Last night was one of those rare times (three times in the last year) when I went to bed without the sound of whirring computers around me. It was raining outside and I wanted to be able to listen to the rain so I shut down the entire office that is in my bedroom. A total shut down has only happened two other times that I can remember since we first moved into the house on Sanctuary Drive more than a year ago. I have become so accustomed to the sounds of fans and disk drives that I expect it when I sleep. Even when I stay at Josh’s apartment, I sleep next to his computer that stays on all night. The sound has become quite comforting to me. But last night I just wanted silence so I walked around the room and shut down all three computers that were running. The only lights that were left were four activity indicators in bright green from my switch, one power light on my phone, the soft blue glow from my cheap Aiwa stereo that I turned against a wall in make as dark as possible and the tiniest light from my alarm clock that I covered with a magazine. It was kind of eerie. I noticed that I laid in bed awake for a long time, the sounds of the rain outside on the trees in the woods behind my house was refreshing and it didn’t lull my to sleep like the computers do. It was like listening to one of those nature tapes where they record rain falling in a park. Only it was live and had the added bonus of the feel of cool mist blowing on my face through the open window. I slept well, though, once I fell asleep. Very relaxed and calm.
So, today I am going to talk to a surgeon about having my wisdom teeth removed. Leanne thinks it is funny since I always bragged about not having to get them out. Now they are taking all four of them out, now that I am older. So they are probably going to have to knock me out because it is going to be a big deal. I should find out the details of everything today. I am not too excited about all of that.
Last night, Loopy, Dominica and I had an in house Age of Empires 2 match up. It was pretty exciting. I won, of course. It is a really cool game to play with other people. It did last over 4.5 hours, though. That is a little bit long for a single game. What a great way to waste away an evening!
I have a question for the community at large… Why is the Arial font so much larger than Times Roman? Shouldn’t they all be about the same size? Wouldn’t that make more sense?
The following is brought to you by Natalie, or non-resident Canadian…
“I’m not a lumberjack or a fur trader. I don’t live in an igloo or eat blubber or own a dog sled. And I don’t know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada, although I’m certain they’re really, really nice. I have a prime minister, not a president. I speak English and French, not American. And I pronounce it about, not aboot. I can proudly sew my country’s flag on my backpack. I believe in peacekeeping, not policing. Diversity, not assimilation. And that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal. A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch. And it is pronounced zed, not zee, zed. Canada is the second largest landmass, the first nation of hockey and the best part of North America. My name is Natalie, and I am Canadian!” – Molson Canadian commercial.
Natalie has supplied me with a bio and some pictures so we will try to have some of that up for you by the end of the weekend.
Anne wanted me to point out that she reads the site everyday in Europe and that she represents our Flemish contingency even though she does not speak Flemish. What is Flemish anyway? Shouldn’t they speak Belgish or something? Belgiumese perhaps. Anyway, we don’t wont to alienate our Old World audience by focusing too much on the “World Next Door”.
I really like the new flag graphics. They add a lot of ZING to the site! I moved the first five days of November over into the archives early because it has been a busy month and with so much text and pictures on the page, it was getting cumbersome to download for a lot of people. Of course, now the archive is positively huge. It takes 371 seconds to download the 2001 archive currently with a 28.8kb/s connection. But, this page is moving along much better now.