I was actually rather productive today, despite my alarm deciding not to go off on time. I started my grad school applications, which is a daunting task, particularly since I have no idea who I'm going to ask for recommendations. My boss I guess? I just don't have any particular comraderie with any of my professors. =/ By which I mean, I actively dislike a significant portion of my department, and the others I am apathetic towards. Anyway.

I also paid some bills, started the FE Exam application process, and tried to fix OneNote (still no luck--Windows' "help forms" are practically worthless considering in four days I've had one response that actually provided me with zero answers, only more confusion). Tomorrow I'm going to work on stuff for my portfolio, which is also intimidating since I'm not actually an art major, and I therefore don't have much to pull from. (Man, what if you were just an engineer with no arts background? What at all would you put in a portfolio?)

Dad and Laura went out to get a Christmas tree, which I didn't help put up at all, though I'm not terribly upset about that. At the moment I'm feeling more "busy" than "Christmasy", although turning on Christmas music won't get me riled up now about how it isn't even Thanksgiving.

I kind of do want to go out shopping, though. Every few weeks I feel the need for crass commercialization. I think it's kind of a "getting out of the house" thing combined with a "need to buy groceries" and "looking for visual stimulation/inspiration" type thing. The curse of being artistically inclined, sometimes, I swear.

Anyway, prompt time, before I go do something entertaining this evening.

My probably number one example for "any place I would like to visit one day" is the Angkor Wat in Cambodia. However, also on my list are visit Australia and all the National Parks, although "go everywhere" is pretty much the rest of my list, to be honest.

I'm thinking for next year, in order to keep up the "daily posting" but with something more substantial than a prompt, I might start doing Hardy Boys read-alongs. I haven't nearly read as many detective/spy/mystery novels since college/discovering the internet in high school/etc., and I kind of miss the genre as a whole. Plus, Hardy Boys books are really easy to page through. I think I can conquer one in about three hours total. Plus, it's been ages since I read the whole collection anyway, it'd be good to recall some of the plots.

Sometimes, I get some really bizarre thoughts. You know, the kind that would turn your life into a really good fiction? Basically, plot bunnies, but they're usually just something based on my life, so they don't really work well with the "plot" part. More like "Diane is crazy" bunnies. Possibly they are Plot Jackalopes.

Long story short: A lot of personal realizations this week that I haven't got down on paper on LJ yet. (Because I'm lazy, lol.) But I was thinking about all the things that change, and this year, how weird it's been just this summer to 1) realize some of my best friends might be engaged, 2) realize some of my best friends probably will be engaged soon, and that I really need to get over some personal issues there that have nothing to do with them as a couple, and 3) that mom and dad want to move. A lot. Meaning, they are both pretty damn ready to get the hell out of Dodge. But anyway, I was thinking about those things, how your life changes, and how it affects your friends, and where am I going to end up living (what if I get a job with Disney? JPI? COST? None of those are in Ohio as far as I know) eventually, and where will Laura be, and Max, and Kyle? And my friends? And then I started thinking about grade school friends who I haven't seen in a really fucking long time. Like, I haven't seen Zack since graduation, I'm sure, becuse he didn't come to Jacob's funeral, I don't think. Which it then kind of hit me again, wow, someone my age, someone I grew up with, is dead. And, guilty as this may be, I don't remember much about him. I remember him making me laugh in first grade and I snorted chocolate milk out my nose and onto his shirt. (I didn't drink chocolate milk for a long time after that, but I always said I didn't like it. I think it comes in phases, because I liked it for a little while at Carroll but I'm not so big on it again.) And getting in trouble for laughing in like fourth AND fifth and probably all the other grades. Oh, and him spelling "sex" instead of "six" in second grade, and everyone laughed, and I honestly don't know how many of us knew what we were really laughing at. But other than him just being kind of a dumb goofball... I don't remember much. =/ He wasn't one of the guys that I hung out with, and even so, the stuff I remember from gradeschool is really random and generally... scholastic.

BUT ANYWAY, so that was all thoughts I had while mowing today, and then the bike ride comes around, and I do a lot of good thinking on bike rides. And this isn't a thought, really, it's a plot jackalope, which I like to encourage because they're pretty rare, but I just realized, what if he's really not dead? What if he's some super spy and it's all an FBI coverup? Cruel but cool.

Yeah, see? That's the way my brain works. I know I'm crazy.

also, I totally blame it all on the Hardy Boys novels, and I've been jiving to be read them all again.