So I don't really have much time to talk about it because I have to get ready for work, but I just had to make the announcement:

Shawn and I have set our wedding date.

We have chosen September 19, 2009. It is a Saturday. Shawn will be 22, I will be 21. We will have been together for almost eight years and engaged for three.

So far we don't really have much planning done. I'll probably have to do most of my planning over my summer break this year. The only thing we've both agreed on is that we want our wedding cake to be made out of cupcakes.

But still... excitement!

I thought I could get away without doing a 2007 re-cap post, but alas, it has hunted me down.

ABOUT MYSELF:
I tend to behave very selfishly without realizing that I am doing so.
I have an incredible memory for detail and am very observant.
I actually might be a decent writer, and publication could very well be in my future. I *can* stick to a workout plan, but I need structure and support.
My thyroid has been the cause of my yo-yo weight.
Motivation is one of my biggest roadblocks in many areas of my life.
It was very hard to live on the peanuts I was making at the YMCA, but not only did I make it work, I did it right and now have more savings because of it.
I can really be a spiteful bitch.

ABOUT THE WORLD:
Apathy just won't cut it anymore.
Knowledge is power, but money is God.
Benazir Bhutto should not have been killed.
Tragedies like Virginia Tech can be a wakeup call for other universities.
I don't trust Hillary Clinton.
Seeing death every day can make anyone cynical.
Patriotism is an empty mask.

ABOUT LIFE IN GENERAL:
It's not what you know, but who you know that will help you advance in the world, especially professionally.
Christmas is so much more exciting when you can actually afford to get good presents for other people.
My graduation is going to be here before I know it.
My wedding is going to be here before I know it.
It's a good idea to let go of old grudges.
Playing Sims 2 is okay...in moderation.

I have a lot of people to thank for these lessons.

My motto for 2008 is taken straight from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (one of my favorite movies, even if they did cheapen the originals):



And for those of you who can't see the embedded video for whatever reason (mostly when this gets imported to Facebook): http://youtube.com/watch?v=4ndsa1k1nR0

I got a new Sims 2 expansion pack (Nightlife), so I've been playing that for a few hours every day, although I'm nowhere near my old levels of addiction.

I've created, of course, a Sim each for myself and for Shawn. I spent a lot of time making the Sims look as much like us as I could. We went to college together and got engaged during our sophomore year. After college we moved in together into an exact replica of our current condo--as exact as I could, anyway, minus closets because Sims have no need for them.
Shawn got a job in Business, while I stayed at home--I might get a job later. We got a dog, a Golden Doodle named Charlie. I got pregnant the same day that we got married, and had the baby a few Sim-days later. It's a girl, and she looks a lot like Shawn's Sim. Her name is Layla, which is the name we have picked out for our first girl in real life, for the Eric Clapton song. I'm eager to see her grow up. As soon as she enters the Child stage, I will try for a sibling. Hopefully this time I won't get twins, like I did the last time I played this situation.

Sometimes I try to think of myself in Sim terms. What are my aspirations, my wants, my fears? At what levels are each of my needs, my skills, and each of my relationships with others? Well, right now...

Needs:
Hunger: pretty low.
Comfort: reasonably high, although not quite full. Only so much can be said for ergonomic office chairs.
Bladder: fine, but on the decrease since I just had tea.
Energy: in the lower half.
Fun: pretty low, but the good music I have going is keeping it stable.
Social: reasonably high.
Hygiene: turning yellow with warning; I didn't take a shower before work today.
Environment: near the top, as I am not around anything messy and I'm in a big room (HUGE room, this whole floor is pretty much one giant room) with lots of windows.

Wants:
-Go out to dinner with Shawn. (Today is our 6-year anniversary but we didn't get a chance to celebrate, unless you count him oversleeping a celebration.)
-Eat hamburgers.
-Gain a creativity skill point.
-Graduate college (locked).
-Play with Shawn
-Buy clothes

Fears:
-Be Rejected for Dinner with Shawn (as the Sims would say it; rather, I fear that we won't be able to go out because tomorrow is packed with other plans too)
-Lose a skill point
-Academic Probation

Skills:
Cooking: 4 out of 10 bars.
Charisma: I don't know, maybe 3? I'm not very social, but I'm not unpleasant.
Creativity: 8!
Mechanical: 2 or 3
Logic: 5
Cleaning: 3, no more. I hate cleaning.
Body: Because of all the work I've done on it, it's probably at a 7, but my actual fitness is declining.

I'm not going into relationships in detail, but I'd say that I probably have around 4 or 5 best friends. Maybe more. I'd have to give it more thought.

My aspiration...well, there are six to choose from. Money, Popularity, Family, Knowledge, Pleasure, and Romance (which basically boils down to gettin' booty). In the Sims, Aspirations dictate what the Sim wants out of life. They also have a lifetime aspiration, a big difficult goal that they want to achieve; if they get that goal, they are in a permanent good mood.

I'd say that my aspiration is Knowledge. It kind of always has been. It fuels most of my other wants, like getting a degree, reading, doing well in school, and gaining skill points (i.e. learning new skills and improving the ones I have). Shawn's aspiration is Family. It gives us a good balance as Sims. We'll just have to see how it works out in reality.

Lifetime aspiration...

I have no idea.

I have been positively ITCHING to blog for like a week now, and I just haven't gotten the chance to sit down long enough to write an entry. So here it is, another issue of head[lines], my personal newsletter.

HOLIDAYS
I had a pretty great Christmas. I was more excited about giving than getting this year; I think this comes with actually having enough money that you can buy decent presents for people. Shawn got me a gift certificate to a spa; my parents got me a sewing machine, and my mom promised to give me lessons. Shawn and I also gifted ourselves a Wii. He's playing golf right now.

I know a lot of people, especially people my age, say this a lot after a night like that, but I think I'm done with alcohol. See, I hadn't been drinking much for about three months prior to New Year's. I just decided at some point in the fall that I wasn't really interested in drinking anymore, mostly because I was drinking every week during game night. So I just stopped for the most part. A sip here, maybe half a watered-down serving of liquor there, but no more than that. And I certainly hadn't been drunk, so much so that I nearly forgot what it felt like.
I usually have a pretty high tolerance for alcohol, higher than Shawn and he outweighs me by more than 50 pounds. Well, I held my composure till past midnight, although around 1am I was getting hard to understand and pretty wobbly. As the liquor was being cleaned up, I was offered the very bottom sip of a bottle of Booker's whisky. Being intoxicated as I was, I said yes.
STUPID!
It was that sip that put me over the edge, and within an hour, I was emptying my stomach. (In the meantime, though, I had a pretty good if very incoherent conversation.) I felt pretty groggy the next morning, went home and slept for about five hours, and then was more or less fine, although not 100%. And now I can safely say that I remember what it's like to be drunk, and beyond the numbness it's not that great, and I think I'm just done with it.

WORK
Going well! Except that I can't seem to get the hang of the headline newsletters we send out every night. Every time *I* do them, I manage to screw them up in some way or another. I am jinxed. Everything else, though, is going well; I just need to learn how to manage videos.
Oh, and there's a chance I might be going to Berkeley in the spring for a three-day journalism workshop. I'd have to miss quite a bit of class, but boy would it be worth it.

SCHOOL
I just started this week. My teachers are all nice, charismatic, and male. Yep. Four male teachers this quarter, the same quarter I take a course in American masculinity. What are the odds?
My literature (17th and 18th-century British literature) prof is funny AND intelligent, which is a rare mix in a professor at WSU. He definitely knows his stuff and also keeps us engaged, even if it is just a lecture class.
My Spanish prof is energetic, loud, and speaks very clearly. He can't seem to talk without walking or moving at the same time. He paces around the front of the (very small) classroom, which is incidentally the same classroom that I had my first class in as a freshman. I find it amusing, yet distracting.
My linguistics prof is one of those guys who is like your friend's cool uncle. Fun guy, cheerful, intelligent, and doesn't mind that we keep him completely off topic most of the time. We took two days to get through the first day's material. And my masculinity prof is one I had last quarter. He uses every opportunity posisble to point that out. Good teacher, though, I like him.

I got one of my past creative writing teachers to agree to supervising my Honors project. I'm meeting with her tomorrow. The project is going to be a collection of short stories with a connecting theme--right now, I'm thinking "underground." I will probably illustrate it myself, too. Who knows, I may even get a publication grant from the school if they really like it.

Finally, I discovered that the course offerings at my university over the summer are MUCH more extensive than I thought they were, and I will most likely be able to finish out my degree over the summer. I always thought that there were slim pickings over the summer, classes for people to make up and all that. But I looked at a course catalog for last summer and was amazed! Every class I still need, plus some of the electives I was thinking of taking, is available. So if the same holds true for this summer then I'll be all set.

Heck, there's even a SLIM chance that I can graduate this spring, depending on how many credits I'll get from doing my honors project.

LIFE
Can't complain. I had a little moment today of severe doubt because I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on the way home (there was nothing else on, and I didn't know that one of my favorite classic rock stations suddenly became conservative talk radio). I started thinking too hard about the country's political system and got really upset about it. I'm over it now but damn, it was pretty depressing at the moment.

I've stopped exercising until I can talk to my endocrinologist about the relationship between my thyroid and my weight. I was working out like a fiend five days a week for twelve or thirteen weeks and didn't shed a pound, and I figured out that my thyroid is probably to blame. Talk about a motivation-killer. I'll be seeing the doctor within the next two weeks, though, as soon as I get my next blood test.

I finally got a new starter in my car, plus fixed some other minor problems. Now it just needs washer fluid (check) and a brake job (eeermmm...).

Shawn and I celebrated our six-year anniversary last Friday and went out to dinner (Chili's) and a movie (Juno) on Saturday night. Juno is a really great movie. I highly recommend it to anyone.

I'll end with a story.
On Sunday I went to the grocery store as always. I got my groceries, reached into my pocket, and realized that I didn't have my keys. Indeed, I'd locked them in my car. Mumbling expletives to myself I called Shawn, only for him to not answer the phone. Seventeen or so calls later, I was starting to freak, my phone was threatening suicide, and my food was in peril. I'd called the police but they told me they didn't have the tools to unlock a car with power locks. So I went back inside, asked customer service to kindly keep my cart in the back in the refrigerator, and went for a hike.
The grocery store, I found out later, is exactly a mile and a half from where I live. It wasn't too bad, honestly. It was 50-some degrees out and misting. I started out jogging but got shin splints pretty quickly and abandoned that plan. Somewhere along the way I figured out that Shawn didn't answer my calls because his phone was still on silent from going to the movies. About thirty-five minutes later, I arrived damp, tired, and sore on my own doorstep. Shawn took me back to the store and we got my car and the groceries.
Normally I would have been majorly stressing out, angry at Shawn, and in a bad mood for the rest of the day, but I chose to employ my DON'T PANIC motto instead. Hey, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been snowing or raining hard. I could have been wearing boots or sandals instead of gym shoes. I could have been underdressed for the temperature. I could have been made late to work because of the whole ordeal. At least it was a manageable mile and a half as opposed to more. And last but not least, fresh air and unscheduled exercise can't be beat.

That's enough yakkety yak from me tonight. Namaste.

I ask of you: Is there ANYTHING on this planet cuter than baby animals?

I don't think so.

DaytonDailyNews.com has a zoo babies gallery that was just updated yesterday with photos of a newborn polar bear cub. This is not a shameless plug for where I work, mind you, although I'm sure they won't mind the pageviews.

No, this is a shameless plug for baby animals around the world.

Sure to give an instant pick-me-up on your worstest days.