SarahAnnAlien's Journal: Finally, a journal entry

Wow. Now I've gone two months without a journal entry. Sigh.

Some of you may remember my "giving up" entry from several months ago?

It turns out that, having given up hope, there just isn't that much to say.

Back when I still had some hope, I could talk about all the hard work and interesting doctor visits and whatnot, and maybe sneak in a few bits about my hopes and fears for the future.

Now that I've lost that hope... there just isn't that much that I feel like talking about anymore.

I moved. The new apartment is wonderful. Unlike the previous apartment, this one is full of air and light. I can watch the sun set from one of my windows, and through another I can stay in bed on a quiet Saturday morning and watch the bees wander through the little flowers on the tree outside. And on a really hot afternoon, the air conditioning is wonderful.

The twenty minute commute to and from the new apartment has turned out not to be a problem. I've managed to get to work by 7am just about every day, which is much better than I did when I lived down the street.

The living room and dining room are basically empty, and may stay that way for a while, but since I rarely ate at my former dining room table, and nobody ever really comes over to hang out at my place, there's not a lot of motivation for me to spend the extra money to fill the place up.

The bedroom is a bit sparsely furnished; at the moment, the bed is an inflatable one. I may try to upgrade that in a couple of months. But, even with that, I still think it's pretty. The dresser-ish thing turned out pretty well, although the white and pink gingham baskets I used for drawers are perhaps a bit too little girly, but I like it anyway. I have a real clothes hamper, too, for the first time in 20 years or so.

The work room is the only room that's close to fully furnished. There's a spot for the sewing machine I bought and am learning to use, but so far I've only had time to make two pillows, a small bag, a very small prototype of a quilt that is definitely NOT a potholder despite being the same size, and, by accident, a case for a Palm III. (It wasn't meant to be a case for a Palm III, it just turned out to be the perfect size... if I needed a flimsy red gingham case for a PDA!) The electronics lab is in good shape; I finally found an adequate cart for my oscilloscope and my frequency counter. On the computer side of things, the gigabit wiring is all in place, but I've been having some problems with the Shuttle box intended as the fileserver. Someone from SBC should show up tomorrow to upgrade my DSL line for static IP addresses, and I'll probably spend the weekend struggling with Fedora and XP.

I'm teaching myself to study again; also on my agenda is to try and finish my degree in 2007, but I need to re-learn how to hit the books. In preparation, I've picked some topics that are technically challenging, but more interesting than calculus. Ironically, most of these subjects would be easier with a stronger background in... calculus.

So you see, it's not that I'm depressed and moping around... in fact, I haven't been this productive in decades. But none of it means anything to me. I've just found ways to keep myself busy, really.

The cover story for all this is that I'm trying to get up to speed on a variety of different things in order to both finish my degree and facilitate a career change in the next couple of years.

The only catch is that I don't have any reason to believe that this will happen. It makes a good story, though, and it sounds plausible enough that people seem to believe it.