I know the real reason I’m writing a new post. It’s the same reason I’ve written most of my entries: there’s something else I should be doing. But I’ll tell myself it’s to get back into the habit of writing. It has been months, after all.  And I’m already proud of myself for being up and wearing real pants before 10 am.  Actually, it’s rather sad how often I gauge my daily success by whether or not I ever put on clothing that is acceptable to wear in public.

The “something else” I should be doing (this time) is packing up my worldly belongings in preparation to move back home.   Yes, I’m throwing in the towel on independence.  But for a good reason, I assure you.  I hate being in debt, even if it is a manageable amount.  I don’t want to work more than I am currently, as it would hinder the large amounts of time I spend in volunteer work.  So my best option is to go home and not pay rent for a while.

I will miss: My awesome roommate, living 3 minutes away from everything, feeling like an adult, being able to walk to 7/11 for a Slurpee or other illicit snacks, access to lovely bike trails, being in the Pizza Hut delivery radius, having the option of riding the bus around town even though I never do, Tegan and my unspoken competition to buy the ugliest tissue boxes we can find, late night junk food runs followed immediately by massive amounts of whichever scifi show we decide on, amazing blanket forts that we leave up for weeks, collaborating on any ridiculous projects that might spring to mind of an evening… really, mostly my awesome roommate.

I will not miss: People stealing my parking spot, being surrounded by noisy apartment buildings, the faint cigarette smell that lingers even though there is a strict no-smoking-on-the-premises policy, the hot water running out after about 10 minutes in the shower, the downstairs neighbor’s baffling tendency to practice the piano late at night, the fear that I will run over the children who play in the parking lot, living in a terrible neighborhood, and well, paying rent.

I look forward to:  Being able to see the stars at night,  having a lawn, Mom’s sweet new washer and dryer, being in a kitchen that has actual food in it, sitting on a sunny back deck, having trees all around, being closer to work, introducing Mom to Doctor Who via frequent marathon viewings, being able to build things in the garage, having space to paint, my parents’ far superior home theater setup, and… not paying rent.

So that’s where I am at the moment.  Writing instead of packing, procrastinating as usual.  Still, I am wearing real pants.  And that’s quite an accomplishment.

Hahaha! I’m posting on my website! I still exist, I swear. But this time, I’m not saying I’m going to post more. Apparently I’m incapable of keeping that up and the empty promises get old. I don’t really have much else to say; I was just posting on a random impulse and goodness knows I’m terrible at resisting those. Ach so. Cheers!

My sister-in-law is officially makin’ babies. Well, one baby. She said I should put this counter on my site and I agree:

Update: Counter is obsolete! The boy is borned! May 12, 2010, 7:51 p.m.
7 pounds even. Photos coming soon.

Wheee! I’m going to teach this kid the most obnoxious things. So excited.

Update 01/07/2010: It’s a boy!

Who’s yours?

Oh, by the way, I have a job now.  Yayyy…  I forgot how I don’t like working.  Heh.  Ah well, income is income.  At least I can work in my jammies (and I most certainly do).

I’ve never been one to stress.  Really.  Public speaking is rated as one of the things people most fear - even above death.  It’s no problem for me.  I’ve been giving public presentations since I was seven (or six?  I forget when I learned to read properly).  I seem to be missing the gene for stress.  Or at least the regular kind of stress – the nail-biting, overeating/undereating, hair-pulling kind. 

You see, for me, stress registers itself in odd ways.  The first thing I seem to do is convert my body to run on Guam time, going to bed at 4 in the morning and getting up at 1 or 2 in the afternoon. (Is that Guam time? Am I using parentheses too much?)  I suppose if I lived in Guam, I would run on Eastern Standard when under stress.  This still wouldn’t be useful – I live on the Pacific coast.  Although I suppose I’d be a few hours ahead of everyone – that might be nice.   But I digress…

The point is, I’ve been out of work for… let’s see… almost two months now.  I’m not sure on the calculations.  I’m not good at math.  I tend to convert things in my head to something like this: “I’ve been out of work for [math amount] of months.”  Literally.  Ask my roommate – she used to hearing “math amount” spoken frequently in the apartment. 

Anyway, the point is that I’m unemployed.  Very much so.  As you might guess, this is stressful – especially (cue dramatic pose/delivery) “in this economy!”  So what do I do?  Stop spending?  Well sort of…  It gives me yet another reason to not go grocery shopping (an activity I detest).  My only problem here is that online spending doesn’t feel like real money and therefore… oh wait, it still is real money.  Crap.  Start job hunting?  Well yeah, I’ve applied at many companies, but I’m sure there are a lot of applicants with more experience.  So I’m at a loss for my next step.

Quick aside – I hate my neighbors.

So I’m job searching.  Which, as you must know, is very difficult in this economy.   What makes it more difficult is that I’m searching for at-home employment with flexible hours.  This is necessary, as my mornings and afternoons are mostly filled with a very important activity, especially starting this September.  If you know me personally, you likely know exactly what I mean.  If you know me only from online interaction, you might not.  Interested? E-mail me and I’ll tell you all about it. 

So this is why I’m blogging tonight (still hate the word “blog”).  Blog when something happens, right?  Update – I’m unemployed!   If you know of an open position for an at-home medical transcriptionist with flexible schedule, let me know!  Also, I realized that I really have no “so busy, you guys” excuse to not blog anything lately.  Seriously, I’ve been up till 2 o’clock in the morning lately playing Age of Empires II – and losing.  I’m not good at strategy war games.

Okay, I’m lying – I have no idea why I’m blogging tonight.  I guess I miss it a little.  Also, I really want to start writing again, so I’m following the old “read a lot, write a lot” creed.  I found some old stories from high school creative writing classes and man, they were good.  Maybe I’ll post them later and see what you think.  Yes? No? You, my invisible readers.

Another thing – I’ve been getting a ton of spam from “BUY [insert medication name here] ON THE INTERNETS! IT’S THE BEST THING EVAR!!!1!” spambots in the comments section.  I’ve decided to coin a term: “Spambien”.  I checked and that’s not a thing.  I made it up myself.  Yay me.  I might put some sort of prove-you’re-human test on the comments, but… then I’d stop getting e-mail.

And now, I’m not going to lie to you.  I’m not going to bed like a responsible citizen.  I’m going to play Age of Empires II.  I’m in the “Conquerors” expansion and I’m playing the Montezuma campaign.  I’m likely to get obliterated.  Again.

Cheers!  And Merry Unemployment, if applicable!

PS:  I missed you, blog.  I really did.  Let’s get back together.  We can make it work, I promise.

PPS:  I love WordPress.  It’s lovely.

I have a few minutes before I run off to my friend Simone’s house, so I thought I would share a couple of videos I uploaded to Vimeo last night.  There are a few more on my Vimeo profile here.

Here’s me being childish and NOT resisting the urge to climb a pile of filthy snow:

Dirty Snow Pile – Must Climb from Katie Durham on Vimeo.

And here is Marc as we’re putting his luggage in my car at the airport:

Hi, I’m Marc. from Katie Durham on Vimeo.

So that’s all for me for the moment.  Oh wait! I found this cool site through and ad on Flickr where you can self-publish professional quality books.  Nothing new, really, but I still got excited about it.  Maybe I should finally write something!

Caio, internets!

I was planning to wait until I had everything all in place before I redirected all katiedurham.com traffic to this WordPress page, but I finally decided “meh.” (It’s a real word now, see?)  I’ve pretty much abandoned doing anything to the old site, so why bother sending traffic to it?

Therefore: welcome to the shiny brand new katiedurham.com!  It is made with WordPress, which I am quickly falling in love with!  I just ended a sentence with a preposition!  Meh!  It is far from complete; I still haven’t written an “About” section or put anything into “Projects,” but “Gallery” is full of fun stuff!  I uploaded everything to Flickr and let WordPress and this great Joe Tan plugin do the rest.  Thank you to all programmers who give their awesome free plugins to all of us mere mortals.  The FriendFeed plugin over there on the sidebar is a plugin by Evan Sims.  I love plugins!

Also awesome:  Moments ago, my browser freaked out and closed everything, but WordPress has autosave and I lost nothing of this post!  I love this.  I really do.

Anyway, welcome to the new site.  You can still find the old site by clicking the link in the sidebar down there on the right.  I’ll leave it up for old time’s sake and all that, but all new content will be here.  I’m sure I’ll be adding more in the other sections as time goes on.  But for the time being, take ‘er for a spin, and let me know what you think!  You can e-mail me or leave a comment below.  Enjoy!