Beckism.com

Whew! After a little over three weeks, I’m at last back in the United States of good ol’ America. To recap (for anyone not aware), my dad had a sabbatical in France (because he is a hard-core Francophile, it seems), and as a graduation gift he brought me over here. Just for kicks, he brought my sisters, too. When we scheduled the trip, I wanted to go home after two weeks, but he pressured me into a month because he didn’t think two weeks would be long enough.

After having me grump around the house for the last two weeks, I suspect he’s regretted this.

In any case, I was in France from the end of May until the end of June, and am at last home. And about time, too. Before coming to France, I was pretty sure that I’m not a tourist. Now I’m certain of it. I really, really dislike wandering around other people’s countries consuming their culture. Especially when I’m surrounded by a language that should never have been written down.

Of course, that isn’t to say that I didn’t had fun. There are some good things about France (the baked goods and their approach to fruit—i.e., lots of it and without loads of sugar—are particularly praiseworthy. Seeing places like Fontaine Bleue was cool, and hot white chocolate at Angelina (near the Louvre) is good enough to die or kill for. But a month was still too long.

Since having me bitch constantly isn’t all that fun, here’s some other good stuff that has happened on the trip:

Going to Scotland (and very briefly, London). Scotland is a really, really cool place. Granted, everyone’s driving on the wrong side of the road, but they’ve got some very fun little castles (the best are the ones that are run-down, where they just let you explore the place on your own and don’t restrict you to the fancy, lord-and-ladies areas). We also got to see my cousin Laurie, who is one of my coolest cousins.

In London we got to see Avenue Q, which is amazing on stage. Just from hearing bits of the soundtrack thanks to Ajay I hadn’t thought I would like it much, but I was dead wrong. What a hilarious show.

Seeing Dad was really nice, too, since I haven’t heard from him much recently. Granted, a month in close quarters was a bit much, but so it goes. Family is there to drive you nuts.

I also enjoyed a number of things in France, but overall it’s just not my country of choice.

In any case, now I’m home and trying to make a living doing freelance web work. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get clients regularly enough to keep myself afloat, but we’ll see. If not, I’m planning on applying to some agencies like the one I worked at in Walla Walla. They always need workers, and I’m sure I could get a good reference.

I’d never really thought it would happen, but I also got a cell phone to help out with the whole being a business thing. It’s very strange having to think about carrying it around with me. I’m having a minor dilemma trying to figure out how to put both it and my keys into pockets (since I can’t very well put them into the same pocket or I’ll scratch up the phone). Life is a trial.

I’m also trying to do some writing, although I haven’t really dived into that yet. I’ve done some writing for the book I always meant to write first, but nothing substantial yet. I’m thinking of re-implementing the daily word requirement for myself. Without a deadline, I think I can set it low enough to be low-stress, and it certainly helped me get my thesis written.

And that, I think, is enough of a monstrous update for now.

Well, I had an unexpectedly good day today. I had thought I was going to have to work on websites all day, but instead I got an email from Valerie, who was pining away from boredom at home, and after a couple emails and a phone call she and Vanessa both came to Mom’s house and we went to see Nacho Libre with Jack Black. It was pretty hilarious. Then again, I have a soft spot in my heart for utter losers. What was extra special good was that before that all happened Mom and I went to Borders and I got a couple of books. So today was a day of buying books and seeing Valerie, which is a five-star day in my opinion.

I also did a bit of IMG work, updated the Whitman OP Scrambles page, and mostly got done what was most pressingly needing to be done.

And here I thought today was going to be a fiasco after my terrible showering experience (got in, found out there was no soap; rinsed off, found I’d forgotten to put the shampoo in the shower; rinsed off the hair, got out, dried off, discovered I didn’t have any clothes…grah!). What a pleasant surprise.

Tomorrow I’m off to Seattle with Kristin to participate in whatever crazy Father’s Day shenanigans Dad has dreamt up. A couple of years ago, he decided that the only thing he wanted on Father’s Day was for his children to do something with him without complaining too much, and generally putting a happy face on things.

As long as we don’t end up paddling madly across the Seattle shipping lanes again, I think that it will probably be fun.

Man, I am not at all happy with my domain name registrar for Beckism.net. My websites have all been down for the last few days (or longer, my memory is fuzzy) thanks to the fact that the damn host didn’t give me any way to update my custom DNS entry (for those of you who might understand that). Since Beckism.net is the host for all of my other websites it meant they were all down. Granted, Beckism.com is the only one that I’ve set up properly since the last outage, but still. It’s the principle of the thing.

Since I wasn’t able to post this before (stupid freaking website outages!) I am currently on the West side of the state, at the moment of this entry sitting in my mom’s house. Thanks to the terribly spotty wireless internet (and the fact that I got wrapped up in a book) I’ve not been doing much computer work the past few days; a fact that is very, very bad, since I’m woefully behind on a couple things. Looks like I’ll be spending tomorrow working on website stuff.

On the positive side, my orientation for my new job got pushed back a couple days, so I don’t have to leave as quickly as I thought I did. Mainly this will be nice for Dad, since he was hoping to do something with all of his kids Father’s Day and was sad I was going to be out of town driving across the state.

The reason that I’m over here is all thanks to Valerie, wonderful person that she is, who let me hitch a ride with her and her mom back across the state and is graciously taking me back to Walla Walla when the time comes. Hopefully she will stick around (she has something to do in Walla Walla the next weekend), although I am granted not all that exciting a host. I mostly sit and stare at things all day (be those things books, computers, walls, or whatever else I can find).

I haven’t done much the last few days. I’d been hanging around in Seattle with Dad, and he’s one of those people who needs to be doing something (Mom is much more of the welcome-home-I’m-fine-if-you-sit-on-the-couch-all-day types, although she would probably be happier if I did something with her, too; might have to try and convince her to go to Borders with me, she mentioned she had a gift card). In Seattle I did various fun things like eat fry bread (I don’t know if it was being born in a place with fry bread in the air, or what, but I live for fry bread, and you just can’t get it most places in the Pacific Northwest), watch X-Men 3 (Valerie came and saw it, too!), watch Thank You For Smoking (hilarious, but I’m still not sure what the message was, and if I approve of how light it made of serious issues or not), go to Half-Price Books (where I bought an absolutely fantastic book on a whim–can’t argue with a $6 hardback), and so forth.

So far at Mom’s I’ve set up my eMac for Kristin–which she was very happy about since while it is slow like molasses it’s still faster than the laptop she was using–sneezed a lot (I think I may be allergic to the rabbit in a big way), and read Wizard’s First Rule again. I might need to obtain a copy of the second book in the series and reread it, too. I’d forgotten how good they are. Maybe I’ll try to reach the later books again. I’ve given it a shot once or twice, and given up both times around book four. However, if I remember correctly the first time I gave up it was because I got disgusted with the explicit sex and violence (of which there is sometimes quite a lot; it’s hard for me to get through some portions even in the first book) and while my tolerance for violence is possibly lower than it has been in the past, I’m less put off by sex. I was such an uptight little kid. I probably owe most of my integrity to the damned Disciples of Christ church, but the repressive sexual legacy the church left me royally pisses me off in retrospect. Can’t recall why I stopped the second time through. It might just be that the series gets old by then (the books are huge, 600+ pages). Perchance I will have to try and see.

Then again, I should probably just forget it and work on my way-backed-up web work. Bah. Responsibility is annoying.

Speaking of responsibility, my dad asked me what my plans were after college, and was pretty disapproving when he found out I don’t have any. While I like to think of it as “keeping my options open” he seemed to think it was more like “denial.” Just watch; I’ll graduate, have some percussion gig drop into my lap, and that’ll show him.

And worst case scenario, I can always move in with Mom and start actually writing for a change. That would be nice, too. I just wish that I could find a way to make money with the writing that I do online without selling my soul in advertising to do it. I love Beckism.com and Idol Bat and all, but they just aren’t money-makers.

On the other hand, it is possible that I will be getting a very sizable check from CafePress soon. I’m not holding too much hope for it, because it seems a little too good to be true, but somehow I got over $120 in affiliate earnings. The reason I’m thinking there has to be some sort of mistake and fate is playing a cruel joke on me is because it’s the result of one phenomenally big order (over $600!), the order was placed on my birthday, of all days, and as far as I know I don’t have any affiliate ads out that people would click through, anyway. Plus even if I did, I’m pretty sure that my website was down during that time. I can’t figure it out.

Of course, if CafePress sends me a check that large, I won’t turn it down. It would mean that, against all of my expectations, the shop had paid for itself for the first time since ever. And during the year that I received free. How rich is that?

I just realized that this post is ludicrously long. Many apologies to anyone on LJ whose friend page got cluttered up by it. I would put things behind a cut, but thanks to the cross-posting nature of this thing, I don’t know if I can. So many apologies. Hopefully in future my damned website won’t be down and I will be able to post smaller incremental posts.

Because I do that normally. Right. Oh well; it’s a nice thought.

Ian out.