Had fun Monday night. Stephen and Natalie came over and we watched the remake of The Music Man. Man, I love that musical! And we chatted before and after and generally had fun. At least I did. Hope they did, too.

Last night, I stopped on the way home to pick up birthday cards for Mike and his fiancee since their birthdays are both coming up before the month is over. Found the perfect card for Mike in about two seconds. Then spent half an hour on Zoe's card. Trying to find a card that isn't way too sappy but isn't suggestive is hard. I mean, really, how many suggestive cards do we need? I'd bet over half of them were inappropriate in some way. Some of them even made reference to a contraption to hold water and make a lake. Do we need to start rating cards now?

Now I know some of you will rake me over the coals. "People talk that way." They never used to. And, when you can leave the word out of the card and it makes just as much sense, then tell me why it was needed to ruin a perfectly good card.

I guess my thing is, why do we need to reflect the way people actually talk? Can't we reflect the way they should talk? Or has our collective vocabulary dropped so far that we can't think of anything other then four letter words to say? And, since they can be used as any part of speech, why do we even need other words?

Really, I want you to do me a favor. Next time you are tempted to write swear words in your blog, see if you can't come up with better words to express yourself without resorting to that. I'll bet you find you can get your point across just as well if not better without being lazy like that.

In other news, my car is in for it's 45,000 service right now. That's set me back more money. After paying my car insurance this month, I've really hit a set back money wise. Fortunately, I've got roommates. :)

But this just underscores why I'm so dead set against going home this weekend. I just changed my oil two months ago, and it was already time for my next service. Now I did drive to see my family in February and then I drove to Donald's wedding a couple weeks ago. Both those put the majority of the miles on my car.

As I've said before, I'll be making a total of 5 trips to Santa Rosa this year, and my family will be making no trips down here. Now I know they've got a lot going on this year. But, when Mom starts trying to make me feel guilty about not coming up this weekend when we were talking on the phone on Sunday, it really steams me. I don't have the nerve, but I feel like saying, "Until you have made one trip all the way to Santa Clarita for the sole purpose of seeing me, then you have no right to make me feel guilty about how many trips I've made to see you." But I know me and my family. If I ever did have the nerve, I'd somehow be the villian for feeling this way and expressing it.

Meanwhile, not only is Mike's wedding interfering with Trixie Camp this year, but his graduation is the same day as a concert I'd really like to go to. I'm frustrated and feeling sorry for myself over both, and I'm frustrated and feeling sorry for myself for feeling sorry for myself.

Can we just fast forward to 2005? I think I'll be much happier then. I wonder how Australia is this time of year.

Ironically, today hasn't been a bad day. Guess I just have some frustration I need to work out.

Thanks for listening to me rant.