Earlier this week (or last week, I can't remember which), I got a letter containing my grade for the Roadway Programs Technician job I applied for a few weeks back - I got an 80! I guess I got lucky, then =P

Also, early Monday or Tuesday (I can't remember which), I overheard my parents arguing really loud about something; it was at about 6:00 AM, and unless I've got a job (which I will have, starting Monday) or have to be somewhere early, I'm still asleep at that time. I tried falling back asleep, but they continued to argue...I eventually came downstairs, and it turns out they were going to have to wake me up anyway - it turns out my Mom had tried signing up at PA CareerLink to look for a job (she had to quit her job so she could take care of me after I was born, but now she wants to get a job again), but kept forgetting what username/password combination she created to log in (she didn't take into account whether or not the letters were uppercase or lowercase). I tried all of the combinations they wrote down, and nothing worked...But to make sure it wasn't a site problem, I went ahead and created one for her (and wrote it down, so she wouldn't forget it), and I had no problems when logging in with it. After that, Mom and I worked on getting her information set up there.

I got a haircut from my aunt on Tuesday so I'd be ready for the job interview on Wednesday...And on Wednesday, I felt sick - I thought it may have been how I slept (if I have my legs bent when sleeping, I have a tendency to wake up with what feels like a nasty cramp near my stomach the morning after), so I went ahead and got ready anyway. Fortunately, aside from having a bit of trouble concentrating on completing the interview, I managed to make it through the interview at Klingensmith's just fine. When I got home, though, I felt a lot sicker than I did earlier in the day, and went upstairs...and after flushing the toilet, I bent right over it and threw up a few times - according to my Mom, I haven't been that sick in about a decade (although I felt a little better after doing so - I haven't thrown up again since then). We then found out a bit later that my aunt was sick as well (she didn't look sick then), and it turns out she got it from her younger son (and quite a few people in the family have been sick since then). About all I could do for the rest of the day was lay down and watch TV, as I felt too sick to be moving about in the house. I was sick for most of Thursday, too, though I felt a little better then.

On Friday, I (possibly) had sprained my right ankle in shower, and I don't know how it happened - I was hopping around a lot on my left foot for part of the afternoon, as it hurt to walk on my right foot - it feels a lot better now than it did then, though. I also had to work on a CD for Mom's teenage church class - I was downstairs on the computer, and my parents were upstairs. When I kept asking what I needed to change, I could barely hear their replies (sometimes not at all). I managed to get things settled here and got the CDs ready (doing the case inserts later), but later on in the day, Dad said that, awhile back, I mentioned I had sensitive hearing, and then he asked if I'm losing my hearing, given all the times they had to yell for me to hear them - hopefully not, but if I have started to lose my hearing, I'm sure their yelling would be the most likely cause of it. It's weird how sound travels in this house: If they need me for something, or if I ask for something, and we're on opposite floors, I can't hear them...But if they're arguing, I can clearly hear it, regardless of where I am in the house.

I just hope I'll have recovered from whatever has made me sick before the weekend's over - I don't want to still be sick when I start working at the courthouse again...

On Wednesday, I went to help fix the Pastor's computer, as it had been acting slow for him. After checking for spyware (and removing what I found), I booted it into Safe Mode for defragmenting...And while that was going on, he asked me something about what he saw on my site - he found out about it from his eldest daughter when she was searching for info about the church, and ended up finding my Confessions/Revelations entry. Though I trusted what he said about that, I checked it at home myself, just out of curiosity: As of the time this was posted, that page is the first result for for Limestone Reesedale Church of God - it's also first for Limestone Reesedale, and #13 for just Reesedale!

As for asking me about what he saw in that entry, I felt very uncomfortable talking about it - They (the Pastor and his daughter) are the first people I know offline that know about the site. The Pastor and I talked privately about some of the things I had mentioned there - he helped clear up quite a few things that I wasn't sure about, especially when I kept bringing up what should be done in hypothetical situations depending on the condition(s) of those situations. Given how uncomfortable I felt about talking about these things (as I'm not used to revealing things like this), he was very kind to me while I talked about it, and that's something that I really respect when talking to someone. All in all, we had a rather interesting discussion on all of these things. If (or when) issues like this come up that I'm confused about, the first person I'll be talking about them to will most likely be him.

I was also supposed to fix one of Mom's friends PCs, but it took practically all of the time I had left while I was at the church to defragment his computer (it was finished before I had to leave, though), and I had to put that off for a day. That evening, I had to help Dad clean out the chimney - we had a small fire yesterday (in part of a pipe connecting the furnace and the chimney), but no damage was done to it. This went horribly - I had a lot of trouble moving the chimney brush up and down (most of the time it didn't even budge - it's segmented, and it got stuck a lot when I used it), and I asked Dad for help - he had no trouble pulling it out. I had problems doing this while wearing gloves (which kept slipping on the handle) and without gloves (my hands were sore from rubbing against the handle so much).

He yelled at for not being strong enough to do this...And though I do agree that I should get some exercise (in addition to already having to constantly run around in this house, usually to get a ringing phone; I haven't had any real exercise since 12^th grade gym in high school), it may be difficult to bring myself to: One, If I choose to exercise, I won't do it in public (not since the time in 6^th grade where I couldn't do a single push-up, and was ridiculed by the class for it), and two, even if I were fit enough to do a job like that, if he's going to display that kind of attitude when trying to get me to do these things (especially whistling and making noises while I'm working), then he can just do the job himself. Chastising others if they're doing something wrong may be the way he learned about this, and that might work with some of the people he works with, but I can say that it definitely doesn't work with me.

I admit, I have been rather critical of some people's work, but it's because I'm very nitpicky about things, and I want to cover anything and everything I find...And along the line, I forget to pay attention to how I sound when I do that, by accident. I honestly try to go about it in a courteous way, but I've slipped up at times and just sounded rude as a result - I apologize if something like this has occurred, and I'll do my best to make sure that doesn't happen again in the future.

I like my Dad, but I hate the attitude he displays when he wants me to do things for him - I'd be much more willing to help him out if he'd just stop yelling at me when I don't come up immediately to do something (I keep in mind that if he's busy with a game of Solitaire/FreeCell, he doesn't quit it immediately if Mom asks him to do something, unless it's an emergency or if it coincides with a completed game), and stop complaining about how I do certain things, especially the same things over and over again - If you have that much of a problem with how I'm working on something, you can just do it yourself.

Yesterday, I went over to work on a friend of Mom's computer - she was trying to figure out why some links didn't open up properly in Firefox, why some bookmarks weren't in the right folders, why she had trouble copying a recipe into Microsoft Word, and why graphics weren't appearing on one particular page. I helped to fix all of those problems: When she used IE in the past, she opened up multiple windows when working with certain pages, and she didn't do that with Firefox until I showed her that; I helped move around some of the bookmarks to their proper places, as well as hiding folders containing bookmarks that don't directly lead anywhere, like Quick Searches and Sage Feeds; I showed her the "Print Preview" function in Firefox so she wouldn't even have to copy the recipe she found to Word at all, and; she had erroneously blocked that one site's images beforehand - I showed her how and where it was marked as blocked, unblocked the entry for that site, and reloaded the page, which now could show the previously-blocked images.

After that, she said I could watch TV for a bit while she got ready to leave and take me back home along the way. When she took me back home, not a minute passed by before I noticed a girl standing around, who looked familiar. I didn't get that good of a look at her (just part of her face, and especially her hairstyle - that's all I managed to notice), but if I'm not mistaken, it just might have been Jessica. I had a feeling she probably still lived around here, as she went to the same high school as I did (if it's where I think it is, she lives very close to the school), and the place where she was standing was not too far from one particular drive - one which I've been on every so often when going through Kittanning, which I had recalled seeing in the phone book a few years ago under the last name Karaffa (there was only one Karaffa in that book [the most recent book has none], and though the first name's different, I'm willing to bet that this Karaffa is a close relative of hers). If that was her...Well, at least I know she still lives around here, so that's one thing taken care of, in terms of having a chance to speak to her again (which would be the first time since 10^th grade in high school) ;P

When I got home, after my parents and Mom's friend talked together for awhile, I had to help clean parts of the house that were dusty - and why were they dusty? It seems that Dad, in the basement, used a vaccum cleaner to try and clean out the soot (and other stuff) from that part of the furnace pipe in the basement that caught fire a few days ago, and he ended up getting dust throughout the house (well, the lower end of the house) as a result; Mom was furious. When I finished, I messed around on the computer for awhile, and later got a call from a lady at Klingensmith's Drug Store for an interview next Wednesday. I hope the interview goes well, but even if it does, and I get hired for a job, I'm going to have to see when that job would start, as I've recently been hired for another job - earlier in the day, Mom had told me that I got called back for work at the courthouse (as I was told I did a terrific job when I worked there during the Presidential Election), and I'll be working there from March 28 until the day of the primary election.

The carpet's been laid out, and pretty much everything has been moved back down to the downstairs living room and kitchen...It's almost done down here =)

Yesterday, I went to the Clearview Mall with Mom after church so she could take care of getting a necklace for a weightlifter charm she bought (as well as get me something for lunch...and, when she bought anything, having me carry her bags =P). When we got in, we both noticed something:

Napoli's Pizzeria (where we always stopped for lunch when at the mall, and has been around for as long as I can remember) was closed - Not temporarily, but [probably] for good...The sign in that section of the building space stated it was being leased. And they were doing great business, too...Employees working in other parts of the store said that the owner of the shop had considered retiring, and (if I heard correctly) didn't want to continue working in that business anymore. There goes a great pizza shop =(

(I find this almost as sad as when Aladdin's Castle [an arcade, and my favorite place in the mall when I was younger] closed down - Unlike with Napoli's, it wasn't sudden...But once they took out the classic games [and all of the pinball machines] and put in games that were for much younger kids, I didn't want to come anymore, and had a feeling they were going to close down in time...And I was right - They've been closed for quite some time now, though no lease sign has been put up, unless I missed it.)
Also, if anyone has the TV Guide channel, you may have seen the commercials for something called "So You Wanna Fight"...And I personally find this commercial annoying, for three reasons:

1. Poor use of grammar: Some of it is slang (which, in and of itself, I don't have a problem with), but when your opening line is "'cuz ya think yer tuff" [sic], and you spell certain terms the wrong way (since when was there a space in "red neck"?), some* people might have a problem with it.
   (* - That would be people like me, who have nothing better to do than pick apart the spelling and grammar in commercials and closed captioning for television programs [my hearing's just fine, but I still like to have it enabled]...But what would you expect from a person who's done quite a bit of proofreading for others in the past? =P)
2. Inconsistent use of ellipses: When you separate a list of things using ellipses, please try and use the same number between them...I counted, and the number of periods per ellipsis between the names went in the format of 4-5-6-4-5-4. Can't a consistent number of periods be used here?
3. Repetition: This is the most annoying part of this commercial. Sometimes commercials may be played twice, but it's by accident...This one, however, is played four times in a row...Every single time! That has to be on purpose...Isn't once enough?

Earlier today, my parents drove me down to Pittsburgh so I could take a Civil Service test today (for a Roadway Programs Technician position)...And, unlike the previous tests I took there for other jobs, this one was impossibly hard - I had a lot of trouble with at least half of them, and had absolutely no idea what about a third of them were even talking about. I even forgot how to do some of the arithmetic-/algebra-related questions, and given that math was one of my best subjects in school, that's a bad sign. I'm sure I failed the test as a result of this.

The computer-related questions at the end, though, were the exact opposite of the previous questions, and took practically no effort at all for me to figure out. In the (unlikely) event that I do pass the test and am eligible for that position, it'll be because of those questions, and a lot of lucky guesses on the questions I didn't know (all of the tests so far have been just multiple-choice questions).

On the way home, Dad mentioned I should get my license (I got my Learner's Permit awhile back, but never took the driving test, let it run out, and haven't retaken the tests since then), even though I probably won't be driving...Mainly because of the fact that it may seem that (to a prospective employer) I wouldn't come to work often since I don't have my license...And even though I wouldn't be driving (much), getting my license would greatly increase my chances of securing a job.

We ordered a pizza on the way home, and after we got home, changed our clothes, and got something to eat, Dad went out in his truck to get some wood for our furnace. I had to help with unloading it in the garage from the back of the truck (again, even though I didn't want to), but unlike the last batch of wood he got, this was redwood...And it smelled like vomit. I just wanted to get it over with - That smell was awful...And hours later, that smell is still here - In the middle of the hallway! I can't wait till that smell is gone...

That's pretty much how the past two days have went - Hopefully the rest of the week will go better than the past two days have...