I woke up this morning with a tune stuck in my head. It was just a few measures. I was trying to place it, while I lied there in bed, something about pleasures. Oooh look! I rhymed! Too bad it had nothing to do with pleasures. At first I thought it was a tune from Fable, but then I placed it at the climax of a movie. Now I can't remember which movie, so that bothers me a bit. I wanted to confirm the placement.

I've not slept well in a while, including last night. For the past many years, I've dreamt virtually every night. These past couple weeks, though, every night has brought bad dreams. They weren't scary, but they were always stressful, and I've woken up well before I've wanted to. The first three nights it was at 5am, then 6am. This morning I woke up at 7am, but I think that had more to do with the kids playing outside my window. They wake up around 7:30, I'm guessing, every weekday morning, and now that it's Saturday, their day off, it's a good idea to sleep in until 7. Yeah, that makes sense.

My cat just ruined my train of thought. Stupid bugger got on the table again, so I got up and he ran under my bed. I pulled him out and coldly soaked him with the squirt bottle. I wish they'd just learn not to get on the table. They've gotten better about it. They don't get up there innocently anymore. They know they're not supposed to. They seem to take turns being the good cat. Calloh has been good for about a week now, though they both still scratch up the inside of the couch. I wish we hadn't torn that lining off the bottom. I think that was done because a cat or ferret had started tearing at it.

This past week, and really well back into half of the week before, I got no work done. Between sickness (no more strawberry cream cheese), the day I couldn't motivate myself no matter how many games of Minesweeper I played, and being blocked the rest of the time, there was just nothing I could really do. There were things I thought I could do. I'm an expert now on upgrading the backend bits, but each time I've tried (and it takes a few hours if it works -- a wasted few hours if it doesn't, and you have to restart), I've found another bug relating to my task, and have to wait another three days for the fix to be made, approved, and tested. It certainly could be worse, as my peer mentor pointed out. In some projects it used to take a month for a bug in one area to be propagated to areas where the bug fix was needed. All of this to say I made progress yesterday -- significant progress. In fact, after this latest bug is fixed (hopefully Monday), approved (hopefully Monday afternoon, though likely Tuesday), tested (Tuesday night -- hopefully without causing a failure), and downloaded to my machine, I'm confident that, if my part won't work already, I will finish it by end-of-day (eod) Wednesday. Hopefully that makes up for 10 days of progresslessness. Yes, I know it's not a word, but look at how many esses there are in it!

Two weekends ago my church had a barbeque right after it. That was pretty fun. The community and fellowship there is great. One thing I'm starting to consider, though, is the worship. It's kind of selfish really, and Harper's former worship pastor had to deal with this issue a lot, but I'm not sure I like the style of worship. We don't play anything old. No hymns unless they've been remade (though even that is rare), no All In All, it seems like we learn a new song every week. Maybe it's just because I'm new that I don't know them, but I've seen people only mouthing the words, so I'm guessing they don't know them either. It's hard to get into worship if you don't really know the words you're singing. Also, though I'm sure it's just my old age catching up with me, I don't much care for the actual musical value of most songs produced today. There are certainly exceptions, but most of the song-value anymore is in lyrics, not in the music, and not in the poetic form. Suddenly worship is reduced to words on a page. What's weird is that wasn't my original impression of the church. Maybe I was just new and wanting to find a place quickly (which was the case), or maybe I've just been more critical these past couple weeks, or maybe the music just hasn't been my style these past couple weeks, and that's just how it was, temporary. Anyway, if it's not temporary, I'm deciding whether it's a big enough issue to change churches over. I feel so at home with the people, and while church is about the people, it's also about connecting with God on a deeper level than you can alone, in your daily life, and if that's not happening, then I'm not at the right church. Oh, but the barbeque was awesome. We played volleyball. I'm considering joining a rec league if I ever find the time. Maybe if things get patched up between my dad and me, he and I might join the same team.

This past weekend, Labor Day weekend, I had a vet appointment for the cats' rabies shots. Kotenok might be having a reaction to them, because there's a pretty big knot where I'm guessing the needle went in. That night, Ashley and her friend came over for dinner, and so I could meet her new kitten, Tomtom. It was hard to believe my cats were his size when I got them. He was the scrawniest little thing, with more fur than my cats put together.

I convinced them to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, though they were skeptical. I always thought my sister's sense of humor and my own were pretty similar. I guess I was wrong. She laughed a couple times, but I was dying the first time I saw it.

On Monday, I went back to Port Orchard. I'd told my mom I was going, and she asked if I was serious about getting an iPhone, which I had been, but I was waiting for May to come around, so I could keep my phone number without it costing ridiculous amounts of money. She, however, has lost her phone, so on the way down, I bought my iPhone, and gave her my old KRZR.

The primary reason I was going to Port Orchard, though, was to see Eowyn, and her new apartment. After the grand tour, neither of us had much to do, and we were hungry, so we got food at a local grill. It honestly wasn't great, and it wasn't cheap either. I guess when I said "medium rare," they thought I meant half medium, and half rare. I paid. Then she suggested we watch a movie together. She's not seen Stranger than Fiction, so we went and rented that. She and I have always been a little relaxed about physical touch when sitting next to each other, from orchestra concerts, to movies it turns out, and so we were comfortably squished together on the couch, just shy of cuddling. About 75 minutes into the movie, she fell asleep on my shoulder. It's weird, but I'm not at all romantically attracted to her anymore; that's something I never expected to go away, and am now glad has. Even so, having a girl fall asleep on your shoulder watching a movie is a nice experience. It means she feels safe next to you, and that is a pleasant thought. Tuesday was the day I played so much minesweeper and couldn't be motivated. I suspect Monday night had something to do with it.

I've begun reading Lord of Chaos, book six in the series. I'm a little less than halfway through it, if the progress bar at the bottom of my screen can be trusted. It says about 700 pages in, but a page is about two thirds, maybe five sevenths, of a real paper page in the book. (For those who care where I am, Nynaeve just asked Birgitte to ready some horses and not talk to Uno about it. Rand was just bonded.) So far I'm enjoying it, even the female chapters. It's shaping up to be a good book, and while I've heard it's the pinnacle of the series, I hope my sources are wrong.

I started testing out Google Chrome. It's in beta, of course, so I can't expect it to do everything, but so far I'm not all that impressed. It does seem faster, but I don't really like the color scheme, or what it does to about half the webpages. The rendering is a little off. Also, they don't have it ported to Mac yet, which I don't really understand, but oh well.

Lolbot might be moving in with me in a couple months. He likes his job at Adobe for the most part -- he likes the people and the atmosphere -- but he's rather bored, so he sent me his resume, which I gave to one of the leads on my project. If all goes according to plan, we'll have more job openings in a month or two, and he'll be interviewed then. I'm pretty confident he'll be hired after he's interviewed. That kid is crazy good at programming and at working with others.

I was thinking in the shower today. That half hour each morning is probably the most productive time of the day. Anyway, I'm watching The West Wing again, and that always gets me thinking politically, and with politics comes religion, whether it should or not. (I tend to believe it should. If the basis of your government is freedom of religious beliefs, it's a little hard not to govern regarding those beliefs in order to keep those freedoms.) I started considering whether the world is getting better or worse, more specifically whether America and its society are. (And 'society' doesn't follow the grammar rule. Let's all welcome 'society' to the Weird League, along with our other new member, 'caffeine.') I think it's getting both. I think it feels like it's getting worse because our standards are going up, and rightfully so, and I think those standards will slowly have a positive impact on society. People are slowly starting to realize that killing is bad. Revenge is bad. Poverty and hunger are bad. Inequality and favoritism are bad. In the few cases where I think society is getting worse, it's attempting to masquerade as better, and I sincerely hope people start to realize what is wrong before there is so much more hurt in the world. I don't think the world needs more hurt.

Anyway, that's enough for now. As I told Alexander earlier today, I have a lot to do. I have to shower (already have), do laundry, and go grocery shopping. I'm a thinker though, and have realized that if I attempt to do all of these tasks in one day, I will have nothing for tomorrow. Always have to think ahead. Oh, also I'm angry about the deaths in Serenity.