dianaschnuth

Not that I don’t like our new house or anything… but I do kind of miss having a downtown area to walk around. Tonight, I could have seen myself braving the cold chilly wind and traipsing down to Grounds with a notebook and pen. Maybe bringing a packet of Splenda and pocketing the miniature bottle of caramel sugar-free syrup from our fridge and ordering a decaf.

Sure, there are places in Toledo I could have driven to, but there’s something different about having the walk to clear your head. When you’re driving, you (or at least, I) have to pay attention and don’t have much brainpower left for properly zoning out.

I like being closer to more things we can drive to, but not being able to walk to real shops and stores and restaurants takes some getting used to.

Maybe this is just a manifestation of the weird depression I seem to have been in lately. Can’t seem to shake it. Don’t want to sleep, don’t want to do crap. I’ve been terminally bored for nearly a week now. It’s a little early in the chilly season to be going through this—this was once what I expected to go through every February. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not nearly as depressed as I once was, and it’s been quite a while—years—since I’ve been even recognizably depressed… and this isn’t nearly as bad as I’ve been in the past. I can handle a general lethargy. It’s just pushing through it, when I know that it has no reasonable cause and no foreseeable cure, that’s the trouble.

It’s been a few days, so I figured I’d check in with my faithful readership.

On the stiff neck front: it no longer hurts everywhere, but one or two muscles are still stiff. It doesn’t bother me that much, though, and another good hot shower and a nice long night’s sleep may make it better. That, and not playing on the computer all hours of the night.

On the job-hunting front: Designski never got back to me. I submitted my updated resume to Thread on Friday afternoon/evening, and have yet to hear anything beyond the standard autoreply e-mail. Just checked the Sunday Blade classifieds online, and the only thing even remotely close was a graphic design and vinyl cutting job op. Must be for a sign maker somewhere in town.

In other news: I keep having bad dreams that someone is going to spill to Aaron what I’m doing for his birthday. It’ll still be a good present, even if he finds out what it is ahead of time… but I really hope he doesn’t. And if you know about it, don’t post anything damning here, because he does read my blog. 😉

Skipped out on Sunday’s LakeShoremen banquet, mainly because 1.) the main course was pizza, with the remainder being potluck style (read: Aaron and I would be eating salad and nothing else), and 2.) the venue is two hours and fifteen minutes from here. This is also where all the rehearsals will be held for the 2005 season, which makes me a little unhappy. I’m planning to go to the first few rehearsals, see how the drive is, see how happy I am with the membership and the music and getting to really march again. If the drive and the mental payoff don’t equal out, I’m turning in my mello. I mean, really. That’s farther than driving to Cleveland.

In other news: MY GOD, PEOPLE, EITHER LEARN TO SPELL OR USE YOUR SPELLCHECK. Professionals look like complete idiots when they misspell words like “preform” or “there” or “your” or some such thing. Good Christ. The common layperson writing a random “tommorow” or using the wrong “its” can be excused… but for God’s sake, people, proofread the copy that’s going to the printer for a mass-media run! I know I’m the queen of finding the spelling error / typo, but I know I’m not the only one who catches this sort of thing.

Oh, and my printable Imation CD-Rs from Amazon were actually non-printable Spin-X CD-Rs, according to the two incorrect items I’ve received. I’m apparently getting a refund and a $5 coupon off my next order. So, so annoying. The question now is, do I want to try to find some other brand of printable CD-R on Amazon, or do I give it up and just order another Muppet Show DVD?

Just got off the phone after talking with Carolyn for over an hour. (Aaron – we’re going to have a large long-distance call to West Salem on our next phone bill.)

It’s amazing how much we’ve both grown up, yet we can still relate to one another. It’s partially an age thing—both married with a new house, both age 28 (she’ll be 29 two months before I will). But some of it still a personality and interest thing—both interested in the arts at some point and in some form, both in “boring” jobs we never thought we’d end up in.

I also think we’ve both gotten to be better communicators over the years. She may have been holding back, but her humor didn’t seem as caustic as it once was, and I know I didn’t hold back anything like I might have at one time—if I had a question, I just asked it, to hell with propriety. “How much did you pay for your house?” “Are you breastfeeding?” That sort of thing.

Sounds like she’d be quite excited to see me at their shower on the 30th, so I think I’m going to try to make it out there. I don’t know if Aaron will be up for making a day of it, even if I drive out for the first leg of the trip. Either with or without Aaron, though, it’d be good to see Carolyn again.

I wish I knew what I did last night that made me wake up with such a stiff neck. Goddang. I could barely turn my head to check my blind spot while driving to work this morning; by lunch, my neck muscles were sore from holding my head up. They felt almost sprained, I swear. I took a couple Excedrin QuickTabs from Scott, my cube-mate… nasty, nasty stuff, and they have 65mg of caffeine, but they seem to work. Not only did my neck muscles get just a touch less painful, but I also got quite wired and talkative and happy and smiley. Damn… oughta caffeinate myself more often. As Aaron and I said last weekend: with our abstinance from caffeine and sugar of late, we’re really cheap dates. 🙂

Anyway, when I came home, I took Aaron’s advice and spent some quality time on the couch with Harry Potter and a heating pad. My neck’s feeling better now, just a little tense—hopefully I don’t do whatever I did last night while I’m asleep tonight. Sheesh.

In other news, my middle-school friend Carolyn had her first child last week! The new baby pics almost got deleted in my Gmail spam folder, but I recognized one of the e-mails as being from Carrie’s mom, Candy, and marked it as Not Spam. Glad I rescued that one.

You know, I haven’t seen Carrie for years, and we’ve had a weird relationship at times (we’ve both got warped senses of humor that don’t always jive with each other); but for some reason, I’m happier for her than I’ve been for any new parent I can think of offhand. I’m not rejecting the emotion—I’m just perplexed by my reaction, given the years and miles between.

later: On the same day as Carolyn’s baby shower in West Salem (aka BFE), there’s a Pietasters concert at the Grog Shop in Cleveland. If we were to do both, which would require me dragging Aaron out to a girlie-giggles baby open-house in the middle of nowhere where he knows literally no one but me, it would be:

2 hours from Toledo to West Salem
Open House at Carrie’s from 2pm to 5pm
(likely arriving closer to 3:30 or 4pm)
1 hour to Cleveland Heights
(with dinner somewhere en route)
Doors at 9pm at the Grog Shop – three opening bands before the Pietasters even go on
2 hours from Cleveland Heights home to Toledo

But part of me really wants to do that, despite the fact that Aaron’s not too keen on the NE Ohio BFE area, having seen part of it once before and having been bored out of his freaking skull. But I’d love to see Burbank again, the half-mile-square village where I spent my junior high years. It’s not much… at all… but I’m curious if the tenants of our old house have dug up Mom’s lavender after 15 years. They hadn’t the last time Mom and I happened to drive by, when I was in college.

Just the thought of getting off at Exit 204 off I-71… seeing how they’ve straightened out the S-curve into town that used to scare the living shit out of everyone who gave me and my Mom a ride home… seeing how the town has (or hasn’t) grown… whether the old Variety Store is still there (restaurant, bar, grocery, video store, and library, all in one)… driving past the city park… Then driving further north up I-71 through Medina… It’s really giving me the weirdest sense of nostalgia. Kind of happy, kind of depressed. Kind of anxious to see, kind of anxious to avoid the experience.

Again, I don’t understand my reaction here.