Uh-Oh...Merry Christmas!

So it's been a week. Hope I don't make a habit of that.

I went to see Narnia again on Christmas Eve eve...yep, that makes 3!

Speaking of Christmas, I hope you all had a very happy one. I know mine was great. Much better than I expected. :-D

I spent Christmas Eve with my dad and his family, then Christmas at home.

I'm going to Westminster again on Saturday and coming back Sunday. LJ invited me to a cookout, so that should be fun. Oh, and I need to get fireworks for New Year's!

Hopefully I won't be so slack about updating anymore. Lo Siento. :'(

Narnia (again) and Anniversaries

So today I went to see Narnia again, this time with Laura Ferrara. That was fun. It's good to have Laura back in town. Of course, the movie was just as good this time as it was last time. :-D Thanks again for taking me for Christmas, Laura!

(Un)fortunately, I had (got) to leave right after the movie to go have supper at my house for my grandparents' wedding anniversary. That was really sweet. I think this was #58 for them. I can only hope my marriage lasts like that. My step-dad cooked steak, which was absolutely delicious, and my mom made cherry cheese pie for dessert. My grandpa also brought some roasted pecans for my sister and I to eat later.

Just to clarify the "(Un)" and "(got)," I mean to say that while I was having fun with Laura, I also wanted to go see my grandparents. But I'll get to see Laura again tomorrow, so it's ok.

Ok, so that's about all for now. Tomorrow I get to purchase a computer for QHPC...um...yeah ok NOW that's all.

Westminster

*note: see previous post for any clarifications. I went to see Laura JONES in her hometown in the Armpit of SC.

Yesterday had it's difficulties, but ended up being a lot of fun. I woke up an hour and a half later than I wanted to because I didn't set my alarm clock properly. I was pretty upset about that, but it turned out ok for several reasons. If I had left at 7 am like I wanted to I may have ended up in Greenville/Spartanburg rush hour traffic. Also, it was still pretty foggy when I left at 8:30, and there were still some patches of ice on our deck. If I had left earlier it probably would have been foggier, and there may have even been some ice on the bridges.

Man it was a long drive out there. Between 3 and 3.5 hours, counting enough time to stop and get gas. Luckily I got it for $1.97 at the Flying J in Blacksburg, but it had gone up to $2.04 by that night. I burned over 20 gallons in my truck. Glad I decided to get some that morning or I wouldn't have made it.

Laura's house was really easy to find. She was going to meet me somewhere, but her battery was dead and we had to jump it off. Our batteries are on opposite sides of the car, and she only has a 12' jumper cable, so I had to back into her driveway, then PUSH her car up next to mine. Who knew a Focus was so heavy to be so small?

I mentioned Stumphouse Tunnel in my previous post. Once we got her car started and some batteries for my flashlight (which came with a nifty Aslan snowglobe :-D) we drove for 20 minutes up a mountain only to discover that it was closed. We drove on to Stumphouse Ranger Station, but they said they don't take care of Stumphouse Tunnel. I think they need a new name. Me and Laura also tried some other parks, but I guess they are closed for the winter.

We ended up going shopping in Anderson, about an hour away. That was pretty fun. She was kinda upset that there wasn't much to do, but I don't have to DO something to have fun. Even though the parks were closed on such a beautiful day, we still got to look at the mountainous scenery and spend some time together. I can't wait to see Oconee County in the summer and fall...absolutely gorgeous!

I left that night around 9 or a quarter past, and still made it back at about midnight. I guess there was even less traffic on the way back, even though I had to stop for 20 minutes at the Flying J to get some food and walk around to wake up. Man I was tired of driving. I really don't want to get in a car at all today, though I probably will end up doing something tonight.

Sunday

Yeah today was a really good day overall. Church was really bad...the pastor pulled random verses out of thin air while talking about his mom's Christmas decorations.

Lunch was really good after church, then I got to see Laura (Ferrara) after lunch so it MORE than made up for a bad service. I got to work on Laura's computer and the Ferrara family computer, which was lots of fun. It's not too often you get to spend a solid 2 hours removing spyware. :-D The family computer was chock full of little nasties for me to get rid of. The computer seriously run like 50x faster now. I took it from about 50-60 running processes to just under 30 startup processes.

As for Laura's computer, I updated Firefox to version 1.5, converted her to Gaim, then installed Thunderbird for her. She can now check my atom feed, along with some other friends' blogs AND her brand new Gmail account! I'm so proud of her for at least TRYING something new and better. Hopefully she is enjoying all of her stuff! ;-)

We (me and Laura [F.]) went to Moe's for dinner, but nobody showed up like they were supposed to, except for her brother and future sister-in-law, so we just went to Taco Bell. I returned a phone call from Laura Jones for 8 minutes and Laura F got a little mad...but she can't stay mad at me for long! ;-P We made up and still had a REALLY good time...well, when she wasn't asleep while I was fixing the computer...we were having fun separately. It was the first time we've hung out in like a month, and she didn't get too mad at me, so I consider today a success.

Tomorrow I'm waking up early in the morning to drive to Westminster, SC and see Laura Jones. We're going to see the mountains around there, and visit some state parks like Stumphouse Tunnel...an old Civil War era train tunnel going straight into the mountain that they never finished. I hear it gets pitch black in there VERY quickly. *BOO, SCARY* lol.

This week is certainly looking like it will be a very nice week. Let's hope it continues that way!

Wow...it's almost depressing how cheery I sound... :-P

oh, more stuff

yeah, I thought of some more stuff.

1. I bought (that's right, bought!) the Chronicles of Narnia Soundtrack. That's something I haven't done in a long time. People said they couldn't find it, but I did! And it's AWESOME! But what can you expect from the best movie EVER? :-D Now I want to hear the music inspired by the movie again. I really like that Turkish Delight song.

2. What's the deal with gaim? They were supposed to update to version 2.0.0 two weeks ago, then said it would be done by today, and it's still not done. I'm not complaining, just pointing it out. I really enjoy gaim, btw. there's a link over on the right. It's a multi-protocol IM client, because otherwise, I would be running 6 separate IM accounts. Anyway, hurry up guys!

3. There's a new JibJab cartoon. Check it out!

night, y'all!

Christmas Shopping

I am now right at half way done with my shopping. I just went with my dad and sister up here in Gastonia.

I also got Laura Ferrara her gift ;-) See, I mentioned you, too!

She also asked me to list her livejournal and xanga. oh, and happy birthday to Mr. Ferrera!

that's all i've got for now.

got a hankerin'

Yeah, I have a hankerin' to write something tonight, but I'm not sure what. I guess it's just because this is new, and I think it looks cool or whatever. I'm sure the newness will wear off soon enough.

So I'm driving up to my dad's tomorrow (today). It's supposed to freeze pretty bad again tonight. It shouldn't be a bad drive, especially since I'm driving up about lunch time. If it's not too bad out on Sunday, I'm going to leave my dad's and drive down to Spartanburg for a family dinner (dinner as in lunch, not supper). Hopefully, Laura Jones will drive to Greenville so I can meet her there. She hasn't called so I don't know what she's going to do yet.

My mom is crazy. She's going to let me drive my sister up to my dad's and drive her home...I do it every other weekend - that's 1.5 hours round trip. For some unknown reason, however, she doesn't want me to drive my sister to Spartanburg (a 1.5 hour drive) because "it's so far, and the roads aren't as good." Instead, she's going to drive 45 minutes to my dad's on Saturday night, get my sister, drive 45 minutes home, then drive my sister to the family reunion (2 hours from her house) on Sunday morning. If she was worried about my sister, she should reduce her drive time by letting me take her, and it would save her a lot of mileage. But I digress...

Well, I think that's all I've got for now. I'll end up posting later with details...not that anyone cares... :-P

fun with css

I've had a lot of fun over the last 12 hours. I took an HTML/Computer class in High School, and over the last few months (or year) have wanted to learn other languages like CSS (cascading style sheets, not counter strike: source ;-) ). Every time I would start to learn, I would realize that I was starting from scratch and I had no idea what I was doing.

After posting last night, I realized that I could edit the template code directly. I stayed up 'til about 3am farting around with this code and the code for a friend's myspace. I hate myspace, btw. It's an internet popularity contest with ads all over the place and poorly designed, hard to read pages. Just my rant for the day.

Of course, I have to give credit to AB and his 2005 redesign...that showed me some basic commands like float, etc. I actually ended up changing this code very little, but had fun trying, nonetheless.

The little bit that I did do was pretty simple stuff, like adding links, decapitalizing my header, and adding the nifty firefox 1.5 logo :-D

Well that's all I've got for now. I need to shower and get ready for work. Yeah, I'm gonna be late...we had a good bit of ice here last night. Ice + the south = very bad because nobody knows what to do, and we don't have the equipment to clear the roads.

Have fun slipping and sliding, y'all!

[still looking for a cheesy sign-off line, lol]

starting out

So...writing my first blog in a long time. Maybe I can keep up with this. Do it kinda regularly, you know? meh, I doubt it, but I'll give it a shot, nonetheless.

Of course I'll start off my first post like any respectable blogger:
"well, it's late, so I better get going..."

[insert cheesy sign-off line here]
;-)