Category: The Lisa Chronicles

glitches

so.
okay, i was just reading my friend dayan’s diary and seeing that he had updated his diary (without posting it to his LIST! *smacksmacksmack*) and his color scheme, which reminded me (as i’m amidst of doing bills and yes it’s 3am in the morning) that one of the main reason why i haven’t written is:
*drumroll*
I’m bored with simunye.org
I’ve been writing down actually stuff with what i wanted to do my entries on, and actually a lot has been going on worth mentioning and i’ve even taken my new spankin’ laptop to work so that I could write during down time (ahahah!) but the thing is that i’m bored with the way the site is looking and while initially i loved it, it’s been nearly the same now for a year (and the lisa chronicles is coming up on its 2 year anniversary in july — gasp!). i actually had redone the site about a month ago (while i was in the middle of my great depression) but hadn’t updated it because i decided it was way too complicated to do so. i actually downloaded flash4 cos i wanted something snazzy to do with my site but haven’t had the time until recently to start playing with it (not that I have created anything mind you — just that i have it).
we’ve been bursting with people at das geek-haus and it wasn’t until a few days ago that paul and i finally had time alone — and then it’s like i don’t want to write but be with him.
i’m feeling very gushy and in love at the moment, excuse me. 🙂
anyways, i wanted something that is done by web — so that i can stick this doing things manually up the ass — and the idea of doing it list only comes to mind (nothing to update and it’s all publicly archived on the mailing list site as it is), but there is also a feeling of those who don’t like mailing lists and etc.
so i’m in a bind and i haven’t decided what to do as of yet.
i don’t think we have any plans this weekend other than for paul to hack DVD for linux and me to seriously clean the house (i’m trying to figure who is blind enough to miss the toilet in the second bathroom as there is urine stains on the floor). so i’m making it a priority to do so this weekend.
xoxoxoxoxo
lisa

um. yep.

i’m trying to think of a good excuse as to why i haven’t written in over a month.
none are forthcoming.
actually, everything everyone said would happen would: i handled things way too well. the move cross country, moving to a state i’ve never even BEEN before, starting a new job, getting an apartment, living with Paul. it all came crashing down in an instant.
at first everything seemed perfect when Paul moved in. NYE was a blast, got so drunk I have no idea what happened that night (except Paul tells me that I kept begging for sex in front of everyone all night and then finally passed out around 2am). work schedules, Paul ‘s job at thinkgeeks, the list goes on.
then it started slowly started falling apart. I don’t know what was going on exactly, that except Paul and i just found ourselves sniping at each other for no reason — and every reason. then it came out that we were going to NYC for LWE 2K. It was like one problem after another to get ready for this show. First it was *I* had no place to stay (andover (parent company to thinkgeek) had already gotten Paul’s rooms with a roommate), then i found a place to stay, then i didn’t know if i could go (was going to use all my vacation time and then found out UUNet was now allowing employees to go to cons on company time), then it was how to get there (i had opted for the train, Paul wanted to drive, guess who won?) and finally when i drove up in front of the Fitzpatrick Manhattan on Lexington Ave in NYC, i just started bawling. That got cured with a major gossip session with Kethryvis and rynsey. God, I had not realised how much i missed having “girl friends” (not special friends) around. you know, girl chat. Paul is wonderful, but it’s not like having girl time where we can dish about everything in general for hours at a time.
But the strange thing, and i’m not sure what happened, is that since we’ve been back home (after driving in a near blizzard via NJ and getting lost in DC) is that things have been better. being away from each other maybe? i don’t know. i do know, with long in-depth talks with keth every nights, things felt better between us. maybe because we had time to be away from each other? i thought i could find a reason, but i can’t. i just know that now that we are back suddenly things feel more relaxed. okay, our fish digital died, BUT OTHER THAN THAT, everything is falling into place. Paul has been chirping for the last few days because he feels he finally got the respect due to him (at his age, it’s hard to gain respect for his work because no one believes he is *only* 19 (yesh, the song “Mrs. Robinson” is played in our household) and that he’s come a long way baby). now i’m his good luck charm and *I* feel like it’s more me now.
i’ve been sitting here for the last few hours tonight, thinking about stuff in general, just wondering where my life is going , and the last month, the one thing I’ve realised is that how often i let depression (and panic attacks and paranoia) run my life. and i know I’ve stressed that before. too many freaking times. i know, thinking about it now, that one of the reasons i’ve refused to write is that i didn’t want to divulge all the same crap over and over again. it just seemed — pathetic? is that an excuse? probably not. i have no idea. i’m letting thoughts wander around right now.
looking back over everything as objectively as i can (and having this same conversation with my friend Graham) and realizing that on my own part, I expected way too much way too soon. I never let things fall into place — i just have been running at this speed of wanting things to be “perfect” and finding that they weren’t what I had thought — and that was my mistake. All of my bitching of wanting things to “be” and i was too worried about being like my mother. which is scary. because i haven’t spoken to my mother in almost a year.
another thing i realised this past month was how much i miss not having a family. i could argue, and rightly so, that i never had a family (other than my beloved brother, Jeff). but it was like hearing all this stuff that Paul’s family does (scary they have been to Disney world more times than i could count on fingers and toes) as well as listening to other friends talk about their families and i have — nothing. Christmas sucked major ass (as well as was told by my five line dialogue i sent out) and i just feel so damn alone half the time. Paul keeps talking about how his family is my family (i’ve met his uncle and aunt already) and i’m meeting his mom, dad and brother and sister soon. along with grandparents. will the madness never end?
i’m hitting the sack.
it’s good to be back.
x0x0x0x0x
moi

i wanna be adored

Saturday afternoon, paul and i plunked down cash for our new pad that we will be sharing with his sister, Ivette.
Now, here is where it gets somewhat interesting. When we moved into our current pad, we had to plunk down 2 months worth of rent plus the deposit because at that time our credit was so shitty. In the 15 months since we have been living here (has it really been that long already??), I’ve been working my ass off on improving both my credit and helping paul establish his. The road has been rough and in that process I’ve learned a few things about myself. For instance my need for must have handbags and must have shoes. i also don’t need all the clothes I’m apt to buy (but whine it was on sale!) and the host of other things we have around our apartment.
i noticed this really prevalently when we were in Miami for Christmas. We brought back so much loot (including my lovely new visor that I adore the living hell out of), that I drug (is that even a word in this context?) Brian to the mall with me to go shopping for a new suitcase because the three we brought with us was simply not enough to ship our shit back home. What loot we got! Nearly new 20 dvds, books, clothes, candles, visor, a scooter (that paul promptly broke), toys, games, money; we made out like bandits on Christmas day. Not including all the shopping sprees I did when I was there because “everything was on sale” and had to have this red velvet skirt. I have enough clothes now to clothe a small nation. You know, like China.
when we came home and unpacked, i looked around our apartment and noticed all the “crap” we had. stuff that we bought on whims that wasn’t necessary at the time nor is it necessary now. I’ve been purchasing storage boxes just to toss all this crap in so that we can move everything to the new apartment in a much more smoother fashion than when i moved into the old pad.
all the stuff that can be used to decorate my cube, I’m taking with me to work tomorrow. All the papers I’m so found of keeping (you know, credit card bills, receipts, stuff like that); I’ve gone out and bought a shredder and have already shredded my way through five garbage bags of stuff. Next is the magazine collection (ugh, never again will I subscribe to any magazines!). Then it’s the books. I have no idea what I’m going to be doing with all the books that I’ve purchased over the years. I’ve been looking and eyeing our current bookcase (which literally takes up one whole wall of our apartment) and it’s already overstuffed with books and crap. I’m thinking we’ll end up throwing that bookcase into our new bedroom and buying something new for the living room.
it’s all about spending money isn’t it? I’ve been looking for design programs to help design our new living area so that i know what to keep and what to toss, and then it comes down to how much freaking money I’m willing to spend for this item or that item. it was like this apartment was our starter apartment and now that we are moving on up in the world, i can no longer allow myself to have pictures of darthmaul on the door.
go figure.
pauly is my co-pilot
you get the feel for someone after you’ve been living together for awhile. I’ve started getting such a good feel for the way that paul acts and behaves that I’ve started intoning before he ever does anything. “no paul, we are not spending 300 bucks on a tivo.” or “no paul, we are not going to eat Mickey d’s on our diet.” you know, shit like that. now I’ve started ribbing him about “pauly is my co-pilot” since doesn’t drive so he assumes that he is automatically in control of the car dashboard while he bitches about my one handed ability to drive a car and look for cigarettes. next up on the list, before we kill each other, is paul getting car driving lessons and his own car. he wants a durango. if anyone thinks that i will be co-signing my name to a loan for a 2001 durango while i drive a 1998 Saturn, must be smoking some serious crack.
already dead
on the topic of books, paul made me read “already dead”, the California gothic and I’m dying from all the “lush symmetry” and the “beautifully chosen way he has with words”. it’s like, when people write, why can’t they write for the sake of writing. it’s goddamn boring.
but it’s spring and I’ve got ants in my pants. nothing could satiate me now.
x0x0x0x
lisa

hope floats (well sorta)

it’s mid afternoon here outside of DC and I just got done watching a horrid yet true to somewhat life movie hope floats. i think i may have mentioned this piece of tripe before — I’m drawn to it like flies to shit. there are several points here that i guess i have been reminded of: sandra bullock carries a silver lunch pail which prompted me to carry my own box, harry connick jr is always a hottie and well, that’s about it.
but what i think the thing is (other than beating this piece of shit laptop into submission) there has been these re-occurring themes in my life as of late.
lately i’ve been having some major moral issues primarily with relationships and my own relationship with paul. for the last few nights i’ve been watching teevee and of course there is a dating channel. i’ve also been helping a friend of mine write a personal ad for yahoo personals. the thing i’ve been noticing very heavily is the sheer amount of people who are cheating on their spouses. the more I read and the more i watched, the more disgusted i feel.
now, i’ve argued for both polyamory and monogamy for eons. but the thing that irritates me the most is that just the sheer number of people who are so willing to cheat on their partner. i don’t understand this. call me silly, but it’s like what the fuck are you getting married for if you are going to be cheating on your spouse anyways?
now, i know people get all riled up about this. i don’t love them anymore, what about the kids? what about my life, etc. first off, staying married for the sake of the kids is a weak excuse. I’m reminded of my friend dave whose recently been dating a married woman who is not only older but has two kids. dave himself just came out of a serious relationship that was bordering on getting married, girl breaks up with him and he falls into the relationship with this married chyk — and it’s like i want to beat him upside the head. yah, it’s none of my business but it’s like i just feel like he’s going to get hurt in the long run.
i had with shelly last night in discussion about her ex boyfriend boobie. She said that a whole little of something was better than a whole lot of nothing — which she quoted from some kind of wonderful.
see, i don’t agree with that either. i would rather be alone sitting in my apartment eating kozyshack pudding and drinking diet mt.dew than to be with someone for all the wrong reasons.
the one thing i adore about paul is his strong sense of ethics and morals.
i just called paul and got his voice mail.
i miss him right now more than anything.
3.5 days and the boy is mine forever.
and this is where paul and i come into this whole shindig.
paul and i have been going over everything as of late, and mainly about how we feel for each other. paul feels that his relationships always die after a year for whatever reason — but he’s also said that they have felt doomed from the start. and he says that with me he doesn’t feel that. that he’s made promises in the past in good faith only to be screwed over by that person(s) — which sounds like me: i’ve been told promises only to have been fucked over by said person who promised me said things.
i think the crux of that is that in the past, we want to so believe what we are being told is true: but feelings and people do change. this isn’t something we always want to admit and it’s not something we always want to believe. and i think my problem has always been that i could never ever really believe in the person i was with and when things didn’t work out, i always took things emotionally to a new level. but i just knew, knew that paul was the one for me. sometimes he hates hearing it even though he needs that kind of reassurance like i do.
i watched a cheesy movie Christmas eve about a woman who no longer believed — in anything. yah it was really cheesy premise : basically her “inner child” came out and of course at the end of the two hour flick (on Lifetime no less) everything worked out fine.
but basically, it got me thinking about me and paul. see, we’ve been having conversations as of late about being in love. we know that we are in love, we want to be together, but all this crap that is basically baggage from our past has been creeping up and onward. this is not to say that we are breaking up, not getting married or anything negative. what it is to say that we are both scared shitless of the future.
paul said something to me the other day that i’ve always believed myself: don’t just tell me you love me, show me you love me.
see, i’ve been saying that for years personally. that’s one of the reasons why i have “issues” with gifts: people tend to buy me gifts because they are incapable of showing feeling. goes back to having daddy send me a few hundred dollars to make up for time he couldn’t be with me. which only made things worse you know. spend a lot of money on me but don’t spend time with me. what kind of lesson is that to learn?
paul and i have long known we had “issues,matters and concerns” in a lot of things that have to do with us. it’s not bad things, just things that were problematic in the past with past loves and things we don’t care to repeat with each other. things we have been working on together to make us stronger as a couple. people have been saying for months how they wished they were in a relationship similar to what paul and i have — and to that i don’t know what to say. i think it’s great that people think we have something special (which we do) but the trials and tribulations of coming together — and to this point have been hard. i don’t think that with everything we have gone through to get where we are now would be so easily accepted by just anyone.
watching those cheesy movies all weekend made me realize i did believe in paul and i do believe in us. i can’t remember the last time i felt this strongly about someone or the fact that i want to live my life with someone such as paul. he’s a very special person and compliments me in so many ways. I’m excited about the prospect of being with him, falling in love with him all over again every day and knowing that my own faith, in him, in myself, and in us will help not only me but us become stronger both as a couple and induhvidually.
i love you pauly. you are always mein gott.
x0x0x0x0
lisa

la pictures

updated pictures with some pics from thanksgiving weekend. will be finish scanning them this weekend sometime. at the moment, my machine is too slow (or the scanner is) to do scanning and other stuff. took 45 minutes for four pictures. forget that.
in the first pic paul is drunk and holding an IBC rootbeer bottle. what a man!
vanity
my friend jacob got his own domain.
suddenly i find myself very scared.
random thoughts
all day today i had a list of three subjects i wanted to talk about: lint, y2k and um, shit i forget the last one. while the ideas are still bopping around in my head, i find that I’m too tired (frustrated/horny/angry?) to write other than to tell you what i was thinking about at work today. yes, work is that exciting. tomorrow is Friday right? i hope so.
heart ache
shelly ICQ’d me to tell me that her bf broke up with her this past weekend. after everything she’s gone through with him, i don’t know if i should laugh or cry. actually, i laughed — just because the soap opera moments of it all just seemed so hilarious to me. but i do feel bad. it always sucks breaking up.
bed time for lisa
see subject.
x0x0x0x0x

pr0n

i finally uploaded the pr0n and pictures pages (no, not the bill cosby kind). DO BE WARNED that these are in THUMBNAILS and there is quite a number of images. if your on a slow connection, this can take some time. I’m on cable — but hey, you slowpokes are just being warned. and please. do not email me bitching about morals, bullshit, and how its degradating to women. the pictures are either funny, disgusting, perverted or just down right “um — okay” type of deals. this is my website, i will put on here what i please. just don’t bother with me with how you feel about pron. i mean, jesus christ, if i can write a chronicle about rimming justin, I’m sure you people can handle pictures. and hey. no one is forcing you to go there. I’m just letting you know.
the above was just necessary because i really don’t want my email box filled with letters about how I’m going to hell, and pr0n is degrading to women and yadda yadda yadda. move along now. there is nothing to see here.
spam
i used to claim that back in the day that i /never/ got spam because i never posted to usenet. hahahaha. okay well anyways, i now do get spam (spam in my aol account doesn’t count btw) and the funny thing is that it’s generally sent to an address that theoretically doesn’t exist (it exists in so much as it’s now an alias pointing to a physical email box) and for the most part i just delete it.
I’ve also gotten complaints from people who have forwarded to me spam that was “generated” from my simunye.com address. which is funny — but hey. hehe.
but I’ve been getting spammed from two persons who have been directed at me. one is from cyberplebe.com. yes, i know, go ahead and laugh at that lame ass moronic page. the issue is that for the last year or so, they’ve been spamming me about their lame book — and got my address from the geek white pages (a little project started in 1995 that i had signed up on in 1996). and the guy claims:
“Sorry about the email. You will not be sent any future mailings, that email was mis-sent. please take your name off the Geek Pages list to stop any email in the future. For your information SPAM is not illegal in any state nor the US on any federal or state statutes. SPAM of course is discouraged. Your were sent this email because your name was on a submitted list.”
Obviously, the idiot didn’t read the last two emails I sent him in regards to federal law:
U.S. law, including Title 47
Sec.227(b)(1)(C) of the U.S. Code, as follows:
US Code Title 47, Sec.227(b)(1)(C):
“It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine”
A “telephone facsimile machine” is defined in Sec.227(a)(2)(B) as:
“equipment which has the capacity to transcribe text or images (or both) from an electronic signal received over a regular telephone line onto paper.” Under this definition, an e-mail account, modem, computer and printer together constitute a fax machine.
The rights of action are as follows. Under Sec.227(b)(3)(B):
“A person or entity may, if otherwise permitted by the laws or rules of court of a State, bring in an appropriate court of that State —
(A) an action based on a violation of this subsection or the regulations prescribed under this subsection to enjoin such violation,
(B) an action to recover for actual monetary loss from such a violation, or to receive $500 in damages for each such violation, whichever is greater, or
(C) both such actions. If the court finds that the defendant willfully or knowingly violated this subsection or the regulations prescribed under this subsection, the court may, in its discretion, increase the amount of the award to an amount equal to not more than 3 times the amount available under subparagraph (B) of this paragraph.”
Now, I’ve been more than polite to this guy and I’ve quote said paragraphs to him above several times. I mean, what is it going to take for people to get the hint that YOU WILL NOT MAKE MILLIONS HAWKING YOUR WARES ON THE NET! jesus. especially some drippy little page done in FrontPage hawking a book called “cyber plebe”? ugh no. Anyways, he hasn’t emailed me back, I suspect he will not. His wife has previously written to my response and told me to fuck off (which he said she apologized for — which she had not). Lets grow up people, shall we?
The next group soulforce.org is an actual legit community. and i can admire what they are trying to do, but for the last TWO years they have been sending me updates on their community. problem is, I’m not interested, i don’t really care and i want to know how they got my email address. The first time i got mail from them, they promised to take me off. The second time i got mail from them, i got an apology from the founders and a gift certificate from amazon.com for my inconvenience. and then it stopped.
well it was raining spam again this evening folks as i got email from BOTH parties at the same time. I’ve also emailed the founders of soulforce again — directly and bitched. but in a nicer way. i never spent the amazon.com certificate (didn’t think it was a big deal) and was told it was an intern error when they were importing addresses (and we know how interns are — just ask Bill Clinton).
I believe in freedom of speech but spam has gone WAY AND ABOVE the call of duty here. it’s distressing because i can’t think of anyone who really reads it (let alone who actually RESPONDS to it), it causes problems with servers (amount of mail vs sever load), people get angry, blood pressure rises, i mean, what of any GOOD that comes out of it?
me personally, i take extra careful steps when I’m registering something on the internet. i always read the fine print (some legit companies will ask if you mind being put on a mailing list — always read the fine print on this) and make sure I’m not receiving extra mail. for instance, i was getting mailing info from companies like Barnes and Noble, Iomega, C|Net, et al. I read the fine print at the bottom and unsubscribe my ass from their mailing lists (if i had inadvertently gotten on). Some mail I do read, like Wired Daily News, my horoscope, and my weekly update from cdnow.com. But for the most part, I’ve realized that I do not have the time and energy to sort through that crap. some companies will put you on a mailing list when purchase something from their website (again, read the fine print, unsubscribe). i never realized just how much junk mail i was on until i was swapping accounts over from simunye.com to geek-haus.org/simunye.org mailing addresses. everyday I’ve been getting something new from something i had purchased/registered for and hell, i was even a founding community member of nerve.com website. (which i had forgotten about until they sent me an anniversary email — hehe).
i just don’t like the fact people can try and hawk their wares to me thinking it’s okay. I’m a resourceful goddess, if i need something, i know where to look for it. i don’t need to be told how.
i guess that is what irritates me the most is that most people will run something because it is under the guise of “free speech” — but you see, free speech (in my opinion) is only worthwhile AS LONG AS IT DOESN’T HURT SOMEONE ELSE. I’m sure someone is going to put the smackdown on me about this in particular, but there are limits to everything — including my patience.
paul and i had a conversation a few weeks ago about internet e-commerce. from his perspective, only 10% of businesses succeed on the Internet today. When someone starts a business, they have a 50% chance of either closing in two years or continuing to run. On the Internet, with so many choices being available — and so many people working from home these days, this has sky rocketed to 90/10 fail/pass percentage — and with the advent of IPOs? It can’t stay like this forever — the market won’t allow it. it’s going to crash and burn sometime.
I saw a wonderful article in modemag.com about how there is just TOO much information — and i totally agree with it. With the advent of portals, my.company.coms, free web hosting, specialized sites/search engines, newsletters, everyone is rushing to be on the information superhighway — and wanting to be a geek in the same time. ITS MADNESS I TELL YOU! i keep two my.company.com ‘s websites running at work with my profiles with my weather, horoscopes, movies and teevee guides and other fun things. i can remember a day when i spent EIGHT freaking hours on yahoo taking advantage of their services — and the suck-me-part is the “FREE” word. hell, even one of my usual rants is about the popularity of online journaling, now made more famous by websites such as diaryland.com with everyone and their brother jumping on the bandwagon.
god, one of the dreams I’ve had for a long time was a complete Internet cleanup. Go through and remove 404 errors, weblogs (lame ass link pages), and dead websites. kind of do a spring cleaning on the whole thing. and especially start requesting that a computer iq be generated when purchasing either a computer or an online account. yah, that’s the ticket.
in short, spam is evil. don’t do it.
addendum to the abortion story
got a lot of responses to the chronicle from 12.12.99 on my experience with being a friend to someone having an abortion. got in several stories of some personal experiences as well as guesses as to who i was speaking about (i will neither confirm nor deny those).
all in all, honestly i didn’t feel like i had written well enough to convey what was going on. the person who i was speaking about thought i had written well on the topic — but my main story running through my head while i was hanging out at the clinic didn’t come out as passionate as i had hoped. which sucks, but there is good days and bad days when writing.
Anywho, i do thank everyone for telling me how they have felt. paul and i were discussing the old “what if i told you i was pregnant” theory — and he said he would quietly freak out and not speak to me for a few days before we talked about our options (which is funny considering that paul was just telling me this morning how we are going to be buying a house within the next year — I’m like dude, just drag that big freckled hard arse of yours up here so that we can start our life!)
I think the thing that freaked me out the most was the fact that laying next to my friend the night before the actual procedure having her tell me how the babies were kicking. to me, that was just too close to home. as i find myself getting older, i keep thinking about little lisa’s (and little paulys i would assume) and i keep thinking about how great it would to be a mom just to clean up the fuckups in my own life. but i don’t have plans for quite some time to do this until I’m older and more able to handle it — as for the fact of being in a stable relationship (married or not).
I’m all for being protected and being safe. again, to me it is a show of utter lack of respect when not doing these precautions — especially in this day and age. you can’t just assume that because the vaginal area/penis area looks clean — it is. get tested regularly (once a year), buy condoms and live a long and healthy life!
x0x0x0x0x

starry night

for the last 8 months or so I’ve been dying my hair “raven mist” which is basically a deep dark black-ish red. i really adore the color, but it wasn’t till recently that i noticed that i had three shades of colors in my hair: my roots were black. then about 2 inches would be this reddish tinge and the rest of my hair was black. it looked like that i had this ring of red through my head which made for interesting results — but what surprised me was that when seeing how long my roots were, it was nearly 2 inches and i had just done my hair before I left VB a six weeks ago.
so whilst i was shopping last night for groceries, i decided that i had wanted to re-dye my hair. mainly because the red halo was kind of annoying and that i wanted a change. I’m sick to death of dying my hair red, because it ends up fading and looks too brassy. and the true fire engine red color that i did want is too harsh to do on my hair. so i opted for “starry night” which claims to be “shiny black” — and my hair is finally all one color. i can’t tell the difference other than I’m now one color instead of three. but i like it. and no one noticed. it’s not a majorly drastic change but it’s still a change. and it’s something new. 🙂
not like you can tell in the damn cam. seeing as it’s “Lisa und Paul Noir” and its black and white. Paul is talking about changing the cams in the house to be color. that will be coming up soon — i think probably within the next month or so. We are planning on taking geek-haus completely live complete with archives and crap. that should be damn interesting to see.
horoscope for: 12.13.99
Gemini:
Pack your bags and be ready for last-minute invitations for travel. You may be tapped for sudden fame and find yourself in the limelight. Groups, friends, and organizations may tap you for a leadership position. Partnership may catapult you into the spotlight, with newspaper coverage, interviews, and exciting new propositions for opportunities at a distance or in another country. Be ready for almost anything. A powerful new lifestyle is just around the corner.
[yah sure right! hahahahaha]
blasphemous rumors
there has been a long standing argument, at least with me and with others, about how to treat IRC. Some people say that IRC is just text and that most of what is being said is bs. And for the most part that’s true. But (and I say but! here folks), what if you are part of a community of people are are interacting for the most part with them daily, things do arise. rumors, speculation, gossip: for the most part, this is normal and generally harmless. and this can be applied to any medium: personal life, internet life, work, what have you.
today i was sent a private message from Paul’s roommate who happens to be friends with a certain female on the channel. this female has had a long history of instigating and spreading malicious bull not just about me but about several (and I do mean several) other more regular channel goers. if it’s not one person, it’s another. one time she took the intitative on privately messaging me a conversation between her and another channel regular about: me. And i didn’t understand why she did this since it was pretty rude comments from the person she was speaking to.
the private message i got from Paul’s roommate was way out of line: both by him and by the female in question. i had had it up to here with people such as her spreading bullshit rumors about me (and other people) for no other reason than because of jealously and maliciousness on their part.
the thing that gets my goat is the ‘why’ of this whole business. i really hate HATE people who are two faced and talk behind other peoples back — especially when it’s unfounded. there is no reason why except out of pure pettiness this has to continue.
for the last week or so, people have been privately messaging me about the female in question asking me what was her deal. most of these came from newbies who have just recently joined the channel and were curious as to why this hellcat was all loose. i just explained that for the most part, that she blows a lot of hot air and to ignore her. some were feeling defensive because the female in question would attempt to rip apart the person a new asshole, publicly, for no reason.
and it’s not just this one person, it’s been several. it seems the more concrete my relationship with Paul is and the happier I get, the more people wish to tear it down. I will never ever understand this petty jealousy and nor will i feed into it.
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non sequitur

this has been one hell of a weekend. well, it’s been one hell of a week. so much has happened within the space of a few days, plus my own thoughts and feelings, i have a feeling I’m going to be all over the place — more so than usual.
from the what’s new front:
12.12.99
87 people on the mailing list (geez, can’t i eve break a 100?). Did some more comestic work on the website. Added filez, pictures, pr0n and really put up the obligatory webrings, awards and links page.
family fun
yanno, another reason i don’t get the holidays is mainly because my own family is fsck’d in a definite loony way. for instance, now that I’m all settled in Fairfax and basically living with paul (meaning he doesn’t show up until the 30th perm), i decided to start calling my aunts and stuff to let them know i was alive and living. and basically i got to hear for an hour about how horrible of a daughter i am (because i haven’t spoken to my mother in about 6 months), about how everyone is a son of a bitch and Canadian currency is basically crap and how one aunt married her drug and alcoholic bf and moved to Kentucky and that my other aunt and her husband moved to Florida.
you know, its the Christmas season. and I’m trying to make the best of it. i thought by calling my Aunt Jackie and letting her know I was okay and that I was sending them a Xmas card with my and Pauls address that it would be okay. But it wasn’t. My Aunt Roberta (her younger sister and sidekick) basically grilled me about paul. When she asked me if paul had a big family and I said “yah, he’s half Spaniard and Irish and catholic”, she drops her voice and whispers “is he dark?” Like jesus christ people. This is 1999. His coloring shouldn’t matter to anyone. (But the boy is pretty goddamn pale.) And when I told her that we were getting married she said “Well, I won’t tell anyone that you aren’t married now (due to the fact that paul and I are living together)”.
They always make me feel so goddamn rotten when I speak to them. I don’t know why I do it. Maybe it was because of seeing how Paul interacts with his family and this was something he and I had discussed that I could shed some light into my own family problems.
Turned out I was wrong.
My father had a stroke two weeks ago, and I got the phone call from my cousin James in Toronto. I’m a okay.
this is the part when i start deconstructing myself and feeling like shit. bah.
how i spent my saturday (December 11, 1999)
Editors Note: as we all know, when people start talking about a ‘friend’ and not naming names, it is generally presumed that it is really about the person who is telling the story. fortunately in this case, it really is not about me. it’s about a long time friend of mine who choose to get an abortion. since she has been mentioned in TLC in the past, she was afraid she would start getting hate mail because of her choice. so we decided that it was okay for me to talk about it, just not to mention her name. I’ve never been pregnant and paul and i are not expecting devils spawn. really.
when i found out that one of my oldest friends was pregnant, i wasn’t happy. i knew that she hadn’t been practicing birth control and knowing that she had been pregnant in the past due to ‘carelessness’ really irritated me. you see, out of the group of close friends i grew up with (high school/college), I’m the only one in the bunch who has never been pregnant and thusly was lucky enough never to have to make a decision on whether or not i was going to keep a child.
I’ve had my shares of scares, true, but I’ve always been ultra paranoid about my sexual health. when Alan and i were dating in the early 90s, we had went and gotten checked together so that we could practice monogamous safe sex without using condoms (i was on the pill at the time and told that i was possibly not going to be able to have kids as it was). so, like any other young couple in love, we got checked and tossed away the condoms. then i found out that he had been cheating on me. and then i found out that he had NOT been practicing safe sex with this other girl. my own paranoia (aids had just started to ravage the country and people were on the war path about safe sex) plus common sense prompted me to to get checked and make sure that i was okay. i was. but that set in motion a passion about sexual awareness and practicing safe sex that is almost cult like.
I’ve had many discussions with lots of people about practicing safe sex. I cannot believe that in this day and age people are so fucking stupid about not using protection. the most common excuses I’ve heard are “i don’t like condoms” and “i can’t remember to take the pill” — okay fine, but there are other options for you to use. not all of the guaranteed (nothing in life is) and not all of them protect you from disease but something is better than nothing. sex to me is a very adult thing — meaning you have to take the responsibly along with your actions. i cannot tolerate excuses about why people are not practicing safe sex. and yesh, i practice what i preach. I’m on the pill and paul and i use condoms.
so when my friend told me she was pregnant, i felt sad for her. she was taking it all in stride though — I’ll grant you that. but when she went to get checked and was scheduling a time to have the procedure, they refused to do it telling her that she was much farther along than she thought she was. which was wrong. her boyfriend didn’t move in till late august and she got pregnant early September. they told her the time of the conception was middle of august — which is fricken impossible since she was only sleeping with him — and he wasn’t event here yet. and she was also pregnant with twins. and since the clinic claimed she was above the date for an abortion (she found out that babies were just bigger than normal) — state of Virginia will not do anything past the first trimester (up to 12 weeks). she could go to Philly, DC or North Carolina to have the procedure done.
She choose DC.
I didn’t find out until nearly her appointment that she was coming up. i rescheduled work and plans to help her out. it was a two day procedure. on the first day (Friday) she was going in for what she calls the ‘seaweed stick’ procedure. what this is, is that they stick sticks up your vagina wrapped in iodine to dilate the cervix. this is (according to the paperwork she was given) the beginning of the abortion. the second day (saturday) visit is when the actual abortion would take place, which would last about 1/2 hour with an additional 2-3 hours for resting. she was then free to leave as long as someone was driving her home. — and that person would have been me.
she arrived late Friday night in some discomfort. the babies had been kicking and she was also having mild cramping. she was having a hard time even going to the bathroom because she was afraid the sticks might fall out. after taking a nap that evening, she and i stayed up and talked until 2 am — when we had to be up at 6 am to get up for the appointment.
and as we talked, she kept telling me how she was feeling the babies kick — and she said it such a non-chalant way that it was almost scary.
we woke up early saturday morning and both forwent showers to get to the appointment on time. we arrived a few minutes past 7:30 to see that there were protesters already out front. well duh. planned parenthood. Washington DC. hello here. we walked quickly by them, went through the security guards and were let into the clinic. other girls soon followed in and at 8am, the nurse started calling peoples names to go back for the procedure.
she gave me the option of going back to the apartment and getting rest and then coming to pick her up. i decided to hang out for awhile and just kill time. i read magazines, i watched the waiting room swell up with people. all types of girls came in — i couldn’t tell who was there for what. but there were all races and social classes. some came in alone, others came in with bf’s/spouses/partners. finally around 9:30am, i went outside and chain smoked for awhile.
i met up with two volunteers for the clinic and talked with for awhile. the protesters had grown in numbers but it was still a small motley group of people. one man had a huge (about 3’x2′) sign that showed a dead fetus with “32 million babies killed since Roe vs Wade”. there were young and old people, chanting Holy Marys and giving away rosaries. The volunteers were friendly and a bit passionate about their work. we talked about the protesters and i asked them what it was like doing this. i was truly curious. i mean, I’ve heard and read all the stories about what was going down at these clinics. when i went to PP in Oakland for my own checkup, we were forced to check in with a security guard and go through auto-locked doors. this place in DC was more secure — and the protesters, man, it was like something out of CNN. they approached everyone walking near the clinic and gave them roasiers and told them they would pray for their sins. one young Hispanic girl came in with her bf. i watched her staring up at the sign above the entrance and watched her eyes water as she tightly clutched her bf’s hand. i felt so sorry for her, i wanted to do something but i didn’t know what to do. hell, for all i know she could be there for a pap smear.
the volunteers job was to make sure the protesters didn’t harass the patients as they walked into the clinic. they spoke softly to the women walking up and comforted them if they didn’t look so hot. i stood outside for nearly an hour watching this take place in 35 degree weather. i had my scarf wrapped around my neck and my gloves on as i chain smoked just watching the scene. i chatted some more with the volunteers and walked back in. by this time, it was going on 10am and the waiting room was packed. i settled down in a very uncomfortable chair and read newsweek waiting for my friend to leave.
she walked out at 12:15pm and just seemed as snappy as she ever was. she wasn’t feeling sick or upset. she just wanted a cigarette and food. we went to safeway to grab some maxi-pads for her and some advil and drove to TGI Fridays for lunch. Both of us acted like nothing had happened. sure we spoke about her abortion but i was as if nothing had happened. she felt well enough a few hours later and drove back home.
——
Pauls been on this kick lately about not letting me have a dog that he PROMISED i would get for Christmas. you see, his aunt raises pure breed pugs and we were going to get one out of the next litter. but some moron told him that if i asked for a dog now, within 6 months i would be asking for a kid. a: paul wanted the dog first and b: I’m not planning on getting pregnant for quite some time.
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Abortion is a touchy subject. There is, I believe no right way or wrong way to go about it. Me personally? I’m pro-choice. I like having the option that if an unwanted pregnancy came up that there was an option for me to terminate it. but it’s the people who ABUSE it that irritate me. It’s the constant stupidity people use towards sex and their own health that drives me insane. I don’t begrudge my friend for having the abortion — i begrudge her for not taking care of herself first in the first place. This is why, in so many ways, volunteering for a PP or for a rape crisis center is something that really speaks to me. I’ve seen too many women waste their lives by having kids they did not love because they were pregnant or abuse the system that was given to them. There are WAY too many people running around in this world who think AIDS/HIV/STDs and pregnancy won’t happen to them because they don’t fall into the criteria for the demographics.
If you are in a relationship with someone or are sleeping with someone, do yourself a favor. respect yourself and use protection. i don’t want another person going through what my friend did.
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copy run start

well, just like yesterday (or was it the day before?), i turned up another t1. with help of course. 🙂 this time it was a bit more tricky. once we turned down LMI, we were getting an up/up from the customer, but we were not getting anything when LMI was turned up other then down/down. To make a long story short, turned out the customer had plugged in the router to the wrong smart jack, since he’s doing diverse t’s, he had two smart jacks installed. well, he was passing packets and a happy camper. so that made me feel special.