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I am at an age where people seem to be squirting out accidental babies, getting married, and dropping dead (generally at an older age than the two aforementioned types.)
It's all a rather depressing experience. First of all, the cornerstones of my childhood have been whittled down into pebbles and lost completely or just changed shape and importance.
My grandparents, whom I admit I did not see overly much - just half a dozen times a year on special occasions, are not what they used to be. Three out of four have died, and the fourth one seems to enjoy teetering on a much self-imposed seesaw. I won't go into it in depth, but I just wish she would get a grip. I miss the old granny who crafted things, made scrumptious foods, gardened, braided my hair, and watched me play with wooden building sets.
My big brother, who was my idol through my kiddy years, has finally gotten married. It seems he is settling down. This is by no means a bad thing - in fact, I think it's some of the best news I've heard in a long time. It's been a pleasure to watch it happen, even if it happened so fast that I haven't fully gotten to know my new sister yet.
My little brother insists on living his own life apart from me. Gone is my "twin" and playmate. Now I have to make do on my own, and although he does try to come visit and encourages me to do so, it's not the same and it never will be. Ah well. At least I have my memories (until I go demented at an early age).
My parents, although I have rather well managed to hide the truth from myself, are starting to get a little old. (No, don't be insulted, I said starting!) Dad doesn't do cartwheels or give piggy-back rides, mother's ligaments are getting worn, and I refuse to let them exhaust themselves with excessive physical activity or carry heavy objects alone (especially in the case of my mother). What with all the death and illness going around, it's made me really have to take a deep breath and re-assess the immortality of my parents.
The same applies for my old kitty, who is pretty much deaf, and whose limp has become a daily thing instead of a periodical matter. At least her heart-murmur-induced coughing has stopped ever since she lost so much weight.
And then, there's work. Somehow, despite commencing work at an art studio which involved physical labor and creativity, I have somehow evolved into your standard office rat, creating things according to previous standards, producing a large amount of stuff in a short amount of time, but all of it looking the same. Some days I get so confused that the only way to keep track of it all is to make a bleeding EXCEL table and make tallies and marks in it as I go along.
Now, work is about to drastically change - I am a freelance graphic designer as of today. This should be good news, only when I look around in the world, there is so much damn talent out there that I don't know how on earth I'm supposed to be able to compete in any way. The same applies for my other passions - arts, crafts, writing...
In fact, I feel as though I have mostly given up on writing, and I haven't produced any proper "artwork" in aeons. I don't think I know what artwork is anymore.
The one thing that I designed myself for a private project has been a complete flop. I have not managed to sell a single of my high-quality offset art cards. Oh well. Perhaps it'll sell around Christmas instead. But it's bloody depressing to sit on a stash of 2000 cards that just aren't going anywhere. The biggest problem is that I simply haven't had time to properly market the things.
I mentioned that people are squirting out accidental babies left and right. What's going on? Is everyone punching holes in condoms and forgetting their pills? Are they prescribing to the "just pull out"-way of thinking? What is this?? It's very confusing and a little bit scary! How can it be happening on such a massive scale among people who definitely know what safe, protected sex is?
As for weddings.. well, that's alright. I can live with that. Just also happening at a somewhat scary pace - I believe that this year I shall be attending at least four weddings.
And last but not least, I am finally about to move in with someone. It won't be my first time away from home, but it will be the first time I actually have a short-distance relationship if you don't count my attempts to seduce a classmate in 6th grade or my knight in shining armor from first year Kindergarten who always saved me from the class bully.
I can't put into words how much I am looking forward to this.
10:23 - 1.7.2008 - {7} -
I recently had the pleasure of attending a wedding. It was the first wedding for a family member. This was big brother's marriage to his beautiful bride.
It was an elegant but fun wedding. I loved all the little details!
The whole thing was done to a decoration theme that was white and fresh spring leaf green... which was lucky for me, as that happened to be the color of my clothing - white with light green details.
It was a great chance for me to get to meet the other half of my brother's relatives, and to get to know my new sister-in-law and her family. The poor girl was so stressed before the wedding that I thought she was going to burst into tears on the spot. But once the whole thing was underway and the live music band (brother's childhood friends) started rocking the place, she loosened up and started to boogie with the best of them.
I don't know who designed the whole wedding, but it was so delicate and pretty!
There was an abundance of drinks to choose from, not just wine and champagne, but liqueurs, punch, juice, fizzy drinks, juice, and water as well.
Alluring little cloth flower petals were strewn across the tables and window sills.
The location was unique. It was large with curious little details, such as this curtain made from antique weathered wood, old farmyard tools, and hand-painted murals.
Food was plentiful with a huge selection available for all sorts of tastebuds and appetites. The cake decoration had the traditional bride and groom in an untraditional pose... We shall have to see if it stands true or not.
The bride gown was spectacular - I'd seen it haunting a clothes hanger but it looked fantastic on the bride. I wish I had gotten a better picture of all the dainty little details.
Lots of thought had also gone into the things that most people wouldn't even see. The bouquet was interlaced with silver threads and pretty little beads that could have made an exquisite piece of jewelry on its own. I'm not a fan of hearts and pearls, but it worked with the huge, layered roses.
I especially loved the twined little flowers on the ring bearer pillow. It's a shame most people didn't get to see it properly.
The music evolved from a cheesy sort of Finnish cruise boat music into something that really got everyone out on the dance floor. Once they started rocking, people were even singing along. No one (except me - I'm such a stiff prude) cared how they looked and just had a great time twisting, rocking, waltzing, and improvising their own crazy moves. Especially the kids couldn't get enough. I don't understand how they had so much energy!
All in all, the best wedding I've been to! Great fun. I look forward to the next one... but I don't know whose turn it will be!
08:24 - 3.6.2008 - {8} -
..there comes Ann-Mi! Yay, for a change, I managed to vanish and reappear yet again! Woo-woo!
Why anyone should remain subscribed to this decayed place, I have no idea. Oddly enough, I haven't given up on it yet - I still think about it weekly, but I haven't made it all the way to blogging.
So here's a little update for anyone who cares concerning travels, sketching, driving, and gaming:
1) Going traveling next week - can't wait! Will be gone for 10 days, but who will notice the difference? In fact, me being away from home might induce blogging while away instead.
2) I finished my sketchbook. I'm looking into a way of uploading it in its entirety with a fancy page-turn effect and stuff so people can peek through it as they please.
3) I got my driver's license! Amazingly, I both passed the theoretical and practical parts on my first try - don't know how that's possible considering how incredibly... mediocre I am at it all. Luckily, mediocre seems good enough and my good points made up for the bad points, and I got my little floppy piece of paper! I guess I can pick up the plastic card in over a month and then proudly display the picture of me looking zombie-like and tired with a pimple on my chin to all who wish to see my ID in shops and whatnot. Luckily that's only a semi-temporary thing.. whew.
4) Uhh... Yeah ! I nearly forgot, I'm playing Colonization again for the first time in a long time, and it's even more addictive than I recall. I thought I was worse at it now than I've ever been, but I finally finished a game and got just about the highest score I've ever gotten. They named an inland sea after me, "Spankton Bay". See, my game-name was Lady Swank of Spankton, and they name something after you depending on how high you scored.
It's a lurvely lurvely lurvely strategy game from the age of DOS when possibly the most high-tech thing you had on your pc was Windows 3.
If you don't care about graphics and want a good, brain-exercising game to wile away your time with, hop on over to home of the underdogs to check it out - there's a windows version available.
So, uh, yeah, that's about it. Banana-flies are overrunning the kitchen, but I'm trying to get my meat-eating plant to blossom again so I can give them a wonderful surprise. BUHAHAHAAAA
09:30 - 10.11.2007 - {7} -
Huzzah! I now have 3 gb of RAM! Whether it was smart to go all the way to 3 instead of sticking with 2, I have no idea! But it sounds bigger so I'm going to pretend it's better. I am quite pleased.
Installing the 2 gb went seamlessly. Just turned the power off, unplugged it, made sure I wasn't full of static electricity, and took out the old two 512 mb sticks and shoved in the brand-spanking new two 1 gb ones! Disturbingly enough, the old ones look more modern and fashionable than the new ones. I tested the 2 gigs, then turned it off and shoved in the two extra 512's!
This didn't go so well. The pc sort of whirred and then stopped, and I hastily turned it off again. The problem was easily solved - the RAM wasn't properly placed inside. So I got back down on my belly and re-attempted it, and mission successful!
Now then only problem is that I don't know if the memory is running at the correct speed... I romped about in my BIOS and tried to see but I actually didn't see an option for it - only one that told me how much RAM I have. Disturbing.
Once I gather the courage, I will hopefully attempt to upgrade the other pc that blew itself up yesterday. It's a bigger job, unfortunately. It's getting a new motherboard, which implies taking the whole damn thing completely apart, putting in the new motherboard with the new processor and new RAM and then putting the whole shebang back together and hoping I did it all right. It's not fun when it's not my own pc.. :(
I think I've made my mind up on what new graphics card to get. It's a schmexy Geforce 8800 GTS 640MB PCIe card by PNY. No, I don't think I'll go for the GTX version as my screen doesn't even allow me to go to high resolutions. As I recall, this motherboard isn't very compatible with Radeon stuff, so it's not even an option.
While romping about on the web, searching for useful tips about graphics cards and RAM, I accidentally stumbled over a recommendation for a program called Aida32. It tells you all sorts of stuff about your pc - even more than the dxdiag command does. I HIGHLY recommend it to people who want to know wtf they actually have inside their pc... especially hardwarewise.. And if it's all running properly, what the specs are, etc. You can download it here at Major Geeks.com. It's only 3mb and highly informative. It also comes with a memory benchmarking thingy, which I guess is good if you want to compare memory or brag or see if it could be improved or something....
02:44 - 30.9.2007 - {4} -
I just thought I ought to share with you the source of my current self-obsessive troubles.
Yes, it's sexy, I know. This is what my poor mole looked like the day it was removed. Or rather, the mole looked like the world's tiniest, roundest slug, curled up on a table surrounded by bloody pieces of cloth. Super-schmexy. I got the stitches out by now, which was a scary but wonderful moment. Finally, the annoying tugging and poking of the stitches was gone. Of course, later that same evening, I managed to rip it open by mistake and I was back to square 1.
So now I'm waiting for it to heal again. The normal, old-fashioned "I have a hole in my chest"-kind of way. It's a little more exciting than watching paint peel because it's interactive. I mean, ok, you can help the paint peel, but with a wound, you can disinfect it, put anti-bacterial lotion on it, bandaids or bandage, and finally some skin lotion that would usually be used on dry skin! Yeah! So much fun! You also get to follow the progress. Right now, the scab is trying its best to annoy me by jumping off and causing me to go back to step 2.
It's very annoying. It's nowhere near painful, but the constant presence is so hard to ignore. I also notice that I can't stretch like I could un-sliced. (Speaking of slicing, it was done with local anesthesia and a scalpel. No fancy freezing or acid or whatever for me!) My illusion of being able to move freely was what ripped the bastard open again in the first place. Grrr...
So if I seem a little more disgusted with myself than usual, it's probably from the exciting new hobby - scab-watching. Woooh! At least there's no mysterious white-blood-cell-related ooze around it anymore..
01:13 - 30.9.2007 - {7} -
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