Well Kate has gone home for the semester. We had a nice time on Thursday with Jen, Julie, and Thomas. We went and helped them pick out a Christmas tree for their apartment and then hit Macado's afterwards. The guy who sold them the tree was really nice, he gave us free cookies and apple cider. Macado's was fun, I really like their black bean con queso dip. After we were done with dinner I dragged them over to the coffee shop next door so that I could get some coffee. There was a parade going on in downtown Christiansburg that we had no idea was there until we walked out onto the sidewalk and a huge cement truck blew it's horn. I'm not sure why there was a cement truck in the Christmas parade. But there was really nobody to ask about it. Much to my dismay they didn't have the Red Eye special at the coffee shop anymore. That was my favorite coffee drink. I'm going to have to find another place that serves it. I got a white chocolate mocha which was very nice. After that we went back to Jen and Julie's to put up the tree and decorate it. When the tree was finished we watched I, Robot and an Eddie Izzard show. In between them Ludwig came over with pizza. His LAN party had been FUBARed when they couldn't get the computers to link up. So he brought us some double melt pizza. Thankfully he didn't do anything crazy to it like put barbecue sauce on it. I had to work at 8 the next morning so I took Kate home relatively early, around 12-12:30. Which I guess by this time isn't early for us, we've been calling it a night earlier and earlier all semester. Maybe it's because Kate has a roommmate this semester or maybe it was because she had so much more studying to do, or maybe we just kinda ran out of fun things to do. It's probably a combination of all of those things. Oh well, maybe next semester will be better. Assuming I'm going to be here, I'm supposed to hear something from the Richmond job on Monday or Tuesday. It's been nice, I haven't thought about it much at all, so the anticipation isn't doing anything weird to me. Like making my hair fall out or giving me indigestion. I'm not even hoping at this point. But I do know that I need to get out of Blacksburg soon.

On Friday I got to work at 8 and basically just sat around being sleepy for a couple of hours. Even a nice cup of coffee didn't wake me up much. I started chatting with random people online just to stay awake. Then I did some dubbing and worked on an encoding that looked like it had gone bad. The video quality looked like the tape had been run through the dryer a few times. It turns out that encoding to realvideo format from an DVCPro player just looks like shit. After that I had lunch(enjoyed Nancy not being there). In the early afternoon I went over to Durham to check the 261 room. Apparently one of our student workers left the mics and podium set up all week. Who knows who might have played with it. I had called Sarah at lunch time because her Livejournal had said that she would be home making cookies. But it turns out that when she said "tomorrow" she meant Thursday even though she posted after midnight on Wednesday. So when I called her she was at work and didn't have time to talk. I felt pretty bad about it at first but then she called me back later and it was ok. She called me just as I was finishing 261. So I talked to her for about an hour and we got caught up. Her life has been really busy and interesting. They have a new friend who is basically staying with them now. I'll get to meet her when I go up for New Years. Her name is Audrey and I'm having such a hard time not making Little Shop Of Horrors jokes it's not even funny. She sounds interesting though and it'll be fun to meet her. After work I went to Souvlaki for some dinner after renting a movie to watch. As I was leaving Souvlaki Troy called me. We talked for a long time about his job/jobs. His trip to Shanghai and lots of other things. Every time we talk he tells me that I should just move up there and look for a job. The problem is that I haven't been able to save near enough money to move up there. Every time I start to build up my savings account something bad(or really expensive) happens that I can't avoid spending money on. It's very frustrating. And Troy is a great friend, but him acting like I don't want to move or that I haven't done anything as far as looking to move hurts sometimes. But that's Troy, he will always assume that everyone is like him and if they aren't.....should be. Talking to the two of them made my life around here seem really boring. My life isn't really boring at all. It can just seem that way sometimes. But hey anything can seem boring compared with someone who poses nude for almost 40 hours a week, right? That's all for now.