My scanner, printer and zip drive mysteriously stopped working on Monday. Which is odd, because everything was peachy keen on Friday night when I finally stopped putting off scanning all 130 pictures for the Centralia Project website. I spent most of Monday and today complaining and fretting, checking and rechecking the cables, downloading Norton Utilities to see if it could diagnose the problem, blah blah blah. The usual Bethany panic routine. Then, last night, I noticed the plug on the side of my zip drive was loose. Pushed it in. Immediately, everything comes to life. All systems normal. As it turns out, I have everything daisy chained with the parallel ports, so that one little plug being loose cut power to everything.

The ONE plug I didn't check. Figures. I spent the next 20 minutes berating myself for being such an ass.

Speaking of The Centralia Project, things are coming along well, but slowly. I'm really excited about it. I have everything pretty much written, it's just a matter of designing graphics and fitting it into the html. John (proprietor of U-town and provider of my web space) is helping me to do frames for this site. Yet another skill to add to my html arsenal. We have plans to teach me Style Sheets over the summer, as well. At any rate, look for The Centralia Project within the next few weeks. I promise.

I've been really insanely busy lately, not just with school, but with writing as well. I seem to have hit something here with writing, and I think this journal is responsible for that. I'm writing more now than I ever have in my life, and I'd forgotten just how much I enjoy it. In addition to (almost) daily updates to this journal, I've been working on the Centralia thing, plus (god forbid) I've started writing fiction again. I haven't written fiction for at least 2 or 3 years, and even then it was tainted with memories of how morbidly bad the results were. But I think I am getting better at it. Hopefully some of my fiction writing will be up on this site someday.

I've already gotten the redesign bug with this site, but I'm trying to save it for this summer when I can redo this site with Style Sheets. I was thinking about naming each section after a Joni Mitchell song. Is that cheesy, or is it only evidence of my respect/awe/obsession with her? But think about it, Joni songs have the coolest titles... "Shades of Scarlett Conquering", "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow", "The Hissing of Summer Lawns", "Shadows and Light", "The Tenth World", "The Silky Veils of Ardor" (that could be the soft porn section, I think*). Is this a good idea, readers? Tell Me, I beg.

I've been contemplating what a shithole this dorm is. I had a notion of titling this entry "I Live in a Shit Hole", but that seemed too negative. Now, by nature, college dorms are not on par with a Four Seasons hotel, nevermind a Hilton. But the Beech Hall dorms really take the cake. I think the main reason they're not putting any effort into the dorms repair wise is because Tyler is going to be moved to the main campus of Temple at some point in the near future. I guess they figure, hey, they're going to be moving out of here soon, why bother to work on anything?

The smell in the halls is usually pretty bad. I don't know where it's coming from, and I don't want to know. The smell is particularly bad on the first floor, the all guys' floor. I have to walk down there to do my laundry, and as a general rule I always breathe through my mouth.

Now that it's warmer, there are ants everywhere. The big black ones. And let's not forget the mice down in the cafeteria! I saw one skittering across a table late one night. Lovely. And then there's the perpetually stoned Travis, one of the cafeteria workers, who actually rolled a joint in front of Sarabeth one night as she was getting food.

Less than a month. I can survive, I suppose.

*I'm kidding. Don't get any ideas.