May 7, 2000
Realizations - Old and New

This is my first entry at my new diary homepage lgleason.diaryland.com, but I thought I should also put it here it let everyone know that this is the last posting at this URL. The Shrew's News main page will be updated soon with this information.

It’s only 11:30 PM. I think being back at home is going to alter my normal sleeping schedule somewhat. When I was at school I was usually lucky to get to bed by midnight and most of the time I fell asleep around 1 AM. Now that I am in the same house as my parents I am finding myself ready for bed really early. This is just one of the strange things I am realizing about being home. I also eat too much during family meals because my mom is such a good cook and she makes all of my favorite foods. Tonight, at my request, was had spaghetti for dinner plus some fresh green beans (my favorite). I tried to have small helpings of everything, but that adds up to one large meal. I have no self-control when it comes to good food. I have about eighteen days left here in Tallahassee and I am sure I will come up with more realizations in that time, so stay tuned for more where this came from.

I have my computer set up in my bedroom – along with the rest of my junk. A couple of days ago this “junk” classified as all of my important belongings, but now that it is taking up every possible square inch of space on the floor I can’t stand to even look at it. I brought back almost an entire room-full of stuff from my sorority house residence and now it has been combined with all of my possessions that were not with me at the University of Florida to create one giant mess. I never knew how much I owned until it was all in one small space. I just moved a large box of clothes off of my bed so that my cat, Tom, could lay down in his favorite spot. It’s funny how well I know him; as soon as the box was gone he plopped his little body down at the end of the bed. He is in dire need of attention tonight and he has been following me around. Anyway, I am going to do something about the horrific state of my bedroom tomorrow when I am the only one around to entertain myself. My parents will both be at work and my brother has an AP test in the afternoon so I am all on my own. There’s a lot of work to be done before my dad and I leave for California in a couple of weeks.

The thing at the front of my mind is my boyfriend. Stuart and I said our goodbyes on Friday afternoon and I must admit I cried a little. A part of me knows that I am not going to see his sweet face or feel his arms around me again until August, but the rest of me doesn’t want to believe it or even think about it. I love Stuart so much and I know I will think about him everyday that we are apart. I have a picture of him in front of me now. It’s the one I took at Universal Studios last October. Stu has such cute smile and I like to have that picture on my desk when I am working at the computer. If I need some patience when a MatLab program is dodging my every attempt to debug it or if I just need a little inspiration for the current diary entry there is a friendly face there to help me out. You are the best Stuart, even if I don’t tell you that enough, and I really appreciate everything that you do for me. I only wish you were here now so I could see your reaction to these sappy words I am writing about you. I’m not sure if you would be touched or horrified, but either way the face would be priceless.

Everyone in my house is asleep now – even my brother and the cats. When I am home for the weekend during the semester that’s usually my key to watch whatever I want on TV and have free reign on the computer. I need to check my email and chuck out all of the junk mail that has accumulated in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe I’ll even get a message from my sweetie. I wish I had access to ICQ, but my regular computer isn’t plugged into a phone line, my new laptop doesn’t have it yet, and my brother doesn’t use that message service. Oh well – life goes on. I guess this is a good place to end my first diary entry at this new URL. Expect some interesting stuff from me in the following weeks before my dad and drive to California for my summer internship with Boeing. For example, my car decided to flash the “check engine soon” light yesterday so that means another trip to the dealer to see what’s wrong this time. The light last came on the week before spring break and I had to get it checked out then. Let’s hope there isn’t a problem and my little green Neon gets a clean bill of health.