September

 Not much has been happening since my parents came back from Alaska.  It's mostly been pretty quiet around here.  August isn't exactly a favorite month for a lot of people anyway.  For many states, it's the local "drought month,"  even in hot, humid places where rain is more common.  Plus, for kids, summer vacation is ending and often school  starts during that month, some of them starting as early as the first week of August.  Even the birthstone for August isn't all that pretty.  It's a Peridot , which is a gross, ugly shade of green/yellow.  Some of my relatives were unfortunately born in that month.  They're [mostly] nice people, and I'm not sure how they feel about it , they just were not as lucky as all the relatives born other, more exciting months.  (On a tangential note, an odd thing I've found is rarely do I meet people born in January.  Isn't that weird? :bademoticon:) 

September is an exciting month for some people, a not-so-nice month for others.  On the one hand, the weather is nice (unless you live in Hurricane  country).  Also, anyone born this month has a Sapphire  for their birthstone, which I've always thought was pretty .  On the other hand, summer vacation has officially ended and the school year is starting .  It's why I used to dread and hate September :bademoticon:.  (Some schools start as late as the first week of this month, whilst others are already in full swing).  But then again, I never liked school while growing up.  It wasn't really the material we studied .  It was the kids :bademoticon:I went to school with, and the lack of material we studied.  (Word of advice, never send an intelligent kid to a public school in the Midwest.  You'll be doing them a favor).  It's why I could never understand :bademoticon: people who tell me their kids were excited about going back to the  snake pit--I mean school, to start the next year and be with their friends.  I didn't have many while growing up in the Midwest, and frankly, I'm starting to wish my parents had sent me to some Christian school for gifted kids.  Perhaps I would have actually found slightly smarter students to be friends with, and an actual mental challenge from the materials we were studying.  Public school, on the other hand, is something of a cruel joke here in the US .  It's also another reason I pity kids who have September birthdays :bademoticon:, especially those who were born just before the school year started.  It's like mom saying, "Happy Birthday sweetie!" and the kid's got a very unhappy, unexcited look  on their face when they say sarcastically, "Whoop-dee-doo!  I got school tomorrow."  It's yet another reason I find summer birthdays to be awesome .  You can have your big day and still have fun without school screwing it up.  

The September thing isn't an issue for me anymore, now that I've graduated  high school.  It's only significant anymore if you go to college or your job is that of a teacher in a school of any kind.  In the adult world, especially if you have a job that isn't teaching, it's just another month of the wage-earning slog. 

One of the more significant things that really improved my internet experience was being told about Ad-Blockers.  I'd never heard of such things, so I was forced to have to deal with tons of advertisements  and banners on my favorite websites.  It was especially annoying trying to write anything on this site because the damned advertisements were constantly loading and re-loading, and screwing up my typing.  Or worse, I couldn't enjoy YouTube or my fave dress-up games without having to wait through the stupid advertising commercials .  It made me very irritated at all the hidden crap programs I had to have Spyware Search & Destroy scrub from my computer, and made me worried  that my PC was infected somehow.  Then a nice Dutch :bademoticon: person told me about ad-blockers, and I'll tell you, they've changed EVERYTHING!! Seriously!  I was amazed  at how clean and easy it was to visit my fave websites again.  No more fake "come see this," or "doctors hate this person's fake medical cure," no more stupid videos I don't care about, no more lewd pictures of scantily-clad women, no more fake stories about celebrities, no more videos I don't wanta watch having to load and slow down the site, and no more banners advertising things I don't care about!  It's almost like a miracle!   It appears various web browsers have their own add-on app for this, though I was told that it's better if you have several layers of ad-blockers, so I added Ghostery  as well.  What horrifies me is what Ghostery has shown me so far, in how many trackers it has blocked .  Just this site alone has four!   Some have as many as 11!   Can you believe that?!  It's criminal!   I've told my parents about the ad-blockers so their PC's will be protected as well.  Funny how such information is not well-known out there.  Damned parasitical  advertisers count on people being stupid and ignorant about it, and I hate you all for that .  The worst offenders are websites that trick you into thinking your only choice for making the ads go away is subscribing and having to pay them, as if there was no other option.  Not falling for that anymore, thieves.