In the past week, I have had more stress than I've experienced in a long time. It was a problem building for a few weeks and finally came to it's head this Tuesday and Wednesday. I was just so involived with all my campus jobs and activities that my classes were suffering. After my japanese test on Wednesday, I decided I needed to makes some changes. Pep Band is now gone. It was last on my list, which made it the first to go.

I was so exhausted Tuesday night at the game that my band mates were a bit worried. I went home and practically passed out right away. The next morning I felt just as exhausted as the night before. It was then I made the decision. I think it was a good choice. The rest of the week was much better.

Thursday I had my first estrogen shot. The shot itself wasn't that bad. The achy thigh all through the next two days was though. So far, I haven't noticed any difference emotionally or physically. I'm sure it's too early to tell though.

The other pain on Thursday was my laser consultation. I knew what to expect physically, so that was fine. It was the price that hurt the most. @2745 for just my chest. I'm not even going to mention the other prices. 'Ouch' is enough to describe it.

Right now I'm actually in a hotel. I'm about to go to sleep. The biggest day of the big gay conference is tomorrow. It should be fun. I have my breakout session at 10:30. I'm looking forward to it. I'll write again tomorrow on how it went. Wish me luck. Good night.

Luv,

Jessica

I have a headache today. I'm not exactly sure why. It could be several reasons. It's cold out, and when I came in I felt it. So it could be that, but I also haven't had much caffine today. So that could be it too. But also, I didn't get much sleep last night. It's probably a combination of all three. The headache itself isn't all that bad, just a little pain around my left temple and a little further back. I think it's getting better too. I hope so.

I have to give my workshop today. It's in about an hour. I'm not nervous at all, but I never feel prepared the first time during the semester. I have some ideas for this one though. I think it'll be fun, and also a good preparation for next weekend. I will be speaking at the MBLGTACC....I think that's right. The Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference. It's quite a few words in there, but yeah. It's a big conference, so I'm excited. It'll be good to have this dry run through. I can perfect it if I need to.

Well, I better start preparing for it then. I need to gather my materials and work out an outline. I'll write about it later tonight. Wish me luck. Bye.

Luv,

Jessica

Last night I had to house my parents in my apartment. I knew I had to do it, and overall it wasn't that bad. It was only one night. They had to come to my therapist this morning. So, it was a necessary thing, but still not that much fun.

They got here at about 11:00 pm last night. I was tired already. We all didn't get to sleep until midnight and had to be up at 6:00 or so. That's not enough sleep for me. I have been attempting to get 8 hours each night. My body and brain function just feels so depleted when I'm sleep deprived like that, especially when I have to drive a long way. I guess I can try for that next week.

The actual therapy session went well. No one cried. My mom tried to at one point, but got herself together. I am quite the lucky trans person to have family like I do though. My parents are completely supportive. I couldn't ask for better. .....well ok, maybe richer parents so I don't have to worry about SRS and HRT costs, but we can't have everything.

Speaking of HRT, last week I was prescribed injectible estrogen. It may help kick start the breast growth I haven't been getting much of. It'll be self-injections, which kinda scares me. I'll deal with it though. I learn how to do them in a week. The worst part of the whole thing is that my insurance company wont cover this version. Patches were ok, but injectible not ok. So I had to shell out $143 for 5 ml of hormone. The needles were only 7 bucks, so that's good I guess. Except that they're an inch and a half long. We'll see how that goes a week from today.

Well, I have to get to the LGBT meeting. More later.

Luv,

Jessica

So, since I actually haven't been able to write anything since December 8th, there's been a ton that went on. I actually finished up the semester at school quite well. I ended up with a 3.80. That's my best GPA yet. I'm very proud of that. I'm going to shoot for higher in this semester.

I didn't get to mention this much, but I had been seeing a girl kinda sorta for the last few weeks. Her name was Leslie. She's a nice girl. We hung out a lot during the last two weeks. It was nice to be close to someone again. Although, I learned that I'm not exactly comfortable with the idea of dating anyone just yet. I thought I was. I thought it was even what I wanted, but it's not. I really did like cuddling and being close, but I'm just not comfortable with my body enough yet to be able to get closer than that. I feel good knowing this now. I'm ok with being single for a while longer.

I did have to tell her this though. That wasn't so easy, but it went well. I don't think I could have said it any better when I told her. She understood and took it very well. So we were still friends. Winter break rolled around and she headed back to her California home.

Late in December there was an earthquake in mid Cali, which, granted, is a rather large area. Still, I was worried about her, so I called. She was fine, but we ended up talking a lot. There were a lot of long conversations over the next few weeks, which were nice. I felt it strange though, that the more I got to know her, the more she just felt like a friend and less like a girlfriend. It was kind of a confirmation that I made the right decision to not date. Unfortunately though, these conversations seemed to be giving her the wrong idea. Oops. That I'll get to in a minute.

Break in itself wasn't all that fantastic. I spent the entire two first weeks in the projection booth at the movie theater. I started a ton of movies. Thankfully I know that job so well that I used the time inbetween shows to read a few books. I even worked Christmas day, New Years Eve night, and New Years day. I never do anything special on those days anyway, except Christmas morning. So it was no big deal. I couldn't wait to get back to school though. I was so sick of having to constantly correct my family's use of pronouns. I'm not a girl to my family, and I can feel that sentiment when I'm at home. I really don't enjoy it.

Finally the third week in, I came back up here. It was nice to be back, but that Monday and Wednesday was 3 hours of electrolysis both days. I took Tylenol PM both times and was just really out of it for the whole thing. That really helped with the pain. They were impressed that I was able to handle that much, but I did. I do what I have to. The rest of that week I spent playing Knights of the Old Republic. That kept me up to all hours of the night, but it was a ton of fun. I recommend it.

The last two weeks were training at work. I had a two week paid training camp for my campus job. It wasn't so bad, but half of the stuff I already knew. I even taught a few of the workshops. That's fine though, it was money. That was pretty much it for my break. I then started up school then. It's been really cold, and really busy since. I'll write more on that specifically later. I have to actually go do some work now. Bye.

Luv,

Jessica

I'm sitting here putting off doing my laundry, so I thought I'd write my first entry to the new diary section. Wow, it's been quite the two months. I've had such a pain in the butt with my web hosting that it's almost not worth getting into. I'm sure, though, that someone has to be wondering why the site was down for so long. Well, here's the story.

So, around December 8th...like maybe 2:30 in the afternoon, my former webhost decided to change some settings on his server. He didn't inform me that he was going to do this. For the technically oriented out there, the nameservers changed. The company changed as a whole. It changed from Rackshack.net to ev1servers.net. Wonderful idea I think. Change something important like that, but don't inform all the paying users.

I tried to contact the guy I normally do if I have a problem. He told me it was my DNS settings. Lehman's terms, that means the name TransLife.net wasn't set up correctly. It was pointing somewhere else. So yeah, I went in and changed it to what he told me to. It takes a few days for the change to filter through the internet. Waited...waited...waited....nothing happened. Site still down.

So I tried to contact the guy again, he blew me off telling me it was still my fault and the DNS was still wrong. So I tried changing it again to what was listed on the main hosting site. Waited again, nothing again. All in all, I probably did that four times with different settings each time taking up probably 3 weeks of the 2 months. Eventually I got sick of trying to contact that guy that I tried contacting the host directly. They didn't get back to me either. At this point I started looking for new hosting.

In my search I found one that was inexpensive and supported JAVA, since I just learned that language. I was going to write out my own stuff to use on the site. However, once I got the hosting, I learned very quickly that it wasnt worth my time. For those of you that are planning on making a website, DO NOT get windows based hosting. Total waste of money.

Through the help of a friend at work, I was directed to TotalChoiceHosting.com. I looked it over, and it looked wonderful. I eventually signed up for it, and it's been 400 times better than the other hosting I've had. I highly recommend them if you're in the market. The whole price of this website just went down, and it's capability went up. How's that for good stuff? So yeah, that's the story.

What did I learn from all this? Many things. One: Don't use windows based webhosting. Two: Ev1servers.net are not all that great. Three: Backup the website periodically. Four: Do research before starting into a project so as to avoid getting ripped off. I think in the end it was a good experience to have, however annoying. I don't expect the site will be down anytime in the near future, but if so, it definitely wont be for that long.

So yeah, sorry about the interruption. Tomorrow I will write about my actual life and such. K, time to go meet some friends. Bye.

Luv,

Jessica