Odd dreams.

There was this thing, and there was this beach, and it was somehow connected to getting home to Phoenix: after we'd had our fun on the beach, we were supposed to get all of us (including Threepio and Artoo) home to Phoenix. Guide Dog Aunt picked us up, and we drove to a place on the road where we could see almost the whole country, including the vast reservations in the East (beautiful land, there), and Phoenix, and San Francisco, and there was stuff where we were driving down old, poorly maintained, roads and tunnels, and had to get out of one (unmarked) tunnel very fast, as a) there was a hole in the floor of it, and b) there was a train coming.

Darkside was there, and Guide Dog Aunt wanted to see more of the motivation on my character's part for her behavior towards his character.

Red

Votania's machine Red is in deep trouble. I honestly have no idea what she keeps doing to it, or what it keeps doing to her, but they hate each other with a passion.

Computers tend to work worse for those who hate them, mostly because those who hate them don't really have the tendency to work around the computer's known flaws, but instead go barging straight through them, causing the computer to get pissy and wreak all sorts of revenge.

Downloaded Mozilla for her to try and get around the happy Internet Exploder problem (thing keeps crashing and won't work); Red seems to be dead again.

Oy to the Vey.

Silly things:

Doing the swish-and-flick of hand, and declaring: Alohamora! when one's roommate is unlocking the laundry room door.

School

Attended my first class this morning. Second class is later this evening.

I've got Double McGuirk for Web Development, which is going to be a bit of an adventure, I foresee. We are to avoid making horrendous web pages at all costs.

I do not intend to repeat Darkside's experiment of having the background this color and the text being this color. No. No. Wrong. No. Bad. Evil. EVIL, I tell you!

...He was able to get this atrocious combination by following the instructions in the book, mind you.

My class group seems to have been whittled down to a core group of dedicated students. There would be myself, of course, the big guy, Sleeping Jimmy, Hari, Baronness Babble, and Bambi. There are a few other, less memorable people, but we've all been in this together for a while. Bambi, Baronness Babble, and the big guy seem to almost want to pull me into their social group, but somehow I haven't been pulled.

Hisssss...

It looks, by the end of this, that either Votania will have made Red the slave of her Will, or Red will be in very, very small pieces.

The sad thing is, I feel fairly certain that Red would behave perfectly, if left in the hands of someone who both knows and likes computers.

My frustration level with the situation is rising to the point where I'm ready to rise up, start yelping, and wind up asking her not to do anything at all, no matter how small, with computers while I'm around, or even on the same LAN as anything I'm using.

Not quite yet, though.

We'll see how long it takes before I'll crack.

Ghaaa.

Sometimes my timing sucks.

My schedule's timing, rather.

I was planning on calling Darkside tonight to let him know that I survived the first day of school. Unfortunately, the optimal time to call him is right around nine, which will be right in the middle of my English class, should it run for the full two hours this first meeting...

(no subject)

I'm just exhausted.

Oh yeah.

I cracked.

My Strengths and Weaknesses in the Field of Communications

( assignment for Business Writing )

It feels so very good... (computers, empathy, introvert/extrovert)

...to stop needing to play at the guess-and-check that is my only way of working on Red, and to let trained professionals provide support over the Wired.

I can't tell you how much it feels better to know that I'm not the poor thing's last line of defense, and that I'm not the last line of defense between it and Votania... that's how I've been feeling. Since I can't help, I can only try and protect them from hurting each other too much, and that means I get hurt in the process...

I empathize with computers, with machinery. I can empathize with only a few humans, though I can fake it pretty well. Do I look like an introvert? I seem to fake extroversion fairly well, but I will curl up and have severe problems if I don't get the time by myself to recharge. It shouldn't be absolutely alone, though... I still like that Emily Dickenson poem best of all poems. Which is odd. I've never known myself to love a poem that much before.

I suppose I've figured out the difference between those people I count as being able to be alone with, and those I am always in company with, if I'm with them: it's those people who I can be silent with who I can be alone with. If I have to make active interaction with a person, I can never count myself 'alone'. If I can just be silent with someone, with no need for constant back-and-forth, I count myself as alone.

Whining, Crying, Unhappiness

Nephew's been pitching a lot of fits. Today he got far too frustrated over homework. To make sure that there were no fits over homework, not even little ones, we sent him to take a nap, and sure enough, there was a fit over the nap. Not a huge one, just a bunch of crying. There was a tantrum at school... I think I mentioned this earlier today. Poor kiddo... not sure what to do.

There have been many, many battles over bedtime. His latest trick is to say he's not thirsty when asked before bed, but five minutes later, in bed, suddenly he needs a drink. After this became a pattern, Votania decided to stop playing along with it. Not only does he know how to get his own drink of water, it's just stalling tactics. So, he's now asked if he needs a drink before bedtime, and requests thereafter are treated as bedtime-delaying ploys, which they are.

Removed cat from room. It's 11:40 now, and bedtime was nine, or earlier. Walked in, laid down quietly on lower bunk, didn't say a word to him or acknowledge him in any way when he was being noisy and talking, complaining about how Shamash's breath "is stink", and when Shamash finally came down out of the bed, grabbed the cat, petted the cat, whispered to the cat. When Nephew was quiet for a sufficient length of time, I petted him, said, "You're being very nice and quiet. Goodnight. I love you," and went to leave the room. When he said something to me, again on the water theme, I said, "That was *not* nice and quiet," and left, taking the cat with me.