"You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." --2 Corinthians 3:3

Gray-Ink
voi ch'intrate

Ridiculously Tired After a Ridiculously Awesome Weekend

Ok, first thing's first: it's hotter than hell here. I just feel the need to complain about it, ya know? The heat index for my town is seriously 118 degrees. And it's so humid! When I went outside this morning our front door was sweating! SWEATING! It was seriously all wet and nasty and I really didn't want to touch it to lock it behind me. Ok, I'm done venting.

So my cousin got married yesterday!! It was so awesome! I'm so happy for them both, and I'm seriously excited that I can officially call her new husband my cousin. He's a really neat guy and I'm not just saying that because he's an Otaku! [laughs] He's a really nice guy. The wedding was actually pretty funny because he seriously almost passed out during the ceremony. We all had our cameras ready because we told him that if he did we were posting a video of it on YouTube. Anyway, the reception was really good. Oh my God, they had the best prime rib I'm ever had in my entire life. It was positively scrumptious. My sister and I ended up leaving the reception about 10-ish, mainly because everyone was starting to get drunk and if we went home we could help babysit my eldest cousin's kid. So we left and came home to take care of the baby, who consequently fussed until midnight when his mom came and got him. My parents didn't get home until one [they were the master and mistress of ceremonies so they stayed until the bitter end] and I went to sleep about 2...woke up at 7-ish and headed back to where the wedding and reception were held to clean up. So I've been functioning on five hours of sleep...ugh. But it was worth it because we had a really great time!

Pre-Wedding Madness

One of my cousins is getting married this weekend. Our family is like super-spread out around the continental US, so in an effort to not just accomodate one set of family members, my cousin decided to have her wedding in a fairly removed location: where we live. So out of pretty much the ENTIRE family my parents, sister and I were the only ones who did not have to make a multiple-hour/multiple-day trip for this event. Anyway, now that it's gearing up towards the weekend, everyone is converging here. So we spent the day with my cousins and aunt and uncle. It was a lot of fun. My eldest cousin has two little boys of her own [her youngest is the baby I asked for prayers for because of his heart surgery, if you recall] and they were actually pretty well behaved. Her oldest had his moments, but he's three...so as far as three-year-olds go, his meltdowns were few and far between. We were able to make a Starbucks run, hang out at the pool at the hotel and then all of the girls of the family set up camp in my cousin-that's-getting-married hotel room to put together gift bags, watch some SYTYCD and have fun. Hopefully everything else goes smoothly this weekend. Thus far things have gone well...we've only joked that she's been a Bridezilla once. It seems like it will be smooth sailing from here on out, but who knows... For right now, I'm just tired from playing with the babies all day and from randomly trying to learn a hip-hop dance from a YouTube video in my cousin's hotel room at like 10 o'clock at night. [laughs]

I always forget how much I like this:

Howl's Moving Castle is FTW. That's all I'm sayin'. I seriously always forget how much I freaking love this movie!! It makes me want to break out my Studio Ghibli collection and watch them ALL! Which I can do now, because my new laptop came. It's pretty much useless for anything else right now because I don't have a modem so I can't get on the Internet at my house so I don't have iTunes or LimeWire or anything else on it. So all it's really good for right now is writing or watching DVDs [which I can't do with my old laptop because the DVD drive kills DVDs--seriously it broke my Furuba DVDs] or I could use it as a very attractive, very expensive paper-weight. But it will be immensely useful in 38 days when I leave for college!1!!!111!!!1 Woohoo!

The Longest Long Day Ever.

So, woke up at 6 this morning, leisurely read in bed for an hour because I KNEW that today was going to be a long, but fun, day. This is how my inteded day was going to go: I was going to get ready at an easy pace, stop by work at about 10 and pick up my paycheck, visit with the secretary that I filled in for last week, see how her trip went, maybe stop by Starbucks on my way home. When I got home we were going to leave to drive to my cousin's house [she lives 2 hours away] for her bridal shower. We were going to leave a couple of hours early so that we could enjoy the drive and then visit with our family before other guests arrived and then we were going to take an easy drive back. But now. That's NOT how my day went.

This is how my actual day went: Started to get ready about 8-ish, had barely gotten into my routine when Mom and I noticed a foul odor. We thought someone had hit a skunk on the road so we were bummed because it was nasty smelling. Mom decided to go let the cats inside so they wouldn't smell like it. Anyway, I'm on my way to get my hairstraightener when I noticed Mom is standing REALLY still at the backdoor. "Come here, I can see the skunk," she said. "It was under the gazebo." Holy crap. So my sister and I, of course, run to the window because I've never seen a skunk before. And not just any skunk but a possibly rabid, possibly injured skunk. So we get freaked out because this skunk is staggering around our backyard all creepy-like so my dad gets the shotgun and goes to 'put it out of its misery'. Well, when he got it...it sprayed. Our house REEKS TO HIGH HEAVEN. Oh my God. If you've never smelled really potent skunk smell before, count yourself lucky, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemies. I very nearly vomited. My sister and I ended up sitting in our unfinished basement with is basically a glorified storage shed to put on our makeup and fix our hair because it didn't smell down there. Anyway, I ended up having company come with me to pick up my check because no one could stand to be at the house. So we were all upset as we got in the car to drive to my cousin's. Not to mention we all were terrified we would smell. Anyway, on our way to my cousin's we encountered the downpour to end all downpours. We couldn't even see a car-length in front of our vehicle. It was ridiculous. We were all really tense and everything by the time we got to my cousin's. The bridal shower wasn't bad. It was a whole bunch of women playing weird bridal shower games and eating ice-cream cake. On the way home, we experienced the detour to nowhere. Seriously the road was closed for some festival and the detour the cops put us on seriously took us to a hotel. We literally had to turn around in the hotel's parking lot and come back the way we came to get home. So we finally got home...to our skunky house... Needless to say I'm exhausted. It's been an effing long day. It wasn't horrible, I think I'm just overwhelmed by the fact that I feel like I've been awake for about a year now. And I'm still wide away so I know if I try to sleep anytime soon I won't be able to. Ugh.

The Roommate Chronicles: This is just frustrating.

So, I am now in contact with my roommate...but not really. My roommate is super shy and she hardly talks to me. We've exchanged a few Facebook messages and one very stilted Facebook chat conversation and we've officially gotten no where. I know a little bit about her now, but we seriously need to get over this whole wierd-I-don't-know-this-person-I'll-be-living-with thing, because it's getting old. I know some people are just introverted and don't do well with new people. But I think that no matter who you are you should at least try to put effort into making a connection with your roommate. And you know what they say: to have friends you have to be a friend. Whatever. I need to know if I have to buy a fridge or not. Right now, that is my goal. See if Roomie is buying the dorm fridge or if I should.

Gah, this is just frustrating. I'm trying not to get exasperated with this, but patience is not one of my virtues. And I don't want to be mad at her, because it's not like this is her fault. I'm probably just as guilty because I have poor communication skills--it's not like I have very many friends to practice on. I just am at the end of my rope, because I don't know what to do to make my roommate feel comfortable with me! I just want answers from her and don't know how to get them. I know that I'm not the most sensitive person in the world, but I'm trying to understand where she's coming from...but I'm not shy and I'm not worried about moving onto campus or anything so I just...am at a total loss. We're just stuck.