Well well well, happy turkey day to you all! Hopefully everyone's holiday will be juicy and delicious with a hint of crispy skin! Don't ask me what that's supposed to mean.
So, the last few weeks have been pretty busy, and the next few will probably be just as, if not more busy! You see, in addition to school and working at PLACES, I've taken up a second job, at... wait for it... Circuit City. Oh yes, I know. Home of the infamous comment. I'm at least not working in customer service this time; I'm selling cameras & camcorders! I started out pretty sucky at it but I'm getting better by the day and things aren't quite so bad. I mean don't get me wrong, it's still a retail job, and there's still some people that I don't really like at all, but it seems to be working for the time being. I'll be working from 4:30am to 6:00pm on Black friday, so that'll be a riot... No, literally, it will probably be a riot. I'm looking forward to it.
School's going well; I'm in a "too many papers assigned at once" phase, so I'm trying to whittle away at them gradually to try and prevent any all-nighters. Those suck when you're used to going to bed at 11:00. Hopefully some of my Feature Writing stories will be published somewhere in some paper; so if and when that happens, you can all bet your arses I'll be telling you all about it!
Also, I don't think I've elaborated on my computer drama that's been going on the last 2 months and has finally come to a sound conclusion. So, my old computer Bessie (It was a Gateway so I had to give her a cow's name) had gotten this problem of randomly shutting off completely. Probably something to do with the processor not being cooled properly. So I brought it to Best buy since my warranty was still valid, and they shipped it out to be fixed. I get it back 2 weeks later, and it's still not fixed. So I back up my files, do a system restore like they wanted (even though it had nothing to do with any sort of software; it was a hardware problem), and brought it back, again. It comes back a week later, and surprise surprise, it's not working still! They say "come in and we'll give you a new machine". I'm thinking "sweet". I go in, and they bring me over and give me what they say is a "comparable model", which means shittier specs and runs like crap. I get it home and realize just how godawful of a machine it was (I had programs freezing on me minutes after I started it up for the first time), so a day or two later, I go back with Katie. I say "this machine's not as good as the one I had before; I want a different one." I'm all nice about it (read as: quiet and passive), and Katie, the awesome Katie, opens up a can of worms on BB, and long story short, I get a brand new computer that's way mre awesome than my last one, a 3-year warranty, AND $214 BACK. Man, it's awesome having a girlfriend who knows how to work the system for all it's worth. She was slick, too, you all should have seen it. So, for you geeks, here's my new comp's specs:
HP Pavilion dv9500 Notebook w/17" widescreen (Aptly named "BEAST")
Intel Core 2 Duo @1.5 ghz (the only part I wish were a little higher, but still plays Half-Life 2 with flying colors)
2 gigs RAM
256 MB Dedicated (not shared) NVidia Video card
240 gig Hard Drive
DVD burner w/LightScribe
TV Tuner & Windows Media Center (niiiice)
aaaand... a NUMBER PAD. Fuck yeah.
Needless to say, I'm happy with my new computer. Woot.
Also, Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii is the best mario game since Mario 64. Maybe even better. There, I SAID IT. Arguments welcome.
That concludes this episode... speaking of, this writer's strike sucks. No new season of 24, and The Office is already in repeats as of this week? That's lame, Hollywood. Really lame.

I'm not really sleepy right now so I'm gonna talk about things I think you should know.

First off, I went to Acadia National Park with Katie last week. It was an amazing time. Ususally I get bored after just 2 or 3 days of camping, but we were there a good 5 days and I feel like I could have stayed there forever! It was such a beautiful area of the country, even if the ocean water's even colder than Hampton Beach! We hiked up Gorham Mountain one day (the way we took was about 4 miles round trip, +545 vertical ft.), and the next day we hiked up Cadillac Mountain (just about 9 miles round trip, plus over 1,500 vertical ft!). My only real complaint would be the obnoxious guy who started yelling across the campground at 11:00 pm and caused me to miss sleep one night. Jerk. I also got myself a lobster dinner one night, and came to the conclusion that while the meat was fairly tasty, if I'm gonna pay $30 for a meal, I don't want to have to perform intensive manual labor to eat it! Although on the humorous side, I creeped out some young girls when I was dismantling my lobster.

Mexican chocolate ice cream and Lemon Lemongrass sorbets are both indescribably delicious, as are Bar Harbor Brewery's ales (especially the Peach & Thunder Hole ales!), so if you're ever in the Mount Desert Island/Acadia region, I strongly advise you to seek them both out! BHB does free tours & tastings daily, too.

I've been reading "The Catcher In The Rye" over the last week since it seems I'm probably the only person who graduated high school without reading it, and I must say it's really interesting so far. Holden Caulfield's quite the character. He reminds me of like, 5 people I know too, which probably isn't good.

It was a big week for CDs this week too; since probably my all-time favorite band ever, Reel Big Fish came out with a great new album, as did one of the original "real punk bands", Bad Religion. Both are awesome albums, RBF's is very slapstick-ey ska goodness, and BR is really hard, heavy, angry type punk. Check 'em out!

I think I'm gonna read and fall asleep now. Woo!