Useful Insomnia?

It's been a while since I've had a full blown case of active & persistent insomnia. Sure I've had the zombie, can't sleep but not really awake insomnia. I've had the "maybe I should try reading a book" insomnia. I've even had the "racing thoughts, can't think, distract myself with simple games" insomnia. (I must have more problems with insomnia than I thought.)

But this brand of insomnia is different. This brand of insomnia is a full burst of energy right at bedtime or shortly after, if I'm even tired at bedtime at all. I am a bundle of energy, and when most days I drudge along, a bundle of energy is awesome. Sure not quite so awesome at 12am, but hey whatever helps get the house cleaned right?

But while I'm bursting with energy, I'm also wondering if by being active I'm perpetuating being awake. Ugh. Thankfully I had little scheduled to do today, so I did try to take advantage of the energy while it lasted, but I was still torn as I didn't want to end up sleeping all day today.

So between doing things last night, and catching up on some projects that I'd been putting off due to lack of energy or time, I tried to sit down and rest to see if I got sleepy. No luck on that.

I finally did get sleepy at 7am this morning, and at 7:30 hit the bed and was out. (An extremely rare occurrence).

Rarer still, I woke up after barely over 5 hours of sleep, wide awake and in a relatively good mood.

Sounds great huh? It was. But as usual with my body and allergic reaction symptoms (which all of this is just part of the cycle of allergic reactions), every good is followed by an equally great negative.

As I type this, I'm pretending to not notice the little blips of negative & paranoid-esque thoughts slowly increasing in number in my head.

But the upside I guess, is that I did manage to get some laundry and dishes done.. and still hope to get a little bit of baking done before the down gets into full swing. Wish me luck! :)

If you can't stand the heat..

*begin rant*

I am irritated. Making new local friends is not easy.

Making new local friends who have interests in common other than food and eating out, is even harder.

Making new local friends who have interests in common other than eating out, and want new local friends themselves.. is rarer yet.

Making new local friends, who have interests in common other than eating out, want new local friends themselves, and who can deal with a little craziness.. Impossible.

Taking food out of the equation eliminates a good 70% of the population, as most people aren't going to want to just hang out and chat without food. And food here in Austin, usually means corn chips and salsa (not always but generally), and since I (corn allergy) can't be around people eating corn chips.. well.. this isn't an option.

Which leaves other things that don't require food. Meeting at a bar for drinks, book clubs, writing clubs, and maybe bowling if I could find a bowling alley that doesn't pop popcorn.

Anyway, I'm having a little pity party.. you're all invited of course. The decor is all up and pretty.. with dark walls, clouds, and those eerie streams of moonlight.

Luckily I have friends from back when I was crazy all the time, who get me (or at least are used to the crazy) and like me any way.

But it seems no matter what I do anymore, I manage to piss the new friends off. !?!?!?!!??!!! I just don't get it, but in a way I don't really care either.

I used to be a huge people pleaser. I would find out what people wanted in a friend, and change myself to be that. I would alter beliefs, feelings, likes, dislikes, speech patterns, terminology, etc. Almost a head to toe make over, while retaining just enough me. Even some of my real friends, with whom I never had to be anything but myself, noticed that I'd completely change in other people's company.

Thank God that craziness is over!

And now if I have to bend over backwards to be something I'm not, in order to be someone's friend? Ain't going to happen. I could be alone for 10 yrs on a desert island, still wouldn't happen.

So, if you can't handle proverbial the heat of my fire, get your ass out of my proverbial kitchen.

*end rant*

Texas moves to England

Can someone stop the RAIN!!! Seriously, enough already.

During spring, it was nice. "Oooo I don't have to water the plants. YEAH!"

But I realized today, that I hadn't seen sunshine all freaking week.

My lawn is starting to look like a swamp. No.. my yard isn't flooding and we're not in a flood plane. Half of Austin would have to be completely UNDERWATER for us to have flooding. But that doesn't mean that the poor soil doesn't "squish" and release a puddle of water when you step on it.

I will say though that the oranges on my orange tree have never looked bigger, but dang it, I wanna see some sun!

One of the benefits of living in Texas is supposed to be the sunshine, and nearly constant sunshine during the summer. Its summer, and its not suppose to feel like an English Summer. I didn't move to London. I moved to Austin.. TEXAS.

So you global warming people stop hoarding my sun, and give it back! I'll even throw some clouds in on the exchange! :)

MAC vs Microsoft - Take Two.. And Action!

I love my Mini don't get me wrong. It's not that hard to "figure out" and its been really reliable (though I can't say so much for my internet router).

Unfortunately, the MAC Mini doesn't seem to have all the bells and whistles that I'm used to.

I'm certain I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out where (nor can the MAC-addict hubby). For those of you tech-support people reading this: 1. Yes I've restarted the computer. 2. Yes I have clicked on and read every possible button in the printer setup features in order to find the options I was looking for (so has hubby). 3. Yes I have the most current driver installed.

My printer is awesome. While most of my previous printers have been thorns in my side with little to no features other than color or grayscale options, my current printer is cool. I can print double sided pages, booklets, etc, plus the options of grayscale or color.

I should say I have these options in Windows. In MAC, I can print and thats about it. Ok.. so I can adjust margins and print portrait or landscape.. Whoop de doo.. I cannot print grayscale if I want. There is no option to select grayscale, actually there are very little "options" in the print mode period. If there is color on the page, it prints it. Which means with the webpages that I print out from time to time, I can easily run out of my color in my printer as the color cartriges are at least 1/3 the size of the black. And if the colors on the page that look black, aren't really black but lets say dark blue, or other "color" that might look black but isn't, my color cartriges are going to be used to print it.

So I'm a bit peeved about it all. I am currently using Google Docs to paste links or store documents that I want printed, then I access that page on my Windows computer, load the links/documents, and print them.

Its a lot more work, and I'm still debating on whether the Mini is worth the freaking hassle.

I am btw liking having two computers, as it splits up the work and my Windows computer hasn't been tempermental much at all. Or maybe it sees the MAC Mini, and is on its best behavior.

I'd just like to be able to utilize all the functions of my printer. Right now, I feel like MAC put "idiot guard" on the print features so that all you can do is "click print" to save people from manually messing with their options and thus screwing up their printing. Which might be good for computer idiots and those that completely lack creativity, but for those that actually have a need to use the features that the particular printer was PURCHASED to do, its not very useful at all.