The days are getting shorter and shorter. This makes me rather sad. I love the autumn because of all the crunching leaves and crisp weather. I don't love the short days and the rainy leaf-smush that people too lazy to clean up their leaves rake into the street making it slippery and dangerous for everyone, especially cyclists.

On a plus side, there is a bunch of new snow on the Lions and they look incredibly beautiful from our front deck and through my window at work.

I won tickets through CFOX to the Beastie Boys concert a couple weeks ago. It was super-awesome! I never win tickets to things so I wasn't that excited when I heard you could win tickets by decorating yourself or your car with a "Fox Rocks" theme. I was sitting and home and considered dressing up like a schoolgirl with "Fox Rocks" written across my bosom. I quickly decided I didn't want to show my bosom to strangers and thought about writing it on my hair ribbons etc. but decided it wouldn't get me the tickets because there'd probably be so many others participating. Then I decided what the hell and did it anyway. It was fun and it won me the tickets, and I didn't have to flash anyone. What more can you ask?

Finally our evil, noisy neighbours are moving! Huzzah! I say it again, huzzah!

You'd have thought that a Vietnamese family with 2 young-ish kids would have been great neighbours noise-wise. I'd have preferred drunken college kids! The kids in the family - maybe 10 at the oldest - were almost always still up and SCREAMING at 11:30 on a Thursday night. Sometimes they were playing their recorders instead. Go. To. Bed.

The adults weren't much better. No one seemed to talk in the house. It was all about the yelling, especially as the weather got hotter and everyone's windows were opened wide. Then this summer while it was crazy hot, the dad had his buddies out in the back yard every night, drinking beer and hollering at one another. I was woken up on more than one occasion around 12:30am with one of them out in the yard on the phone! He probably went outside so as not to wake his family - but who cares about the neighbours, right? Grr!

Anyway, they were trying to sell the house last summer, with no luck, and didn't have any signs up this summer even though we saw some realtors and clients going through the house and yard. I had lost hope that we were going to be rid of them but apparently they're leaving at the end of the month. Glory be!

Bring on the drunken college kids for some peace and quiet.

I was very worried yesterday morning when I turned on our computer because nothing happened. Well, there might have been some distressed beeping before it requested a boot disc because it wasn't recognising the hard drive. Eep! Restarting did nothing but bring me back to the same screen and when I tried turning the computer off, it stayed on, well, the fan did anyway. For those of you wondering, if you stick your finger too close to the computer fan while it's running, it'll cut you.

When I arrived home yesterday, Theovis was playing a game on the computer so I was thrilled to discover it was working again. I had spent a whole schwack of time the day before working on a webpage for a prospective client and was super nervous that all my work was lost. This morning as soon as I was able, I uploaded it all so I have a copy of my work somewhere. Once I kick the cat off my lap I will save it all to disc as well - the floppies are handily stored across the room from the computer. Brilliant, I know.

But hopefully all this will put a fire under my sweetie's butt and we'll have a new computer soon that enjoys actually turning on when it's supposed to.

I have been spending less and less time in front of the computer lately. Partly it's that I have been so busy at the clinic and am not home much to be in front of the computer and partly it's because our system has been acting so sketchy lately that I worry about putting much time into writing and coding information that could be obliterated when our system finally kicks it. Frequently when we try to turn on the computer it makes unhappy beeps or simply doesn't do anything. Theovis is looking into ordering us a new computer so I really hope something happens with that sooner rather than later.

We went down to the States on Saturday to go to a BBQ at Karen and Larry's. It was fun and we even talked to a bunch of people we didn't know and got our butts kicked at croquet by Karen's mom and step-dad. Before we went to their place in Deming, Theovis and I cruised around Bellingham finding their game and comic stores. He bought a bunch of Heroclix which seemed to make him very happy. We then went to the mall where he bought 2 pairs of his favourite Adidas runners (they were on sale). I bought a casual and a dressy winter jacket at Ross so I no longer have to put up with the feather bomb that is my former down jacket.

I have been totally slacking on a bunch of administrative stuff I need to do for work because I'm not really sure where to start with it *and* I simply don't want to. I am so much better at following directions than trying to be all self-directed but I got into a bunch of it today. I had planned to tackle it last week but then got blasted with menstruation followed by a cold. It meant I went to bed around 9:30 every night last week and read books instead of doing all the crap I meant to do. I much prefer reading books. I will never again let someone else play on my sense of responsibility guilt me into taking on tasks I don't want!