Change Lies Ahead

It's funny; when I joined Facebook, I told myself I wouldn't abandon this blog for that horrible networking service.  Then I found that everything I really bother talking about can fit in the 140-or-so characters of a Facebook status.  And for what I blog about that can't fit in one sentence... well, I haven't felt the need to wax poetic for a while (or what I have written isn't up to par for what I deem a post).

But some things have come up that I can post about, I guess.

I'm one step closer to being called an adult: I'm making plans to move out.  I have a couple of apartments in mind already, with monthly rent between $500-$600.  I haven't talked to any of the places yet; that's on my agenda for "Things to do on my Mondays".  My dear brother has been of help in this, by giving me advice on what to look for, what to keep in mind, what it might cost, and other things like that.  I was hoping to move at the beginning of January if possible, but I think I'm going to have to wait a little bit and move at the end of January/beginning of February so I can save a bit more money.  Other things I have to do to prepare for this: make lists of what I need/want for my apartment (i.e. furniture, appliances, and cookware); sketch out a rough budget including food, car insurance, renter's insurance, rent, plus extra for whatever utilities I'll have to pay for; start sorting all the crap in my room into what I'm going to keep, what's going into storage, and what's going away.

Another big change is my computer.  My technophile brother surprised me when he pulled out his black MacBook during his Thanksgiving visit.  "What, you don't have the aluminium one?" I asked him.  Well, while he was here, he bought one of the new aluminium ones and gave me a choice: I can take his old MacBook (a smaller screen than my Inspiron, but roughly four times the memory and hard drive capacity of the Dell) or he'll get me an entirely new laptop (he was thinking a Gateway).  I was slightly afraid of compatability issues between a Macintosh and the Windows machines we have on our home network, but considering a lot of the small programs I've found that are only on Mac and the fact that I'm not going to be a permenant part of the home network anymore (not to mention that the MacBook is a lot more portable than the 17" desktop replacements I'm used to), I chose the MacBook.

Since it's been slow at work, I brought both laptops along and used some of the gadgets to transfer data from the Inspiron to the MacBook.  Everything worked pretty well; I have all of my iTunes data, music, and pictures, and I'm getting a virtual machine up and running with Visual Studio so I can do programming homework when I start those classes again.  I'll set up Boot Camp later, when I can get my hands on a OS X Leopard installation disc (since my brother didn't have one he could leave with me).  I'm going to wait a week or so before I wipe my old laptop to give to my mother, just so I know I'm not missing anything vital.

Election Coverage

What do you know.  Change can happen.  I just hope that the damage done isn't permanent and the hatred built up will dissipate.

Food Upgrade

I think I just found an upgrade to my chicken parmesean recipe.

I don't know why I keep looking for recipes when I'm at work.  It's just a new form of torture.