fake tattoo )

It's a little blurry, but that's the camera, not the tattoo. :( *wants new cam*

Just around the corner. How do the weekends go so fast and the weeks so slow?

I didn't do all that much this weekend, just worked on craft projects and practiced my drums. Tonight I watched the VMAs. Remind me not to do that again, ugh. It was the Britney awards, and she didn't even perform. Christina Aguilera did - hi, does anyone else feel like we've gone back in time? - and she looked like she was actually impersonating Britney in the Toxic-era. Also, Michael Phelps came out wearing a headset and I thought those were his ears. Also performances by Kid Rock and Pink. Seriously? *eyeroll*

I did like Russell Brand - he was amusing, even though he kept trying to convince us all we were having SO MUCH FUN.

Anyway, enough of that. On to the purpose of this post: ( Camwhoring my new jeans! )

Just FYI, it's really hard to take a picture of your own ass.

I've been meaning and meaning to update, but I never get around to it. So in a nutshell, what I have been up to:

*Went home to Missouri for the 4th. It's a big holiday for my family, and we're all about going to the lake and going boating and water-skiing. The lake is up really high with all the rain they've been getting, up higher than my dad, who is 73, can ever remember it being. Here's a picture, which is probably only funny to people who know what it normally looks like, but suffice it to say, the lake, while always ahead, not usually that close:

( picture )

Anyway, good times. Got to hang out with my sis, my brother and his wife drove in from Boston, and my cousins were down from Iowa. I managed to get the first actual sunburn I've had in probably a decade, in which I managed to burn my back, and ONE SHIN. Just one. It was a good look, let me tell you.

*Got back, managed to do absolutely nothing for two days, except for read a fantastic book, My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Piccoult. krazycat recced it to me, and it was so amazing. One of those books that makes me wonder why I even want to bother trying to write, because how can I ever do anything close to that?

*Which was an excellent way to feel when starting a course on Creative Writing, which I did last week! Fear my timing, people! :D I'm taking a five week course from Emory University's night school. By the end of it, we are promised to have two chapters of our novels written, and then critiqued by the professor. Last week, I had to leave a bit early, so I missed the in-class writing assignment. Our homework though was to write the first three pages, or the hook. I got it done, sort of - I wrote 3 pages, but didn't finish my scene. I handed it in anyway, we'll see what he has to say. Tonight was the second class, and we did a couple of in-class exercises. One I did well on, but the second one was a group assignment and it was hard to corral everyone, without taking over. We were supposed to be constructing a scene based on information given to us by the teacher, and they kept wanting to write the whole story.

*Last week I was in Florida. Not much happened. My insomnia, which had gone away while I was on vacation, came back full-force. Whee. This is partially why I didn't get my scene finished; creativity is low when sleep is deprived.

*This week, we are meant to write the first chapter of our novel to turn in on Monday. The only problem is that I'm not sure what length the professor is looking for. I sat down tonight after class and wrote out an outline for what I consider to be the first two chapters, and wrote the first scene of the first chapter. Then I tried to figure out the length requirement, because I am a brown-noser student :) The teacher talked about his first novel being 50K, with 60 chapters. That seems a bit short though, because that would mean a chapter is only 834 words. Maybe once I read the assigned text it will be clearer. Either way, I got 695 words written tonight, and my goal is to write one more scene and fix the intro this week.

So I'm trying to learn to parent myself again while I'm home, since I'm not traveling for the next month (knock on wood). My plan is to try to practice my drums in the morning before work this week since I'm working West Coast hours, then after work to write from 10 to 11pm, quickly get ready for bed and then watch the Colbert Report and go to bed by midnight. We shall see! The laptop is no longer allowed to go upstairs with me.

Also, since the Colbert Report just finished, I'm off to bed.

ETA: And of course, I type this all up and LJ freakin' goes down. Guess I'll post it tomorrow!

Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Okay, so I get this really weird form of jetlag. It's only started in the last year or two, so I'm guessing it's one of those joy-of-aging things. (OT, this July is my tenth anniversary of being a road warrior, go me!) So the night I get back from travelling, I am tired, but I always make myself stay up til at least 10 pm. This time around, I made it til 11, then I slept til 1pm the next day.

All of this would have at one point gotten me back on track quickly. Not so these days. So I then proceed to stay up til 5 am on Sunday/Monday, which was okay because I had Monday off. Then came Monday/Tuesday, when I stayed up til 2:30am when I had to get up at 9 the next day. Tuesday/Wednesday was especially fun, when I went to bed at 1:30am - progress, right? Except I woke up a few times in the night and then woke up at 7 and couldn't get back to sleep.

Wednesday night, I broke down and took a sleeping pill (OTC) and actually got 8 hours of sleep. Blessed, joyous sleep! So I was in such a good mood yesterday that after I got back from having dinner, I played drums for an hour, then caught up on some of the work I'd slacked off on, then talked to a friend for an hour on the phone, then read a story from bandombigbang, then burned a CD, then imported that CD into my iTunes, and posted on a comm looking for my song (Beth by Kiss) which meant I had to upload one in return. And yeah, by that time? 3 am.

*sigh* And then it was back to the waking up constantly, and then wide-awake at 6:45. This sucks and I want to sleeeeeeeeeeeep.

I'm going to stay in tonight, instead of going to play tennis, because a) I'm too tired, and b) I want to watch the premiere of FNMTV because I can't resist the novelty of music videos being played on MTV and the possiblility that I might get to see Panic at the Disco jam with Snoop Dogg. Thank you, Pete Wentz, you giant freak.

Also, thanks to mandieleigh pointing out the site, I am now the proud owner of this t-shirt:

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself!

Um, so here I am playing the drums! I suck! But that's okay! There are times when I mess up, but I am changing the bass drum around on purpose, I swear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz-snVXNeoY

Also, I'm a giant dork! This should come as no shock to anyone who's ever met me!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A2d582Y-Vs

ETA: Also, I fail at embedding files.

I have new music, yay!

I just ran to Best Buy and bought the new Counting Crows and the new Panic at the Disco. God, I miss Tower Records. They used to have pretty much everything that was alternative for $8.99. Now Best Buy had some good deals on both of these at 9.99, but there's a new Raconteurs album out (fail, universe, for not telling me this) that they wanted $14.99 for and The Hush Sound's new one was $12.99. I refuse to pay more than $10 for a CD, there's just no reason for it. Not unless it's a double CD or has a DVD in it. Just my personal opinion.

But now on to how my iPod owns me. So I'm going through all my new music which I cunningly stole from the internets which I have been trying out for a few months now, and of course the way I want iTunes to work and the way it actually does are two different things. So I am going through the process of burning CDs, then I'll have to delete the files off my computer, then burn the CDs back on. I know it sounds dumb, but if I don't then I get a ton of files on my computer and it's all messy and it bothers me. Anal retentive much? Yes I know.

But new music, yay!

Off to practice my drums! Oh! My sis-in-law and I were talking and I might have told her I'd make a video of me playing the drums. If I do, I shall be sure to share the hilarity with you here. :D

I OWN DRUMS!

They are Tama Imperialstar, and they're dark blue. I called about them, like, ten minutes after the ad went on craigslist, and the woman I bought them from said that 32 people called her today.



AREN'T THEY PRETTY?!

Ok, they don't look like that right now, because I have no idea how to put that back together. And I'm still sooooooo excited! *bounces*

:(

So I thought I was buying a drum kit today, but it got sold out from under me. I was on my way to pick it up and the lady called me to tell me that someone who'd said they wanted it before I did had come to get it. She hadn't thought they were legit, so she didn't say anything when I called this morning but it turned out that they were. I'm trying to tell myself it just wasn't the right set, but it is disappointing.

Okay, so when I started taking drum lessons, I decided I should wait two months to purchase actual drums, because there's no need wasting money/space on something that I might get bored with quickly. The only problem with that is that there's a nice set on craigslist now that's within $100 of what I wanted to pay, and I like the color (I have learned there are some really horrific colors for drums out there). So what do you think?

[Poll #1140544]