The Ramblings of a Hazy Mind

Today my friend Devon was in Bozeman for a while with his family, and his sister had planned a little hike up to Palisade Falls in the Hyalite Canyon. Being that I haven’y really gone outside for a while, and also haven’t hung out with anyone all summer (except my sister of course) I figured I should accept the invitation they offered to go along.

It takes about a half hour drive to get to the base of the trail (paved trail sadly enough, but there are others nearby that aren’t) and about an hour of hiking and playing around up in the hills and at the falls. Altogether it was a pretty good day. Devon is coming up next week as well, so we will probably go look for appartments and maybe buy some camping gear for some trips later in the year. I do need to go camping sometime soon.

Well, it seems I have fallen out of the habbit of posting every day on here. Oh, well. No biggie I guess. It was something I just started doing totally out of the blue one day (including buying the domain name, which I decided to do in about 10 seconds of consideration.) I just thought I would be able to keep myself motivated a bit better and write more often.

It definately helps to know that there are a few people out there in the world (shout out to you WA and CA folks there!) who are reading this every now and then, because I figure they come here expecting to read SOMETHING, so I might as well give them something to read right?

It especially helps when people you are close to (or who might be getting there?) read your spillings, since it reaffirms that they give enough of a ***t about you to spend some time in their day and see what is going on in your life (shout out to a few people there, including you mom ;).)

Wow, I can’t believe I managed to write an entry that long about how I seem to be having trouble writing long entries… Can’t be as hard as I am thinking I guess. It probably helps that it is 3:39 AM and I am too tired to get distracted by the wonderous AntiA.D.D. devices all around me. All I really have left to say is stay tuned! Interesting changes may be afoot.

I just got done reading Black Wind by Clive Cussler (and his son) and State of Fear by Michael Crichton, both of which are excellent books.

The first is a tale about Dirk Pitt’s son, Dirk Pitt Jr. Fitting that it was written by both Clive and Dirk Cussler in this case. The story starts out with a Korean submarine on an attack mission to the northwestern cost of the United States that is sunk and lost for many years, and the terrorists who discover it’s weapon contents form old documents and try to bring back the terror that lay awaiting on the ocean bed for so long.

The Crichton story is about a highyl wealthy environmentalist who funds a very important lawsuit from the island nation of Vanutu against the United States for their rising sea levels that are flooding their country caused by the global warming that the US is such a major contributor to. Over the course of the novel though, the global warming problem is proven to be basically nonexistant, and with a few other twists the problem is solved by other means.

Crichton of course uses all factual data which he cites in the back of his novel to show that his theory put forth through the fiction of the novel is an entirely factually based claim that holds without the help of the tale he weaves to bring his view to the public.

Now all I have left to read are computer books… oh well, back to my nerdy self I guess.

I talked to an old friend of mine that I have only seen once since about 8th grade, and he suggested that I take a trip out to see him sometime over the summer now that he has gotten himself totally situated in New York and is familiar with everything around there. I thought this would be a good idea, so I decided to go check on plane ticket prices. Here is what I have found for a round trip from Bozeman to New York:

Expedia says this:
1:04 pm Depart Bozeman (BZN)
Arrive New York (LGA) 9:36 pm
Duration: 6hr 32mn
$531.00

Their partner Hotwire says:
Any Time Depart Bozeman (BZN)
Arrive New York (LGA) Any Time
Duration: NA
$435.00

I have a feeling Hotwire would make me leave at 2:00 AM. I think I can deal with it though. I probably wouldn’t be in bed yet anyway :/ Now all I have to do is find a week where I can be gone (or do some bits of work from there).

So tonight my sister and her husband and I watched Ladder 49 and Sideways (well, I watched Sideways, because they like sleep) and I would have to say they are both pretty good; although, I think Sideways could have ended better, maybe with one of those car driving into the sunset scenes or something.

I still haven’t gotten around to making my pie yet, but we do have eggs now, so tomorrow is probably the day for it.

On a totally unrelated note: a while ago I posted a rather lengthy and babbling entry about my opinions on love, and have since decided something that needs to happen in my life. I need a girl to flirt with. I don’t care if she has a boyfriend or if she doesn’t even have a second passing thought about dating me, but I need to flirt… bad.

I’m not sure how that will sound to someone who doesn’t spend all day inside my head, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. I’m just getting so damn bored out here in Belgrade. Oh well, only a few months and then there will be 14,000 people on campus again. There has to be a flirter somewhere in those numbers.

So there is one thing about this work situation that I am not so sure about - What do I do when I’m not working? I guess I could always play some computer games or program my own stuff for a while, but none of those things seem to be keeping my attention much lately.

Granted attention keeping is not exactly the simplest task for my brain being that I have the worst A.D.D. known to man (and no, I don’t take drugs for it. I hate brain altering chemicals :p.) All I can think to do is sleep, and that is clearly not a very productive way to go about the day.

Maybe I should start baking or something. I haven’t really made anything substantial in the kitchen since I moved up here for school, and I really want some key lime pie right about now.

You know what… key lime pie it is. I’ll tell you how it turns out.

My employer told me a few weeks ago that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep me busy enough so that I wouldn’t need to get another PT job this summer. HAH! Our Client Services Director has intro’ed me on the two task management programs we use, and has been assigning little things to me all day and it is working out great.

I was really hoping to not have to get anotehr PT job (probably a crappy food flipping one), and now it looks like I won’t have to. I have been working since 9:00 this morning on things, and there’s still more to do. The only reason I am posting this now is because I am taking a short lunch break between tasks. Man this job is sweet.

The other day at the grocery store, I saw some pretty good looking artichokes for $1.50 each and decided to buy a couple for dinner sometime this week. Today I ended up cooking them and man were they amazing. Of course 2/3s of the reason for the way the artichokes taste is my mother’s ‘recipe’ for hollandaise cause, simple as it is, it has to be the best tasting sauce on the planet.

So, after my sister and I finished eating our lovely meal of artichokes with hollandaise we decided that we needed to do something with the egg whites we had left over, so we made three kinds of meringue cookies with them: plain, chocalate chip, and raspberry preserve. Boy our mother would be proud.

Well, it was a terribly uneventful first day of summer, so I am sure I will have nothing to write here, but as you may have noticed, I hate leaving a day on the calendar without some sort of entry (boy that was a lot of commas.) I guess I will just give a rundown of what the day entailed even though it was fairly boring.

I woke up this morning, took a shower, called a coworker to get some short training on a few software products we are using to manage projects and client information, drove to my sister’s office, fixed her computer, went to some stores, came home, ate dinner, sat here, typed. All that took from about 8:00 AM to 8:30 PM.

I sure do know how to stretch a few things out for a whole day.

Well, it is that time of year again when every female with a child is supposed to get a free day of relaxation and happiness, although I am not entirely sure that’s how it turns out for all of them :/

Anyway, this year for Mother’s Day, my sister and I stayed where we are, and our mom came up to visit us. We had the best lunch/dinner ever (what we always have for holidays it seems), ham and scalloped potatoes. Granted, something got burned in the oven at our house, I am almost entirely sure that is because mom is used to cooking in her stove in Billings that is probably heating up to about 20 degrees colder than what you set it to, and it was still the best holiday meal ever regardless.

So I guess this is my Mother’s Day card to you mom, since I’m too terribly A.D.D. to remember to go and get one at the store, so Happy Mother’s Day mom! I love you, and thank you for the wonderous lunch (I am snacking on the leftovers for breakfast today.)