Abbie's Real Life Blog

Middle of July!  I bought a box of Late July brand cookies at Whole Foods yesterday, and then had a think about the graphics on the package.  Am I having a real Late July, complete with lazy beaches and picnics and summer fun?  No, on those marks, I am falling short.

But it has been a pretty good summer so far, all told.  Maybe I haven’t seen the ocean this year, but I’ve had plenty of other fun experiences.  There have been parties and dog parks and road trips and live music and ice cream.  But not enough ice cream, honestly.  I need to up my consumption of ice cream.

This weekend was the Modest Mouse concert that I had been looking forward to since April.  At the time, my friend was supposed to go, but he is still in South Dakota on a field assignment that has taken (at last count) about eight weeks longer than he expected.  I was supposed to go with a crowd, but ended up going alone, which was just fine.  I sold his tickets for him on Craigslist and had a good time by myself.  The show was at the Pageant in St. Louis, and I didn’t have a seat, but I had a pretty good view directly behind two shorter girls.  I was interested in how the venue ghetto-ized the under-21s from the 21-and-over (aged) people.  The 21-and-overs had much more space, better view.  The under-21s were packed into the sides of the bar.  I could see that it would suck.  But I didn’t have to care much.  Anyway, the under-21s weren’t dodging broken beer bottles while wearing flip-flops.  The show itself was pretty good.  I love Modest Mouse and they played a lot of my favorite songs.

I elected to stay over in St. Louis and got an airport-adjacent hotel room (though I should have gotten a deal online- I paid too much), which was nice.  I didn’t have to make the drive back to Columbia after the show, even though we were out early enough (before 11:30pm).  I was hoping for pretty weather on Sunday morning to take some photos of the Arch, but I woke up to clouds.  Bummer.  Even more of a bummer- there must have been a big storm system that I didn’t even hear because my car has a lot of new hail dings all over it.  I was sorry to see that, but it shouldn’t make much of a difference because I intend to keep this car for at least another seven years.  Maybe longer.  The goal was 10 years and it’s been nearly 3.5!  I am almost done with the car payments on my 4-year note.  That is exciting.

I went to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods before another storm system came through, and ended up driving home through the storm, but I was home before noon.  Not a bad little mini-break.  I spent the afternoon hanging out with family, playing my sister’s Wii while I messed about trying to clean up my iTunes.  The Wii has been a big social activity for all of us in the past few weeks.  I don’t usually like video games- they lose my interest fast, but I have had a lot of fun with the Wii.

I am syncing my iPod with my iTunes right now.  This has been a big pile of wack since I had to rebuild the computer a few weeks ago.   I am frustrated that I lost all my playlists after rebuilding my iTunes library.  And this just a few months after building that same iTunes library!  It’s so frustrating.  I do not like how picky iTunes is about this stuff.  I am tired of wrangling iTunes, to be honest.  But I can recommend that if you’re having similar problems, a few third-party programs do things that iTunes should do (like fixing all the broken orphaned files after your system needs to be rebuilt; otherwise you have to go through and correct them by hand, which takes hours).

Meanwhile, I am also frustrated with Adobe.  I use Adobe Bridge and Photoshop, and I know my versions are fairly old (I am using CS3; the current version is CS5), but Adobe won’t support anything later than its current version.  Not even one version back, which I think should be standard (especially since Photoshop is so expensive).  I hate this.  Adobe Bridge is a clunky program, but I use it all the time.  Since I rebuilt my computer last month, it has been nothing but problematic and there are no updates to fix [what I believe are] stupid easy-to-fix problems.  Today I will go to buy the new version of Photoshop.  This seems like going to buy a new car because my old car is having a minor issue, but the dealership just refuses to fix it because they think I should buy a new car instead.  It is irritating.  It will be more irritating if it doesn’t actually fix the problem.  I guess at least I will have CS5, which does have a lot of new bells and whistles.

These are mostly minor annoyances.  I have a lot of them right now, little wiggly anxieties that float in the back of my mind and sometimes jump to the forefront and cause me frustration.  I still haven’t fixed the driver’s side window in my car, for instance, but it doesn’t really bother me until I pull up to the drive-thru without thinking.  I’m avoiding the weed-eater even though my dad swears it’s working now.  The dog is starting to get very nervous about thunderstorms, even more nervous than she used to.  I don’t know why.  I have a Netflix that’s been sitting on the TV for a month.  It’s all small stuff like this.  I am very lucky.

This week should be easy.  My photo club is having a barbecue tomorrow in lieu of a meeting, which is fun and unexpected.  I will go home and decide if I am making something in addition to bringing veggie brats, even though this is a decidedly non-veggie crowd.  Maybe I will bake something.  I think I have options.  Then I do trivia on Wednesday and then it’s already Thursday!  On Thursdays I get frustrated that the weeks go by so quickly, which seems kind of strange now that I think about it.  I don’t mind the work week all that much, but I do mind that time just passes by and it never seems like I get all that much accomplished.  Maybe I should make a specific effort to feel like I have earned this coming weekend.  What do you think?