A lot of things have been happening to me and around me since I came back from Matt's. Yesterday was my Dad's 59th birthday and a lot of our family came by to spend the day here. They came around in the mid-afternoon, we sat and talked for a while, we had a large dinner, we sat and talked for a while more, we went out to the road to watch the fireworks (excellent view up here), and then eventually they all left. Nothing special, but it was still really nice. I love my entire family a lot, although there was still an hour-long period where I had to sneak off to my room for a little quiet time. It doesn't matter what crowd I'm in; after a few hours I inevitably start getting sleepy and/or withdrawn and/or cabin feverish and have to get away for a bit to recharge. Luckily my family seems to understand this.

I have decided that I need to spend less time on the computer and as such I'm getting rid of AOL, my largest time-wasting culprit. I'll be completely off of it by the 17th (the end of the billing cycle), and in its place I'm already on a paid account with NetZero, a simple $9.95/mo ISP that I like a lot, except for the fact it fixes a thin navibar at the top of your screen while you're connected. As for my new email address, it's aaronica@netzero.com (although aaron@lerve.com still works too). I plan to tell this to all my friends personally but might as well put it here just in case. And I'm still definitely going to keep my SNs on AIM.

Now that I'm not on the computer as much I've started reading more. Right now I'm reading Six Walks in the Fictional Woods by Umberto Eco, a book Matt leant me of six very technical essays concerning the nature of good fiction and story-telling. I'm not sure how much I'll gain from it but I'm glad to be reading it anyway. I'm almost done with it and next up is Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, which Chip recommended to me and I've heard a lot of good things about. Right now I'm also spending a lot of time thinking about my own storylines and settings and characters and ideas which I want to develop into actual stories, and I hope to start writing them soon.

I and other people have also noticed other, subtler changes in me recently-- in particular that I'm less whiny, more thoughtful and more adventurous. And I couldn't be happier about it. I feel like I'm slowly becoming the person I need and want and have to be.