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8.30.2003
So I guess I've been a pretty bad blogger lately. Then again, not a whole lot has been going on. I apparently got passed over for the position at the Condor Project. Damn. I'd probably write a more mean spirited rant, but there's still the outside chance somebody there might still be considering me, and it probably wouldn't be best if they came across such a thing here. Condor Project, I love you!

I'm sure all of my dear readers have seen Romancing The Stone. Great movie. Remember the beginning, when Kathleen Turner is sick and runs out of all tissue in the house? Well, that was what happened here this morning. No tissues. No paper towels. No toilet paper. It really, really sucked. Luckily, the situation has been rectified with a trip to Cub. In retrospect, though, I think there are some napkins hiding in the kitchen. I really need to remember that in the future.

The other day I went back to Racine to pick a few things up, including these bookshelves:
Carrie has already volunteered to help me refinish them. Other help would not be rejected.

I started and finished Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Great book. It's amazing not only how much certain members of the right distort things, but how often they tell outright lies. Like Bill O'Reilly grilling somebody on his show for something he previously said, claiming he NEVER said it. Then there are things like Sean Hannity attacking the left for not supporting Bush during Iraq (saying everyone should stand behind the president in a time of war), yet blasting Clinton during Kosovo.

But I digress. Come buy a printer (and some ink - a lot of extra ink, even though it costs more than most of the printers) today. Papa needs another bonus.

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8.12.2003
Photos of U.S. flag spark protest

People just don't get it. The flag is a *symbol*. You don't fight for your flag. You fight for your *country*. By the same token, showing a love for one's country involves a lot more than waving a flag and saying "I must support the president."

It's not even as if this was intentional. And even if it was, so what? Don't people have better things to worry about? If somebody wants to burn a flag, step on a flag, wear a flag, that's their business. People should be *happy* they are protesting in a nonviolent way, and not bombing a building something.

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8.11.2003
This afternoon on the radio they played I Want A New Drug by Huey Lewis & The News. I can remember back to when I was probably about 6 or 7, playing this song and singing along to it. "Want a new *drug*?!" was my mother's response. I have to wonder how many parents said that at the time and never bothered to actually listen to the lyrics.

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8.09.2003
More crazy dreams, only this time I took a cue from Erin and wrote things down when I woke up. I'd change names to protect the guilty, but I think most people would figure it out anyway...

In (apparently) somewhat random fashion, I'm in an office of some sort. A waiting room? Whatever the case, it's me, a girl who works there now but is leaving, and a boss. The girl clearly doesn't want to leave, but isn't just coming out and saying it. Stuff like "I'll never forget all the great times I've had here." So I grab the boss (a woman) by her shoulders, shake her a little and say "don't you get it, I think she really wants to stay." I then walk away.

Next thing I know I'm elsewhere in this office and my cell phone rings. "Ruppert Cell" pops up on the caller ID. Yet when I answer the phone, it's a female. "Is this Amanda?" "Yeah." "Why are you calling from Ruppert's phone?" This is where it starts to get really strange. Apparently Ruppert had a laptop that he had been letting Amanda use for the past few years. But since she was leaving, she had to give it back. Which still doesn't answer the question as to why she was using his phone. She was living next to Stearns in a connected building, but they never talked. Brian and Carrie would give Amanda's visitors the evil eye. Then she asked me where Panera Bread was on the east side. I gave her the street names but she couldn't figure it out.

The next thing I know, I look out the window (pretty much the entire wall is glass) and there are several tornados going through Madison. We (there are now other people around) watch them intently, but then one starts heading to where we are. I jump underneath a very heavy table, but for some reason nobody else really gets the idea right away. As the tornado gets closer they start to cram underneath the table too, which in turn gives me protection on all sides. I'm not sure if the tornado hit or passed us, but in either case, it was gone shortly. I got out from under the table, and instead of the Madison skyline, there's now a lake with a guy in a canoe.

I start walking away from this, which puts me on a dream version of campus, once again looking at a dream version of the Madison skyline. I try calling Amanda back (cell phones and tornados must not mix), but got her machine, which was for her and the other Amanda. And the message was her doing some sort of operatic singing.

From here things just got stranger and stranger. Without going in to everything, the dream included:

- driving a large machine where you had to get down off of your seat to reach the clutch, which morphed into:
- a car who's shifter made no sense (some gears were in more than one spot, gears in order were not next to each other, etc)
- a dead woman sprawled on/in parts of a jungle gym
- a kid's school project book, in which animals (including a dragon lizard, among other things) are actually real and run off when I open it up

I don't know. I certainly didn't drink THAT much last night.

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I went to the dog park the other night. More pictures of the crazy kids:

BTW, don't bother with the CD option at WalMart if you go there to get your pictures developed. The resolution pretty much sucks, especially compared to what you can get directly from a negative.

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8.07.2003
Yesterday we drove up Hwy 12 to see the construction, went to the Mid-Continent Railway Museum:
MCRM

And took a small hike at Natural Bridge State Park:
Amy at Natural Bridge

We need to go hiking more.

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8.06.2003
We saw Pat for the first time in almost a year and a half last night. Hmm. Maybe a year and a half wasn't long enough away. Some things were enjoyable, particularly some of the more obscure songs, but a lot of it just felt kind of tired. Like the bits that seem like they're spontaneous when you first see him but in fact have been done hundreds of times before. With a catalog of (literally) hundreds of songs, with new ones being written all the time, do you really have to do the same few songs (and bits) over and over again?

Oh well. Maybe I'll pull out some of these CDs I haven't touched in a while.

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8.05.2003
I don't know what it is with my dreams. More "I'm in school and forgot about this class/test/etc". And the strange thing is that never actually happened to me. Well, once I didn't know an exam was rescheduled and missed it, but I did know about the exam itself, was ready for it and was able to take it the next day. I never really had a "I forgot I was even in this class and now we have an exam/paper/etc" moment. Which is what these dreams seem to be about.

Other strange dreams - the attack of the Lexmark ink cartridges. I don't recall the specifics, but it was something about not keeping track of all of the different kinds, or new ones coming out, or something. All I know is I woke up in the middle of the night very anxious.

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8.04.2003
I forgot the most blog-o-riffic story of the weekend...

On Friday we went to Milwaukee to see Brother at Rainbow Summer. We got there about 20 minutes before the show was supposed to start and found some seats (it was first come-first served). A few minutes later an older man came by looking for a seat and sat next to me. He seemed a bit odd - as I mentioned, he was older (perhaps in his '60s), was reading a book, and had a small suitcase with him. Not the typical person you'd see at a Brother concert.

Nevertheless, the show started, and I didn't think too much of this guy. That is, until, about halfway through the show. At that point he got up and left. And left his suitcase at his spot, directly next to me. Call me paranoid, but exactly one thing was going through my head: BOMB BOMB BOMB. Here's a fairly large container sitting right next to me - if it goes off I'm screwed. I looked around for any sign of the guy, but didn't see him. Did he just go to the bathroom? Did he just leave and forget his suitcase? Or was he a few hundred feet away with a remote control? Well, after about 5 or 10 minutes (which of course seemed much longer at the time), he came back, much to my relief.

After the show ended, I discussed all of this with Amy and Rob. Apparently they were thinking exactly the same thing. I believe Amy's words were along the lines of "if you would have said something I wouldn't have hesitated in leaving."

Damn terrorist paranoia.

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8.03.2003
I've been surprisingly busy this past week. What did I do?

1) A few weeks ago we bought one of those metal shelving units to put in the garage. I finally got it assembled the other day and quickly filled it up. The garage is a much nicer place now, and that car can (once again) actually fit inside of it.

2) For the past several months, the basement has been a mess. Several hundred feet of CAT5 cable were strewn about, and most of the removed drywall was in a heap on the floor. Well, I needed a length of CAT5 the other day, and the situation prompted me to untangle, test, and put RJ45 plugs on each cable. After that I started getting all of the drywall in garbage bags. After a bit of organization, the basement is finally somewhat clean - probably the most clean it's been since before we moved in.

3) Monday I had an interview with GUILD.com. No word yet on how things went.

4) Yesterday we went to Portage for a work party, then came back to Madison to grill out at Nate and Tracy's new house.

The house is slowly getting all cleaned up. This is a good thing.

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The Simpsons Archive

Vital stats:
DOB 2/16/79. I'm a web developer at the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. I like lots of old music, including The Who. I spend a lot of time working with computers. And my favorite TV show (when I actually decide to watch TV, that is), obviously, is The Simpsons.

Education:
In May 2002 I officially graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a BS in computer science. In 1997 (man that seems like a long time ago) I graduated from Washington Park HS. Yes, I know, that site isn't very impressive, and no, I haven't touched it for several years.

WFS Logo

WFS:
One of the best experiences I have ever had was on a trip called Western Field Studies. This is a 33 day adventure throughout the western United States. Students travel on a school bus to national parks, monuments, forests, and places of historical interest and camp out (in tents or under the stars). I was a part of trip 25, which took place in the summer of 1996. A first for WFS was we took along a laptop computer and kept up a web site. That link will take you to the 1996 site, where there is a link to the current site.