8/29/03, 2:14pm.
Oh distance has a way of making love understandable...
I'm a bit bored, and a lot tired. But I'm having a fabulous time here. My floor absolutely rocks. We are all performing arts majors: dance, theatre, vocal and instrumental. It's awesome, because it's high energy, but not drama queen-ish. So I've hung out with some of those people a ton. The past two nights we've taken Jess's TV from her room and brought it into the air conditioned common room so that we could all watch movies together. Rock on.

Classes start on Monday. (Yes, that's Labor Day.) I'm a little nervous, but I think it will all be okay. Today I'm just so lethargic. I'm sleepy and just don't want to do anything. Probably has something to do with the fact that I was up at 7:45 this morning. But I did just take a nap. It's probably the heat. Still so hot inside. It's actually cooler outside now. I almost wish that I smoked so I could go outside and take a smoke break. Almost.

8/27/03, 3:52pm.
...
Well, I did it. I'm here at good ol' Indiana Univeristy and I'm completely moved in. Actually, I have been since 5pm yesterday, a day before the designated move-in day. For $20, I could move in when elevators were not a rare commodoty, and when people aren't running around the floor looking for this and that. And I got to stay in my room last night. So I was one of about 15 people on a 60-70 person floor and it was great. I'm definitely not like my sister, Fayanne. She would have stayed with the parents at the hotel. I, however, chose to be quite independent.

And I've already been meeting a lot of people. Last night, 7 of us watched Chicago in a dorm room (which are NOT air-conditioned) and it was fun. I only remember three peoples' names, but it's been less than 24 hours. Fun stuff.

Now I need to wallow in the fact that the temperature is about 95 degrees (and not much cooler inside) and head over to Assembly Hall for a "freshman induction" followed by a free picnic. Mmmm...freeeeeee fooooood!

8/26/03, 1:55am.
It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, baby...
Now I've had to go through some really tough things in life. Everyone does, I suppose. But tonight? One of the hardest.

Saying goodbye to people that I've known. Some only for a couple months, other for years and years. But with each there is history. And some are just completely incomparable.

I first met Allie in Kindergarten because we were in TAP Math (an special advanced class for kids good at math) together. It wasn't until second grade though, that we became best friends. To the end. Have been since. Through the shit that's been known to happen in our lives, and we even survived the crazy new life that high school brought us. Even if we didn't work physically side by side...we had too different of interests in activities...we were always there for each other. Me cheering her on at meets or at least asking how they went. Her by coming to, I believe, every single one of my shows. Not even my mother has attended them all, but Allie did. And I love her and will miss her so much. So needless to say, when the time came for me to give her a hug goodbye, I started sobbing and she too started crying and together we silently relived the past 13 years. And that's it. Now it's time for me to go.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Bloomington, Indiana. A 4 hour road trip with my parents and all of my possessions that I'll need for the next 3 months until I get to come home again. I've been told that I'll make it and everything will be fine. But indeed, I am scared to venture off alone.

8/25/03, 2:36am.
Somehow that always just made me feel good...
The end is nearing. I will soon be on my way to good old Indiana for the start of my freshman year at good old IU Bloomington. Proving once again that there is more than corn in Indiana...

This past weekend has been a bit hectic. Saturday, I went to the Apple Store in Woodfield to buy my new messenger bag for school. Granted it was a bit expensive...it's also really durable and has an awesome place for a laptop to sit securely. So my baby won't be ruined. Then Saturday night, Mama threw a family going away party, where I hung out with my immediate family (all 11 actually made it!!!!) as well as most of my aunts and uncles in the area. We had a lot of snack-ish foods and later, when the party was over, I joined Fayanne and Brad with our neighbor Stephanie to Chili's. 'Twas a decent night.

Then Sunday morning, I woke up early to go to lunch with Whitney at Egg Shell Cafe, which was really good. I then went home to nap, because who wakes up early enough for breakfast? At 3, I rejoined Whitney, as well as Becca and Molly to Starbucks for yet another farewell gathering. And tonight we had Olive Garden for a family dinner. Soooo yummy.

Tomorrow, I already know that I have to finish packing, as well as find time to see Peter one last time, and I know Steph wanted to say goodbye too. Then tomorrow night, at 7pm, it's the final hurrah. A bunch of us will be at Liz's and then that'll be it for me. When I leave there around midnight, I won't see any of those kids again until Thanksgiving...maybe Christmas. Or right now I'm considering trying to come home Columbus Day weekend, and then I'll visit Jason, Pat, Charlie and Candace in Evanston.

I guess this is growing up...

8/23/03, 11:29am.
W00t!
Sally D. Coffelt, the uber bitch known as the clerk of the circuit court, finally gave me back my license. I didn't post it here, but there was a FIASCO a bit ago where I received a notice saying that my licence was being revoked because I hadn't paid my fine. Which I had. $100.

Then, 10 minutes after my father called to complain and bitch them out, another chick from the SAME OFFICE calls to say that they received my money, but it was too late for "court supervision" (aka - traffic school) and I would get refunded $25 dollars and the other $75 would be kept to go toward my fine.

Talk about stressful shit. But now I have $25 and my license. And all is good. Ish.

8/23/03, 10:55am.
You've got to roll with the punches...
At 8am, I was awoken by screaming children. They went upstairs again, but came down at 10am and all hope for sleeping late was lost. So now I'm chilling in the basement. Sitting on the couch while one child (the boy, age 10) watches Cartoon Network and the other (the girl, age 7) plays the Sims on the computer. And now I'm working on loading the Sims onto a laptop that my mother brought home from work. It's 3 years old, but still pretty good. Windows 2000 Professional, Office XP...only 6GB, but I suppose it will be alright. It's not like I'll be using it.

Success! The Sims has been installed and now both children can play simultaneously. I am the coolest aunt ever.

And now, me and my Corn Pops are going to contemplate all the stuff I should be doing today. *sigh* 3 days.

8/23/03, 2:12am.
Still I wish that there was something you would do or say...
I've sort of reached a plateau for my site. There aren't really any other graphical elements that I need to take care off. And the layout is pretty good for now. The only thing I could think to do design-wise would be change the background color. I don't know though...how do you like the yellow?

Content-wise though, I suppose I could archive old entries so it takes less time to load, and it's easier to browse. That shouldn't be too difficult, and only mildly time consuming. But I look forward to working on my site because I am still so proud of it, and so proud of myself for getting it all up and running. And in pretty good shape, if I do say so myself.

On the non-website front, I've only got 3 more days until I leave. I am so not ready. I haven't even begun to pack. I have a lot of stuff already, I think I'm pretty set with buying stuff. But actually getting it all together? Not at all. So I guess my weekend will consist of that.

This week, I've tried to see a bunch of different people to say my farewells and other sad parting wishes. I went out with Carly and some random folks on Monday and today, Becca, Beth and I went downtown to the Art Institute. There are SO many more people that I wish I could set up time with, but I just don't have time like that. I wish I could be a lucky one who gets to start late. Silly quarter system. I wouldn't take advantage of September the way I let August slip through my fingers.

I guess I should get going. It is nearly 2:30am and I'm going to be on one hell of a sleep schedule if I keep doing this as much as I have been.

8/20/03, 8:44pm.
Heartbreaks' never easy to take, but can't we still be friends...?
Now even YOU can link to my site! I know, I know...don't get toooo excited. But I did make this fun little number.


Here, I'll make it even easier for you:
<a href="http://www.poofgone.com"><img src="http://www.poofgone.com/linktome.gif"></a>

That's about it for now. I'll be continuing to update stuff periodically. So check back often! And give me plenty of feedback and praise!

8/20/03, 6:13pm.
I remember when rock was young...
I'd say that it doesn't really need to be said, but the site has had a few changes. :-)

I spent the large majority of the day (probably about 6+ hours) creating the graphics for use on this page. I'm so incredibly thrilled with how they came out, especially since it was my first time EVER working with Fireworks. Which rocks, by the way.

I seriously can't get over how cool everything looks. The ransom-esque lettering, the strategic use of fonts to match the google-searched letters. So damn cool. My only concern now? Keeping the content as interesting!!

8/19/03, 1:48pm.
I believe we were born to glow, don't you know...
It's official! http://www.poofgone.com is now up and running! I'm especially proud of this fact because I had to set it all up myself and download an FTP client and figure out how to use it. Then I redirected http://www.gailglader.com to arrive here. And I did it all by myself! No help from Patty, who I've been using quite frequently to answer my questions and fix my problems. :-)

While I'm still working on my poofgone.com email, I have set up gail@gailglader.com. Exciting, n'est pas?

And now? To work on that crappy left frame. Eww. Looking at it makes me want to vomit. Or drink poison. Or all those other dramatic clichés.

8/18/03, 10:40am.
We've got parts to perform, hearts to warm...
In quite a feat of impulsiveness, I bought domains last night around 2am. That's right, not just one...but two. The first will also be hosted and was purchased from doteasy.com for $25 a year. Pretty good deal, and that domain is none other than www.poofgone.com. Indeed though, I have not received the final confirmation on that, so alas, I'm still plugging away at Yahoo!Geocities. I suppose it's only really been 8 hours, so I should relax.

However, my other domain (www.gailglader.com) has been activated...it just has no hosting. I'm paying $15 a year through servercentral.net to secure my namesake (which I really shouldn't feel threatened about. It's not like my name is Sue Smith). Anyway, I'm currently trying to get email forwarding to work so that people can send stuff to gail@gailglader.com. I've encountered some snags though...so I'll give you an update on that later.

Though there are a lot of things that I don't like about the current layout of *poofgone*, there are indeed many aspects that I'm proud of for a first attempt at using something other than straight HTML. I wonder what changes are still to come...

8/17/03, 8:36pm.
For tonight I sleep on a bed of nails...
Two updates in one day...quite impressive. This one, however, is to talk of a bunch of computer-type stuff. First off, Goldy was so über generous and gave me his wireless internet router, since the family is switching back to wired in the new house. Major props go out to him.

Then, of course, there was the issue of setting it up. Which was far more difficult than I had imagined. So indeed I had Jason come over to get it all in working order. And I'm happy to say that I'm currently using my laptop wirelessly. This deserves a w00t.

Finally, there is the issue of website. As you can see, it's been redesigned because of my recent acquisition of Dreamweaver for mac. I've spent a good majority of the day figuring out how to use the program and working on making my website better. I don't know how great it is...I think it still looks like crap, but even so, it's an improvement over those damn tables I was using before.

Despite all of this accomplishment, I'm deathly bored, and very much want to get out of the house. I need someone to save me tonight.

8/17/03, 12:02am.
It's funny how the girls get burned...
Well, I've been on my new computer for a while and I'm really getting everything figured out. I've got some basic troubleshooting skills down too, so when anything goes wrong, I can fix it quite easily. It rocks the house.

Camp is over, and has been for a week+. It's a little sad, but I'm enjoying time off too much to care. Got my last paycheck in the mail today. THOSE I'll miss quite a bit.

Seattle was great. It's a very nice city. Beautiful bay, lovely buildings, great views of mountains and super friendly people. We did a lot of shopping and walking around. And when we got back to our hotel by 7:30 because the buses didn't run any later than that, we enjoyed chilling out and reading. I finished Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone. It was alright, I'm glad that I read it. I started and finished Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty, which was fabulous and I highly recommend to any female (or adventurous male) reader. Then I started Shopaholic Takes Manhattan which is rather dull right now.

I have discovered recently that I'm a shopaholic. I was teased horribly earlier for buying 4 posters totally about $32 on allposters.com. Just because they had free shipping on orders over $30. Yeah, I'm a SUCKER for deals. The internet is horrible. Shopping is too easy. I have my VISA number memorized. Scary.

I realized today that while I'm not overly upset about leaving my family behind when I go away to school...I feel really bad leaving my cat. Cici missed me a ton while I was gone in Seattle. See, she always sleeps with me, and stays up late into the night with me, as she generally sleeps when I sleep or when I'm out during the day. What will she do without me? She'll be so confused and not understand why I'm not coming home. This 5 day Seattle vacation was just about the longest I've been away from home EVER, so being away for 3 months is sure to make poor kitty go nuts. Will she remember me when I get home? Will she forgive my long absences for the few days I'll be home on this break or that vacation? Will she cuddle up to me like I had been there everyday before?

I guess these are the things I'm going to have to start coping with in the next 9 days. Because after that I'll be off on my own. Completely and totally. No friends on the floor above me or in the dorm next door. None even in the entire state. It's going to be different. I'm from a family of 7+ and I've never been alone. And I've never been away from family for longer than 5 days, and I've never been away from friends for more than 7 days. Craaaaaazy.

8/7/03, 12:14am.
One last call to answer...
So much to say, and so little ambition. Probably due to the fact that I'm tired and should be sleeping.

First off, I got my new computer for college. A beautiful 12" PowerBook G4 from Apple. It's my baby, I swear. And with it I got a printer and 10GB iPod, Apple Care, extra memory and a Timbuk2 iPod case. All in all, with educational discounts and mail-in-rebate...we saved $750 off the list price and it was just over $2000. Not bad for all the neato stuff I got.

So these past few days has amounted to me setting stuff up. Downloading necessary programs like Adium, installing all the cool stuff it comes with and learning how to use it all. Then I transferred all my files from my old PC to this. With the help of Jason, this was so über easy. Being almost completely unfamiliar with macs for my entire life, I'm so impressed with how easy all of this is to set up.

Whoa. Fucked up...the song just changed from "Room 317" from Miss Saigon to "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down. Yeah, that's a bit different.

Today I started messing more intently with iTunes and my iPod. I still haven't actually used the iPod other than to play Brick, but I'm starting to rip CDs I got through the numbers and As!. 3 Doors Down, 10 Things..., ABBA, Aerosmith, Ally McBeal. Not that the 900 songs I had already wasn't sufficient, but I may as well make use of my 160-ish CDs. I did go through and delete a lot of duplicates that I had though. Mostly the songs that I download are ones that I have on CD already, so as I get further into the ripping, I'm going to have many more to delete.

Two days left of camp. I'm so ready for it to end. I love a few of the kids, and would seriously love to be friends with them and see them often. But the other kids that make my job not so enjoyable are enough to make me not want to go another minute after 3pm on Friday. At the same time, I'm already looking forward to coming back next year, because I did have a really good experience.

On Sunday I leave for Seattle with Zoe. It's nuts...I keep forgetting about it. I should write it on my hand or something...I need to pack! I only have 3 days. The flight out is at 8:20 on the 10th and we return the evening of the 15th. Five days and nights in rainy Seattle. I'm really excited. My mother is having a heart attack.

I got my roommate information today...or well. Her name and phone number. And I know my room number and phone number. Bare minimum stuff...but then she called me later and it was all good. Her name's Katie and she's from Princeton, IL. She seems really nice, good sense of humor (I was making her laugh a lot), interior decorating major, big into theatre in high school, not a big partier. Good stuff. Makes me really excited to get there. Though it's still über scary. Oh well. I'll deal.

Eep, 12:34. I need sleep. Still have work in the morning. And tomorrow night is counselor bonding dinner at Trax. Should be a nice night of camp bashing! ;-)

Love.