After working another long week, (38 hours this time) I finally have a little room to breathe. I've got the next three days off to rest and recuperate, plus I'm taking some time off next week to go laptop shopping with my mom. We've both finally saved up enough money and I am SO excited to be so close to getting myself the laptop I've been wanting for over a year now. :) Plus, after I'm finished purchasing my lovely new Apple, I can start saving up for the other pieces of technology I've been craving, such as an Xbox 360, a new iPod, and of course lots of video games/music to go along with them. *squee* My poor 20-page-long Amazon wishlist has been sadly neglected over the past couple of months! It'll be nice to get back to shortening it.

Also, words do not describe how happy I am that the new Hellboy movie is finally coming out. I saw previews for it last night and I'm still squeeful. Unfortunately I haven't seen any of the other cool movies that have come out this summer, which is just terrible, but such is the danger of working life. (And not having a car) That's OK though, since I think we're going to go see Iron Man next week after laptop shopping has concluded. I'm amazed at how many interesting movies are coming out this year. Last year it seemed like we had hardly anything worth watching and now my list is so long, I can't keep up with it. On the bright side, maybe now we'll go see more movies since I can finally afford to pay for my own ticket, which makes it a little less expensive. (Though not if gas prices keep skyrocketing)

My writing hasn't been going so great, again thanks to my job. I'm so exhausted when I get home that trying to do anything creative is just too much for me to handle. I have managed to do a little work, though, and Episode 3 of Dreamfall is almost finished. I swear it's forthcoming, plus I'm going to use the extra time off this week to see if I can't get Episodes 4 and 5 done as well. No promises, though, because I've also got to spend time on other things, like catching up on chores and another project I've got going that I'm keeping under wraps for the moment.

The job hasn't been that peachy, either. All but a handful of my friends have left. Yesterday is probably the last time I'm going to see one of my best friends there, and it seems my superiors have decided that they just can't be bothered to train me for anything new and different, which means that I get to be a cashier stuck doing the exact same job day in, day out, from now until doomsday. I am not the sort of person who deals well with monotony. Especially not minimum wage monotony that's so exhausting and painful it's keeping me from my real work. Writers: don't quit your day job, but don't let your day job take over your life, either. Mine is dangerously close to doing so, not to mention I've developed a creeping depression because of it. Things will change soon-- I'll make sure of it-- but I am sad that a job I once enjoyed has so quickly turned sour. And I miss my friends. Not all of them are gone, but the ones I was closest to have moved on, and it makes me sad. Bright side: all this emotional turmoil will make for a wonderful story someday.

And that's your window in to the life for Amanda Cales for this week. :) Have a cookie.

So far, I'm having a really great day. :) Had lots of great, vivid dreams I don't remember. (Nor do I remember the last time I slept so soundly) Got the kitchen cleaned up and picked a couple of yummy cherry tomatoes from the garden. (Really need to force myself not to be so impatient in the future, though, since once again they were a little under-ripe) Relaxed, ate a yummy breakfast, and had a lot of fun adding new subforums over at The Dead Robots' Society official forum. phpBB is such a nice change from EZBoard. I'm glad to see that forum building technology has taken a turn for the better, instead of having to deal with EZWhore's stupid rigidity all the time. I also got to learn something new, which is always nice. Once again I went in, knowing absolutely nothing, and with a little research (and a very helpful technomage to back me up ^_~ *grins at Graham*) and managed to make something useful out of nothing. Pretty good feeling, that.

My brain is still refusing to work on anything writing related, though I might give it a shot later on anyway. Now that I'm done messing with the forums I'm kind of out of things to do and writing something might be the only way to stave off boredom. Or maybe I'll cruise the internet looking for some new podcasts to subscribe to. =D My current list could use a major change, methinks.

Ja! *skips off*

EDIT: OMG NEW EPISODE OF CHILDREN OF THE GODS UBERSQUEE HURRAY! *jumps up and down* =D =D

Whoa. New LJ main page layout. O_O That's going to take some getting used to. I think I like it, though.

The podcast I'm joining is going great so far. There are about six of us now, and even though we're still in the discussion stage, I'm having massive amounts of fun. My inbox hasn't seen this many e-mails since I left the Petz Community. We even have a Wiki! It's awesome. (Wiki code blows my mind, btw. I've never actually input any data into a Wiki before. It's wild.) I can't tell you how excited I am to be doing this. Every now and then I'll look up and realize "OMG I'M GOING TO BE IN A PODCAST SQUEEEE!!!" I even make the squee noise. Today I spent almost three hours looking for suitable theme music on the different podsafe networks...amazing. Not only was it a lot of fun to be helping out, but I had no idea how much high quality free music was available on the internet. These creative commons licenses people are using now are absolutely spectacular, and I love their website. Licenses you can choose yourself? Custom made to fit your needs and desires? It's like ordering a burger at McDonald's only you don't regret it afterwards. So neat. The speed at which technology is moving boggles my mind. A few years ago there were no such things as Wikis, or podcasts. Now every website is interactive and interconnected. I grew up visiting websites hosted by Geocities bathed in horrible pink backgrounds with bright green font because the owner's grasp of HTML was a little too basic. Now HTML is actually becoming outdated. None of the forums allow it anymore. (Which I actually don't like, but there you go.) In place of Angelcity (or whatever it was called) we've got WordPress and Facebook and personal Wikis and Blogspot and Gmail accounts, and the days when I used to be amazed at FortuneCity's 20megs of webspace are long gone. Video games have characters in them that look like real people, and environments that react to them realistically. (Plunge Lara Croft through a waterfall and she gets wet. And I'm not talking about that lame dripping effect they had in TR4/5, I mean she's actually wet. Hair dripping, shirt sodden, boots squelching, just like I am when I come inside after standing out in a rainstorm.) Phones as thick as toothpicks play movies. Books are downloaded onto PDAs instead of borrowed from the library. Hell, books are podcasts now. I can walk into an Apple store and make an episode of Heroes appear on the screen using an iPod that's barely the length of my index finger.

Now I know what my dad feels like. When he was a kid, computers took up entire rooms and barely had enough processing power leftover to crunch numbers for NASA. These days they have thumb drives that you can wear like earrings and cameras with USB connectors. And why bother with heavy, outdated encyclopedias when you can just log onto Wikipedia and find out anything about anyone in five minutes? And I know that all of this is going to be just as outdated a few years from now. I foresee implants that are injected just under the skin, jewelry that stores all your important data, and maybe someday we'll even have replicators. Now THAT would be kickass. Any food I want to eat made with reconstructed proteins available at any time with only a few minutes or seconds worth of wait time? I'm in. Especially if it means I get to eat ice cream without wishing I was dead afterwards.

I have no idea how me getting all excited about podcasting led to that particular ramble about technology, but there you have it. Fifteen minutes inside my brain. =D