Wow, talk about a surprise: I just found out that my online friend Melissa (a.k.a. Trinity, since I can’t kick the habit of using her old alias) is preggers. I was just shuffling through sites in Perfection and decided to check hers out, since I hadn’t been there in a while because she hasn’t updated in a while. Turns out she posted at the beginning of this month about being pregnant, and she was already seven weeks along (she guesses) at the time. I just got off the phone with her, checking on how she’s doing; she said she’s fine, just waiting to get married so that she can get on her currently-boyfriend’s health insurance and get checked out at the doctor. I’m trying to think of the next big weekend when I’d be free and she would potentially be free so that I can go visit her.

It’s so surprising to find out a friend of yours is going to be a mommy, because that’s such a defining moment in your life. Before, she was on the same plane as me, now she’s going to be a mom. That’s like, “goodbye college days of youth, hello crying baby with lots of expenses.” Frankly, the idea of being pregnant scares the bejeezus out of me. I don’t want to be pregnant for seeeeeveral more years, and I want to be doing very well financially and relationship-wise when I decide to have a kid. That’s another thing: this whole pregnancy thing was not planned for her, it just happened. I would be freaking out if that happened to me, but she seems remarkably calm. She’s told her family and, of course, her boyfriend who got her pregnant, and she seems to have some plans, which is good.

Heck, I’m still freaking out in a mild sort of way about the imminent end of college. I’ll be graduating in the spring and, uh, what then? Lexmark seems like it would be an option, but I want to look around at all the places around town before I settle on anywhere. I will not do Windows–I want a place open to Linux and OS X, so that I’m not the odd-kid-out when I choose to use one of those instead of the latest crap from Microsoft. I would ideally do web design (where the appearance actually matters, not just internal things where the developers could care less about my madd CSS skylz) with a hand in the programming on the backend, too, and a little database action thrown in for good measure. I just want a job that I can be happy with for several years, and being cramped into a Windows-only place doing programming on Windows for Windows with a bunch of Microsofties will make me bitter and curmudgeonly–more so than I am currently, I mean.

In other news, the semester starts Wednesday, and I’ve got to get organized. I’m hanging out with Todders (I wonder how he really feels about that nickname…) tonight, but tomorrow I’m going to go through all my old folders and notebooks from past semesters and see what I can junk. It pains me to throw out all that old work, but I never use the stuff and it takes up so much space. I hate being a packrat. :P