Avast!

I just needed a title. I apologize for the infrequency of my posts. Work and life’s stressors have been on my case just a little bit more. Still, I’m standing tall. Or I’d like to think that. Things are a bit annoying with regards to my living situation. This summer, we got hit with astronomical cooling bills because there was a dog in the house that needed temperatures to be around 70°F. Well, we are about to have the same situation only in reverse. He (our landlord) wants the heater to be turned on constantly because of the furniture in the house. Edit: Matt estimates that P wants the house to be at 74°F now which is even warmer than it was during the summer!!! He gave Matt a (IMHO)  half-assed explanation for the heater to to be turned up. My god, we’re not even in the 50’s yet! As you can tell, I’m slightly furious because I am not looking to fritter money away on heating furniture. I’m away from the house for most of the day (working Mon-Fri and even sometimes, the weekends!). We are 4 members in the house, but Matt and I pay half combined. It is not in our interests to have the heater turned up especially when there is the cheaper option of purchasing a tiny heating element for your room! Hell, that’s what Matt and I have been doing already!!! If you don’t know to the answer to our dilemma, I’ll provide the one that Matt and I have been avidly interested in: moving to our very own apartment. Right now, all the advantages for renting a room cannot come close to what it will mean when we get our own apartment. Actually, I can’t even count any more merits for staying any longer. If not for Matt wanting the best living situation for us, I/we’d be outta there. I love our landlord and he’s a good person at heart.  However, this situation has struck me as a little more than inconsiderate. Here’s to a fruitful apartment search and an amicable resolution of this issue. It’s not as bad as it seems, but things bug me a bit more than they do Matt. 🙂

In other news, I’m loving my Palm Treo 750. I have spent as much money as I did buying the phone (the refurbished phone cost $99) on its accessories namely: a Spectec Wi-Fi card ($49.95 from Treocentral.com), a 2GB miniSD Kingston card ($28 from Buy.com), a bluetooth ear piece ($49.95 from Treocentral.com), a carrying case and 3 backup-styluses ($28 from iGoneMobile.com). With that, I’ll be done. Out of all my purchases, I love the Wi-Fi card the most. I have been able to surf the internet on my little bitty phone and essentially bypassing ATT’s network. It’s amazing the things you’ll learn on the internet. Thus far, I’ve installed Google Maps on my phone which is a much beloved phone component now. I can map my contact’s addresses, find out the closest pizza houses wherever I am along with their contact information with varied options as to what to do with this information, I could go on. Needless to say, my productivity may take a hit while I get an overdose of my phone. 🙂 With that, I’ll sign off till my next brain fart.

Will we burn….

I’m in a Sarah McLachlan mood tonight. Someone dear to Matt and I passed away. Like my brother, Donald said, God knows best. May she rest in peace. Her funeral is tomorrow and I will be paying my respects. When I watch the videos I have of her, I weep because of the loss that we have suffered by losing her. However, Julie noted that she would not want us to be so mournful at her passing. Rather, I would like to celebrate her memories. If I were more of a computer geek, I would splice the little footage I have of her and give to people. But for all my love of gadgetry, I still struggle like the novice I am. 🙂 I got a call from an old aunt of mine. It warmed me and it was healing to keep talking. Maybe someday, Matt and I will take a trip down there.

My experience with the band, Pelican.

Artist/performer: Pelican
Price: $10
Begins: Wed, 01 Aug 2007 at 11:30 PM
Ends: Wed, 01 Aug 2007 at 1:30 PM

Location: 285 W Washington Street, Athens GA 30601

This band (Pelican) simply rocks! First of all, they don’t have a singer/lyricist. They make the music with their instruments consisting of a bass player, a drummer and two other guitar players. As you may or may not know, my husband is Caucasian and I’m Nigerian. We went downtown to a part of the city and to a club where my kind isn’t frequently seen. This place was the 40 Watt club and I’ve actually been there before with Matt (to see The Melvins). As expected, I had to wear earplugs, but I could hear fine although Matt kept mothering me. 🙂 There was about ~25 people in the club by Matt’s estimate and still, in his words, “they played their heart(s) out” Their sound is nothing like I’ve heard before and I’m frankly speaking. If their songs could have lyrics, they’d be almost melancholy. Matt pegs their styles as “emotional, dramatic and heavy.” He took the words right out of my mouth. They’ve got a hectic tour schedule so go listen to them while they’re in the US. Or check out their Myspace page for samples.

Going to church

church service

Begins: Sun, 05 Aug 2007 at 9:45 AM

Ends: Sun, 05 Aug 2007 at 12:30 PM

Location:

2390 W. Broad St.

Athens, Georgia 30606

USA

For the hell of it, I’ve created an event i.e. going to a Baptist church with my friends, P and J. I’ll hopefully go to lunch afterwards or I suspect I’ll be too tuckered out to do much. I stayed up till 5.35am reading a book by Ken Follett called “A Place called Freedom”. To say it moved me is saying the least. The fact that I refused to sleep till I’d consumed the whole book should tell you something. Go check the book out from your local library, now! The next book I’ll be feasting my eyes on is a book by a renowned ethnobiologist from Harvard who teased out the ingredients in Haitian voodoo that caused the phenomenon of zombie-ism. I can’t remember the title of the book right now, but it’s a must read for those who poo-poo the occult.

Some volunteerism in my life

I’ve found a worthy cause to volunteer my time to. The location is anywhere with the only caveat being high speed internet. I’ve got that and now, I just hope that I pass their rather rigorous screening process. The website belongs to Sage Leadership and the position is that of a Global Economy Associate and has several themes an associate can work under. They believe in a lot of things and Open Source, which is music to my ears, is one of those things. The ‘job’ requirements include knowledge of audio editing software (such as Audacity which I’ve tinkered with before, but now, I have Nero‘s WaveEditor) as well as becoming skilled in using a voice recorder. Score for me on both counts! 🙂 Now, I just need to find a way to channel all the goodness I have to give into an astounding cover letter. They also require knowledge of things such as blogging software and they use Vox as their example. Well, I’ve been a WordPress user for the longest while and just switched to Drupal as my content management system so I guess I’ll have to sign up with Vox and see how it stacks up. Interesting thing about Vox is its owners: the company (Six Apart) that owns LiveJournal, Moveable Type and Typepad, but Vox is being billed as “social networking” site (1). They ask that individuals be familiar with things like wikis and I’m up for the adventure. Now, let me get back to writing that cover letter.

  1. Vox Lifts Off and You’ll Love It Techcrunch.com 10/26/2006