the enchanting perfume of winter

I'm posting way too much today but oh holy shit, I just got a really, really big fucking order from Geico. GEICO. Not the local office, either. HEADQUARTERS. THE GODDAMN LIZARD HIMSELF. (Well, not really, but it's funny to think about..) 8D

Lol, wow. An Encyclopedia Dramatica article devoted to WWS now. I've never seen a more entertaining case of bleeding, angsty butthurt in my life. I'm doing a glee dance on the inside over the fact that my RPG means enough to some knuckle-dragging moron that they'd sit there and spend 394103 hours of their time bashing our artwork, making lame fat/ugly jokes, and even going so low as to make fun of my boyfriend's name. That one even got a chuckle out of my boyfriend. Good job, kiddo. Your mother must be so proud.

I like the pictures. And I'm so calling someone a "cockloaf" now. XD

Submitted a support ticket for all these damned 500 Internal Server Errors we've been experiencing at WWS lately, and the request form made me chuckle. This is why I love Dreamhost so much – these guys have a sense of humor:

One of many reasons why I hate my job, copied from an email I sent my sister in Alaska on Friday:

Perhaps the moodiest and most uncooperative piece of machinery at this shop is my plotter. You may or may not remember what that is from my days at Print Masters. The plotter is the big contraption that cuts the vinyl graphics, kind of like a giant printer except with a knife instead of an ink cartridge, and sheet vinyl instead of paper. My plotter at this job is such a bitch. Seriously, this thing honestly has moods. I shit you not. Some days it works awesome, and other days it won't do a damn thing. Sometimes it'll be working nicely and then suddenly, for no reason at all, spit out like 20 feet of vinyl in the middle of a job. Or randomly jam and chew up $20 worth of vinyl. Or it'll get distracted from what it's supposed to be cutting and just start cutting whatever it wants. You should see some of its creations -- it's quite talented. Perhaps I should have it do my graphic artwork on the computer for me so I don't have to. Some days, it'll be cutting just fine and then it'll just decide it doesn't want to cut a certain part of the lettering or design. Like today, on one section of wording for these banners I had to do, it said "Mill End Carpet Shops". Evidently, the word "Shops" offended the plotter, because it chose simply not to cut that word at all. It cut everything else perfectly, but skipped "Shops" altogether. Sometimes, my plotter decides to play a game with me called "put shit where it doesn't belong". For example, if I were to tell it to cut "Houkie", if it's feeling particularly playful it'll cut "Houki" and then put the "e" all the way over on the other side of the sheet of vinyl, cut right over the top of a bunch of other stuff that's already been cut (which sucks, because then I have to cut it ALL over again).

Sigh. -_-;

I'm having a really hard time waiting two years to go back to Alaska. I'm not happy here at all. Each day feels more miserable and depressing than the last. I hate my job. You know, a lot of people would kick my ass for saying that, considering I get paid extremely good money to just sit on my ass and do nothing all day. But I don't like it. It's boring as hell. You know, there are actually two customer jobs I should be working on right now. One is a full-colour banner, but I just discovered I can't design it on my computer because my computer isn't powerful enough to handle artwork THAT big in Photoshop. It taxes all the memory and slows down the computer so that it's impossible to get anything done. The other job is an order of 18 shirts that I need to print on. The print has to be cut on my plotter out of a vinyl material and then heat-pressed onto the shirt. Well, my cutter decided last Friday that it didn't want to work anymore and I haven't had much luck getting it to do anything since then.

This is how it goes at this stupid fucking job. I hate it. We have no business right now. It's been about three or four days since I last heard the phone ring. Nobody has come through our door in at least a week. And on the rare occasion that I do get a job to do, I can't fucking do it for one stupid reason or another. *bangs head on desk* I'm so ready to just get up, walk out the door, and not come back. But we direly need my income. This money I'm bringing in is really helping dig us out of the hole we've been in all year. This past Sunday, we went and spent $200 at the grocery store and I didn't sweat about it at the register. I went and spent $85 at a salon having my hair done. Wacy and I spent $70 on dinner at Red Lobster. I can't remember the last time I had these luxuries. But God, I feel so guilty each week when my boss hands me my paycheck and I feel like I haven't done a damn thing to earn it. :/

I'm just...not happy. And getting unhappier. I feel horrible because it's making me a very aggressive, very unpleasant person to be around. And because Wacy lives with me, he's generally the one who has to suffer because of that. I have been such a cranky, grouchy, humorless bitch the past few weeks. Last night, when we were laying in bed, he pushed me and pushed me to tell him what was on my mind and I finally did, and when I did I freaking broke down and cried. A lot of the sadness has to do with my Oma having gone back into the hospital again recently (her failing health is tearing me up inside like you wouldn't believe), but I kept telling him that I hate it here, I hate my life, I hate my job. I want out.

Out of curiosity this morning, I searched on Alaska's job center website and there are so damn many jobs in Kodiak right now. Getting a job in Kodiak is EASY, too. Hell, a place that I worked for when I got out of high school is hiring right now. I was really good friends with my boss there too, so I could probably just walk in, ask them for the job, and be hired. And they're paying $1 per hour less than what I'm making here, right now.

Out of further curiosity, I played on Orbitz for a while and found one-way flights all the way to Kodiak for $400. I am balancing on a very, very fine line between doing what's smart and logical, and giving into extreme temptation. I think, really, the only thing keeping me from buying that ticket is knowing I wouldn't have a car up there. Winter comes very fast in Alaska and it's never a good idea to be there without a car. Dammit. -_-;

This is going to be a long entry, but it's been a while and a lot has happened.

So housesitting out at Dad's house was surprisingly enjoyable. There are things that I will not miss, such as the lack of internet, the commute, the stinky water (they're on a well system, which is loaded with minerals that make the water smell like sulphur), the bugs, the ticks and chiggers, the hard-ass bed we had to sleep on, and milking goats every evening in clouds of mosquitoes and 90-degree heat. I WILL, however, miss the chickens. I loved the chickens. And fresh eggs every morning ("straight from the chicken's ass into the frying pan", as Wacy so eloquently put it). And the peace and quiet. And Sherry's amazing windchime. And letting Simba run around the property free and unrestrained without worry of him running off, getting killed, or getting stolen.

I hate the city. I can't wait until our lease is up in January so we can move.

College did not happen for me this semester. Again. Just like every semester I've tried to get in over the past three years. I got registered for my classes and ordered my books and bought a beautiful bookbag and got supplies and got all excited because I miss school...and then, just like I knew they would, my college started their bullshit again. They're charging me out-of-state tuition again, even though legally I am a resident of Virginia and could probably fight it and win. I just don't have the energy or the desire to fight them anymore. I've been dealing with this for years. I'm so sick of it. Because they charged me out-of-state tuition, I had to cut my courseload in half from four classes down to two. Because I did that, they cut my financial aid in half, meaning that even with two classes, I still can't afford to go. So I'm giving up. Fuck this.

Over the past month, Wacy and I have done so much talking and thinking about where we want to end up in the future. This place is not working for me. I'm tired of the city, I'm tired of the people and their fucking constant aggression and lack of courtesy, I'm tired of the shitty climate, I'm tired of the pollution, I'm tired of the traffic, and...I'm just sick to death and tired of this place altogether. I can't deal with it anymore, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I want to move back to Alaska. Now. I've wasted five years of my life here that I'll never get back and the only good thing I've got to show for that time is Wacy. Other than that, nothing. I can't even go to school, now. Virginia is not the place for me. It never was.

So Wacy and I have agreed to move back to Alaska.

The thing is, we don't have a lot of money, and a move of that scale is going to cost a lot of money. Not only will it be expensive just to get there (it'll be about a 6,000 mile drive), but it will be expensive finding a place to live, getting moved in, and feeding ourselves. We need to have enough in the bank to take care of ourselves after we get there until we both find work. I want to have at least $6,000 in the bank after we get there. That means we probably need to come up with about $9,000 altogether for this move. Can we do it? Sure we can. It'll mean a lot of hard work, though, and it'll mean living pretty rough in the interest of saving money on rent and putting the savings toward our Alaska Fund. I'm OK with that, though, and so is Wacy. I'd live in a tent if it meant the possibility of going back home again!

I've tentatively set summer of 2012 as our moving time. I think that two years is a realistic amount of time for us to come up with that kind of money. We'll both work our asses off, and each payday I'm going to sit down, look at what bills we owe, and then take whatever we can spare out of each check and set it aside in our Alaska Fund. Every Christmas and birthday, I'm going to ask people to just send money, and every penny of that will go into the fund. After I get this mountain of commissions done, I'm going to start doing more commissions and every dime of that money will go toward the fund too. Hell, all of our loose change is going to get collected, cashed, and put into the fund too. I'm going to double up on my car payments and make two each month instead of one; my car has 18 payments left on it, but if I can have it paid off in 9, then that'll enable us to pile that much more money into the Alaska Fund.

My sister Sarah, who lives in Alaska, is helping us with this crazy plan of ours. Anytime she finds information she thinks might be helpful to us, she sends it to me. She and her husband both are bending over backward to get us back up there because she wants me back home just as badly as I do. I checked my mail on Monday night and found a money order for $1,000 from her in there. @_@ I freaked out and cried and immediately called her, but she refused to take it back. So my Alaska Fund is off to a good start with a balance of $1,000 in it. My boss is going to be paying us to paint my office here in the near future, and he's going to pay us $600 to do that. Every penny of that will go into the fund. Seriously, every extra cent that we make and don't need to put toward bills, gas, and food is going to get stuffed into this fund.

I just feel like I've been stuck in a mud-hole, spinning my tires and getting nowhere for the past five years. I'm tired of being here. If I go to Alaska, yeah, I'll be broke and I won't have a thing to my name, but you know what? I'll be happy. I'll be where I want to be. I'm broke and don't have a damn thing right now, and I'm miserable here. Something's gotta change.

Wacy's totally on board with this idea and I think he's a little excited himself. Dad and Sherry are backing us up 100% too, and they're going to help us as much as they can. I think they're planning to move up to Alaska themselves in 2013, so that would be awesome. I'm not sure where we're going to end up settling. Right now I'm thinking Anchorage, since it's the biggest city (lol, by Alaska's standards, anyway...compared to where we live now, Anchorage is a small town) and will have the most job opportunities. University of Alaska Anchorage is there, too. However, I'm more than willing to change my mind and drop anchor elsewhere if something comes up.

Guys, I'm so fucking excited. I haven't stopped jabbering about Alaska for weeks now. Wacy's got to be getting sick of listening to me, lol. I'm just so excited. I haven't been this excited in years. I finally have a real, tangible, achievable goal, and one that makes me scream and flail around with glee. I'M GOING HOME! I know I've said this many times before and made plans and come up with ideas to get back to Alaska that always fell through in the past, but this time, I'm not alone. Wacy's on board with me, and we've got a good group of people around us supporting us and backing us up in this. It's going to happen.

Since I don't have much of interest to document in a journal (I mean really, who gives a damn about what goes on in my personal offline life? I certainly don't, so I know nobody on my f-list does, lol), I think I'll use this to chronicle our journey from here and now to Alaska in 2012. :D

I went to the gym last night. It's been...gah, almost a year since I last went. I got a one-year membership at this gym last August, went two or three times, and then never went again. I've been paying $20 a month since then and I haven't been going. Now that my membership is a month away from expiration, I start going again. HOW MUCH SENSE DOES THAT MAKE? XD

I went last night though, and omg...I worked my ASS OFF. It felt wonderful, though, to work my body after being inactive and sedentary for so long, and I felt really good afterward. And holy crap, I slept like a rock too. I was late as hell for work this morning (thank the Lord I pretty much work whatever hours I want!) because I absolutely could NOT open my eyes this morning before 9 AM. Even when Wacy came to kiss me goodbye at 7:30, the most I remember is mumbling nonsense at him before passing back out again. I haven't slept like that in a long time! @_@

I started with 10 minutes of high-intensity cardio on the elliptical, then I spent 45 minutes or so on the weight machines. I used most of the machines, but there were a lot of people there and I didn't feel like standing around waiting, so I ended up passing up a few of them. After that I went back and did another 10-15 minutes on the elliptical. I felt like a million bucks.

The night before last I did another two-mile walk with the dog.

I did my measurements this morning, and they were depressing as all hell. :/ I'm at work and don't have them handy at the moment, so I'll post them later on when I get home. I also did my weight too: 265.6 pounds. x_x;;

I had a bit of a crisis with Simba last night. When I came home from work, I noticed that his eyes were seriously not right. His pupils were different sizes. On the right side, his eye looked fine. It might have been over-dilated a little. On the left side, though, he almost had NO pupil whatsoever. It was like a tiny black pinprick.

Oh my God, I fucking freaked. I mean I haven't been so close to panic in a long time. Not only was it just damn CREEPY, the way his eyes looked, but I didn't know why his eyes were like that and all I could think was, Oh God, my dog is going blind.

I did some Googling and I read on several web sites that pupils being two different sizes (I forget the technical word for it) is a telltale sign of head trauma or concussion. A couple of my friends who know a thing or two about dogs told me the same thing. I dunno. He's a clumsy, knuckleheaded puppy so it wouldn't surprise me at all if he banged his head on something before I got home.

After a while, his eyes returned to normal and he was back to his usual frisky, playful self. We've been keeping an extra careful eye on him since then, though, and if it happens again, I'm going to call the vet. If it doesn't happen again, I'm going to ask the vet about it when I take him in for his shots.

I took this picture after I got off the phone with Wacy (I had called him in a panic), so this was after like...20 minutes or so. His eyes had already started slowly returning to normal. The pupil in his left eye (on your right-hand side), when I first noticed it, had been much, much smaller.

I took Simba and went for a two-mile walk earlier this evening. It just about kicked my ass, but I feel so good now that I'm back and I've had a shower. Simba's passed out hard on the floor next to my chair, hah. He's not used to that kind of walking, either. But he sure enjoyed it.

I need to get some bike shorts or something. My thighs rub together when I walk, just enough to really, REALLY friggin' hurt. They're all chafed and sore. I did interval walking/jogging as long as I could, but after about a mile I could barely walk because of my thighs, let alone jog. ;_;

Tomorrow morning I do my measurements and weight. I'm almost afraid to know, gahh. D:

All I have to say is – I have some of the most incredible friends. Seriously. I don't even know what to say that would begin to sum up how I feel about these people.

Anyone who says that online friends aren't "real" friends is a drooling dumbass, because the last 24 hours have shown me the true colours of the people I know online and all I can do is sit here, stunned by their kindness and generosity.

Basically, for those who are wondering what's going on with WWS: In short, our host decided to pull the plug on us because apparently our database is overloading their servers. They took our entire database offline and "restricted it" so that I have no access to it whatsoever. This, of course, was all done without any prior notification, warning, or communication to me. I came home from work and thought that WWS had been hacked and our entire database had been deleted. And then, when I checked my email and saw a message from IX in my inbox, I put two and two together and proceeded to spiral off into a dimension of pissed-off I haven't been to in many, many years.

Right now, Sarah (ravnwolf) and I are working on obtaining a copy of our database files from our host. Once we get those, we'll figure out what to do from there.


Please see http://wws.sentirai.net/ for news updates on our progress with this issue.


jods, I'm sorry I never got around to contacting you like I said I would. Things have just been an insane, chaotic mess since I got home from work and I just didn't have a chance. <333