Whew...long one here!!

I have a feeling this is going to be a really long blog since I haven't updated and there's tons and tons to talk about. We'll start simple. My parents came in on Wed. last week and I was a bit late in getting them, but they were still waiting for their luggage, so all was well. Mom and I ran around while we forced Dad to slave over getting a DVD player hooked up (we'd gotten one for Christmas last year and Paul just never did it, so yay! It's finally hooked up and running!). We were actually supposed to be looking for an outfit for me for the party and a shirt for mom, but I got an outfit and Mom got nothing. But we decided on something else for her anyway. Then we drove to NE on Thurs. I had to rush a bit to get to class since my group was supposed to meet beforehand at 5 pm. I totally sped to get there and was 15 min. late, but no group. Oh well. Some members trickled in, but it was really too late to do anything. I had the presentation on a CD and showed them after checking for software updates on my computer through the wireless network at school (don't worry, this is all very important, but much, much later in the story). So, shut the puter down and went to class to watch others present. After that was done (woohoo, got out an hour earlier), my group and I sat down to go over the presentation and suddenly, the laptop wouldn't boot up. Got a windows-like blue screen of death. CD is still in puter and won't come out. Presentation stuck in puter. So hop online to Apple Support and tried what they told me. No luck. Called Tech Support. Closed (since of course, computers never get broken after 7 pm). Eventually called my wittle buddy Ewic, who was nice enough to hold off on a shower to try to help. After much trying, we finally got the CD to come out, but still no booting going on. By this time, an hour and a half has passed and I now have a raging headache. The whole family is hanging out waiting for me, but we had to get this figured out. Handed the presentation over to another member and made the changes to my part of it after profusely apologizing to her for dumping the rest of it on her. There wasn't a ton of stuff to do, except get the references on there and finish up referencing the paper. Did I tell you that Eric was seriously my life-saver? I was considering how to crack the sucker open before calling him.

Missed out on most of the family that night, but caught up with them the next day. We started out early, my cousin Sherry, and my two aunts, Elaine and Ida and ran around Lincoln trying to come up with centerpieces for 28 tables that wouldn't require a loan. We ended up with 28 decorative fish bowls with turquoise pretty marbles filled with water and flowers (turquoise) floating in them. Really wanted to do candles but the hall wouldn't allow any open flame. Tied in both the Ruby Red for 40th and mom's original colors though, so it turned out pretty. Got those made on Friday and then Auntie Ida and I went shopping for shoes for her and pants for me since I stupidly left mine in the dryer in KC during the mad rush to leave. Ended up with two pairs of pants, two shirts and a new pair of shoes. Hunh. Funny how that sort of thing happens. At around 11:30 pm I made some changes to my paper, printed it out and then by midnight started studying for my final. Couldn't last long so ended up asleep by 1 pm, but woke up a few hours later and started cracking on it. Felt totally nauseous by this point, completely unprepared and seriously cursing myself for getting any sleep. I just can't pull an all-nighter like I used to. Sigh. Getting old is such a bitch.

Got the final done. Got my grades up to that point then went to lunch with one of my group members and we tried to finish up the presentation (although, nothing to really finish up as no one got us their references, haha). Power slammed a chef salad at Perkins and dashed to class to sit through more presentations. Since I have done public speaking, I offered to start us off with an intro and you all know me. Big mouth and loud. Got through our presentation okay and that class is over. Feeling the pressure now of waiting for grades. Please, God, if you're out there, I promise to never attempt to plan a party the same day as a final again if you just get me through this class!!!

Ran back to Chris' for a quick refresher shower, got prettied up, got to the party. Started out very, very good. We had a couple of surprise visitors that made mom and dad really happy and all these people running around. I don't think my mom sat down for 5 min. Before everything really got rolling, my brother and I presented them with the 8x10s we had professionally done of us and the family. Now, I expected my mom to cry, but I didn't expect Niagara Falls. We had to get a mop to clean her up. I think even my dad was really happy with them too! So another surprise we managed to keep secret.

The only bit of a downer was when one of my uncle's tripped on the slightly (and not marked!) elevated dance floor and really took a nasty fall. He actually passed out a couple of times, so we had an ambulance in to check him out. I think his ego will never recover, but his body did. He's doing okay, but we had a terrible scare for a while there. Luckily, one of the guests was a nurse and she kept watch over him until the paramedics got there. Sheesh. Poor guy felt terrible for "ruining" the party...we had to prove to him he didn't ruin anything and we just soldiered on and had a good time. Well, I somehow managed to not eat and only had two drinks all night long, but enjoyed seeing so many people.

The slideshow was apparently a massive hit and now I've got requests for copies all over the place. I have no idea who wants one so I will send out an email for requests. Don't worry, Paul isn't the one doing it, so you can ignore his $19.95 price tag! Sunday, we baptized my great-niece Macy and Paul and I and Mitch's brother were the godparents again. Service took forever so we barely made it back in time for the baby shower. Ran out of time for getting a gift, so opted for cash. Always a safe bet. Then we went to Tom and Sherry's for dinner and drove home.

Mind you the puter still isn't booting at this point, but yesterday after work I fussed with it for awhile. Tried every flipping thing I could think of. Every single diagnostic comes up totally fine, but still won't boot. All of my computer is still there when I boot in single-user mode, but just can't get the puter to do any damn thing. So, connected the desktop and the laptop by firewire and enabled the laptop. Copied what I needed over to the desktop and did a re-install of OS X with an archive. Everything worked fine. So took a look at my console logs and came up with some odd things. Apparently, at some point after connecting to the school wireless, my computer couldn't "see" my hard drive anymore. After doing some research, came across others having the same problem. Turns out it corrupted my daemon server and basically no go joe. Near as I can figure, it did something to one of the basic preferences and while I changed the most common ones, that did nothing. Someone else I came across wiped them all out and his worked fine. So, didn't have to do what I did, but it's okay since all of my stuff is still there. So, big ACK!! Never connecting to school wireless again I guess although at least now I know what happened and it wasn't something wrong with my disk or with the computer. Total wireless problem, messing with my junk. Now that I've bored you with all that mumbo jumbo, here's some pics of us at the party. (Yeah, that was brutal to make you go through all that just to see some damn pics!)

Love, B