Lacuna Liliae

Rough Day

2008-08-27T23:46:00.002-05:00

I am my own person. I have a personality that is unique, and is no more influenced by others than anyone else's except in the fact that I am more open minded than many.

Why is this so hard to believe?

First, tonight, I was informed that I am gullible. Impressionable. Easily swayed by the will of others. I have no personality of my own, and I simply absorb the personalities of those around me. This will, inevitably, wind up with me becoming an apprentice to a serial killer, joining a cult, or killing myself when a man breaks up with me.

This was informed to me by my parents.

And then, when I sought validation that this was not the case from my significant other, I was informed that it was a "reasonable concern" on their part. In fact, said significant other in the past has expressed concerns about my lack of my own personality and the fact that I seem to simply become whatever those around me are.

I AM NOT GULLIBLE.

No, I don't have a unique fashion sense, so yes, I wear whatever people around me who I care about the opinion of tell me looks good. Want to know why? Because I DON'T CARE WHAT I LOOK LIKE, as long as I am not revealing too much for my personal comfort, I feel comfortable, and those around me consider me attractive. You know what else? I don't have a favorite color, really. I wear red because people tell me red looks good on me. So I say it's my favorite color because I wear it all the time. In truth, I don't give a shit what color I am wearing unless it is purple. I don't like purple.

So I'm not a fashion horse. I don't care if I express myself through my clothes. So what? I still want to look attractive, naturally, so I wear clothes that other people tell me look good. When I valued my mother's opinion on my appearance the most (read: no friends), I dressed as she wanted me to. When I valued my peers' opinion the most, I dressed as Vivacia wanted me to. Currently, the only person who I want to find me attractive is Ryter. So SURPRISE, I wear what Ryter says looks good. Do I have to have a fashion sense to be my own person?

And yeah, I listen to metal a lot now that I am dating him. I also still listen to country, and pop, and emo. Around him, I listen to metal most of the time because I don't want to subject him to music he doesn't like. I also listen to it on my own. Because he introduced me to metal. The truth is, I like music that has an effect on me. Metal has an effect on me emotionally. The music is emotional. For country and pop, the lyrics make me think, especially with story songs. For emo and some pop, I can't understand the lyrics anyway so I use it as background noise because it's not distracting. Different music serves different functions for me, just because I was introduced by someone in particular doesn't mean I am influenced by them, it means I share their taste in music.

My politics have always been my own. No influence there, at least not recently. Ryter and I disagree on McCain vs. Obama. He doesn't share the importance I put on sex education, science education, available and safe birth control and a reformed healthcare system. When it comes to politics, we have different priorities. I have different priorities from most people in my life.

And yes, I changed my career goal from "doctor" to "ecologist." Part of that was admittedly Ryter, in that I chose to become a doctor when I was convinced that no one would ever love me so it wouldn't matter that I wasn't going to be financially stable enough to have children until my eggs started to churn out clunkers. I have since realized that medicine is probably not the ideal career for me because I actually will be able to have children with a guy I love some day, and I'd like to do it before I am 30. In addition, it was pointed out to me that I don't handle stress well and I don't function well on very little sleep, and I'd like a career where stress on the job means a few weeks of studies get derailed instead of a person dies and then I lose my license because of malpractice.

Also, I hate willfully ignorant people. I'm not talking about people who have no access to education, that's not their fault and I can't hate them for that. I'm talking about people who are presented with evidence and ignore it or disparage it to fit their preconceived notions. I hate Creationists, and anti-vaccinationists, and HIV denialists. I hate anarchists and communists and fascists, and freegans and vegans (well, religious/moral vegans who don't try to pretend it's healthier or more natural are okay). I hate people who believe telling kids about birth control will make them have sex and people who believe kids who don't have sex education don't have sex. I hate people who think America has the best healthcare system in the world when that only applies to people who have good health insurance coverage, and everyone else gets screwed, resulting in our average life expectancy being lower than most developed nations (I will concede that for those with good insurance, it's probably the best you can get). I hate people who refuse to see reason under any circumstances because it contradicts what they want to believe.

This would not work well in medicine. I think I would stab a scapel into the heart of the first person I met who insisted vaccines were wrong while their toddler was in agony with pertussis. Not good for business.

This does not mean Ryter is controlling me. It means that I am learning who I am. Ryter doesn't care if a mother he doesn't know doesn't vaccinate their child. I do. It just happens that much of my self-discovery is coinciding with when I met Ryter.

I have a personality. I am both compassionate and passionate about causes I believe in. I am fiercely loyal to those who are loyal to me and I want to help everyone who cannot help themselves, and some who will not help themselves. I care intensely about the world around me and want to make a difference, and yet I know I am powerless in many ways, which disturbs me. I am silly and goofy at times, and angry at others. I am slow to warm up to people but will share anything once I am warmed up.

I like music that isn't rap, I like clothes that make me look beautiful to the man I love. I like dancing and singing, which I don't indulge in much for others' sake because I am not very good at either. I love to cook and love to see people appreciating food I have prepared for them. I love to learn about the medical world and read about the environment I would not do well in and yet can appreciate on an intellectual level. I like biological sciences and puzzles of biology and learning how the mind works. I like dark humor but not embarrassment humor, and I like good wordplay. I like technology and imagining the world of the future, I like anthropology and the history of human evolution, I like weird, rare languages and uncontacted peoples.

I like the outdoors. I like hiking and swimming and camping and skiing an riding horses on trail rides, but not in a ring. I like animals and plants and interesting fungi and stargazing and the process of forest decomposition and regrowth and encouraging life to grow on a petri dish, in a cage, in a garden, whatever. I like obscure and ugly animals and anything that lives it's life in the dark. I love viruses, as long as I don't have them.

I like to track diseases and find the patient zero and where they got it from, I like to rant about the way things should be versus the way they are versus the way they will be. I like drawing and sculpting and writing and attempting to recreate the images I see in my head for those around me, and for my own future reference. I like learning about religion and myth and why it exists and what it teaches us, and considering what my own beliefs are. And yes, I am a raunchy person and have my own likes and dislikes there too.

I don't like being around people that much, and I need a lot of down time to process everything around me. I don't like when people criticize my beliefs or try to correct me when I am not right or wrong, simply in disagreement. I don't like crowds or mosquitoes or taking pills every day, or unapplied math or sleeping in the heat or any time the air does not move. I don't like being interrupted, cut off, not allowed to finish a thought, not allowed to take a breath in conversation for fear of that being the case, or when people misinterpret my words, which happens often because I have a tendency to use words in a manner which is slightly unlike their normal use and not even realize it. I don't like roller coasters, horror movies, sudden movement in a quiet area or being touched by anyone I am not very comfortable with.

Not one of the above is influenced by Ryter, or anyone else for that matter.

I'm sorry, world, but I don't understand what the problem is. I don't see where I lack personality. I often change what ASPECTS of my personality I present to people, which is something I am actively attempting to change and which action I believe is what is leading people to believe I myself am changing. Well, no, I am not. I am simply showing you the real me instead of the custom-made-for-you me.

I can recognize when a person is attempting to control me and I will cut them out of my life as needed. I usually recognize it when they start to resent positive changes in my life and when they resent efforts on my part to reveal my true self to them. I can't really cut my parents out of my life yet. But I can still limit their exposure to me because they are a negative influence on my life. I know my parents want to control me, consciously or not, for a simple reason: They are resenting the changes in how much of me they see.

So please. Stop telling me that I have no personality of my own. I have one. I have likes and dislikes and values and priorities and they are all mine. I can recognize attempts to control me and circumvent them, except as regards my parents. No one's gonna talk me into smoking a joint, joining a cult, or eating human flesh and the fact that I have almost no friends outside Ryter has nothing to do with Ryter and everything to do with the fact that I am too shy to make friends or maintain a large social circle. I have almost always had one friend and built all other friendships off that, and right now, it's Ryter. Is it ideal? No. But it will not change any faster if I am living on or off campus, if I spend more or less time with him, or anything else. The only way that will change is if I can convince myself I care enough to change it. I don't care enough about it right now, I'm more concerned with school and my health and doing things I enjoy to change something which, while annoying, is not impacting my life except as a nagging "probably should get around to that" thought in the back of my head.

And if I am talking and talking and don't make sense, please, for the love of all that is good in this world, BE PATIENT. I have a point. But I don't think in words and phrases and I am trying to make connections between my brain and my mouth and convey how I am thinking, but if you interrupt me, you break my train of thought and then I can't finish it. I do have a point, I will get to it, but I do not have the communication skills needed to do so quickly. Please, just... be understanding.

Needs me some moolah

2008-06-27T11:12:00.002-05:00

The trouble with jobhunting is that I should have been doing it months ago.

Right now, there's plenty of jobs. BUT. None of them want to train me for a couple months then have me go back to school. All the summer positions-- amusement parks, ice cream stands, etc-- were filled back in April or earlier. Last year I lucked out with the Discovery Channel position, because they needed immediate help short term with their going out of business sales. This year I'm thinking about donating my body to science (more on that later).

I mean, there's a few summer positions. I could work at Vector Marketing selling crappy overpriced knives to people who don't want them. I could go door to door for global warming again (long story). Or I could work for an elderly gentleman doing household construction, except I can't lift 85 lb bags of cement, and the guy on the phone clearly didn't believe that I'm good at carpentry and landscaping (I am, being female doesn't mean I can't use tools and I do it around the house all the time).

But they all suck or won't take me. So I am left with two ways to make money: help my mother with chores around the house, which I will do-- I can mow the lawn or repaint the back porch easily, plus she won't be able to cook or clean once she gets her hip replacement on July 8th. Or volunteer for scientific studies.

Thus far I've found a couple promising studies. There's one where they'll put me under anesthesia (a common one, widely used already, not an experimental one) and study my brain in an MRI machine for $200 plus transportation costs. Then there's one where they'll make me keep a strict sleep schedule for 2 weeks, then have me come in and keep me awake for 24 hours then give me an FDA approved sleep medication to see if it works under those conditions. That'll be a bit trickier but it has the advantage of paying $725.

Then there's the one that looked really promising at first but I decided it wasn't worth it. They're testing an HIV vaccine, not to see if it works, just to see if there are any side effects. The only catch is that the vaccine, while it can't give me AIDS, WOULD give me the antibodies against HIV which are the most common thing doctors and blood banks use to see if you have HIV. So any time I was tested I would come up as HIV positive, unless they used special alternative tests.

Not so much.

Ah well. I want to do a sleep study where you go in for two weeks and live in the hospital getting studied and they give you like $2000 but I can't find any right now, and I would only do it if they let me talk to Ryter on a regular basis. That would be awesome, in two weeks I would make as much as I would normally make in a whole summer. We'll see, and I'll keep looking. In the meantime, the only thing jobhunting is hurting is my parent's wallet (they've agreed to give me gas money for jobhunting, and they pay the phone bill). And if anyone asks me why I didn't work this summer, well, my dear mother had to get a hip replacement, see, and I WOULD have worked, but I just HAD to take care of her in her time of need...

Yeah, that's the ticket.

And more....

2008-06-23T14:31:00.000-05:00

Ryter's not online and not answering his phone or cellphone, and it' pouring outside so I can't go anywhere. So I guess I can't do anything but write more.

Part of the problem I have is I feel like everyone is really judgemental of my relationship with Ryter. Like, my family like him, btu they don't seem to like that I am dating him, or at least they didn't like it at one point. And Vivacia and that group don't even seem to LIKE him. So I feel like any time I complain about some minor problem we're experiencing, they're going to chalk it up as another strike against him. I want them to like him, and like us and want us to be together. That's what I want and what makes me happy-- to be with him. But they seem more concerned about stupid little details than if I'm happy.

Like my dad, who seems to take offense to the fact that Ryter is still being supported by his dad. Despite the fact that Ryter and his dad have a very different relationship than Daddy has with any of us, and Ryter's dad decided a while ago that Ryter should get a chance to just write for a year after school, to get a shot at doing what he loves for profit. Basically, Ryter's dad deciding to support him for a year and let him work as a writer is the EXACT SAME THING as Daddy trying to get Shrewd to go to grad school and offering to support her through it so she could get a shot at her dreams. The only difference is Daddy only supports dreams that he approves of, like getting Shrewd a master's in math so she can teach, and not getting her a master's in history like she wants. Ryter's dad wouldn't support Ryter if becoming a writer was a hopeless long shot but it's NOT, Ryter's work is better than most of the stuff you can find in Barnes' and Nobles and he's very dedicated to it. Ryter's dad has simply decided that Ryter can pursue his own dreams, instead of what his parents want for him. Daddy could learn from that, but he won't.

And my mom, who, lacking anything else to complain about, has decided she doesn't like that Ryter has health problems. Like that he needs medication to sleep and he has bipolar disorder and anxiety issues. Because she's concerned that that would mean our children would be unhealthy. Of course, by that logic, she should be sabotaging any chance of romance that Shrewd ever has, because Shrewd's got a few health issues that can be passed genetically. Or even my own, because hey, I have unipolar depression and knee problems and a tendency towards obesity and a 50% chance that a kid of mine will have polycystic ovarian syndrome and will be infertile. For some reason she (and my grandmother too) seem to think that I should be choosing a guy based on their health. What they don't understand is that a) Ryter is far more emotionally stable than EITHER of them, my dad, my sister, OR me, despite his diagnoses; b) I can't sleep without meds half the time too; c) He is managing his health issues and mental issues and handles anything new as it comes up, so there won't be any nasty surprises; d) My daughters will have unipolar depression no matter WHAT because all the women in my family have it and I'd much rather raise them with a guy like Ryter who is supportive of mental healthcare, knows what warning signs to look for, and would help a kid get help early enough so that my children can be as stable and successful as him instead of emotional wrecks like my mom.

One of the reasons I left my last therapist was at one point I was really stressed out. Ryter was really sick and upset and needed me a great deal and I got kind of scared, I had this panic moment where I thought I needed to get out of the relationship. I get these all the time when I am with people, they are a problem with ME and not with the people I am with. It's because I can't trust people very easily, and this was before I was as close with Ryter as I am now. Anyway, I expressed both this "excape" feeling and that I also was feeling like I couldn't leave him because he needed me too much to my therapist and her immediate reaction was "get out now." She didn't try to figure out WHY I might be having this reaction, or have me talk to him or anything, she jsut told me to get out. I am SO glad I ignored that advice.

Ryter is a great guy. I know what issues my friends deal with with their S/Os and I have none of them. When I am upset, Ryter has NEVER brushed me off. He's always right there for me. When I need comfort, he's quick to provide. He gies me advice when I need it and doesn't when I don't; he rarely talks down to me and when he does, he realizes it and apologizes. He respects me, loves me, and treats me like I want to be treated. He's never hit me or verbally abused me; even if he says something as a joke he's quick to apologize after if he thinks it upset me. I look at the relationships my friends have had and I think, wow, I have it made. And yet my family and friends all seem to focus on whatever negatives they can find. He's too "metal" looking, he listens to the wrong kind of music, he needs to shave, he calls me too often and shouldn't need to talk to me every day (All of which are positives in my eyes. I love his beard and his music and his clothes and talking to him every evening). He needs to become independent of his dad, he has health problems (neither of which are hard to deal with and both of which he is working on, and the mental health issues are minor compared to your average American's issues). Once, just once, I want someone to meet him and see us together and say, wow, he seems like such a great guy, you guys are so cute together, I hope you last forever. But the only people who say that are his friends and family, never mine. And they wonder why I am drifting away from them.

I found the guy who is perfect for me. We work well together, we complement each other. We have a wonderful relationship, despite the ups and downs around us, and we're both so committed to making it work that I think we can weather anything. I will NEVER find a better guy for me than him. Such a guy simply does not exist, or if he does he's probably dating some movie star or millionaire's daughter. I love him and he loves me. Do we have issues? Sure. But I'd rather have our issues than anyone else's.

And all of this I could handle except for one thing-- the lack of approval from my family and friends is putting a strain on our relationship. It bothers both of us that I can't get anyone's approval and what's more, it bothers Ryter that I won't stand up to my parents and that I feel like I need their approval at all. But is it too much to ask that my family likes my boyfriend? Is it too much to ask that they want me to be with someone simply because it makes ME happy, not because he's someone THEY pictured me with?

And now I am put in an unfortunate position, because there is something they do not seem to understand-- if they force me to chose, I will chose him. I want them to care about me, and about him, and I want to stay close to them. But if I have to chose between my family and Ryter, Ryter comes first. I will sever all ties to them if that's what it takes to be with Ryter. But I really, really don't want to have to do that.

Hello again.

2008-06-23T13:10:00.000-05:00

The trouble with relationships, at least real relationships, is that when one person gets upset, the other person gets upset.

Ryter's been having a rough time lately. His dad's worried about his job, plus he's remarrying so that's more expenses, and the fact that Ryter is still dependent is becoming a problem. This means Ryter needs to get a "real" job, ie, he needs to get a counseling job that will pay his bills. He won't be independent for a little while, but it will help out his dad. Unfortunately, this is coinciding with Ryter's own need to first of all finish the piece he's currently working on, which is very personal and very important to his understanding of both writing and of himself, and which is also something that is amazingly good and very marketable, so it's something he could make money off of. He's trying to finish it and write up his resume at the same time.

Meanwhile he's only recently (month or so ago) moved to his new place in Portsmouth, which is a great place but has a few issues (fridge randomly freezes things, bathroom drain doesn't work, toilet won't flush quite right, kitchen sink sprays you-- minor things; plus Loquelo still has a lot of Nonaestima's stuff, including her kitchen table). And his new roommate Nonaestima has just gotten back from Italy like... a week or so ago, and she recently had surgery so she can't lift anything heavy or stand very long so he's pretty much on his own dealing with the household issues AND helping her out.

Then to make matters worse, he's been trying to help me out. Because at this point I don't have any confidantes but him. I have a new therapist I'm just getting to know, since the old one wasn't working out. The psychiatric nurse is handling my meds and she's fine, but the therapist I'm not sure about yet, I've had a few red flags from her. Meanwhile I can't talk to or confide in my family. My mom can't handle my stress right now. She's getting her hip replaced (bone necrosis) on July 8th and I know she's scared and stressed out but she won't talk about it. Shrewd, meanwhile, has no job for the summer, no income, a potentially increasing rent on the house she's sharing with a couple people and has been forced to cut back on luxuries like food.

And I haven't heard from Vivacia in forever, and she's never really wanted to hear about my problems anyway. Especially not my problems of late. And Libentra and I were getting closer but we're not near confidante level and I don't really talk to her in the summer anyway.

So it's Ryter. He and his friends have become my sole social circle, and he has become the person I come to when I am hurt or sad or upset. Except that sometimes I am hurt or sad or upset about something with us or with him-- and then I keep it inside, or at least I did, until this weekend when I exploded disastrously and made his life a million times worse.

And he told me, trying to comfort me as I worried aloud about how he didn't need this right now, how he LIKED doing this, how this was what he wanted to do for a living, and don't worry, it was okay to confide in him and it might make him feel better. Except it didn't make him feel better to help me because my problems were with him.

They weren't BIG problems. They were minor complaints, blips in our relationship. But he's already stressed out and depressed and moody and to be told that even a small part of my recent misery was due to his actions was not good.

I want to support him. I want to be there for him. I want to be able to put him first, which I think is what he wants, he wants it to be all about him for just a little while instead of always being about me or Loquelo or Nonaestima. But he won't confide in me because he's worried about making my situation worse. And he doesn't want comfort or support, he wants to be left alone to write. So what can I do but leave him alone? But if I leave him alone, he worries about me and that's no good either.

I should be there. I should be living with him this summer, working in Portsmouth where there actually are jobs instead of here where I can't find employment at all and I'm trapped in my house. That way he could write and not worry about entertaining me, because I would be living there and should be able to entertain myself. That way I could help him with the rent once I had a job and I could help with Nonaestima's recovery and their household issues. And I wouldn't be paying $20 in gas each time I go to see him; instead I could visit my family once a month or so, if that. I have little desire to spend time with my family right now, as much as I know they need my help with Mummy getting the surgery.

I should be going to his gym that's within walking distance instead of forgetting to go to the one here that's a 20 minute drive. I should be there for him without him having to ask for me or adhere to my schedule of weekends with him, weekdays spent futilely jobhunting or doing odd jobs for cash.

But I can't stand up to my parents, so instead I am stuck here at home, and Ryter is miserable, I am miserable, and I don't know what to do about it.

Summer sucks.

Minor Rant

2008-04-02T13:44:00.001-05:00

Health Services keeps increasing the price of my birth control.

It's not like it's their fault. The government used to provide incentives for pharmaceutical companies to provide discounts for birth control for young women. This has been taken away under the Bush administration. This means that my birth control, which used to be $35 a month, is now $45 a month after the second price hike. And it's only going to get worse, because my kind of BC doesn't have a generic form they can give me.

It's so illogical. The reasoning for the removal of the legislation that supported price cuts for college students was to reduce the deficit, focusing on Medicaid. However, the change in the law means that pharmaceutical companies that offer these discounts are charged more to participate in Medicaid. Basically, to pay for a poorly conceived, underfunded program, they're gouging college students on their birth control prices.

Not to mention the whole fact that the cost to Medicaid for a new child being born to a parent who couldn't afford birth control is gonna be a hell of a lot higher than the amount they are getting from the pharmaceutical companies since the law went into effect.

My mom's still paying for my BC since I am unemployed and a student, but when I graduate, I'm going to have to budget $50 a month just for that out of my meager entry-level salaries. I have no idea how I am going to afford that, frankly, especially if it increases even more. I could switch BC methods but hormonal methods are the most reliable and I can't take the Pill, which has a generic, because I would forget (I have the Ring right now).

Hopefully the government will change their mind, but I doubt it. Long-term cost/benefit analysis and the government don't tend to mix.

Random

2008-04-01T20:33:00.000-05:00

Created by OnePlusYou

!!!

2008-04-01T07:46:00.001-05:00

I'm engaged to Ryter!

Sorry, sorry, sorry...

2008-03-25T22:45:00.001-05:00

I know, I have been horribly lax in postings lately. I had an Organic test, I've been suffering from severe insomnia especially over break, and this week I have three exams, in Genetics, Organic lab, and Calculus. Insomnia and sleep deprivation + cramming = BAD. I got a 50% on the Organic test, yikes.

And the psychiatric nurse will see me to manage medication, but I will have to see another counselor for therapy. Still need to make that appointment, but at least I am on meds and stable for now.

More later this week, after the last of the tests. I think Genetics, which was today, was OK but I have Calc coming up and this one will pretty much decide if I have a chance in hell of passing that class...

There is always one person on the Dover bus that is about 50 years old and sketchy as hell

2008-03-06T22:32:00.001-05:00

Good news. I got an appointment, not with a psychiatrist, but with a psychiatric nurse, for March 14 (about a month sooner than expected). I know nothing about her except what the internet can tell me, which is that she can prescribe medication, but also provide therapy, that she works with people who have depression and anxiety, and that she does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which Ryter has suggested would be good for me.

If this works out, I won't need to have a psychiatrist separately, which would be good because the only one I could find that I thought I would be comfortable with (I am incredibly sexist about these things) won't take any patient under age 21. Now, I get not taking kids if you don't really feel qualified to work with them, but 21 seems arbitrary. 18 would eliminate parental controls/high school and 25 would be more likely to mean the individual acts like an adult... but anyway.

If it doesn't, I'll have to find another psychiatrist, and I'll probably try to get an appointment with this one therapist whose office is within walking distance of my dorm. That would be awesome, no hour commute. She also does CBS and deals with depression and anxiety, but she can't do meds, so she wouldn't be able to manage my care fully. She might be affiliated with a psychiatrist, however.

I have a few other prospects, all carefully plotted on my Google Maps that outlines the bus stops. However, alas, this first appointment is on a Friday... at 8:00. Like in the morning. With a fifteen minute bus ride to drop me off at 7:15 and pick me up at 9:45.

So yeah. 6 AM wakeup, that'll be fun. Hopefully future appointments can be at more reasonable hours, and hopefully I can arrange to have my car on campus for Friday, because I really, really don't want to be on the bus that early before classes start...

My jewelry may be tacky but at least I don't have VD

2008-03-06T21:30:00.004-05:00

So I'm sitting in class, listening to our teacher drone on about esterification, and I raise my hands up to fix the little clips on the back of my head holding my hair up, when I hear the sorority sisters behind me talking, clearly not thinking I can hear.

"Huh, you know, mood rings can be cool sometimes, but you know, not ones that tacky..." I am wearing a mood ring, on the hand that is behind my head in their line of vision, a rather large one I got for $2 in Portsmouth that I am rather fond of.

"Yeah, aren't mood rings, like, don't they not do anything? Like they don't predict your mood or anything."

"No, they like, react to temperature or something. They're not real."

"Huh..."

Meanwhile I am debating the urge to turn around and say, "I can HEAR you!" I mean, come on, are we in high school? Who sits there and describes someone else's jewelry (or clothes, or hairstyle, or whatever) as tacky when that person is sitting about a foot in front of them? At least wait until I'm out of earshot before you start critiquing my fashion choices.

Besides, I'm sitting in an Organic Chemistry class, implying I do have some knowledge of chemistry. Did they really think I believe that my ring responds to my mood? I like mood rings because they're cheap, they're fun to look at, and they demonstrate a cool chemical/physical property. Plus, I like having a large colored ring on my pointer finger of my right hand, because I watched too many cartoons as a kid and now I like imagining that I can summon the power of water or fire, and maybe Captain Planet if I got a group together.

Okay, that's a little lame. But whatever. My point stands, Captain Planet and all.

...

Let our powers combine!
Earth!
Fire!
Wind!
Water!
Heart!
By your powers combined, I AM CAPTAIN PLANET!

Memes

2008-03-02T01:16:00.001-05:00

Meme: Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.

1. I chew Trident gum almost constantly. It's a nervous habit, it keeps my teeth clean, and it freshens my breath-- but it also aggravates my TMJ. My oral surgeon keeps telling me to stop, but oh well. Vivacia says Trident gum reminds her of me.

2. When I am stressed out, I write lists. I've done this since I was a kid. I list religions of the world by their adherents, countries by population, languages by countries that use it as an official language, different medical professions, different crimes by severity, etc. I used to list breeds of domestic animals when I was a kid, and that's how I mastered handwriting.

3. I crack my knuckles all the time. And my shoulders, and my back. When I stretch I sound like Rice Krispies.

4. When I was a kid I held a pen incorrectly, resting it on my ring finger instead of my middle finger. I later forced myself to switch. As a result I have two writer's calluses, one on the ring finger and one on the middle finger.

5. When I eat "finger foods," like goldfish, dry Cheerios, or grapes, I prefer to take tiny bites of them, eating them very slowly and one at a time.

6. My customary hairstyle, that I wear nearly every day, is twisting my hair back and securing it with a chopstick, pen, or specially-designed hair stick.

I'm not going to tag anyone, unless they want to be tagged.

Conclusion-- I think

2008-03-02T00:42:00.002-05:00

First of all, I'm on medication again, and I will be seeing a doctor back in Londonderry every two weeks until I can make an appointment with a psychiatrist. It's not ideal, but I don't have to see my creepy pediatrician doctor (I'm seeing one of the RNPs instead) and at least this means I can get my life/grades back on track in the meantime.

I also didn't go to class Thursday or Friday-- Friday because of the doctor's appointment, and Thursday because Wednesday night I had a bit of a breakdown and cried for several hours, and Ryter had to come get me and made me spend the night at his place so he could keep an eye on me and keep me company.

I feel bad for Ryter-- he's been trying so hard to help keep me stable and get me back on track, and meanwhile he's been having issues of his own, most recently the fact that his dentist crowned the wrong tooth, so he's going to have to deal with either forcing the dentist's office to make all the repairs free of charge as well as not charging him for the original crown, or else initiating a malpractice lawsuit. And he's been feeling like he shouldn't be complaining to me, despite the fact that I've told him it's okay, since I'm complaining to him. But he's been incredibly supportive and sweet, even if he was displeased that I asked for help from my mom rather than trying to pull through and do what was needed on my own.

I guess I should have, but I honestly didn't know what to do. The problem I have is that unlike Ryter, I never lived away from my parents until college, so my mom tended to just take care of all my medical stuff for me. Now I can make most appointments, but when I run up against a system I really don't understand, when I genuinely don't know what to do, I call her, and she can usually figure out something. Like in this case, having me go to a normal doctor's office not connected to the school, so they wouldn't just send me to the Mental Health Services people and make me wait. There's no way in hell I would have thought of that, because I didn't know that non-psychiatric doctors prescribed antidepressants. And next time I can do it on my own (if there is a next time, which I doubt).

It will take me a while before I can be fully independent. I expect to call my mom the first time I want to plan an elaborate Christmas dinner for my family and have it all ready at the same time, or if I'm the victim of fraud, because I've never experienced those kinds of things before. I mean, Ryter had to call his dad over the whole malpractice thing, partially due to the fact it's his insurance, of course, but also because it's just hard to know what to do in a situation you have never experienced before.

Next week, I'll call the psychiatrist in Dover and try to make an appointment, and also start calling around and trying to find a new therapist. There's one that is right next to campus and a very quick walk, plus she does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy which I am told might work well on me. If she's taking new clients that would be perfect. If not, I think my next option will probably be seeing one of the therapists who works in the same facility as the psychiatrist.

I have a plan. Plans are good.

On the plus side, Ryter bought me candy!

2008-02-26T23:07:00.000-05:00

So today I got a call from my therapist telling me that apparently last week she was on vacation, so I was supposed to come in this week, and oh yeah, if I tried to cancel because I had already made plans, she was going to bill me for $70. Despite the fact that if she had called me with sufficient time for me to actually make the cancellation, I would have done so on the grounds that I haven't been to the gym since last week and at this point I honestly think working out and getting some endorphins flowing would do me more good than going to see her.

So I went in, and I explained that I was going to look for someone else, and we decided to have me continue to see her until I line up a new therapist, because right now I shouldn't really go without someone to talk to.

I got back to campus and went to make an appointment with the school's psychiatrist, but I was informed that in order to see him, I would have to see the school's therapists for a few weeks. Now, I know that they do this in part to prevent people from visiting multiple doctors and abusing meds, but considering that they won't let me get long-term therapy on campus, and I immediately burst into tears, which should have indicated that maybe there was an actual problem, you'd think they'd have some sort of emergency contingency plan or something.

So I asked my mom to help me get a list of psychiatrists and therapists in the area from my insurance company (I can NOT deal with that right now) but she said it would probably be a month or so before any of the psychiatrists could see me.

Now, to vent.

Psychiatric medicine has the WORST system. I mean, basically this means that someone in my situation has two choices-- be miserable and have their life slowly fall apart over the month or so before a psychiatrist meets with them, or get emergency care, which isn't really a choice, because it would entail self-harm of some sort. This is setting people up for a fall. I am logical and composed enough to know that hurting myself, even if I only did it to try to get some much-needed care, would ruin my life-- I'm still dealing with the aftermath of last time (and I feel no real desire to hurt myself). But five years ago, before I knew what I know now? And what about people who are a lot less rational than I am? These doctors seem to think that unless someone is causing themselves harm, it's not an emergency situation and they can wait as long as need be. Well, sure, I don't need help as much as someone who has attempted suicide. But it's like in ER medicine. A person who attempted suicide is about like that guy who gets hit by a car and has a collapsed lung. A person who just cuts themselves, that's more like someone who's really sick and puking everywhere. They still need emergency care, but they can wait until after the hit-by-a-car guy. I'm sort of in the "broken arm" category. I'm certainly in a more serious position than the person who's coming in to tell the doctor that their medication is working fine, thanks, no, everything's okay.

I don't know how they could do it, exactly, but there really needs to be a system so that people in my situation, who are incapable of functioning but aren't actually hurting themselves, can get in to see a psychiatrist within a week at least. If I want to talk to my doctor about a birth control checkup I can get in within two days, but when my mental state is so fragile I burst into tears at the thought of listening to automated voice messages from my insurance company, I have to wait a month. It's completely unreasonable.

Ah. Complaining about things makes me feel a lot better...

I should really be doing Genetics right now.

2008-02-24T20:25:00.001-05:00

The trouble with being depressed is I have an instinctual need to hide it. When I was younger, I used to practically brag about it, using it to get attention, which helped me feel less alone and uncared for. However, sometime when I was in high school I began to understand good attention vs. bad attention, and that, combined with stern cautioning from my parents and my guidance counselor that colleges and employers will avoid depressed people like the plague, made me force myself to learn how to hide it from people I didn't really, really trust.

Of course, this was impossible sometimes. I remember one of my high school history teachers (sucky teacher, nice woman) confronting me because I seemed "sad all the time, and unusually quiet." My 9th grade science teacher picked up on the fact that at the time I was scratching my arms with keys (my mother had removed all sharper objects than that from my room) and burning the hair on them with matches or candles. I had a bunch of teachers talk to me about low performance or falling asleep in class. They didn't send me to the guidance office or anything, they just talked to me and tried to figure out what was going on, and then once they figured out I was already in therapy, suggested that I talk to my therapist about it (to which I replied that I was already doing so) and did their best to keep me on top of my schoolwork despite my total apathy on the subject.

Then last year, I was forced to reveal that I was very depressed to my roommates, because I was bursting into tears in front of them. See, the way I handle stress and depression has been evolving since I was a kid; when I was little, I took it out on my family members, usually my brother and sister. This, while very effective at making me feel better, was obviously not a good thing to be doing, so it slowly morphed into abusing my siblings less and myself more. This was better than pummeling my siblings, but still not a good system, so it seems to have evolved again, this time into crying. A lot. At everything. And sometimes at nothing. While I'd like to deal with it a bit more productively, at least crying doesn't really hurt anybody, so I'm okay with crying.

Anyway, my problem now is that I really don't want to face the fact that I'm depressed, and yeah, I think I need medication again (I will make a doctor's appointment sometime this week). More significantly, I don't want to deal with explaining it to Cellamica. Two results: first of all, Ryter's been getting 95% of my crazy lately, specifically the bursting into tears at the slightest provocation, which sucks because he's not in the best emotional state right now either. Second of all, I am suppressing and faking my emotions around everyone else, trying to seem at least calm and collected, even if I can't pull off cheerful.

I really, really hate it. Plus I have trouble because someone will say something to me, and I have to scramble for a response and often pause for too long before answering, because I'm not actually capable of thinking about things lately. I don't talk much unless prompted and then my replies are slow and sometimes don't really make sense in the context of the question. Meanwhile there's a fight in my head as I'm struggling to bring my consciousness to the here and now long enough to answer a simple question.

There are few things I hate worse than being stuck in my own head, and I am. I'm forcing myself to seem normal, but inside I feel like I'm trapped in a fog. I feel absolutely miserable.

And you KNOW this isn't helping my mood.

2008-02-20T14:26:00.001-05:00

I failed a Calculus test today. I know I did. I studied all last night and afternoon, and I got in, and it was like I had never seen anything before. The questions were ten times harder than any sample problem we had done in class. I felt like I'd wandered into the wrong math test.

The biggest problem with my lack of understanding is I don't actually understand what it is I'm not understanding. So I can't ask for help, since professors won't accept "I have no idea what I'm doing wrong," they want you to have actual questions when you go to them. I don't have questions because I don't understand anything, I basically need someone to sit with me and walk me through everything we have learned until I can actually figure out what the hell I'm doing wrong, then explain to me how I can do it right, and give me practice problems and make sure I am doing them right as I go.

I also need someone to explain to me how it is that I am walking into a test feeling completely prepared, like I really know the material, and then realizing that I actually haven't a clue.

I only ever had one math teacher who was willing to actually give me what I needed to stay on track in her class, and she was my high school algebra and algebra II teacher. Only good math teacher I ever had. That's what I need for Calculus, but unfortunately, my high school math teacher devoted several hours a day before and after school when I was in trouble, and also was just really good at explaining things so I could understand them. I really really doubt my Calc professor's going to want to do that, and besides, he's got a really heavy Chinese accent and I can't always understand him.

Meanwhile I managed to get a C- on a Genetics test, one I actually thought I was going to do WELL on, because I studied on my own and with Libentra and I understood all the concepts we went over. And Organic, naturally, is still a disaster; my highest quiz grade was a 60% and the other two have been in the 30% range.

I am completely incompetent and idiotic. I'm gonna wind up kicked out of the Honors program, and I'll have to take these classes again, and I'll probably fail them again. I can't ask for help because I don't actually know what to ask, and they aren't going to accept "I just don't get it." And no matter how much I study, how confident I am, I still walk into exams and don't understand anything. It's not that I brainfreeze, it's not that I don't study, it's not even that I don't attend classes. I just don't GET... something. I don't even know what I don't get.

I think there's a Math Center that may be able to help with the Calculus, but I don't know what to do about the Organic. I really need a tutor, but the school doesn't really offer them for that level. Maybe my professor can tell me where to go.

Grr

2008-02-19T13:09:00.000-05:00

So I, still feeling very depressed and all, went to go see my therapist today, hoping I would get a chance to talk about this and maybe find out what I should do. I rode the bus in, I waited 40 minutes like usual, then I waited an additional 15 minutes, wondering where the heck she was. Finally I asked one of the other people who works in her office where she was, and he said he hadn't seen her all day.

No note, no call, nothing. And it's not like I can just drive back to campus, I was left with the choices of waiting around like an idiot for another hour and a half for the bus to arrive, or calling Ryter AGAIN to come pick me up (last time I had a therapy appointment I missed the bus afterwards, since they changed the schedule slightly over break). She just canceled with no warning, which is a) incredible unprofessional and b) really not fair to me, since I can't easily get to and from the office.

Plus I'm still depressed, and knowing that my therapist doesn't even care enough to give me a two-second phone call to say "hey, sorry, I can't come in today" isn't really helpful.

I'm stopping therapy with her. Like, as soon as is practical. Most people seem to be of the opinion that at this point I don't really need therapy anyway. Ryter put it, "You don't need a therapist, you need a friend." Unfortunately, "friend" is harder to look up in a directory.

On the plus side, I finally did my laundry after two and a half weeks....

2008-02-18T22:08:00.003-05:00

I think I'm depressed.

I'm retreating into myself, constantly berating myself over my appearance, my actions, or my intelligence. I am struggling in Orgo, which isn't helping. I need to memorize chemical equations but I got behind and now I need to catch up. I got a 28% on the last quiz.

Of course it didn't help that I was a real idiot last weekend. See, Thursday was Valentine's Day, and I agreed to spend Thursday night with Ryter so we could have a really good Valentine's Day. I decided I really didn't want to lie to my professor and take a make up quiz, so instead, I studied for an hour before, went in for the quiz, and then went back to Ryter's. So I didn't get enough studying in and as a result, spectacular fail. It was dumb and I knew it was dumb and I did it anyway because I wanted to spend time with Ryter, and while I enjoyed that time, it was still a bad decision.

And I wound up staying there the whole weekend, because I had originally intended to go back Saturday night and study Sunday like usual, but Ryter's dad invited us out to sushi, and turning that down would be sacrilege. In retrospect I should have gone back Saturday and had him pick me up to go for sushi but my judgment seems to be impaired. Luckily I don't think that was too bad a problem.

The trouble is that I want to seek out my friends, who I feel like I haven't seen much of, and hang out with them; I want to go do things and hopefully have that help pull me out of my funk. But I'm so withdrawn right now that I don't do anything unless someone asks me; I can't seek people out or plan things on my own. Ryter invites me to come see him all the time; sometimes Cellamica invites me to dinner or Libentra asks me to grab lunch with her. But I really want to spend time with Vivacia, and with Mack, who's at UNH now (he finally transferred, and even got on-campus housing), and Closer, too. I want to be out there and doing things with them, because I feel like I'm losing or have lost them and I really don't want that, especially not with Vivacia. I bought her a little potted rose bush for Valentine's Day and left it at her door (she was out), but I think it might have upset her, because I forgot to leave a name (dumb) and she was concerned it was a creepy stalker or something, and then had to explain to her residents that no, she did not have a secret admirer who was going to make Closer jealous.

And I can't even reach out to her, or to anyone really, so I'm just kind of hoping she'll call me or IM me or something. I hate this state I get into. I'm perfectly amicable and normal when I'm with people (except Ryter, he's been getting dumped on a bit more than is fair lately), it's not like I'm being emo all the time, but at the same time, I can't seek it out, it has to come to me, and as a result I spend most of my time daydreaming and staring off into space or quietly sitting here and thinking about how stupid and useless I am.

Meanwhile my joints are hurting constantly, especially my bad knee, and I joined a gym which is showing me just how terribly out of shape I am plus isn't helping with the joint pain (it's not serious pain and I know when to stop, so it's not like I'm going to hurt myself).

I'm not at the level, yet, of needing medication again because I can still pay attention in class (even if I don't study enough) and I'm not doing anything that will really hurt me; I'm trying extra hard to take care of myself, in fact, because I'm hoping that if I get healthier I'll have a little more energy and get out of this. But still, it's kind of sucky. I need to push past it, but I feel like I'm Sisyphus right now.

Wish me well...

Yet another one...

2008-02-10T00:32:00.000-05:00

Last night I had another story dream.

A young woman in a wealthy society had two lovers, one who looked like George Clooney and one who looked like Adrien Grenier, and she was secretly dating/sleeping with them both. She was invited to a weekend event held at an old mansion converted into a summer resort, and all her friends and some of her family was there-- and unfortunately, the two lovers were both invited.

She was remarkably sneaky in managing to keep her two secrets separate from both each other and the rest of the group, which pleased her no end. One afternoon she told the older lover that she would meet him in his room, and she went outside to get a breath of fresh air and so that her sister would think she was gone to walk in the garden. However, as she turned to reenter the house, there was a massive explosion-- someone had planted a bomb in the house, and she watched it explode right in the area of the house where she knew her younger lover to be. As people fled the area, headed for the lake or their cars, a second explosion went off-- this time closer to where she knew the older man she had planned to meet was.

Flash forward several months, and she's visiting a hospital. She goes to see her older lover, who is recovering well but severely disfigured; she then goes to see the younger one-- who is severely brain damaged and missing his legs, and sits on the floor of a padded room drawing in crayon. She has realized that of the two lovers, she was truly in love with the younger-- but because she had tried to have both at once, neither would ever be whole.

She left the hospital and met with an old man who told her he had a solution-- that he could send her back in time to occupy her body for the day of the explosion. She immediately agreed, and soon she was back that day; however, this time she changed her path. She paid a soothsayer and sent him to her older lover's room, claiming it was to be a fun little gift and she would join him soon; she then told the younger one she would meet him in his room instead. However, the soothsayer drugged the older lover's tea, and, per his instructions, dragged the man into the closet and pulled down clothes to pack around him. She had noticed that the items in the closet had been mostly out of reach of the second blast.

Meanwhile she met the younger lover, not dallying in the garden, and she told him she loved him, and they made love in his bed right before the blast went off. However, as they were farther from the center of the blast and they were in the bed, they were merely jostled and hit by splinters of wood.

A few days later, she is sitting with the younger lover in the hospital garden. They're recovering from the injuries, which aren't very severe, although he has trouble walking due to a shard of wood that hit his leg. Suddenly she sees the older lover walk by, glance at them, and walk faster. Giving her younger lover a reassuring kiss, she runs after the older one.

"I'm sorry," she said to him, once she caught him.

"You should be," he replied. "You played me like a fool. And then you chose him over me." It seems that in the rescue, the truth of her relationship with the younger beau became very apparent. "You hurt me."

"I saved you," she replied. "Why do you think that soothsayer drugged you? Why were you in that closet, protected from the blast?"

"You couldn't have known that ahead of time," the older man scoffed.

"I saw what happened to you-- saw you hit by the blast, your face practically blown off..."

"What are you talking about?"

"I knew. I did it to save you."

"You couldn't have... You didn't have anything to do with the blast, did you?"

"No!"

That's when I woke up. You know, for me, dreaming is a bit like watching 3/4ths of a movie and then having to turn off the TV. Annoying.

If you have saints make appearances in your dream, isn't that supposed to mean you're like blessed or something? What does the Terminator mean?

2008-02-08T09:05:00.000-05:00

Last night I dreamed that I was working at a store or a gas station or something, and three guys came in-- two short guys and a really tall one-- that I recognized from the news as being wanted for some crime. So I had my co-worker stall them and I went to the back room, got some stuff for makeshift handcuffs (fuzzy handcuffs, wire, and a flower press- don't ask me why a gas station had fuzzy handcuffs, or a flower press) and we managed to get them restrained until the cops showed up. However, as soon as the door opened for a customer, they made a break for it, and the cops didn't wind up catching them.

They headed to the five-lane main drag through the town and I followed them at a safe distance. All of a sudden the tall one stumbled out onto the street, right in the path of a Greyhound Bus, and one of his friends cried out "Oh shit!" and lunged at him, trying to push him out of the way. End result, they were both hit, as the bus swerved and sideswiped them. The other guy ran off, and the short guy, who seemed to only have a few bruises and scrapes, attempted to move the taller one, who had a very broken leg (it was twisted all weird) and was slouched forward and bleeding everywhere. He was also unconscious. Concerned, I ran pout into the street, narrowly missing a truck myself, and cried "Wait, don't move him!"

"You!" the short guy cried.

"We have to call an ambulance, his spine might be injured. Anyone have a phone?" I looked around at the few people, like the bus driver, who had gathered. They dug in their pockets. Suddenly remembering, I pulled out my own phone.

"No, wait! They'll come to arrest us!"

"I promise I won't mention who you are. He needs an ambulance. I don't care about the police right now."

"Okay..."

I called 911 and said to the person in a shaky voice, "Hi, I'm at the corner of..." I looked at the nearest sign "18Q street and 102, a guy just got hit by a bus, he's bleeding and his leg is broken."

"Okay, we'll send someone."

I looked up from the call to see the injured guy raise his head groggily. "What happened?" he asked. His friend explained it to him.

"We have to get out of the street," the injured guy said, pushing himself along to drag his leg. His friend grabbed him as well and before I could stop them, they were on the far curb. I followed them, and we waited for the ambulance.

All of a sudden this giant Megatron-like robot came down the street, zapping things with it's arm laser. "We have to move!" the tall guy said.

"You can't walk!" I cried. "Your leg's broken!"

"How bad is it?" He looked down at it and winced. "Oh. Hang on." He grabbed it and twisted it back into position, and it made several cracking noises. The other guy and I kind of stared. He cracked his neck, and his right eyeball withdrew into his head, and in it's place out came a Terminator style red eye. I realized that where the red "blood" had cleared in his wounds, underneath there were glints of metal.

"What ARE you?" I cried, not realizing the Megatron bot was getting closer.

"Go, hide," he ordered me, standing on his now-stable legs. "She doesn't want us."

"Not even me?" the short guy asked, as I ran off, headed for the nearest building. A giant metal hand swiped at my head before I ducked into a storm drain and was able to sneak over to a building. Outside that building was Mother Teresa (don't even ask) and as I ducked in, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her along. We headed for the basement, which was semi-developed and had workman's tables, which we hid inside. I heard the giant robot outside, and was absolutely silent and unmoving. Soon she passed, and I came out from under the table, cautioning Mother Teresa that she might want to stay there for a bit longer.

Suddenly Terminator-guy came down the stairs (he appeared to have found himself some machine guns), saying, "Disguise yourself or something." I grabbed the conveniently-located makeup kit and some spare clothes and dressed in a sort of disguise, even changing the way I walked. The two of us then returned to the surface and I cautiously went over to the Megatron-style robot, who didn't seem to recognize me. She continued to search for me, though, yet I was able to actually go with her, and she didn't realize who I was.

I wish I could remember how it had ended... I think there was a firefight.

I'm... sort of back.

2008-02-04T17:06:00.000-05:00

Lately I've become obsessed with the news.

Normally a healthy interest in the news is a good thing. There is a definite value to staying on top of current events, especially in an election year. But my problem is that I'm unable to detach myself from the news. Hearing about a famine makes me depressed. Hearing about an injustice by a government makes me angry. When Huckabee won Iowa I was afraid (this fear has since passed, I can deal with McCain winning).

I mean, I don't freak out when they talk about the Bird Flu and shit like that, because I actually understand things. I respond to real problems, not problems imagined by Fox News to scare the populace into submission. But I can't detach myself from the real problems in the world.

I don't want to become apathetic like the rest of the world, but I also don't want to be depressed or furious every time I read about something terrible that's happened, and I don't want to feel like I can't go a few days without reading the news. And I also want to be able to debate politics without feeling terrible afterwards.

Ryter's attempting to help me with the problem, with minimal success. Basically I've been avoiding reading news sites, and avoiding any sites that might involve me getting into a debate. So if I comment on a blog, I make sure it's one where I generally agree with the writer, lest I start a debate. I'm also trying not to talk about politics much, though that's difficult with the election going on (Ryter's also not really helpful in that regard, but oh well). And I'm trying to spend less time online. Failing miserably in that regard.

But I'm hoping I'll be able to get to the point where I can read the news without obsessing about it and debate with others without upsetting myself soon. We'll see.

2008-01-20T20:11:00.001-05:00

I am working through some personal problems right now and will not be online for a while until I sort them out. Internet use seems to be contributing to them, so I'm on hiatus for a while.

Proof I'm a Scot

2008-01-13T22:54:00.001-05:00

Oh man oh man oh man.

I have to try this. I have to. I mean, just... wow.

Baked onions with vegetarian haggis
(Source)

-6 medium unpeeled onions, trimmed
-50g sunflower margarine
-50g organic rolled oats
-50g pinhead oatmeal
-50g chopped mixed nuts
-1 onion, finely chopped
-100g mushrooms, finely chopped
-1 carrot, finely chopped
-200g can red kidney beans, drained and chopped
-50g vegetable suet
-1 teaspoon yeast extract
-1 teaspoon ground black pepper
-2 tbs. chopped mixed fresh herbs
-pinch of grated nutmeg
-juice of 1 lime
-1 tbs. whiskey
-seasoning
-chopped fresh chives and parsley, to garnish

Cut a slither from the bottom of each of the onions, so that they stand upright. Cut a cross in the top about three quarters of the way down. Place in a large pan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 15 minutes, drain and refresh under cold water.

Preheat the oven to 190C (375F). To make the haggis, melt the margarine in a pan and add the oats, oatmeal and nuts. Cook over a gentle heat, stirring, for about 3 minutes until toasted and golden. Transfer to a bowl.

Melt remaining margarine, add the onion, mushrooms and carrot and cook gently for 5 minutes until softened. Stir into the toasted oat mixture with the remaining haggis ingredients. Season.

Snip out the center of the onions with kitchen scissors, leaving the skin and 3-4 outer layers intact. Stuff with haggis and bake for 40 minutes.

I'm on ur teevee, debatin' yer social policieee...

2008-01-05T20:20:00.000-05:00

My grandmother is an avid Republican (though she at least doesn't support Huckabee; she prefers Romney) and the Republican Debates are on tonight, so they are watching them.

Shrewd suggested a drinking game: every mention of 9-11, take a drink. Every mention of "jihad" or "islamofascists" take a drink. Every mention of the Bible or how this is a Christian Nation, take a drink. Etc.

Only problem is, we'd be drunk before the first fifteen minutes were up...

Anyway, I was sitting downstairs in another room, on my computer, and I could overhear the debate, so I turned on my music. I have no interest in listening to them talk about how all Muslims want to kill every good, moral Christian they see, or about how we should all be very afraid all the time... However, every time the music would slack off, or quiet a bit, I would hear these snippets...

"We need to investigate terrorist cells..."
"America is the richest nation in history, and the most powerful nation in the world, and we need to stay that way..."
"The islamofascists are plotting, I mean they are plotting every day, to destroy our lives..."
"I think they need to face the fact that we are a Christian nation..."
"Well, I think that they are forgetting that it's a human being, they are killing an American citizen in the womb..."

That's when I went upstairs. I can't deal with idiots who think they know what they are talking about tonight.

Every day, it seems like 90% of our phone calls are from candidates. I mean, don't get me wrong, I kind of like living in a state where we actually get a larger-than-usual say in who is on the ticket. It makes me feel like my vote's a bit more valuable than in the general election. But man, all these phone calls are ANNOYING. Especially since all I do is look up the candidates online anyway.

Oh well. Tuesday I do my civic duty and tell the rest of the country who to vote for. Then I'll only get as many ads as everyone else.

My life is a never-ending parade of cleaning supplies and computers

2008-01-04T23:56:00.000-05:00

Grades came in the other day.

Latin, A; obviously. Ecology, Biostats and Orgo Lab, all Bs. And then, the C in Organic-- but you know, I passed, and I can continue. And I won't let it get to me. No matter how irritated my dad is.

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My grandmother is still up; this means I am sleeping on the couch downstairs on weekends and cleaning the house pretty much nonstop. Between cleaning, promises to help people move/unpack/pack up their room/etc, and assorted parties, plus the primary next week (I have to go to Durham, that's where I'm registered), I won't have time to sit and breathe for a week. I'm already struggling to find time to see Bisobrina, who had a mental breakdown and was hospitalized and is now at home recovering; I also want to go see Vivacia sometime soon, to give her my Christmas gift to her, give her mother a bag of romance novels that is sitting in my car, and hopefully sit and talk for a while. You know, relax, the thing I'm supposed to be doing on vacation?

I really wish I could spend more time with Vivacia. It bugs me that we don't see each other as much. But the trouble is, Ryter's available online from 9 AM to 10 PM with very few times away from his computer; planning stuff with him is beyond easy, and most of the time when we get together it was his idea. Vivacia, to compare, has a very busy life and spends a small to moderate amount of time on AIM, usually while studying. And I am phenomenally lazy, so the extra effort to track her down and find a common time, or even just keep calling her until I find a time when she's able to pick up the phone, tends not to get done. I guess I'm a bad friend for that. But you know, I've always been an introvert; I've always needed other people to plan things and get me out of my hole.

I should call her tomorrow.

Christmas Week, Part 3

2008-01-03T00:38:00.000-05:00

Okay, sorry, I wanted to finish before but between being busy and various parties... oh well.

WEDNESDAY: The family Christmas party, with my grandfather, aunt, uncle, cousins, cousin's boyfriend and this year, my brother's girlfriend. It was good fun, as always; we had hot apple cider by the fire and we mingled for a while before opening presents and then playing a few games-- like "pass the package" where the person who answers a Christmas trivia question takes off one layer of wrapping paper from a gift, and the one that finds the final present gets to keep it (I lost).

Then there was the search for the pickle ornament, with a prize for the winner. My cousin won, after much frantic pawing through the tree.

And the Yankee Swap, where we passed around a box and each person took one wrapped gift, and either unwrapped it or exchanged it for an already unwrapped gift. The little bottles of alcohol were very popular, but alas, my mom's gotten increasingly bad at picking desirable non-alcoholic gifts as time goes on, and I wasn't allowed to trade for the alcohol, obviously. End result, I got tissues, which I afterwards gave to Shrewd, who had a cold. My older cousin got the risque tissues, which said "Jingle My Bells" with crotch shots of elves. My mom swears it was an accident...

Then we mostly sat around and talked again until they left and we started to clean up.

THURSDAY: I went to see Ryter, as I had promised to go down with him to help him unpack his mother's apartment (she apparently moved in three years ago and never unpacked). He's been avoiding seeing her one-on-one lately. So I drove all the way back to Durham, met up with Ryter, we got in the car and started to drive-- and got a phone call from her, saying she had forgotten she had an appointment that day and could we reschedule. Grrrr...

So we drove back, and before I could drive home or anything it started to snow. So I spent the night. Which was okay, but... bah. His mom can be vexing at times.

FRIDAY: I drove back early in the morning because my grandmother was coming up in the evening. My grandmother, while a very nice woman, has a tendency to pick fights without realizing she is doing so... especially with my sister. So I came home, slept on the couch for the weekend and tried not to get entangled in arguments. We also opened presents, and thus ended Christmas.

The weekend was mostly spent hiding in my room, but on Monday I drove to see Ryter for New Year's Eve. WE didn't do much on the Eve, just hung out and kept each other up until midnight, toasted, and went to bed. New Year's Day I was supposed to go down to Mass and see family for a big brunch, but the snow was too heavy, so instead we just got ready for his New Year's Party, which was tiki-themed and had a surprising number of the invites show up despite the weather. The only one who didn't was his former Japanese professor. That was fun.

I wound up spending the night again because it was so late when everyone left. Then today we cleaned up after the party before I headed back here.

On the plus side, I cleaned his shower during our preparations. I burned my lungs on the bleach, but the weird scunge is gone. That made me very happy.

Part 2, Christmas Week

2007-12-26T22:35:00.000-05:00

The Christmas tale continues. Here's the first installment.

TUESDAY: Christmas, of course! We woke up at 9 and moseyed downstairs once my mom had passed us. We don't do Santa much anymore, as the Brother is going to be eighteen in a few weeks. My mom does fill the stockings with little gifts, though, like wind-up toys and Christmas candy (Daddy fills her stocking with Lindt chocolates and scented soaps). Inexpensive fun things. This year was kind of lame because Daddy was down watching TV when we woke up, and then we sat around waiting while my mom put breakfast in the oven and they watched MORE TV- and not even something Christmasy, they were watching a robot movie. Grr. But they stopped when Mummy and I finished making breakfast and we opened the stocking gifts, all wrapped in tissue paper. Then, as breakfast cooked, we started the other family presents-- I gave my sister a scarf, my brother a book about numbers, my dad a bottle of special olive oil and my mom a little cosmetic bag for her purse (she needed one, her old one broke) and an organic candy bar.

My parents gave me lots of stuff-- this is what they do instead of buying me stuff I need or want at other times. So I got a Leatherman tool, and plush microbes from ThinkGeek (syphilis, malaria and mono), and Age of Mythology for my computer because I am a myth geek and have wanted it for years but couldn't afford it. And I finally got a new hair dryer to replace the one that broke. Shrewd's making me a scarf but she's been sick and couldn't finish it in time. I don't mind, though. The Brother gave Daddy a collection of Agatha Christie movies, including The Man in the Brown Suit, which is a movie that Daddy taped off the TV years ago, but which was then accidentally taped over by Shrewd. Daddy loved it and was disappointed as hell. He was thrilled, as was Shrewd, who is FINALLY out of the doghouse.

Soon breakfast was done. Christmas breakfast for us is almost as big as dinner. The traditional family Christmas breakfast is an egg casserole (part veggie and sausage, part sausage only, part veggie only), cinnamon rolls hot from the oven, homemade tea breads and fresh-squeezed orange juice. We finished presents after breakfast, then cleaned up the wrapping paper so that the house would be ready when Ryter arrived.

Ryter came soon after, and we talked and helped with dinner until it was time to eat. Dinner was tenderloin with peppercorn sauce and stuffed scrod with Newburg sauce; sweet potatoes, my mother's famous cloverleaf rolls, peas, broccoli, shrimp cocktail, sweet baby carrots and probably something else I forgot. It was wonderful, as my mom's cooking always is, even without the traditional popovers Shrewd usually makes (she was too sick to handle food safely).

Ryter opened my gift and I opened his; I gave him a T-shirt of Emperor Constantine Paleologos and he gave me a collection of Phillip K. Dick novels. My parents also gave him some maps of the White Mountains for hiking in the spring, and he gave Daddy a bottle of rum, for general over-21 consumption. The Brother and Daddy played with their new mini RC helicopters.

After we cleaned up from dinner we played Trivial Pursuit (Daddy and Mummy against the Brother, myself, and Ryter) and my team lost miserably. They got lots of easy questions. We had pie and cheesecake for desert and split up, Shrewd playing with her brand new laptop (boy did she need it), the Brother and Daddy playing Scrabble and Mummy setting up her new vacuum cleaner from my grandmother, while Ryter and I hung out, watched some Bones, and then said our good nights.

It was a marvelous Christmas all around.

Part 1, Christmas Week

2007-12-26T22:15:00.000-05:00

So there is a good reason why I didn't write a blog entry the past couple days. My dad "fixed" the wireless connection, so it went from working fine to not working at all for a few days.

So Christmas has come and gone. Well, almost. Christmas is being spread out over six days for me this year. This will take a couple posts.

SUNDAY: Ryter's family party. It was cool. We went down to his grandmother's house and exchanged gifts and sat around and talked. I met his favorite cousin, who is very cool, and stood around feeling awkward most of the time. By the end I was exhausted and ready to go well before Ryter was, but I waited until he was ready to go anyway, because he doesn't get to see his cousin very much.

I also almost got into a politics fight at dinner before I remembered The Rules of Discussion at Social Events: No politics, no sex, no religion. Oops. But I backed out. It's just hard not to get riled when someone's talking about Huckabee taking over the US government. I'm pretty sure I would arrange to do med school in Canada, if degree transfers would work.

MONDAY: Christmas Eve. We cleaned the house and cooked what we could of Christmas dinner, then got a massive quantity of Chinese food, as is tradition. See, my great-uncle was an insurance salesman, and he believed that a good salesman buys from his customers. So on Christmas Eve he would visit every Chinese restaurant he insured and buy food from each. Thus, mountains of food. My dad's carrying on the tradition, with only one restaurant as the others in this town suck.

To be continued...

I return.

2007-12-23T00:54:00.000-05:00

*Enormous sigh*

Well, it's over. I had my last exam yesterday and I am now at home, helping my mother clean the house. Supposedly it was to be a family affair but Shrewd spent the morning knitting and watching TV with Daddy while the Brother helped by cleaning up his own Legos and robot stuff, which was everywhere. Daddy started the kitchen, went and sat back down to watch TV, Mummy went out and I cleaned a good portion of the downstairs all by myself before Daddy and Shrewd wandered in and asked what they should do... bah.

So yeah, "Welcome home! Now clean the house." And it was pretty bad, too. Mummy and the Brother have been busy and Daddy won't clean unless we make him; Shrewd just recently got home as well. We're talking like mail stacked in every corner of the kitchen and all on the dining room table, robot stuff everywhere, school projects and college applications scattered about... Not to mention the piles of laundry, mostly Shrewd's and dish towels but my small basket as well. It wasn't like, pick up a few things and vacuum.

Plus when I got back my mother had not yet assembled the Christmas village. When I asked why not she said "Well, I had to paint the living room the first two weekends and then it didn't seem worth it for only a few weeks, and your dad didn't want it there because he's been talking about getting a flat screen TV..."

My dad already spends pretty much every hour of the evening parked in front of the TV doing nothing. He only reads if there's nothing on. Now he wants a flat screen despite the fact he has a perfectly good, LARGE TV he only got a few years ago? Bah.

Anyway, she agreed to put it up with my help, so after the house was cleaned we assembled the village. Then after dinner we watched The Nun's Story and then I went and wrapped presents for my dad, who claims he is incapable of doing so properly.

Tomorrow I go to Ryter's family Christmas party; I'll also hopefully get a chance to talk about the Hanukkah festivities as well...

Cultural Survival

2007-12-02T22:34:00.000-05:00

Today is the feast of Bona Dea, the goddess of fertility, healing, virginity, and women. She's also known as Fauna, for her father, the goat-legged Faunus (Greek name Pan). She was especially popular with lower-class citizens, slaves, and women, who would pray to her for healing or fertility. She was also the patron of freedom from slavery, hence the popularity with slaves.

Her festival was celebrated with secret rites held in the home of a prominent Roman magistrate. Only women were allowed, so I guess the magistrate himself was kicked out, and his wife ran the show (with the Vestal Virgins' assistance). You couldn't even have a male animal or a picture of a man with you. The words "wine" and "myrtle were forbidden, as there was a myth of Faunus beating Bona Dea with a myrtle stick when she got drunk, and it seems she didn't want to be reminded (this may be one of the few Roman festivals and/or ceremonies with no use of alcohol in copious amounts).

She was frequently depicted on Roman coins, often with her symbols, the cornucopia and the snake (a symbol of healing). Snakes were also kept in her temple in Rome.

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Last night my dad picked me up late and took me back home for the night; we ate Chinese food, watched a Christmas movie and had a nice fire, and I got to bed waaaaaay late, which is a bad habit I need to break...

The reason for this was this morning, when we drove down to Boston for the Cultural Survival Bazaar (after a stopover in. If you live in the Boston area, you should check this out; it's very cool. Merchants who do fair trade practices with indigenous/impoverished peoples will come to sell the crafts and foods (coffee, chocolate, and olive oil mostly) at the bazaar, and 40% of the profits go to help preserve indigenous culture. Whatever you think of the politics/idea, though, it's a great place to poke around, and the timing (first three weekends in December) make it good for Christmas shopping for the people who don't actually need anything, or who might find it interesting.

There's a lot of sub-Saharan African stuff, especially wooden decorated bowls and utensils; toys; and instruments. There are woven rugs from Peru and woolen hats from Nepal; Ojibwa dreamcatchers and singing bowls from Tibet. And lots and lots of jewelry, from pretty much everywhere. I actually got almost all my shopping done there; I had only three presents left (for my mom, my brother, and a little gift to give Ryter on Christmas Eve). We also ate lunch from the Indian food stand that was there; it was really good (mmm, chicken masala).

Then we went to the BU bookstore, because Shrewd has an employee discount (she works for BU Hillel) and we wanted to kill time before we checked out her place of employment (which wasn't open yet). There, I got my present for my brother, who asked for math books for Christmas (weirdo).

We then went to Hillel, where Shrewd works. She serves kosher food in a little cafe overlooking the Charles River. It's a very pretty place. We got the 20-second tour and ran into my cousin's boyfriend, who helped Shrewd get the job there (yay nepotism).

Then they took me back to campus, as there's supposed to be a blizzard tonight and none of us wanted to be caught in that...

Quick Note

2007-11-30T22:05:00.000-05:00

Postings have been scarce, I know, and they're not likely to pick up until after finals. I have a few monsters coming up, but I'm not failing Orgo yet, which is a plus... I'll post now and then but don't expect a return to frequent writings until January.

Damn public health videos.

2007-11-28T22:59:00.000-05:00

Dear god I can't watch this.

It is inane.

I've managed only a few SECONDS.

I have a question. Is it impossible to teach people about STDs, birth control and safe sex without a) bad 90's hair, b) a geeky teenage boy saying "It can be fun!" and c) making the watcher feel like they are five?

Apparently, we're not allowed to sing Christmas carols until December. Shucks.

2007-11-26T09:11:00.000-05:00

So Thanksgiving is over.

The reason I didn't write anything over Thanksgiving was that I spent my time either with my family or sleeping. I finally caught up on sleep, which is good.

So, Thanksgiving Day. Ryter came over and we ate Thanksgiving at my place, with all the traditional dishes-- turkey, naturally, and gravy; mashed potatoes, squash, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, baby onions, mushroom barley soup, popovers, rolls, salad-- tons of food. My grandfather was there too, which was nice.

Once we finished we drove down to Ryter's grandmother's house for his family Thanksgiving. Tons of people, tons of food-- the turkey was wrapped in bacon, which was weird, but I didn't eat the skin and it was fine. Everyone was really nice, it was a lot of fun, and I got to help Ryter surprise two of his cousins when they were up on the third floor, doing something that involved one of them shirtless. Awkward.

His grandmother has an awesome house. There's a secret second staircase to the kitchen, and a secret room, and a second little kitchen on the third floor with a door onto a rooftop balcony.

Friday we all--save the brother-- went to see Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, a very good movie, I recommend it. Great imagery, very fun. Saturday we returned to the movies for Enchanted, which was hilarious and I also recommend.

So that was my break; most of the rest of the time was spent sleeping. I have just two things to say:

1) I could've sworn Thanksgiving was supposed to be the last Thursday in November...

2) Four weeks left of class. *Sigh*

Quizzical

2007-11-21T13:25:00.000-05:00

Today in Biostats my professor gave a quiz.

Yes, the day before Thanksgiving. It was a bonus quiz. Merely for showing up, we get an extra 5 points on the next test; for filling out the quiz correctly, we get 10 points; for filling it out correctly and turning it in in the first 15, we get 15 point.

Plus, he added, "Anyone who showed up today has a guaranteed C or higher in this class, whatever your grade was before." He paused as we cheered. "You know why I do that right? You know the Cistern of Doom?" The Cistern of Doom is what he called the bottom like, 7 kids who haven't dropped the class but have less than 20% total grade in it. "All those Cistern of Doom kids, I guarantee you, did not show up today."

From the back of the class, we heard: "Uh... I did..."

Much laughter, cheering and applause. That kid? Luckiest. Guy. Ever.

Anyway, he tells us to flip over the quiz and begin. First line: "Be sure to read the whole quiz before answering any questions."

When I was in second grade, on April First, my teacher gave us the biggest test we'd ever seen. Same first line. I got about 40% of the way through, about to where the Calculus questions began, when she collected them. She then told us that the last line-- which NO ONE got to-- said, "Now, go back to the beginning, put your name on the top of the paper, and don't answer any of the questions before you turn it in."

So I checked the last line. "Do questions 2, 14, and 15 only. Score.

Question 2: Put your name on the page.
Question 14: Say loudly, "I love Biostats!"
Question 15: If you read the last line before beginning, say "I have."

I turned it in, top 15 (I think, there were lots of papers everywhere) and looked around to see half my classmates filling the damn thing out.

Thank you Mrs. Patterson!

New Blog on the Blogroll!

2007-11-20T00:18:00.001-05:00

Babycatcher is written by an American nurse-midwife working in Malawi. Her stories are almost as incredible as her work, done in the worst possible conditions, with lazy, jaded, untrained, inefficient or a sheer lack of staff, and with patients with no access to clean water, food, or transportation to the hospital. Malawi has terribly high infant and maternal mortality rates and there's not nearly enough being done. Some of her stories are positively haunting. I'm thinking about sending her some money for infant formula for the hospital (high maternal mortality means lots of orphaned babies), once I learn more about her contact information and the best way to do so (obviously can't send cash). It wouldn't be much-- I don't have too much of my own money to spare-- but it might be something.

Sometime in my life I will go to Africa or India or some other 3rd world area and I will work as an obstetrician* there. I will probably wait until after my children are grown (has to be after med school and I'll probably want to have kids as soon after I get out as possible, and I couldn't do it while they were growing up-- too high risk). But when I have paid off my med school debts and saved my money, I will go and stay for a while in a third world country and try to do good there. I have wanted to do this since I was twelve and I think it will make me a better person, and help me truly understand the world in ways that spoiled Americans can not. Plus, I will be offering a service that is desperately needed by these women.

So read her blog.

*If for whatever reason I don't become an obstetrician, I may still get midwife training, or do some other kind of relief work. It's something I feel morally bound to do before I die. For how long, I don't know, but I will do it, and encourage others to do the same.

Scholastic Adventures

2007-11-20T00:07:00.000-05:00

So today I had a Latin test. I didn't KNOW I had a Latin test. So I go there right at 3:40, walked into the (still dark) classroom, and there on the board is a note telling me to go upstairs for the test.

So I go upstairs to the tables by the professors' offices and my class is there, taking their test, and I walk in to my professor's office and she hands me three sheets of paper, and says in her accent, "Okay, this one" she pointed to one "is a poem you haven't seen before, and here" she indicated another "are the notes for it. Now this other one has two poems you've already seen before on it, which you need to translate and compare."

So I sat down and started with the longer first one, the one with the notes, thinking it would be easiest (I don't remember my translations very well and I don't have a Horace-sized vocabulary-- pretty sure you have to be an expert for that). I finished it fairly easily, only had about 15 words I had to look up. Then I checked the clock-- 4:10. I was doing pretty well on time. So I started the first of the two shorter poems.

Unfortunately, they happened to be poems that, in my stressful fall, I managed to not translate, or not finish translating. Regardless, I couldn't remember very much and I was looking up like, three words a line without the aid of notes. I guessed and rushed and by the time I finished the thing it was 4:40. Feeling frantic, I hurried to do the next one, and ten minutes later I had only one stanza done, as I couldn't even remember the plot of it. With ten minutes left and the analysis to do, I dashed off a note about running out of time, wrote down what gist of it I could glean, and finished my paragraph-long comparison of the two right at 5.

Then my professor came out and I explained that I hadn't been able to finish.

"Well, how much did you get done? Did you get the basic idea at least?" she asked.

"Yeah, I got most of the winter poem and the very basic outline of the spring one, and I did the comparison. And I finished the first poem, I did that first."

She glanced down. "You did the first poem?"

"Yeah, that's done, it's just the other two--"

"Oh, [Basiorana]! That was all you had to do! You were suppose to chose, not to translate seventy-five lines of Horace in an hour and twenty minutes!"

I was a little shell shocked, to say the least. I think I managed a "What?"

"Oh, you must have thought I was a monster, trying to make you translate so much! I'm impressed you got this much done, did you finish any of the poems?"

"Yeah, I did the first one, I wasn't as rushed for it so it should be fine..."

"Well, I will count that one and give you bonus points for the rest. Seventy-five lines, my goodness!"

So my panic was for naught, and I admit I left a bit sheepish. But it'll work out, I mean, she's giving me the bonus points and everything so I'll probably do better than I would have done just turning in the normal translation. Still, took a while to come down off the "Oh crap it's ten minutes left and I have twenty lines left, what to do what to do" rush.

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So today at recitation my Biostats professor wanted to give back our tests and our homework from last week. Now, the sensible thing would have been to place the tests in the back on separate chairs based on the first letter of the last name, and do the same in the front with the Opportunities, right? That way people wouldn't all be congregating in one place and it could go faster.

Nope. He stood in the back with the tests and had the TA stand in the front with the Opportunities. Then we all kind of swarmed-- all 150+ of us.

So half the names he called were down getting their opps, and the rest of us could barely hear him through the mob and couldn't get over to him anyway, plus we're in this massive hall , standing on stairs or seat, pushing and shoving. It took me 10 minutes to get the test and I nearly fell down the steps thanks to my backpack being loaded down with my laptop (which I need for recitation), my Biostats notebook/binder, and my Latin books (which I didn't need... grr).

Anyway, I got that test back. 64%. So not as miserable as I was expecting but still crappy. If I completely bomb another test and I have to keep this grade, it won't kill me, but I'd really rather not bomb another test. Still, I consider this a comparatively good ending.

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And Heroes tonight? AWESOME. Just needs a bit more Peter and more depowered Sylar, but we can't have everything, can we?

Lack of Posts is Due to Plethora of Homework

2007-11-14T21:13:00.000-05:00

So...

Bad news: I'm almost positive that I flunked my Biostats test yesterday. I got into the exam after studying ALL weekend and some last week too, and the first question required a regression formula and I completely blanked on it. Like, mind freeze. I knew I had known it the night before, I was just blanking. If that had been it I could have still done well on the rest, but then I proceeded to be completely unable to let it go-- my mind was racing through possible formulas it might be but drawing a blank and I started to freak out and the next thing I knew I was getting a panic attack. I managed to suppress it enough to do my best but my best under those conditions is probably not too fabulous... I think it was because I was stressed out about a lot of different things lately, so my breaking point was a bit closer than normal (More specifics later).

I'll talk to my therapist about it next time I go in (in two weeks, I was supposed to have a session yesterday but the day off screwed up the University schedule). Ryter suggested I get a note from Disability Services but I don't think there's much they can do to help one way or another, I mean, taking a class in another room will probably make it worse, and I don't need extra time. Too much hassle, not enough gain, and I honestly don't think my anxiety disorder counts as a real disability. Not at my level. And I don't think it will happen again.

The good news in all of that mess is I already talked to my professor and he said that he will drop my lowest test of the 4 so chances are it won't count. So that's sorted out.

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More good news: I also talked to my adviser today, and he said that I'm so far ahead in credits thanks to AP and all my honors classes last year that if I feel stressed with my current workload I might as well take only 3 classes next semester so I can focus on Calculus and Organic more. I'll still be ahead of where I need to be credit-wise (I'm like one credit shy of being a junior right now. Vivacia's still beating me, though, she's already a "junior"). I might take a seminar or something easy, too, but I thought I might do that to avoid a repeat of this semester. I don't think I could do this again, and I have the dreaded Calculus coming up.

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VERY good news: Talked to the dining office again. They said that they've had many students complain about that machine since I came in (I was just one of the first) and they're trying to get it fixed. The machine was putting other people's charges on my account if they went after me on the machine. They will sort out exactly what needs to be sorted out and will find a way to transfer the money back to us somehow. Good.

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I think I might be depressed. I mean, I think that's why I had a panic attack instead of just pushing by the problem. I'm having trouble focusing and trouble sleeping, and I feel lonely all the time unless I'm with Ryter or like, actually talking to Cellamica instead of just sitting in the same room as her. I crave someone to talk to all the time, but no one ever really wants to talk to me except Ryter, so I'm spending more time with him than I should. Vivacia's really busy, and injured, and possibly mad at me, so I can't really talk to her...

I'm kind of paranoid, too. Like I thought Ryter was mad at me over something little that was said the other day, and he had to reassure me that he wasn't; meanwhile I remain convinced that Vivacia's furious at me and just not telling me about it. I don't know, maybe she is, but it also could be that she's busy and hurt and having issues getting around. I can't tell, but my brain is defaulting on "mad at me." She did say more than ten words to me today via AIM so I was a little reassured that at least she's not like, ready to murder me if I come near her, but...

I feel disconnected, like I'm vibrating a little bit out of our plane of existence. The trouble is I know this will mean I will spend even more time with Ryter because he's the only one who ever has any free time or the patience to listen to me freak out. And then Mummy will be upset with me because she thinks we need to spend less time together... not to mention Vivacia, though I've pretty much flat-out told Ryter that if Vivacia has some free time, unless we either had tickets to something or were supposed to meet someone I'm going to cancel our plans and hang out with her. Perhaps because of the funk I'm in, perhaps because it's the truth, I've been feeling like a kind of crappy friend lately.

Then again, I've been feeling like a kind of crappy everything lately.

I was supposed to STUDY today

2007-11-11T20:30:00.000-05:00

AHHHHHH!!!!!

So remember how I had to cancel my credit card because I was getting enormous charges to the Dining ID office, of all places? They charged me about $500 that I never saw a penny of on my card, so it wasn't my doing. They claim it wasn't even THEIR doing-- in fact, that it would be impossible for them to remove money from my card without my using it on a Cat's Cache machine. So basically, either the bank is making errors, the machines are making errors, or someone stole my card and can't think of anything more inventive to spend my money on than campus money.

Mummy put a stop on that credit card and now I can't use it any more, so I've been begging her for money so I can buy things like shampoo with my own debit account.

Well, guess what.

Now my debit card is getting the EXACT SAME FUCKING CHARGES.

$400. I lost $400 of my OWN money. Keep in mind that I only HAD about $500 in my checking account, so basically, I have no money any more (well, I have $1000 in savings, but that's my capital and I can't spend it unless it's like, life and death). Mummy's contesting the charges, of course, but that means I have to put a stop on my DEBIT card, meaning the entire sum of my wealth until either my parents can physically bring cash to me or the bank fixes the problem is $100, and I don't dare spend any of it on anything because I need a certain amount of emergency money that I can access.

What's more, I'm pretty sure that this isn't even the bank, it's GOT to be the dining office. So now I have to go down to the dining ID office and say, "Look, one mistake I can buy, but TWO, both on the days that I put $20 into my Cat's Cache from that card?" and make them take my card numbers out of the system completely. And from now on, whenever I need to put money on my card for the laundry machines, I have to walk over to the ATM, take out cash, walk back to the nearest Cat's Cache machine and pay in cash, lest they decide to make me pay 20 times what I wanted to pay AGAIN.

And they will tell me no, no, that's impossible, it must be a bank error, and I will have to tell them FUCK YOU, I JUST LOST ALMOST MY ENTIRE WORLDLY WEALTH AND ALL ACCESS TO HAVING MONEY ON CAMPUS BECAUSE YOU CAN'T FIX YOUR DAMN MACHINES.

It HAS to be a problem with the machine. Nothing else makes sense.

What's worse, I NEEDED that money, like, for specific purchases I was supposed to make.

And on top of all that Ryter was a little impulsive and bought something off ebay for me that doesn't fit me. So since he was kind of freaking out over an $80 charge on something that I can't wear, I promised him I'd resell it on ebay and buy the right size. So I put it up, very nicely, listing it at $60 because I figured that would be a good starting bid and if we were out $20 that would be tolerable. And then, lo and behold, next thing I know there's another seller with the exact same thing for only $20. Mine's the only large size, sure. But I've already had someone contact me saying they'll buy it-- IF I drop the price. The replacement dress is going to be almost $100 including shipping. If I sold it for $20 we'd wind up having spent $160 on this one dress.

I dropped it to $50 but I really can't go lower. I might have to though, because $20 is better than nothing. And this is important enough to him that I'll wind up buying the dress from the other company regardless of what I get for this one. So I might wind up being out $80 because of this. $80 that I don't have because of the stupid Cat's Cache machines.

I basically can't spend a penny until Christmas. And even then, maybe not...

Proteus says he goes to Elysium

2007-11-08T22:13:00.000-05:00

Menelaus, my Betta fish, finally died. I've been expecting it, he's been lingering for weeks, picking at food and only occasionally moving. 'Twas a lovely Viking funeral, mostly because thankfully no one else in the bathroom realized what I was doing, so I didn't get a lot of "EWWWWW"s.

I'll scour the tank and get new ones (two of them) soon. I might pick a different source of Classical rivals for the next two.

What I Think About When I Should Be Doing Homework

2007-11-07T22:45:00.000-05:00

So I was reading Navelgazing Midwife, which is a fascinating blog, and very helpful to me, because I want to go into obstetrics and gynecology and the blog often talks about problems with OBs.

I was especially interested in her post about birth rape, because I honestly never heard of it before, but it really makes sense. Many women were saying how their OBs didn't respect their choices or tried to force or coerce them into things, especially involving sticking hands or instruments up the birth canal. I read several years ago about doctors who perform episiotomies when the mother doesn't need it, and I was rather horrified. One thing I always assumed about medicine was that you do what the patient (or their legal guardian) wants, as long as it is legal.

Now, of course, in childbirth there is the question of the child and sometimes things go wrong. But misrepresenting information to a mother, or treating her like she is stupid or imbalanced simply because she is in labor? I hope I never get that arrogant, and that if people see me becoming so, they will slap sense into me. I know that when I am in my residency I will have to obey the chief OB, but I hope I can get one who is understanding and compassionate towards the new mothers, and that even if I am not so lucky I will still focus on the mother and pay attention to HER demands.

I think when I get to that point in my life I'll take classes in midwifery, so I can do things like catch the baby no matter what position the mom is in, and learn what's best to say to mothers. And I intend, if at all possible, to hand the baby to the mother BEFORE it gets brought into the nursery. Unless the baby is seriously injured or drastically premature and needs medical attention, mothers should get to see and hold the results of their labor immediately (or when they wake up) and begin bonding (unless, of course, it is a case of the child being put up for adoption or surrogacy and the biological mother doesn't want to hold the baby).

One of the reasons I want to be an OB/gyn and not a midwife or a nurse, besides money, is that as an OB, I will have control, and be able to do things like kick out nurses who belittle the mother or try to pressure her into things she doesn't want. And hopefully in my own small corner of the world, I can start making up for all the shitty, terrible OBs in the world.

And as for myself, when I'm pregnant I'm going to do tons of research and walk into the OB's office (I don't think I'd want to do a home birth) long before labor and say, "I am informed and educated in the subject of childbirth, and I want you to understand that I expect to be in control. Do not try to treat me like a child or an idiot or a hysteric at any point in this process. If you do not agree ahead of time to listen to me and treat me like an educated equal, I cannot have you as my doctor." Hopefully by that point I will be in med school or an intern and have access to OBs I know I can trust.

And then I will probably have a perfectly normal, hospital birth, on my back with my only "unusual" demand being no epidural or offers of an epidural until I specifically request it. I mean, hospital births aren't all that bad. My mom had three healthy vaginal hospital births (even my sister, who was late) and she always talks about how the nurse-midwives who helped her were the most wonderful thing imaginable (there were a couple of other women in labor at the time and hers was fairly normal, so the OB was only really there to check in and catch the baby). But hopefully as an OB/gyn I'll be able to help some of the women who might otherwise have had a really terrible doctor who treats it as a disease instead of a normal biological process that just requires a bit of help and an experienced set of eyes and hands if something's wrong.

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Tonight Ryter suggested that he, Loquelo, Nonaestima and I all get a house in Dover next year, and I commute to campus...

Pros: I like Nonaestima and Loquelo, and obviously Ryter, and I would get to cook my own food and eat healthy. I'd have a real bathroom and a real kitchen and it might even be cheaper than living on campus, depending on where we go.

Cons: Ryter would have to be cleaner. I'm fairly messy myself but I have to have a clean toilet seat and no grime in my shower, and nothing sticky on tile floors or crumbs on the rug. Also, he figured we'd just share a bedroom, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that right yet. I wouldn't be living on campus and I'd bet money my circle of friends wouldn't be growing. I'd be paying for gas too. And even though I doubt it would happen (pray it won't), I have to consider what I would do if we ever broke up mid-semester.

Oh, and the number one con: My parents would NEVER agree to it. Not sharing a bedroom. My mom doesn't even want to have me live off campus at all, because she wants me to get the college experience, and she's already worried I spend too much time with him and that he's looking for someone to settle down with while I should be fun-dating. My dad... yeah. Not gonna happen. And they control the money.

Maybe senior year, if I proposed it right. But next year? HIGHLY unlikely. HIGHLY.

Life can be random.

2007-11-05T00:01:00.001-05:00

Tonight was rather interesting. I have now officially been drunk-dialed. By Ryter, because he wanted to drunk-dial his ex and I pointed out that that was a bad idea on oh oh so many levels.

And then, out of the blue, a high school girl from Australia IMed me after finding my name on a blog I commented on and asked if I would listen to her. I wound up spending an hour or so just talking to her, asking her questions about her life as she vented. I don't know, maybe the whole conversation was made up (Ryter has made me a bit suspicious of people online) but I figure I have no reason to not believe she is who she says she is and I might as well give her someone to talk to, even if time zones mean there's a window of like, two hours at night when we can actually talk to each other. It was a bit random though.

Don't you hate days when everything goes wrong?

2007-11-04T00:48:00.000-05:00

Perhaps it's no coincidence that my religious beliefs are so closely tied to the idea of guilt, because sometimes it feels like that is the emotion I feel the most, and most powerfully.

Right now Vivacia is upset with me because today we celebrated her birthday and I'm pretty sure I royally messed it up.

My parents are irritated because I saw them for the first time in weeks and I couldn't even let them take me to lunch or really do anything but talk to me for two minutes and then go.

Closer is probably more than a little pissed at me because I messed up his surprise that I didn't know about and that didn't happen anyway for reasons unrelated.

Ryter will probably feel like crap if/when he finds out about any of this because it's all tied up in his wanting to tag along and get to know everyone better.

I try to make everyone happy and this shit happens. If I don't try to make everyone happy they all get mad at me. I can't do anything right and I don't know why I bother to try.

I have 38 hours over the course of an entire week when I am not sleeping, eating, in class or doing homework. Of that there are actually only two blocks of time, Friday night and Saturday, when I am free from a long enough amount of time to make planning something feasible. Meanwhile Vivacia's usually on duty during those blocks Everyone wants my time, it seems, and half of them don't want my time with them to overlap with my time with anyone else. Ryter just wants me to spend time with him and he wants to spend time with Vivacia and Closer, but my parents think I need to spend more time studying or come home more often (my mom was upset that I didn't come home this weekend), and Vivacia wants me to spend time with her without Ryter being around.

I don't know. I posted more of this in my livejournal, because it's all very emo and LJ is better for being melodramatic.

My life is a blur

2007-11-01T19:39:00.000-05:00

I spent most of the morning wasting time, so now I have to finish a lab report I was supposed to have done this morning for tomorrow, AND study for an Organic quiz...

Movie Night!

2007-10-31T23:23:00.000-05:00

Happy Halloween!

I had hoped to do something like a party tonight, but the campus was pretty dead, so Ryter and I had a movie night. We wanted to watch something scary, but I had suggested a while back that he might like the Stepford Wives, so we rented both the 1975 version and the completely-different modern version.

I was surprised, I thought he'd prefer the 1975 version because it ends with the main character getting replaced by a robot, rather than the modern one, which has a happy ending and is really more "funny" than "scary." But then again, the old version was kind of weird. Creepy, too.

Of course, the trouble with the modern "Stepford Wives" is that a lot of it doesn't make sense. Like, clearly the women have robotic bodies (ATM girl, and Bobbie's hand) and yet, they have normal brains (just with chips) and are able to go back to their old lives? What, did they keep the old bodies in storage? To suspend my disbelief, I went with the "robotic parts but not all robotic" idea, like they had cybernetic implants and stuff.

And the ending, while cute, was RIDICULOUS. A man turns you into a cooking, cleaning sex-bot and rather than, I don't know, DIVORCE him and have him ARRESTED for domestic abuse and brainwashing and SUE him for damages, you... make him do your grocery shopping? Riiiiiiight.

Of course, all Ryter could point out while we watched the 1975 version was, "But what do they do with the BODIES?" Now remember kids, in 1975 Stepford, don't eat the burgers.

We were talking about the logistics of a place like Stepford actually existing, if the technology was up to speed. The trouble with it is, though, women like that-- smart career women-- don't marry the kind of misogynists who actually would want a Stepford wife. They marry nice guys who can at least sort of keep up with them intellectually, and nice intellectual men can't be married to people who won't offer them more than sex and cookies. They need to be able to have a conversation with their wife. In that sense, 1975 Stepford were more realistic, because those women had already accepted the stay-at-home mom lifestyle, and in that time period it was more acceptable for men to be at least mildly misogynistic. If someone tried to Stepfordize their wife today, the relationship would probably already be abusive and people who saw the change would assume the woman was becoming mentally ill and report it.

If I had the technology to make a robotic Ryter, you know what I'd do? I'd make a robotic ROBOT to do the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping, and keep Ryter the way he was. Why go to all that trouble to make a house-cleaning sexbot when you could be having sex WHILE your house got cleaned?

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I also wore my costume to Biostats class, and brought my camera intending to take pictures, but I left said camera in Ecology and then it vanished. Two hours, five checks and a panic attack later, I learned that someone turned it in to the professor of the class that is in that room afterwards, so I sent him an email. Hopefully he still has it.

I hate panic attacks, especially when I'm so sick I can't hear and my ears are constantly popping and I feel feverish.

I'm a little slow lately.

2007-10-30T21:52:00.000-05:00

Now, finally, a week later, I'm putting these Intertidal Zone pictures up.

If you want to know where this was, it's Fort Stark in Newcastle, NH. Very nice place. Here are some "Look how pretty it is" shots.

The rocks had cool layers to them, like ribbons.

And now, the lab. We lay out two of these little plots and counted all the organisms in them-- the seaweed, snails, barnacles, and mussels. Look at all the barnacles! That was annoying to count-- there were over 400.

There were three kinds of snails. The one on the far left is a carnivorous snail, not native to the region. It eats by latching on to other shellfish and scraping a hole through the prey's shell. The next one is also not indigenous-- we know of it as the common periwinkle. The third one, the tiny one, is the native aquatic snail in this region, also a periwinkle.

Also, I found an empty sea-urchin shell.

It's a great area, lots of tidal pools and fun to explore.

Sick

2007-10-29T21:19:00.000-05:00

My head weighs five hundred pounds and is stuffed with cotton pain, my nasal cavity is dealing with an overpopulation of mucus and my left nostril has decided to grant amnesty, and my throat aches so much I've been popping cough drops until my teeth feel furry.

Bah.

I have returned.

2007-10-28T00:19:00.000-05:00

Today is the first day of the five-day Isia inventio Osiris, the Passion of Isis in her search for the dismembered body of Osiris.

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Yesterday was the Halloween dance, and I, like a moron, forgot my camera. Dang. Well, I'll post a (headless) picture of my awesome costume later, and also Ryter's cool Byzantine soldier costume.

At the dance, I saw several cool costumes, like the full Power Ranger set, Bill and Ted from Bill and Ted's Most Excellent Adventure, and Captain Orange, who informs kids about Vitamin C! And of course, there was the obligatory sexy maids, sexy nurse, sexy witches, sexy pirates, sexy angel, sexy schoolgirls, sexy Hogwarts witch, sexy 1920's gangster, sexy Leia in her slave girl outfit and several prostitutes.

Not that I wasn't wearing red thigh-high boots with five-inch-heels, and not that I really mind sexy costumes, but sometimes you like to see a bit more variety, you know? Not that it's their fault, if you buy a costume as an adult woman you're basically stuck with "sexy," as Vivacia and I learned last year. But anyway, it was fun despite my feet KILLING ME by the end. Ryter and I left as soon as the costume contest was announced (I didn't win, the Power Rangers were Best Group, Where's Waldo was Most Creative, and the class president won with a store-bought superhero costume (but since he knew EXACTLY who I was without guessing "Devil?" I can't fault him for it. Props to the comic fans, y'know). Unfortunately, Vivacia couldn't really come until later (by which time I was spending most of my time sitting or standing in one place uncomfortably, not dancing) so I didn't get to see her much. Oh well, next weekend is her birthday and I will be around for that.

--------------------------------

I'll post about my Tuesday field trip when I get around to uploading the pictures. As for the Organic test, it was okay. I didn't FAIL it, at least-- I'm guessing a low B. Also, I got a perfect ten on my last Biostats quiz, which is VERY exciting because I was worried about that class.

Busy busy busy

2007-10-23T23:21:00.000-05:00

I haven't been writing because I have an Organic midterm Friday and I've been assembling my costume, which requires lots of sewing on the cape. On the plus side, I have all the pieces and it will be awesome.

Sometime soon I will write about my trip to the ocean for lab.

Short post

2007-10-20T22:46:00.001-05:00

Ryter and I saw Transformers today. Awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. Go see it.

Also got the cloth for my cape. This will be fun.

And that's pretty much it...

I think I annoyed Vivacia with my crazy school reform ideas.

2007-10-19T22:53:00.000-05:00

Holy shit! My last entry was # 300 and I forgot! Oh well. Congrats to me, that was my 300th blog post! Wooo!

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Sorry I forgot to write a blog entry last night, Ryter and I hung out after my reall not-fun Chem lab (four hours and I only got 1% yield for one sample) and watched the movie Se7en, all because Ryter is doing a short preliminary-to-a-novel story on a telekinetic serial killer and I said, "You know, I always thought it would be cool to do a story about a killer whose MO is based on the seven deadly sins."

He then said, "You know what? Get in the car. We're going to Blockbuster."

So my idea's been done. I liked the movie, actually, though it was very creepy. Hang on a second....

SPOILERS, IF YOU CARE

Not that you should, it was released over ten years ago. Still, only fair to warn people.

I have to say, my favorite murder by far was the Sloth one. Chaining a guy to a bed and keeping him alive as his body is covered in excruciating sores until he looks like an long-dead corpse and his mind slowly turns to mush, so he can't identify you when he is found? Cutting off his hand to place his fingerprints at the scene of another crime, thus leading the cops to him at the perfect time? And even paying his rent so that his landlord never complained or noticed? That's impressive.

The writers were pretty creative with the murders. Gluttony= force feeding was kind of obvious, but a pound of flesh from the greedy man then bleeding him dry, that was clever. Although the "lust" one, making a john strap on a penis sheath with a blade on the end and stab a prostitute through the uterus, creeped me out because there are actually people who might make that sort of shit for someone. Gah. The model for Pride was interesting because I actually have trouble believing even a model would choose suicide over disfigured survival. I mean, really, you'd think she'd know something about plastic surgery. Someone could build her a new nose to replace the one he cut off.

The only part that really bugged me, though, was the final scene, specifically mailing the young detective's wife's head to him. Creepy and effective, yes. But I have two problems with it. One, Doe SPECIFICALLY said in the car that his victims were not "innocent people." As in, he killed them because they were sinners. He didn't think he was a monster for it, because they were not innocent. And yet... he kills a pregnant woman and her fetus with her, just to get at the guy he wants to peg as Wrath? Maybe he could justify the woman as obviously a sinner because all people are guilty of some sin, but Catholic dogma, which he was following, states that a child can't be accountable for their sins until they are seven years old, and that a newborn has only the original sin. By his own rules he should have been forced to leave her alone as soon as she said she was pregnant.

Also, I thought the detective should have died. All the other representations of sin died. Why not Wrath? I figured he should have killed himself and it should have ended right then.

But anyway.

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Today Vivacia and I had girl time. We talked and I helped her bake a cake for her mom's birthday, which they are celebrating tomorrow. It was fun.

And yet, while I like spending time with her, this is the first weekend since I got back to school that I haven't spent the night at Ryter's. It's actually been a couple months since I went a week without spending the night at Ryter's.

AHHH! Boyfriend withdrawal... No. Must. Kick. Habit...

I'm lonely.

And there weren't even any bears!

2007-10-17T22:34:00.001-05:00

So about yesterday.

We went to College Woods for lab to identify and count trees. First he told us all about the different kinds of trees you could find in the area, most of which we didn't actually find ourselves. Then he had us each measure out two four meter-by-four meter squares in the middle of the woods, measure the diameter of each tree in them, and identify it. This wouldn't have been that bad except that your average 4m x 4m plot of woodland has about 30 trees, some of which are quite large in diameter and required multiple people to measure (our biggest was 79 cm in diameter) and all of which like to poke you. Some were hard to identify-- we had to look at my camera pictures and get some help to figure out the red oak-- but about 95% of them were eastern hemlock. I got really sick of hemlocks.

Here are the trees we found:

Also, some pretty shots of the woods:

I need to go there for walks more often. It's not that far from campus.

I have an odd affection for that picture.

2007-10-16T22:35:00.000-05:00

I will tell you all about my trip through College Woods to hug trees tomorrow, but for tonight, I have a Biostats paper I just finished and two epodes to translate so I'm afraid you'll have to settle for something random.

Well, I warned you it was random.

If I type "Lee Bog" enough I'll get even MORE visitors!

2007-10-15T23:52:00.000-05:00

No real blog entry tonight, I had a big paper for Ecology. I do find it interesting, though, that in researching this paper, which is about Lee Bog, I typed "Lee Bog" into Google and got... my own damn blog.

I appear to be the foremost authority on the ecology of Lee Bog. At least according to the Internet, which we all know is God.

I only wonder if my classmates got shunted here as well. Don't rely on me! I'm not as smart as I pretend I am!

Redneck step-uncles: the best kind of redneck uncle.

2007-10-14T22:25:00.000-05:00

You know how I've been having issues with feeling like reality is surreal? Well, the worst thing to do in that state of mind is go to a haunted house. I was scared shitless. Ryter's knuckles suffered quite a bit.

Loquelo, Loquelo's housemate Quiesa, Ryter and I went to the Haunted Acres in Epping, where they've got two haunted houses, a haunted maze, and a haunted walk through the woods. Ryter had never been to a haunted house before. We went to the Haunted Saloon/Mineshaft first, where I made the mistake of going last, and thus was the victim of the various monsters who followed us a bit too closely. Quiesa would scream bloody murder when people jumped out, which made the whole thing five times scarier. It was all Western-themed. Ryter said "Hi" to all the actors, just randomly.

The next one was the Atomic House, designed to show nuclear fallout. For this one they gave us 3-D glasses, which did make the whole thing very psychedelic and a bit like an acid trip, but which also, alas, refused to stay on, and when they were on they made it very hard to find my footing on the floor, which went up and down at random times. I wound up taking them off for the uneven parts. The strobe lights were a challenge, though. At one point someone jumped out at me while I was messing with the glasses and I shrieked, which was one of the few times Ryter actually admitted he got scared.

Then we went to the maze, which was just that-- a maze-- only in almost complete darkness, with hidden doors from which costumed people would wander out, surprise us, and follow us. We got lost a few times, and this one guy with a meat cleaver who looked exactly like Loquelo in the darkness got between Ryter, Quiesa and I and Loquelo, and trapped us in a dead end. Thankfully they weren't allowed to touch us so we got past him, but he followed us all the way to the exit and scared the CRAP out of Quiesa. Meanwhile Ryter and Loquelo were laughing, and they both have these high-pitched, creepy laughs that weren't really helping matters.

Then we finished by doing the quarter-mile Nightmare Walk through the woods. First guy we see has this big-ass sword and comes running straight at Quiesa, raising it in the air. She shrieked and cowered. Of course he didn't touch her, but she was crying as she laughed afterwards. The walk was by far the scariest. Even Ryter was scared, at least until he figured out the pattern of where the people were hiding, waiting to jump out at us. There was a six-foot-high dragon, lots of ghouls and witches, and a guy with a real, running chainsaw that smelled terrible. I admit, my heart was in my throat. The fact that we were in the woods-- and thus there was real wilderness on either side, and we accidentally went off the path once, and it was REALLY dark in spots-- made it much worse.

Ryter LOVED it. Especially the Atomic House and the walk, of course. He had a ball. Me, not so much. I don't like being really scared, and the fact that I have had trouble with reality vs. fantasy lately was making it very, very hard. I didn't realize it would be that bad. Still, it was fun, and I'm glad I went with someone whose hand I could grab onto and basically not let go of the entire time...

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Yesterday was Ryter's grandfather's engagement party. Basically, like 40 people of his extended family on his dad's side, all gathered together in this little ranch house... It wasn't that bad. It was a bit claustrophobic at times, but everyone was really nice, and Ryter's favorite uncle was there from LA as a surprise, which was cool. Plus we got to laugh at the antics of his redneck soon-to-be step-uncles in many different levels of sobriety.

Ryter has learned that his uncle, a man he and his entire family does not like, is paying for the bar bill at the wedding (which will be one day after I turn 21, incidentally). Thus, he and much of his family has decided to get as plastered as is humanly possible, as fast as possible.

I will be driving us back from this wedding, methinks.

Trying to be both vague and specific at the same time is rather challenging.

2007-10-11T22:37:00.000-05:00

It appears this business of bursting into tears pretty much every night that I am alone is going to become a habit.

I'm glad I spent the night at home, though honestly I wish I could have spent another night, or a whole weekend. I did get to get some apples and cider today, and see the ducks at the local apple orchard's duck pond. They used to advertise "FEED THE DUCKS!" and sell duck food, but I think some environmentalist got to them because now the sign says "PLEASE DON'T FEED THE DUCKS-- THEY NEED TO BE ABLE TO FLY!"

And I talked to my dad about Thanksgiving. He refuses to let it be moved to Friday but was okay with eating at 12 or 1 and letting me go to Ryter's family dinner afterwards. The only question is if my aunt can come up that early. My mom will talk to her.

And now I'm back at school, a little later than planned. I think this stress won't go away until I solve the problems that are causing it-- no amount of relaxation will help. I just wish I could say how successful I will be at that.

Not this shit again.

2007-10-10T23:36:00.000-05:00

I managed to skip Biostats today. Not intentionally. We were dismissed from Organic and, instead of sitting there and waiting for my professor to come in, I just... left. I spaced. I honestly thought it was time for me to go. I forgot a whole hour of my day.

But oh well. I can catch up later. I'm stressed, is all.

---------------------------------------------

I'm at home right now, which will help. I talked to my mom about Thanksgiving with Ryter-- she said she's okay with it, but I haven't talked to my dad yet. That will not go as well...

Honestly? I'd rather we just did separate Thanksgivings this year. I think he said they do a deli platter. For Thanksgiving. My mom does a big-ass turkey and a whole mess of side dishes and she's a fabulous cook. She suggested we do the dinner Friday, if Shrewd could get Friday off work, but if Shrewd's at Crate and Barrel she'll need to do day-after-Thanksgiving sales. Moving it would be so unbeleivably perfect... but unlikely. So I may be skipping my mom's amazing Thanksgiving cooking for Ryter. I hope that kid knows how much I love him.

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I played my Marvel Heroes monopoly game tonight with my mom and dad. I lost, spectacularly. Mummy won, and she was talking to Shrewd on the phone for the first 20 minutes or so. It didn't help that Daddy had the TV going for background noise, which makes it impossible for me to concentrate. But it's a cute game, and a lot of fun. Park Place was Magneto, Boardwalk was Professor X, in case you're curious.

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So I was sitting here writing this at midnight, and now I'm crying. Why am I crying? Hell if I know. I'm just crying. And I can't see the screen very well.

okay, so maybe I do know. Maybe I'm crying because I'm so stressed I accidentally skipped a class. Maybe it's because I just finished my third test in less than a week this morning. Maybe it's because I spent 15 minutes of that test on one problem only to realize that duh, 1200 divided by 300 is 4, not 400. Maybe it's because I can't stick to a diet and every time I look down I am reminded of how fat I am. Maybe it's the fact that he, completely innocently, made me feel incredibly embarrassed and ashamed of the one feature of my body that I have always felt really, really self-conscious about and wanted him to approve of. Maybe it's because I have a Orgo quiz Monday and a test in two weeks. Maybe it has something to do with all my Daphnia dying and my turning in a crappy report on them. Maybe it's the fact that my boyfriend has told me that all the not-quite-sex stuff that we do together does pretty much nothing for him, and basically told me to lay off anything more than kissing until I'm ready for sex (not that he's saying that needs to be soon). Maybe it's the fact that this is the first time I've been home for longer than an hour since I went to school, and I can only spend the night, and no one's going to be home tomorrow anyway since it's Thursday and they have to work, and by the time they get home I'll have to go back to Durham so I can be around to spend tomorrow hiking with Ryter, and spend the night before him sleeping in his god-awful uncomfortable bed and not touching him, then go spend Saturday being smiley and happy for his family, and Sunday doing homework. Maybe it has something to do with not being ALONE since... god. I can't remember. I can't remember being alone. And I'm increasingly retreating into my fantasy worlds to the point where reality seems surreal, and I can't fix that problem because I have maybe five friends and they're all so busy with jobs or extracurriculars (you know, lives) that I can't spend time with them instead and have THEM pull me out of this world I've retreated into. And I feel like I can't tell Ryter because he's stressed out already and his problems are worse than mine, and besides, he's the reason for some of mine and that will make him feel worse and when he feels guilty it makes me feel bad for making him feel guilty and ultimately, even if it was his fault, I wind up suffering emotionally more than him.

I'm so sick of crying. The way I stop crying is to retreat into a fantasy, where I'm pretty and healthy and supreme dictator of earth. But when I retreat into fantasy it's worse when I have to return to the real world. So I have to decide if the temporary relief is worth it.

Bog Blog

2007-10-10T12:10:00.000-05:00

So yesterday I went on a field trip in Ecology to Lee Bog. Which is a bog. In Lee, NH. More specifically, a sphagnum bog, protected by the town of Lee.

We got there and first he took us to this little place:

Which I was very proud of myself for knowing that it was a vernal pool, before he even said it. Vernal pools are puddles that always show up in the same spot. I thought the dip at the end of my driveway was a vernal pool, but it turns out it's just a drainage problem.

Then we started our walk. Thankfully it was not a hike. Along the way he pointed out a bazillion white oaks, which are some of the few plants we actually will have to identify for this class. This is a white oak and white oak leaves up close.

I can't remember the name of this next plant, but you can eat the little purply-blue berries. They're very bitter and usually only birds eat them.

This is eastern hemlock. Unlike the hemlock that killed Socrates, this is not poisonous, and is in fact edible. The leaves are, anyway.

This is Lee Bog. It's kind of pretty. The little scraggly evergreen trees are black spruce, which only grows in bogs, at the timberline, and in the tundra. They need it to be rather cold and harsh. Bogs are cold because the water in them is blocked by the vegetation, so it can't circulate.

Notice the other pine trees are kind of scraggly. That's because bog soil doesn't have a lot of nutrients.

This is the sphagnum moss, which is what creates the bog. Rotting sphagnum makes the bog soil jiggle when you poke it with a stick, like jello pudding. Muddy, stinky, freezing cold jello pudding.

The nearby trees are all yellowed because of chlorosis, which means they aren't getting enough nutrients.

Bogs are usually surrounded by plants that do well in tundra environments too. This is reindeer moss, so called because reindeer like to eat it.

We walked through the woods, too, and he pointed out the canopy effect-- plants can't grow because the caonpy takes up all the light.

This is the American Chestnut.

It's almost extinct because humans accidentally introduced a chestnut fungus to the New World that the European and Asian chestnuts were resistant to, but the American one was not. They are incredibly rare; apparently there are only about three or four trees that are known to be breeding and that's only because their root systems are all but immortal, so when the tree dies off from the fungus the roots send up new trees. Which then get attacked by the fungus. Sucks to be an American chestnut.

And this is the pretty foliage on one of the trees by Parsons Hall.

So that was my Tuesday field trip.

Sorry

2007-10-09T21:13:00.000-05:00

No post tonight. I have an exam tomorrow.

I got really PO'd at my RA too, but she may actually deserve it.

2007-10-08T23:12:00.000-05:00

Good news. I got an 82% on my Biostats exam. Now to get through the Ecology one Wednesday. But I'm much better at retaining things from that class, at least.

I also took a Latin test today, but I'm not too worried. It was just a translation. I think I may have tripped up in some places but they were minor mistakes-- I got the gist of it, and we had to paraphrase too. Not a terrible worry. Except I forgot to record the homework for that class, so now I have to admit to my professor that I spaced...

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I'm depressed right now, and I don't know why. I've been crying a lot, over anything, and I'm moody. Plus it feels like everything people do bothers me. Not irritable-bothers, but just makes me feel sucky and upset. I noticed it with Ryter tonight, though I was suppressing it because he's in a lot of pain lately and he doesn't need to deal with me being moody and emo. Hopefully it will go away soon.

Honestly, I think it's a yearly thing. As much as I love fall, every year-- perhaps due to the return to academia-- I get depressed for a month or so. I actually think it might be a good sign for my own health that I'm getting upset at other people instead of myself, though. I mean, I'm upset with myself, especially in terms of my weight and academic difficulties, but I'm ALSO getting upset with others, when previously I would just take all that emotion and turn it in on myself.

This annoyance at those around me, while potentially a good thing, is also a bad thing in that I won't be very fun to be around for a while, and in that I have to talk to my parents about the Thanksgiving issue this weekend-- specifically that Ryter really, really wants me to spend Thanksgiving with his family, and my family has been increasing the importance of Thanksgiving since Shrewd and I went away to school. Which means that I will have to have my mom explain that we're a little young to be sharing holidays that both families celebrate (his doesn't celebrate Christmas, so that doesn't count), and more specifically, that this is "all well and good to date him but it's not like you're going to marry the guy" which is the one statement that drives me NUTS lately and I get it ALL THE TIME from family.

Basically, what they are saying is, they want me to treat this like a college fling, a starter boyfriend. Which I would NEVER do and I would discourage others from doing, because it is cruel and manipulative. If we don't wind up together forever, that's okay. If we do, that's okay too. I don't know. But if I did that, I sure as hell would know how it would end, and it wouldn't be fair if he didn't.

I'm still debating whether or not to talk to Ryter about the things that are bothering me. On the one hand, maybe they are legit complaints. On the other, maybe I'm making them up because I'm depressed and moody. On the third, creepily dismembered hand of some dead hobo I found, he's got a lot to deal with right now and probably doesn't need this too...

My mother seems to have decided to give me sweaters a lot-- I'm not entirely sure how related this is to the "miniskirt" incident...

2007-10-07T20:33:00.000-05:00

My whole family came up for my birthday celebration today, which was cool. We went to the New England Center (they have a Sunday brunch buffet), and Vivacia and Ryter came too.

It was cool. I got a cowboy hat, a sweater, an iTunes gift card, a Marvel Monopoly board and $375. All of which are most excellent. Also, the food was good and having Vivacia there apparently made Ryter a lot less nervous around my parents, because they were more focused on the fact that they haven't seen Vivacia in ages.

Then, I spent the afternoon studying. Well, sort of. I was supposed to be studying, anyway. It was an on and off thing... However, I did set up my secondary blog, which has only three entries. It's just me babbling about the Middle East conflict, plural marriage, and cheating, but if you like that sort of thing or want to tell me all the many ways I am wrong, check it out. Unlike many internet opinion blogs, I will admit if you change my mind-- and changing my mind is possible.

Last one, I promise

2007-10-06T23:05:00.000-05:00

This is one of many new blog entries from tonight. Check the first one here.

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Today Ryter and I went up to the White Mountain National Forest and hiked along the Pemigewasset River, on the Lincoln Woods trail. It was a LOT of fun. I need better hiking socks for my boots, but it was still fun. We walked the main, flat, wide, used-to-be-a-railroad-track trail for a while, though we did wander off it when there was a good place to climb down to the river.

We sat on the rocks for a while until giant insects the size of a quarter (well, one giant insect the size of a quarter) attacked us. Then, back to the trail. We finally veered off when we saw a little side trail labeled, "Black Pond, 1.0 miles" and decided to investigate. That was a much more rugged trail (well, less of a dirt road, more of a trail) but it was also fun and more exciting. We never found Black Pond, we had to turn around (I'm reeeeeeally out of shape) but it was a fun walk and we're going back next week, to find either Black Pond or the waterfall that is rumored to be in the area, whichever we decide.

I was sweaty and gross afterwards, but it was worth it. So much fun. And Ryter especially loved it, he can't wait to get back. I really hope I can match his stamina soon, because I know he really wants to get so tired he comes back to his apartment and collapses from exhaustion, and I get that way about an hour before he does...

Next week, I am totally bringing my camera.

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There, all caught up. More tomorrow/later today (it's 12:03) after my birthday party, and after I start studying for the Ecology test on Wednesday (yeah, ANOTHER test...).

My crazy week

2007-10-06T22:38:00.000-05:00

This is one of many new blog entries from tonight. Check the first one here.

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Monday I learned I had the Biostats test, and promptly freaked out. That was yesterday. It wasn't too bad, but I did get a lot of studying in. But I went over to Ryter's and burst into tears anyway, because of it.

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Tuesday was my field trip with Ecology to Blue Job Mountain, which is a protected wilderness area that used to be a blueberry heath, so it's a young forest. As my teacher is a bit of a naturalist type, it was very informative and interesting. As I had not anticipated climbing up a mountain, and had expected instead that we would drive up and wander around a small wilderness area, I did not have enough water and I am too out of shape, and I was dying by the end. But the views? Amazing.

At the top there is a rickety old tower from the 1910's that is used to watch for fires, I believe. We climbed up and took pictures from the top. That was cool, even if the narrow stairs did make me fear pitching forward the whole way down.

Of course, the best part was watching the "I'm only in Bio to do pre-med, why do I have to take Ecology, wah" types complain about the mountain and more specifically the wilderness, and the potential for nail-breakage.

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Also Tuesday, I discovered that my lab partner in Ecology and I had managed to kill all of our Daphnia in our experiment over the previous week. Oops.

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Wednesday was my 20th birthday. Yes, I am 20 years old now, and officially not a teenager. Two decades. Holy cow.

I didn't do much for my birthday on the actual day (we're going to the New England Center-- my family, Vivacia and Ryter-- tomorrow) but I did break from studying for a few hours and went to eat dinner with Ryter, who ordered a pizza, which was sweet of him. We also ate leftover pieces of a cake he had (yes he buys cakes randomly), which, we discovered, was decorated with magnets. Yes, what we had thought were merely decorative fish-shaped cake toppings were actually magnets, stuck on top of the cake... and we watched the baseball game (he's very into baseball, it's the playoffs). It was nice. I mean, it would have been nice to have a birthday wish and all but that sort of thing gets harder as you get older and people care less and less about birthdays.

I went to the animal fair... the birds and the beasts were there...

2007-10-06T21:51:00.001-05:00

Finally, I can write. I'm going to separate these into different posts, instead of one long one, because I find it easier to read that way.

Starting with Friday...

After I checked my Daphnia experiment in lab I met Shrewd at my dorm, and we got directions and headed to the Deerfield Fair. The Deerfield Fair is held every year, never really changes, and is a lot of fun. Shrewd and I always like to go.

We were planning on meeting Mummy and Daddy there, but the cell phone reception was bad (isn't it always?) so we wandered around a bit. First stop was the sheep barn:

Which is one of Shrewd's favorite places. Then there was the goats...

And the pigs. We caught a bit of the pig show:

And then met up with Mummy and Daddy at last, as there was reception by the swine barn. Also by the swine barn? A sausage stand. Sketchy.

We moved on the poultry barn. There were ducks that looked like Arthur from Sheldon,

and drag queen chickens. Fabulous.

We got soup in a bread bowl for lunch, then the next stop was the draft horse heavy pulling show. Basically we watched giant horses, over seven feet tall, drag 3000+ lbs across the ring. Each team had to be backed up carefully towards the weight (which was put in place by tractor). This was sometimes a bit challenging, as the draft horses were all too eager to go. The first team was called Redneck Express, which amused me.

After watching that we swung over to where the Teamsters (4-H types) were competing with their oxen. The first kid looked about 8 and his oxen responded to him like puppies. Adorable. But not very obedient. The second kid had a little better luck with his.

The oxen were so sweet, but very big, and there were two cute little kids (can't take pictures of kids not your own, that makes you a predator, or I would have gotten one of these guys) playing on the fence and, for a little while, IN the oxen ring. One of the mommies caught this and freaked out, racing over to rescue the little kid.

One of the competitors was the regional champion oxen-raiser. These are hers. She's adult-sized, compare to the little ones before.

Then the draft horse barns! Ah, horsies...

And oxen, which I actually had to look on Wikipedia to figure out that pulling oxen are basically just steers. I always figured it was like the difference between a dairy cow and a beef cow but turns out that a neutered male dairy cow is an ox. Actually all cows/domesticated cattle are oxen, but these guys are the only ones we call such. I'd show you a picture from that barn but the only one I have has family members in it.

But here, have a dairy cow. That was our next stop:

And we saw them get milked:

By this time it was getting late. We went and got a Blooming Onion to share, then looked at the shops on the fairway, including a cowboy hat shop where Shrewd got a cool fancy hat, and then got fried dough, fudge, and decided to leave.

That was fun. Then we went to the Olive Garden all the way in Manchester, and I wound up getting back to campus really late. But it was okay, in the end.

Ecology is adventurous.

2007-10-02T09:20:00.000-05:00

I lied, but it's just cut and paste from my field trip permission form:

"Other hazards you may be subjected to on field trips include, but are not limited to, lightning strike, attack by rabid animals or psychopathic axe murderers, being crushed by a falling tree or a meteorite from outer space, getting sucked into a flying saucer by space aliens or carried off by a giant bird. In addition, you may be captured and sold into slavery by evildoers, sprain you ankle, break a bone, catch whooping cough, come down with fits, cut yourself, fall in water, fall off a log, fall off a cliff, fall into a hole, fall in love, lose your car keys, hear funny noises, be gored by a testosterone-addled moose, get shot by a hunter who mistook you for a deer, enter a time warp, meet Keith Richards, think unpleasant thoughts, catch on fire spontaneously, be singled out for ridicule, be robbed by a homeless person with a sharp stick, have you hair fall out, rip your underwear, get poked in the eye, sing off-key, hear a smutty joke, get stung by bees and wasps, get bitten by a venomous serpent, be possessed by demons, have a giant ground hog leap onto your head, AND ... it’s possible you’ll see lions and tigers and bears (oh my!)"

2007-10-01T22:36:00.000-05:00

I discovered I have a Biostats test Friday which I am woefully unprepared for. Do not expect posts until the weekend.

The news is depressing.

2007-09-30T22:36:00.000-05:00

I think if Bush makes us go to war with Iran despite the massive disapproval from the populace, I will have lost all faith in humanity and finally stop being optimistic.

According to Ryter, this will make me a "realist."

These days the line between realist and pessimist has faded into obscurity as surely as the concept of a literal interpretation of the Constitution.

If only politicians would understand that the Constitution is to be taken literally, and the Bible metaphorically-- not the other way around.

Short because I have homework

2007-09-27T19:13:00.000-05:00

I actually did pretty well in lab today-- finished quickly and didn't break anything, not even a tiny disposable capillary tube. Of course we were just boiling, melting and calculating density but I was still proud of myself.

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It has been ridiculously hot all day. I've been melting. It's September, dammit, I want fall.

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Continuing with the whole "make a new opinion blog" idea-- if I do this, I'm thinking of calling it "Naïveté," because I fully acknowledge up front that I am naive but I have my points as well.

I still don't know if it's a good idea or not...

My Chem homework was surprisingly easy.

2007-09-26T21:51:00.000-05:00

I'm wondering if I should start a second blog in which to dump my philosophical musings, anything that doesn't actually involve my day-to-day life, and keep this as a separate journal blog. What do you think? The other one wouldn't be updated as often. Actually, I might miss more days with this one as well, but the other one would be once or twice a week, and mostly so I can respond to newspaper articles and hopefully get people who wouldn't be interested in reading a diary blog to read the philosophical musings/opinion blog and comment.

So, good idea? Bad idea?

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Still haven't talked to my dad, though I did have to call home because the credit card was denied the other day. I want it working again so I can buy components of my Halloween costume online. I got Ryter to get himself a costume (Byzantine soldier, though it's actually a modified Hercules costume) so I need to do the same for myself-- finish off that scarlet witch costume.

So here's what it looks like:

Red tank leotard, including shipping: $23.24
Red cape, estimate including shipping: $20.00
Pink or lavender hose: $5.00 at Hot Topic or something
Red opera gloves, including shipping: about $12
Funny red hat/crown/tiara thingy: free, because I'll make it

I'm looking at $60 (not including the boots which I already bought) but I'll have an awesome costume. I wonder if Mummy would pay for some of it, knowing that I'll just wear the same thing every Halloween in the future, or modify it slightly if I want to.

I may also forgo the actual cape and just get a big piece of red cloth at JoAnn Fabrics, that would cut the price down. I can hem it myself, that's no big deal. Hmm.

This is what you get for lettin' us womenfolk think

2007-09-26T18:49:00.000-05:00

There was an article on the death penalty that I was reading today, and I felt the need to put my 2 cents in on the subject.

I believe in the death penalty.

That said-- Texas is bonkers in how much they use it. Like the guy mentioned in this article, who raped and murdered a woman. One woman, however cruelly and violently. Should he be locked up for life? Yes. I also believe that violent rapists for whom there is DNA evidence proving the rape should be surgically castrated. Not chemically, as you stop taking the pills and the desire comes back-- if someone violently rapes a person and there is definite evidence both that he was the rapist and that the crime was violent in nature, they should have their testicles removed and replaced with prosthetics. Cruel and unusual? If a person kills someone with a car, they lose their license. If they shoot at someone with a gun, they are denied the ability to ever own one again. It's just removing a weapon.

And yet, as for the death penalty-- I am of the mind that the death penalty should only be used for repeat offenders. Serial killers and gang members and the like. No crimes of passion, no single-murders, just people who plotted and acted on their plans to murder a stranger, a passing acquaintance, or a rival.

Also, the insanity defense is way overused-- the only way you should be able to plead not guilty by reason of insanity is if a) you actually have a real mental illness, and one severe enough that your crime is plausible-- situational depression doesn't count; b) you were not undergoing treatment (because you were undiagnosed or were not enough in your right mind to chose to) at the time of the crime (or a proper course of treatment was not found); c) you agree to undergo treatment and NOT STOP for your ENTIRE life; and d) you are expected to be a functioning member of society if treated.

So if a person kills someone and blames it on postpartum depression, they should get the same treatment as a healthy person. If they are an undiagnosed schizophrenic and willing to undergo treatment, they can get off. See where I'm going with this? My point is that if you have another Ed Gein, who was determined not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a mental hospital for his whole life-- well, honestly. He wasn't going to get better. And if he had been sane he probably would have been put to death. So if you've got someone like that, just put them to death.

But not the electric chair or anything. Nitrogen narcosis-- unconsciousness and painless suffocation, with mild euphoria beforehand. Plus it leaves the body undamaged so the family can chose to donate the organs or the whole body to science, if they so wish, or inter it intact, if their religion requests it.

And as for the people who claim the jails are too crowded from all the people who deserve to die already-- if we legalized and then regulated (most) drugs and saved jail for people who are a threat to others or who genuinely need rehabilitation.

Also, anyone in jail for life should have the option of painless elective suicide whenever they wish. I think it's only fair, honestly.

I wish I was able to do an overhaul on a prison and test some of my theories about rehabilitation, though. Even if I didn't get to set sentences or allow suicide. Things like work detail, trade education, and not allowing people convicted for certain crimes (pedophilia and gang crimes spring to mind) interact with each other (because that's how they learn techniques). That way I would see firsthand if it failed and accept the system we have now.

I did get to see Loquatia again, at dinner, so today wasn't all that bad.

2007-09-25T22:30:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to regulate my caloric intake (the dining halls post nutrition facts this year). While good for teaching me to add large numbers in my head quickly, it is posing many challenges. Yesterday the challenge was my Latin teacher bringing in homemade baklava. Today it was the fact that it was a festival day and the special foods don't list nutrition facts. And then there was the caramel apple pie.

I suck at this. But I did at least manage only about 2400 calories yesterday, which considering that I estimate I burn 2800 (lots of walking around) is kind of good. My goal is 2000 a day.

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So yesterday I had recitation for Biostats. Determined not to be as confused as last time, I took copious detailed notes on my laptop, step-by-step instructions and a guide in Excel itself. At the end of the class, she handed back quizzes (I got a 59 on mine. Yikes) and I rushed to pack up and get mine before the crush of half the class (of 125) got theirs. I then went to Hoco and to Ryter's for the evening, watched the first season of Heroes and speculated wildly as to the nature of the next season (but it looks like there will be superhero-teen lovin', so it's gotta be fun).

Then I got home, opened my computer, received a "YOU HAVE FLAWS ON YOUR DISK" message, clicked "fix" and came back in five minutes...

It rebooted my computer. Completely. What's more, in my rush I neglected to actually save my notes, figuring they would be there when I next opened the laptop. I lost everything.

So I grabbed some stuff off the website and frantically IMed Maritima, who is also in Biostats, and asked her for help. She's basically walked me through half this stuff. My lack of notes made this assignment take me a total of five hours, four of which were spent on one problem which I couldn't figure out at all.

But thanks to Maritima and my willingness to accept defeat on one problem, it was finished in the end. Thank god.

The thing is, I like statistics in itself; I don't like the fact that my TA has a new baby so she doesn't give a shit about teaching us, or grading us. My last assignment? She didn't grade the graph because I put it on a separate page. I mean, come on. Take off a point if it bugs you. But don't just not grade it. She claimed that she couldn't find things so if she had to hunt for it she gave it a 0, but honestly, how hard is it to get to that question where the graph should be and read "See page 3," and turn to page 3, where the graph is?

And that's not all she did that on-- I got a sixty, seventy with scaling, and I bet if she had spent more than a minute on each paper I could have gotten at least ten points higher. And she didn't bother to tell me what I did wrong, either. I guess I have to guess.

She says repeatedly that she hates statistics, hates grading, won't come in except for her very limited office hours, and is only doing this for the money because of the baby and because she's a graduate student. Okay. I get that she needs money, but really. This is all my stats professor could find???

Bah...

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Meanwhile I am debating how to ask my dad for a small allowance so I can do fun things on the weekends sometimes, or go out to eat once in a while. I mean, he knows I can't work with school stuff, and I do like to do things for fun besides surf Fark, read blogs and pester Ryter. I think I'll ask for $15 a week but hope for $10 and settle for $5 if I must. $5 would mean I get to eat out once a month and go on an (inexpensive) trip once a month. $10 would mean the same but eating out twice a month, or saving it; $15 would mean I could actually save up some money for the holidays.

My biggest concern is that the geniuses at UNH decided this year that finals end the week before Christmas. My last one is the 21st. Sure, vacation lasts until the 21st of January but guess what? Stores don't need help in January. They need help in December. If I go to a store and say I can start work on the 26th they'll say, "Sorry, no can do." Last year TJ Maxx really didn't need me after the ninth.

So that means I won't make any money at all over the winter break, and I don't really know what to do. I need a source of income, but I don't have the time to work during the year... The only thing I can think of is baby-sitting, but I hate, hate, hate advertising myself as a baby-sitter, and I don't really know any families in the area. Financially, I am screwed unless Daddy gives me an allowance.

He probably will understand. So what is my concern? I bet he ties it to my grades, as in, "Get a B or higher or the money goes away." And seeing as I am in Organic and Biostats, that means that it may very well go away and I'm screwed again.

Maybe if I suggest that I may need to take a year off and work otherwise... The only thing worse for Daddy than failing grades would be skipping a year. Something about "never going back."

Bah...

2007-09-24T22:39:00.001-05:00

I would write a blog entry tonight but I'm kind of freaking out because I think I am going to fail Biostats and possibly Orgo....

Highland Games: 70% diehard Scots, 29% diehard Metal fans.* Go figure.

2007-09-23T21:49:00.001-05:00

Last day of the Mercatus.

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Friday night after sunset was Yom Kippur, and since Ryter has a level of anti-religion backlash similar to that of former Christians thanks to a few years in Hebrew school he had mentioned he wanted to eat ham on the holy days. I complied, coming up with what I thought was the least kosher thing we could have prepared-- cheese dreams.

A cheese dream is usually bacon, tomato and cheese, melted over a piece of bread into ooey cholesterol goodness (I omit the bacon). Ryter doesn't like tomatoes, so I replaced them with a piece of ham. They were quite good, even if I do think that making them again before the next Yom Kippur may send him into cardiac arrest. Apparently Yom Kippur is also about fasting, which meant that the whole thing was even more sacrilegious.

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Saturday was the Highland Games up at Loon Mountain, and I had decided to take Ryter this year. I love the Games, I go every year I can, and I was hoping he'd like it too but honestly I was kind of expecting he would think it was boring or cheesy.

We got there a little before my family did and took the shuttle from the parking lot to Loon. As we had not eaten breakfast, food was the first priority-- specifically fish and chips for me (mmm, greasy fried fish from a fair stand first thing in the morning) and haggis and thumps for Ryter. Haggis is of course sheep's blood pudding and thumps is mashed potatoes mixed with cabbage. Keep in mind that Jewish law expressly forbids the consumption of animal blood and it was Yom Kippur.

He ate the whole thing and liked it (he wanted more, or to figure out how to get it at home) so he has become an honorary Scotsman and was christened Angus MacJewberg.

Anyway...

We met up with my parents, my grandmother, and my brother shortly after that and then looked around, checking out the Utilikilts and Threads of Time. Then we decided to go up the gondola to the top of the mountain and checked out the view. That was a lot of fun-- very pretty, less of a crowd and more of a breeze (or "stiff wind that nearly blew my skirts up," rather) so it wasn't as hot as at the Games themselves.

And once we went down again Ryter got to see the tail end of the caber toss and the Historic Highlanders, who were sword fighting at the time. We finally reconnected with my family later on for the sheaf toss (stick a pitchfork into a bag of oats and throw it over a 28-ft bar), which Ryter was very enthusiastic about and he cheered quite loudly for his favorites.

It was a lot of fun, and Ryter loved it. We had a little trouble finding our parking lot again, thanks to some bad info from the bus driver who brought us there, and then we wound up getting home later than hoped because we went out to eat with my family at Hart's Turkey Farm, but it was a great day and definitely what Ryter needed. It got him out of his apartment and doing something fun. He's also asking for a Utilikilt for Chrismukkah or Chrismahanakwanza, or whatever it is, which makes me happy because kilts are always sexy.

*Other 1%? Asian tourists, of course.

I was upset about lab, but Ryter made me feel better about it.

2007-09-20T21:59:00.000-05:00

Today is the first day of the Mercatus, four days of markets and fairs.

---------------------------------------

This morning I got the Gardasil vaccine and then donated blood, as they were running a drive in the MUB. I almost got denied because of my anemia but I ultimately passed, if barely. I think the nurse damaged my vein pulling the needle out, it's a bit bruised, but I'm okay. The guy in the cot next to me nearly passed out. He then said, "I think I lasted longer this time, last time I passed out after five minutes and the time before that I only got to the needle going in."

Then. Why. Are. You. Still. Trying.

Moron...

Well intentioned. But still kind of a moron.

As for the Red Cross themselves, it's kind of funny. I never give them money. Blood, yes, because I know what they do with the blood. But they only spend about 10% of what they get in donations on charity, the other 90% is for "administrative purposes."

Like after Katrina, apparently they turned down a free place for their volunteers to stay in a boarding-school dormitory in favor of a really expensive, fancy hotel that was farther away, because they didn't want to take non-monetary donations. That money could have helped victims; instead, it went to putting minibars in the volunteers' rooms.

But the blood, at least, goes to the people who need it. Not that I don't think for one minute that if it were legal to buy and sell blood they would always be in "critical need" of monetary donations to buy it, while actually harvesting it from third-world illegal immigrants who have been raised since infancy on nothing but antibiotics, liver and spinach so as to have high quality blood while living in cages and peeing in bedpans.

---------------------------------------

I had my first "real" Organic lab today. It was disastrous. I already owe the school about $7 in broken glassware, I don't really understand the concepts and I think my TA got rather annoyed with me by the end of it...

---------------------------------------

Did you hear about the 900 lb man with Prader-Willi Syndrome (which makes you perpetually hungry) who had to have firemen lift him out of bed to go to the hospital?

I think Prader-Willi is fascinating, and heartbreaking. Basically these are people who constantly feel like they're starving.

If, god forbid, I ever had a kid with this, I would let them eat-- but healthy, low-calorie food, and only if they were athletic. And I mean Olympics athletic. Go to school, come home, work out and eat at the same time. Make it fun-- soccer, races, whatever-- but still burn massive amounts of calories. Basically give them exercise anorexia to go with their Prader-Willi. And if they get too tired to continue, let them eat celery non-stop. You can eat celery constantly and won't gain weight from it. I would buy massive amounts of celery and say, "When you need to eat and you aren't at meals, eat this."

Of course I would also give them GH, which helps with other symptoms like short stature and muscle mass, and push them academically to help them overcome the learning disabilities, but the main problem is the food preoccupation, it's the most dangerous for their health. Apparently you have to keep their food under lock and key. I think the hardest part would be explaining that despite their severe hunger, they didn't need food. A parent would probably have to measure out their own amount of calories as well, until the kid would be surprised at people who ate without counting calories-- treat food as something you just do to take care of yourself, not something enjoyable. Like taking vitamins. Being a bad cook might help.

Still, it's very sad, and I think that the brother of this man, who allowed him to get that heavy despite being his caretaker and who let him have a credit card and allowed food to be delivered, should be tried for negligent domestic abuse, and, should the poor guy die of obesity-related issues, manslaughter. As should anyone who is such an enabler for a person who is morbidly obese.

"What the-- That's not funny! You suck!!!"

2007-09-19T19:01:00.000-05:00

Last day of the Ludi Romani, and also, for those Egyptians out there, the Fast of Thoth. Thoth was one of the most important Egyptian deities. He represented the balance between good and evil, was the scribe for the gods (and according to the Egyptians, invented hieroglyphs), the master of natural and moral law, the one who decided how and when the stars, sun, and moon should move and the god of all science and learning. He's probably closest to Athena of the Greek pantheon in that respect. He was the master of the Underworld and would weigh a man's heart against a feather to determine if he was a good or bad person.

------------------------------------

I feel the need to share a little gem from Latin class today. we are reading Horace, who was a Roman poet who was friends with such infamous greats as Virgil and Augustus Caesar, the emperor. Here is an except of the sermones (V) that we just finished translating:

"Hic ego mendacem stultissimus usque puellam
ad mediam moctem exspecto: somnus tamen aufert
intentum Veneri: tum immundo somnia visu
nocturnam vestem maculant ventremque supinum."
l. 82-85

Translation for the uninitiated: "Here [as in, in the city he was staying in] I in my extreme stupidity awaited a deceitful girl until midnight: but sleep stole my readiness for love: then in dreams the unclean sights defiled my night-"clothes and my prone stomach."

See? See? This is why I love the Romans. Only in that culture could a man who writes poetry about getting stood up by a prostitute and then having a wet dream be best buds with the emperor.

------------------------------------

Random tidbit of the day #2: "The average American man will begin to force himself to lose weight as soon as he can't see his own genitalia. The average American woman will start doing so when she can't see anyone else's."

------------------------------------

Also, Ryter says he's been feeling much better-- he's hungry again and sleeping all the time to catch up. So I'm not worried about him any more. Well, I'm not worried about him needing to be rushed to the hospital. I am slightly concerned that he will get hit on the head by a meteor. That's why every time I see a shooting star I wish that it doesn't land on the head of anyone I know.

Life.

2007-09-18T16:12:00.000-05:00

These last 24 hours have been... interesting, to say the least.

Last night I went over to Ryter's, because he's still feeling pretty awful and he needed some company. Loquelo came over as well, and we all hung out and Ryter was in pain and depressed as well, which made things worse-- he was depressed, nauseous (couldn't keep anything down), had a migraine, his whole back was seized up and as the night wore on he started to lose feeling in his hands.

After Loquelo left but before I did, Ryter threw up what little he had choked down that day, so I took him to the emergency room. We were there until 12:30 or so, though we could have left much earlier if they'd been quicker with the discharge... I stayed with him, being the annoying "patient's companion," chasing down snacks and nurses for pillows and because the monitor machine said he didn't have any blood pressure. I'm sure I was a total pest. But he felt much better as we were there and his mood perked up...

Anyway, we both got home by one and I collapsed asleep, but I found out this morning that Ryter later puked up the pills they gave him in the hospital and then couldn't go to sleep.

Plus the 3rd floor showers were being cleaned, and someone shat on the floor in the 2nd floor one, so rather than go upstairs and wait in line (since EVERYONE was going there) I decided to just shower tonight. So as I've been running around with a heavy backpack going in to Dover and then Ecology lab today, it's been on less-than-normal levels of sleep and no shower, and all the stress of Ryter being sick...

Goddammit, I hope the neurologist can help him...

Try it yourself!

2007-09-16T21:48:00.000-05:00

I took an online career quiz at Career Cruising (username: nycareers and password: landmark) called the Career Matchmaker, and now I'm posting my results for what my career should be.

Bold: I like this option
*: Something I would be interested in doing-- my interest level varies from one star (might make a good summer job, temp job or last choice) to five stars (I am currently actively pursuing this job). My commentary on the other options is included.

My results:

1.Taxidermist-- AHHHHHHH!!!!
2.Nurse Practitioner
3.Acupuncturist
4.Dental Assistant
5.Massage Therapist*
6.Nurse
7.Librarian-well, not as a career
8.Tour Guide
9.Sign Maker
10.Mental Health Nurse
11.Anthropologist
12.Podiatrist
13.Hairstylist
14.Family Practitioner*****
15.Esthetician
16.Physician Assistant****
17.Plastic Surgeon-- what is up with all the beauty things?
18.Surgeon
19.Doctor*****--This is what I actually intend to do, of course.
20.Dermatologist-not really but they do pay amazingly well
21.Obstetrician-Gynecologist*****
22.Furniture Finisher
23.Picture Framer
24.Activist
25.Bicycle Mechanic
26.Writer***
27.Print Journalist
28.Political Aide
29.Translator
30.Musical Instrument Builder and Repairer-- uh, what?
31.Tailor / Dressmaker
32.Chiropractor**
33.Surgical Technologist
34.Dispatcher--again, not as a full-time career
35.Library Technician--see previous
36.Market Research Analyst
37.Upholsterer-- right.
38.Critic
39.Dentist
40.Orthodontist

Then I added more criteria, to make it a bit more precise. The results were much better.

1.Physician Assistant****
2.Family Practitioner*****
3.Nurse Practitioner
4.Dermatologist - money and a good schedule, I guess.
5.Doctor*****
6.Obstetrician-Gynecologist*****
7.Massage Therapist*
8.Acupuncturist
9.Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
10.Naturopath
11.Taxidermist - NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
12.Social Worker
13.Mental Health Nurse
14.Podiatrist
15.Neurologist**
16.Surgeon
17.Plastic Surgeon
18.Chiropractor**
19.Anesthesiologist
20.Medical Illustrator****
21.Esthetician
22.Veterinarian
23.Writer***
24.Illustrator
25.Psychiatrist
26.Genetic Counselor***
27.Graphic Designer
28.Animator
29.Gerontologist
30.Gunsmith
31.Tour Guide
32.Artist*
33.Community Worker
34.Industrial Designer
35.Religious Worker - riiiiiiight.
36.Psychologist
37.Nursing Assistant
38.Interior Designer
39.Addictions Counselor
40.Midwife**

It looks like I would be okay with the careers I prefer. Also, alternatively, art seems to come up a lot. What do you think-- would I look good in all black with a beret and a cigarette and weird jewelry, bone thin as I murmur about the sublime use of shape and pick paint out of my nails?

The bone thin is because there's no way I could make money at that...

I say the pickled cauliflower was weirdest. And that's what he KEPT.

2007-09-15T23:44:00.001-05:00

Last night I went over to Ryter's. He's been doing increasingly poorly the longer he has to deal with the tic and the pain, which really sucks. I'm trying to just be there for him, there's not much else I can do, and he can't really do anything either until he sees the neurologist except handle the pain as best he can.

Today, randomly, I started cleaning his fridge. I don't really know why I did it, but I was feeding Jesus the Lizard for him and instead of putting Jesus' veggies back I started pulling out the old veggies and dumping them out in the compost bin. But it was an experience, certainly. There was clumpy milk and gray cheese, pumpkin beer over a year old and a hot dog that was completely solid. He had a liquefied squash and something we couldn't identify in a plastic bag, and the V8 had a fuzzy white thing floating on it. But now his fridge is clean, so if he feels up to it and goes to see his dad tomorrow (for laundry and a Costco trip), he can put the things he buys somewhere. Plus I won't go to pull out Jesus' blueberries and almost put my hand in a strange off-white substance with a green shimmer that has pooled at the bottom of the fruit drawer.

Boys.

I also did all his dishes, but that's mostly because I'm the one who asks that we use them-- he just eats with his hands or disposable packages half the time, and reuses dishes many times before cleaning them-- and his OCD means he has issues letting things soak, because of the dirty standing water. I don't mind doing that sort of thing-- Ryter's always worried that I'm going to get sick of dealing with that stuff and break up with him because of it, but I mean, come on. I'm hardly going to fault the guy for a liquefied squash and a few dishes, especially not when he's got all this other crap to deal with (and cleaning fridges is actually kind of fun, sort of like how I imagine forensic scientists might enjoy their job. I always like seeing what weird things people put in their fridges and forget about). Part of the dishes was giving him one less thing to have to deal with-- at least he'll have something to clean to eat off of if he needs to and he won't have a whole pile of dirty dishes laying around getting in his way.

I'd clean his whole apartment if I thought it would improve his mood, but I think the only thing that would do that is going to the neurologist and having them say, "Oh, we know exactly what is causing every single one of your problems. Take this one pill once a day for six weeks and then you'll be cured of all these problems for the rest of your life, and be happy and productive until you're 80."

And then he comes home, and wins the lottery.

Oh well. Things will get better, at least, if the neurologist can handle the tic and help with the pain. Which seems very likely.

He told me when he dropped me off that he didn't want me to worry about him. I replied, "I'm your girlfriend and you're suffering, of course I'm going to worry. But I won't drive myself crazy over it, I promise." He settled for that.

One and a half weeks until he can see the neurologist. Only one and a half weeks...

"He has the grace of a hippopotamus and a penguin's love child."

2007-09-13T20:54:00.000-05:00

Still the Ludi Romani. I figured I should explain what the Ludi Romani is, exactly. They were games, with races (games in the Circus Maximus) for last four days, and they had dramatic performances (a rarity in Rome-- they, like Americans, preferred comedies and satires). It would start with a solemn procession, then chariot races and footraces. And no one really had to work. Well, the rich people didn't. THere should me more 15-day-long holidays in modern culture, don't you think?

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I made a bazillion phone calls this afternoon, but my bills are paid and the credit cards are canceled, at least. And I have an appointment at Health Services. I'm going to get the Gardasil HPV vaccine thingy. Mummy's been pestering me about it.

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Also, I had my first Orgo lab today-- not a real lab, just an intro. Because most of our equipment is crazy expensive, they've given us keys to "our drawer," where we have a full set of everything and no one else uses it. Thus, they can catch us if we break something. And make us pay through the nose for it.

------------------------------------

The other night I was talking to Ryter about future careers and he mentioned that his psychiatrist told him the money's in child psychiatry. This devolved into a mini-debate, because I find most modern child psychiatry to be akin to plastic surgery.

Both are sometimes needed, badly. There are children (by which I mean under 10) who are actually mentally ill, for whom early intervention is a godsend. Also, some children have post-traumatic stress disorders or autism or some other issue that is beyond normal pediatrician and parental care. At the same time, accident victims are often badly disfigured and require reconstruction, or children are born with deformities that require correction.

And yet, just as most people who go to plastic surgery actually need self-esteem, a supportive social network, diet, exercise and maybe counseling, most children who are sent to psychiatrists these days need parents.

ADHD, "depression," lack of motivation, imaginary friends-- parents assume that if their kid isn't the same as every other kid or different in a brilliant/precocious/cute way, he needs therapy. ADHD? Most kids diagnosed with ADHD are just hyperactive with short attention spans. Maybe they need a little Ritalin, if it's a problem in class. Don't get me started on depression. Kids are impressionable. Usually depressive tendencies can be countered by loving, attentive parents who still know how to give their kid space, and maybe a change of schools. Usually they just need to make some friends. And if my children DON'T have imaginary friends I'm gonna worry that they're being creatively stunted somehow.

Ryter argues that sometimes kids just need to talk. You know who I talked to when I was a kid and upset or hurt? My mom. She was my confidante and adviser and counselor. Yes, teenagers are rebellious and don't talk to their parents. Nothing I say here applies to teenagers. Teenager-hood is 5-8 years of PMS, essentially. If that's not enough to send you into therapy I don't know what is.

BUT. The truth is, if your kid needs therapy because they "need to talk," you aren't being a good parent. A good parent makes sure their child knows that they aren't judgmental, they will listen and be there, etc. No kid should be afraid to talk to their parents for any reason. Note I said "kid," because no one expects a conversation that starts out with "Mom, I think I should go on the pill" to end well.

Kids have problems that seem huge to them, but small to us. They're problems a parent can handle (some exceptions, naturally-- "Mommy, the priest touched me in the private place" won't end well either).

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be child psychiatrists, clearly. I'm saying that I could never be one (for reasons besides the obvious "couldn't be any kind of psychiatrist"). Because while I could treat the truly ill children, if I got some moron parent in there looking for an ADHD diagnosis to explain why their kid doesn't listen to them, I would tell them that I won't treat their kid until they take a parenting class, got some counseling, and took some time off work to play with the child. I doubt that would go over well...

Not my evening

2007-09-12T23:53:00.000-05:00

Still the Ludi Romani.

----------------------------------------

Ryter was really sick tonight, like, constant agony sick; he's got a tic problem that's popped up (well, he claims it's been there forever, but I haven't noticed it) and it affected his trachea, causing him to have trouble with food and drink. He also is dealing with some medication shifting while he's waiting to see a neurologist, and that may have had something to do with all of this. Luckily his meds kicked in in the evening so it was okay, but we were thinking he might have to go to the ER for a little bit there. If he has that problem tomorrow, he will.

----------------------------------------

Then on top of that, my mother called. See, when I was buying school stuff the clerks would offer me various promotions. The conversation would go thusly:

"Would you like to sign up for our Rewards Card?"
"What does it do?"
"Well, you get a discount on all future purchases."
"Does it cost anything?"
"No, it's free."
"And it's just a discount?"
"Yep! Takes no time to sign up..."

And I would sign up, because what's the loss?

So now my mom's called with the news that contrary to what I was told, these are actually credit cards. And what's more, all those pesky "receipts" I signed, and all those times the clerks swiped my card? Yeah, they weren't real. They were just practice, I suppose. Because now they're charging me for it again, on their little credit card that was supposed to be a Rewards Card, like the little key thing you get at Shaw's that gives you discounts on baked beans once in a while.

So their clerks blatantly misrepresented these cards to me, and now I discover I have to pay them off and cancel them and this HUGE hassle. I intend to actually go into the stores that I got the cards from and ask to speak to the manager there, and say, "Your employees GROSSLY misrepresented this deal. They portrayed the card as a simple discount membership, failing to mention that it was in fact a CREDIT CARD and that I would still owe money. I like your merchandise and this won't stop me from shopping here, but I damn well expect the next time I or anyone comes in and you offer this service that you have those clerks mention "credit card" somewhere in their little chat-up."

We;re ignoring the me not reading the small print part. If the clerks had been honest, I would have. As it was, I wasn't expecting that I was entering any kind of contract that could negatively affect me in any way; as it is my mom has to pay these things off for me lest I wind up with a bad credit score, then I have to cancel them.... bah...

I haven't forgotten, but I don't dwell.

2007-09-11T22:25:00.000-05:00

The Ludi Romani continues.

---------------------------------

I was talking to Cellamica at dinner today, and the topic strayed over towards previous roommates, and she shared a very interesting story with me...

Imagine you're sleeping in a dorm room, and you wake up and the bunk is shaking. You look around sleepily, then, you happen to glance into the unfortunately-positioned mirror to see two sets of feet hanging out of the bunk over you, and a squirming set of bodies under a blanket.

Her roommate was having sex. In the top bunk of a bunk bed. While she was sleeping underneath.

I can't imagine what I would do in that situation. She said she just turned over and tried to not think about it, I mean, it's not like she could leave without it being awkward, and it was apparently really early in the morning...

I'm just amazed she didn't immediately request a roommate switch, I would have. But instead she stuck it out, and a while later she was working on her computer and her roommate had sex with a guy on the top bunk while she was in the room, and clearly awake. All that was covering them was a sheet.

God. That is just... man. Wow.

Best part? This girl is a girl that Ryter once mentioned to me before, in the context of "I once was attracted to her," so I got to inform him with a bit more glee than was probably fair that he was once attracted to an incredibly inconsiderate slut (to be fair, he stopped liking her when he started picking up on how obnoxious she was). Whee!

---------------------------------

My Ecology lab was outside today. It was raining. As in, downpour. It was depressing not only because I got soaked despite Cellamica loaning me her umbrella, but also because it was a really interesting lecture-- at least the parts I could hear while the rain drummed down on my umbrella and those of the people around me, and on the brook we were looking at. He was talking about invasive species, the species of plant that humans introduced to the area that have been damaging local environments, and he was throwing in survival tips as he went, like "This is poison ivy, note the shape of the leaves;" "Crush up the berries of this kind of sumac and you can make a kind of lemonade;" "The juice of this native kind of impatiens is an antidote to poison ivy," and "Do not eat any part of this plant or you will die immediately," which I kind of wish I could have heard the name for, in retrospect, especially after that lovely story about that gardener who mistook a root of it for a ground potato, ate it, and died.

Not that I normally go about eating random tubers I dig up. But knowing that the antidote to poison ivy grows all over College Ravine is useful. I just wish I could have listened to that lecture without mud in my shoes.

Der Fuhrer's Face

2007-09-11T10:14:00.001-05:00

I have had this song stuck in my head for days. I finally found this old cartoon to share, and to confirm my memory-- I think I saw this last my freshman year in high school. Note the lovely depiction of the "Japanese Nazi." I find these cartoons hilarious, in a "horrifying" kind of way...

Enjoy!

I remembered something odd today...

2007-09-10T22:04:00.000-05:00

Fifth day of the Ludi Romani.

--------------------------------

So I was reading Fark and I saw an article about how kids don't have the "astronaut" or "ballerina" fantasies adults think they do, but just want to grow up to be happily married.

I read it it and I just thought, Well, yeah. I mean, when I was a kid, which was not all that long ago, honestly, I occasionally entertained the idea of being a famous ballerina, or singer, or Nobel Prize winner or whatever, but most of the time I just pictured my future as marrying a rich businessman and having like twenty kids (3 natural, rest adopted). I'd work as a teacher when my kids were older, but just to give back to the community and all, because my husband would naturally be supporting me with his bazillions (Incidentally, that's about how much he would have had to be making to support my little orphanarium there).

Obviously I grew up and realized that a) Most businessman-types are either jerks or at least unlikely to marry women with no social skills, as they are often socially adept themselves as a necessary aspect of the job and would not particularly appreciate a wife who spills the bisque on their clients; b) Contrary to family lore, it is not "just as easy to love a rich man," as rich men aren't really common; c) In the modern world, it is a foolish or very, very trusting woman who does not continue to maintain her own finances apart from her husband's so she is independent enough to survive a divorce (and I would never, ever take alimony-- child support is one thing, alimony is welfare for WASP women-- I don't care how much I hate the guy); d) teachers not only get paid crap, they also are TREATED like crap; e) Who the hell has twenty kids besides crazy Quiverfull people?

But yet, even once I grew up a bit, I wanted to be a doctor with a husband who had the kind of job that meant that he would be there for the kids while I was doing weird hours. So I still wanted the husband, and the kids. I just wanted a career too, and way fewer children. Then my self esteem plummeted and I pictured my future as a doctor, living alone with lots of cats but traveling with Doctors Without Borders when I could.

Still, I think every kid wants to have a family. Expects it, even. It's not until reality sets in that you have variations, people who DO NOT WANT KIDS EVER and people who may want a kid, but mostly just want to focus on their job. Mind you, reality sets in at different times for different people-- I'm pretty sure Vivacia (who claims she NEVER WANTS KIDS) was five going on forty-- but my point still stands.

I'm not sure where I was going with this. I think I just wanted to share that I used to want to have twenty children. God. Innocence of youth and all that. *shudders violently at concept*

---------------------------------------

I have heard the phrase "biological variation" so much between Ecology and Biostats today that I swear I am going insane.

I went on a trip!

2007-09-09T21:19:00.000-05:00

Fourth day of the Ludi Romani.

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Don't expect many Friday or Saturday entries in this blog this year; I went over to Ryter's on Friday night, and we made dinner together-- well, he did most of the work, I just cut up some veggies and chicken and stuck the rice in the rice cooker. He did the actual cooking-- a Japanese curry that was really good. Then we had ice cream sundaes, because the weather was in the nineties with ridiculous humidity. There was a slight disagreement as to whether they were "sprinkles" or "jimmies" but all was resolved.

We've decided to make this a weekly event-- we'll cook together, and make something neither of us has had before. Note to self-- no gazpacho.

Anyway, Saturday we went to Salem, Mass to see the Peabody Essex Museum, which was very cool. I've never been before, but it's a favorite of Ryter's. It was pretty cool-- lots of maritime art, especially figureheads from ships, but also a large collection of Asian and Native American art. One thing that I noticed was that in a display, there was a woman's shoe from the 1700s, clearly worn, and I thought to myself, I wonder what the woman who wore this shoe would have said had she heard that 250 years later, it would be on display in a museum for people to look at and marvel at how ridiculously small her feet must have been?

There was also a carved ivory tusk that impressed the hell out of me, it was so finely detailed with little people and animals (and made long enough ago that the ivory part doesn't bother me); and a wooden Indian altar that was just amazing. If you're ever in the area and get sick of the kitschy witch stuff, see the museum. No, see it regardless, it's way better than the witch museums.

Speaking of kitschy witch stuff, we walked around a little after we finished at the museums. We went to a couple wannabe-witch stores, the kinds with silver pentagrams and incense and crystal pendulums where you can get a palm reading in the back room. Ryter wanted to get his fortune told but it's Salem, witch central, so you know they charged ridiculous fees. We settled for looking around and getting a smoothie (me) and a celery-apple-carrot-whatever juice (Ryter) at a place that advertised "We have wheat grass!" and had fliers for various "spiritual mediums" and a "school of conjuration."

Then we wandered back to the car, and as we went we looked around; we passed through the Old Burying Point Cemetery, as I wanted to look at the gravestones, but then we realized that thanks to the placement of the paths we were walking on graves themselves and left post-haste. There's something inherently disrespectful about walking over a grave, even if the grave is so old that the remains are surely nothing but bones and even the headstone is crumbling and unreadable. Of course, nothing can top the disrespect that I saw when my high school English class went to Salem and were told to eat our lunches in the cemetery; bad enough that most of my classmates picnicked on the grass between the headstones (I forced my friends to eat on the edge of it, by a tree, so we weren't as blatantly disrespectful), but the chaperones perched on one of the above-ground tombs and used it as a picnic table.

Now, I don't think there's that much significance to a body after death but honestly. You do not use a tomb as a picnic table. Somebody put their loved one in there. That still irks me.

We headed back to Durham after that since Shrewd was bringing up various things I had forgotten (bathrobe, shower sandals, phone charger, etc-- all important things) and anyway, it was really, really hot and we were tired.

Fun times, though. Even though Salem is so very kitschy, the museum is nice and honestly, I like laughing at kitschy and spending no money on it.

----------------------------------

Cellamica was gone for the weekend so I had the room to myself for the day, which I spent doing my mountains of homework. Very boring. Got it all done though, which is all that matters.

There's always a pet blog

2007-09-06T20:08:00.000-05:00

The Ludi Romani continues.

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Today was... god, it was BORING. I didn't have any classes until 5 pm and Ryter was in Boston so I couldn't talk to him, and I don't have any real homework yet; thus I sat around and was bored.

I did each lunch with Libentra and saw Loquatia, my roommate from last year, when I went to dinner with my current roommate. I've decided to call my current roommate Cellamica, from "cella," a room, especially a small one-room apartment, and "amica," friend. Room-friend. Roommate. Work with me here.

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Cellamica is Republican, but not rabidly so-- she clearly has her own opinions and isn't just spouting off what others say. She's involved in politics and keeps informed, though. She loves watching hockey but isn't really into playing sports herself, and spends most of her time on her computer. She's turning 21 in November but doesn't have any intention of even going out drinking on her birthday-- the whole alcohol culture doesn't appeal to her, which is nice for me. She's Italian, has a younger sister, a close friend of hers has just had a baby and she likes country music. That's what I have learned about her thus far. But she's nice, and quiet, but I can still have a conversation with her; she's willing to eat meals with me, too, which is nice.

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Ryter, meanwhile, is looking for a hobby. This wouldn't be so challenging were it not for the fact that he can't do tasks that require a steady hand, like drawing, because of meds-related tremors and it has to be inexpensive, relaxing, and something he can do year-round. Thus far he has pooh-poohed starting up an RPG club (unless he can get someone else to GM-- I would, I think I would like that role better than a player, but I don't know the rules of gaming well enough), learning massage therapy with me (didn't think it qualified as "fun"), candle-making (okay, so I was being a bit facetious with that one), balloon sculptures (already knows how to do it), and carpentry (doesn't have a decent workspace).

I also suggested origami; weaving; wood carving; lock-picking; making models; ghost hunting; fishing; designing, making, and flying kites; juggling; photography; magic tricks; learning to dance; biking; and 3-D puzzles. He didn't comment on any of these, although I suspect making models, 3-D puzzles, or kites might be too expensive; fishing and biking aren't great in summer; and learning to dance might be too frustrating for him to be relaxing and fun.

He listed his interests as "The Byzantine Empire and reptile-collecting." This is not really helpful. I just hope his eventual decision doesn't involve computers. Ideally it would involve dragging his butt outside. Maybe I can get him into nature walks, like learning to identify plants and shit. In the winter, snowshoeing.

Nah. He won't go for that. I suggest "outside," he cites "bears."

Hmm....

Optimism

2007-09-05T22:14:00.000-05:00

Second day of the Ludi Romani.

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Today after my morning classes I went over to try and sell back my old textbooks-- at least, the ones I didn't want to keep (I kept Classical Mythology, for example). Alas, the science books are "too old"-- I couldn't resell those. Unfortunate, as those were the expensive ones. I wound up only getting $16.

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I've had my first three classes (they're one right after another). Ecology looks interesting, and the teacher is the very image of a scatterbrained professor-- tie, slacks, button-down T-shirt and bright pink Crocs. Organic doesn't seem like it will be impossible and the professor reminds me a lot of what I figure last year's unfortunate Chem teacher would have been like if he had been able to control the class- very accessible, friendly, likes technology. And Biostatistics is only worrying me because he doesn't allow calculators for a lot of it. And yet again, I wish I could go back in time and learn those damn times tables when that's all I had to think about...

I can't do basic math, by the way. I use calculators. I can handle more advanced stuff, but ask me what 8 time 12 is and I will give you a blank look.

Latin was this afternoon, but I have the same Latin teacher I had last year that I liked, so I'm not too worried about the class itself-- except Ryter's ex, the ex he REALLY doesn't like because he says she used him and tossed him aside and denied they were even dating to her friends, is ALSO in that class. Yeah. Awkward.

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Last night I didn't wind up hanging out with Ryter, as I had dinner with my roommate then went to a rock-painting social for the dorm. It was cool. I have a pretty doorstop now. Ryter was a little irritated about it but he swears he's okay, and I spent tonight with him. He's been really stressed out lately and things are only going to get worse over the next couple weeks. Plus his lizard is sick.

But it will be fine. I know it will.

I'm baaaaaa-ack.

2007-09-04T14:22:00.001-05:00

Today is the first day of the Ludi Romani, fifteen days of games to honor Jupiter, king of the gods. It's also the year, in 394 AD, when the last Pagan Emperor, Eugenius, died.

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I moved back to UNH yesterday,waking up at 7:00 in the morning and dragging my family out of bed (an excellent revenge for not spending any time with me on my last night at home-- I woke them up early when they didn't get in until 12:30) and began to jam stuff into the car. I made the mistake of stating, "There's no way all my crap will fit into one car-- we should take two," which Daddy and the Brother took as a challenge and naturally responded to by packing us in really tightly, with the truck bungeed down and me riding the whole way with a white plastic set of drawers on my lap. At one point Daddy took a sharp turn and I asked, "Is the fish okay? Did he tip over?" Mummy just laughed. For about fifteen minutes.

But it was only an hour, and then we arrived and checked in. I had called Ryter and asked him to come over and help move me in, but there were about 10 people waiting to help with the unloading so no one bought more than 1 heavy thing up, in this parade of boxes and the fridge. By the time Ryter arrived there wasn't much left to do-- Daddy, the Brother and I had lofted the bed and moved the desk under it and Mummy had started unpacking things.

Of course, his arrival did mean he was there for one of the more embarrassing moments of the day... I had very carefully put all the things that I own that my mother doesn't know I own-- mostly undergarments and such-- in one box easily recognizable box, and spent much of the time trying to keep her from OPENING said box. I had finally thought I was in the clear when she held up a miniskirt that I had packed in the wrong box and shrieked, "What the hell is THIS?"

I hid in the closet.

And thus was my roommate introduced to me-- hiding in the closet while my mother berated me about how this was "NOT a skirt," etc, etc. So today, once I switched from "unbelievably embarrassed" to "angry," I sent her an email which in addition to mentioning various expenses I had incurred with the moving in, chastised her for embarrassing me with her complete lack of tact.

Her response offered an apology, at least, if it was tempered with an "I was just surprised" and a bit of denial.

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As yesterday was also exactly six months after Ryter and I started dating, he took me out to the place where we went out on our first date, this little Indian place. It was very sweet of him. Afterwards I had to go back to the dorm for a quick-- and mandatory-- floor meeting then I spent a few hours hanging out with him.

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At least I didn't have any classes today-- normally my only Tuesday class is an Ecology lab. I went in to Dover, was reminded of how much I hate the buses, then came back here and plan to continue with the unpacking while I wait for Matt to be able to take me to the bookstore (I need his car so I don't have to carry books for 4 classes all the way back to Hubbard on my lonesome. Hopefully we'll get to hang out a bit, too.

It's nice to be back.

Vicious Cycles

2007-09-02T19:53:00.000-05:00

It's my last night at home, and I think it's sort of fitting that my dinner is a glass of Crystal Lite lemonade and whatever I can scrounge up from the kitchen, as I clean my bedroom post-packing.

I'm gonna come right out and say it. This was a miserable summer. Pretty much the only bright points were the times I got to spend with Ryter or the even rarer times I was with Vivacia; the rest of it just seemed like a long parade of obligations and chores. I spent at least 50% of the time just frantically trying to earn money, most of which I spent on gas to see Ryter or going out to eat with him. To which my mother points out that he could come visit me, and we could eat at my house.

Except, of course, that she insists that the house be clean before anyone comes over. So that's a day and a half of cleaning, which you know I don't get paid for or even the satisfaction of the cleanliness since it's a sty again in 24 hours. And then I have to make something for dinner, thus making myself messy before he comes. And then my dad comes home and takes the TV in the family room, sending us downstairs, which I had to pick up as well, and people will wander downstairs sometimes so we're not really alone. So we'll go to the orchards, but we're still in public, there. AS much as I love going to the orchards, it's sometimes buggy or the weather's bad. Basically, if I want to spend time with Ryter I have to go to his place because my own house is annoyingly occupied.

So thus I've spent the summer in a cycle-- work my ass off to earn money either at the Discovery Store or by doing exhausting work in the hot sun at home, then go visit Ryter to relax, thus using up my money, requiring me to earn more.

Meanwhile, there were only two real reasons I wanted to come home this summer instead of doing and internship or summer school or something-- one, I wanted to spend time with my family, and two, I wanted to be able to go to the Cape.

This summer I have spent a total of five days at the Cape. Five. And it's the last summer I will be able to go. I've always had chores to do or work. And spending time with my family? Most of the time they're at work or at the Cape, and anyway, my dad's been driving me crazy and my mom's been worrying me sick.

I bet by May I forget I felt this way, but I honestly think next summer I should just go to summer school on campus. My family was all gung-ho for taking me back and seeing me off, but I don't really care about that, I just would have liked to have a real dinner that I ate at the table on my last night at home. Is that too much to ask? Instead they're at the Cape and I'm packing, cleaning, and wondering what I can reheat.

At least it's over.

How To Go Insane

2007-08-28T21:54:00.000-05:00

Today? Not so fun.

I wanted to replant a certain flowerbed for my mother. To do this, I needed a plastic liner (there's a pine tree there), dirt (it's sandy), mulch, flower bulbs and a wheelbarrow.

Step 1. Fetch old wheelbarrow. Realize old wheelbarrow, thanks to years in the rain and sometimes snow, has a massive hole in it. Rusted clean though. Sigh in frustration.

Step 2. Decide to buy a new wheelbarrow. Call mother for permission. Mother says to check credit account first.

Step 3. Go to bank. Ten minutes later, teller says she can't give the info to me because my name isn't on the account. It's on the card, but it's not on the account. Growl internally, call mother again. Mother promises to check via phone.

Step 4. Continue to local hardware store. Hardware store does not have an appropriate wheelbarrow, as wanted plastic one that would not rust like old one. Mother calls in hardware store and says that the account is all screwy but I should be able to pay for things.

Step 5. Go across street to Home Depot. See ideal wheelbarrow out front, ask for it disassembled so it would fit in car. Ask twice about the handles because they are very poorly labeled. Take wheelbarrow home.

Step 6. Realize wheelbarrow handles are wrong size. Sigh, go back to Home Depot, ask to exchange.

Step 7. Am told that their shipper does not send the the right size, so I will have to drill new holes. Ask them to drill it for me; do not think this an unreasonable request as it's not my fault their shipper sucks.

Step 8. Clerk says no, I have to do it myself, because they apparently HAVE NO POWER TOOLS OR PEOPLE CAPABLE OF OPERATING THEM. The latter honestly would not surprise me, considering that this is a store that has staff that think it's fair to sell someone a wheelbarrow and not TELL them at the time of purchase that it requires drilling extra holes.

Step 9. Get home, new handles in tow. Find drill. Realize drillhead is MINUSCULE. Hunt through dusty cardboard boxes of discarded ancient power tools in basement until find box of drill heads.

Step 10. Realize that half the heads are missing, including the one that is the right size. Check boxes in basement again, to no avail. Decide to drill a hair larger.

Step 11. Can't figure out how to get old head off. Wrestle with it for half an hour before realizing that the key is right there, attached to the power cord.

Step 12. In frustration, go play Empire Earth for an hour.

Step 13. Attach new head and begin drilling. Realize that having a table to support the handle might help about when the drill skids off with only a scratch to the wooden handle.

Step 14. Haul over clamp table, clamp in handle, begin drilling again. Smell smoke. Blow shavings away from drill head. Drill stalls. Try again. Same problem. Decide to switch to next-smaller drill head. Go to change them and burn hand on hot drill head. Swear repeatedly and go get ice.

Step 15. Father returns home. Explain what I am doing. Father says I should return the barrow and get a different one. Point out that there are no different ones that I can transport. Suggests another store. Point out that local hardware store didn't have plastic. Suggests metal. Point out rusted old one. Suggests finding another store. Point out that I need to do this before I get back to school, so I don't have enough time for that. Contemplate patricide, or at least a good throttling.

Step 16. Drill has cooled. Switch to new drill-head. Works fine, except produces lots of smoke and burning smell. Blow on it repeatedly.

Step 15. Finish drilling, carefully avoid touching drill. Attempt to put bolt in. Fail. Realize I have to redrill it with a bigger one. Give up for the evening, as alternative involves massive property damage.

Step 16: Mother and sister repeat what father said about returning it, getting different one, because I couldn't POSSIBLY have thought this through.

And that my friends, is my recipe for crazy.

So What if I Condemn 65% of the World to Die?

2007-08-28T10:25:00.000-05:00

You know what we need? A plague.

I'm not talking about influenza, or SARS, or AIDs, or whatever. I'm talking about a real plague. And not like the Bubonic one, because we can fix that now. No, we need a disease which:

-Is a virus. This will make things a lot easier because viruses are harder to fight.

-Has a gestation time of several years in which there are no real symptoms, ensuring it reaches everywhere on earth.

-When it stops gestating, a person dies quickly and relatively painlessly. Basically, if you get symptoms, you're dead. That way ~~I won't feel bad about how people are in agony because of this plague I engineered~~ people won't have to suffer too much.

-Spreads really easily, through breathing the same air or touching the same surfaces; lives for a long time outside the body (like 24 hours or more), and is resistant to disinfectants.

-Reduces the population by 65% worldwide and renders an addition 15% impotent. 20% means a little less than 1 billion people left.

-Attacks the elderly and the severely ill (cancer-weakened immune system, AIDS, etc) most of all. Not that I don't like old people, but if we're slicing up the population of the planet it's probably best that we not have more of them than we have people to care for them.

-Affects people less if they get good health care but still have a strong immune system-- so a person who was raised on antibacterials isn't safe, but the people who played in dirt as kids have a bit more protection. That's pretty much a given, a strong immune system always means more resistance and good health care too. This can't make us go extinct, and honestly, as terrible as it seems, the world would be better off if a little bit more of the deaths were coming from third-world nations that can't support their massive populations anyway.

-Has a lesser impact on Native Americans, gypsies, aborigines and other such underrepresented races; it still needs to affect them, just at a decreased rate so they aren't obliterated. Affects the Chinese and Indians a bit more, but not by much. Absolutely can't affect Caucasians differently from Africans, though, that would be disastrous politically. Also, Ashkenazi Jews will have high resistance, because I'm so sick of Ashkenazi Jews always being the highest-risk group for everything. Plus Ryter's Ashkenazi and it would be nice if he didn't die.

-The bodies have to still carry enough traces of the virus after death to warrant cremation just to be sure. Otherwise, the world would be a cemetery.

-Can't have any affect on non-humans.

-After a few years, scientists need to find a vaccine that can be mass-produced inexpensively and administered to new children, so the outbreak doesn't happen again.

What's my reasoning for the need for this plague? Well, think about it. The world never comes together as well as it does while recovering from tragedy. So there would be looting and panic, and then afterwards people would start to band together on account of not having anything left.

There would be more food and first-world nations would probably give their massive amounts of excess the first couple years to the third-world nations, with the alternative being to let it rot. After a season or two they'd stop producing as much, sure, but the land in third-world nations can often support 20% of it's current human population.

It would be centuries before we'd have to seriously worry about population again.

Countries would throw money into sciences, trying to ensure we were prepared for another such outbreak.

Huge tracts of land would be left unused. Eventually nature would reclaim it. People would start to clump, especially from towns and cities that lost huge amounts of their population; they'd probably head to a few key areas in each country and build new lives there. Like in this country, suburbanites would move towards the coastal cities. That would offer even more land that would be reclaimed.

Also, it would be several generations before people would return to ideas of real war, because their armies would be so reduced.

Maybe this wouldn't all happen, but that's how I see it going down. I don't know, a worldwide plague, maybe not one with this many deaths but a big one, might do us a lot of good.

Lightweight

2007-08-26T15:21:00.000-05:00

Last night, as we wilted in the heat, Ryter got himself a glass of $50 Zaya rum because he was pretty stressed out and the heat wasn't helping matters. He offered me a sip (just a sip, he knows I don't drink). I declined, mentioning that it seemed a waste to give $50 rum to someone who thus far has found almost no type of alcohol she can tolerate, including fruity sweet liquor, and isn't really too fond of the one she can tolerate, which is champagne.

He said he really just wanted to see my face when I tasted it, and wouldn't consider it a waste.

With trepidation I took a sip; immediately I jerked back, cried "UGH!," frantically scraped at my tongue with my teeth, and hurried to the fridge for some iced green tea while my eyes watered and my mouth felt like it was on fire. Ryter cracked up and said, "On the plus side, your mouth is now sanitized, as that was 40% alcohol."

I don't think I will ever learn if I can "hold my liquor," as I seem incapable of even "holding it" in my mouth...

I Bet I Get Called Naive For This

2007-08-23T20:07:00.000-05:00

I've noticed something, in reading online forums and in talking to people. Very few issues are as hotly debated as that of Israel and Palestine. Threads on this topic are more vehemently debated than gay marriage. I think this is because in any given group, people tend to be either staunchly conservative, staunchly liberal, or moderate and not particularly opinionated on subjects like homosexuality, feminism, racism etc. But 90% of the people who know more about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict than the name have an opinion on it, and your normal political alliances don't really apply-- it's not like conservatives are pro-Israel and liberals are pro-Palestine or vice-versa. If it's at all important to them, it's REALLY REALLY so.

Of course, the time to really worry is if they're truly, deeply passionate about it, because then they will be furious if you disagree. I've discovered a system for knowing when not to talk about the conflict:

-If you believe that Palestine is right, or that Palestine might have some decent points of grievance, don't talk to someone who is Jewish, of Jewish ancestry, or has ever expressed any anti-Muslim opinions.

-If you believe that Israel is right, or that Israel might have some decent points, don't talk to anyone who is Muslim, anti-Semitic, or a conspiracy theorist because WHY are 90% the conspiracy theorists anti-semitic too?? Must be because "the Jews control the banks and the media" and all that jazz.

This causes a problem for me, because since I am not part of a major religion and the one I was loosely raised as is secular Protestant, I actually have a much more impartial view than most people I talk to. I think both have grievances, because I believe that the UN had no right to make Israel a country all those years ago and encourage Jews to move there, so the Palestinians have a legitimate complaint, especially since many laws are biased against them. At the same time, that doesn't give them the right to terrorize the Jewish people any more than living there gives the Jews the right to "fight back." The Israelis have a legitimate complaint in that all their neighbors are ready to kill them, they're much more progressive and can better handle the land than most of the Palestinians, and they've been there for so long it's not fair to kick them out.

Besides, everything in the Middle East is tied up with religion. You can't kick anyone out. And they can't live together, clearly. At this point the two groups have pretty much equal claims to the land, whatever they may want to do with it-- and although I know Palestine would enact Sharia law, I still say that it was their land to begin with and they have equal claim to it.

If I were Empress of the World... I'd wall off all the major holy sites. Jerusalem especially. Completely wall it off. Then impose martial UN law over the land, saying it no longer belongs to any nation. Ban Jews or Muslims or anyone who is known to have a stong side in the issue from that military service. Set up a number of gates, all strongly policed, sort of like the Vatican-- make sure that if you want to get in you haven't a single weapon on you and no history of terrorism. Inside the walls, put soldiers everywhere, with non-lethal weapons.

Then, split the rest of the land.

Make sure there is a clear, protected road from whichever country doesn't contain Jerusalem to the city; then force a mass exodus. Tell people which area is which. Allow the governments to evict their enemies from their land. Make sure the land is divided by population and if you can, make sure they get comparable shares of the most fertile land. Will people be happy? No. Which is why you police the border like crazy and impose a major UN presence in the area for at least two generations.

Of course, this would hardly solve the problem but it would certainly hold of the inevitable. I would also pump aid money into this new Palestine with certain stipulations-- namely, that it has to go towards building schools and educating the populace (or as I would put it, "making sure you are at the same level or higher than your enemies so you can protect yourselves"), that it can't be used to manufacture weapons or it will ALL go away, and that all women must be educated under an improved curriculum until the age of 18, regardless of if they are married before then. Forcing them to educate their women or forfeit large quantities of aid would lead to a generally more educated populace, women marrying later (a man doesn't want a wife who has to go to school every day and can't watch his children), giving birth later, and hopefully getting a bit of empowerment thrown in with it all.

So clearly I can't just be Empress of the World, I also have to be God, because that's pretty much the only way this would happen. Ryter's probably right, just pull out of the region in a military sense, give money to the Kurds, and force major civil war that will drastically decrease their numbers.

Bah. Being an optimist is hard in this world.

In Which I Am A Bit Emo, I'm Afraid

2007-08-22T01:26:00.000-05:00

Tonight, while I visited Ryter and comforted him because he was dealing with anxiety after a not-so-good doctor's visit, my mother accidentally fed my father meat in a marinade with too much sugar content and he lost feeling in his feet from the diabetes. He complained to her, she flipped out and angrily scrubbed the remaining marinade from the leftover meat, while he continued to complain every now and then because he couldn't walk right and was hurting.

She then drove off to go scream bloody murder in the car, parked in some lot somewhere. My sister cried and was petrified that she would hit a tree, she was so upset. This is not the first time this has happened. One of these days my mother will drive off angry and hit something and wind up in the hospital or worse. She needs therapy more than I did when I attempted suicide, and she will refuse to go because she thinks it's a waste of her time because honestly, I think her will to live is wholly rested on the fact that we need her, but she wouldn't really mind too much if she died. And my mother always tells me to throw out clothes that I still know I can mend.

Now, because my sister will cry, my father clearly has the tact of a walrus and my brother wouldn't know how to start, I have the task of going to her tomorrow and trying, yet again, to convince her to see a psychiatrist, knowing that if I do not the next time she drives off angry she may not come back.

God... I just want someone, anyone, ONE person in my life to be more stable than me. I just want someone who can be a rock for me. Someone who I will always know what to expect from. I don't want to be the responsible one in this family. I don't want to talk to my dad about how he needs to change his ways or he will lose his "perfect" children in all but the most perfunctory sense, I don't want to convince my mother to go into therapy, I don't want to have to protect my sister from them both and I don't want this life.

I wish the functionality we present was the functionality we possessed.

We're so 1955...

Dreams

2007-08-16T08:55:00.000-05:00

I dreamed last night that I had decided to become a fashion designer, and my designs were pretty well-liked and I'd been signed up to work with a major label, so I was bound to be successful. Then I went to tell my dad. He had a golden retriever with him, which I knew was "his dog" although he doesn't have a dog. The dog had a scarf around her neck and was quite cute, running around our feet. Then I told Daddy about my new job, and he flipped out, telling me to go back to my original plan and I was an idiot for giving up my life like this and I should go back to studying biology. The dog ran off, scared.

I cried, explained to him that this was a good thing, etc but he just stayed mad, so I stormed off in a huff and drove away. I had just left his line of sight when I heard a thump and I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw a flash of golden hair and the red scarf around it's neck, crumpled in the street.

I tried to brake but couldn't, the car lost control, and I was crying and scared and then I drove off the shoulder...

And woke up, and spent several minutes repeating "It was just a dream," over and over again in my head until I calmed down.

Then I fell back asleep and my next dream involved Clark Kent from Smallville. No it was not dirty, thankyouverymuch.

"It was tragic and delicious."

2007-08-10T22:45:00.000-05:00

This week has been a bit insane for me. Why? Well, let's recap.

Monday night, after I got my last paycheck from the Discovery store, I went down to Cape Cod with my folks, saw Order of the Phoenix, and spent the night, because on Tuesday Ryter was coming down to join me, Mummy, Daddy, my great-aunt (the one who took me to the Revels), her significant other to whom she is not married, my grandfather, Shrewd, and Shrewd' s college friend Spaz, who I can actually call Spaz on here despite that ALSO being how I think of her in real life (she and my sister have the same name, Spaz is her nickname, etc) on account of it not being a REAL name. We were having our big annual lobstah feed.

It could have been worse. My great aunt didn't interrogate Ryter nearly as bad as I had expected, and he made a good impression on my family for showing up, staying all the way until dessert, generally being personable and, in the case of my father, turning down that second glass of champagne. My aunt has voiced her approval. Plus we got to build a sandcastle-- Ryter is quite the accomplished sand-castle constructionist. And we got to scare the crap out of the teenage boy who didn't realize the architect was on the beach and thought it would be funny to destroy the thing.

Boy: YARGH! [kick, kick, jump, swipe]
Ryter: [glowers]
Me: That's not very nice.
Boy: Oh, it's my castle, I made it.
Me: No, you didn't.
Boy: Yes I did!
Me: Uhm, no, he did. [points to Ryter]
Boy: [dawning horror and anticipation of a smack down, followed by frantic attempts to "fix it"]

It was pretty hilarious. Almost made up for the kid's assholery.

I think Ryter was expecting the park to be, like, overun with unwashed toddlers and hillbillies, so he was pleasantly surprised to find that it's not the sort of place trailer trash affords-- most people who go there are like my family, with enough money for a summer place but not enough for a full-sized cottage they can only visit for a few weeks and weekends. The problem was, what with it being a three and a half hour drive down from Durham, and his hamstrings acting up, it wasn't really a fun day for him-- I mean, he flatly stated that the only reason he was going was because it was important to me that he go.

I wish there was a way to make the experiences that are fun for me be fun for him, too. I like everything, anything he wants to do is usually fun for me, but the reverse is not so, and he's usually dealing with pain at the same time which makes things even more difficult. Basically thus far the only things I've suggested that he's been able to get enthusiastic about are making pizzas with weird toppings and going to the orchards in my hometown and stargazing (there's no ambient light, so the night sky is amazing on clear nights-- so amazing that last time we went we saw several shooting stars, clear as a bell). Most of my ideas he either tries and winds up disliking (the planetarium in Concord, for example), or KNOWS he won't like (hiking, or the Chatham band concert). Vivacia wants to go to Old Home Days in our town, and see the fireworks, and she suggested I invite him, but I don't think I'll have much success. Unfortunately, if Ryter doesn't come along it looks right now like it will wind up being Vivacia, her boyfriend Closer, me, and my former boyfriend Mack, and that would be awwwwwwkward. Well, for me anyway. And yet I can't picture Ryter wanting to go to an Old Home Days thing, even if we do spend a lot of the time hanging out on the swings at the elementary school and chatting.

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Then Wednesday I spent the WHOLE DAY cleaning my house. I even washed the kitchen window, the hardest one to clean because it basically involves squatting in the sink and leaning backwards out the window with a bottle of glass cleaner and a paper towel and no means of support. The house is basically clean. If Shrewd doesn't mess it up too much, it will be clean for my folks to come home to, which is what I was hoping for-- last weekend Mummy complained bitterly about coming home to a filthy house, and all I could think was, You didn't say you were coming home today!

I should have gone to the gym. But I didn't. I've been really bad about that lately.

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Then yesterday I drove back to the Cape on my own, so that I would have a car. I've never driven that route before. It's two and a half hours and it's very boring when you haven't got anyone to talk to, and you can't fall asleep. Plus it goes through Boston and is kind of a stressful drive in parts. I kept myself alert and focused by playing the street sign alphabet game in my head. Remember that game? You have to find all the letters of the alphabet in order by reading street signs... yeah. Then I got to Z and started again with license plates, that was MUCH harder.

I was planning on going to the Chatham band concert tonight, but it rained so that wouldn't have been fun. Instead I crocheted and then Mummy and I visited with my great-aunt, I shared some family gossip Bisobrina had told me that I probably shouldn't have, then we went to a glass museum for a while before Daddy joined us and we all went to the Lobster Hut for dinner. Then I drove back here.

I'm a bit bummed. I wanted to see the band concert. But I can go when The Brother is back, he'll want to go too. He's still in California with his drum corps, but if they win the next competition, they'll win the big World Championship thing for their division. My mom is REALLY EXCITED. He comes back Sunday.

Meanwhile, I will continue to clean the house. Next task-- windows. Daddy promised me $200 if I do all of them except the ones holding air conditioners.