I mentioned, I think, that I was looking for a new computer. Thought I might as well show you what I got… but first a little story:

Dad and I went shopping for a computer about a month ago or so. We looked at Sam’s Club, Best Buy, and Staples. Sam’s had some nice ones, but from what I had seen online at Best Buy, I knew that the prices were a little high.

Next we went to Best Buy. They had some really nice ones, and a few were at the right price. So we made a mental note of what they had and moved on. We tried to take a break at about this time and went to a new Japanese restaurant that cooks the food right at our table (that is really fancy for here  :D ). But there was going to be about a half hour wait for a table, and we still had other stores to go to after Staples, so we kept shopping.

At Staples, I was torn between two different makes: #1 a black, full keyboard, high memory/hard drive laptop; #2 a small, white, very light weight laptop, with reasonable memory/hard drive. Both were Toshiba, if I remember correctly.

Instead of the Japanese restaurant, Dad and I went to McD’s and talked about which of these two computers would be better for college. I decided on the white one, which was smaller. So we went to pick it up, and then went to Wal-Mart and home.

When we got home, I plugged in my computer and started looking at the manual (I hardly ever read manuals, but I sometimes look at the pictures). Suddenly a thought came to me that I had thought of in McD’s but forgotten to check. I picked up my new laptop and looked at all four sides…

“Hey, Dad?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think this has a DVD player…”

Sure enough, after thinking in McD’s that I needed to check to make sure that it could play DVDs (an essential for my computer), I had completely forgotten to.

So we wrapped it up, and Dad returned it the next day. Thankfully, Staples took it back without requiring that it be traded for another computer or anything. And I looked on Toshiba’s website and found a better one.

Same size, still white (which rocks, by the way), but a better processor, memory, and hard drive… And this one plays DVDs just fine. ;)

A week later Alice arrived:

And so far, I am very happy with her ;)

We have fallen a little behind in my Calculus class, so we needed to make it up somehow. The teacher decided to do this by going 70 mph through THREE lessons on Monday! My brain was fried after that, and I went home and tried to do some of the homework from that class before I had to leave for karate that night. Today, we went at 80 mph through two more lessons, skipped one (that we still have homework for), and went 65 mph through another lesson that he thought was a little more important!

Now my brain is really fried, and I have a LOT of homework to do!!!

….. On the up side: Wednesday is the one weekday that we don’t meet for Calc., and I found this picture to share with you ;)

No joking, this is what my To Do post-it note for last Saturday said:

Bible
Small group work
Math sheet
Chem. sheet
2 pages of Spanish
Vacuum lady bugs

Harmonia axyridis vs. Humanity

Though these are not technically lady bugs (rather they are Asian Lady beetles), I fail to see where this is going to directly affect me.

Anyway, I was talking about vacuuming. The best way that I find to get rid of lady bugs is to use the hose of the vacuum and suck them off of window, wall, and furniture. According to the United States Department of Agriculture the lady beetles like to overwinter in the walls of houses and then come out (sometimes into the living area of the house) when it starts to warm up. I don’t know how they prove this, because we have had a constant stream of bugs coming in since Fall :P

Maybe it is our curse for living in a house that is over 100 years old, but every few years it seems like we get a really bad swarm of the beetles coming into our home, and this Fall was worse than normal. And as soon as I am done vacuuming and turn to unplug the vacuum… there are five more lady bugs in the window!!!

The worst part is that they stink!!!!! REALLY BAD!!!! I don’t know how wide spread these lady bugs are, but in central IL they are no longer cute!!!! They stink like nothing should, and they bite and crawl over your bed!! Vacuuming is simply the best way to get rid of them, but you better have a can or two of air freshener to spray around, because the room that you vacuum and the vacuum itself will STINK!!!

Hmmm…. well, that really had very little help for any of you, but I felt like ranting about these annoying beetles! Be glad if you don’t know what I’m talking about or if you have less than five lady bugs in each window in your house!!

The last few days I have been playing with my blog: adding a blogroll, changing my gravitar, and I added the gravitar picture to my sidebar. But, “A new year, a new you,” right? Or at least, a new year, a new blog. Thus the Connections theme.

Being an artist and designer has made me impatient with old things, and I am constantly searching for a new look or a new way to do things. I’ll still be talking about the same stuff — whatever is on my mind when I find time to sit down and type — it will just be in a nice new theme.

<3