Well, I put my site on hiatus.  With no way to design a new layout for when I return to Atlanta, I'll just wait til I come to that bridge to jump off of it.  I'll also explain more below.

Recent happenings... Saturday I went to the homie Jeff's place.  I've known Jeff since he was a freshman in high school (I'm a year his senior) and we got real cool my senior year.  His folks have treated my mom and I like extended family members since then, and in light of everything I've been going through (which I won't get into here and now), they got me a laptop from the state auction.  A nice little IBM ThinkPad... nothing fancy, but functional, and as they always say... functionality is key.  I've gotta do a memory upgrade and add a new hard drive, however.  With only 16 MB RAM and a 1.25 GB hard drive, updates are imminent.  I also played NBA Street 2 for the first time, and I've already developed enough skill to talk shit.  I use the player I created myself, plus Baron Davis, Tracy McGrady, Rasheed Wallace, and Lamar Odom.  Until I get enough player points for my own player, it'll be Baron and Rasheed, with T-Mac and Odom rotating.  So yeah... chillin' with Jeff was cool as usual.

...Friday, I didn't do much of anything.  I was tired from the work week (which was only 4 days long, but I worked at least 90 minutes overtime every day, including one day from 8:30 am - 6:30 pm), so I came in and fell asleep on the wicker bench we just put in this room.  Until I get the DVD encoder installed on this computer, that'll be its only function.  I continued playing Dragon Warrior on the emulat.or and got up to around level 12 before I started controlling the hero like a drunkard because I was too tired to see straight.

This whole work week was strenuous, and it's only going to get worse.  Everything has to be ready by August 8th and with a 10-day vacation recently behind us, it kinda threw everything off.  Especially for me, since I had only worked 7 days prior to the start of the vacation.  The other disadvantage with that is that when I worked in this building in 2001, we had 1) more man-power and 2) more time to do everything.  Well, in 2003, we're having to flip-flop all the work (un)done in 2001, which consists of moving two classrooms' materials down 3 flights of stairs, across a yard, and 3 flights up stairs.  In addition, 4th grade's stuff must be moved up a flight of stairs, but at least they're in the same building.  To say nothing of the cosmetic work (clean windows, re-finish all wood, clean the desks, etc.), as well as setting up the teacher's lounge, the two of us that are on this task will have to become superheroes.  The nuns that'll be in the building have brought along some help to get the convent and the library set back up (because the library went unused in the past school year, the kids went to a local public library), but with classroom floors needing to be stripped, waxed, re-arranged, and possibly painted, in conjunction with all the previously-mentioned things we're kinda pushing the envelope.  If all this doesn't get done by the 8th, it falls on two people's shoulders, and mine are half that set.  The last thing I need is for them to not re-hire me next summer because "I'm not an efficient worker."  Guess we'll see how all this goes... but there's an abridged explanation for my neglect of this page.

This week was also tough socially.  My best friend called twice to briefly complain about how I don't call her anymore.  The first time I didn't even offer an explanation because I was too tired; when she asked again, I was more alert, so I told her what was up.  Being a best friend, she understood, but there was probably a subliminal in there somewhere.  I didn't even go out this weekend because I wasn't in the mood to, even though I probably should have been.  I called it "rest weekend" because not only did I have to recuperate from last week, but with the week I'm facing, I'll need as much rest/downtime as humanly possible.  That said, I'm extending my mid-day nap.  Peace.