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Hello! This is gonna be fast because it’s past my bedtime–and ask Jim, I’m very serious about my bedtime–but before that, I’m gonna sum up the week, just so I don’t forget. So, since the last post:

• Jim and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. We both got each other books, in keeping with it being the “paper” anniversary and all, and I also got Jim this recipe shaker from Target.
• We also went to The Hideout for our anniversary. Sadly, they’re not as good as they used to be. Seriously, only two types of soup? What the…? Next year, it’ll be Red Lobster. Or O’Charley’s. I love O’Charley’s.
• Speaking of going out to eat, Jim’s dad and step-mom also took us out for dinner for our anniversary. I wasn’t expecting that, but I wasn’t complaining either!
• I’m almost completely done with season 8 of Buffy, which is the comics, for those not in the know. I’m enjoying them, but they’re definitely not as good as the show. And some of the things that have happened…wow. Gag. And huh. And tear. No spoilers here, though, especially since Jim isn’t caught up.
• We had a pot luck at work because one of our co-workers got custody of her grandson. Yay for that! And also, yay for food!
• I started on Jim’s amigurumi kobold. I’m not very far, and I’m kind of making it up as I go along. Here’s hoping it isn’t terrible, since amigurumi is still pretty new to me.
• Friday night, I joined Jim’s Spelljammer game. My character is a level 5 half-orc cleric whose god is Wee Jas. I took domains in Death and Magic. As expected, it was a little awkward, since I’m not very social and all, but it was okay. Hopefully, I’ll be of some use to the group.

On that note, I’ve been trying to think of ways to access my spell list more quickly. When I played Natalia in the “Homebrewed” campaign, I vowed that I would use notecards in the future, so this time, I had just about all the spells that my cleric was capable of casting written down on 3×5 cards. I used all the cards and went through three pens, even.

Guess what? I don’t think they’re going to work. They were great for the magic items I had in the last game, but for a 3rd edition game, it’s becoming clear that the notecards are way too cumbersome for an entire spell list. There are just too many freakin’ spells. Ideally, I would have a tablet or a small laptop, but I have neither of those things. (Well, I do have the laptop I’m writing on, but this laptop is too big and would probably just overheat in the middle of using it anyway.) But I have another idea that I think is going to work. Once I’m done, I’ll let ya know.

That’s all for now. Seriously, it’s time for bed. Good night!

The second season of Game of Thrones starts tonight. For those of you who want a recap:

Sadly, I will not be watching. Our apartment complex dropped one cable company and picked up another, so we don’t get the free HBO that we used to, and HBO is too expensive to pick up for one show, especially in a one-income household. We already know we’re going to be buying the DVDs, so we’re just going to have to wait until next year to see it.

Luckily, we do have the first season that I bought with my gainsharing check just a couple weeks ago. It’s still sitting unopened on the shelf. My plan is that while everyone else is watching season two, I’ll just be re-watching season 1. Since it’s been a year since I’ve seen it and I’ve got a terrible memory, it’ll be like seeing it new all over again, right?

Happy Friday! Of course, I plan on going in to do overtime tomorrow, but we’re going to pretend we didn’t hear that, right? And stay up all night, anyway?

(And be sorry for it in the morning?)

So, not too long ago, I knocked something off one of the stand thingabobs where we keep our DVDs (and yet, it’s not really a DVD stand–don’t even try to understand our furniture choices) and the something (keys, I think?) slipped between the wall and the stand. I reached behind it and made an odd discovery.

A poster, in a hard plastic casing, of this picture:

OMG, it's Ned!

Yup, Ned Stark from Game of Thrones. The odd thing is…I don’t remember buying this. When Jim came home, I questioned him. He scratched his head. “Maybe I bought it for you and hid it back there…and forgot?” He couldn’t remember buying it, either.

Regardless, the picture is now hanging in our hallway, although we both agree it would have been even better if it were over the toilet, haha. As it is, that space–the space over the toilet, that is–is occupied by a cross stitch made for me by my sister of a cat grabbing onto a branch that says “Hang in there!”

Actually, now that I think about that picture in the toilet-context, that’s pretty funny too. Well, if I were 12. Or me.

Anyway, Jim’s out tonight. I am not playing Skyrim. Are you shocked? I’m learning that it takes me hours to do anything in the game, and since I don’t have much time before I have to get to bed, I might as well not bother. I’ll try to get some game time in tomorrow.

Besides, Jim updated his blog, making me feel sufficiently guilty for not updating my own. Although he has a better reason for updating than I do: He’s actually finished the first draft of his first novel! I’m impressed. I’m looking forward to getting to read it, although it’s going to have to squeeze in between Skyrim, reading Name of the Wind and Storm Front, and crocheting these:

Cthulhu!

Ha! I have my own accomplishments. This is my first attempt at amigurumi–a cthulhu. Granted, my skill is nowhere near Ruth’s (a.k.a. Cthulhu Chick), but I don’t think it’s half-bad for a first attempt, especially considering that it was just a short time ago that I got over my longtime fear of crocheting in circles.

Here’s the back:

Wings!

I did better on the wings that I thought I would; however, my stitching is still sloppy. Also, I found out afterwards that I should have used a smaller hook. I actually figured it out myself when I decided that the gauge should be tighter, then looked it up online and found out that this, apparently, is a well-known fact in the universe of amigurumi-making.

Dumb of me? Well, maybe, but what do you want of a girl that pretty much only makes scarves?

At any rate, I knew my first attempt would be sloppy, but it’s all about the learning process. I’m on my second, and I already think it looks much, much better than the first.

The real goal, by the way, is to make Jim an amigurumi-like kobold. He found some by Meri Greenleaf. (Click the link, scroll down, behold some awesome pictures of her husband and the kobold plushies.) Jim thought of all the kobold plushies he’d seen, her kobolds looked more…well, kobold-y, heh. So he wants something similar.

You know what I want? To go to bed. Actually, that’s not true at all, but I don’t want to be as exhausted as I was this morning, when I decided to go in early at 6 AM. Blech. Remember when Friday nights were FUN?

Yeah, me neither. Night!

No, today is not one of those “official” days where it’s calling awareness to mental health. “Mental health day” is my mental health day, a day I’ve taken off to preserve my sanity. Thanks to a mild winter, all those PTO days that I was hording to use as snow days are going to be used as good, old-fashioned days off instead.

Today is one of them.

I decided to do this last week as I was put on the hotline yet again. I was stressed, and I decided I needed a break.

A more permanent (mental) break, though, seems to finally be coming. Last week, I was approached by my supervisor. They had selected a few written CAs to be protected from the hotline. This is in attempt to sort of wean the phone unit off using the written unit to keep their numbers down. (They have gotten a bunch of new people, after all. The fact they’ve needed us for so long is kind of alarming.) The people chosen to be protected from the hotline were based on stats–whoever had the highest quality and production.

Guess who was one of the selected?

(Watch me get jinxed for mentioning this and get an error now.)

Anyway, that is all well and good, but I’m even happier that on Tuesday, we got notice that they were pulling all but 15 people off the phones to focus on–gasp!–our actual work: WRITTEN. Heh. That means that more of my co-workers (but still not all) are now off, too. Since I like my co-workers, I’m happy that they’re also getting protected from the hotline.

So, we appear to be at the end of the tunnel, looking at that light. Remember when I used to like my job? Yeah, it looks like I’ll be going back to my regular duties and back to loving my job again.

There has been all sorts of awesome in the last week. Aside from finding out that my job wouldn’t suck for much longer, we finally got our car back, and the mechanic didn’t charge us for the deductible! So that money I had squirreled away for that–totally ours now! Also, we had a dent in our rear bumper that was completely unrelated to Jim’s accident. Well, apparently, the mechanic noticed it and popped it out. It’s barely noticeable now. And we weren’t charged for that either!

To say that I’m going to be recommending this guy to everyone I know is an understatement.

In addition to having money in our pockets from saving on the deductible, Friday was THE payday–the one that included our new raises, as well as our gainsharing checks. And it was AWESOME. The amount of gainsharing you get is dependent on stats and how much overtime you’ve put in over the year. As you can imagine, my gainsharing was pretty freakin’ sweet.

So, that Friday morning, Jim took the car because he had decided to use some of that money to complete our Stargate collection. When I got off work, I added to our DVD collection with the first season of Game of Thrones. I also picked up a  Lacuna Coil CD and Skyrim.

Ladies and gentlemen…we now have a new obsession in the house.

Okay, I can’t tell you a whole lot about it. My character just finally got up to level three. I can tell you that I’ve seen enough to realize that this was the game for the XBox 360 that I’ve been looking for.

However, I haven’t had a chance to play it much. Jim, who was originally completely uninterested in it, is now completely addicted, heh.

In Jim’s defense, I really don’t like playing on the XBox with other people around. I don’t know why. I just don’t like being watched. And since this is a tiny apartment, and Jim pretty much only likes to hang around the living room…you see why I haven’t been playing as much. Jim has been good about consistently offering me a chance at the XBox, and I’ve been declining, spending my time poring through the book I bought for Skyrim instead. I’m a total Virgo in that regard: I’m one of those people who really like to read things like manuals. And if a game has a training mode, so much the better. I don’t like going into something without knowing what I’m doing. I don’t like to “wing” it.

(Incidentally, this is why I really only liked to do spur-of-the-moment dungeon runs in Warcraft with my friends. Kyle always explained what to expect and the best strategies to employ. Most pugs I’ve seen are just crazy, random killing sprees. Ugh.)

Anyway, as you can imagine, most of my mental health day (“stay home or go crazy!”) will probably be dedicated to Skyrim, since Jim plans on spending most of his afternoon playing Warhammer with his friends. I’m pretty excited. The world in this game is just massive, and it looks like there’s a lot to do. I still suck at it, but at least I can walk around without slamming into walls now, heh.

Well, mostly. Hey, I never played the XBox much, so I’m still getting used to the controller.

Still, even just starting out my first character, I’m already thinking of other characters I’d like to try. The character I have now is a high elf mage. She’s going to be pure mage, I think. The book I bought has “archetypes” of characters listed as possible characters to try. One I have my eye on to try down the road is an orc berserker. That totally looks fun.

Speaking of this thing we call “fun,” I think I’m going to go have it!

There has been a lot going on this week that I was going to post, but I think it’s going to have to wait. Today is Joshua’s and Amber’s birthday, and it’s hitting me harder than I thought it would.

Joshua would have been 25 years old today. It’s a milestone I can’t help but feel he was cheated out of. And I worry that his sister Amber is always going to feel grief on her birthdays from now on. The thought of that just kills me. Her birthday should be joyous, a day about her. I know the first couple will be hard, but I hope it eventually becomes something wonderful again, something she doesn’t have to share with grief.

Today, though, I’m going to light a candle for Josh and play the hell out of Skyrim, which I bought on Friday. Joshua was very into video games. He actually had a collection of consoles. He had everything from the old school Atari to the newer Playstation 3 and XBox 360 and everything in between. Video games were something that he and I both really loved, so trust me when I say that Josh would approve my playing Skyrim.

Also trust me when I say that he would have been way better at it. For those of us who grew up with the simpler joysticks of the Atari and the original Nintendo, the XBox 360 controller is a little complicated. I really love the game so far, but I’m terrible at it. I hope wherever Josh is, he’s watching me and getting a damn good laugh!

So this week, I’ve:

• Started crocheting a tiny cthulhu, frogged it, restarted it, and am still working on it as I need supplies.
• Been getting rides to and from work all week while my car was (and still is, apparently) in the shop.
• Found out some of my co-workers in Harrisburg are dealing with the aftermath from the F4 tornado.
• Had to take cover in the women’s bathroom at work as more bad storms passed through the area just a couple days later.
• Found out that my raise was bigger than I had expected, and my gainsharing was more than I had expected as well. (Jim and I did fist bumps when I showed him the numbers, heh.)
• Found out that my mom lost her job. (She seems to be surprisingly okay with it, though.)
• Been doing a lot of reading on my Kindle, trying to catch up with our book club.

By the way, I love my Kindle. I still and always will love regular old books, but now I’m wondering why I held out so long on getting an ebook reader.

And The Walking Dead tonight! My co-worker Ryan told me some of his predictions on the fate of a couple of characters, and I’m curious to see it is plays out as he thinks. I relayed Ryan’s predictions to Jim, and we agree: Very plausible.

We shall see.

Okay, time for more coffee and more Buffy. The marathon continues! I’m on season 4. Now, the question is, do I watch the Angel episodes along with Buffy (because, as you know, several the episodes between the two series “go” together), or do I later give Angel its own marathon? Ah, decisions, decisions…

ALERT! If you’re not caught up on The Walking Dead, you might not want to watch the below preview! Or read this post! You might want to check your priorities though.

SO:

The Walking Dead is tonight! As I mentioned on my (rarely used) Tumblr account, it’s really nice to have a show to be excited about again. I have to enjoy it now because I’ll be missing Game of Thrones in the spring. Boo to that.

By the way, I’m completely hoping that Rick kicks Shane’s ass. Shane’s getting a little crazy. Although, to be fair, who wouldn’t be under the circumstances?

Follow up to my last post. Unless, of course, anyone else has been reading the comments. Then you probably know where this post is going.

So, in the last post, we bought a Nook and ran into a host of problems that basically rendered it unusable to me. The tech person at Barnes & Noble said that there was a problem with the networking part of the Nook and suggested I return it.

Unfortunately, I bought the Nook at Wal-mart, so it’s not like I could just do it there.

Wal-mart it was then. We went there, exchanged it, went home, and plugged in the thing to charge it again. Jim left for game. I stayed home and grumbled. I had discovered that it wasn’t a fluke that my laptop didn’t recognize the first Nook. It didn’t recognize this one either.

I had a feeling was about to experience some massive déjà vu.

Because Jim had left for the evening, when the second Nook finished charging, I couldn’t go back to Barnes & Noble to try again because he had the car. So I waited until after work on Thursday. Jim picked me up from work, I dropped him off at home, grabbed the newest Nook, headed back to Barnes & Noble to use their Wi-Fi.

Right off the bat, this Nook had problems connecting. “Are you serious?” I kept whispering to myself. I mean, really? Did I get bad luck with two in a row?

I left Barnes & Noble. And because I wanted to exhaust my options, I went to McDonald’s to use their Wi-Fi, thinking that maybe there was something up with Barnes & Noble.

At McDonald’s, I found a few connections. I hopped onto the first, then it kicked me off. Hopped onto the second–same. Finally, the third really was a charm, although I was already becoming disillusioned with the Nook’s ability to get online. I got on, registered it–and had the same issue that prompted the B&N employee to unregister my first Nook. The dreaded name/credit card screen that won’t let me past it, no matter how many times I enter the information in.

So I tried to unregister this second Nook. Now it won’t connect to anything.

I turned it off. I drove home. I stormed into the apartment. Startled, Jim looked up from the dinner he was making. “Nook is crap,” I told him. “This one has the same problem as the first one. I’m never buying another one again.” I grabbed the Nook Simple Touch box, the USB cord, and my receipt. I stormed out and back to Walmart’s service desk.

“This is the second Nook I’ve gotten this week, and it has the same issue as the first one,” I said to the girl at the desk. “I think it’s safe to say that I’m done with the Nook. Can I exchange this for a Kindle?”

And that’s what I did. I’m now the proud owner of the Kindle Touch.

And guess what?

It works perfectly.

Number one: Sure, you need Wi-Fi to register it. But you don’t  necessarily need to register it to use it. I can read books immediately. I can go out to a place with Wi-Fi at my leisure and register it then. After all the running around I’ve done trying to get the Nook working, I’m happy about this.

Number two, and this is important: My laptop recognizes the Kindle. So the books I already have, I’ve moved onto the Kindle. (Well, after I converted them to MOBI files.) It was a breeze, and I’m already reading three books.

Number three: Well, I guess this is really a summation of points one and two. If I go out later and find out this thing’s networking parts are crap, too, I still can at least get books via the computer.

Verdict is easy. For me, the Kindle works. The Nook does not.

No more Nook for me.

*****

Okay, that is what I said before I had time to calm down. Here’s the rest of it:

If you’re considering buying a Nook or simply prefer Barnes & Noble over Amazon, most people I spoke with who have a Nook love it and have not had the same issues I’ve had. My ordeal probably wouldn’t have been half as annoying if I had Wi-Fi to begin with and didn’t have to juggle work/school schedules and the one-car issue with trying to find time to go to a place that had Wi-Fi. My whole ordeal took a whole week of figuring out that the Nook simply wasn’t going to work for me, whereas it probably only would have taken me a couple of days, if I had Wi-Fi.

Also, my laptop is kind of old for a laptop (I bought it in 2008–isn’t that kinda old?), so if you have a newer computer, maybe you won’t have the issues with the computer recognizing the Nook. Although I do have to say that my laptop doesn’t have issues recognizing anything else, and I did see that others had this problem, too.

So if you have Wi-Fi and a nicer computer than I do, then maybe you won’t have problems with the Nook. Because here’s another thing that Jim pointed out:

We bought our Nook at Wal-mart. While we were there, Jim overheard a woman complaining that the DVD player she had bought didn’t work. In fact, it was the second one that week she had to return.

Hm, sound familiar? Jim is wondering if Wal-mart possibly got a bad shipment, and the Nooks we bought were part of it. You never know what happens with a shipment between point A and point B.

Anyway, between the two e-readers, they’re pretty similar. I do think that the Nook looks a little nicer and feels a little better in the hand–the back is kind of rounded–but the difference isn’t enough to put me off. I’m also not really picky about these things, so keep that in mind.

I’ve also since learned that Kindle supports more formats, including audio, so that’s definitely cool.

Truthfully, I always wanted to have both the Nook and the Kindle. Because there are two of us here, anyway, and because we’re both indecisive, so why pick? And now I have Catching Fire sitting on my B&N account, and I don’t know if trying to go through the process of returning an $8 e-book is really worth the hassle.

So, maybe, when I have that new computer I’ve been coveting for the last two years with Wi-Fi and Jim finally caves about wanting his own e-reader…maybe I’ll look into getting the Nook Simple Touch again.

Maybe. But that day will be a long day from now. I’ve got plenty of reading on my Kindle Touch to do, thanks.

Jim finally got paid for painting that Warhammer army he’d been working on for so long a couple days ago. Upon getting the payment, we immediately went to Walmart, where Jim bought me a Nook. Initially, we were going to go for a Kindle–I’d been eyeing the cheapest, $79 one–but Jim thought maybe, because he had a Barnes & Noble card, we’d get a better deal with the Nook Simple Touch.

As it turns out, that is not the case. We found out that wasn’t the only thing we were wrong about.

As soon as we got it home, first thing I did was hook it up and charge the battery, as the instructions say to do. However, while it was charging, I realized we were going to have a problem: Nook requires Wi-Fi.

We don’t have that.

Yes, I realize that it’s kind of silly that I have a laptop without wireless, but what do you want? It quit working quite a while ago, and we get by. Sure, Jim can’t get XBox Live, but seeing how quickly some people can aggravate him, sometimes, I think it’s for the best that we don’t have it.

But now, we have a problem. You apparently can’t put books on the Nook without registering it first, and to register it, you need Wi-Fi.

Jim was already getting angry; however, there was a little part of me that half-expected this, so I was okay. I charged it. The next evening, I went to Barnes & Noble, sat in their parking lot, hopped online, and registered my Nook. First thing I did was look for Catching Fire, since I had read The Hunger Games with my friends. (We have this book club going on in which I’m woefully behind because reading on my computer just bugs the hell out of me these days.) Anyway, I decided to start with that one just to try things out, selected it, and went home.

Only I found out it didn’t work. I guess it didn’t complete the transaction or something, and by the time I found out, I was already home and in my PJs.

Frustrating, but I figured I could load the e-books I already had on my computer in the meantime. “I’ll just go back tomorrow and try again,” I told Jim. It wasn’t like my card had been charged.

So I started fiddling with the Nook and my laptop. I looked up how to move the files from my computer to the Nook–simple enough, it’s pretty much like moving any other kind of file from your computer to an external device–plugged my Nook in, and opened up the appropriate windows.

New problem: My laptop doesn’t recognize the Nook.

By now, I’m grumbling. Nothing is going right. I do some searching to find out what the problem is. I find that Windows can have issues recognizing the Nook. Several people have stated that if you plug in your Nook and reboot your computer while the Nook is still plugged in, Windows will recognize it upon booting up.

So I try that. The laptop shuts down. It starts up. It freezes on start-up.

I try again. It does it again. “What the hell?” I say aloud.

“Oh, yeah,” Jim says. “I’ve noticed if you have anything plugged into the USB ports while booting up the laptop, it freezes.”

ARGH.

Last night, determined for it not to be a total loss, I start reading Dracula simply because that is what’s already loaded on my Nook, and I want to use the damn thing.

Okay, so this brings me to this afternoon. I had a great day at work–systems were down! no phones! couldn’t do overtime even if I wanted so there was no guilt!–and I was ready to tackle the Nook thing again. I’ve resigned myself to having to just buy stuff from B&N and not moving files from my computer. My computer sucks. Oh, well. That I’m used to.

So we go back to Barnes & Noble and I try to buy Catching Fire again. I get online with no problem. This time, I actually can tell that the purchase has gone through. I try to start reading it, but the Nook wants to verify my name and credit card number.

Um. Okay. Enter it in. Hit “Confirm.” It deletes everything in the boxes. I’ve got the same damn screen.

I enter it over and over. Jim comes over. He grabs an associate; she tries. No luck.

First thing she does is check to see if I have the security set up to verify with a credit card. I don’t have that set up, so she’s not even sure why I’m getting that screen. I admit that I registered in the parking lot the night before, where it was mostly dark and maybe I just hit a wrong number while entering my credit card information…maybe that’s why it’s not working?

“Maybe,” she says. “Let’s just unregister you first and start from scratch.”

So she does that. She has me log into the Barnes & Noble site with the info I had put in the Nook the night before when I registered it. Everything matches. So it’s not that.

She finishes unregistering my Nook. She turns it off. She turns it on. We wait for it to boot up. Wait. Wait. Wait.

“There it is,” she says. It brings up the network screen, showing all the wireless connections. It connects us to Barnes & Noble’s Wi-Fi. She hits “next.” Then it brings up an error message, stating that it can’t connect.

We repeat that last step over and over again. It won’t connect.

She gets a girl from tech. The girl told us that there’s something wrong with the network part of the Nook–I’m going to have to go back to Walmart and exchange it.

So. Now, we’re back to square one. My newly exchanged Nook is charging. Because Jim has game tonight, he’s got the car, so I’m stuck home with no wireless to register the thing. Also, what really worries me is that I was charged this time for Catching Fire. I’m wondering if it’ll load onto this Nook.

I’m honestly wondering if I’m ever going to get this thing working at all. My confidence in this product is slipping fast.

Sadly, I like the look of it. I like the feel of it. It feels good in the hand, even if you have small hands like I do. I love the feature of looking up words by touching them, and if I can get this thing to work, I think I’ll really like the Nook.

But look where we’re at with this. I’ve now had a Nook for three days, and I’ve yet to have a single book downloaded onto it. With all these problems we’re having, a part of me can’t help but wonder if we would have been better off getting a Kindle.

If anything, it’s convinced me that getting a new computer with working wireless is becoming a priority. It’s becoming a priority fast.

I’m getting very bad about updating, I know. And at first, I started to tell you why (mostly, because I get annoyed at squinting at the screen–my Internet surfing has dropped dramatically as my eyes get worse, let me tell you), but I’ve decided to pitch it. You don’t need to know how much my eyes suck. Just know that they do. They really, really do.

So. A couple days ago was Valentine’s Day. There are some people who complain about it being too commercialized, that it’s just some stupid gimmick for Hallmark to make money. To those people, I say you’ve forgotten the real importance of Valentine’s Day. Or, at least, the importance to me. Wanna know what that is?

It’s a day to cheat on your diet. 

So, yeah, nay-sayers. Shut up. It doesn’t matter who buys you chocolate! Buy it for yourself! Valentine’s Day is an excuse to gorge! Who cares who invented it?

Oh, yeah, and don’t forget to tell someone you love them while stuffing your face. There’s that aspect as well. It can be your dog, though. Hallmark doesn’t judge.

Anyway. Besides chocolate, Jim got me the third volume of the Buffy comics. Turns out, we also had the first and second ones here, but I did not know this. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS? Apparently, Jim brought them into the relationship and forgot he had them. I’d divorce him for forgetting to tell me, but I’m afraid he’ll take them with him. So I just hog his comics instead.

And his chocolates.

I bought Jim the complete collection of H.P. Lovecraft. Should keep him busy for a while, I think. It’s a pretty big book that would take anyone else forever to read. So for Jim? He’ll probably have it done in a week, once he starts reading it.

Anyway, on Valentine’s Day, Jim and I went to Evelyn’s, which was short-staffed but was still sooo good, and then we went to Walmart and picked up Serenity and Stargate: Season 1. I was excited about Serenity, since I’ve been wanting it for a long time. Admittedly, it was nice to finally get something “frivolous.”

I’ve been thinking about this lately, actually. One of my friends at work told me that I needed to learn to be frivolous sometimes. This is because…well, truth be told, I’m a bit of a tightwad with money. True story. Anything that is not in the food or bills categories gets deemed “non-essential” and I refuse to spend money on it. This is why I haven’t gotten my hair cut since my wedding (why should I PAY someone to TAKE my hair?) and why just about all my clothes have holes in them. Even when I buy yarn, it’s in small amounts to make functional things like dishcloths and beds for the cats.

Luckily, Jim got his loan money in and is able to help out with gas and groceries, allowing me to knock out the car stuff with my check. (The mechanic has ordered the parts! Can’t wait until my girl has her whole face back!) He should be getting paid for painting those Warhammer figures, he’s insisting I take half of it, and he’s suggested that I get a Kindle. (Not sure if it’s really going to help with my reading-on-the-screen issues, but it would be nice to have.) Soon after, we should be getting our raises at work (my review was good!) and our gainsharing checks. I’m hoping to put this check toward a new computer because this laptop, I’m afraid, is on its way out. Although, if I get a new computer, I’m thinking it better have a much bigger screen. Because of, you know, the eye problems.

Anyway, to me, that’s “frivolous,” since technically, my laptop hasn’t broken, and even if it had, it’s not like we couldn’t go to the library to use theirs. Although we can’t if we don’t want to kill someone. The library computers are absolutely awful. Someone remind me, if I’m ever a millionaire, to donate nice computers to our library.

But after that? My eye is on Medieval Times. And maybe even House on the Rock. The ultimate in frivolity. And I will totally get there. Who says I don’t have goals?