Allllll byyyy myyy se-e-elf

I'm starting to really feel the strain of having no friends here. It always get's this way during the slow time at my job. I suddenly realize how little life I have outside of my job and how I have like no friends here my own age. Cept for my co-workers, and we don't exactly like to do the same things for fun. Before I got friends from school or church. Now I'm not in school, and my church is dead. Well not dead, but as my grandmother says most members "gpt one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel."
I want someone to friggen hang out with, and with work consuming my life, and fear of going out alone...I have no way to meet anyone. I don't even know enough people to have a pity party. I'm not sure how to remedy this. I mean I love hanging out with my best friend and her hubby(they're supposed to be moving a lot closer soon) but for now they are far away, but they have 4 kids and a lot of drama. It's so different hanging out with people with kids when you have none. We're just not into the same things. My life's about me and my husband...she lives for her kids.
Maybe..with this incident at my church it will give us a chance to find another church with more young people to hang out with. But I'm so bored and lonely I've resorted to cleaning up my house. I bought a new doorknob for my bathroom and replaced it myself. I completely cleaned the refrigerator which honostly, has not been cleaned since my mom moved out 9 years ago and had some nasty spills that were ignored. I know..gross. and tomorrow. I'm painting the ceiling in my kitchen. I gotta get outta here or before you know it...the whole house will be in shape. I'll be like...a homemaker. I mean...some of you have seen my rooms from college...can you really see that? scary huh?:)

On another note. I finally purchased an ac adapter for my ibook clamshell. Old as she is...she'll be up and running soon. I figured I'd better get her going since she's my only computer with Photoshop, and with the lovely new camera I need a program to play in:) man...there was the laptop on ebay for $800. fully loaded with 2k worth of software including photoshop cs and all kinds of fun little graphic, webpublishing stuff. It was used by a radio station. Original program cds included. I would have been all over it, but hubby's still trying to recover from the near $700 spent on my camera. He would have had a heart attack. But it sure would have been sweet. (sigh)

Camera's here

Yahoo! I got my camera on Tuesday. I'm so happy I could poop:) Not the daunting task of trying to learn how to use it. Maybe I should rent an instructional video:) I also learned that I don't have the right flash for my camera, However I can still use it as long as I set my flash on manual instead of automatic. It's a booger, but it can be dealt with until I'm able to get another flash. It's quite visably used, but not beat up or anything. Works great. I have already taken over 95 pictures. I flew into Seattle yesterday to visit my brother and sister-in-law who live in Oak Harbor. They took me on this underground tour which takes you under the city of Seattle, where people used to live before the fire in 1889. They rebuilt that section of the city over the old section. It was actually pretty interesting. Seattle is such a neat place with everything built on mountains and hills. I've never seen such steep roads, buildings that slant on the bottom floor and people living on so many different levels of elevation in one city. I got lucky and landed on a beautiful sunny day. Once I get back home and load up some of my pictures I'll put them on my blog for you guys to see. I would do it here, but I don't have the software to install on my brother's computer in order to use my usb cable. ah well. But hopefully the rest of the trip will be as nice and I will go back home without ever having to experience the rain and fog and dreariness that all too often is seattle. God willing.

Hurray for me!

I finally won a camera on ebay. Yahoo! Hopefully it will be here within the next week or so. It's a used Canon 10D, but it comes with the cables and battery, charger, manuals, software..all that. Plus a vertical grip. And I got a decent price for it all, at least I think. Also, it turns out the guy who I'm buying the camera from lives in New York and is a photographer for television series' like Cold Case. So I sent him a message telling him I was interested in that line of work, and if he could kinda tell me he got started. He wrote me back and said he was going to buy me a new battery and throw in a 256 MB memory card. And if I just give him my regular email address, he could write me in more detail about his work. And before anyone get's nervous, ebay messaging restricts the number of characters. So for a long email, it just wouldn't work.

I also got a new still-in-package 2gb memory card for $41. did I mention I love ebay.

I can't wait to get my new camera...I hope it will awaken my photographic urges and I'll be inspiried to take pictures of pretty much anything, like I used to. I miss being known as "camera girl" around the acu campus. how cool was that. The euphoria of a new camera has wiped away my anger with ebay. Hooray for ebay.


On a different note. So different in fact, it should probably be it's own post, but...laziness prevails. My pastor was voted out of my church on Sunday. I've written before about the struggles we were having. I don't believe he was completely honost, but he is human. I cannot expect perfection. I understand that the elders of the church wanted him out. They had an impromptu vote to get rid of him. No warning. Just a meeting after church, and all members were to vote. They got the vote by signing a petition; 10 deacons signed. ONe, I might add, has only attended church 2x in the past year. members were suddenly present that hadn't been there in weeks, I believe pre-warned about the vote and asked to come to strengthen the side of those that wanted our pastor gone. Like I said. he wasn't the most honost man I met. But I do believe him to be a man of God. I believe he was young and new and trying to bring our church into the 21st century.

One of the charges they brought against him was that he wanted a second line in the church. And he wanted a computer for his office. And frankly he just wanted them to do things they were not used to doing. They did all but admit they were old, set in their ways and rejected change. They complained about how much money he was costing. but he has no control over the finances. He can only spend what they allow him to spend..ya know?

At the meeting people I thought i respected made rude comments, shouted at him, wouldn't let him even try to defend himself. Is this really my church family acting like this. It's hard to explain, but the way the behaved broke my heart. I was so upset I just left. He told them that the procedure was to give a two week notice before a vote is made to remove the pastor to allow all members to be present if they so chose. They would not respect that. Demanded that the vote be made that day and everyone had to chose. even people like me, who still didn't know the whole story.

I cried the whole way home. I don't know...what to do. My and james are debating if we even want to go back. if nothing else, take a break. I would hate to think I would treat them with the same anger with which they treated our pastor who they said they still loved. I don't know what to believe, or who to believe. But I do know this...i do not think my church, handled the situation well. There was no shred or love, compassion or forgiveness in any of their tones. I don't know if I can get over it enough to keep going there. pray for me please....

Ebay is the devil

Ok...so maybe that's a little harsh, but it has been making me want to pull my hair out. The good news. All but two items sold, with the total profit amounting to $60.88. Ya hoo for me. Bad news. Problems!! A buyer had to get an attitude with me over the method of payment. I said I accepted paypal, but not credit cards. So she tried to pay me with a credit card through paypal. My paypal account didn't except credit cards, so she sent me a nasty gram, because i was not completely honost in my original description. Which is true. But not because I was trying to be deceitful and lure naive bidders in with a paypal promise, it was just pure and simple ignorance on my part. I didn't know. So to appease her (who's total bid, by the was was only like $4.50 including shipping) I had to upgrade my paypal account to accept the cards, and the charge a $0.30 fee everytime someones sends me money, plus 2.9% of whatever the total transfer is. So that sucks about 8 dollars or so off my entire profit. Booo!

Then of course, it turns out somethings are heavier than I had thought, and the shipping more expensive. I had to eat the cost of the extra shipping. Of course..there are a few who paid 3.50 for shipping, when it only cost $0.87, but we'll skip over that.

Then on this one auction I told someone the auction was for twelve things, but I'd send him 5 slightly damaged ones for free if he paid for the shipping. I packed them up to ship...only had 16 . What the heck happened to that other one?!?! I had to write this letter of apology, but fortunately he was cool with it. To top it all off I have two people who have yet to pay or even communicate with me, and the auctions were over a week and a half ago.

Finally getting over my selling fiascos, I decide to buy a digital camera. I see this one I really really want. And I lose the auction. So I bid on this other one that's still good, but not exactly what I wanted. Currently I'm the high bidder and likely to stay that way. I wanted to make sure I didn't lose again. Then...what's this...an email offering me a second chance on the first one. the one I really wanted. Not at the winning price, but my first original bid, almost $100 cheaper. This can't be happening. Of course there's still a chance that I might lose. highly unlikely. So I appealed to the seller, asking if he will release my from my bid, should I win, and take the second highest. I think I said something about a circumstance preventing me from affording it. Not lying of course. Buying my second chance camera, will prevent me from being able to afford his right? right? I know it's awful...but it will save me $100 and get me the exact camera I wanted. Please the second highest bidder is only $10 down from me.

It's causing me stress. But I know that once it's all said and done, I will be much better off. I will have my digital camera (whichever one) and finally be rid of some of the wedding junk, that's just been sitting around.

Sorry about all the complaining. It's life, you know. It gets to you sometimes.