Well then.

Ah... what is it about having the time to get things done that takes away the desire to get things done? Break is upon us, and the sloth in me reigns supreme. Having recently learned that listing things that need to be done is bad blogger ettiquite, I will refrain, but there are things I should be doing that I am not. I'm good at finding more important things to do than what I should do. Blogging, for instance, and You Tube, which may be my current biggest time-waster. And I find myself getting back into Neopets... Stupid of me. Funny how things change. Neopets was what got me interested in the internet in the first place.

This was oh... 1999, I believe. I had a friend back then that I am no longer in contact with, and she was the one who discovered Neopets, and pushed me into it. Those were the old days, with K-mart's Blue Light internet, which allowed us a whopping 12 hours per month. I treasured my 15-minute sessions dearly, and the times I was allowed a whole-half hour of feeding, buying and selling in a virtual world about drove me wild with happiness. Not quite. But still.

Internet is like meth- one whiff and you're hooked, and the longer you're on it the more you need. It took a while- Blue Light was cheap, and so is my dad- but eventually the bad service, limited hours, and the fact that K-mart was switching to Dad's arch-nemesis AOL, we jumped ship and signed on with AT&T for 150 hours a month. This was still in the age of dialup, and those of you who weren't born this millenium will remember the siren song of the connecting modem, the slow loads, and-most hated of all- getting bumped off due to a phone call. Oh, and did I mention slow loads? Everything seemed to take ages- Neopets games took a good minute or two, downloading was not for the faint of heart, and video was out of the question. In spite of it all, I grew in knowledge- HTML became a good friend, I learned how to ferret out the information I wanted, and life was good.

Of course, human nature doesn't let us remain contented for long. DSL came along, and we were slowly exposed to it's wonders. Again, it took awhile, but when unlimited DSL was offered for 15 bucks a month, compared to 10 bucks for 150 hours of dialup, Dad cracked. The first few months we were in awe, poleaxed by the blazing load speeds, the dizzying video abilities, and being able to talk on the phone while checking our e-mail. Not all the changes were for the best- the strange CSS took the place of my familiar HTML, rendering me nearly helpless where website personalization was involved. Neopets froze my 7-year old account, shutting me off from my fake pets, my very real high scores and honors, and my huge stock of NP. And all my secret avatars. It was a crushing blow. But I had You Tube to soothe me, with all it's obscure TV show episodes, it's anime comedy dubs, it's obscure music videos, and I discovered blogging, to my great happiness and everyone else's complete lack of interest. And now, here I am, more or less settled in to the wonders of DSL. I am no longer startled by blazing load speeds. In fact, I occasionally finding myself irritated with our "slow" computer, having already forgotten that the "slow" computer could still whip the pants off our dialup plan, and could pretty much hold it's own with the old HP. But that's humans for ya, never satisfied. A good thing is never enough, we're always reaching out for the next thing, never being happy with what we have. And then you read the winter issue of the Come Over and Help Us magazine about people who don't have enough money to pay for heat, clothes or medicine, who are so happy and overwhelmed at recieving winter boots, oranges, or a Bible. Can you imagine what they would think even of the old Blue Light internet? Are we happier for having it? Is happiness possible without God?
See what college has done to me? It's made me cling to my past, think seriously about the present, and plan for the future. Bah. I'm getting so sick of all this social awareness. And look at me carry on. All I orginally intended to say was that I survived my first semester of college with a 4.0, and that I Aced my Writing class.