Hieumor

I have Cox Communications for my "highspeed internet services", and as of right now....I do not have internet access.

At somepoint yesterday my connection died. I called and was walked through the rudimentary powercycling and rebooting of relevant machinery. Twice. Their computers tell them that's nothing wrong, except they can't see my modem. And my modem is telling me it can't see the outside world. Forget that as of two mintues ago, I had 47 unread emails, no.. I had to wait until MONDAY for them to come "check the lines". And they boast, "Fast, always-on connection". Ahh.. no. Sometimes I feel like telling the phone tech, "Look, dood, you're a 10 minute drive from my place.. You have a flowchart on how to fix this... Come over here and fix it." Then sometimes I think that they make rubber mallets for a reason, and that cable box outside could use some prettying up. Perhaps if it wasn't just me living in my building, other people would complain about the cable outage and someone would come fix it.

Maybe I should threaten to send their tech's a couple of Ebola Monkeys.

I miss you, my internet. *hugs*. Come home soon.

Back when it was just me and the nanny during the day. When I would make my 'friends' out of playdoh and Newsflash was a 3 minute Sesame Street skit. Back when I covered every single freckle-like spot with band-aids just because. Daddy would come home and throw on the record and I would sing... "love love me do, you know i love you".

Daddy's a huge Beatles fan. He would tell me over and over how he had every single record. He knew all of the names of all of the songs on all of the albums. I wanted to learn them, too. I wanted to be like my daddy! It couldn't be that hard. Afterall, the Beatles were the only people that made Music. Well, there were the Sesame street songs, but it wasn't music music. You know... record player music.

So I started my own list. I wrote down, as best I could in very pre-K handwriting (and spelling), every song there was in the world. Because the Beatles wrote them. And since my dad knew all their songs, now so did I. I even added the ones I heard at church. They weren't the Beatles, but they were good enough for my list. And, I wanted to know just a little bit more than my Daddy. Somewhere down the line I was introduced to Sonny and Cher on tv. (!!) Imagine my surprise to find out more people made songs... and on TV?! Well only two more. And how many songs could they write?... So my list grew.

Until one day. Dad was going through his record collection and giving me short history lessons behind the artists and all the good stuff daddies always know, like what song was in the top 50 and the first time he heard it and loved it instantly. By this time I could read and I noticed.... some of these records didn't say "The Beatles". (!!)

He went to the player and put on a small record. "You'll like this", he said. I wasn't quite sure it was possible to like any music other than the Beatles.... But, there was this beat... and then a voice came on...Shake your groove thang, shake your gooooove thang baby! (!!) I was 6, and I liked shaking my groove thang, whatever it was. And so my groove shook.. and shook.. and shook some more. I learned that day, The Beatles weren't the only people in the world who made music. There was Tony Bennett, Peaches and Herb, Andy Wilson, and Cher - by herself! I let go of my list of all the songs in the world. I figured I should leave that to Casey Kasem, because that was his job anyway.

Ahh, the end of Spring Break. It came in exactly how I thought it would: too early. This is my last Spring Break, ever. So I did a lot of sleeping, contrary to what I wanted to do. But, sleeping is my favorite flavor of mental floss. And the mental needed some serious flossing.

I'll keep from boring everyone with the 'stories'. So what did I learn: I have some damn good friends, and they're too darn far away. Boys* are not nice. I need to get out** more.

Do I plan to act on my newly found wisdom: No, not really.

* These would be boys that aren't currently my Friends.
** And by out, I mean out of Lubbock.

Pet peeve of the week: Ringtones.

Not the one's that advertise that you have T-Mobile or a Nokia phone... or even the ones that play the latest jams and sound like a small mp3 player begging for attention in your pocket. Those are fun.
The ones featured in this week's pet peeve can be found on the pages of my favorite cartoons at comics.com. There's apparently this annoying chipmunk-like frog that makes these.. sounds.. that one can *pay* to download to one's phone. My goodness, what will they annoy us with next.

Miss Saigon comes to Lubbock April 1-3rd @ the Lubbock Municipal Auditorium!! I'm going to miss it when it comes to Dallas in May, so I'm going to catch it here in a couple of weeks! Yaaaa!

Texas Tech Univeristy is home to "The Vietnam Project" and it's component programs, the Vietnam Center, Oral History Project, and the Archives. This year, they're hosting their Fifth Triennial Symposium in Lubbock over Spring Break for the next couple of days and I'm visiting a couple of the seminars to learn a little more about my heritage and the history surrounding the time that I was born. It's quite interesting as I get to hear others tell similar stories to what my parent told me growing up. It's the same, and yet different. I find it interesting of all places to have an ongoing project like this, it's in West Texas.

**
Happy Saint Patrick's Day to James Patrick, Baby Patrick, Graham Patrick, and all the other Patrick-cuties of the world!!

James is a little over a year old and learning the cutest expressions! I haven't seen Patrick since I left, but he's two, almost three now? Graham's the same as he was last year :-P

**This is me wearin' green today. I competely forgot about the whole green wearin thing with the pinching. Good times.

First: Snow! Again! Over "Spring Break"! And I'm not in Denver! AAAAAAH!

Second: There's a commerical here where a cowboy in full regalia - chaps with jinglies, cowboy hat spanning the width of his shoulders, dark shirt with bright highlights - falls from a fence and does this whole rolling around act where he's getting away from something.. that something is a Truck. Only in Texas.

In another local commercial, kids are playing "house" and another kid comes over offering to fix their plumbing. And they have these very down home-not quite southern-more backwoodsy drawl to their speech!! You know, where words like "now" and "time" become two syllable words: "naa-yow" and "tye-yeem". I hear people talk like this on a regular basis out here on the plains, and it has crossed my minds that they started speaking this way at some point in their lives... but to hear it come from the mouth of kids makes me cringe! It's the fingernails on chalkboard kinda thing.

Pi = 3.1415926535897

Pie = Good w/ Ice Cream

Spring break starts.. now. Caa-Ching! WoooWooo! Tell me what I've won, Bob!

Hieu've won 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep. That's right! Go celebrate the day, stay out late, sleep until whenever you'd like! Wake up for a glass of OJ and go right back at it! Congratulations!

One of the guys showed up this afternoon all dudded up like a biker straight from Austin, Tx. He had on a red Luckenbach shirt, blue jeans, Harley boots, black sunglasses, and an American Flag bandana. And this is how I learned that he had a bike. More specifically, a cruiser. I wanted to take pictures, but we couldn't decide on a nice place to take snapshots - should have just taken them in the parking lot. It was a little bit of Austin in this dustbowl. Le sigh. He gave me a ride home and then we took another ride to one of his favorite food spots - Gilbert's. And this is how I learned that Lubbock had eating places where the food didn't taste all wierd and processed like. Good stuff!

One: I think I'm going to put out an ad for a personal assistant. I need one to keep up with all the paper/leg work that needs to be done. Whaddya think? Maybe I'll be lucky and end up with a hottie - Eeeee, yeah I know: keep dreaming.

Two: Dood. I met the guy who took over my internship last summer. Dood! DOOD!! That place rocks!!! I'm just a tad jealous that he was able to buy a WRX with his Co-Op money. He also lived at home the whole time. I'ts okay, come December, I'll have my STi - oh yes, yes I will. So this guy tells me that my bossman is hiring boucoup interns for this summer. I really-beyond-belief want to get someone an internship there with me this summer because it is just that awesome!! OMG it's soo awesome! The awesomeness is in the jobbie job, the field work, and most importantly the people! The people. Wow! I don't know what to say. They're just that cool! Seriously.

Oh and Three: Small random note that everyonce in a while I feel must be re-iterated...Karma. Karma can be your friend, or a total beeatch.

I'm half way through the semester. It isn't going too bad. It isn't great either. It's better than it was last year at this time, for sure - I haven't made a trip to the hospital. But I don't have any of my usual peeps around either. One graduated and moved. One moved. The other is incommunicado or MIA, I never really know for sure. For once, my classes are great. It's my organizations that are giving me grief. It's either monsterous bills that need to be paid, large scale planning that needs to be done, or hideous numbers of other things that end up in my email or voicemail with "What do you want me to do?". In the real world, my world: I can pay rent for another month and then my account is bone dry - thanks Mr. Tuition Hike, who gets fatter and fatter... and Mr. Student Loan who is on some sort of diet.

For spring break, my phone will be off. My school email will go unchecked. I will sleep, and eat, and catch up with all the stupid paperwork - and at this time a week from now, I will be freeeeeeeee.

Thank you to Judy for the Get Sane Card. And thanks to DisneyMike and SambaMike for the daily photography pick me ups.

Everyone else, good night!

I'm looking around on the UMC (univ. med. centr.) website for information on who to call to take care of my bills from last year. I have documents saying I'm covered 100%. But somehow, I got a collections notice for a hunk of change for x-rays. Ofcourse the # listed on the document has a generic message that says, "This number has been reserved for Texas Tech but is not in service. If you feel you've reached this message in error. Please hang up and try again." Why would I try again? I got the number right the first time! Will there be a "You are the lucky 103rd attempted caller, you will now be transferred to a live voice who can help you."

So I searched their website for a different number. Only I found this note:

"Make sure you can read the handwriting on any prescriptions written by your doctor. If you can't read it, the pharmacist may not be able to either."

Something about this is humorous to me. 'I'm sorry doctor, I can't read this. Please, write it again, a little nicer.'

For as much as they spend on advertising how UMC is the best in the South Plains, they could use some help in the paper work area. It would also help to rotate nurses more often. The one nurse I had scared the girl next to me within two breaths of death. And when she came to me, I begged her to take a walk and come back when she was more calm. Angry nurses with needles = bad.

Of the 50 some odd pictures the photographer took, why he chose this one, I dunno. I look like I'm cookin' all girly-like. Like I'm about to jump back should one of the patties decide to hurl itself at me. And I'm smiling, a very goofy smile. Plus, that angle - those tall people with cameras and their wierd angles - kinda turned my ultra cool wrap around sunglasses into props from Ray.

When he interviewed me, I wanted to give him a fake name and tell him I was from an exotic far off place and this cookout was to raise money for me to buy a cabana boy during spring break. :-)

So I made the paper, front page.. in a little corner on the bottom right. Iddy bitty corner. :-D