OK, YOU CURLING LOVING FREAKS!!!!!

I'm still recovering from my fall.
I saw a doctor last Thursday and got new x-rays and he said he didn't see a fracture at all. He put a soft cast on it, wet gauze under cotton under gauze and told me we'll see how it's doing next week (which is now this week), and then we'd talk therapy. (Physical therapy! He's a foot doctor!)Then he sent me on my merry way. At which point I stopped at the register to pay my co-pay. Hurray for health-care! Currently I am sitting at my desk at work, leg elevated typing a post to you fine people.

To my delight when I was stuck at home recuperating with a sprained ankle which by the way doesn't happen to be fractured like the ER doctor said it was, I was able to watch some of the olympics. Oddly in former years I would mostly watch figure skating. It's pretty, but this year I watched none. Not even once. I watched CURLING! It dawned on me that of all olympic sports, it seemed like the one I would probably be best out. The experience has truly reaffirmed my love of curling.

Curling truly is a sport in which one has to think and think fast. What must be going through their heads as they rush after the disc sliding oh so fast down the ice? They have to make the judgement on how long to clear the path and when to stop smoothing out the ice so the disc will stop as close to the center as possible. If you haven't judged just right your opponents can keep smoothing out the ice so that your disc continues to slide. Then, when it is the opponents turn to slide down their disc, you have to keep it from hitting your disc and knocking it out of place.
I find it rivetting. I swear I held my breath when the other team went, uh, every time.

Two of my sisters, Tammytyree and Jillibean, were so sad the olympics ended that they went to BEST BUY and purchased the official Olympics game. To our dismay, it didn't seem to work on my playstation 2. I constantly get disc read errors with it. I don't know why. Oh well.

Do you live in a Bright House?

I finally called the cable company. I put in an order for them to install internet for both of the computers in the house (Yeah, no more dial up!!!) and to put in digital cable in my room. The order was put in and the next day I was brutally attacked by an area rug my Mom likes to put in front of the front door to keep out the cold air. Unfortunatly, if you are leaving the house it is impossible for one to put it in place, so it winds up just laying there at the bottom of the stairs. So a week goes by of me recuperating, moaning, oh God it hurts it hurts!! Then it was cable day. It was supposed to be like Christmas you know. A fabulous day when I spend tons of money and wind up giving my family this wonderful present! High-Speed internet, which they never had before. Of course, because I ordered it, it didn't go off without a hitch. They came out practically every day last week to install it.

A timeline of the cable experience:

DAY 1- Tuesday: Not very bright looking cable guy comes to the door. I hop down the stairs to let him in. (because I'm still on crutches.)At which time my mother came home. He takes what I considered an insane amount of time to run the cable to the house. When hooking up the digital cable, I had prior to his arrival kneeled on the floor somehow and cleared a spot for the receiver, despite the excruciating pain, I rearranged it so there was an open spot for it to go. Instead of putting it in the obvious place, he removed things from on top of my t.v. breaking something (not anything expensive so of course I wasn't mad, but come on, there was a clear spot for it.)This of course proved that these guys will do whatever they feel like. To install the cable internet to my computer, I should say my computer is in a large computer cabinet, it's very heavy, after all it's not some shitty Sauder compressed piece, it's actually oak. He tried to move it on his own to put in the modem. Not necessary, but like I said he didn't seem very bright, and the first impression was further solidified with every single thing he did. Then he tells us, my mother and I, he can't get the internet to work, he has installed the modem on one computer, but he needs a tech to come and check his work. He didn't know if he'd connected the cable right at the box on the telephone pole or if the modem didn't work or not. He hadn't even installed the wireless modem thingy onto the other computer. I asked him if he could get that one set too so that it was ready when it was working and he said he would. He installed it then called his office to see when the tech could come out. He said maybe 45 minutes. He couldn't wait because he had somewhere else to be. He left no software for the tech to reinstall if necessary. He left me in no way confident of his job. I was just glad he was gone.

Ok, then the tech got there, said it looked like everything was set up right. He also said there was some corrupt software on the system at headquarters that they needed to reinstall. He said they would re-install it and then give us a call to tell us it was working. Which they never did, and it never worked.

DAY 2- Wednesday: I get a phone call from the tech who came the night before saying to call him. This was my first day back to work after a week, I wasn't home to take the call. So I called in the evening, couldn't talk to the guy that called me and talked to someone else instead. After I told him the problem he said he didn't know what I was talking about reinstalling software at the home office. He instead set up a time for a tech to come out the next day.

DAY 3- Thursday: I get home from work to find my Dad standing behind to cable tech guys working on his computer. He sighs impatiently several times like he's being inconvenienced. You know like he just paid a lot for something and now it wasn't working right only he didn't pay. He would have gone on indefinitly with dial up if I hadn't done this for him. He was kind of rude to the techs, constantly muttering things like, "This is so much trouble. So much more trouble than it's worth!" The techs tell me my computer works, it's online but for some reason, the network isn't working, my parents computer isn't online. They needed yet another tech to come out and fix that part. They also said they were highly dissatisfied with the job the very first installer. He never should have left the house until at least one computer was up and running, and why did he not leave software. Then they left. The next tech guy came and couldn't get it to work either, he didn't have the necessary software either and he thought we'd need a new modem, he didn't have that either. They could send another tech crew out the next day. Also he said he'd speak with billing about the charges for the wireless internet because it hadn't worked yet. Lastly, the initial installer would be dealt with in the morning.

DAY 4- Friday: The time came for the cable guys to show up and they never came. I got a phone call from their dispatcher scheduling a time for them to come in the morning.

DAY 5- Saturday: So the tech guy came, the same guy from Thursday, got everything working. HURRAY!!!!! Once again he said he would talk to billing about not charging us for the wireless until Saturday, because it was all on their end so we shouldn't have to pay.

So now we have cable internet acess and I have digital cable in my room. This in itself is fascinating to my father. He didn't think we could have both a satellite dish and cable in the same house, I don't know why...But he shouldn't be jealous, he still has more channels than me. They have all the movie channels, I only have several HBO'S & CINEMAX. Plus now we can receive phone calls while we surf the net. My parents were probalby the last people with the internet and only one phone line....How bizzare! Now also, 2 people can be on the internet at once. How much fun would that be that I could be on the internet in my room while my sister is on the internet in the dining room and we could talk to each other on instant messanger? Yeah, I'm a dork. But I can message her, "Hey Jax, 'Lost' is on, get your butt in here!" and she can say, "OK!"

Missing in Action

Alright, I've been missing again. So what happened this time.

Well, Tuesday morning I was getting ready for work. As I walked back down the stairs to my room I was attacked by an area rug, or I stepped, perhaps one would say, mis-stepped, lost my footing and fell down. My foot turned one way and it wasn't supposed to bend that way, I fell down, heard a pop, and immediatly began screaming. It was obvious I wasn't going to walk on it though I tried. I hobbled into my room and could feel my ankle swell up to about the size of a watermelon. So I hopped out of my room so I could get to the phone, I crawled up the stairs. Luckily my Mom is walking quite well without crutches these days, she left one in the dining room, I crawled to it. I somehow stood up and used the crutch to get to the other end of the house.

When I got there I picked up the phone and called my boyfriend. To my dismay he wasn't in the office yet. His cell was off. So I called my sister and her cell was in the room I was in, and not with her. I saw a number by the phone that said, Jill, by it. This is my other sister's name, she just got a phone in the house she just moved into. I called the number. Answering machine? DAMN!!! So I left a message, I was still sobbing in pain, cause it hurt like a bitch....Anyway, Judy, called me this is the sister I was trying to reach, she lives with Jill. I hang up and she immediately calls back. So anyway, she came, took me to the hospital and supplied me with a second crutch, because conveniently enough she keeps one in her car.

The prognosis was that I both sprained and fractured my ankle. So I've been sleeping on a recliner all week and haven't been to work. I eventually got a hold of my boyfriend. We work at the same place, he's actually my boss, he said not to come in.
Wednesday he came over here and brought me flowers, roses, and a silly little stuffed gorilla. Which brought tears to my eyes, however that might have been the pain....

Anyway, I'll be around.....

EX # 6

Obviously my last post was a big jumbled mess, I really didn't want to write it. The whole point was to chronicle the relationships and to show myself I don't date failures. Though some of my dating experiences are failures, but that's how you learn. All in all I look at them all as growing experiences. I'm not bitter about any of them. It's just that I'm not very proud of the person I was when I was with Jeremy. That's possibly why I put it off for so long. Once again, this bears no reflection on him, He's a great guy, it has everything to do with me and who I was and who I couldn't be. I'll try to be more coherent here.

Right at the tail end of Jeremy moving out, I went to a competition my old high school marching band was in. I met up with John and Mike, two guys that were a couple of years younger than me in high school. It was the fall, they had just graduated that spring. We hung out a few times and John and I got together.

John was like a breath of fresh air. The best way to describe it was that it wasn't hard. The last relationship was so hard. We both had issues with which to deal. John really didn't, he was a good listener and very patient. His advice was always fabulous. "What, your depressed? Just stop it!" A lot of times, I was like, just stop eh? I didn't know it was that simple.

Was it? Not exactly, it came down to writing down all the bad feelings and whether who I felt bad about ever read it or not, it still helped. What good would telling my parents that they were bad parents do anyway? None, it would just make them angry with me. Denial of responsibility is a big thing in my family.

Another good thing was John was away a lot. He went to Purdue for his first year of college. It was disappointing at first. I was used to having my boyfriend under foot. It turns out I prefer to be on my own alot. I didn't realize this before. At about this time I went to work one time and when we get started at an inventory we have a meeting, I looked accross the group and there was my old buddy Cecil. Cecil and I in high school had a pact if we didn't have prom dates then we would go together. I was dating Matt when prom came around and so Cecil went with some skanky girl also named Jessica ( I always thought of her as that gross skanky girl who hang out with my joke buddy Carrie M.) I teased him at the time, just had to take a Jessica but all he could find was a bad substitute of Sweet 'N' Low because I have no Equal. (Uh, if you didn't laugh at that, I don't care, because he did.) Anyway, Cecil built me my first computer, which gave me internet for the first time, and hooked me up with John while he was gone via e-mail. This was also the time Cecil got my younger brother and I hooked on Resident Evil games. We spent an insane amount of time playing Resident Evil 2 on that computer and it was a blast. However we never beat the second disc, it had a flaw on it and wouldn't run. (I know, boo hoo)

When John saw my computer he laughed and said, if you wanted a computer I could have built you one and it would have been better than this one, but it will do. (Ah, the good old days when I had Windows 95.)

As far as dates go, we did the standard, dinner and a movie, or we would go and hang out at a mutual friend of ours Dave's house. Or to his Aunt's house. Yes we had Sex, it was better with John I suppose, or maybe it was just different. I was not too interested at this point, it was just something I did.

The best thing about John was that he was encouraging. The previous winter when I was with Jeremy I quit college. It was all in my head, I was tired of school, I picked the wrong college I think. For high school, I went to a kick ass college prep school called Cathedral High School. As a result I was prepared for college, too well, I'm really impatient and to start with at college I was essentially repeating high school. Really annoying, it seemed a waste of my time and money if all they were going to teach me was what I already knew. John encouraged me to go back to school. I didn't go but the encouragement was nice. No one had encouraged me on the college front before.

Why did it end? John was a good on paper guy. He had the drive to go far. But like me, he's a snob. I wasn't really ready to go back to school, he thought I should, he couldn't understand it. So during a busy month at work he and I couldn't connect at all that month. So he called and we had a discussion. He and I agreed that we did like each other a lot, but busy or not if we really wanted to be together we would. What does that say about our relationship. So we decided to be just friends.

Now after my older brother moved out, my younger brother moved in. Shortly thereafter, Cecil moved into the third bedroom. This was because Cecil said, "I'm being gang-raped by the utility companies in Brownsburg!!!!!" True story, that's what he said. I still went out with John, but we weren't a couple.

John transferred into IUPUI in Indianapolis. His dorm was right down town and he had his own room. One night I went to visit him and we played Gran-Tourismo. I swear that's what we did. Now my brother and Cecil teased that that's just what we called it.

I started to see John less and less. I hung out with my sister and her husband more and more, and they started to hang out with a certain local "musician" at about that time which is where I will stop for now........


to be continued........