(no subject)
Well I guess I'm finally getting around to this entry. That might be because I haven't had much time for it since I've been adjusting to my new life. What I HAVE been doing with my time is attempting, with a decent amount of success, to achieve goals, particularly by setting realistic ones, but most of my success is based on the fact that working towards my goals is the only real responsibility I've got goin' on right now.
So how can I turn this into a synopsis?
I moved back in with my dad. Lived in a cramped room full of stuff on a pink couch and sleeping bag until his room mate moved out. The room is small but I've made it functional. Here's hoping I can keep it clean when I start school in the Fall.
My XBox is modded and I've had a lot of fun playing with that. It has a lot of neat features as a media center and there are tentative plans to setup the living room as a nice comfortable place for entertainment. We'll see if that ever happens. My dad is a pack rat and collects a lot of junk. Each item isn't exactly invaluable and he has a plan for it. But they're all such a small piece of a larger project, and he hasn't actually picked on to do. So there's essentially lots of useless stuff around, everywhere, and this includes the living room that is intended to become this media center place. The XBox is cool though. Along the lines of gadgets I've been playing with, I also bought a used GBA that has been modified with an internal back light. I also bought a cartridge that takes an SD card so I can download and run games on it. The only cartridge I do own is broken, so I just play the version I downloaded. I'm still working on setting up my PDA. My big issue is disatisfaction with the software and it's integration. Which leads me to Linux. I've been playing with Ubuntu (Kubuntu actually, with the KDE desktop). It's a distribution of Linux that is pretty gosh darn easy to use. It's not there yet, but Linux is quickly getting to the point where one might be able to recommend it as an alternative to running Windows. It can be configured in a way that adapting to it isn't that big of a stretch. And going back to the PDA, I was hoping I could find free open source software that is more flexible, feature rich, and more open to user input, that the alternative commercial packages that are available. Almost there but not quite. I don't see how anyone uses a PDA to get anything done, but maybe they organize different than me. So that's my toys and gadget stuff in a nutshell.
I picked up some work for a company that I'd been working with while I was at Luth. I don't want to get into the details, but I'm not doing more work with them right now, but I may in the future. They were very happy with my work and paid me a little better than Luth. In the mean time I'm still collecting unemployment and unless I find a job, will probably using that as a main source of income until school starts. I have a decent amount of money saved, but I'm using it for school expenses as well as personal expenses and I doubt it will carry me much further than the beginning of next summer. But as I said, my relationship with that company seems pretty good and I'm not qualified to do anything that pays nearly as well, and there's a lot of shittier work out there.
I went through a brief period of depression shortly after I moved home, especially because I realized I wasn't using my time very effectively. I felt kind of lazy, and also it became clear that a lot of my personal issues regarding work ethic and responsibility are.... real? I'd pretty much stopped trying to do anything about them when I focused on finding a way out of Luth. But I quickly realized that leaving Luth wasn't supposed to solve all my problems, it was supposed to allow me the time and focus to work on them. And since then I feel I've improved. Not by the leaps and bounds that I would like, but then more than I would have without being able to put more time and focus into myself. It's clear that I'm going to enter school with many of the same issues that kept me from being succesful in my previous academic career. Nothing much can be done about it but brace myself and try and work on them. Hopefully now that I've gained a better understanding of what the issues are and how they work, I can at least try to work around them if I can't directly deal with them. I'll save going in to what those issues are for some other time.
I've been spending a lot of time with Barb and we've grown rather close. We've discussed the nature of our relationship rather openly and we both agreed that although there may be romantic and sexual elements to our relationship, we are just friends and there isn't any implied commitment or limitting expectations. That's changed slightly since, and although Barb is ok with me snuggling with other people, kissing and more intimate stuff she's kind of jealous of. I have mixed feelings about this, but for the most part I just don't want limitations or expectations of that nature put on our relationship. I don't want it to nickel and dime into a romantic and committed relationship, and I'm afraid of getting roped in like that. Although I love her and care about her, my romantic interests are kind of tenuous. I'm all about the Barb, and I think she's a fantastic person, but when it comes to our romantic chemistry something important seems missing. Anyway, we'll see how things go. I'm just afraid of hurting her. I'm afraid of her feelings turning for me, they already have a little bit. She said it just kind of happened, but that's kind of what makes me uncomfortable. They could just continue to grow, and this is not something I expect some to try and control, nor be succesful at if they tried. But I don't want to be in a situation again where someone I care about has feelings that I can't reciprocate. I could try, I've done it before, and with nurturing have some level of success, but it's always seemed to end badly. Because eventually they realize it's not enough and not what they wanted, and I shouldn't have to try it should just be there, and there's resentment because they tried so much to make me love them by doing so much for me and pandering to me. And lying to themselves and then to me, and oh oh it's so much baggage you don't even know. I'm just terrified of going through all of that again, cuz somehow I end up really hurt, and feeling very shitty. Maybe it's because I usually end up being resented by the person who has spent so much time building me up. And Barb certainly does that. And my confidence has been soaring, and you'd be amazed at how long it took me to realize that Barb played no small part in that. It could certainly be put in a little check, and even Barb's mentioned something along those lines. I don't think I'm being quite the dick with my confidence as I've been in the past, but I certainly come off as arrogant and self absorbed at times. I mean I can see this myself. But I am over doing it on purpose, and the reality is I maintain a humbler view of myself than what I've been expressing, but I guess I'm trying to learn how to be confident. In my thinking and actions and how I carry myself. I'm trying to be more of a doer, since I spend so much time planning out things in maticulous detail and not putting the do in to it to make it worth the time.
So that got off a little track. My point is I've been loving the time with Barb. I haven't seen anyone else nearly as much. She's been helping me learn how to cook which I'll get into later. She's also been consulting on my clothes shopping, and has already put quite a few hours into decking Corey out with some new 'street' duds, since my wardrobe before mostly revolved around work clothes. I've working on rocking brown these days, with bits of blue. Apparently I make brown look good. And Barb has put a lot of time and effort into 'cleaning' Corey up, and teaching him about some of the finer things about taking care of oneself, that Corey clearly considers optional but sees the value in. Yes I did refer to myself in third person, as Corey is wont to do.
Goals. I've been achieving. Things that one might even be able to measure. Let's start with... photography. Now mind you.... I'd hardly even call myself a good Amateur photographer, and to really be good I think I need to be out there more. I'm starting to become more comfortable with the idea of doctering my pictures after I take them. There's something about it that goes against... a purist feeling? I want to take beautiful pictures from the start, and certainly that's the best way, if for no other reason than it gives you that much mroe flexibility when you doctor them. But for now I'm focused on learning the basics of photography, and as far as hobbyist photography goes, I may just be heading into intermediate, although I've played with itermediate features and things. I'm learning a little bit more about how photography works in general. I'm a little intimidated by the works of others. There are times when I feel like I may have some real potential with photography, but then I see the works of others and I feel like the 'art' is missing from mine. Perhaps that will go away. I feel like my pictures more 'document' the world than capture the art in it. Like my coldness and analytical nature comes through them. We shall see. I have been more focused on the technical nature of the camera, and trying to see what it can do. And I've just been trying to get the basics of framing a good picture down. Perhaps I will start throwing in the more artistic adlibing in as I go along. One of the things I realized about me an my art is I'm too afraid to make 'bad' art. So I don't try. I don't let my creativity out because I can't capture it the way I want to. I can't force it into a box and make it follow rules the way my analytical mind wants it to. And I know it doesn't work that way. My analytical mind has helped me to survive, but I'm trying to get my creative mind some exercise, and hopefully I'll be able to move in and out of them both freely someday, but they are two very opposing and different ways of thinking. There's more to say on that but I'll skip it. I've resolved to do more things 'the wrong way'. And to just do some things and get them done. And to try and be creative and let it come out 'bad'. Maybe it will never be 'good', but I feel there is genius in me in artistic expression, but that I am detached from it, and I only get flashing glimpses of it here and there, but maybe if I nurture it, it will come out. So enough about the photography.
I've also been learning how to cook. I had to get a crash course in a lot of different things, but I've learned a lot. I did cook some nice meals, including a Marsala Chicken dish, A chicken with black bean and tomato sauce, with spanish rice, and a Tandoori Chicken dish that was very very good, with sweet and sour cucumbers and Basmuti rice that I fucked up a little but wasn't bad. I learned a little bit more about rice that day and everybody won. What I also learned is cooking is a lot of fucking work and no wonder I eat so much god damn junk food. It's time consuming to make a decent, tasty, healthy meal, especially when you barely know what you're doing. That Tandoori chicken meal was like 6 hours worth of work and preperation. It probably all could have been done in around an hour by someone who really knew what they were doing. The shopping took me a couple hours too, that probably could have been knocked out in a half hour by someone who knew what they were doing. Even still, it was quite a time investment, and although tasty and a generally healthy meal, I know myself, and I'm not likely to do that again unless there's a special occasion. Part of learning how to cook was also to learn how to make healthy meals that don't take more than 15 minutes out of my day on average. I have not discovered anything I can really do like that. And to be honest, when it's all said and done, most things I can make quickly that taste good (meaning I'll actually do it), aren't much healthier or cheaper than making reasonable selections and your local burger joint. Oh well. School is approaching fast, and then I will once again be in the thick of it, where my time is not quite my own like it is now. Hopefully I'll come out of this summer and enter school at least a little better armed when it comes to my diet.
After a registry corruption due to a shitty defrag program I lost all my setup when it comes to the libraries I was working with to make my demo video game. I've since gotten everything all back in place and learned a little bit more about them. I actually have a little modified demo app with a ball rolling around. I can't say that I've done that much actual work. All I can say is I've spent the time learning what I need to know to stand on the shoulders of the works of others. But then, I'm glad I didn't do it myself because the physics library took 2 years for them to get to the point it's at now and the graphics engine took three. It's all open source software which means I can use it freely, modify it, and learn from it all I want. What they allow me to do is spend more time working on the game mechanics, rather than developing the complicated subsystems that support them. There was a time when one did this from scratch for each new game, but games are becoming so big and complex, that to make anything comparable to modern expectations only the well funded or true purists make it all from scratch. A game engine written from scratch that's worth anything is usually licensed out after the game's debut. Other systems of video games are being written and sold. It's called middleware and is used for things like real time phsyics simulation and AI, as well as audio and video players and compression formats. Art assets are usually custom made, but there are also entire libraries of models, textures, sounds for foley and special effects to be licensed for use inside a game. So I've got a ball rolling around on a hilly terrain and responding to user input. I've figured out the basics of getting these two systems working with the research and help of others, and before school starts I might actually end up with something that resembles a game. Meaning there's like goals and rules and stuff. We shall see.
Gees you know there may be something else. Umm.... Christine moved... yesterday I guess. She quit Luth a litte over a week ago. She's moving to Vegas and will be going around Europe for 3 weeks. She decided to do it kind of on a whim. She's going alone and mentioned how everyone is telling her to be careful. She looks like a target if you ask me, but I do think she can take care of herself. At least I'm fairly certain she's someone who knows who she can trust. I still think she is more likely to become a victim travelling alone than with someone else, and if something bad DID happen to her the situation would only be aggrevated by the fact that there's no one watching her back who might be able to provide assistance. I'm sure she'll be fine though, and she's certain of it. I'm going to miss her. I'm still confused by my feelings for her, although I understand them better now than before. When it comes to her and me, her going is probably in my best interest. I feel real love for her. I don't know how I describe her to other people, but apparently it's pretty negatively. I guess there are a lot of negative things about her. I think she's gotten better and matured, although she thinks I just know her better. I'd call it both. I do understand why she's the way she is in some ways, although I'd still say I tolerate the behavior and don't agree with it. Of the people I could love she's certainly not the logical choice. And she definately doesn't have the feelings for me that I have for her, although perhaps she may have more than she's let on to either of us. A lot of it was clouded by the fact that we're coworkers. But in the end I'm just not really the type of guy she's attracted to. She'd definately be settling for me. I'd be settling for her, despite loving her. We aren't compatible people, and I'm not one to believe that love always occurs between compatible people. Since my other coworker Doyle is also moving to vegas, and I think he's a fantastic individual, I spose I'll be trecking out there to visit, hopefully at least a couple times a year. Until I left Luth, Christine and I were pretty close. We talked every day on our smoke breaks, frequently got lunch together, and most of the time just the two of us. That way we had time to talk privately. We'd get together and snuggle and watch movies every couple of weeks and we made good friends. I've already been missing her the past few months. I was a little disapointed to hear that she was moving so soon after she left Luth. I'd hoped that I'd get to spend more quality time with her during the day for the summer, since most of my friends work. Oh well. It's good that she's moving in with her dad. I think he's going to help her get on a track to achieving her goals.
Well that's enough. This took me an hour and a half to write. Oh oh one more thing. I haven't had nicotine in months. You'd think I'd remember the date but nope... I don't. I think it was very early may... Wish me luck. I'm hoping to have a party celebrating my non-smoking status to help ratify my picture of myself as a nonsmoker and to also feel rewarded and encouraged. It's been easy since I haven't been stressed, but I want to be prepared, because I think the real challenges to not smoking are ahead.
Ok ok done for real. If this isn't me reading this at some future time, but someone else instead, spanks for being so interested in me that you read this big long entry. And Corey if this is you reading this again (meaning me), get back to work!
So how can I turn this into a synopsis?
I moved back in with my dad. Lived in a cramped room full of stuff on a pink couch and sleeping bag until his room mate moved out. The room is small but I've made it functional. Here's hoping I can keep it clean when I start school in the Fall.
My XBox is modded and I've had a lot of fun playing with that. It has a lot of neat features as a media center and there are tentative plans to setup the living room as a nice comfortable place for entertainment. We'll see if that ever happens. My dad is a pack rat and collects a lot of junk. Each item isn't exactly invaluable and he has a plan for it. But they're all such a small piece of a larger project, and he hasn't actually picked on to do. So there's essentially lots of useless stuff around, everywhere, and this includes the living room that is intended to become this media center place. The XBox is cool though. Along the lines of gadgets I've been playing with, I also bought a used GBA that has been modified with an internal back light. I also bought a cartridge that takes an SD card so I can download and run games on it. The only cartridge I do own is broken, so I just play the version I downloaded. I'm still working on setting up my PDA. My big issue is disatisfaction with the software and it's integration. Which leads me to Linux. I've been playing with Ubuntu (Kubuntu actually, with the KDE desktop). It's a distribution of Linux that is pretty gosh darn easy to use. It's not there yet, but Linux is quickly getting to the point where one might be able to recommend it as an alternative to running Windows. It can be configured in a way that adapting to it isn't that big of a stretch. And going back to the PDA, I was hoping I could find free open source software that is more flexible, feature rich, and more open to user input, that the alternative commercial packages that are available. Almost there but not quite. I don't see how anyone uses a PDA to get anything done, but maybe they organize different than me. So that's my toys and gadget stuff in a nutshell.
I picked up some work for a company that I'd been working with while I was at Luth. I don't want to get into the details, but I'm not doing more work with them right now, but I may in the future. They were very happy with my work and paid me a little better than Luth. In the mean time I'm still collecting unemployment and unless I find a job, will probably using that as a main source of income until school starts. I have a decent amount of money saved, but I'm using it for school expenses as well as personal expenses and I doubt it will carry me much further than the beginning of next summer. But as I said, my relationship with that company seems pretty good and I'm not qualified to do anything that pays nearly as well, and there's a lot of shittier work out there.
I went through a brief period of depression shortly after I moved home, especially because I realized I wasn't using my time very effectively. I felt kind of lazy, and also it became clear that a lot of my personal issues regarding work ethic and responsibility are.... real? I'd pretty much stopped trying to do anything about them when I focused on finding a way out of Luth. But I quickly realized that leaving Luth wasn't supposed to solve all my problems, it was supposed to allow me the time and focus to work on them. And since then I feel I've improved. Not by the leaps and bounds that I would like, but then more than I would have without being able to put more time and focus into myself. It's clear that I'm going to enter school with many of the same issues that kept me from being succesful in my previous academic career. Nothing much can be done about it but brace myself and try and work on them. Hopefully now that I've gained a better understanding of what the issues are and how they work, I can at least try to work around them if I can't directly deal with them. I'll save going in to what those issues are for some other time.
I've been spending a lot of time with Barb and we've grown rather close. We've discussed the nature of our relationship rather openly and we both agreed that although there may be romantic and sexual elements to our relationship, we are just friends and there isn't any implied commitment or limitting expectations. That's changed slightly since, and although Barb is ok with me snuggling with other people, kissing and more intimate stuff she's kind of jealous of. I have mixed feelings about this, but for the most part I just don't want limitations or expectations of that nature put on our relationship. I don't want it to nickel and dime into a romantic and committed relationship, and I'm afraid of getting roped in like that. Although I love her and care about her, my romantic interests are kind of tenuous. I'm all about the Barb, and I think she's a fantastic person, but when it comes to our romantic chemistry something important seems missing. Anyway, we'll see how things go. I'm just afraid of hurting her. I'm afraid of her feelings turning for me, they already have a little bit. She said it just kind of happened, but that's kind of what makes me uncomfortable. They could just continue to grow, and this is not something I expect some to try and control, nor be succesful at if they tried. But I don't want to be in a situation again where someone I care about has feelings that I can't reciprocate. I could try, I've done it before, and with nurturing have some level of success, but it's always seemed to end badly. Because eventually they realize it's not enough and not what they wanted, and I shouldn't have to try it should just be there, and there's resentment because they tried so much to make me love them by doing so much for me and pandering to me. And lying to themselves and then to me, and oh oh it's so much baggage you don't even know. I'm just terrified of going through all of that again, cuz somehow I end up really hurt, and feeling very shitty. Maybe it's because I usually end up being resented by the person who has spent so much time building me up. And Barb certainly does that. And my confidence has been soaring, and you'd be amazed at how long it took me to realize that Barb played no small part in that. It could certainly be put in a little check, and even Barb's mentioned something along those lines. I don't think I'm being quite the dick with my confidence as I've been in the past, but I certainly come off as arrogant and self absorbed at times. I mean I can see this myself. But I am over doing it on purpose, and the reality is I maintain a humbler view of myself than what I've been expressing, but I guess I'm trying to learn how to be confident. In my thinking and actions and how I carry myself. I'm trying to be more of a doer, since I spend so much time planning out things in maticulous detail and not putting the do in to it to make it worth the time.
So that got off a little track. My point is I've been loving the time with Barb. I haven't seen anyone else nearly as much. She's been helping me learn how to cook which I'll get into later. She's also been consulting on my clothes shopping, and has already put quite a few hours into decking Corey out with some new 'street' duds, since my wardrobe before mostly revolved around work clothes. I've working on rocking brown these days, with bits of blue. Apparently I make brown look good. And Barb has put a lot of time and effort into 'cleaning' Corey up, and teaching him about some of the finer things about taking care of oneself, that Corey clearly considers optional but sees the value in. Yes I did refer to myself in third person, as Corey is wont to do.
Goals. I've been achieving. Things that one might even be able to measure. Let's start with... photography. Now mind you.... I'd hardly even call myself a good Amateur photographer, and to really be good I think I need to be out there more. I'm starting to become more comfortable with the idea of doctering my pictures after I take them. There's something about it that goes against... a purist feeling? I want to take beautiful pictures from the start, and certainly that's the best way, if for no other reason than it gives you that much mroe flexibility when you doctor them. But for now I'm focused on learning the basics of photography, and as far as hobbyist photography goes, I may just be heading into intermediate, although I've played with itermediate features and things. I'm learning a little bit more about how photography works in general. I'm a little intimidated by the works of others. There are times when I feel like I may have some real potential with photography, but then I see the works of others and I feel like the 'art' is missing from mine. Perhaps that will go away. I feel like my pictures more 'document' the world than capture the art in it. Like my coldness and analytical nature comes through them. We shall see. I have been more focused on the technical nature of the camera, and trying to see what it can do. And I've just been trying to get the basics of framing a good picture down. Perhaps I will start throwing in the more artistic adlibing in as I go along. One of the things I realized about me an my art is I'm too afraid to make 'bad' art. So I don't try. I don't let my creativity out because I can't capture it the way I want to. I can't force it into a box and make it follow rules the way my analytical mind wants it to. And I know it doesn't work that way. My analytical mind has helped me to survive, but I'm trying to get my creative mind some exercise, and hopefully I'll be able to move in and out of them both freely someday, but they are two very opposing and different ways of thinking. There's more to say on that but I'll skip it. I've resolved to do more things 'the wrong way'. And to just do some things and get them done. And to try and be creative and let it come out 'bad'. Maybe it will never be 'good', but I feel there is genius in me in artistic expression, but that I am detached from it, and I only get flashing glimpses of it here and there, but maybe if I nurture it, it will come out. So enough about the photography.
I've also been learning how to cook. I had to get a crash course in a lot of different things, but I've learned a lot. I did cook some nice meals, including a Marsala Chicken dish, A chicken with black bean and tomato sauce, with spanish rice, and a Tandoori Chicken dish that was very very good, with sweet and sour cucumbers and Basmuti rice that I fucked up a little but wasn't bad. I learned a little bit more about rice that day and everybody won. What I also learned is cooking is a lot of fucking work and no wonder I eat so much god damn junk food. It's time consuming to make a decent, tasty, healthy meal, especially when you barely know what you're doing. That Tandoori chicken meal was like 6 hours worth of work and preperation. It probably all could have been done in around an hour by someone who really knew what they were doing. The shopping took me a couple hours too, that probably could have been knocked out in a half hour by someone who knew what they were doing. Even still, it was quite a time investment, and although tasty and a generally healthy meal, I know myself, and I'm not likely to do that again unless there's a special occasion. Part of learning how to cook was also to learn how to make healthy meals that don't take more than 15 minutes out of my day on average. I have not discovered anything I can really do like that. And to be honest, when it's all said and done, most things I can make quickly that taste good (meaning I'll actually do it), aren't much healthier or cheaper than making reasonable selections and your local burger joint. Oh well. School is approaching fast, and then I will once again be in the thick of it, where my time is not quite my own like it is now. Hopefully I'll come out of this summer and enter school at least a little better armed when it comes to my diet.
After a registry corruption due to a shitty defrag program I lost all my setup when it comes to the libraries I was working with to make my demo video game. I've since gotten everything all back in place and learned a little bit more about them. I actually have a little modified demo app with a ball rolling around. I can't say that I've done that much actual work. All I can say is I've spent the time learning what I need to know to stand on the shoulders of the works of others. But then, I'm glad I didn't do it myself because the physics library took 2 years for them to get to the point it's at now and the graphics engine took three. It's all open source software which means I can use it freely, modify it, and learn from it all I want. What they allow me to do is spend more time working on the game mechanics, rather than developing the complicated subsystems that support them. There was a time when one did this from scratch for each new game, but games are becoming so big and complex, that to make anything comparable to modern expectations only the well funded or true purists make it all from scratch. A game engine written from scratch that's worth anything is usually licensed out after the game's debut. Other systems of video games are being written and sold. It's called middleware and is used for things like real time phsyics simulation and AI, as well as audio and video players and compression formats. Art assets are usually custom made, but there are also entire libraries of models, textures, sounds for foley and special effects to be licensed for use inside a game. So I've got a ball rolling around on a hilly terrain and responding to user input. I've figured out the basics of getting these two systems working with the research and help of others, and before school starts I might actually end up with something that resembles a game. Meaning there's like goals and rules and stuff. We shall see.
Gees you know there may be something else. Umm.... Christine moved... yesterday I guess. She quit Luth a litte over a week ago. She's moving to Vegas and will be going around Europe for 3 weeks. She decided to do it kind of on a whim. She's going alone and mentioned how everyone is telling her to be careful. She looks like a target if you ask me, but I do think she can take care of herself. At least I'm fairly certain she's someone who knows who she can trust. I still think she is more likely to become a victim travelling alone than with someone else, and if something bad DID happen to her the situation would only be aggrevated by the fact that there's no one watching her back who might be able to provide assistance. I'm sure she'll be fine though, and she's certain of it. I'm going to miss her. I'm still confused by my feelings for her, although I understand them better now than before. When it comes to her and me, her going is probably in my best interest. I feel real love for her. I don't know how I describe her to other people, but apparently it's pretty negatively. I guess there are a lot of negative things about her. I think she's gotten better and matured, although she thinks I just know her better. I'd call it both. I do understand why she's the way she is in some ways, although I'd still say I tolerate the behavior and don't agree with it. Of the people I could love she's certainly not the logical choice. And she definately doesn't have the feelings for me that I have for her, although perhaps she may have more than she's let on to either of us. A lot of it was clouded by the fact that we're coworkers. But in the end I'm just not really the type of guy she's attracted to. She'd definately be settling for me. I'd be settling for her, despite loving her. We aren't compatible people, and I'm not one to believe that love always occurs between compatible people. Since my other coworker Doyle is also moving to vegas, and I think he's a fantastic individual, I spose I'll be trecking out there to visit, hopefully at least a couple times a year. Until I left Luth, Christine and I were pretty close. We talked every day on our smoke breaks, frequently got lunch together, and most of the time just the two of us. That way we had time to talk privately. We'd get together and snuggle and watch movies every couple of weeks and we made good friends. I've already been missing her the past few months. I was a little disapointed to hear that she was moving so soon after she left Luth. I'd hoped that I'd get to spend more quality time with her during the day for the summer, since most of my friends work. Oh well. It's good that she's moving in with her dad. I think he's going to help her get on a track to achieving her goals.
Well that's enough. This took me an hour and a half to write. Oh oh one more thing. I haven't had nicotine in months. You'd think I'd remember the date but nope... I don't. I think it was very early may... Wish me luck. I'm hoping to have a party celebrating my non-smoking status to help ratify my picture of myself as a nonsmoker and to also feel rewarded and encouraged. It's been easy since I haven't been stressed, but I want to be prepared, because I think the real challenges to not smoking are ahead.
Ok ok done for real. If this isn't me reading this at some future time, but someone else instead, spanks for being so interested in me that you read this big long entry. And Corey if this is you reading this again (meaning me), get back to work!