A bit of time away from the computer has done me good. Even though I only made it about 2-3 days before I actually got back online for e-mail purposes, I haven’t been doing all that much on. I’ve resumed reading all the blogs I used to, by RSS, and still need to leave a few comments that I’ve been putting off for a while now.

Been working more or less full time, but shifts like 11-8 don’t leave a lot of time for stuff in the morning, and by the time I get home, I’m not terribly ambitous either. Actually, I should probably sign off from my return so I can get up in the morning, and be to work at 10.

For those who didn’t listen, the last post was an audio post win which I expressed my frustration with computers in genreal, and planned to quit using them at all for the next few weeks. I didn’t make good on that promise, but this summer will feature much less computer use than the last month, and the last year.

Okay, enough babbling, off to bed.

I’m just a bit annoyed right now. Last night, I downloaded the new version of Gaim, my IM client, and decided to install it. I logged off, and installed it, and now it refuses to log me in at all. Now to see if a restart will fix things.

[EDIT: Restarting failed to fix the problem, as did uninstalling and re-installing the new version. I’m now using the old version again, and will probably just wait until the next version comes out. At least I didn’t lose any settings.]

I feel like I ought to do a quick post, if not just to let everyone know that I’m still alive. I’ve been busy the last few days, working at the store, and doing two days’ work for Ray, the man from church that I mentioned earlier. He paid me for the work, which turned out to be mainly moving LOTS of wood chips from a pile in his driveway, and spreading them in his flowerbeds and yard. It’s not that hard, physically, but doing it for 5 hours makes you tired. (He starts at about 5 in the morning, so by the time I got there both days, there was only about 5 hours left in his workday.)

Not a whole lot else going on. Tomorrow at church is the “Never On Mother’s Day Mother’s Day Breakfast”, a longstanding tradition. This year they have recruited the high-school age kids from the church to work as servers, while some of the men do the cooking. I’ve been asked to help with the serving, so that happens tomorrow.

I’ve been slowly cleaning my room, I expect that I should have most of my stuff unpacked by the time I go back to UP. 🙂 Honestly, I don’t know where to put part of the stuff, but I’ve been going through all my old high school stuff and tossing some of it. The trick is to sort through it long enough after you did it that you don’t remember what it was, and soon enough that you can still throw it away and not feel like it is some sort of antique, or keepsake. I have two boxes of papers under my bed full of that sort of thing, and all sorts of papers from high school. I know I’m probably never going to use them for anything, but I want to keep them anyway. Oh well, sooner or later, I’ll probably just decide to throw it all out.

I suspect that this summer, I will be posting less, unless things happen. At this rate, there won’ t be much news this summer, which means not much to write about. So until next time, whenever that is.

–Nathan

As I’ve been mentioning over the last week or two, I’m planning to go on a bit of a road trip starting tomorrow. I was hoping to stay with Cean for the night, but he called me back last night, (actually, while I was on my bike ride) and it was just too short of notice for him to work out. I was online, intending to get a hotel reservation, when Nathan R. messaged me, and he ended up looking at my site, and saw the earlier post about Cean. I told him that it hadn’t worked out, and he offered to let me stay at his house. Plans were made today, and so that’s where I will be tomorrow night. It’s a bit further than Cean’s would have been, about 40 minutes drive, it looks like, but it should be fun. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the Y&G people, and to setting off on my first solo road trip. Should be fun.

Had a bit of a disagreement with my mom about how much I can use the internet, mainly becuse I stayed up until after 2 last night. We had a talk, and I’m a bit limited on the time that I’m supposed to be online, at least until “I prove that I can stay up late and still get up in the morning”–I’m supposed to be off by midnight for the next few weeks, but I expect things will get better in time. I may stay up late now and again, but when I start needing sleep, I will start turning in earlier, if I can’t sleep in. Now that I know what she thinks of as “get up in the morning”, I should be able to do so with pretty good regularity. Of course, starting work again, with my shifts early or late, should serve to jumble up my clock a bit. And get me off my mom’s nerves. 🙂

Well, off to bed, so I can get up in the morning.

–Nathan

I’ve started several posts talking about the last few days of school, after finals were done, but I can’t motivate myself to talk about it. Must mean that it would be too boring to read, so I guess I won’t post it. I’ll just say that I had mixed feelings about leaving for the summer, and will certainly be glad come August 28 when I get to see everyone again.

Still thinking about that Youth and Gov trip. I had been hoping to travel along with the high school, and be some sort of an “advisor”, but the state office for the program mandates that “advisors” have been out of high school for a year at least. Maybe next year. I still want to go, and have been thinking about driving up for a day and just being a random visitor. Cean, my roommate for next year, lives about 10 minutes from the capitol campus, so I’ve been trying to call him today to see if I can maybe spend Thursday night with him. Makes things a bit easier, and I can spend a night without paying for a hotel. He hasn’t been answering his cell, so maybe I need to look up his home number and try him there. I think I’ll call Sunday afternoon. I’m just a bit concerned about the short notice. I really didn’t think of staying with him until Friday, so we’ll see how this progresses. My mom’s not terribly wild about me setting off on a trip all by myself, but I’ve gone there three years in a row, so I know the area, and I’m old enough to wander Portland on my own if I so choose, and she realizes that. If I’m staying with Cean, I think she’ll be more comfortable about the whole thing, and I still haven’t decided for sure that I’m going. If I get a hold of Cean, and they’re ok with me staying the night, I’m going, otherwise I’m not totally sure.

Not a whole lot else going on. Unpacking continues next week, and I intend to sort through the stuff that has been sitting unused in my room all year and see what I really need. Other than that and Y&G, my week is pretty empty. I start work at the store again on Wednesday the 11th or so, but until then, I’m mainly poking around the house, setting up and sorting out my room, and generally being lazy. At least until Mom decides that I’ve had enough.