While I was purchasing something in the lingerie department at Proffitt’s, one of the employees comes back from her lunch break and tells the other two women that were working there that there had been a bomb threat in the mall. A lot of the stores were closing down. We kind of stood there and nervously joked about it for a moment while my purchase was being rung up.

After I left Proffitt’s, I had to walk all the way to the other side of the mall, because of course I was parked in JC Penney’s parking lot (I usually park in Proffitt’s parking lot, so this was a little weird). Anyway, so I noticed the closer I got to the main entrance of the mall, the more stores were closed. The main entrance itself was taped off and a cop was guarding it. It was a little freaky. I tried to call my best friend just in case I somehow got blown up, but she didn’t answer. I did, however, make it to JC Penney’s safely and even stopped to browse through some purses with Zodiac signs on them (no wallets that I could see).

After that excitement, I decided to continue my shopping at a safer mall and went over to East Town.

I checked all the news websites and didn’t see anything, so I’m supposing the mall didn’t blow up.

So first I decided to go out to the park, have a picnic, feed the ducks, and read some. Which I did, except I forgot the bread for the ducks. I stayed there for a couple hours, and now my upper back and the backs of my legs are burnt. Remind me to buy some sunscreen.

After that, I went and paid some bills. Then I got the urge to get ice cream. So I went over to Bruster’s and got chocolate ice cream in a sugar cone. The sugar cone made me insanely thirsty, so I went in search of an Icee. Preferrably strawberry. I went to Wal-Mart. They had Coke and blue raspberry Icees. I got Coke. It wasn’t that great. Usually I like Coke Icees. I dunno what was up with that one.

Anyway, not to make this post anymore boring, I went home and watched Friends. Ross and Rachel kissed!!! I started jumping up and down on the couch, I was so happy!!! Yay!!! It’s sad that next week is the final episode, but it’s two hours long. Ross better end up going to Paris with Rachel. He’s her lobster! Okay, I’ll stop being a dork now.

Well, really, I went to the park so I could read and enjoy the nice day. I brought along some bread just in case. So I had been there for about 20 minutes, and two ducks waddle up next to me, presumably to see what I was up to. So I gave them some bread. Then two more showed up. I fed them too. And some more came. Well, you get the picture. My two slices of bread that I brought didn’t last too long, and within a matter of minutes I was completely surrounded by ducks. So I took pictures, of course.

Anyway, I completely can’t believe it’s the last day of class. I have no time left to bring my grades up. Bleh.

I was getting ready to go to bed, so I got myself a glass of milk and went into the living room to drink it. Tera was on the coffee table and taking up most of it, so I went to move her a bit, and somehow spilled milk on her. She’s okay, but her screen has streaks on it. I need to give her a bath now.

Anyway, it’s the last day of class. I decided I should make an effort and go so I can figure out what will be on the finals. Like I think that will help me. I have just come to realize that, with the expection of one class, my grades are abysmal. They can’t be helped. Of course, in one class, everyone’s grades are bad, but still. I need to start going to counseling again. Or move. Or both.

I also need to find a new job in the next week or so. If anyone knows of anything that’s open, please let me know. I might just go to a temp agency and see if they can find me something for the next couple months. I need something full time and that pays decently. The more money I can save up, the better.

Hopefully summer break (and maybe the time off I will probably be taking after that) will help me. I really, really hope so.

This weekend was pretty fun. Brina came in on Friday and we went out to Bailey’s and some places on the strip. We met up with one of our old friends from high school and hung out with him.

Saturday was, of course, the board game party. For some quick recaps: Ernie is never drinking jager again. I still can’t find the missing Jenga piece. Egyptian Rat Screw is very addicting. I’m really good at Scene It’s alternate movie titles. Never play Twister for longer than like 10 minutes at a time. Ouch. Colonel Mustard in the dining room with the lead pipe (I won). Life is a boring game.

And my mouse is smart. I had one trap go off, but no mouse. And the cheese was gone from another one. Grr. If he was so smart, he wouldn’t have let me see him in the first place!

I would also like to add that I hate it when I figure out that I’ve been lying to myself about something. So annoying. Everything is just so complicated.

My party lasted from 8 pm to 10 am. The pictures speak for themselves.
http://photos.sweetvenus.org/dispfolder.php?folder=040424_boardgame3
I’m going back to bed now.

I’m sitting here waiting for the UPS guy. I hate doing this. I always feel so confined to my apartment whenever I am waiting for a delivery. Normally, I probably wouldn’t go anywhere anyway. But there is something about knowing that I have to stay here or else be doomed to wait another day for my package that really makes me want to go somewhere else.

I suppose I should clean my apartment. It’s a bit of a mess. Though I suspect I’m scared of what I will find, even though I have not heard a peep out of the mouse or the mousetrap since 11:00 last night.

I think the most frustrating thing last night was not the mouse. It was that I couldn’t find anyone who would come help me. It makes me wonder if it had been something more serious than a mouse, would anyone come help me? Or would they just not care? I feel so alone sometimes. If I were to just fall and hit my head on something and blackout, I really wonder how long it would take for people to figure it out. I’m guessing a few days. And that scares me.

I’ve been accused of being self-centered. But when it seems to me like no one else cares, then I might as well. I am the only person I can rely on.

I still need a hug. I haven’t had one in weeks.

Seriously.

Anyway, it seems my favorite Scorpio page is no longer. I have to go to the Internet archive to see it. So I’m going to stick this part in my blog for reference purposes.

So true on all accounts from my experiences.

I come home after work today, sit down, thinking about all the work I needed to get done…the usual. Then I see a small grey thing streak across my living room floor, heading towards the couch where I am sitting.

I flip out.

I am only scared of three things that I know of: needles, clowns, and MICE.

My fear of mice spawns from the movie The Princess Bride. After seeing Wesley and Buttercup struggle with those ROUSes, I have never been fond of any rodent, no matter the size.

So, I’m sitting there, wondering if I should get up and move across the room to my desk chair, which spins and seems safe since I would theoretically be able to see all around me if needed. But I’m too terrified to move. I know this all sounds really stupid and girly. I just am really scared of mice.

I know I have some mousetraps under my sink. But I have no idea how to set a mousetrap; I’ve never had to do it before. Plus I can’t move. I’m too scared that the mouse will cross my path.

Checking my AIM and Yahoo lists, I note that NONE of my guy friends are online. Of course. I IM the ones that are away, hoping to get some sort of response in the next hour or so. But I don’t.

I am getting hysterical by this point. And, yes, I realize, it’s just a mouse.

I call my best friend to get ideas, but she doesn’t answer. Still no one has responded to my pleas for help. And why do none of them have cell phones??

After hearing the mouse rustling under the couch where I am sitting, I finally get the urge to move. And do so over to my desk chair. Then my cell phone rings. I have, of course, left it on the couch. I jump back over to the couch, barely touching the floor. It’s my best friend, returning my call. She somehow calms me down (I was starting to hyperventilate).

I notice some new people online, so I send out some more IMs. Apparently my pleading away message is not doing the trick. No one responds right off, so I continue talking to Sabrina on the phone, trying to get my mind off the mouse that is possibly still under me.

Then Ernie responds to my IM. Yay! He says if I come pick him up, he will come set mousetraps for me. Yay! So I do. And he does. And now I can rest.

Although I am definitely not sleeping on the couch tonight. And if I hear one of those mousetraps go off, I’m going to scream.

1. “Mythbusters” is a great show to watch when you need cheering up.
2. Slim fit jeans look good on me.
3. Certain books shouldn’t be read before attempting to go to sleep.
4. Netmeeting is weird.
5. Scorpios are evil (yes, this includes me).
6. I have trouble deciding on what I want my away messages to say.
7. I easily anger people.
8. When I tell people I don’t want unsolicited advice and they offer it anyway and I get upset, they get upset (wow, that was confusing).
9. Amazon charges sales tax.

So it occurs to me that maybe I should see when my application to UW is due, since I was listing due dates. Yeah, it was due in February. I wasn’t even thinking about moving to Seattle in February. So I can’t even apply right now. Now what am I going to do? I suppose I could take a semester off and work. Or I could just not move. But the way my grades are dropping, that’s probably not a good idea. Every day I get more and more depressed about still being in Knoxville. I just don’t want to be here anymore. I need a change of scenery so bad. Everywhere I look is one bad memory after another. It depresses me so much that I just don’t care about anything, and I don’t care about school most of all. I have no motivation whatsoever. Most of the time I just want to lie in bed all day.

My trip to Indianapolis was great. It was so wonderful to get out of town. But the minute I got back to my apartment, all the depression came back. Maybe more so. Or maybe it just seemed that way since I was so happy before I got back there, I just seemed to fall further. Ugh.

I know my parents will freak if I take a semester off though. But I think maybe I could use it. Believe me, I want to graduate college more than anything, but at the rate I’m going, it’s never going to happen. Especially with my grades. They’ve been slowly dropping more and more since I’ve been in college. When I was a freshman, I went to class everyday, did papers early, and all that. I was happy. My sophomore year wasn’t bad either. And then stuff started happening and I got depressed, and everything has just come crashing down with me. I hate that. I don’t want to do bad in school, but I can’t seem to quite bring myself to care.

I got advised last week for next semester, and my advisor agreed with me that I needed a change of scenery. She understood completely. I just am not myself here. There’s no one here that cares about me. I would just be so much happier somewhere else. Anywhere but here.

1. Java program (due 4/20)
2. Pay parking ticket (due 4/20)
3. MS paper (due 4/22)
4. Finish UW application
5. Pay bills
6. Clean apartment for party this weekend
7. Go insane

I feel as though I’m forgetting something. Hope it’s not important.

In any case, I probably will not be on AIM or Yahoo much until I get stuff done. IMing is my biggest time waster, so if I eliminate it, hopefully I will be forced to do actual work.

http://www.indystar.com/articles/8/139092-1008-063.html

I just got back from Indianapolis.

I’m really at a loss for words. There is nothing I can say that can adequately describe last night.

Well, first of all, we got to Indianapolis in plenty of time. We were supposed to be at the fairgrounds at 6:00 to meet a guy that was selling us an extra ticket. But we ended up driving around Indy for like an hour and a half looking for a hotel relatively close to the coliseum. Apparently there aren’t any.

We finally found a hotel a little bit further away, and then got dressed and headed off to the fairgrounds. We got there at about 6:45. The doors had opened at 6:30. We met the guy, got the ticket, and then I realized that I had left the other two tickets in the car. Duh.

Finally, after we had all three tickets in our possession, we headed inside. They had to search us, and they were searching the guys and girls separately. I did manage to get the stealth cam in by strategically placing it in my shirt.

After we were in, we headed down to the floor and sat down to wait. It was 7:00 at this point, and the concert was scheduled to start at 8:00. I went and got a wristband so I could drink, but after paying over $4 for a tiny cup of Smirnoff Ice, I decided it wasn’t worth it.

At 8:00, The Mars Volta came on stage. They opened with “Roulette Dares,” which made me extremely happy. They continued to jam for the next hour playing an extremely extended version of “Cicatriz ESP”. I really don’t think the majority of the crowd knew who they were, cause they all kind of stood there and stared.

A Perfect Circle came on stage at 9:45, opening with “Vanishing,” as usual. The crowd started to get a little pushy during the first few songs, but they calmed down (at least in the part where I was standing), and I stopped worrying that I was going to die.

I had a decent view of Billy and James for most of the show. I had the tallest person in the world standing right in front of me for a few songs, though. I was probably about the same distance from the stage as I was for the Jewel concert.

It was Maynard’s birthday, of course, so we all sang to him. He’s forty years old now. Getting up there. He asked us to perform various experiments in censorship, and he did a magic trick for us (which I couldn’t really see because I had the tallest person in the world standing directly in front of me at the time). But he said he was going to drop a water bottle and then it was going to levitate. We had to say the magic words. He had to do it twice cause the first time it didn’t work, but apparently he dropped the bottle, it bounced, and he caught it. And as usual, he told us to “think for yourself, question authority” and that we had the power to change authority in November. The usual spiel.

I recorded “A Stranger,” but, of course, it doesn’t sound that great. At all. So I’m not posting it here. I will have to look around and see if I can find some better recordings of the show. I would have recorded some other songs, but at some point, I ended up with a guy behind me who was singing really loudly and off-key, and I could hear him better than Maynard, so I figured recording that wouldn’t be that great.

I can’t decide what the highlight of the night was. Possibly “A Stranger,” since it’s not usually a part of their set. I can’t even begin to describe how awesome they are live. Maynard had been sick lately, and had to cancel and postpone some shows earlier this month, but he sounded fully recovered and absolutely wonderful.

The set list was as follows:
Vanishing
Pet
The Hollow
Magdalena
Weak and Powerless
Rose
Blue
Thinking of You
A Stranger
The Package
3 Libras
The Nurse Who Loved Me (alt.)
Thomas
Fred’s Got Slacks
The Outsider
The Noose
Judith

I realized after we got back to the hotel that I forgot to buy a t-shirt, so I suppose I will have to find one on Ebay. Or I could just wait till Atlanta next month. Yay! I can’t wait to see them again!!

Okay, here is the official set list from the Jewel concert, taken from her website:

Near You Always, Passing Time, Everything Breaks, 1000 Miles Away, Sometimes It Be That Way, Little Sister, Down So Long, Everybody Needs Someone Sometime (1st time acoustic), Life Uncommon, Hands, Stephenville TX, hitchiking story->Race Car Driver, Cold Song, What’s Simple Is True, 2 Become 1, Stand, Intuition, Morning Song, Foolish Games, You Were Meant for Me, long intro->Who Will Save Your Soul Encores: Per la Gloria d’adorarvi, Where You Are, Q&A with audience, Chime Bells

Seems I forgot Sometimes It Be That Way and Hands. I knew I was forgetting one or two.

A Perfect Circle in Indy tomorrow!! Woohoo!! I need to get to bed early tonight. I’ve got a long drive ahead of me tomorrow. I do, however, have my outfit all ready.

I love this weather. And I love my one tan arm. And I seriously dislike men.

Not at all. Heh.

You need a boyfriend like you need a hole in the head.

There’s been drama. There have been words. Breakable items have been thrown. In short, men are trouble and you want no part of them for any reason. Conventional wisdom says they’re from Mars… And that actually is not quite far enough away as far as you’re concerned. Send them all to Pluto! And the chances of your changing your mind are slim to none. But that’s okay. We need to hate certain things in life… So we’ll appreciate the things we love all the more.

Anyway, I think I did really good on my CS311 quiz today. Which is amazing. I didn’t really ever get around to studying for it. And I’ve been kind of slacking off on the homeworks.

Here’s some new maps of the Knoxville area:

Out of all the APs, I’ve found:
41 are encrypted.
165 are not encrypted.
linksys is the most popular SSID with 44 occurances.
default is the second most popular with 13 (not counting nomad, UT’s wireless network).
6 is the most popular channel with 81 occurances.
1 is the second most popular with 35.
5 is the least popular with 1 occurance.

I know this because my left arm (and ONLY my left arm) is bright red. Aren’t sunburns great? And when this goes away, I will have a nicely tanned arm. If only the rest of me were so lucky to be hanging out of the car window for several hours in the middle of the day.

Anyway, I went and saw Hellboy last night. My friends made me. Umm, yeah. Please give me more Eternal Sunshine. Seriously. I’m really glad that I did not have to pay for this movie. I would be demanding my money back. It never fails to amaze me how my best friend and I have completely opposite tastes in movies. She hates Chicago and loves Sweet Home Alabama (not to mention her Star Trek obsession). Need I say more?

Not a whole lot else going on right now. Samantha, who is now six month pregnant, left for Alaska today. She went to the movies with us last night, so I got to see her before she left. Everyone is leaving. I’m not going to have any friends around come mid-May. This perhaps may be why I hope to move to Seattle.

I’ve been in search of a new wallet for awhile now. I’m seriously sick of carrying around a purse, since it basically just holds my huge wallet. I want something small that I can put in my pocket. Well, I went to Wal-Mart a week or two ago, and they had these thin black wallets with zodiac signs on them. Except, of course, they were out of Scorpio. So I go to every Wal-Mart in the Knoxville vicinity. Nothing. Now I’ve been to every Wal-Mart in the Clarksville vicinity. Still nothing. Grr. Capricorn wallets, on the other hand, seem to be in abundance. I guess I am going to have to give up this search, unless I find something online that I like.

Okay, first of all, the pictures did not come out as well as I hoped. Basically, you can see a glowing human figure, and that’s about it. Blah. I will post a couple anyway, as well as one of myself that Ernie took right before I left for the concert. Anyway, don’t know what I’m going to do about the APC concert now.

I did get several audio clips, which came out fairly well.

I was sitting in the tenth row, dead center, so I had an excellent view. For all of the opening act and the first few songs of Jewel’s set, no one was sitting in front of me.

Okay, first of all, Jewel’s opening act was amazing. His name was Ryan Cabrera (blurrily pictured in the center, above). He was just awesome. He has a website at www.ryancabrera.com where you can download full versions of several of his songs. His album comes out in June. He was really great, and funny, and kind of cute. I was really impressed by him.

Jewel came on at 8:30. She was wearing a hot pink skirt, a white tank top, and tennis shoes. She recently got her hair cut and has bangs now, and I thought she looked great. She opened with “Near You Always,” singing a cappella. And, of course, I can’t remember all the songs, or the exact order that she sang them, so here is a general list:

Near You Always, 1000 Miles Away, Passing Time, Everything Breaks Sometimes, Little Sister, Life Uncommon, Stephenville, Stand, Down So Long, Morning Song, Race Car Driver, Cold Song, Everybody Needs Someone Sometimes, 2 Become 1, Intuition, Foolish Games, You Were Meant for Me, Who Will Save Your Soul, Per la Gloria, a new song that she played the dulcimer on, and Chime Bells.

Whew. I am probably missing one or two.

The last three songs were her encore. The new song, which she didn’t mention its name, was awesome. She said that it was only the second time she had played it, the first time being the night before. I would have recorded it, but was out of space by this time.

In between it and Chime Bells, she did a kind of question and answer session. I couldn’t think of anything good to ask, and most of what was asked, I already knew. But basically, she told us she has a dog named George and she lives in Stephenville, Texas, with her boyfriend Ty. She said her next album would probably be six live tracks and six in the studio, one of which would be the dulcimer song. She plans on it coming out at the beginning of next year, but she’s not entirely sure since Atlantic was sold and fired everyone that worked for her. Someone asked if Ty asked her to marry him, would she, and she said yes.

Okay, as for audio, I have:
The beginning of 1000 Miles Away - I only recorded the beginning because it was one of the first songs she sang and I wasn’t sure how much space it would take up.
The story behind Race Car Driver - This is the same story that I was trying to explain last September when I saw her, but, like I said, Jewel tells it much better, so here it is.
Stand - Full version
Per la Gloria - I missed the very beginning of it because I was fumbling around with the cam, but I got most of it.

I got up this morning at about 10:00, walked into the living room, noted that TiVo was recording something, and turned on some music.

Two hours later, I note that TiVo is still recording. Now, I’m curious, since I figure it must be a movie or something equally exciting for TiVo to have been recording for two hours. So I turn on the TV.

TiVo has been taping the TV Guide channel, with two more hours to go. Yeah, I deleted that recording.

Anyway, it’s less than six hours before the Jewel concert! I’m working until 4:00 and then I’ll be on my way to Asheville. Yay!