2001-06-12 - 9:09 a.m.
Enjoying DSL and reminiscing about rocks

*dancing joyously around the room* For once, the phone company wasn't lying. As of 1 AM yesterday, June 11th, my apartment is now on DSL. Now that my computer is back in the land of the living ... and once I buy some heat-sink tape for my brother ... we can have 3 computers up and running at any given time. (Or four ... but the DVD computer doesn't really count, as it has neither mouse nor monitor).

Good grief. I start listing off the hardware in our apartment, and it intimidates even me. Back in my brother's days in school, he was working full-time and going to school full time and didn't have much to spend his cash on, so he acquired vast numbers of DVDs, computer parts, gaming systems, and other assorted bits and pieces that I would love to be able to afford for myself. Of course, I happen to own many more practical items; so I guess we're even. I keep us alive, he keeps us supplied with entertainment. *laughing*

I am not going to mention my cash flow issues again today, I'll save it for tomorrow. *humming a calming tune* There's only so much I can take of that subject in any given 48-hour period without fretting myself into a pile of raw nerves. You've seen the T-Shirt that says, "I only have one nerve left and YOU'RE STEPPING ON IT"? Heh.

I started catching up on my email again ... I've avoided most of my addresses for the past two months. Didn't want to deal with correspondence any more than I wanted to deal with this site, I guess. It's funny how many apt uses I can think for my nickname (Shell) since it was given to me; one application describes exactly how I react when wounded. Retreat. Hide. Wait. (Bad Shell; this is not the best to deal with things! Of course I know that, but at least the "Hide" phase is getting shorter; and I am the way I am, after all).

Have I mentioned that I went rockhounding a couple of weeks ago? *huge grin* I really enjoyed the whole process. Dad and Azash and I took a hotel room in Madras, then drove out to Richardson's Rock Ranch three days running. We ended up with 40 lbs. of thundereggs and 20 lbs. of various colors of jasper. For those who don't know what thundereggs are, they're egg-shaped lumps of rock formed as a result of volcanic activity that have chunks of agate in the center. We won't know what's exactly in most of them until Dad gets the rock saw running again, but he did buy polishing grit and he's working on building a heavy duty bench for the equipment to sit on. It's much handier to do your own, than to pay the ranch $0.25 per square inch to cut, and $0.40 per square inch to polish.

There was lots of hiking involved, and lots of using hand-picks and chisels on rockfaces, and I cut my finger on shattered agate once when I forgot my gloves; but I did remember the sunscreen, and only got a mild tan (and several more freckles). I got several scenery photos too. My mother, bless her, has never been east of the Cascades and was imagining actual desert out there, along the lines of the Sahara; my photos convinced her that "high desert" is indeed different, and can be extremely beautiful at times.

*sigh* I was informed yesterday that a database I spent WEEKS constructing last fall for the custodial department has never been updated, and I must needs go back in today and make it jive with the current data in our main system. I made it primarily so we could keep a history and get nicely formatted reports, neither of which the main system can do; but the purpose is rather thwarted when nobody bothers to use it, and then everyone wants to know why it isn't up to date!! Arrrrgh ... *laughing*