Can you guess what my first sentence will be? Wrong, it's not "It's been a while;" it's "Can you guess what my first sentence will be?" How could you be so off? Am I to blame? Was it bad a bad upbringing? Was I really that bad of a teacher?!

It's alright; I'm better now, now that I've imagined your apology, as heartfelt as I imagine it must have been. You're forgiven.

When we last communicated via RSS, I was still in Port Orchard. It's fair to say much has changed. I don't really remember where I left off, and at the moment I don't actually have an internet connection, so I can't check, but suffice to say nothing all that important happened in my last remaining days there. Mostly it was packing, or stalling on packing. I really only finished about half, though I bet my mom would argue even less than that. A lot of it was stuff from my apartment at Western, and that stuff was never unpacked.

Sunday evening came, and I was supposed to visit my aunt and uncle in Bothel for dinner. I left about a half hour before we were supposed to have it, but my sister said she was running late too. We were supposed to meet at her apartment and then drive there in one car. I got a call while en route, but since I was driving, and it was past July 1st (July 6th to be precise), I ignored it. I was on I-5 and couldn't really pull over. Apparently I'm one of the few people who takes that law even slightly seriously. I just know that I'm absolutely helpless on the phone. Today I was on the phone, sitting in my chair, and when I finished, I realized I was standing. Helpless and/or standing don't go well together with driving. I didn't much like getting on the phone while driving before the law went into effect, and now I have a valid, righteous excuse.

I got to her apartment and checked the message, which of course was to meet her at my aunt's, and hopped back into the car. I confirmed that it's about a fifteen minute drive from her place to my aunt's. You all can breathe easy now, or, at least easier -- there's still the unresolved case of the glove that didn't fit, unless such information was uhh... speculated about... in If I Did It.

So, I got there pretty late, after they'd already eaten. They gave me tacos while they ate their ice cream, and we talked. They also presented to me my graduation gift: a The NEW Super Mario Bros. lunchbox with an Arby's gift card in it. I don't know what they expected me to do with the gift card, but the lunchbox makes a great mantelpiece. William (or at least I hope that's his alias), my cousin, wanted to play Mario Kart with me, but I was pretty beat, and had my first day of work the next morning at 8:30, so we called it a night around 11:45.

On the way back I stopped to get gas, which freaked out my sister since I was no longer following her. It's probably about time I renamed her. Her name shall be Ashley. I suppose I could call her Travis for just as good of reason, but that might confuse our future audiences. See, had I been born a girl, I'd have been named Ashley. That was before they thought of the name-- very tricksy; ya almost got me, but I'm still one step ahead of you. And if she'd been born a guy after I was born a guy, her name would be Travis. So, as I said, it makes more sense to call her Travis than Ashley, but you understand. And if you don't, I suggest rereading this post from the start. You probably missed something important and entirely relevant in the second or third paragraph, which of course wouldn't make sense without having a complete understanding of the first.

Anyway, I got to Ashley's and Travis's apartment a bit later, where they freaked out at me a bit. I was about to get ready for bed, but decided first to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. As it turns out, in order to fill out a certain form, I needed my passport, which of course earlier that day I had looked and decided I wasn't heading to Canada any time soon and left in my room. It was my turn to freak out. I called my mom who said she would have driven it to me, at least half way, had she not had a paper to finish that night for her Master's program. So, three hours later I got back to their apartment. On the way there, while I was still pretty stressed and on edge, worried about my first day of work and being awake for it, and not knowing what to expect, and whatever else, I really felt like God wanted me to go the speed limit the rest of the way home. How annoying, right? I don't go much over the speed limit, but I do consistently go five over. After a few minutes of arguing that it was my imagination, I gave in. I'm not sure what the reason was that God wanted me to, but I am convinced that he did. It very well could have been for no other reason than that it calmed me down. I get frustrated when people don't maintain their speed, or drive so that I can't pass them, or whatever else. Going 60 on the freeway allowed me to stay in the right lane the whole way. Sure I was passed, but that's what the left lanes are for, and I only had to pass a couple people, when there wasn't much surrounding traffic. I'm still not great at maintaining my speed in that car. I miss the van, though not as much now as I used to. The van was amazing for maintaining your speed, probably because of its mass, but also the gas pedal was somehow nicer.

Like I said, three hours later I got back to their apartment. They were sleeping on the couch so closely, it seemed like they were one body. I took their bed, which was scarcely large enough for one of me, and fell straight to sleep. (Okay, I think I've taken that far enough. Ashley will be singular again.)

I woke up around 6 the next morning. The night prior I had thought I was going to don my suit for the first day, but thought better of it while back in Port Orchard. I got to the campus, and actually into the building I was supposed to get to, around 7:00. I had expected traffic and to get lost several times, and allotted time accordingly. So I sat for an hour and a half. I played a little bit of my DS. I've been playing Phoenix Wright. It's a pretty fun game, and I highly recommend it to any DS-toting reader. It's certainly not a typical game, and like any software, it does have its quirks. I actually beat it tonight. It's irritating because even if you find a contradiction, you have to present the contradiction the game is expecting. For example in the last case, the witness testifies that someone was stabbed in the chest, when his autopsy specifically says he was stabbed in the back, but the contradiction they were looking for was that the murder weapon had a broken tip before entering the victim. (Gaul's nodding in recollection at this point.)

Around 8:00 they started handing out nametags to the thirty or so of us who had shown up early. I had been the first by about 10 minutes, then a couple more came and so on. Eventually there were 211 of us -- all starting the same day. I'm not sure it was absolutely necessary that I had gone home to get my Passport, but they did ask for it, and what's done is done. I made the right choice in not wearing my suit -- no one was. (I really doubt they'd fit in it anyway; I'm pretty thin.) Everyone was, however, dressed like I would for a church I've never been to: khakis or slacks and a nice shirt, so I fit in just fine. That's how we dressed the first day. The second day, everyone was in jeans.

So, for the first day and a half, we were in a program called NEO (New Employee Orientation). A woman lead the program/class. She seemed to go by her alias as much as her name. Aliases are basically what our email addresses are: <alias>@micrsoft.com. We can apply to get a nice address like, <firstname>.<lastname>@microsoft.com, but no one does for campus email. She lead the class pretty effectively, giving us lots of information without overloading us, and taking breaks for guest speakers and tens, if not billions, of short movies. The first speaker on the first day was a vice president of something, who gave his speech on innovation. He showed this 10 minute movie on how people at Microsoft envisioned the future of healthcare. All the buildings were white. All the clothing was white. All the counter tops were white. All the electronics were white. You get the picture. The first scene was a woman jogging, and some apparatus was keeping track of her vitals, and sending that information to her doctor and nutritionist, who then were put up on her white wall when she got home to have a video conference. Next up was her doctor, who after the conference, pulled out his white PalmPilot-like device, which gave him directions to his next patient's room. That kind of bothers me because I want my doctor to know how to get to rooms in his workplace, without some electronic device to guide him like the lines in Wall-E. Also, on his way there, he passed maybe one or two people. What kind of hospital lacks people? Anyway, his patient was white in a white hospital robe, in white sheets, on a white bed. His white table had two prescription bottles. A bell dinged from the table, and one of the red circles around the base of one of the bottles turned green. He picked up the bottle, and the circled followed under it until it was not above the surface anymore. He took his medication and as he put the bottle back, a red circle followed it. Anyway, his talk presented this as an example of good innovation, something to strive for and look forward to. Really? Haven't we seen I, Robot? I don't want my life to be so run by software. Sure, we already rely on it quite a bit. I'm typing right now, but at least I can still write on paper (if you can call it handwriting). We have traffic lights governed by software, but when the power goes out, we know how to stop and pretend the intersection is a 4-way stop. Dare I say the internet dies and we no longer have email or Amazon.com, I'm sure we'll all remember how to use USPS and Barnes and Nobel, with a little practice.

After that he warned of us "bad innovation," which was hacking and the like. Not that I at all advocate the destructive capabilities of the skilled programmer (and I decidedly do not), but in a way, it seemed to me that the hackers here were the Rebel Alliance, to business technology's (not Microsoft's or any company's in particular) Galactic Empire.

He also talked a bit about bugs, and his dream that one day, some thirty years down the road or so, they'd look back and be boggled that buggy software once existed. He showed us some of Microsoft's best. I've seen screenshots of most of them in emails caught by my spam filter a couple times, so odds are you've seen them too. Some ones, I suppose, weren't in the emails because they were only funny to devs, like errors that say "Overflow at line 1." The average person doesn't know that that error means, "Hey, come exploit me at line one, Mr. Hacker!" Still, my favorite was a serious design flaw in some software that someone (I don't know if it was MS or not) wrote for hotels. Apparently this was an intranet site so people could order videos or something from their hotel room, and the site would automatically tack that onto your bill. Anyway, there was a "fee" parameter in the URL, so "somehotel.com/movierental.asp?fee=8.95" or something like it. It turns out if you got rid of the parameter, it completely crashed the system so no one could use it, which is bad enough in itself, but of course, what values are programmers going to try? fee=0.00, of course made it free, but no, that's not good enough. fee=-100.00. That's more like it, and yes, it worked. We've come a long way since then. I hope.

All the videos, particularly the first day, made it feel a little cultish, actually. Microsoft is such a great place to work. Here's another reason it can be your new god. There was a guy who apparently was being hired to public relations with a jacket that said "Evangelist" on the back, as in Micrsoft Evangelism, which is actually a department there. Their goal is to go out and get people excited about Microsoft technologies. It's not a bad goal, but the word "evangelist" in particular bothers me. And then the whole idea of being called by your alias rather than your name... Cults often rename their members, yes? In two week's experience, however, working at Microsoft doesn't at all feel like a cult. On the contrary, in a cult (or so I would imagine), you're brainwashed into believing everything about the cult is truth and the best and so on, whereas at Microsoft, we're extremely self-critical.

The second guest speaker was a woman who talked to us about our benefits at Microsoft. The one I'm most excited about is a program called GIVE, where MS will match dollar for dollar any donation to a government-approved non-profit organization that fit some pretty broad criteria (basically, they won't match my tithes, but I hadn't even considered that until I read the criteria), up to $12,000 a year. If that's not insentive to give generously, I don't know what is. So, the amount God pushed me to give to the INN over the summer is being matched, and the donation toward Hime's September Jamaica mission trip is being matched toward her trip. I'm very excited. The rest of our benefits are pretty amazing too. In Washington state, we have three health plans to choose from, and they'll actually give us a little bit back each paycheck if we choose the Group Health option (which I did -- I don't really have a reason to see a doctor outside of Washington for the time being, and I can always change it in some November down the road).

The next day, we had a speaker from Legal talk. He was pretty funny, as we were promised on day one. Unfortunately, for entirely valid reasons, we're not really allowed to talk about much of what goes on at work, and every division is different. For example, XBox devs don't talk about their products pre-release at all, even to other devs within Microsoft, whereas my group, SSDS, is a bit more laxed. We can talk about what it does (in fact much of it is documented in MSDN), but how it does it is completely hush-hush, outside of the company. Another unfortunate must is that we can't really work on Open Source stuff, because if we look at source that's copyrighted, we're corrupted in the sense that we can't then go write code similar to it, or the big meanies who maintain the GPL will come sue us, and perhaps rightfully so.

Anyway, expect whatever content I do post here in the future to lack much information about work.

Around noon on the second day, they gave us all our Microsoft badges that grant us access to the buildings we're in. From there, I walked two buildings over to where my group is. There, they set me up with a computer and such, and for the rest of the day I put it together and installed Windows Server 2003, and so on. I have a peer mentor who's worked at MS for a few years, but in this department only about a month or two, and he's been a wonderful resource and friend to me, helping me get settled and get a grasp on things. I hope someday I can pass on the favor -- and have as much patience as he's displayed.

Until this past Wednesday (so for about a week), I've been working on a toy program of my own design that uses the software we're developing; so I was writing a program as if I were a third-party company. Using it was remarkably simple, though there are a few features that we'll get to later that would be nice to have.

Meetings are pretty fun, especially if they're brainstorming meetings, because people get pretty heated. It doesn't really get unprofessional, but there's definitely a debate and sides taken and everything, and then when the meeting is over, everyone walks out as if nothing happened except good ideas. At least that's the impression I got.

On Friday night, I was exhausted, but not as badly as I was on Thursday night. Ashley had to work late, so I got to her apartment, took an hour nap, got up to watch Last Comic Standing, and went back to sleep. I must have had some quality sleep, because Friday morning was the most awake I'd been all week. Anyway, after work on Friday, I drove up to Bellingham, and stayed with Hime again. Rufus's wedding was the next day, so that was the primary reason I went up, but also to visit.

God works in mysterious ways: a cliché, but a true statement nonetheless. A few weeks ago when I was apartment shopping, the guy who worked at the apartments I decided on told me that in order to have some fees waived, I'd have to email him a copy of the first page of my offer letter within three business days. Wednesday morning, I did. I tend to get fairly paranoid when it comes to things like this, so that night I almost got out of bed to make sure I did in fact send it and then if I had, to write an email to confirm. But something stayed my, er body I guess, as I was in bed. Friday, at work, I got a call from the guy asking if I had ever sent that letter, to which I said I did, and he figured it was just caught by his spam filter and asked me to send it again. That whole week I had been putting off calling the place to tell them that I'd be moving in on Sunday because of the wedding on Saturday. It wasn't so much putting it off as I was just busy. Anyway, after I emailed it to him and stayed on the line until he got it, I asked him about moving in on Sunday, and he said that they were closed, so I'd have to get my keys that night. So, had my email not been filtered, or had I emailed a confirmation (though who's to say that wouldn't have been filtered too), or had I not had to send him my offer letter, or had he not called me (as by that point I had forgotten), I wouldn't have been able to move in on Sunday, and that would have been quite messy.

Anyway, I don't remember much of that night. We went to an improv show that was so-so. Hime gave me my The INN hoodie. I guess she had worn it, which doesn't bother me, except that yesterday I kept smelling her scent and it distracted me. In a good way. The wedding, on the other hand, I remember just about all of. Hime is a confusing girl. Honestly, sometimes she makes me feel like trash, and most of the time she makes me feel great, and then sometimes, like during the wedding, she makes me feel luckier than the groom to have such a good friend, to be so close to someone like her. She didn't do anything in particular, I don't think, but somehow she made me feel loved, and liked for that matter. One of our friends at the wedding, a photography enthusiast, took a picture of the two of us. He posted it on Facebook Wednesday night and Hime commented on it. The next morning I saw both. Some combination of the quality of his camera, the skill with which he wields it, and the beauty I had my arm around, produced my favorite photo in years, if not ever. I asked him for the original (since the Facebook one was severely shrunk). Even though it was taken upright, the width was large enough that I still had to shrink it side to side to fit my desktop background, 1680 pixels wide. The 1050 pixel height is just enough for our faces. It looks almost as if that was the entire photo. At the risk of seeming too interested... actually, let me do this right.

In the parking lot, after the wedding, it just felt right that while I was in my suit and tux shirt, I should open the door for my date. She teased it was the suit that made me a gentleman. So for the rest of the weekend, if I thought about it, I opened the car doors for her -- it seemed to make her happier, and I like seeing my best friend happy. At one point during the wedding, I was introducing her to a guy I knew, and he asked if she was my girlfriend. I said, "Nah, we're just friends." She pretended to get all offended because I didn't say "best friends," and made me correct myself. She knows how she rates in my life.

From there we went back to her apartment to change into our bathing suits and head to the lake to meet the girls from her house. First we hit Boomer's, where I ordered too much. At the lake, there was a girl in a very pink, and somewhat skimpy bikini, though as Hime later said, she could pull it off. I did my best to not be distracted by her, but at one point, I was talking to one of Rosa's friends, and pink bikini girl and a bunch of other people with her started walking by. I didn't even know who it was that caught my attention out of the corner of my eye, but I glanced to the right real quick as I would had it been anything moving: car, squirrel, boomerang, guy, or pink bikini girl. Apparently Roas's friend noticed my glance, and turned around to see what I was looking at; when she turned back she had a smirk on her face.

That night we ended up watching the Wedding Singer since half of our group had never seen it. Adam Sandler is real hit-or-miss with me. This one was a hit, though. It's not the best movie ever made, but it still was pretty good, if a bit chick-flickish, but what would you expect when the title includes the words "wedding" and "singer?"

Sunday morning, we went to Morris's church. It was pretty tiny, maybe thirty people, but they seemed like they all knew each other. I wouldn't mind being part of a church that size. I think three or four different people came and talked to the four of us visiting to get to know us and such.

Pretty immediately after church, I packed up and headed to Redmond. There I met my mom and Jack who had driven up a U-Haul with all my stuff in it. They forgot only one major thing: my desk. Even so, I was very grateful, and they, along with my aunt, uncle, two cousins, and grandma helped me move in. It took about an hour from start to finish. I was impressed. I'm actually pretty happy with this apartment. There are few things that could probably use a little repair, like the bathroom door that doesn't like to close, but it seems to be a nice neighborhood, and it's pretty quiet. Also, the location is great. Without traffic, it's an 8 minute drive to work. My mom keeps bugging me to get involved in a carpool, and I might, except that my hours seem to be pretty sporadic, and I don't want to tie down another person to my schedule, or have myself tied down to them. Also, it's really not very much gas from here to work.

On Monday after work, I spent about $250 on stuff I did need for the apartment, from food to a shower curtain to a lamp to some towels. Apparently you're supposed to wash towels before you use them or they shed on you. Lesson learned. Sort of. I still haven't washed them. Tomorrow I will. I need to do laundry here soon anyway. Also, my pillow needs to be cleaned. But that's neither here nor there.

Yesterday I began working on my tasks for this sprint. A sprint is a phase in agile software development. Basically it's a 5 to 6-week time where we work on very specific tasks, and then we take a short breather working not as hard on specs and such, and then do it again. I still don't know enough about what I'm doing to feel comfortable asking questions, but I'll get there. Also, I'm having a hard time remembering names, and I feel terrible about it. No one else there seems to have that problem, or to have had that problem in the past, whereas other issues with being new they sympathize with.

Last night a guy from CCF called me because his dad was having programming issues. He was working with InfoPath (which I've never used) and a script he downloaded off the internet (never a good start). It'd have been a 3 minute fix if I'd had an internet connection, but between figuring out what his code looked like over the phone, and realizing he was using JScript rather than VBScript, and convincing him that in if statements in most languages, the == operator is different than the = operator, it took a couple hours. Not that I'm complaining. I enjoy being helpful. Most of the time anyway. This morning I received a Facebook wall post from the guy saying that his dad was really grateful and owed me a dinner.

Tomorrow Ashley and I are going kitteh shopping. That should be fun. On Sunday I hope to look at the church that Solomon suggested a few weeks back, but for that I'll have to access the internet, and I'm not sure where I'll do that. Maybe I'll drive onto campus.

It's not really that late, 12:30, but I'm exhausted all the same. Bedtime.

I just woke up at the crack of 2pm when my grandpa called checking up on my mom. Apparently she had called and left a message saying she'd call back which she hasn't so he got a little worried. Anyway, he and I had a nice, be it brief, conversation about my new apartment (which I still always spell with two 'p's the first time) and my car and my job and that I'm going to live with my sister for the first week of work.

The dream I had woken up from was an odd one. I wish I still remembered it vividly, but after the conversation with my grandpa, I almost forgot about it. I dreamt I had died the day before my mom's wedding, and gone to heaven, or more like this waiting area before heaven. It wasn't limbo or purgatory or anything. It was like heaven's lobby, like Welcome to Heaven! We have trains leaving every evening sort of thing. So I was there with a bunch of people I knew from church. My mom even showed up at one point. Jesus was there and sort of directing things, and kids were playing in a yard. It wasn't heaven as you'd expect it though. People were sad, and the weather was cloudy, then rainy, then freezing cold and snowy. Christians always talk about questions they'll ask God when they get to heaven. I tried a few of them out on Jesus, and received only questions in return, just like he would have answered on earth. That made me irritated, and angry -- two things I wouldn't expect in heaven.

We went to have dinner in a house, a very large house. I think we flew (in a plane of sorts) to get there. Out the window you could see a lot of land, but it wasn't beautiful. Most of it needed reworking, or had abandoned buildings in decay or burnt down leaving only charred beams sticking out of the ground. Before dinner, we watched or played some video game that was a combination of Mario and Godzilla with the Wiimote. I broke my record for timing this car-jack pumping motion as Mario was trying to bounce Godzilla's mouth open. A couple people that were in my youth group when I was in youth group were watching. I never got the feeling they liked me much except to make fun of me (in real life), and their attitudes hadn't really changed.

Dinner was salad from a bag (the lettuce was a little old and turning white), steamed rice, steamed vegetables, and roasted pig. I think at least most of that came from imagining my mom's wedding dinner -- at least the pig did. The rice and cheap lettuce may have come from the dinner on my birthday when we went to King's Teriyaki.

At some point one of the guys that didn't like me pulled out a laptop that was running Vista, but he had the Windows 95 scheme to it -- those people always bothered me. Also, he had a windowed X11 process running, and I was trying to figure out how he did that, a little jealous that he knew how when I was the CS major. It turned out he didn't know how he did it. One of the other guys commented, "You always did love computers, huh?" That's the kind of thing people say when they want you to feel included but have no idea how to actually talk about the topic they know you're interested in. It also implies that they think that's all you're interested in, if that's the only way they start a conversation with you. We talked a little bit laughing at jokes about the size of computer chips, saying the guy with the laptop was using eight pounds of memory, which translated to like 128K.

At some point, before or after this I don't remember, I was thinking, this isn't what heaven is supposed to be like. Things are supposed to be better. We're supposed to be entirely fulfilled by God's presence, and yet, it felt no different than on earth. We were supposed to see God's face! Jesus was supposed to answer questions, rather than questioning the validity of the question, or even dodging it, it felt. We aren't supposed to feel things like jealousy, annoyance, and anger, because there weren't supposed to be reasons to feel those things. People, myself included, weren't supposed to be harboring grudges from back on earth. I never really figured there'd be "technology" in Heaven. The land should be cleaner, and untouched by human hands perhaps -- not burnt and destroyed and misused and strip-mined. Then a question occurred to me: how would you expect heaven to be? My answer started out sort of stereotypically -- not like clouds and harps and halos and such, but like, clean and beautiful. Then to finish my sentence, I said "and people would help each other, selflessly." But how can people help each other if we have all our needs met?

Of course, I don't expect to see heaven as I saw it in my dream. It contradicts the Bible a half a dozen times. But that last question, that one's got me thinking right now. The new earth we'll live on -- I assume we'll have to take care of it, will get to take care of it, and will succeed in taking care of it, unlike the one we're currently on. But I wonder if there will be needs met by God, but through us, just like on earth. We will work, but will we need to work to sustain ourselves? Will there be money? Will Jesus answer questions like "Did evolution happen?" and "Was Noah's ark a story or history?" Or will he answer them asking, "Does it matter?" If he does, will that frustrate me?

Well, since I'm already halfway through a decent-sized post, I suppose I ought to finish it, recapping what's happened since my last post. It wouldn't be justice to forget those things, right? And it's certainly not just an excuse not to finish (or start) packing. Anything but that.

Saturday the 28th, I went to Seattle to visit Alexander. He lives in a nice apartment with a few of his friends from college. It's sort of in the middle of a busy suburb, and the closest big street, he can only turn right onto. I think that'd annoy me. Can saying something like that be taken offensively? Saying something about an apartment he didn't build doesn't say anything about him. He chose the apartment, with his friends, and he seems to like it, which is all that really matters, so....

After dinner and watching him play the Sims a little bit, and then of course Rummy filled with stories of 21st-year rituals, I headed up to Bellingham to visit. I stayed at Hime's place. Her sister was supposed to come up the same night, so I might have had to go sleep at Hime's house for next year, but she didn't ever show. Around 10 or 11, Hime and I started to get hungry, and she and I badgered Gaul and Cammy into going to Applebee's with us -- because I haven't spent enough money there already. Hime especially enjoyed riding in my car, after three years of driving me around. A thought occurred to me the next day watching her play Halo: Is the reason people call "shotgun" because that seat, in a war vehicle seats someone who shoots as the other person drives? Another question for Heaven. So the four of us were seated, and the waiter thought it was a double date, so we joked that Gaul and I were there together, and Cammy and Hime. While we were waiting for our food, somehow innuendo started that Hime wanted to be on Gaul, and when it got to be a little out of hand, Cammy said somewhat jokingly, "This isn't good dinner conversation." Without missing a beat (and quite honestly without thinking first), I said, "Yeah, we keep work at work." I think it was the quickest funny insult I've ever come up with. I don't really know how Hime took it. She sort of glared at me and said, "Thanks Jordan." I would never mean that seriously.

We went back and talked for a while longer, but went to bed pretty quickly. It was quite hot that night, and even with the windows open, I slept without a shirt or blanket, still sweating, until around 3am, when the heat died down. I'd planned on going to FPC that morning, but Hime didn't want to go, and most of the people I normally sit with were out of town. I was certainly capable of going alone, but I didn't.

That day, whether intentionally or not, Hime reminded me of why we wouldn't make a good couple, even were she attracted to me.

We all watched her play Halo for a bit. Gaul and I played a little bit of Smash Bros, but she's not really played it yet, so she doesn't have almost any of the unlockable characters. That morning I made a Facebook event to see Wall-E that evening and invited some 50 people. I knew most wouldn't make it, because they were out of town or were busy and it was late notice and such. Two that weren't in the apartment I was staying in, came, Bob and Nikkie, and it was a lot of fun. Rosa had gone home that weekend because her parents offered to pay for gas. I had been hoping she might make it back up in time. We got to the theater a good 45 minutes early, got tickets, and walked over to McDonald's. When we got back, the only section of five seats (Cammy had to see it with her boyfriend first) together left available were in two rows, so Nikkie, Bob, and I sat in front of Hime and Gaul. The movie is hilarious. Seriously, it's probably my favorite Pixar movie and I'm a sucker for those.

Pretty soon after the movie, I drove back home. I wasn't in any rush, so I didn't really mind any of the traffic I hit, which was sparse to begin with. Further, there was a spectacular lightning show in the clouds. A Third Day song came on called "Show Me Your Glory" and right as the line, "It was like a flash of lighting / Reflected off the skies" was sung, a lightning bolt streaked from cloud to cloud. The storm must have lasted an hour. Oddly, the drive home was my favorite part of the weekend, because it was the closest I've felt to God in a long time.

Monday was my birthday. I went out to lunch with a family friend, as is tradition, to Silver City. They had changed their menu, and the pizza I normally get was pretty gross. I'm not even sure the root beer was the same. Next year I think we'll pick a different restaurant. Traditions die hard.

That evening, I went with my mom and Jack to see Wall-E again. It was good the second time as well, though no one laughed at the thing I thought was funniest the first time around. Apparently they haven't been around Macintosh enough. After that, like I said, I went to King's Teriyaki.

On Tuesday I met with Eowyn over smoothies. I really should have told them to hold the chalky supplement. Them be nasty things. We talked about all sorts of things. I had asked her via txt earlier how things were going with finding answers about God, and she said it'd be best to talk over those things in person, so I purposely brought it up. I'd been a little worried that she'd given up in her faith, but it turns out she was just realizing that you can be a Christian without being her parents. And she was finding it difficult to act outside of how people expected her to act, which is common, I think, in people her age -- it's the real reason we like to go off to college. And we talked about her crazy roommate situation (left intentionally ambiguous). They were going to have to delay moving in together because of various reasons, and I thought maybe the apartments might let Eowyn move in first into a single-room, and then switch rooms partway through the lease within the same complex. A couple of the complexes I visited when I was hunting offered to do that. Alas, hers does not. She'd gotten pretty excited about that prospect too.

On Wednesday I began to pack a little. I've been playing WoW for nearly a month now, and am pretty bored of it. I leveled from 27 to 39 quicker than I've ever leveled, with much help from QuestHelper. I also met a couple people during a run of RFC, Lipsandhips and Lessie. The three of us were making fun of the other two, who were bickering. One was a Warlock who liked to tank with his grey sword, and the other, who was much better, claimed to be one of the best PvP hunters in WoW. Anyway, the three of us all friended each other and Lipsandhips always talks to me when we're on at the same time. Anyway, on Tuesday or Wednesday I got bored of the 30-39 PvP bracket and leveled to get my mount. On Wedneday I told Lipsandhips that I probably wouldn't be on much anymore because I was starting work and had to pack up my desktop and such. She seemed sad, which I thought was kind of funny, because we really haven't had any meaningful conversation.

On Thursday I discovered Mario Kart Wii online battle. It's the most fun I've had playing a game in a very long time. It's simple and doesn't take long to find a game, and you can be good at it, but you don't have to be in order for it to be fun. It's not laggy. And it's free! No monthly fees! I spent most of that day playing the Grand Prix cups trying to unlock everything. I met a crossroads when Dry Bones was unlocked and I suddenly had to choose between him and Koopa Troopa. I chose Dry Bones, and that decision was solidified when I unlocked The Quacker, which is the most awesome bike there is. Dry Bones in the Quacker looks sleek and deadly, accentuated by the giant duck head acting as a wind shield. Koopa in The Quacker looks silly with a bunch of different colors, when The Quacker was quite obviously meant to be chrome and grey. The one down-side to the combination is that Mario Kart Wii has really messed up physics for bumping into other players, and well, if you tap someone Dry Bones in the Quacker will fly off the track, even against someone like Baby Mario on the generic dirt bike. This leads me to believe that babies should not be driving dirt bikes.

Yesterday I caught up on Last Comic Standing. They didn't pick a few of the people I would have picked, in particularly Stone and Stone, and Mary, but Marcus made it through and he was the best performer that night. Papa CJ did make it through, and I usually like him, but during that performance he didn't tell any new jokes, so that was kind of a downer. That evening I went to Jack's house to watch fireworks. I thought I would like one of his British friends, but he plays smarter than he is, and that was a letdown. After the show, I began to drive home, and there was a firetruck coming toward me. A very wide one, I think, with its lights flashing. I stopped first, and so did he, then I tried to move as far right as I could, and stopped again when I heard a loud pop. After he passed me, I pulled over, and found that I had hit a car with my right mirror, which had popped off, seeming undamaged. It had dented the other car's left blinker and left a scrape, that I hope will be easily buffed out along the side of the car. I knocked on the door of the closest house and asked if the owner of the vehicle was there. He was pretty cool about it and I think he agreed not to call my insurance company, but I'm not sure about that, as long as I agreed to pay for the damages, which I of course did. He also didn't call the police, and for that I was grateful.

That about catches this blog up with my life. Now I need to shower, dress, and hope I can get to Vlist's before it closes so they can pop that mirror back on before I leave tomorrow.