Well, I'm just sitting in bed on an overcast Wednesday, still in the clothes I wore yesterday and not even caring.  I'm taking a comfortable, lazy day today and I just feel really good right now.  Yesterday was a mixed bag of enjoyable and distressed.  The day started off with me and Mom getting up early to take the Sounder train yet again to Seattle!  We drove down to the Kent train station and got on the 8:32 train.  This time we sat down on the bottom section instead of up top, which I think eased my nerves a bit since last time?  Last time I was unusually nervous even though I thought taking a train would be relaxing and enjoyable.  I don't know, I think I just have this anxiety with machines, worrying that something will go wrong, and the first time we took the train I kept getting nervous that the train would go off the tracks and crash or something.  It didn't help that we were on the top floor, so at that time I figured we'd be in more danger if we ever got into a crash, us being farther up from the ground and all.  While this second train ride was still bumpy, I felt a bit better being at the bottom and, er, closer to the ground.  Haha.



Once we got to Seattle, we actually started off by walking to the place where Mom would have her interview at this mail/delivery office job she applied for.  As we walked, she started thinking of how nice it would be if she got this job and could take this walk down the city streets every day to work.  Yeah, she's really thinking of taking the train to work every day!  As long as her work paid for it, of course.  Otherwise, it would be REALLY expensive to take the train to work and back everyday.

We finally reached the address of her possible future workplace and Mom couldn't believe the insanely tall building that was there.  We just looked up at it in awe, counting all the floors and comparing it to the other tall buildings around it (it was nearly one of the tallest buildings!).  She just couldn't believe it!  She kept smiling and laughing and going, "Oh my god, this is insane!"  Her interview's going to be on the 22nd floor (which isn't even the last floor!) and she kept saying, "If I get this job, I'm going to be so nervous being up that high!"  It really was unbelievable though, looking up at this endless, fancy skyscraper and imagining if Mom got this job.  Walking through the city every day to THIS, maybe going out for her lunch break to the Starbucks across the street.  Mom was so excited, she said, "It's going to be cool just to be able to walk IN there!"  Haha, that's my mother for you.  She doesn't get her hopes up too much and she always finds the positive in everything.  And it is great that someone from this eminent business found something special in her and wanted to offered her an interview.  That in itself is something to be proud of her for.  Oh, I really hope she gets the job, though!  This sounds like it would be the perfect job for her: on-your-feet mailing and delivery type of work, which is the kind of work she prefers; right in the heart of Seattle; getting to know other people she'd do business with, which is another thing she absolutely loved about delivering at her last job.  She really, really, really deserves this job.  Her interview is today at 1:30 and she left a little over a half hour ago, so I hope everything goes well.   Mom, if you can somehow telepathically hear me, GOOD LUCK!  Anyone reading this, please also send good thoughts her way.  Thank you :)

After we walked to the building, we walked back to our now-beloved coffee shop, Zeitgeist for a breakfast snack like we did last time, sitting at almost the exact same seats by the window.  I ordered the same thing as last time, too: the most amazing hot chocolate I have ever sipped in my life that tastes like liquid Tiramisu, along with a filling breakfast sandwich.  Besides walking to to Mom's interview place, the other thing that was different about this trip is that we didn't stay in Seattle for long because we had to walk to THE FERRY!  Yep, we decided to take the ferry to Bainbridge Island, which I've never been to but Mom thought would be a fun little trip!  Yay - anything to get me on a ferry! ;)  The actual ferry ride wasn't very long, though.  About a half hour, if that.  Once we got off the ferry, we walked the streets up to downtown, which thankfully wasn't far at all from where the ferry dropped us off.  The town was so cute, though!  Narrow streets lined with small businesses, very easygoing, and everyone looked so nice and friendly.  Even though we could've explored more and I'm sure there was more to Bainbridge Island than just that one area, we didn't really feel the need to explore any more than that. We started off walking into this great bookstore and, agh, I saw SO many cute things I wanted to buy!: little pocket journals with beautiful designs on them, scrabble letter mugs, and of course loads of books that looked really interesting.  They were a bit pricey, though, as was I'm sure most of the other stores in this downtown area.  It was fun to look around, though.  To end our Bainbridge Island visit, we slipped into a coffee shop to get another refill.  Yet again we sat at counters looking out to the window, because what better seats are there in a coffee shop?  There was a newspaper in front of me as I sat down, so I looked through the comics (heh) while I waited for my hot chocolate.  I was so happy when it finally came - it was in a small mug (point 1: I love coffee shops that aren't chincy about serving drinks in proper mugs) and best of all, the whipped cream was artfully arranged in a delicate feather design.  I love when they do that.  That's when you know you have a good hot chocolate.

After that, though, is when things started to get crazy.  We finished our drinks and went outside.  Mom looked at her cellphone, turned to me, and said, "Hey, wanna try to make the 2:10 ferry?"  I asked what time it was now and she said, "1:57."  That should've been our first clue that this wasn't a good idea.  We figured we could still make it anyway if we walked back to the ferry at a brisk pace, and for awhile we actually were doing pretty good.  It wasn't until it came down to the wire when we started having trouble.  Mom was trying to find the place to buy the tickets to get back on, so we were both rushing around, trying to find the damn ticket place.  And it didn't help that this place seriously had the most unnecessary long hallways ever.  We go outside again and try to find information when the intercom says, "Final boarding: Walk-on passengers, you have just shy of two minutes to board."  CRAP.  We find an information booth and run over, asking where to buy tickets, and the girl says, "It's free to walk on."  GAH.  So we run back inside and we see this other lady running along with us, trying to catch the ferry, too.  All three of us are sprinting down the endless hallway, praying that we'll make it.  It was pretty comical.  Of course I'm way ahead because my legs are longer and I'm faster.  I turn the corner to the ferry entrance as a horn starts blaring, and I yell, "WAIT!"  The woman standing at the entrance must have thought we were pretty crazy.  Finally, we make our way up to the walkway to get onto the ferry, heaving and ready to pass out.  Me and Mom slump into some nearby seats and I look out at the door we had just come through to see the ferry pull away from the walkway we just barely managed to get onto.  So we had JUST made it in time.  We were SO tired after that, still breathing heavily and sweating, half laughing at what had just happened.  "Story of our lives," Mom said.  That could not be more true.

Once we got back to Seattle, we had about an hour to waste until we had to catch the Sounder back.  We didn't do much but wander around.  We popped into another bookstore, but it wasn't nearly as exciting as the one on Bainbridge Island.  Then we -  you guessed it! - stepped into another coffee shop, but one much more familiar to us: Starbucks.  I was all hot chocolate-ed out, so I just got a pumpkin-decorated sugar cookie that looked really cute (I still can't believe it's already that time of year that pumpkin-themed things are coming out).  What was really special about this Starbucks, though, is that the outside was painted blue!  Usually Starbucks' are green, but this one was unique.  So, once we had our snacks in the blue Starbucks, we headed to the train station and took the Sounder back home, thus ending our long and eventful day.  It was a pretty good day, I must admit.

Okay, but here's where the "mixed bag" part comes in.  It really wasn't that awful.  I just started to get really paranoid and panicky and over something that's not even a big deal at all and I'm just pathetic.  ANYWAY.  I was on my laptop doing Swagbucks stuff and my laptop was going pretty slow and annoying me and it was interfering with my getting points, so it was extra infuriating.  Then Swagbucks wouldn't load at all, so I went to use my parents' laptop downstairs, and before long the issue happened again where errors kept happening and at one point I actually had to take the same survey three times because the videos needed to complete the survey were buffering.  It was SO annoying.  Then it got to the point where the entire Swagbucks site wouldn't load.  I found this out after I had just finished a survey worth 36 points and the very last step was to have the points transferred to my Swagbucks account.  Well, there was an error message, so I checked Swagbucks and it wouldn't load.  It stayed like this, not being able to load, for 15 to maybe 20 minutes.  I kept checking one of those sites that tells you if a specific website is down or not, and it kept saying that Swagbucks was up and running.  This bothered me because of course it wasn't up and running for me.  That's where the paranoia came in, and I thought, Wait, is it ONLY me who's experiencing this problem?  What if something happened and someone's trying to get into my account?  I'm almost at $70 WORTH OF POINTS RIGHT NOW, THIS CAN'T HAPPEN.  Before long, Swagbucks finally started working again and I was relieved that my points were still there, untouched.  I contacted the survey site where I did the 36 point survey and explained the situation, and hopefully that issue will somehow be resolved soon, but even if it doesn't, it's still not that big a deal.  I'm just glad nothing majorly bad happened.

But the paranoia didn't stop there.  I got back up on my laptop in my room and started doing some things, but then something happened and I'm still not sure what caused it... this noise started playing out of nowhere.  I couldn't even tell you what it was.  It was like a mixture of music and some guy's voice talking.  Now, it's entirely possible that this was just playing from an internet ad or a video I didn't realize I clicked or something, but I just started freaking out then and wondering, "Oh my god, what's happening?"  Even when I clicked out of Opera, it was still playing, which is the other reason why I started freaking out.  I remember hearing once that if you hear random noises playing on your computer, that could be a sign that there's some sort of virus or keyloggers downloaded to your laptop.  So I let my technology paranoia get to me and for the rest of the night I could not stop freaking out, wondering what's going to happen, if I should log into my personal accounts knowing that some keylogger could potentially see my passwords as I typed them.  It really scared me.  I wasn't myself for the rest of the night.  My heart kept racing, even when I went to bed last night.  I woke up this morning and I still felt so uneasy, so along with scanning my laptop with my primary Avast antivirus the night before, just to be extra safe I decided to download this software called Malwarebyte that a lot of people had recommended for detecting keyloggers and performed a scan.  Apparently it found some stuff, although I couldn't decode any of it, as I'm not fluent in virus/malware speak.  Some people online said that sometimes antivirus programs pick up other things, mistaking them for harmful malware when really they're harmless - false positives, I think they called them - but still, just to be safe, I got rid of all of it and restarted my laptop, and as of now nothing seems out of place, so I'm assuming the scan went well!  It felt good, though, just getting that scan out of the way and ensuring that my laptop is now in tip-top shape :)  I still feel really stupid for freaking out so much.  It very well could've been that there weren't any keyloggers or anything wrong to begin with and I was just letting my imagination run wild, jumping to rash conclusions.  But better safe than sorry, and now my mind is much more at ease.

So, this is what leads me to the big sigh of content: sitting in my bed on a lazy day; watching the weather slowly get better and brighter outside; my laptop healthy after a good scan; sending nothing but good thoughts to my mother, hoping her interview went great; still a little bit of chocolate muffin left to eat, sitting on my bedside table.  I still feel a bit nervous right now, but I think that's just my baseline nervousness.  Overall, though, I feel really content right now :)

x Danielle


.