Argh, don’t wanna be up this late… wanna sleep… wanna talk normal… :)
Kevin took me out to see The Bourne Identity today, which was loads of fun. We talked about geeky stuff on the way in, and I completely embarrassed myself with my knowledge of Star Trek. I have no clue where all of that stuff comes from! I’ve gotten into debates with people over the color of Klingon blood, whether the Vulcans truly have pointed ears, and every time after one of these discussions my face turns red and I wonder, “Why the heck do I know all this crap?”
Today was no different. We were waiting for our popcorn at the concession stand, and to our right was the big huge cardboard stand-up for “Star Trek: Nemesis.” Kevin remarked on its slogan, “The final journey begins.” We started laughing, and I said, “Yeah, maybe they’ll all just blow up at the end.” Then I actually stopped myself and said, “Wait, they can’t do that, it’d screw up the timeline… crap.” Kevin and I both started laughing and he just went, “Geek.” Later, as we were walking down the infinitely long hallway to our theatre, he said, “Okay, wait a minute, so why would it screw up the timeline?” So I had to get into this technical description of some episode of Voyager I saw where Lt. Barkley and Troi showed up to help Voyager. How ultimately sad is that?! I’ll admit, I watch Star Trek occasionally when there’s nothing on TV and I feel like watching something pointless. It’s great for that, and so much better than the other alternatives. But I should not by any means be able to recall singular episodes that further prove the timeline of events from the creation of the warp engine to the possible destruction and untimely death of the TNG crew. It’s just sick and wrong.
Echem, moving on… The rest of the day was lovely. I enjoyed Bourne Identity again (….frankapotente!… [sorry, inside-blog joke]), but I didn’t make it to Ikea today. Oh well. The auditions went really well, I thought. It was fun, but I embarrassed myself a few times. Ah, that only adds to the experience, right? However, the first part I read for included a point where I had to say, “Duh!” Erring on the side of exuberence, I decided to read the part as a typical valley girl, complete with accent. It got a huge laugh out of the directors, but from there on out I was cast as a kid or another ditz. I didn’t get to read for any of the serious roles, which rather stunk. I was hoping to wow ‘em with Shakespeare, I’d even been practicing!
“Art thou a man? they form cries out thou art:
Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote
The unreasonable fury of a beast:
Unseemly woman in a seeming man!
Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!
Thou has amazed me: by my holy order,
I thought thy disposition better tempered.”
See? I can do serious, I can be a thespian. Did you pick up on my accent? It ruled, didn’t it?
Haha, sorry, it’s late…
I watched a great show on TLC earlier that I think I might just order on video when it comes out, to preserve for my posterity and all that. It’s “Teen Species”, all about what really goes on inside a teen’s mind and body. I was thinking it’d just be depressing and condescending, but they actually handled everything extremely well, at least in what I’ve seen so far. I’d love to watch the rest of the episodes, it was really interesting. They covered basic stuff, but also a few technical things that made quite a few things make a whole lot more sense. Like exactly what happens physically when a boy’s voice cracks - it was great to see a little animation on that. Ugh, but it made me choke when they put a camera down a poor boy’s throat to look at his vocal chords as he sang. Ooooh, I could barely stand that at all.
Oh, and while watching that I’ve had a little break-through. I’ve been really worried about this recent bout I’ve had of getting far too emotionally involved in everything I see or hear. Especially on the news, I can end up getting seriously upset, risking really bad stomach aches. I thought I’d turned into a wuss; I used to think things were sad, but I’d never be physically bothered by them. Then all of a sudden, bam, I’m having stomach aches, wanting to cry for all these lost children, and feeling as if I was the one who lost a loved one during a car crash or natural disaster. I can’t continue to live life in this little cocoon I’ve built for myself, I’ll just feel too stupid and too cut off from the world. Like my friend Robert wrote to me yesterday (As in, August 29 - It’s still August 30 to me, sorry) and asked what I thought about the US’ climate control summit. I couldn’t say a single thing, or express a single opinion, because I had none. Why? I didn’t know a thing about it. I felt rather stupid, and we all know I don’t like to feel like I’m being left out of learning something.
But, on the other hand, I can’t keep subjecting myself to the news in my current state. So what brought on this all? It hit me when that show was talking about changes in teenage mood. No, I don’t think it’s hormones, I’ve worked very hard to control those. And it’s not even a mood thing, it just happens whenever I hear something sad. I’m overly empathetic all of a sudden. But what is it? I think I figured it out. In the past I’ve been diagnosed with mild Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Understandable, after six years of a stupid infection. Me of all people should understand this - I’ve spent years researching PTSD for a book, I understand it. And yet I couldn’t see it in myself. I think this latest battle with over-empathy is just another way of dealing with it. Sure enough, I’ve looked it up in my psychology book and that’s one of the symptoms. Now that I know what the problem is, I can address it and take care of it so I can finally quit feeling like a sheltered dork. I like to know what’s going on in the world, I don’t like to be the ditz who doesn’t know what’s going on. And I know my friends probably don’t think that, but I miss the news. I miss the stupid music. I miss the talking heads. Well, the BBC anyway, I could live without CNN. They’ve turned into the Barbie and Ken News Hour. Don’t even get me started on that!
I think I’ve covered everything I want to cover, and now it’s time to sleep. If this is riddled with typos, I do apologize. It’s way too late for proper spelling or rational thought. Good night!
Today was a rather beautiful day. It was Max day, (Thursdays to everyone else), the day we spend the day with my delightful little nephew. He seems to choose favorites each Thursday, and today I was it. I love when that happens. For a long time he didn’t really know me that well, or play with me, because when he was really little I was sick a lot and couldn’t really play. But today was great. My Mom had to take Steve to class and run some errands, so for a while it was just me and him. He was eating lunch off of a Star Wars plate when he started spelling ‘Star Wars’ again and again, asking me to spell it, and we’d get happier and happier about it every time we spelled it. It got to the point where he actually said, “S T A R W A R S Exclamation point! Yaaaaaay!” Then he’d start babbling about playing games with his Dad and watching Star Wars. So, when lunch was done, I asked him if he wanted to go watch it with me downstairs. He got even more excited so we cleaned up lunch, then hopped downstairs. I let him choose which one he wanted to watch, which was great fun to watch the little wheels turning in his head. He ultimately chose “Empire Strikes Back”, which was handy, since it’s my favorite.
Throughout what we actually watched of the movie, he kept moving from the couch to the floor, asking me to follow him and sit next to him. I love that. The little hand patting the seat next to him, saying in his cute little voice, “Sit here, Aunt Heather.” It makes my heart melt every single time. Eventually, as things usually go, we ended up in a tickle fight, which is another all time favorite game. He wore me out, though. I got real tired real fast.
Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day. I may be going out to Ikea in the afternoon, then at 7:30 I’m going out with my friend Megan to audition for a series of one act plays put on by a local community theatre group. I’ve been meaning to get casually back into acting, since I rather miss it, and thankfully Megan’s really into that sort of thing so she knows what’s around, what’s available, and which groups to get in with. Her whole family’s really into it, which is loads of fun. So, wish me luck, and hopefully I might just get cast in something. Megan says everyone who tries out for this one will most likely get a part - it’s a testing ground for their more elaborate productions, a chance for newbies to prove themselves. Now I’m kind of worried, though. Not nervous, I’ve done this before. I just forgot to ask if I was supposed to prepare something or not. Whoops. :) I guess I’ll just have to wing it, and if all else fails I can spit out a poem from Midsummer Night’s Dream I have memorized. Shakespeare’s always good, right?
There were a few more things I wanted to say, but I’m way too tired now to remember them. I so need to get some sleep!
There’s nothing quite as comforting as a rainy afternoon spent eating a plain, buttered bagel and sipping an ice-cold pint of chocolate milk. It’s a tradition, you see, one I’ve been upholding since the age of three. After dropping my brother off at preschool, my Mom and I used to go to the Chesapeake Bagel Bakery in Fairfax, get my incredibly goyish bagel, and then come back home to watch ‘Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers’. (Not the strippers, the chipmunks.) It’s been a comforting meal ever since, especially on rainy days.
And my goyish habits haven’t gone unnoticed. My sweet podiatrist that originally helped with the whole toe thing, Dr. Siegel, was a great Jewish guy from New York City. He got incredibly emotionally involved in my whole struggle - it was cute, really, but also rather sad in a way. He’s was sweet, though. After my first operation he came to visit me in my room, and as I was only half awake he took my little hand and said, “Is there anything I can get you, Bubbie? Anything I can get you at all? You name it, you got it.” I knew that every morning Dr. Siegel went to a bagel bakery to get his everything bagel. In fact, he claimed he’d been doing this so much that they let him come in the back way and get his own, but I think he was bragging.
So I asked him to bring me a bagel the next morning. He said of course, and started going on and on, saying, “Do you want an everything bagel? How about some lox? Cream cheese?” I shook my head and said, “No, a plain bagel with butter.”
He literally stood up and started pacing my hospital room, waving his arms about. “I cannot do this… it is an insult to my people, I just can’t do it. I wouldn’t be able to go in there ever again.” Then he paused, looked at me and said, “For you, Bubbie, I’ll give someone else the money have them order it.”
So my tradition is an insult to the Jewish people, but I love it! It’s the perfect comforting tradition. And I so needed it today, I had a constant headache all night and then it lasted well into the afternoon. It was just so perfect - the butter was whipped and nice and gooey, the bagel was perfect, just like the one I had in New York. Dr. Siegel would have been proud.
Hehe, sorry for the random bagel story. :) Call me mashuga, but I’ve been obsessing about bagels all day. I hadn’t had one in such a long time, I was long overdue.
And now I’m way too tired to go on anymore about what I did today. In a nutshell, I’ve been preparing for the design class all day and I’m exhausted. I’ve been preparing design kits all evening and I literally just finished for the night. And they still aren’t done yet! I need to make tote bags for them tomorrow. But it will be so incredibly stylish! It’ll kick serious butt. I’ll take pictures when it’s all done.
I’m off to bed, please excuse any typos, I’m too tired to be bothered by them. Good night!
I hate that feeling when you’re bored, but you know there are a million and one things you should be doing, but you can’t do them for various reasons. My reason today is I’m in the process of catching the flu, so I feel like crap. I can’t think, it’s taking ages for my to type anything, and I’m just entirely dead all over. Except for that one little corner of my brain responsible for personal nagging; “You can do it,” “Get off your butt and work!”, and the all-time favorite, “You should be doing something more important!” But no matter how hard I try, it all goes kaput. For example, I just tried to update the Daily Prophet. Ha ha ha. Not happening. I got through about 20 emails from DP columnists and now my fingers feel like spagetti and my brain is going “Articles… articles… great job… update… nyuh”. Thank you, I have been turned into toast.
It’s just so aggravating and it’s making me feel bad. By this time today I was supposed to be churning out SQL, dang it, so I can help Robert with the programming. I can’t even get past the first chapter now. It’s - to play with a phrase - going in one eye and out the other while my brain is still going “Articles… update… nyuh.” It’s not a great feeling at all, knowing I’m supposed to be working on this project that I got someone else involved in, but now they’re doing the work cause I’m too sick to do it. Argh, I don’t think I’m even explaining this well…
I need a cookie. Or better yet, sleep. That sounds good.
And to think that I actually have to be sociable tonight. I have to go to that mandatory youth group mentorship thingie tonight. I’m so not in the mood.
Hmm, happy thoughts… happy thoughts… Emails are happy. Puppies, rainbows, Berlin, London, friends, money, castles, chocolate… nyuh. :) Just kidding, hehe.
I found a new artist that I’m absolutely in love with, but unfortunately some of his stuff is a wee bit suggestive at times. Should I link to him anyway? They’re really cute 50s/60s sleek style paintings and I just love it. It’s so cute and sleek and curvy and stuff. Check him out here, unless you’re a kid, then don’t. Honestly, they aren’t that bad, just like I said - some are suggestive. The rest are just dang cute. It’s kind of the style that I’d like to have for the opening titles of my travel show, only animated. That is, if I ever get my travel show. It’s a nice dream in the mean time anyway. :)
And now I think I’m going to go lay down for a while before I have to go out tonight. Ta.
Just a quick note because I have a bet on with my friend Sujit.
He and I were talking and I said I wanted to do something fun. I checked out the movie times just to see what’s actually out and I noticed that ‘The Bourne Identity’ is still at my local theatre, but it’s only playing at 10:30. It hit me that I’d kind of like to see that again, so I mentioned it in passing to Sujit. That turned around to me realizing no one’s around that I could call up and say, ‘hey, let’s go to a movie at 10:30 at night!’ Sujit, first of all, doesn’t believe that’s true, that there’s no one around. Secondly, he says that if I post that on here, in my blog, that within a couple hours he guarantees I’ll have people offering to take me. I don’t believe him. So the bet’s on.
But what he doesn’t know is only two people who actually live where I do read this blog, and they’re family, and probably won’t want to go to a movie at 10:30 at night, let alone a movie I’ve already seen. I think I might just win this one. :)
Yet another day, yet another blog. It’s been a nice lazy Sunday, I just wish I didn’t have to wake up so early. If only I could sleep in until 10ish, then the day would have been absolutely perfect. I spent the afternoon reading ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘A Guide to SQL’ (See, Robert, I’ve been behaving! I said I’d read it.), and ‘The Baked Bean Saga.’ The last is a story a friend of mine wrote a long time ago but I never got to finish reading it. He and I just reconnected after about a year or so of incommunicado, so for the sentimental value of it all he uploaded his old web page from way back in 1996, when we first met. On it was a copy of the story I always meant to read but lost the link to and therefore never got to finish it. Despite having nothing to do with baked beans, it’s a great story and I had a great time laughing my head off. It’d make one dang funny cartoon.
I’m sorry about that teasing blog last night - I realized as I was laying awake at 2:30am that I really can’t tell you everything that made yesterday so wonderful because it’s a rather sensitive situation. (Don’t worry, Kevin, it has absolutely nothing to do with a boy.) I’ll have to retain an air of mystery and say all will be revealed in due course. (Haha, I’ve always wanted to say that.)
But, I can tell you some things. More nice emails, a nice relaxing afternoon spent at a bookstore buying a english-german/german-english dictionary (I have to learn German so I figured that’d be the best way since I already understand basic German grammar, etc), and then I went to Lowe’s and Home Depot collecting paint chips and bookletts for my design class. I’m making a whole decorating kit for each of the girls - it’s really going overboard and they’ll probably just throw it all away, but you never know. One little booklett may inspire one of them, and that’ll be good enough for me. But I forgot how many girls there will be so I need to go back and get more! I hope Home Depot doesn’t throw me out for stealing all the bookletts…
And now it’s early in the evening (for me anyway), I keep looking at my email count hoping it’ll turn from 34 to 35 (waiting for emails from people cause I’m bored and I like hearing from them), and I know I should be doing something constructive but I think I’m in sugar-shock. I’ve had too many brownies today and my brain is just dead. That, and I’ve read too much so my head is full of confusing stories about relational databases programmed by Frodo Baggins which is being chased by a small furry ewok-like creature with a North London accent. My mind’s a fiction (and part non-fiction) mess! :)
I think I’ll sit back, talk to Chris, play a little solitaire, and convince myself that it’s okay to be totally lazy on a Sunday evening. That’s what they were made for, after all, and I’d better enjoy it while I have it.
It has been an absolutely wonderful day, but sadly I’m way too tired to blog at the moment and I have to get to sleep. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow afternoon, good night!
I did it! I reformatted the hard drive last night, got the bare bones of Windows installed, but then I had to delay installing the drivers until this evening. The day kind of got eaten up a lot faster than I thought it would. But, it’s around half past one in the morning and I’ve installed all of the drivers successfully, AOL is running, Paint Shop Pro’s installed, Office is ready to go, and now I’m downloading WinAmp. It’s on to the fun stuff, baby! :) Woohoo! Of course, I still have to transfer a butt-load of files back to the laptop, but I’m leaving that for tomorrow. I kind of miss my music collection, but I suppose I’ll have to live with CDs for now (hehe, that sounds so awful, doesn’t it?)
All in all, I think I did okay. There were just a few instances where I had to go knock on my brother’s door and say, “It’s asking me questions again.” Sometimes it got a bit confusing, but I think that’s because I was entirely overwhelmed and really worried I’d screw it up. But, I’m alive, the laptop’s alive, and things are good. I even got a bit of cleaning done while it was reformatting and installing, which is always a good thing.
I’m dead tired though.
I accidentally slept in too late this morning (11:30 for goodness sake), and then I had to spend the day doing stuff, like downloading drivers on my computer downstairs, getting ready to go bowling, and then went off on that excursion around 3:45. It was a fun afternoon/evening. Six of us “wild teenagers” went to the bowling alley, played three straight games, then came home, had pizza, and watched movies. By the time we got home there were seven of us - John (I believe I’ve mentioned him before, he’s one of the pants guys) stopped by to join us for movies and such. Sadly he missed out on bowling since he had to work. It was a fun event, but it was really tiring. It’s so hard to bowl without a left big toe! It was rather embarrassing, in fact. Gutter ball after gutter ball, and there was nothing really I could do about it. My thumb would stay straight, I threw it okay, I just kept slipping. At least I didn’t fall on my rear, and at least the other people I was with were really sweet about it. They’re a great group of kids.
But now my right foot is really sore from slipping so much and having to catch myself. My arms are surprisingly fine, despite my many different attempts at finding my own bowling style. Toward the end I just stood at the very front of the lane, pulled back my arm, and launched it with nothing but my own brute strength. No momentum from walking, just flinging it. It worked out alright, and I think I’ll go with that next time, since the approach is what makes me slip so badly. I thought it would hurt my arms more afterward, though. Hey, maybe all those push-ups are finally paying off. :)
I’ve really got to get to sleep now, but I have a nice email I want to answer before I head off to bed. Why is it that when my foot’s sore the rest of me gets tired? I shouldn’t be that tired after all the sleep I had last night. Ah well.
For some strange reason I’m now addicted to Strauss’ ‘On The Beautiful Blue Danube”. I got a ten cd set of classical music a few weeks back, and I hadn’t really paid attention to listening to all of it until today. I threw in disc number five because I’ve had to send my Mp3 collection to another computer while I prepare to whipe my hard drive. Yup, that’s right, I’m finally reinstalling Windows. I finally realized just how long I’ve had this laptop and just how long I’ve dealt with the built-in annoyances of preloaded Windows ME. It’s time to go back to my roots (sort of), back to Windows 98. I’m regressing before I finally decide to give in and turn myself into a Linux junkie. I’m nearly there - I laughed at a few people a couple weeks ago when they mispronounced it. And not just any people - government computer people. Okay, so it was my Dad and a Major in the Army who works in the Pentagon, but still. They’re both working on government integration software and they’re calling it Lie-nux. It’s Lynn-ux, not Lie-nux. Silly people. I’ve heard if you mispronounce Linux enough that cute little penguin drops the act and mauls you. It’s a tough little Tux. :)
So I’m finally taking the plunge, letting myself slip off that slippery slope into the deeper, darker abyss of geekdom. Never fear, I shant let myself fall into the Realm of the Nerd, though. I still like haute couture too much to let my clothing choices revolve solely around the T-shirt and ill-fitting pants.
Even more news on Geek Campaign 2002, Kevin brought over a SQL textbook this evening, so if all goes well with reinstalling windows I shall start my SQL studies tomorrow. Huzzah! Yet another three-lettered funny acronym to tack onto my resume. Life is good, the campaign is moving along well…
Reinstalling Windows… it sounds so ominous. I’ve never done it on my own before. Wish me luck. I might need it.
Hmm, other news - I’m going bowling Friday. Wooo. I’m really starting to miss London again. I’m still dying to go travel to some place new. I still need money for school. Um. That seems to be about all the regular stuff. Oh! Time for a gratuitous Aunt moment!
Thursday is Max day at my house - a day where Max comes to visit his extended family to give his parents a break. I didn’t get to do much with him in the morning since I had to go look at a house with a friend, then spend the afternoon slaving to back-up the files on my laptop. But, I got to spend those happy moments next to him when he’s waking up from his afternoon nap. Laying on Grandma’s bed, I smiled at him as he was just waking up. Once he was more alert, it was time for fun. The greatest tickle-fight in the history of Auntdom ensued. It was so massive that even when I thought he’d had enough, he crawled over to me, grabbed my hands, and from behind his pacifier said, “Tickie tickie tickie.” I love that. After we were both all tickled out we went downstairs hand in hand, and for the next half an hour he sat on my lap and we read stories. It was great, but now I’m in a bit of a baby craze, checking up on all of my friends’ little munchkins. They’re just too cute.
Sigh. The time has finally come to whipe the hard drive. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, send for help! :)
Argh, I’m never buying a hewlett packard again. I got my laptop just over a year ago and already the battery is dead and it crashes every ten minutes because the sound card they put into it is absolute crap. I’ve run all the diagnostics they told me to run, I’ve taken good care of it, I’ve never dropped, pretty much always kept it in its pretty laptop case, run Norton regularly, defrag religiously, and yet it’s still crappy. The hardware is supposedly good, I’m not taking up all of the hard drive. Ergh. I’m going to try and take matters into my own hands and look for new drivers - their tech support is crap. The stuff they told me to do didn’t do anything, just made it crash more.
Crap, no new information about the sound card. And I’m not even the only one with this problem. Originally, I’d be working, not doing much, then my laptop would start screaming at me. Literally. Turns out one of my friends has the exact same problem with the exact same laptop model. At least that put my fears at ease that I’m lethal to computers everywhere (I always take good care of my machines, but they always die strange and inexplicable deaths. Same goes with watches - all of my clocks are always wrong. I reset them and reset them, yet they always go sour.) I want my laptop to work, dang it. I’m afraid I may have to do what I’ve been dreading; reinstall windows. I hate doing that.
I’m just about ready to switch to Linux. The cute little penguin is calling me.
Anyway. Other than my computer crashing, it’s been a nice day. More nice emails, met a nice new person who found my blog, and went out shopping for a little while. Nothing exciting this time - I just needed rubber cement and had to look at fabrics for the guest room. My Mom wants me to redecorate it, but she keeps forgetting what I had planned, then changing the design. I think she should just do it. She wants me to base it around a china pattern, but it’s pink, green, and blue flowers. It’s not ornately girly by any means, but that’s so not my style at the moment. I’m not a flowery, pink, china-ey person. I was going to modernize it with geometric shapes, but using the same colors as the china. Then, there’d be a contrast between the “harsh” lines of modern geometry and old world china. For example, the walls were going to be pale green, then at about eye-level there would be squares of blue. Inside each square I’d hang one of the china dishes, letting the wall act as the frame. The bedhead was my favorite idea - a huge plank of MDF from floor to ceiling, brought out about two inches from the wall. It would be painted the very pale pink from the china pattern, and then all over it there would be evenly spaced and lined up three inch by three inch squares, painted just a few shades lighter. The geometry would be mirrored by the curtains, which would be sheers with squares that are just an extra layer of sheer fabric, so they’re just a bit darker. I saw the fabric at a fabric store and it inspired the whole idea. It’d be feminine but not “girly”.
I guess I’m just not into girly designs anymore. I could do it if I really wanted to (or if I was getting paid enough to do it). For instance, I was designing a room for a friend and she wanted really ornately girly stuff, and I worked it out to the point that she loved it. And earlier this year I had to design a “Martha Stewart’s Garden” themed wedding, and did it beautifully. But it so wasn’t me.
Right now I’m into what I’m calling “Uber-modern Japanese.” Not shogi screens, no calligraphy, no greenery, not even what you’d think of as typical interior design “Japanese.” Nope, I’m taking all the inspiration from origami and Asian fan dancing. I’d tell you more, but I’m afraid of someone stealing my idea. It rules way too much to be blabbed about. I can’t wait to put it into play somewhere. Bright colors, meanings in the smallest of objects, complex curtains… it would definitely qualify as kick-butt decorating. Well, in my opinion at least.
Dang it, I need to find someone who will allow me to design a whole commercial space so I can do my Uber-Modern Japanese theme on a grand scale. I need two to three storey ceilings, I need huge walls, monsterous windows, I need concrete and metal. But most importantly, I want a big budget. Notice, I didn’t say ‘need’, I just reeeeaaaalllly want it. :) Honestly, the most expensive items would be the custom furniture I’ve dreamt up, but the rest would be really cheap. Mostly just fabric and paint. Bright colors. Intricate curtain systems… yummy.
And I suppose I need sleep. I might read for a while first, though. I’ve been convinced to read Lord of the Rings, and after about a week of trying to read I’ve only gotten to chapter 6. I’m enjoying it, and once I get on a reading marathon I’m hooked, but I just haven’t found time to get caught up in it.
Now off I go, to dream pleasant dreams of curtains, closets, sculpture, furniture, and to try and figure out how I can possibly get this skylight shade system to work. It’s a feat of engineering, but I think I can make it work… but I’ve got to resist the urge to talk about it! I should be keeping it quiet, waiting for the right moment to patent it and release it on the market, then make millions of money from my Uber-Modern Japanese movement. Hey, maybe I should start unbuttoning my cuffs so I can channel Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. :) Haha. Quick, run away before I start donning chintz suits! Nah, I like his stuff usually. Only kidding, Mr. Laurence!
I loath going to car dealerships. The sales-people are always so phony. My mom and I went out to look at some new cars to see if those “rebuilding America’s economy” deals are really anything to get excited about. So far, they aren’t real fantastic. We test drove a Chevy Impala and then went to another dealership to test drive a Kia Spectra. The Impala rode okay, but not okay enough to justify the price of $28,000. No way, not for a chevy. Not when I could get a Mercedes or BMW for that much. That’s just crazy. It wasn’t even that cute, or that nice inside.
But maybe I was just irritated by the sales-lady. She was using just about all of the sales tips used by the main character in ‘La Huitième Jour”, right down to the copy-cat personality quirks. (La Huitième Jour is a great movie, though. You should go rent it.) She adjusted her accent to my mother’s, tried to get chummy with me, but she slipped. Her real personality showed through at a few very inopportune times, leading to a few awkward moments. The guy at the Kia dealership was worse. Imagine Paul Henreid in a cheap striped, button-down shirt and a bad tie, trying to sell you a Sportage. “It’s got side airbags, Reek.” I swear, he looked just like Paul Henreid! (That guy in Casablanca, in case you’re totally confused, which wouldn’t be surprising since you are reading my blog, it is midnight, and I’m probably not making any sense.)
Once I got home around 1:30, I ended up watching TV and going through some videos to double check they recorded okay (for my collection.) Then, I got to work on a few more architectural models for my class. I think I’m going over-board with this silly class. I get too into decorating and architecture. But the models sure are fun! It’s amazing what you can do with poster board. :)
I think I might actually go to sleep now. I’m really tired and sore, so it’s time to sleep. I need a massage, dang it.
Sorry for the poem last night, I just didn’t feel like blogging and I figured that was an easy cop-out. Cheap, aren’t I? But I’m cheap with style - it was Shakespeare, after all. :)
So today’s been better than the past few have been. Still not stellar, but pretty peachy. It’s always nice to wake up and find cute emails waiting for me in my inbox. :-D
All in all, I had a nice day of talking with friends. And, I planned a bowling trip for this Friday with a few other friends. I’ve just been little Ms. Social Butterfly today, so that makes things happier for me. I always enjoy having people around, people to talk to, or people just to smile at and have them smile back at me.
I’ve been preparing for that design class I have to teach (I mentioned that a while back, I think - it’s for a youth group thingie). Yesterday afternoon I got extremely bored and thought it would be cool to build one of those elaborate architectural models for the class to demonstrate differences in style through something a little more interesting than just pictures. I went spelunking in the garage and found some forgotten tag board (like poster board, but thicker) and immediately set to work with blueprints. After the plans were drawn, I had to cut the tag board by hand with a sharp steak knife (I couldn’t find the exact-o knives). It was great fun! I listened to some classical music and made a huge mess in the basement. I then figured out how to make all the walls collapsable, so they could stand up, and then come all apart so I could carry it around in a portfolio case. Ta-da! Velcro. I used strips of velcro to hold everything up edge-to-edge. It’s hard to explain, so I’ll just take pictures once it’s all done.
The model is going to be of my Loft dream house - I have many dream houses for different periods of my life, depending on where I’ll be, etc. The Loft is what I would have in London while at school if I had all the money in the world and could blow it on this dream house. It’s a converted warehouse with amazing two-storey areas, and then an absolutely killer closet. I’ve come up with a closet system that will look like modern wood panelling - the cupboards are hidden in a room that will look like an art gallery! The shoe cabinet will be a center island with a white upholstered top (doubles as an ironing board), but the wooden structure itself opens up to reveal a shoe cabinet. Then, all around, wood panelling with pictures hanging in front. Once you know where the handles are hidden underneath the chair rail you just stick your hand under there, pull back the panelling, and snazzy recessed hinges reveal spacious and organized storage. Of course, I can’t show all this in detail in my tag board model, but wouldn’t that rule? It’d be the closet to end all closets.
And the master bedroom is to die for. Curved glass walls, amazing architectural elements, a bed (of course), and lots of other grand things. Ooo, and the bathroom - it has a 2 ton concrete tub. That may sound hideous, but Kohler has come up with an absolutely beautiful (and efficient!) bathtub. I won’t bother to explain it because I’m sure you’re all just laughing at me now, me and my elaborate day dreams of closets, ironing boards, and concrete. Just don’t even get me started on ceilings and staircases, I could go on for hours. :)
I’m too hyper to be tired again. My eyes and my body are ready for sleep, but my mind is moving at a mile a minute. I want to go back downstairs and finish my models. I’m also making little poster board room models for the kids in the class to play with. I’m going to talk for about 30-40 minutes about color, basics, design, history, etc, and then for the last half of the class I’m going to have them design a mini room. It’ll be great! I can cut out accessories from catalogues, print stuff out on the computer. I hope they get into it and won’t laugh at me and my rants about concrete and Sir John Soane’s genius. I could seriously blow those poor kids’ minds.
Mwahaha…
Okay, I let out an evil laugh, that’s definitely a sign that it’s time for bed. Good night!
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream.
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
It was today. One year ago exactly today I had my toe amputated. And I thought of a tradition.
Shortly before I had my toe amputated I made a painting. I did a purple background, all swirlie and fantastic. Then, I painted my left foot blue and stamped it on the painting. I had planned to create another version of it a few months after the amputation, but never got around to it. The base coat of the painting is drying downstairs and I’m waiting to attempt to stamp my foot again. I’ve tried it twice already and both times the base coat was still too wet. I’ve set a timer and in 18 minutes it should be dry enough.
That’s my tradition. Every year on August 17 I will create a new piece of foot art. Just some painting or sculpture or whatever that requires the use of my foot to create it. I decided against starting a new charity project every year since that would get overwhelming really fast. I can handle art, though. I just wish it’d dry faster cause I want to paint my foot again. It feels really weird, but interesting. Who knew acrylics would feel so cold. And once my foot’s blue it accentuates the movement, so I can see the movement of my bones in more detail. It’s really amazing, you should try painting your foot some time. :)
So, I should shortly have a set of two paintings, same size, same general colors, only difference will be the lack of a toe. I think it could be pretty cool. I’m thinking of doing a set of my right foot (only with all the toes intact), and a set of my hands. Then, they can all be one big huge set of paintings. It’d be great.
I’m glad I went through the whole upheaval of emotions last night over the toe thing. I wasn’t expecting it, but I feel that if I’m going to get depressed I should do it at night, that way it doesn’t kill the whole day. The only thing that’s at risk then would be having bad dreams. Thankfully I managed to avoid that last night by watching a few episodes of ‘Pete and Pete’ and ‘Daria’ before I finally went to sleep. It made me laugh enough that I had really wonderful dreams, in fact. I dreamt that I went to London with my father, but I was much older… and much richer. I was buying a house, supposedly Sir John Soane’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, even though it looked nothing like the real house. It was certainly gorgeous, though, and it felt great to be buying it. :) MmmmMmmm, it was so lovely. There was one massive living room area with two-storey ceilings, marble inlaid floors, wainscoting, elaborately carved ceilings and chair-railing, and a gigantic staircase at the end. It felt great to be buying a home like that, to actually know I would be living in it. I hope I get to experience that in real life eventually.
I’ve felt pretty sick all day so I basically just ran a whole butt-load of diagnostics on my laptop (it’s been misbehaving) and read ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ I did have to go move some furniture around at 2 in the afternoon, which was really miserable. Not only did I feel like crap, but it was over 90 degrees outside and so humid it felt like I was drowning. No fun at all. Right now I’m feeling a little better, but I’m still not sure if I’ll be able to make it to church tomorrow.
Dang it all, I’m getting nothing but junk mail today. (Sorry, that may seem random, but I just checked my mail again.) I’ve gotten about 30 crap emails and only 1 from a real person. Oh, but I did get something nice in the regular post today. :) Joinee Whitby from the Join-Me.co.uk collective sent me a great Join Me button (the kind you pin to stuff). It was oh so very nice of him to mail it to me all the way from England. I’ve added it to the back of my rucksack, along with a charming button from Hot Topic - “I caught you picking your nose.” It was only 50 cents. :) Lady-like, eh?
So, I found my tradition, I still feel kinda sick, and I’m still not entirely happy about losing the lawsuit. But I got some stuff out of my system that needed to get out. It had been stuck up inside me for way too long, I needed to rant. I’m just kind of sorry it ended up on my blog, but oh well. Such is life, and I’m not going to delete it. Maybe there’s some grand purpose behind the babble of last night. I really didn’t mean for it all to come tumbling out. I even had a few happy things I wanted to say, but I’ve forgotten what they were. Never mind, now I’m getting babbly again. All in all, read it but I’m not proud of it. There are plenty of things I could have done that I could be more embarrassed about, so I’m just not going to worry about some stupid rant.
And woohoo! Looks like my painting should be dry by now. Off I go to paint my foot. :)
I am in need of a tradition. The one year anniversary of the day I had my toe amputated is coming up soon and I want to do something to mark the occasion. I feel like I should take some step to commemorate what I went through, and gradually – year by year – let it go. But I’m not sure exactly what to do.
While getting ready for bed this evening one thought hit me. Instead of one routine physical movement each year, why not commemorate it with an act. Such as, each year, start a new charity or help one out. That might get hard later on in life, but it’d be a good way to give back.
I figure, if I can’t get anything out of my pain, I might as well give. I keep feeling like I’ve lost my toe for no reason, that there has been no manifestation of a greater cause at hand. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe that the knowledge I’ve gained won’t eventually prove useful to someone else. Indeed, I think in some ways, it already has. But I mean nothing has been brought to a proper end, I haven’t received any grand blessings to assure me that the last six years of my life haven’t been lost waiting for doctors appointments, breathing in ether, or lying alone on a hospital bed unable to move. I don’t feel I’ve gotten any personal blessings in exchange for what I’ve gone through. I suppose I gained a way of looking at the world beyond my years, but I haven’t had any real comforting moments that can assure me that it wasn’t all completely pointless. For goodness sake, I wasn’t even great enough to be a stupid Rosie Kid on the Rosie O’Donnell Show. I was deeply honored that so many kids I know nominated me for it, and that felt great, but it was kind of a blow that we never heard anything back at all. Not even anything from Oprah, either. My feat of overcoming such trials and then developing the Daily Prophet wasn’t worthy of any grand scholarships or recognition. It wasn’t big enough to anyone else.
Six years was a lot to me to lose. And my current health is a lot to suffer through. I haven’t been able to properly move for two months because of stupid ulcers I got from all of these stupid years of test after test, operation after operation.
And he still got away with it. The legal system still failed me.
One man’s ignorance and subsequent lies cost me my teenage years. I haven’t been carefree, happy, healthy, and full of life. And I still have nothing to show for it, literally. There’s a gap of nothing at the end of my left foot. But it’s so upsetting that he got away with it. That US Attorney – I’m not even afraid to say her name anymore, Jennifer Guerins – spent more money defending a guilty man than it would have taken to simply settle the case. The numbers I heard were in the range of $800,000 and above. Blown on crackpot specialists that had nothing to do with my case, whittled away on so much paperwork that her assistant literally had to wheel in a basket, like a shopping cart, into the courtroom.
In the end, she never even denied that the doctor stabbed me, that he negligently handled my toe and lied about what he had done. She resorted to simply burying the judge in paperwork and useless facts. He couldn’t make his way through it. She should be disbarred for the things she’s done – she stole and altered my medical records, she had people lie on the stand, and it only gets worse from there. And we could have proven it. But my lawyer ran out of money.
Where was 60 Minutes then? Where was Dateline? I wasn’t good enough for that, either. I got lost in the legal system. I’ve learned to live with the fact that the man lied and ruined the last six years of my life. It’s the fact that he got away with it that still kills me.
Sorry, I really did mean for this to turn into a crying rant. I don’t think I’ve really gotten over everything yet. A year really isn’t much time at all, when you think about it. It hasn’t been enough time to even physically heal – the skin at the end of my foot, at the place where my toe used to be, is still raw. It gets sore after wearing shoes for any period of time longer than an hour and a half. How can I expect my psyche to be any better? I’m still raw. I think about what’s happened – or rather, what’s not happened – for more than half an how, and my emotions get sore.
I’ve managed the pain because I felt that I would, for lack of a better word, be vindicated; that there was a greater purpose to my pain; that those at fault would meet their consequences face to face. And instead, all the guilty party was faced with was me as I sat on the stand testifying, crying as I described the pain I felt as he darted that needle into my bone. How did he meet it? He smirked at me. He smiled as he sat next to his attorney. I cried, and I was met with insolence and apathy.
Is he sorry for what he did? Can he sleep? Has he ever cried for the lives he’s stolen? Does his family know what he really did?
I need a way to mark the upcoming anniversary as a point of continuing closure. But I’m not sure what to do. Is it enough anymore to wear myself thin trying to save the world? I don’t know. I want to, I really do. I want to be the righteous one, moving ever forward, forgetting my pain and instead adopting the pain of others to take it away from them. To ease their load. I want to do that. But in the mean time I feel my pain has been useless, that there was no point to it at all. Yes, I’ve learned, but there’s been no closure. No final act to prove it all worthwhile.
I suppose my problem is I just can’t live with the bad guy winning, and the cowboy left to limp off into the sunset. I try to believe that eventually the bad guy will meet his comeuppance, but right now I really wish God would work a little faster.
If you can think of anything I could do on the anniversary, please post it in my guestbook. I’ll appreciate anything you could offer. These past few days, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, have been a bit of a roller coaster. I’d like to find something that could get me past this hurdle and on to whatever’s ahead.
We are young, we run green
Keep our teeth nice and clean
See out friends, see the sights
Feel alright!
I’ve so got that song stuck in my head. I don’t even know why I’m so addicted to it, it’s just so happy and… retro. I guess it’s not that old, only 1995, but still. :) I guess I’m just in a happy mood. It’s been an interesting day, despite having to wake up early again. I so hate that.
I had to go back out to Fort Myer in Arlington this morning to get a referral to go see a specialist for yet another problem (not serious, no worries), and I also had to take care of this stupid Certificate of Medical Necessity for my prosthetic toe. My poor doctor is so old and so incapable. She got this form from Tricare (my medical insurance), all she needed to do was put in my height, weight, and her physician pin number. That’s all. And yet we’ve all been trying to find this stupid form cause no one knew where it was. Tricare approved the prosthetic toe, they’re going to pay for it, but they can’t without getting that form back. We found out the last time I was there that it had been sitting on my doctor’s desk the entire time, she just didn’t know what to write on it.
Anyway, I got the nurse to write in my height and weight, but then had to go to the Tricare office in the hospital to have the physician’s pin number put in (my doctor didn’t know that either. I swear she’s in her 70s - it literally took her ten minutes to write a single-sentence referral. It’s just sad.) I went down to the office and there’s this really nice African-American lady that works there. She has her head shaved bald and she’s one of those great women that’s flamboyant and sure of herself, and so willing to help anybody. I explained what was going on, she said, “Come on, honey, I’ll take care of you.” She took me over to her office and asked me what happened with my toe. I told the whole story in a nutshell and she got so upset. She kept saying, “You sued him, right?” When I explained that I lost the law suit because of one wicked nasty US Attorney she turned to me and she said, “Sweetie, you know that God will get him in the end.” She was so funny about it and just kept going on and on. “It’s not like you wanna wish somethin’ bad on him, but it’ll happen. You may not get that money now, and he may seem like he’s doin’ well, but oooooh, he’ll get it!” It was so cute and funny.
Then my mom came back from her appointment and found me in her office, still talking to that nice lady, and waiting for someone else to track down the physician’s pin number. The nice lady kept telling my mom, “Your daughter’s so sweet, she’s just the sweetest little pookie on this planet.” From there on out she even gave me a pet name. In the Tricare office at Fort Myer I am now referred to as Pookie Bo Bo. :) I kind of like it. I may use it on one of my children some day. It’s just a great nickname. Pookie Bo Bo. Hehehe.
I just love those nice flamboyant black ladies. The type that always calls everyone Sweetie or Darling. They’re instantly caring and treat everybody like family. They’re just loads of fun to have around, and really great to talk to. All ladies like that should be therapists. No more drugs, just one hour of being called Pookie Bo Bo and telling you that all evil people will “get it from God” in the end, that’ll cure all your problems. :) It’s just so nice to be emotionally pampered by somebody like that for a while. I bet she’s a great mother.
So, what else did I do today. Mom and I went to a great outlet store after the hospital to just run through it real quick. I felt miserable in the store, my legs have been aching like crazy. But, on an up note, I got two new skirts and an awesome new bag. It’s rather big, but it’d be perfect for a book bag or over-night bag. Plus, it matches my cute bowling shoes! :) I’m all happy about that. I’ll have to take a picture of it cause if I try to describe it I know I won’t do it properly. I’m not awake enough and I’m too hyper - all at the same time - so there’s no way any description of mine is going to be coherent. Heck, this blog entry is probably really babbly and full of horrendous typos. Please excuse me for that. A tired body but happy mind is a bad combination this late at night when Pookies should be trying to go to sleep.
I so love that nickname.
Haha, okay, one more funny thing that happened today before I go off to sleep… or end up spending another hour talking to Sam. :) I emailed this guy yesterday about getting a pin/button/thing from the Join-Me.co.uk campaign. (You should join, go there.) Anyway, this guy, Joinee Whitby, is making buttons, and he had a thing posted on his site (Joinee.co.uk) that if you wanted one just send him an email. I did, he said he’d send me one, then I made a button design, and it was all cute and stuff. And then, after he thanked me for it I send him this message: “No problem, if you ever need anything else just give me a ring.” Now, that’s pretty straight-forward, right? I get an email back from him this afternoon that simply said: “A ring?” He was completely confused. Is that phrase just not used in England? He must have thought I was being horribly forward and egging him on for a proposal of marriage or something. Or that I was just some weird chick who tried to coerce men into buying me jewelry. I straightened it out, but now I feel rather silly. Who would have guessed they don’t use that phrase in the UK? I have problems with that sometimes. For instance, I was writing an email to Robert the other night and I almost said, “That’s a bummer.” Then I went, Doh! It’s really awful when Americans share words in common with Britain that are only swear words on one side of the Atlantic. Bummer isn’t bad over here at all, but over there I’d probably get my mouth washed out with soap. Or, at the very least, Alastair would laugh at me and gasp, “Do you know what you just said?”
And now off I go. :)
I forgot to blog a cute random thought I had earlier while watching TV! Wouldn’t it be really cute if, say you were married and everything was all wonderful. But the husband was preparing his will, for when he dies (obviously). (Okay, it’s getting cute, I promise.) He spends hours and hours somewhere, just writing on little cards. Then, when he and his wife are old and gray, the husband dies. (Getting to the cute part, I promise…) But, a week later, the wife gets a dozen white roses along with a little card that says how much the husband loved her, etc. Turns out the guy gave a deposit of $10,000 or whatever to some florist with the express instructions of sending flowers to his widowed wife every week for the rest of her life, along with one of the little cards he hand-wrote himself before he died. That way, every single week, the widow would remember just how much her husband loved her. Wouldn’t that be the sweetest thing on the planet? As long as he had the money, of course, and didn’t send the poor woman into debt over it. I think that would just be the nicest expression of love, don’t you?
Okay, like I said, it was random. But isn’t that cute? But nobody steal it, I think I’m going to put it in a book some day. Of course, if you’re preparing your will, feel free to use it, since I’m sure whoever will get the flowers will appreciate it. :)
I’m addicted to downloading MP3s again. I was ripping a few off some CDs I found stacked on my tower over in the corner of my room (I rarely go over to that corner, since it’s just a huge tower of over 150 CDs [thank you, forgetful brothers!]) I tried to swim my way through them and found some great stuff. For instance, now I’m addicted to a song I had never bothered listening to on the Philadelphia soundtrack. I think the next time I’m asked to sing at one of those church things I’m going to since track number five - “Send Me Somebody to Love”. I love the mellow bluesyness of it. MmmMmm Good. Go download it, I say!
And now I’m downloading a song I’ve been hearing all over the place but could never remember to download it. It’s like that stupid song has been chasing me around, so I’m finally answering its call. Last night I did that with three other songs; ‘I Miss You’ by Randy Newman (horribly depressing, but pretty), ‘Bar B-Q’ by Wendy Rene (absolutely hilarious and I have no idea why), and ‘Waiting for October’ by Miracle Legion (dunno why I got that one, just got it stuck in my head). And now that stupid brain-chasing song is downloading, ‘Alright’ by Supergrass. Every teenager should have that song in their MP3 library, just to be stereotypical. :) Hey, at least it’s fun to dance to.
It’s a shame I left my list downstairs of other songs I’ve been wanting to download. While taking hours and hours to burn all of my digital video collection onto CDs, I listened to the satellite radio stations on DirecTV. I picked up tons of great old big band songs! Things like “It’s Been A Long, Long Time”, and there was another one that was just hilarious. Something like “Six Lessons From Madame La Monga”, or something. I’ll try searching for it and see if it pops up. Also, I’ve been listening to the reggae station lately just for fun. I really should remember to write down those song titles. They’re even more fun to dance to. :)
Yes, yes, I know, go ahead and say it. You’ll feel much better after you do. Come on, only two little words. You can do it.
“You’re weird!”
Thank you, yes I am. :)
Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been busy having to wake up early, go out to take care of things, etc. I had to get my passport sorted out yesterday (as in Monday, because to my clock it’s still Tuesday.) Today I had to wake up around 6:30ish, after only sleeping for about four hours, so I could go into Arlington with my Mom. She had a doctors appointment at Fort Myer (the Army post there), and I found out yesterday whilst trying to get my passport that my military ID expired. Whoops. So, I went there, got muffins for breakfast from the commisary, then sat in the hospital while my mom went to her appointment. I took a big book - The Lord of the Rings (Pauline convinced me to finally tackle it) - and read for about two hours. Then I went to get my ID card (my sponsor had to be present, so my Dad had to come in to sign a form. I couldn’t just take care of it on my own.) I had my picture taken, and thankfully that one turned out way better than my passport photo yesterday. Egads, that one was bad! The ID card picture is, yet again, pretty funny.
First, a little history: my last ID card had a fantastic picture on it. Not cause it was a flattering likeness, it was because of the shirt I had on at the time that picture was taken. I had on a shirt from the Aardman clay-mation show ‘Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers.” On my shirt was a poster from the show, a police “wanted” poster saying “Have you seen this chicken?” (If you’ve seen the show, you’ll know what that’s for. If not, that’s okay, it was just a wanted poster.) So, with the angle that the picture was taken, there was me on my ID card, with the words “Wanted” emblazoned across the bottom of the picture. I was a wanted woman with access to US military bases. How funny is that?
The new picture I got today doesn’t label me a criminal, it actually makes me look really old. As in, the photo literally looks like an old tin-type photo from the late 1800s/early 1900s. When the ID lady handed me the card I started laughing and said, “I look like I belong on a coin!” I wonder if I’d be breaking any rules if I just scanned the picture part. The picture really doesn’t even look like me, which I think is even funnier.
I also haven’t blogged for a while cause I’ve been rather upset at the world. You know how I try to ignore the news because it upsets me. Well, over the past two days I’ve caught glimpses of things, but it culminated this evening. I got an email from Robert, and he mentioned two girls who were missing and how upsetting it was. I had to know what was going on. I went to CNN.com and saw way too many headlines about way too many different kidnapping cases. But then I thought, I wonder what’s happening in England. Sure enough, BBC.co.uk was covering the disappearance of two little girls. Why has the world all of a sudden gone to pot? All of a sudden out of nowhere kids are being abducted left and right, all of them that I know of have been little girls. Probably abused, most likely murdered. It’s just sickening. The minute I see the pictures of the little girls it feels like I know them. That I’m related to them. That I’ve seen them laugh, cry. Or that they could be one of my columnists that I haven’t heard from in a while. It becomes all too personal and disturbing. Maybe it’s a good thing I get so involved and I haven’t been desensitized, but then again, it hurts me so much that my ulcers act up and that’s just not good for me.
These things keep me up late at night. Anything that involves young children being abused in any way. I end up thinking about these things when I’m lying in bed, trying to sleep. Just the other night this feeling came over me that I wish there was some other way to exist. Some other alternate reality - like (Chinese) Sam said - but you don’t have the worries of society or life in general.
Okay, now that I’ve thought about it, I just want my own little version of heaven; the earth without crap. But, on the other hand, I don’t feel like dying yet. It’s quite a conundrum. I think, basically, I just want my little family and my house in France. That’s what I want. I’m like Linus with my security blanket, the only difference is my security blanket is an 18th century mansion two hours outside Paris that’s surrounded by 60+ acres of land. :)
And now that I’m all depressed cause of these poor children, I’m going to try and distract myself so I can actually sleep. Thankfully I can sleep in tomorrow. Hmm, Pete and Pete or an episode of Daria? I’ve burned my collection so far onto CDs, so my collection can travel. :) Woohoo!
I loath insomnia. I couldn’t get to sleep for ages last night. I was probably awake until five or six AM, just laying in bed, trying to force myself to sleep. Then, when I did finally get to sleep, I kept waking back up. It also didn’t help that I had to wake up at 8 to get ready for church. I had to drag myself out of bed, sleepily pull on sunday clothes, and then attempt to put make-up on. I think I looked like a ghost again cause when I don’t sleep I get even whiter, and I kind of forgot to put on enough blush. Oh well, who cares, right? About looking not-ghostly, I mean. I cared about not sleeping.
Of course, since I was moving so sluggishly, that meant I just barely got finished in time to get to church. Meaning, I didn’t get to eat breakfast. All the way through the first service I was starving, my stomach felt like it stung again, and I felt so icky I couldn’t even sing without getting light-headed. I really need to go back to my stomach-doctor (I’m not awake enough to even attempt to spell the proper technical name for him.) My stomach’s been hurting really bad again, I’ve been getting dizzy, and now my weight’s fluctuate rapidly, which really isn’t good. I hate it when it gets like this cause I can’t diet, exercise won’t make a difference, it’s totally up to what mood my metabolism is in at the moment. Thankfully it’s not a big change, just enough for me to notice it and get annoyed. It’s just aggravating. I do push ups and all I do is bulk up more muscle, which isn’t what I want to do. I do the leg lifts and I end up with French-Ballerina legs, which isn’t what I want either. Alas, I shall never be a size 6 or under. Oh well. (And I really mean that one on topic this time.)
Good news, though! Robert, being a wonderfully nice gentleman, has offered to help program the DP expansion for me without me having to pay him. Isn’t that nice of him? And now I don’t have to face that huge project all by myself. I was really getting worried about it, but now I don’t feel quite so bad.
Well, I do feel bad that I won’t get to work with Fabs, Peter, and Simon, my programming team. But I just can’t afford to pay them. I feel like I’ve disappointed them, which isn’t a great feeling at all. I really wish I had the money to pay them, but it just wasn’t going to happen. I’ve sent them an email to apologize and I hope they take it okay. I think they will, though. They’re nice chaps, and plus, I think they saw it coming.
Tomorrow I have to work on getting the webhosting. I realized something this evening that really made me feel stupid (even more evidence I’m really loopy today.) Web hosting was only going to cost $200 if I signed up for a two year contract. If I only sign up for a year I still get two months free so I’ll only have to spend $107.70. I can afford that since I have a little more than that left from when the fans sent in donations for web hosting about a year ago. That’s covered and I feel better now, except for the fact that I’m still going “duh!”
Even more good news. I have this cousin, Andrew, who lives in the area and works for an airline. (He’s older than I am, as are all of my cousins. He’s in his 30s.) Since he works for an airline, he gets free travel to anywhere that certain airlines fly, and he can take “buddies” with him at a hugely discounted rate. Andrew is planning a trip to London in two weeks. He was planning on just going for a day until I got all excited and blurted out, “I wanna go!” (We had been planning a trip to the French Riviera that never really panned out, and he said he needed a travel buddy, so it’s okay that I blurted that out, inviting myself, and all that normally-considered-rude stuff.) We looked into it and I can go with him to London for $55 one way. How insanely cheap is that? Since I’d be going we’d probably stay overnight there, provided we could find a cheap place to stay. I could get my Lush shampoo, go to my favorite Italian place for lunch, go say hello to Alastair, go to the Ritz for tea, and say Hi to the trees in Green Park. It’d be great, and completely worth the money.
He also kind of wants to go to Paris, and of course, I have no objection to that whatsoever. :-D Also, he’s looking into whether or not they’ll hire someone under 18 so I can get a job their either as a scheduler or a receptionist. The pay wouldn’t be stellar - only about $10 or $11 an hour - but I’d get the same benefits he would from day one, only I’d fly completely for free (only on certain airlines.) I could spend the weekends in Toronto, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, London, Edinburgh, Paris, Rome, Berlin, or New Zealand! Or… or… or… the possibilities are just endless! I’d so be a receptionist if it meant I’d get to travel like that. I hope it works out. Being a scheduler would be more money, but apparently the job’s more stressful. It has to do with making sure crews match up with flights and rearranging things. Ironically enough, though, Andrew called it “a job where you have to juggle time.” You know how I feel about that bolt of satin known as time. :)
I’ve started to burn my digitally recorded episodes of Daria and Pete and Pete onto cds, so I think I might watch a few tonight on my laptop to try and calm down so I can get some sleep. If I were horribly, stinkingly rich - after donating to charity first, or course, and yadda yadda - I’d hire a masseuse to give me a massage at 11:00 at night so I could relax and fall asleep at a more normal hour. That’d work out perfectly. Hey, maybe I should just marry a masseuse. Wait, no, I think that’d be icky. Okay, scratch that, and instead I’ll just marry a guy who’s good a massage but not a professional masseuse. That’d make me feel better.
Where the heck did all that come from? This blog got way off topic, time to end it. :)
I finished recoloring the various sections for the Daily Prophet, but only one of them is online: http://www.dprophet.com/middleearth I think I like the green, but I’m not sure. My laptop monitor has a way of shifting colors ever so slightly so I’m a bit worried the green is really pukier than I can tell. I have to double check it on my other monitor to make sure the greens are okay. Anyway, thoughts anyone? My guestbook’s always open and I need encouraging words. I’m feeling a little weak and puny while facing this huge undertaking. I feel I may be losing steam, but I suppose that’s just silly. I’ll get to it once I convince my parents to help pay for webhosting. :) Then I can learn PHP, feel all accomplished, then get to work on the DP.
I watched ‘Kate & Leopold’ today cause I got to rent it for free at Blockbuster. It was okay, it met my expectations of being a silly, implausible romantic comedy. And it kind of made me want to go back to the 18 hundreds until I realized how awful it would be to wear a corset, have to be a lady at all times, be most likely a member of the dirt poor society, and not have equal rights. But the men would most likely be gentlemen, unless they were part of larger percentenge of chauvinistic people. So, all in all, despite my century’s set backs as far as manners and gentlemanly behavior are concerned, I’d much rather be living in 2002 than 1876.
And speaking of time travel, last night I watched ‘The Time Machine.’ (What is it with movies and their recent obsession with the time space continuum?) Even though that movie was entirely weird, it got me thinking and introduced me to a whole new brand of heebie jeebies. The fabric of time seems so thin, I don’t it’s anything anyone should ever screw around with. I had a long conversation with Chinese Sam and his friend Eric about quantum mechanics when they came over. First off, I was delighted to find out I wasn’t as ignorant about quantum mechanics as I had originally thought, but furthermore I’m convinced that time travel is highly implausible. It would create all manner of impossible loopholes in time, creating multiple versions of ourselves. Or, like Chinese Sam explained, that time travel isn’t really travelling back in time, just finding a hole in the space between alternate realities (not alternate dimensions, that’s another matter entirely, people just get them confused), stepping into another place where one small decision made by one person led to a different version of our reality. For example, let’s go back to a seemingly stupid and insignificant decision I made in January of 2000. I was really bored, couldn’t sleep, and wandered onto the message boards of HarryPotterFans.net. At the time I hate message boards, so imagine if I hadn’t made the decision to go there at all.
Anyway, so, I’m at the message board, browsing around. I see a thread subject header, a simple request for a penpal. Do I ignore it and keep moving, or click on it? I clicked on it. And there was a message from a girl named Julie, talking about how she wanted to talk to someone else who read Harry Potter, liked it, and wanted to talk to someone who liked the villains in the book. I read it, then I had another decision to make; do I write to Julie or not? I did. She and I became friends, two or so weeks later we started the Daily Prophet. It all started with me not being able to sleep and a whole chain of little decisions that led me to a message board.
Imagine I had changed just one of those decisions. How would my life be different right now? Would I have a web site at all? Would I have gone to MIT? Would I have a blog? Would I have met my new friends? My life would be entirely different. Who’s to say it would be worse? Maybe it would be better, maybe I would have conquered the world by now. I’m immensely curious about what I would have done without the DP, but I don’t really want to go messing around with the fabric of space and time. I like to imagine time as a bolt of satin - you put one snag in it and that snag grows and grows, until the entire bolt is just a bunch of loosely tied fuzzy threads. It’s a wrinkled and useless mess. You can’t make anything out of it, its lost its shine, and it is completely useless. So yeah, that’s my big scientific thought for the night; the space time continuum is a bolt of satin. :)
I think there’s a reason I’m not going to MIT. I may think I understand this stuff, but I certainly can’t explain it.
I really feel like I’m on the edge of something big with this new plan for the Daily Prophet. I sent out a notice to the staff of the DP today, explaining the plan in full, and so far I’ve gotten nothing but supportive messages in return. Just this evening alone four staff members have already volunteered to transfer to the Lord of the Rings section. It’s going to be fantastic, I can’t wait to get it done. I just seriously need programmers. I’ve got webhosting covered, I just need to keep working on my parents to convince them to “donate” some money to it. It won’t be cheap, but a friend sent me a link to a great webhoster that’s only $7.77 a month. It won’t work for all of my projects, but it’ll work for the DP. But still, it’s a matter of money. For two years it’ll be $170.94 (if you order service for two years they give you two months free). Not much money comparatively, but still. It’s a chunk of change. If my parents can contribute half I think I can cover the rest. And then the expansion should be set to go, as far as I know. I might have to do some double-checking, but 250mb of webspace should do it.
If you want to know the whole plan you can read the letter I sent out to the staff by going here. I’m going to make a graph of it eventually along with a better explanation, but as of right now I want to get to changing the colors and setting up the basic templates for the sites. :) I’m really psyched about it. The main focus of the site will be the same, it will just expand and flourish a bit more. I think it’ll be fun, provided there are people out there like the ones in my staff who enjoy learning about such things.
Now all I have to do is stare down the mighty tasks of finding good Section Editors and learning PHP and SQL. It’s daunting. Oh how I wish I had my own private programmer who would do this for me, but it looks like it’s down to me. Or, at least some kind of port at the back of my neck so I could just download the appropriate information. That’d make things so much easier. :)
You know what, forget everything I just blogged. I’d delete it, but that would be cowardly. Think whatever you want about me. Let me be labelled an enigma and I will accept it. I am what I am, I won’t make excuses. I don’t care if you think I’m an obsessive fan girl. I have thoughts about you, I have thoughts about many people, and I’m sure - at least, I hope - that mine are as wrong as many people’s assumptions about me.
This isn’t good. I’m in a ranty mood and my brother goes and posts his opinions on Lord of the Rings. Here’s part of what he said: “…I watched Lord of the Rings. This movie was made for fanboys (and girls… Heather). It was long. It was good, but I got a little bored with the ‘Short guys and bearded hunks running from munsters’ that seemed to compose two thirds of the movie. The rest was elves, and Hobbitts and tedious exposition. If it weren’t for the fact that Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen were excellent, and Viggo Mortensen was impressive in an understated role, I would have been disappointed. The scene at the end with Sam and Frodo in the boat made it all worth it. It was touching, and perfectly played. It is a beautiful movie, but man it was long (I’m preempting retorts from my sister).”
I only have two comments. First, I’m not an obsessive fan girl. This may sound silly, but hear me out. Whenever I try to say this in person I’m always cut off by one of my family members saying, “Yeah, whatever, you have a fan site.” It’s not a fan site. In fact, very shortly the DP will change completely. A fan site is where people obsess over something, like which character’s cuter or who they’d rather go out with if they were real. The Daily Prophet’s different. I made it initially not out of some insane urge to become a part of Harry Potter, but because I wanted to learn how to make a website and I needed a topic that would attract visitors. Once I realized the educational potential of the site I kept it going. It wasn’t just educational for the kids I hired and tutored, but for myself. It gave me a forum where I could practice my writing and get honest feedback from readers. That’s all. At times I got seriously into covering news. Look at the times when I did that. I had nothing else to do. It was practice being a good journalist by collecting news, or lay around watching movies. I was sick, I couldn’t walk, most of the time I either had pins in my foot, an IV line in my chest, or a brain infection. I devoted my time to the Daily Prophet because it was the most effective use of the little energy I had left.
And I’m definitely not an obessive LotR fan. I’ve tried reading The Hobbit and I haven’t been able to get into it at all. True, I loved the movie. It was a great movie and I was happy to see the dedication and passion that went into making it. Movies like that always excite me and get me going. Like the Sixth Sense; I got that on DVD almost right away and have seen it probably a dozen times. Does that make me an obsessive fan girl? No. I just appreciate good movies.
So there.
Finally, the movie was long, yeah, but it couldn’t really have been any other way. Everything in that movie was important because it’s such a detailed book. You can’t rush through Tolkien because you’d lose the symbolism. Every time I’ve watched it I’ve gotten something new out of almost every minute of the movie. It had to be that long.
Okay, sorry, like I said, I’m in a ranty mood. And you don’t want to know what I really wanted to rant about. So, thanks to Kevin I had something less disturbing to rant about. And now I’ve finally gotten it off my chest that I’m not a Harry Potter fanatic. I liked the books at a time, I made a webpage, sure. But they were never really my favorite books. (In fact, now that I’ve seen Lord of the Rings and learned more about those books, I’m actually kind of mad at J.K. Rowling.) I love Ender’s Game way more, Blood Ties kicked Potter’s butt, and I probably love The Power of One even more. But I didn’t make sites about those because I had already learned how to build web pages. Now I’m planning on using Ender’s Game to learn more skills like PHP, military strategy and political science, so what? It’s just education and charity. No one can be faulted for that. Books are just doorways for me. I read a book, I get excited about one of its componants, and I use it as a path to further knowledge. That’s all.
Holy crap, there I go again! I’m not angry, I’m just babbling. My feet got nailed to a soapbox and I can’t get down! :) I think I’d better get to sleep before this turns into another humongous blog entry. Good night.
I’ve been out and about just about all day. I was woken up at 11:30 (another late night as of 24 hours ago, I’m afraid) with an invitation to go out to lunch. My mom had this thing to do at Tysons Corner, so we went out to P.F. Chang’s. It was fantastic! I got Mongolian Beef - way better than the stuff I made - and for dessert, we got the Great Wall of Chocolate. It was literally the biggest piece of chocolate cake I have ever seen. I was barely able to eat one layer, and it was six layers tall!! It was huge, and really dense chocolate. Mmmmmmmmm. :)
After that we went on a search for shampoo since I’m sadly almost out of Lush shampoos from England. :( I only have a fourth of the shampoo bottle left, and all the Coolaulin conditioner is completely gone. I’m a sad little shampooer. We went everywhere, even Sally’s Beauty Supply, and we couldn’t find anything that was as chemical-free as the Lush stuff. Lush stuff is to die for, they just need to open a store here before my hair goes through withdrawl. Seriously! It makes that much of a difference. For example, with regular shampoo and conditioner, since my hair is so dang curly, it can take up to twenty minutes to brush my hair out. But with Lush, I’ve timed it and the longest it ever took was four minutes. Straight through, same brush used in the last test, and an average of two minutes brushing time. AND, to top all of that, it takes less hair gel to control the friz so my hair ends up softer, lighter, and more touchable. I’ve never had a bad hair day with Lush. (Tee hee, I sound like a commercial.) I shall miss it until I venture again over the atlantic to the coasts of Great Britain. Or until I can convince my Mom to drive me to Toronto - they have Lush stores just about everywhere in the world, but not in the US. I mean, come on, if they have a Lush store in Slovenia, there should so be one in Washington, DC.
Whoa, that got a lot longer than I meant it to be.
So, shampoo shopping. Checked that off the list; I finally found some stuff that had only 8 chemical ingredients and no ammonia or alcohol in it. (Lush only has two chemicals. So n’yuh.) It smells pretty good, so maybe it’ll hold me over until my next Lush fix. Then we went over to Ross, I got some new clothes cause they were dirt cheap. I got some really swanky Dockers for $3.00. Cool, eh? We then rushed home because my Mom had to do another thing that I can’t talk about in Tysons, this time at the uber-posh Capital Grille - again in upper-echelon Tysons Corner. Since my Dad went out to play golf for some strange reason (he was supposed to go with my mom), I got to go. I threw on my new slacks since the dress code called for business casual, a new green shirt (that I really love since it matches my eyes), and my nifty bracelet. Add a pinch of make-up, some fancy shoes, and baby, ten minutes later, I am “business casual.” :) I wanted to add a pearl choker, but alas, I don’t own one… yet.
The Capital Grille is my new favorite restaurant. I had a $35 porterhouse steak that was to die for. They dry age it for 14 days, letting the meat marinate in its own marrow. Holy crap, it was the best steak I’ve ever had. Probably even the best meal I’ve ever had. And the service was great! If you ever go there, ask for Dana. He was really sweet.
For dessert there my Mom and I shared the strawberry cheesecake which was made with ricotta cheese instead of the regular cream cheese so it was really light and fluffy. Mmmmmm, again! I love this going out to eat for free stuff. I want to go back to the Capital Grille for my birthday (only five months! Eee!), but I highly doubt that will happen. Maybe one day… Tee hee.
Anyway, since the steak was 24 ounces (huge!) I still have well over half of it left. That steak… ooooh… it’s just impossible to get over. On one side of the bone was a filet, the other half a sirloin. Nummies. Or rather, humminah humminah. :)
And now I’m back home, relaxed, no longer “business casual”, and ready for sleep. Thankfully I’m actually tired this time, even though it is almost 3 in the morning. As of last night I didn’t even feel tired enough to sleep until 4:30/5:00. How sad is that?
Anyway, off I go, sleeping before another happy day tomorrow - I have some nice emails to answer (I just couldn’t get to them today. I’ve had like five minutes online all day) and then in the afternoon, some friends are probably coming over to watch ‘Lord of the Rings.’ Fun, fun, fun! :)
Chinese Sam came over today at long last. He convinced his friend Eric to drive, which amazes me. Eric must be one understanding guy. Anyway, I opened the door to find Sam there holding a bunch of white bud roses and a bag from China. I’ve never gotten flowers before. :) That was rather fun. He came inside (and so did Eric, of course), and I went to try on the dress but I was feeling rather weird about modeling it for two teenage boys. I tried it on as quickly as I could and I think it’s just a little tight in one part, but at the time I was thankful for that since it meant I didn’t have to come out in it. :) It’s gorgeous, though. The perfect shade of kick butt red, frogs (the clasps, not actual amphibious frogs) all along the side, slits to just the right height, and it has dragons embroidered on it. :) Tee hee. Now I just need to figure out how to fit into it. It’s too small in an… awkward spot. So, no pictures until I can figure out if it can be adjusted somehow. Sorry.
We ended up watching ‘Galaxy Quest’ for a while until my Dad got home, then we all went out to dinner. Then, we came back home since we hadn’t finished the movie yet. Then, at 7:00, I had to run out to get something before my Dad had to go to a meeting at 7:30. They left, and then off I went to Blockbuster to pick up my reserved copy of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ on DVD. My mom preordered it a while ago as a surp