This week has not been a week of getting good nights sleeps.  I managed to catch about seven hours between Tuesday and yesterday but then Will and I were up until two, working on a friend's computer that was having problems.  Or, Will was working on the computer, I was helping him with crossword puzzles while he ran scans and other computer geeky things. 

Every morning when the alarm goes off and I jab Will awake with my pointy pointy elbows (he is convinced that his alarm clock is broken and that's what wakes me up!) he rolls over and urges me to go back to sleep and to sleep in for a couple of hours to catch up on my sleep.  His intentions are good but I really need to stop listening to him. On the days that I do go back to sleep and sleep in until ten or eleven my mood improves, but I lose the ability to concentrate for pretty much the whole day.  Today, for instance, I have two projects and I've only gotten one of them done. 

What I really need to do is learn to go to bed on my own.  I can do that.  Apparently there are nights when I go to bed and then, when Will comes in to go to sleep, he and I have entire conversation–conversations that I don't remember having.  It's just….I don't like to go to bed on my own anymore.  I know that makes me sound all sappy and girly, but the truth is that I like falling asleep together, especially on those nights when we both have trouble falling asleep so we talk until we pass out.  Also? Most of the time, Will does not understand how to be quiet or stealthy when it comes to going to bed.  He knows how to close the door quietly and after that, it goes downhill.  He'll flop down onto the bed, which bounces me around.  He'll yank at the covers and usually ends up pulling them off of me and then tossing them back over me.  He'll turn on his alarm to make sure it is at an appropriately eardrum bursting level when it "fails" to go off the next morning.  It's hard to fall asleep when you know that you'll just be woken up again–and you don't know when it will be. 

I am very much looking forward to getting eight hours of sleep each night again….someday!

Also? How excited am I that Yummy-McStaples-Himself will be back on Grey's Anatomy tonight?!?  So excited!

I spent all of yesterday afternoon and evening moving my blog back over to Typepad and now all I want to do is sit around and play with Typepad. A lot has changed since I used this service regularly and I have been having fun poking around and learning about all of the new stuff.  I've been blogging for so long that I remember a time before widgets and now Typepad has a whole widget library!

Today I went in to downtown with Will.  He had a short lab class and I needed to return some stuff to the library and people, I walked a lot.  I walked almost eighty blocks.  EIGHTY.  In three hours.  And I just realized why I've been hobbling around my apartment for the last few hours feeling like all of my joints were going to suddenly explode apart. I'm getting old.

Last night I got to talk on the phone with one of my older brothers for a little over an hour and it was super fun.  We don't get to talk very often and every time we talk we promise that we'll be better about calling and keeping in touch and then a few more months (or years) go by.  Still though it was fun to just sit and joke around on the phone. 

Tonight I watched the thirty minute Obamamercial and then part of his Floridian midnight rally and then watched his appearance on Jon Stewart and I have to say, I keep finding more and more reasons to feel good about voting for him.  I know that I am making the right choice in filling in his circle in my mail in ballot (Oregonians vote by mail in ballot.  It sucks.  I desperately want an "I Voted" sticker).  It hit me today that this will be the FOURTH time I've voted for President.  This? Also makes me feel old.  And proud.

Finally, I still haven't decided whether or not to do Nablopomo.  I really really want to, but I am afraid of putting up a month's worth of crap.  I know, though, that I need to kick start my posting again.  Now that I'm back on Typepad that should be a little more fun.  I love Typepad.

And look, I just brought it full circle!

I switched back to Typepad today.  It has changed a lot, but it still feels better for blogging than anything else I've used over the last few years. 

Go. Fuck. Yourselves.

Oh yeah, I said it.

You guys and your stupid World of Warcraft game can just go sit on it because seriously? You suck.  I'm sure you started out intending to do good things with your little game.  I'm sure in the beginning it was "let's create a fun alternate reality game where people are wizards and stuff!"  But now it has turned to "these dorks want to have lives?!? hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Yeah. Um, No.  We! Want! Our! Mon-ay!"

Every day I watch my fiance resign himself to having to sit on your game for hours.  Why?  Because you require players to keep playing.  Even though we pay a monthly subscription fee to you bastards, you require a certain amount of hours to be logged by the server otherwise he can lose points, rank or be subjected to any number of bad things that are feared by people of the WoW verse.  I watch as he schedules his entire life around your game because he needs to accomplish certain things to keep his current score/rank/whatever and those certain things only happen at certain times of the day.  I watch as every few nights he is kept up until 3 or 4 in the morning because he needs to do a certain number of…things (raids? instances? arenas? whatever) otherwise he'll lose the things he's worked so hard to accomplish.

My fiance? Now calls playing your game "going to work."  It is something that he "has" to do instead of something that he "wants" or "gets" to do.  He's worked very hard at getting to where he has gotten and, again, even though we pay a monthly subscription to you farkers, he has to log hours or everything he's worked for will slide away.

Will insists that it is possible to play the game casually and that there are people who can log on for a little bit and log off.  I do not see how this is possible because your game is set up to exclude the people who only play it casually and enslave the people whose love for gaming makes them keep playing because they want to finish the damn thing already.  I have to wonder how many people just like Will feel trapped by you.

Video games are supposed to be fun.  They are supposed to make people laugh and help them relieve stress.  They are not supposed to encourage you to feel like your world will fall apart if you don't keep playing.  You've stolen the fun and turned playing into "but I have to or [insert something bad]!" and the worst part of it is that you charge your players money to feel like that!

Go to hell you greedy bastards.

This message has been brought to you by someone who only got three and a half hours of sleep because someone she loved felt forced to play your effing "game" for half the night because of some "this will only happen for the next three days and I can't play it later because I have school and homework!"

Okay, seriously? What happened to 2008.  In another week it will be NOVEMBER!

Speaking of which, I am seriously considering doing Nablopomo again this year.  I tried to do the Blog 365 thing and did pretty good with it for five whole months.  In June I nixed it because I found that I was spending more time putting up crap than putting up actual content.  The thing is, I miss having that reason to post every day.  People, I? Am lazy.  I'm also one of those annoying "do the work first, the fun later" and blogging? is my fun.  So it usually gets left until the end of the day when I have no energy or brain power left to post anything interesting.  This means that, more often than not, I leave off the posting until I have the energy.

I've written about this before, but blogging and writing in this style? Is what I really love to do.  I love my job.  I love writing for other people and having an excuse to research different things each day.  I? Would kick ass at a cocktail party after a year and a half of content writing.  But if I want to do this for a living, I need to work more at it.  Blah blah, I say stuff like this all the time and then the next morning I wake up and I'm tired and no longer feel the motivation.

In case you couldn't tell, right now I am in the middle of my weekly "the weekend is almost over and a new week will be starting soon!  I am going to get up and get stuff done! I'll do a ton of work and maybe even re-start the Couch to 5K program.  I am motivated!" thing.  I hope it goes through and is still here in the morning.

What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, Nablopomo.  I think I'm totally going to do it.

As I type this, both Will and I are sitting in the living room.  He's finishing up a school assignment (he promises that it won't take until 2 AM this time) and I'm trying to think of a funny story to blog about.  While we do these things I'm torturing him playing him music from my iTunes folder.  According to the footer toolbar thingie, I have so much music in here that I could leave iTunes on for seventy four and a half days before the songs would start to repeat. That means two things: I have more music than I know what to do with (honestly, I couldn't tell you all of the artists I have on here, let alone all of the songs) and putting my iTunes on shuffle is nothing short of a musical adventure. It just switched from Black Sabbath to Sugar Ray. No kidding. I'm pretty sure that Will's head is going to explode soon, which will make it much harder to get to sleep at a decent hour.

Will insists that he has better taste in music than I do.  He also insists that he knows more about music than I do.  In some ways he's right.  I couldn't tell you who the artists in the top 40 are right now for all of the money lost by Wall Street.  In other ways, like music history and older music trivia, I totally kick his ass.  In terms of taste, however, well that's going to be up for debate until we both keel over from stubbornness.

I will admit that Will is more discerning in the music he chooses to listen to than I am.  I'll give just about anything a chance and can tolerate almost all music (though classic country, Justin Timberlake and John Mayer all make me want to pull my ears off) while Will will switch the channel after a few bars if the music is not either twangy old country (gag), techno (bleh), or butt rock (some of which I do actually enjoy). This makes putting together playlists for things like road trips and, oh, a wedding, kind of hard.

I have to say though, that while some of my music makes Will want to tear his hair out, we haven't had a hang out and listen to music in a long time.  Usually the television or a computer game gives us our background noise.  I'd forgotten how nice it was to just listen to music…which is sad since I have two and a half months worth of the stuff.

Sweet!  It just shuffled from Miss Halfway by Anya Marina to AM Radio by Everclear!  I love my iTunes!

I changed my captcha service because the old one, apparently, was being a jackass and not actually displaying the code.  This one makes you type in more stuff, but hopefully it will keep the spammers at bay.  It's definitely better than not having a captcha–at least on my end of things.

Will and I stayed up until 2 AM.  Will was working on a lab assignment for school and I was… well I was trying to get some extra work done, but my brain stopped functioning some time around 11:30, so I was playing with my yarn.

Yeah….that wasn't the best idea in the world.  Will kept telling me to go to bed, but I opted for staying up because I knew that even though I was exhausted I wouldn't be able to fall asleep until he came to bed too.  That sounds sweet and gushy, but really it's more a matter of the man's lack of awareness when it comes to noise and disruption.  I love him very much, but wow.  The dude is noisy.

So I stayed up and played with my yarn.  Then today I ended up accidentally taking a three hour nap.  Um.  Whoops.

And the other day when I was buying my yarn? I got ma'am-ed…actually that felt pretty good.  Usually I get "aren't you supposed to be in school?"  The clerk was about to call me miss and then saw my engagement ring when I swiped my debit card and changed her mind.  So, I guess technically I called a "miiiiia'am"-ed.

I'm getting old.

I did not actually forget about Tuesday Bloglets yesterday.  I just kept getting distracted by other things.  Like the O.C. And needing a nap.  And a yarn sale at JoAnn's Fabrics.

Yesterday I walked up to Joann's Fabrics and bought two things of yarn.  I've kind of fallen in love with the neopolitan color scheme and they had a couple of variations on it there.  Now the yarn has been balled up and is sitting on my coffee table.  I'm feeling a little bit tortured because I have a ton of work to do, but all I want to do is play with my yarn.

Most of my friends (and my family probably) are surprised that a) I know how to crochet (sort of) and that b) I actually do enjoy crafty things.  Just because I don't usually do them doesn't mean I have no use for them.  Nan, my Mom's Mom (my oldest cousin couldn't say Grandma when she was little so she started calling her Nan and so now that's what all of the grandkids call her), was very crafty.  She could crochet, she could sew, she could quilt, she could cook, she could garden.  Seriously, the woman is a handcraft/growing/cooking genius.  If she had been born today, she could outdo Martha Stewart in her inventiveness and creativity.  Except, unlike Martha, she used things normal people had lying around the house.  She made a stepstool for me once out of old soup cans and fabric–which did not end up looking like it was made from soup cans and fabric at all.  Every girl in our family got a "Barbie cake" for her sixth birthday–It was a cake built in the shape of a dress that was worn by a Barbie doll.  I can't remember what color mine was, but it was awesome.  She crocheted afghans and hats and potholders and pooping ducks (the duck was crocheted and was filled with jellybeans which could only be reached by squeezing them out of the duck's *ahem*).  Whenever we'd visit her, she'd cook these huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge meals.  Ham or turkey or roast beef and many many side dishes.  She could grow pretty much anything.  I guess when my Mom was a kid she grew all of their food–the fruit, the vegetables, even the herbs and spices used on their food, and she has always had beautiful gardens, even when the only space she had was a small plot of dirt outside of her window.

Of course, growing up I never much cared about learning how to do any of that.  I was much more into books and CDs and computers than I was anything crafty.  If we want to be really honest (and what else is a blog for), I turned my nose up at all of it.  I was one of those "why make it when you can buy it?" kids–and young adults.  I appreciated everything she gave me and everything she did for us, but learning how to do her things didn't interest me much.

Lately though, I've been looking down the craft aisles.  I started really getting interested in cooking a couple of years ago when I had to (Will begged me to make something that did not involve ground beef) and now I'm doing my best to keep Ralph the Begonia alive.  I like the idea of doing crafts and keeping my hands busy.  Mostly, though, I like the idea of being crafty for my kids (if I ever have them).  I like the idea of knowing how to make stuff that they can actually use and being more than an "okay, yesterday we made pictures with macaroni.  Today we are going to….make pictures with macaroni!" crafty Mom.  I like the idea of working on a larger project, like a quilt, with my kids.  I like the idea of passing down something that has been important in my family history.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't so busy and that I had enough money to take a few weeks off from work, go up to Idaho and say "Okay, Nan.  Teach me.  Let's pass this stuff down."  I think, at least for me, that kind of family heirloom is way better than anything tangible.

And right now I also really really want to play with my yarn.

*Chandler Bing, Friends

At what point do you throw your hands up in the air and shout "Enough! Have some respect!" ?  When does something that is not technically your business become, at least partly, your business?  And how long do you have to wait for irritation and frustration to subside before you write about all of it on your blog?

Last night Will and I had a talk about my blog.  Not a "please don't post this" talk but a "Goddamn it, it's your blog and if they don't like what you write then fuck 'em" talk.  I've talked with some of you about the reasons I've been holding back on this blog and finally last night I talked about those reasons with Will.  We talked about the reasons for my reasons and, in some ways, cleared the air.  Obviously because I'm one of those "let's hold it in until I explode" people, Will didn't know how frustrated I was but once he knew, he said…well, I wrote that already.

So I ask you: at what point does something that shouldn't be your business become your business?

Is it when the thing that really shouldn't be your business can directly affect your life?

Is it when the thing that really shoudn't be your business does directly affect your life?

Is it when you need to make plans around the thing that shouldn't be your business but can't because you aren't supposed to ask about things that aren't your business?

You can see how quickly things get complicated.

Here's the real rant:  I am tired of people telling me what my plans are going to be and expecting to be accommodated.  I am tired of people telling me to do things for them without asking first how I feel about it.  I am tired of people just expecting Will and I to change our lives upside down for them without first asking how we feel about the upside downness or giving us a time frame for the upside down-ness to occur.  I am tired of being told when I ask what's happening "that isn't really any of your business."

So again, I ask: at what point is it my business?

At what point do I get to say: "Actually it is my business because my circumstances are affected by this too so kindly tell me what the hell is going on and what the plan is."

Also?  I'm not at all thrilled about having to work my butt off to make up for having to take three weeks off (remember the companypalooza of September?) only to find out that now I have to kick it up another notch because we'll probably be having another company fest in December.  I may or may not have cried about it for half an hour this morning….though the tears might have been brought on more by what time of the month it is.