Saturday

Been a good while since I wrote, lots to tell about! As the school quarter was nearing an end I started getting really irritable at work, and school just seemed harder and harder to go to. Emma and I were hoping to go on a really cool roadtrip down to California but we couldn't get enough people on board, money and work was probably the biggest issue people were running into. We decided to just wait for a better time when more people could go, or the two of us could go somewhere really interesting, like a tropical beach, or someplace super warm and calm. Plus it was looking pretty enticing to just hang out in Redmond with old friends for a week, since I already had work off in advance. I also had 600 bucks stewing in my wallet from some filming work I helped James out with, so I treated myself to a PS3 and a wonderfully relaxing week with friends in Redmond. I also brought the boys up to Bellingham for a few days, showed them around, went climbing on the puget sound rock faces, ate at Bellingham's finest, and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. I also got my grades back from school and to much surprise and delight I got 2 A's and a B-.

I went out and finally did some grocery shopping, and I've realized that I really need to have sustenance before I go into work, I don't know why I've been neglecting it, but I'll usually wake up and not eat anything until 11, that can't be healthy. So the other day I had a banana and oat bar and it helped me IMMENSELY, I wasn't grouchy, I wasn't irritable, and I didn't feel like I was counting down the minutes for 11 when I could go eat. I also took some initiative and redesigned are very arduous service check-in form. I took the whole thing from 2 pages down to one very neat and organized sheet, that will hopefully cut down on customer lip I get when I'm trying to do my job. "Why am I signing this field about a $95 service fee when my computer is under warranty?" Anywayyyyys I could go on and on about crappy customer experiences, like the 85 year old german world war 2 fighter pilot vet who asked why his favorite porn sites required passwords when he thought he disabled passwords on his computer... Ewwwwwwwwwwwww. But the weather is warming up immensely, it's Saturday and unless I totally jinx it by writing this (which always happens) the day has been really slow and relaxed, sunny outside, and it's only gonna get warmer through the weekend!

I also found out today that I now have a new half-sibling, it's hard to fathom cause I'm not there and have limited contact with my father, so it doesn't strike me yet but it's strange to think about. I find her middle name interesting it's "Louiena" which I realized is decent if you call her Lizzie Lou but why the Louiena? Maybe it's a Utah thing afterall I have been liberalized by the Bellingham brain washers into liking names like Fré and Hopice, and forming bile at the names Bethsheba and Jehosephat just kidding I don't even know what I'm talking about, but it is strange to think that next time I show up in Utah I'll be very closely related to a girl 21 years younger than I am. By the time I'm in my 40's she'll just be turning 20. This is a long post so I'll end for now, but I'm doing great, feeling great, ready to start school on Monday, and feeling stable and sound in my direction.

Taylor

Sunday

Spent the whole day cleaning the car with Emma. We scrubbed it, waxed it, shined the rims, vacuumed, and polished the inside. It's nice knowing that even though it's not a fancy ride it looks the absolute best it's going to in current situation. Emma was really helpful, and patient as I meticulously poured over the small things, and took up most of our day cleaning. She's amazing, she came over the other day and tore into my closet while I went grocery shopping. I came home to a completely organized and now much more functional closet arrangement. I forget how good it feels to be in a clean and organized environment, and she makes sure I'm always never too far from one. I like things clean, but I also find myself sacrificing it for laziness sometimes, luckily neither of us can be in that kind of condition for too long and we go clean crazy. After a long day of cleaning, it's wonderful to have her there to cuddle with and take in a show. 

In a fit of absolute boredom at work I wandered into a free credit report website, I admit I was also curious to see how my credit was doing. It helps that I don't have any student loans, and no car payment but my 727 credit score is 51% above the "average American", and was in the "excellent" color range. Lately I've been really taking notice to how unstable the economy is, every day the job cuts hit people closer and closer to me. I feel blessed to have a stable credit rating, and a job that I'm up for a raise in a week at, and a car that even though it's not shiny and powerful on the road gets me back and forth and hasn't crashed and burned on the side of the road. I feel prepared to take on what lies ahead and hopefully come out of school to a stronger world, with possibilities that'll let me be happy doing what I love to do.

Tuesday

I started writing a post a couple saturdays ago praising how wonderful those days are, I was doing it while working and as the day went further, as the post got longer I'd keep getting pulled away, and the day kept getting worse and worse. The day ended in me being dog sick, feeling like death, and starting the hardest weekend in a long time, I totally walked into that one! I recovered from a terrible case of the flu, and since then things have been pretty great! I got a really cool HD TV, Emma and I spend a lot of time just relaxing in front of the TV at the end of long days so it's cool to have a really nice picture to look at. I'm finally getting my credit card paid off, using my fat tax refund I got it taken care of, and after I finish the film gig with James I should have plenty to go on a really fun spring break, maybe down to California! After the weather here it'll be really nice to thaw out in some 70 degree perfection. I added a Santa Monica weather monitor to my google start-up page so I'm always seeing the contrast of our nasty 30 degree weather to the warmth and constant sun down there. I'm working with James on a film project down in Bellevue, we're documenting the process of a patient going through a Lasik Eye Surgery, we're renting out really nice equipment, going all out, and FINALLY getting paid for our services, it's been really fun to get behind a camera lens again. The winter seems to be forming its last phrases, the turning pages seem less harsh, and there seems to be more to look forward to in the coming months. 

Thursday

It's really slow at work so I'm gonna try and update my blog. This Tuesday my Dad was supposed to come up and visit Freddy and I, something inside told me not to place too much anticipation into it. I guess my insides are more Romantic than I give them credit for, I allowed myself to get excited, more than I thought I guess, because when he bailed, and he didn't call to let me know, and he didn't really even apologize and try and make it right I felt really hurt. I didn't realize it until later in the evening but I was  dropping in and out of focus, finding myself mindlessly engaging in small tasks, wandering around my room almost in a haze. I was really disappointed in how he treated the situation, Freddy and I are cutting a corner out for ourselves up here, so incredibly distanced from family and friends. It 's a very exciting thought to  to give someone the kind of perspective you face everyday, the things you can't express in words, the places you have to see to understand, and most of all where we live. But it was nice to hang out with Freddy that night, we chilled out at starbucks for a little bit and talked, I always enjoy that.

One of my New Years resolutions was to drink fewer energy drinks, it got to the point where I was averaging nearly 1 a day, and there's no way that's healthy. I don't consider myself addicted because I don't feel any different without them, I don't crave them, I just end up buying them. Since New Years I've only had three, which is a HUGE improvement over the rate I was going at before. 

It's still pretty slow at work but I should get back to focussing on tasks around the place, after the amazingly busy follow up to the Christmas season it's nice to have times like these, reminds me of the summer.

Friday

Lately I've been wanting to try and write in a blog, but held off because I thought nothing really happens worth writing, or there wouldn't be too many people interested, but I realized that that's totally lame and makes me want to write it out even more so here goes!

I'm taking some really interesting classes this quarter at school, my day starts off with a History class, which after reading about it online, I decided to take because it's almost a guaranteed A. On the first day of the class I walked in and there were only 6 or 7 students, I sat down and noticed the professor wasn't looking too hot, he let us out of class after only 10 minutes which was awesome, except I had nothing to do but stroll around campus for an hour and a half. So I'm walkin' around and I see these ambulances out front of the main building, so I watch for a second and out comes my professor on a stretcher, and gets put into the ambulance right in front of my eyes. He didn't come back until a week later, and it turns out he had a routine operation but they transfused the wrong blood into him so he's lucky to be alive because apparently you only get an hour before that kills you :S. Anyways, I'm also taking astronomy with this really geeky professor who is amusing but tries to make the simple act of stargazing way more scientific than I think it should be... My favorite class by far is my American Music class, it's the same professor I had last year this time for my other music class and he's SO cool, just a really quirky guy almost like Russell Crowe in a beautiful mind but a little more bubbly. I'm really enjoying all my classes this quarter, probably gonna be able to get A's in all of em. 

It's been a really harsh winter in Bellingham. Last winter was gloomy, it had its moments of ice and snow, but it was mostly a mild endurance race up a grueling hill. This year is so so different. For weeks the temperature was bellow freezing, and some days it even dropped to 10 degrees. We had the most snow I've ever seen Washington get, and it stayed the longest too. For weeks I had to park my car at the top of a steep hill leading right down to my house at the bottom. For weeks I slipped around trying to get around town, fighting against the reluctant and often negligent bellingham snow removal plans. But the snow doesn't just disappear, first it transforms into a muddy grit of exhaust and sand accumulation, it gets mushy, and most of all, wet. My car as it was attempting to drive through the residual snow build up severed the exhaust system along the undercarriage. My loud car became much much louder as all the exhaust was left to exit and resonate bellow the steel body of my car. Every time an inch or so of snow would pass under my car it would hit against the severed section causing a terrible thumping and vibrating sensation as my exhaust pipe was colliding with frozen muck. Luckily I was able to get under there and with some zip ties fasten it back together temporarily. The result was amazing! My car doesn't sound like a boiler room anymore, I can actually carry out conversations within the cab, and not deafen the poor passerby's. Of course right as I finish doing that I notice one of my tires is completely flat. Luckily I live next to this really ghetto shop out in the country that has dirt cheap tires, so today I got my back tires replaced with some less bald ones. The forecast calls for a sunny week with warmer weather, which should do wonders for the snow and flood stricken Bellingham. It'll also be nice to see my dad who's supposed to be coming up here tomorrow, it'll be even better to have a nice dinner on the town with him!