ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. --aldous huxley (1894 - 1963)

my world been has flipped upside-down. a total change in perspective. i suppose it'll be better in the long-run to know what i just learned, but right now it simply hurts. alot.

for years, i've thought a large chunk of pain from my past was caused by a mixture of someone intentionally hurting me and the effects of this person's medical condition. so in effect, it was a combination of the person and god (since i believe god is ultimately in control of what medically happens to our bodies).

now someone has convinced me that the hurt may have been caused solely by the effects of the medical condition. my head knows that god isn't punishing me or simply does not care about me, but i haven't been able to convince my heart of that.

i think the toughest part of this realization is that i'll never know for sure how much of the pain was caused by the person and how much from the medical condition. hopefully i'll soon be ok with that...

tidbits

sarah's moving to kearney in a few weeks!

i went wedding-dress shopping yesterday...and enjoyed it! so now i have a wedding-dress in my basement. :)

as i was putting on my suit to go to my great-uncle's funeral on friday morning, i realized i hadn't worn my suit since i went to the interview that got me my job.

today heather, a 60ish-yr-old, and i helped another 60ish-yr-old put up christmas lights for 4.5 hrs. then we went inside, ordered pizza, and watched parts of a few nfl games. these women are awesome -- they're not afraid of manual labor and they love football! :)

skiing was great, but there were many surprises. among them:

*we skiied all blues even though Heather had only skiied greens in wyoming. [definitely not the whole story, but i'd rather not share the rest of it now :) ]

*neither of us hit trees as i did my last time on the slopes and Heather did 2 times ago [again, definitely not the whole story, but that's ok]

*got taken out by a snowboarder and slid on top of him and his board for at least 30 feet. Heather thought it was hillarious bc i wasn't touching the ground the whole time (i landed on him and my skis were at least a foot above the snow, "resting" on his board).

*Becky had to work, so she couldn't join us either day on the mountain. but she accomplished alot there! and hopefully there will be less stress this week because of it.

*my brakes burnt up the 2nd day on the completely downhill 1-hr drive from copper to Becky's. downshifting had minimal affect. that's always enjoyable...


i might fill in the rest later. we'll see.

i was totally refreshed at work today. something about spending a long weekend with cool friends, 2 days of skiing, being surrounded by mountains, and getting a good night's sleep last night. but it'll be a long week. we have an election tomorrow so i'll be at the courthouse until at least 11.00p. then wednesday i have a meeting most of the morning and am going to a demo for the new mugshot/booking software for the jail all afternoon. nothing like a 14-hr work day followed by loosing a day's worth of time fixing issues (unfortunately the issues don't stop cropping up when my time is taken up doing other stuff). so i'm guessing the refreshment i'm feeling now won't last too long... here's hoping i'm wrong!

in other news, there's a 70% chance of some form of snow and/or rain tonight and a 40% chance of snow tomorrow morning! w00t!

so last night i was showering and knelt down to pick up a small wad of hair at the end of the tub. as i touched it, it jumped! ahh! i started spraying it with water and coaxed it towards the drain while touching it as little as possible. i couldn't convince my fingers to touch the drain to make sure it was gone, so i put my glasses on. that of course didn't work...they got fogged up right away (o how i miss my days of wearing contacts). so i finished up my shower not knowing if this thing would jump out of the drain at me. i still don't know what it was, but i will definitely check the shower for scary bugs before i jump in!


< 2 DAYS UNTIL I LEAVE FOR SKIING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

if there was strife and contention in the home, very little else in life could compensate for it. --lawana blackwell, the courtship of the vicar's daughter, 1998

i watched part of anderson 360 where they were talking about the effects of divorce on kids. obviously i've only directly dealt with one, so i can only speculate on what others are like. i would say the most difficult part about my parents' divorce has been that it seems they are only concerned about hurting the other. everything is fair game -- beginning horrific rumors involving us kids, using family members or friends to manipulate the other, using money to manipulate the other, the list goes on and on...

i hope neither of my parents know the pain they're putting us through.

wedding planning is stressful enough -- my sister deson't need to deal with all of this additional crap, but it started the second she told one of the parents. *sigh*

and this is why i don't talk to my family very often

i missed 3 calls from a family member today. after trying to call her back a few times, i finally got through and this is what i got:

me: hey!
her: so...what do you think? [about my sister's engagement last night]
me: i think it's great!
her: are you going to wear a dress?
me: i will wear whatever my sister wants me to wear. it's her day, not mine.
her: mmm...[hesitates while trying to change the subject]...how is your mother going to pay for this?
me: uh...i don't know.
her: she doesn't have much money right now. i suppose we'll have to help her out with that. or you could. she's paying off some of your loans, ya know.
me: that's just how it is. i got as many loans as i could in my name. she helped me out by getting a few under her name without any complaints or hesitation.
her: o, ok then. well, i'll talk to you later. bye.

i was surprised at the abruptness. she's always been the type to have long conversations with me on the phone. but this time it seemed like her only intention was to shoot me down.

i wish my family could simply be happy for my sister and her fiancee for at least 12 hrs before stressing about the wedding. there will be plenty of time to do that later.

i'm so excited. i just can't hide it.



my sister's engaged!!! :)

i'm her maid of honor, which honestly scares me, but right now i'm concentrating on being excited for her.

oi

a small plane crashed right next to the bleachers during a high school football game tonight. incredibly, there was only one minor injury.

it's been a good day.

the highway department is in the process of installing some sweet gps systems on all of their vehicles and the maintainers are getting censors to broadcast whether their blades are down or not. apparently those who live along gravel roads don't think their roads are grated as often as the county says they are. so this will be proof of where all of the vehicles have been. the gps equipment and its software is working in all the vehicles. today we worked on getting the grater censors to communicate with the software. or, rather, i watched the engineer stress out about why things weren't working while i answered a few questions here and there about network, how the software is set up, etc. it took much longer than i was prepared for and my feet didn't appreciate all the time i was on them, but other than that, it was great. for once, it was someone else's responsibility to get things working. he was stressed and i was not. i felt kinda sorry for him because the day didn't go as he had planned either, but it was nice to be stress-free for the moment.

"we" worked on this until 6.30 and then i went straight to a co-worker's home to help him with a new pc. this guy is in his upper-50's or lower-60's and understands technology quite well compared to most of the people i've met in that age range. but he couldn't figure a few things out, so i answered questions and changed a few things on his pc for about 15 minutes and we were done. he offered me a cuppichino and then showed me the cuppichino maker he bought for $1000 a few yrs ago. it was the sweetest (and biggest) drink machine i've ever seen! it had a compartment on the right holding whole beans. on top, there was space for another flavor of grounds. a tank of ~6 cups of water was on the left. after every few cups, the thing cleans itself. it's great!

after the drinks were made, we sat down and chatted for about 1/2 hr about drinks, entertaining places to go in kearney, what he does for the assessor's office, and some of what i do for the county. in addition to the good company, i got some cash out of the evening. :) sometime next week, i'll return to his home to help beef up and/or reformat a win95 machine.

the fun definitely doesn't stop with this evening...tomorrow i'm going to a hockey game with a friend. good seats, good company, a bit of controlled violence. good times. :) as an added bonus, we're eating at the restaurant my sister works at before the game.

o, and it's november. my favorite month...3 days off, my birthday, thanksgiving with a wonderful family, and, this year, skiing. :)