So a couple weeks ago, I took the week off and my mom and I drove up to San Jose for a Joyce Meyer conference (very rewarding by the way) and brought Brimly and Moobie along with us.  In fact the boys were so excited about getting out of the house that they were ready and waiting in the car the morning of departure long before my mom and I had a chance to get outside.  Moobie was particularly excited about going to see the famous Winchester Mystery House after he'd heard about the supposed ghosts. 

Brimly offered to drive in order to get us on the road but we politely declined. 

On the drive up, we decided we would do some sight-seeing at Hearst Castle, but first we needed to stop for breakfast in Solvang.  The boys ate a bit too much...

I took lots of pictures of Hearst Castle but I'm not supposed to publish them anywhere without permission.  :(  Anyway, after Hearst we drove up the 1 along the coast, much to my mother's terror as it is a long and windy road on a cliffside overlooking the ocean.  My mom was convinced, when we stopped for dinner in Big Sur, that she was going to need to be medivacked out of there.  I drove the rest of the way to San Jose that night while she took a sedative.  Brimly and Moobie were screaming and puking in the backseat the whole time.  Wusses. 

In San Jose we finally made it to the Winchest Mystery House, though ironically enough Moobie was too scared that there actually would be ghosts and forced Brimly to sit with him in the car the whole time. 

Doesn't look scary to me...

Mom and I left the boys in the hotel room while we went to the Joyce Meyer concert.  They look innocent, but don't let them fool you: they threw a wild party the minute we left the room...

Anyway, the rest of the trip was edifying but uneventful and the drive back down the 5 was all smooth sailing.  It was a good week. 

On a completely unrelated note: I cut my hair off for Locks of Love yesterday.  I look more like my sister now.

Woohoo!  I have found the key to mending my butterfly blogging ways: themes!  Themes, I tell you!  You know, like one blog will be all about writing and the process of writing and what I think about when I'm writing particular stories.  And another blog will be just sort of me, just me.  Etc. 

Originally, I thought I would explain how I came up with my whole themes idea with some deep explanation about readership and knowing your audience and tailoring what you write to the values of the people who read without sacrificing your own.  But then, I decided that didn't fit in with the theme of this blog.  Not that I know what this blog's theme is yet, but still...  Maybe I'll make it about gaming and interactive media.  Sid Meier's Civilization series!!  Woohoo!!  (Must... nuke... barbarians...) 

Maybe Brimly and Moobie will make a comeback and answer all sorts of burning questions with hardhitting articles and fun andventures. 

Who knows.  It'll come to me. 

So I've been subscribing to the Joyce Meyer podcasts and listening to them on my drive to work lately and I have to say it's been rather good for my mental state as she invariably makes me laugh and feel good about myself at the same time that she lectures me on humility and whatnot.  This week, especially, I've been entertained and encouraged by her talks on personality and selfishness--she has a way of making me relate and see the flaws in myself while taking the sting out of it. 

Take, for example, yesterday's podcast (which I downloaded last night and listened to this morning) entitled "It's Not All About Me".  She hadn't even gotten to the message yet, she was just introducing it with the confession that she used to worry about what people thought of her until she realized that most people aren't thinking about her at all (they're too busy worrying about how they look to everybody else). 

When she said that I just started laughing. 

Okay, I'll be honest: I started laughing at first because I was thinking "I totally know people like that!  They always think everyone else is thinking about them as much as they are!"  Oh, yes.  I am that humble...    Anyway, about five minutes later I suddenly thought, "wait a second..." as I was struck by the memory of a number of rather dumb things I've done, myself, on the assumption that the rest of the world was as obsessed with me as I am. 

Prime example of this behavīor being my personality on the Internet.  Here's some random individual with a blog post that I comment on and three days later I'm in a panic because I'm thinking that they must hate me or have thought I was stupid or been offended since they never responded to my "clever witticisms" (which is really just a way of saying that I wanted to impress them and it's become painfully obvious that I've failed).  So then I make the really dumb decision to seek out an answer as to why they weren't impressed, either by apologizing for "offending" them or requesting (read: demanding through subseversive and "polite" means) suggestions to "improve" (actually, I'm just asking for the tools to make them like me) or, sometimes (and even more passive-aggressve), I just say hi and try to start another conversation where I fish around for clues as to where I went wrong in my attempts at overwhelming awesomeness.  That last one tends to be my preferred method...

Their response, without fail, is usually something along the lines of: "Huh?" or "No worries, I'm not offended" followed by total conversation ending silence. 

In any event, I've finally left an impression on them, but it's not a very good one.  Which begs the question, what did all this worrying about what they think get me anyway?  Three days of self-loathing anxiety and another random stranger (usually located somewhere on the other side of the world) who probably only ever spares a though in my direction to sincerely hope that I leave them alone...

Yeah, that was productive, right?

And then I had to start laughing because I thought, at least I'm not the only one.  And if I'm not the only one then maybe I don't need to try so hard to impress these people that I'll never meet face to face.  I mean, who cares if I make an idiot of myself?  Obviously they don't, they don't have any feelings one way or the other.  And, really, we're all idiots.  And if I can laugh at someone making a fool on themselves in a movie or on TV or in a blog, then why not laugh at myself doing the same thing in real life?  Seems a heck of a lot more productive.  I mean, laughter burns calories, releases endorphins, and makes people fun to be around.  So I'd basically be losing weight, feeling good, and making friends.  Maybe even those friends I was trying so hard to impress when I was making an idiot of myself.  Huh.

And if I laugh at myself, I know I'll never run out of things to keep me entertained.  Because, yes,  I am just that funny.

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p.s. Just to add an extra thought: If I worry so much what other people think of me instead of focusing on developing myself as God made me to be with His specific purpose for my life, that's actually putting their opinions above God's and is a form of idolatry.  And any time I put something else before God, I'm going to be miserable.  It's that simple.

I can be hilariously funny when I want to.  No really.  I can. 

Aw screw it...

We just had an earthquake here in SoCal and being the crazy person that I am, I loved the adrenaline rush (it was one of the long-lasting rollers, I love those).  Plus, it just amuses me to see my coworkers react: you see a different side of people in that kind of situation.  For instance, the two co-workers who hail from non-quaking states had no idea what to do; Brian directed them into a doorway while calmly heading to safety.  It was poor Ed's first quake and while he took it with grace and dignity, he did seem a tad disturbed that the ground had just moved. 

The whole thing started so calm that it just seemed like someone had slammed a door really hard in the hallway so I asked Caitlin if it was an earthquake or my imagination; we merely looked at each other for a moment (native Californians, both of us) then nodded and agreed that it was indeed an earthquake at which point I slithered out my chair (literally slithered, it was amusing) and under the desk out of reflex while Caitlin just waited it out, still deciding if she should take cover or not. 

Then, when it ended, Steve burst back into our office crowing and laughing in excitement while one of our HR reps and recruiters commented on how slow they are since they just stood there the whole quake.  Ahhh... good times. 

It kind of reminds me of once when I was in junior high and my friend was spending the night at the time that a really big earthquake hit (way, way bigger than today's, it damaged freeways and killed people).  From the very moment that quake started, before I even really had a chance to wake up, my friend jumped up from where she was sleeping and threw herself over me yelling that it was an earthquake, trying to cover my head with her hands.  I never forgot that she did that, that her first instinct was to protect me and she was willing to use her own body to do it.  (Sure, she hadn't really been in many earthquakes before and actually ended up pinning me down so that I couldn't move us to a safer spot in the room, but that's beside the point.)  Most of the time back then she kind of gave the impression of not needing anyone or really particularly caring if you chose to be her friend or not--she was nice and funny but tough and independent, not always friendly.  After that I always knew she did care and put other people before herself even if it wasn't obvious on the surface.