Update

Okay, so looks like it's been nearly an eternity since I've blogged.

Oh well. Guess I ran out of things to say that seemed to fit the focus of my blog name, at least for a while. And I've been pretty busy.

I've been employed since August at a national chain pharmacy. This job is very stressful, and I'm not good at taking out the abuse customers or "patients" like to dish out. I understand that their situation can be stressful, but I don't like being the punching bag, you know?

Also, we've just moved. We were living in a 2-bedroom, 2 bath 1050 sq foot apt on the 2nd floor of a 3-story building. We were surrounded by neighbors on all sides, and it really sucked. Also, we were not fitting into the neighborhood anymore, for various reasons. We're now about 10 miles west of where we were previously - it is still a Minneapolis suburb, but it is smaller, and there are actual FARMS about 10 minutes' driving distance away. It's nice 'cause, though we do have a downstairs neighbor, we pretty much don't hear them. There isn't traffic in and out all the time (usually with some dude driving as slow as possible through the parking lot, hip hop cranked), and there aren't screaming, excited young children running frantically up and down the hallways. We have about 200 more sq feet of space, and a garage of our own. It's a much nicer place to host guests, and to live, really.

If this were a house, and it came down to where the owner decided to not re-rent to us 'cause he wanted to sell, I'd be interested in buying it. It was only built in 2004, and has trendy vaulted ceilings, colorful accent walls, good sun exposure on the deck for my plants, and a spacious kitchen (something I'd been missing for 3 years). However, it is in an HOA neighborhood, and I don't want to buy a home in one of those neighborhoods because (at least in this one) we don't really have a space of our own in the back yard that I could dig up and plant veggies. Every citizen should be allowed to attempt to grow their own food, or "growceries." Also, I would want a house to have a fenced yard so I could get a small dog (Boston Terrier FTW!).

How I got here: an unexpected love story

For Christmas of 2006, my brother got me an MMO called City of Heroes. It was one that he and his wife enjoyed playing, and since I had recently upgraded to cable internet, he thought I should be having fun with it as well.

Initially, I didn't load the game. He called me and said, "Hey, why aren't you on yet? You get a free trial with it so you should at least check it out...." Ok fine, around the time of the Valentine's Day event I put it on and he helped me get set up. I had a bit of fun meandering over the city with my newly-created stone tanker, Brawlita. I died a lot and didn't team much with others, except for my bad-influence brother.

Eventually I teamed with a toon (character played by an actual person) named Nopalita. It was funny that our names both ended in lita - I'm curious now if that is why she picked me to play with. She was a small toon, mostly green, with the powers of spines and spikes protruding from her back (fighting class: scrapper). Spike + green = nopales, hence the name. I probably met her when I was around level 20 or so; she invited me to her super group, where I met others to play with. We also could team up with members of our coaliton, and it was here I met Forrest Tiger.

Why the two R's in his name? Even he doesn't know. He teamed with some other friends of ours in a large group of players called a coalition. I ended up teamed with him quite a bit, though usually with several other players.

One time he typed something in the chat box like, "BRB, need more music!" I sent him a 'tell' (private message), asking him what he was listening to. "Lacuna Coil," he typed back. OH REALLY.... considering they were a band I really liked a lot, I was interested to find out more. So we 'telled' back-and-forth a bit, at first about music and later about where we lived, etc.

I grew to really enjoy logging onto City of Heroes and seeing that he was on. We started teaming together quite a bit, sometimes just the 2 of us but usually still with friends. I grew to really like what I saw of his personality and sense of humor - never crude or mean-spirited, often silly. We shared a few personal details through chatting, such as his having had cancer and that neither of us were seeing anyone. We found out our age difference, exchanged Myspace details, and that we lived about 1,700 miles apart.

Ozzy Ozbourne is responsible for us finally meeting "in real life!" We would have met eventually, I'm sure, but it just so happens that Ozzfest was free in 2007, but we had a dilemma: Ozzfest was not coming to Minnesota, and while it was coming to WA, I had no one to go with me. I half-jokingly typed, "Hey, you should fly over and attend Ozzfest with me!" He types back, "Ok." I then thought, "ACK! What have I done?!" While I did kind of want to meet him, it meant that he, a person I'd not yet met in real life, would be coming to stay with me for a week. What if we didn't get a long? What if there was no chemistry? What if (like everyone's mom likes to say) he was a bad guy?

Well he came over in July of 2007, and after a few days of initial skittishness, we became a lot closer. By the time he had to go back to Minnesota, it was pretty well-established that we liked each other. He flew over to WA to see me about every 1.5 months - the times in between his visits were hard for both of us.

Eventually the realization came that one of us was going to have to move.

He thought I should move over there with him, but I wasn't willing to without a serious committment, as in marriage. I know that marriage is not a necessity for couples to be committed to each other, but IN MY OWN experience, that 'co-habitation' (hate that term) thing never worked out. I would be giving up my job of 7 years, the closeness of my friends and family, and the gorgeousness of Washington for the unknown. I wanted something in return from him in exchange for all that I was giving up.

So about 6 months after we met, he proposed. That was one of the few times in my life I'd been shocked speechless. It was incredible to me really; I had always been one of those who kind of scoffed at marriage, until I met THIS guy. I woke up the next morning and was like, "Whoah... did that really happen?!" Since it was a spur-of-the-moment act for him, he hadn't come prepared with a ring or anything.

I chose to move to MN to be with him rather than him coming to WA for a few reasons. One is that his job had a greater career potential, while mine was just a job. Secondly, an ex-bf of mine knew where I lived and had the annoying habit of showing up occasionally (in fact, he showed up the week before I got married; didn't talk to him much, as I was HORRIBLY ill with food poisoning from the MN airport food). I just didn't want any ties to former relationships nearby - I felt to truly make this work on my end, I needed a fresh start. Otherwise, if things started getting the slightest bit sticky, I could have bailed a lot more easily than I could now.

I don't regret doing it this way, but I sure do miss my friends and family back in WA.