Xbox Jive

So Chris keeps complaining about old monitors and the refresh rate. Apparently, anything below, like, a billion Hz gives him wacky jive-talkin trippy nightmares or something. I don't see it unless I'm really concentrating on it like those annoying magic eye posters that I could never quite get the hang of and wasn't sure if it was three dolphins or a top hat and a dinosaur. Sometimes I think I was just making it up in my head (unlike normal people who imagine it but at least come up with a consistent answer.)

I no longer know where I was going with that since the parents distracted me with a bunch of "will you set up the new Xbox? (cleverly phrased as a question, see?)" and "Can I watch Netflix on the new Xbox?" and "Where's my saved game?" "What do you mean I have to select memory unit instead of the hard drive?" and, my favorite, "Why isn't anything showing up on the screen?" Well, dad, that would be because you didn't plug it in. It's okay, I'm sure you'll figure it out someday. I assume it's working now because dad has begun his customary cursing at the game for being too hard or the controls for being inoperable or something-ruther. This does not, however, tell me what game he's playing as he says this for every game that has ever been made.

Funny story, since there were just three of us playing Left 4 Dead one day, we asked dad if he wanted to play with us (since he'd been having a hard time doing it on his own earlier that day.) He said no because he "didn't want to have to follow other people." I guess he likes being the leader of the pack and doesn't want to be inconvenienced by picking up incapacitated teammates. After all, that's what the AI's are for, right?

At first I disagreed with getting another Xbox (because I get it when I leave, apparently, and I'd rather have an extra PS3, hehe,) because I figured there'd be money arguments again. Apparently the worth of being able to play separately (co-op gameplay? what?) is far greater than any monetary inconvenience caused by getting another Xbox and all its associated peripherals. I'll be sure to bring this up at the weekly/daily money fight. But hey, I probably won't actually be able to take it with me when I leave because they'll be too used to not fighting over the video games/t.v. time. In that case I'll get a slim since I'll kinda have to have a job by the time I move out anyway or it defeats the purpose.

It seems it's time for me to go be extraordinarily nerdy so I'll leave you with a random segue to best video ever?


(Wham, bam, I'm done with a post for this month. Commence not-feeling-guilty subroutine!)

Too Lazy to Title!

Today, dad asked me if I was okay. He said I look really tired.
I figure I must really look like crap if dad's noticing.

Someday I'll figure out how to sleep again instead of flopping around in bed like a fish out of water.

People also keep asking me if I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving. My thoughts are: I don't have a job or school so it's not like I get the day off; any food beyond turkey, stuffing, and instant potatoes I'm going to have to make myself; everyone else will be spending the day with their families so it's not like I can hang out with anyone, really (which will probably prompt a lot of "you can come celebrate Thanksgiving at our house!" which I won't because it makes me feel like an interloper even if I was technically invited.)

The kitchen renovations are coming along fine, I suppose. The new counters are in and I'm hoping I can at least keep the bar area clear, but I'm not too optimistic about it. Dad, after about six hours of cursing at non-standard plumbing fittings, decided to have an actual plumber put our sink back together. I miss the kitchen sink so bad, didn't really realize how often I use it. So come on, plumber, I want my sink back!

She-ra's started a disturbing new habit of trying to eat my pants while I'm still in them. I can't decide if this is better or worse than her trying to eat my ankle. Maybe she thinks this is an acceptable compromise. The vet is heckling me to bring her in for her six month checkup.
This only forces me to realize that I take my dog to the vet far more often than I visit the doctor. I wish I knew where my vaccine record was...

Macaroni

So, Connecticut, though it's pretty, is a state that annoys me to no end. The roads suck, the drivers suck worse, and my body seems to think that it can't survive without at least 90% humidity.
Everything is expensive (and the state makes me feel a little claustrophobic (yeah, the whole state)) and the roads are screwy. Not as bad as New York, but still gratuitously obnoxious. It's like the civic engineers tried to make it as complicated as possible to get from point A to point B and a half (because, let's face it, you're never actually going to get to point B, you'll just circle it desperately for half an hour before giving up and walking half a mile.)
Also, it should not take 45 minutes to travel 16 miles. This is very wrong, Connecticut...ians...?
My sister bought a shamefully large house (but I am pleased that the house across the street is much cuter, and I bring this to my sisters' attention quite frequently.)
The dogs are even more neurotic and, in Alfie's case, senile, than the last time I visited. Alfie spontaneously runs laps up and down the stairs. He walked through the paint can lid (that Dessa left...on the floor? For some reason?) and left tiny green pawprints all over the painting tarp yesterday. He also kicked over his food dish today because he felt walking through it was more expedient than walking around it (I mean, he's right, but he still made a mess.)
Sleeping on an air mattress sucks. My back hurts all the time now. My mother snores intermittently and I have to flip around to make her stop (probably by waking her up but it is my little vengeance.) I know I've been waking up a lot because I remember three or four dreams a night now as opposed to the one or two I usually remember.
Diedre dragged me to the state fair in one of them (I apparently had something better to do?) and I lost my pen in a ninja-bull's manure (the manure was unfortunately not graced with any ninja aspects.) The bull was hiding under a pile of hay, though.
I think I was supposed to buy something there too, but I'm not sure anymore cause I think that was actually the night before last.

Dessa and Nathan eat poorly. We bought too much at the grocery store in abject fear of the emptiness/junk food repository of the kitchen.

Did I mention there's no snow and I am disappointed? This probably means that Nature is saving it all up for a shitstorm of snow the day I try to fly out of here just to jack everything up.



._.

This is Halloween

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I'm not sure if it's because I get to dress up as weird things without anyone thinking I'm crazy (a definite factor,) the free candy, the weather, the parties, or that Halloween is probably the holiday with the least emotional baggage.
Unfortunately, talking about Halloween reminds me that Chris dumped me on Halloween for some reason that I'm still (and probably will forever be) unclear on (preposition, no!) This may take away Halloween's privilege of being emotional-baggage-less.
(Is it bad that I spend so much effort trying not to cry about things like that (like...during the breakup even?) Sometimes I think I'm a tomboy even emotionally...)
Yeah.


Anyway. Halloween.
(I'm really itchy and fervently hoping that I didn't get bedbugs from Scott's house. The pattern doesn't seem like bedbugs, maybe I'll be lucky for once.)
HALLOWEEN IS FUN.
I like seeing people dress up and play (non-injuring) tricks on others. Just what's up with all the skanky versions of everything now? There's even a skanky BigBird and Cookie Monster. There's something seriously wrong with both those designers and the people who wear the costumes.
This is why I tend to just make my own, because I don't want to wear a skirt that MIGHT cover my butt.

For the ladies, it's that or be a witch/vampire for the jillionth time in a row.

Unemployment always sucks, but moreso if you knew your job was disappearing and you've been looking since June and haven't gotten anything yet except the one person who was definitely going to hire you but you couldn't because they needed someone the next day and you still had school two hours away.
So anyway, lately I've just been like "Blaaaaagh I can't do anything right and nothing's going my way and certainly nothing's turning up Gemini and I'm still stuck living with my parents which is okay but makes me feel like a total loser and now I don't even have a job and I'm still living with my parents which makes me like a superultra loser and I'm not even sure at this point that a redo would help but I can pretend like it would and I've been soooooo tiiiiiiired lately and I'm not sure if there's something wrong with me or I'm just that depressed/stressed/apathetic ahglhwkgjhdfhj."

Also I hate going to fill out applications because I've been getting a lot of no and that's hard to face that many times.
I have now been sick for longer/more times since I graduated than I have in the last two years and that just isn't right.

Parents are ridiculous as usual. Remodeling the kitchen is both more personally fulfilling and more frustrating than studying. At least I can see my progress, but the parents argue so much about what should go in the kitchen, whether or not to buy appliances even though the old appliances still work just fine, and today, buying a fridge that's too big because nobody bothered to measure the damned thing. Also, the things I can do have been put on hold because of my sister's moving (so we have to clear out her storage space and drive her shit up to CT, which means she and her husband owe us a hell of a huge favor *again*) so instead of being able to just finish a project I'm slammed with HOW MUCH STUFF I HAVEN'T FINISHED YET.

Anyway, the tl;dr of it all is that I'm frustrated, emotional, and running out of time.

10/25 I wanted to leave previous post up longer, but I also don't. My post-box is all confused cause technically most of this post was written before the previous (obviously the previous trumps this one, though) and today I feel like updating, though now I'm second-guessing it again so I guess I'll wait.

55% of my views are from Internet Explorer. I can't accurately state how disgusting that is. Get a better browser, people!


10/27
My old job wants me back but I don't know if I want to bother with them. I may or may not need the money, but it's not what I need in job experience, and frankly, I'm tired of the random shit they pull. (Also killing things.)

In Memoriam

There are times when I feel like I should blog about something, and there are times when I want to talk to myself (and I sometimes blog to do that) but think that I shouldn't blog about it yet.
In fact, it's probably definitely too early to blog about this, but my typing is much faster and more legible than my writing (and much less prone to tear stains and edits.)
My friends' youngest brother suddenly passed away October 16th (yesterday at the time of this writing.)
I feel completely inadequate in the consolation of the surviving members of the family, especially the other sons who are trying so hard to be strong. Of course, you never think that something like this could happen to you, or someone you know, especially when they're so young. Sure, he was sick, but not that sick, right?
I put so much hope and prayer into David growing out of his seizures, or at least that they'd be able to control them by medication, that I never even considered that he might not survive (that doesn't happen to good people, right?)

I wish that David could have had a long and happy life, but I have accepted that there is nothing that I can do or could have done to change that.
I take my peace from that I made the right choice, that I got to have fun with him before he died, and that he was not in pain, and certainly is not now.

God grant us the courage to continue on without him, celebrate his life, and honor his memory, and grant us the serenity to accept what we cannot change.




Post-edit 10/25: I'm also grateful that I was allowed to help bury him. Unfortunately (maybe not that unfortunate,) it was closed casket so I kinda still feel like when I go over to the house he's just in his room or at school or something. I wonder how long it will take to ...not think that anymore.




I hope I didn't make Scott cry.

Octobanana

I don't know why, but I never want to spell mañana correctly. To me, it just seems like it should be manyana, because I can't get over how much it looks like "banana," and I want to separate those two as much as possible, as "banana" and "tomorrow" are in no way related, unless you're going to give me a bunch of bananas tomorrow (or possibly you'll shoot me with a banana tomorrow, in which case I question your sanity.) "El Niño" does not pose this problem for me, for some deucedly opaque reason. Perhaps, I have always seen "El Niño" in conjunction with hearing it, so I never suffered through how to spell foreign words (it's easy in French, just say something in Latin and add a bunch of letters at the end that don't actually make a sound!)

In totally unrelated news, the Indonesian Mimic Octopus has reminded me why I love eight-limbed invertebrates so much. They're pretty and hideously intelligent, can color change, spray ink, and mimic other creatures, they can squish themselves into tiny spaces and steal all your crabs, and some of them are ridiculously venomous to boot.

Probably due to watching too much British television, I want to start calling the trunk of my car the boot instead, so that I can then tell people that I've got loot in the boot. (See also: deucedly, queue up, bugger off, bollocks)

2012, Are You Worried?

The Mayans. Aren't they crazy, with their crazy creepy calendar? I remember one point, after I first learned about that calendar, that I actually worried about it. I mean, the Mayans were incredibly clever. How could they be wrong about the end of the world? Then I started thinking, what if they just got tired of carving centuries of dates into a big rock? It's not as if they needed the information that far ahead anyway. But, you know, there are always the people who believe it, and the predictions of Nostradamus, totally and completely. After all, it's not as if we've been looking for the meanings to these prophecies (and fitting events to them as necessary) for several decades, if not for several centuries.

In my mind, it "works" in the way that horoscopes and astrology work; everything is just specific enough to gain your trust, but vague enough that it's easy to find something that fits. People are so focused on finding patterns and attributing symbolism to random objects/events/whatever, that they end up with a lot of false positives. It really is like astrology; here we've attributed meaning to random clumps of stars and then divine how they influence our mundane lives in an effort to predict the future. It's not as though every culture sees the same clump of stars in the same way, so how could we possibly ascribe meaning and import to them?

Really, what worries me about 2012 is just people. Maybe it will be the end of the world, but the real question is: will it be because it was always going to happen, or will it have been a self-fulfilled prophecy? Is it some sort of divine will, or just people with itchy trigger fingers?

(P.S. Do you really trust the prophecies of a civilization which did not forsee their own demise?)

Monsters

Some days, I feel more like a monster than other days. Some days at work, I have to euthanize animals, usually for space, which is probably the stupidest reason to kill something. Sometimes, it doesn't actually bother me. Those are the times I feel guilty that I don't feel guilty. Today, I finally had to euthanize a cat that's been at work a while that I particularly liked (that I, as the hand of Death, have skipped over for almost three months now,) as well as four kittens that I've watched grow up for the past two months. Today is not one of the days it doesn't bother me. I'm so frustrated with this job,and that I'm shoving animals in cages together to try to keep from euthanizing anything, and that when we go to mobile adoptions, everyone comes to pet the cute puppies, ignore the older dogs, and make excuses for why they can't take anything home (and, on occasion, why I'm a horrible and vicious person for having to euthanize anything at all.) They tell me how they breed their animals so that their children can witness the "miracle of life," then bring the unwanted offspring here so I can handle the inevibility of death, even if I as much as tell them that I'll euthanize the animals. Not to mention the people who surrender their 10 year old dogs and cats to us because they just don't feel like taking care of them anymore, and who don't bat an eye when I tell them that, due to space issues, or health, or temperament, I'll have to murder their faithful companion. Or those that bring strays from outside our jurisdiction even when we're so, so full, and then have the gall to tell me that it's my job to help the animals and, again, I'm a horrible person for not killing other animals to take theirs. Some of these say, "I'll just dump them on the street in Pearland so that you have to take them in!" and storm out in righteous fury. How churlish of me.

It's because of days like today that I dread coming to work for my two days a week (and we haven't even officially opened yet.) Those two days have the potential to be truly loathsome.

Blah Blah Blah

Today, while I was caught in my routine of starting out on a totally legitimate website like pcmagazine.com and somehow, through the magic of associated links, ending up on strange and not entirely truthful websites with questionable English composition skills.
I had actually read the first paragraph or two without noticing blatant grammar errors and flowery prose (obviously not an American tendency) and was only briefly confused by the correlation between average esophagus size and sexual facts (this is so going to hit on Google's porn keyword list, isn't it?) until I hit a statement that was so bizarre considering the article content and average English grammar that I actually stopped to consider it.
"It is not the adults but infants dream more time."

What are we saying here?  That infants dream more than adults...(and hopefully not about sex?!)Does this include Stage 3 and 4 sleep (nightmares,) which is also when you're more likely to sleepwalk/sleeptalk, or just REM sleep?  (You are more likely to hallucinate if deprived of REM sleep, which I find fascinating as well as hilarious.

At this point I scrolled back up to the top of the page to discover what the hell I was reading that, up to that sentence, had been at least reasonably comprehensible and mostly on topic.  I then wondered if the article was as questionable in the other four languages or if the English version just had a third-rate translator.  Do they bash the sperm-counts of men of other nationalities in the other translations?

But honestly, where did they get this information?  It's like trying the pickup tips in Maxim and expecting it to be, you know, helpful, when the magazine is written and edited by a bunch of guys with as low a pickup-line success rate as you.  (Who reads Maxim, anyway?  I always see it at the store but never see anyone buying any...Actually, I never see guys buying magazines at all.)

It seems that yellow journalism is on the rise again with blatant errors in fact-checking (or total lack thereof...) and sensationalist stories, and the exaggerating of random coincidences to sell papers (or get site hits, or feed subscribers, or what have you.)

Pimpin' Rides and Questionable Luggage-Towing. Also, Asshat Parking.

Three entries this week?  Man I must be really bored on a roll!

On my drive to College Station this week, I saw (and managed to take pictures of while driving with my iffy cell phone camera while no cops were looking!) the two most amazing vehicles I've ever had the pleasure to actually see on the road!
                                                             
 Pre-Pimp

Mid-to-Post Pimp












It was bizarre...like watching Pimp My Ride in real life, only they were only partially done because, sir, that is not nearly enough pimping yet.


I expect to see these cars again in a further state of pimp.   Also, the pre-pimp car was only three cars behind the post-pimp car, which was excitingly unexpected.  I was just driving along, rocking out to Queen and minding my own business, and I see pre-pimp car and think, "Well, that's kinda a sweet ride, there, love the color" and lo and behold, when I pass him, there's ANOTHER one, SAME COLOR, only with added pimpiness!  What are the chances, huh?  I wonder if they know each other.


On the subject of cars and driving, I took a picture of this minivan with rather terrifyingly-loaded plastic tubs while sitting in way-backed-up I10 traffic (it's not like I had anything better to do, like move six inches closer to my destination\...)  I mean, does that really look like a good way to transport things?  I'm not even sure they had a top rack (can't see one when you zoom in), but they didn't tie it on through the windows, so I guess that's something.

I cry for their gas mileage, though, since it was just viciously, brutally murdered.

The other day, my roommate and I went to the movies.  There's always someone parked atrociously, but usually, you can at least tell that they made an attempt (if a pathetic attempt) at parking within the lines.  Not this guy.  Oh no, not only did he park in the most assed way possible for no apparent reason, he doesn't even have a front plate, which I'm pretty sure is illegal in Texas.  (It's not a new car either since they have an inspection and registration sticker.)  I think what bothers me most is that he was so close to parking directly over the middle line but didn't quite hash it.  Also he parked crooked.  AND HE TOOK TWO TREE-SPOTS (the most important ones in summer-Texas.)  What a total asshat.



Blogger, why do you insist on cramming my awesomely laid-out posts into tiny little bodies like a fat woman in a size three dress?  I don't understand when you give me a reasonably sized Composition Box that is apparently 1.5 times the size of the actual body...why?

Old thoughts

I am both entertained and saddened by a diary entry in a long-lost journal of mine that I just found tonight.  I will reproduce it here in its' entirety and possibly also post a picture (maybe later.)

July 30/1997 age 9
Dear Diary,
I hope that when I am 27 there will still be Rinos, pigions,. TIGERS, and other animals that are endangerd and threatened today.  I hope PEOPLE will quit polutIng and cutting down Trees. I hope that the murder of Lauren K. Smither will be caught and punished but won't be killed.  I hope murders will be little. won't be often and maybe quit.  But most of all I hope people won't be cruel Dumb! or cruel.


Now, I am entirely unsure why I thought pigeons were endangered and/or threatened when I was nine, but apparently I've never liked people.  Lauren Smither was a girl in my sister's Girl Scout troop who was abducted and found dead some months later.
A later entry:

"7/20/98
This night was a scary one.  Mom might have gotten killed.  (She was in a car wreck.)"

Frankly, I'm surprised I didn't write more.  Maybe that's because nobody bothered to tell the kids what had happened until both parents came home four or five hours late.

"June 10, 2000
Commendable won in 2:00 10/3 sec in the Belmont Stakes, 10 lengths
Aptitude 2nd
Unshaded 3rd."

I guess I found the horse races on TV one day?
I'm thinking maybe my childhood was a little strange.  Then again, I also wrote "Wow! 94" in the bottom of my desk drawer, so who can tell?

ID vs Teleportation?

So I'm sitting in bed and watching Hot Fuzz (which is totally like the best movie ever) but really I'm busy typing instead of watching it, which is somewhat sad.  I'm also wondering why I'm so incredibly unreasonably ridiculously tired which, coincidentally, is why I'm currently in bed watching Hot Fuzz.
Did you know proponents of Intelligent Design often cite the human eye as an organ that could not come about randomly?  In fact, it would take only four simple steps (all forms currently present in the animal kingdom) to get from a few photosensitive nerve cells to the complex structure of the human eye.  Furthermore, this as evidence of Intelligent Design is total bunk, because any designer who would install photoreceptors backwards for no good reason could hardly be considered intelligent.  At least the blind spot makes some sense (it's where the optic nerve exits, so naturally doesn't have photoreceptors in that area.) It might be possible for the optic nerve to exit somewhere that, you know, doesn't receive sensory input, but maybe that would have caused some other problems.
Anyway, I should be studying for my physiology lab exam but I really think I'm just going to pass out when the movie is over.  I guess I don't have much to say today, but felt like blogging???
Teleportation is the best superpower.  I'd only have to get up like twenty minutes before class instead of like an hour.  I wouldn't have to drive back and forth to school every weekend.  I could go visit my sister whenever I wanted to instead of planning out a week I can take off and sit through the airport.  I could go visit Kelly whenever I wanted to.  I could make day trips to Italy and still sleep in my own bed.  Even if I could only move myself and whatever I was carrying at the time, it'd be extraordinarily useful.  I could go see musicals in New York.  Now I just need to figure out how to not land in a wall or a person or underground...

Silver Tongues on the Silver Screen?

This should never happen.  What the heck, people, did you really all grow lives outside the internet?  I am saddened by your failure to entertain me.

I'm kinda sorry that I haven't blogged in a while.  I was planning to, but there were finals, and two days later my dog died, and after that the post would have just been miserable whining about that.
Unfortunately, I'm seriously out of the habit now and don't know what to blog about.


Everybody abandoned me to my own devices today.  I made it back to that point in Geist where I suck and hate the level.  I'd gotten past it once, but I either don't know where that memory card is or it got horribly corrupted.

I am so so so so sorry that Vincent Price died.  He was on my list of People with the Awesomest Voices on the Planet.  He is survived by Sean Connery, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, and Keith David (but not Suzanne Pleshette as I've just discovered.)  My list needs more women.  Ladies, step it up already!

Pranks, Banks, and Floa...Tanks?

I'm always sad when my pranks backfire on me.  Like when I neglect to replace the toilet paper roll and think, "Hah!  The next person who wants to go to the bathroom will be seriously disgruntled and perhaps mildly inconvenienced when they discover that there is no toilet paper on the roll!" and then I end up being the next one to use the toilet and recall that I have, in fact, only inconvenienced and disgruntled myself by my childish prank-laziness, and that makes it possibly the most failure of a prank there is (except maybe that time I wrote a letter from my middle school on my typewriter telling my parents I was failing my middle-school classes and my dad actually believed it and confronted me about it even though it was April Fool's Day and I misspelled "Independent School District" and had weird typewriter alignment errors and didn't even bother to put it in an envelope--it crushed me to think that he actually thought I'd fail middle school, of all things).

 Where was I?

Oh yeah.  I'd sat on the couch and gotten online and started playing Assassin's Creed II because I need to get those last few trophies, when the power went off like God was telling me that I needed to get off my lazy bum and take that deposit slip to the bank and get coin-rolly-paper-things so I could actually deposit my meager collection of change and pretend I have money even though it's only a measly $30 and that doesn't really pay for as much as I'd thought it would when I was seven and could only dream of amassing such a large amount of money and what I could buy with it, like a horse and a dinosaur and a trip to Pompeii to see the weird plaster-people because that sounded really cool, and probably I could squeeze out enough money to buy a spaceship with the leftovers, or if I didn't buy any ice cream from the ice cream truck that still came around then, even though he was starting to drop us off his rounds cause the only kids in my neighborhood were myself, my sister, and my next-door neighbor with whom I was best buds but now I'm not even sure I would recognize him in the grocery store.  (I know I have a tendency to write ridiculously long, possibly run-on sentences, but that was a 211 word sentence and I'm a little proud of that even though I probably shouldn't be.)
At any rate, I took God's advice and drove to the bank, check and deposit slip in hand, and deposited the check to my sister's account (who, it seems, needs to inform them of her address change before they start charging her for returned mail.)  Unfortunately, the bank has decided to eschew the manual wrapping of coins and no longer has little coin-rolly-paper-things and I have to use a machine now, which I guess means that one of my secret enjoyments has been taken away from me and I feel that I didn't get enough coin-rolling in this life, and I'll be telling my grandkids that in my day we didn't have these fancy coin-rolling machines and that we had to roll them by hand, and by God did we roll those coins like there was no tomorrow and we probably sometimes didn't count right and a roll that was supposed to have 40 quarters only had 39, but that's okay because unintentional unexpected windfalls are God's way of saying you are loved (or that you'd better return that person's wallet and this is really a test to see if you're worthy of Heaven because God is sneaky that way and that's why people are always on edge when they find wallets (unless they're bad people and just keep it, that is; I don't think they're on edge about anything.))  I was kinda annoyed that I have to take my coins to the bank now (didn't I have to do that anyway?) and it's a little frustrating.

Anyway, I was sitting on the couch and trying not to move after rabidly defending the awesomeness of jeans on an old blog post of Allie's (of which most of the reasons include bugs and I never noticed that apparently is approximately a third of the reason I wear jeans and not just because I like to wear jeans.) because it's kinda really hot since my parents refuse to turn on the air conditioning until I can literally prove that my blood is boiling and not before.

Nobody was talking to me online, and after a few hours of mostly talking to myself, I resigned myself to spending today alone in the hot house contemplating the exact amount of heat that would be produced by propelling myself to the kitchen to get something to eat and whether the energy gained by eating would really be worth the trouble and unnecessary production of heat by my muscles.  Then I remembered that we have ice cream in the freezer and that producing a little extra heat was totally worth it for a Coke float.  So, I dug out a glass and as the first scoop of ice cream was falling in, beyond the point of my stopping it, I realized that I'd forgotten to check that the glass did not have any current or previous unsavory occupants; i.e., roach appendages or dead (or living) silverfish.  I dropped two more scoops in the glass and tried my best to ignore my oversight and pray to whoever might be listening that I was not, in fact, about to unwillingly ingest insects of any sort.  I grabbed a glass-bottle Coke and spent a few moments debating whether that one 8oz Coke would be enough to cover three scoops of ice cream and started to worry that I'd made a grievous mistake.  Then I contemplated how much trouble I'd be in for drinking mom's glass-bottle Cokes in the first place, especially since I'd already had one today and was hoping she wouldn't notice, but I really doubted she wouldn't notice two conspicuously empty glass Coke bottles in the recycle bin.  Then I considered whether I really wanted a Coke float in the first place, since I'm far more enamored of root beer floats, but there was no root beer in the fridge, and would it really be that weird if I just ate ice cream out of a glass instead of a bowl like normal people?  At that point, I was struck by an epiphany--the garage fridge might present me with A&;W (if dad hadn't drunk it all, even though he always says (as he's drinking one) that root beer is too sweet and he doesn't like it (which happens with alarming regularity.))  To my joyous surprise, the garage fridge did, in fact, have not one, but several cans of A&W and I could commence making the best root beer float ever.

It occurs to me (and also to Chris, who claims that a root beer float is NOT dinner and I should eat real food,) that just because I'm alone and when I was younger I always said that when I was an adult I could eat whatever I wanted for dinner, that even though I'm now an adult and can technically eat whatever I want for dinner, root beer floats are satisfying and delicious but hardly classified as nutritious by any means, and I really should not be forgoing meals for tasty ice cream and soda treats.  But then I ignore my responsible side and Chris is trying to get me to eat something that might be classified as "real food" if your description is rather lenient and includes greasy fried foods with a high fat content, and instead enjoy my delicious root beer float (which, thankfully, does not have a bug in it, or if it did I already accidentally ate it without noticing, which is probably just as well.)

Just because my dog is funny, you get a funny picture of him.

-Insert reference to tanks here because of this post's title-



Or maybe I'll just spam the end with AT-AT pictures.

Electronic Amnesia

So I woke up this morning and turned my PC on, walking away, only to hear that beep that traditionally means a big screaming system error. Since I have a paper due tomorrow and it's only saved on the PC cause I'm stupid, I hightailed it back to my desk, thoughtfully restraining my (not so) irrational screams of terror and frustration.
My computer sat me down gently, and said,
"CMOS battery error. Press F2 to continue."

Okay, what the hell is a CMOS battery, you damned machine?!
So I waited for it to boot and Googled it.
"Huh, that's funny, my clock says 12:24am. This better not be like the day the Playstation Network thing crashed and I lost some of my trophies," I thought as I looked for relevant information on CMOS batteries.
"Oh, I see, CMOS batteries apparently do important things like run my clock, and make sure it doesn't forget what programs it has installed, or what devices are connected."
Like...my...PRINTER that's been reinstalling itself every day since February?!
(Chris, I am disappointed that you didn't catch that!)
So after I mourned the loss of faith in my boyfriend as the end-all source of computer knowledge (and my personal Mr. Fix-it of all things electronic), I found that I just have to go buy a new one and install it. No biggie.
Except, well, that I'll be leaving town for the weekend soon. And I have a paper due. And my dog is on the downside of "happy and healthy." And Scott's birthday is next week. And, apparently, the longer the computer is off, the more stupid it gets.
Anyway, so I tried to sign on to Facebook to whine about it.

What, invalid security certificate?
"The certificate will not be valid until 4/13/2009 at 7:00 pm?"
So I double-check my clock.
"Wednesday, April 11, 2007."

Well...it still has the right month, anyway...and it hasn't fallen through a wormhole so far back into the past that electricity doesn't exist yet (I loved that about the Y2K scare and some other electronics that I've had do that)
But otherwise, it's hard to be more wrong.
So I logged on to Blogger to complain about it some more (had to accept another security certificate that's "out of date"), of course!
And then my email so that I can send my paper a million ways across the world before it becomes a random scramble of letters and numbers as my computer experiences its' own personal mental apocalypse and inevitably shuts down in unbelievable terror.












*EDIT*
The culprit?

This tiny thing.









My computer case is dusty.  As far as I could tell when I put it back together, it was working fine again.

Troglodyte

As of right now, I'm fairly positive I have the dubious distinction of knowing more about Neanderthals than anyone else you're likely to know. Just saying.
My lower back hurts something fierce, and I'm not particularly sure why. It may or may not have something to do with bending over my Neanderthal texts and daydreaming about troglodytes and cave bears and woolly mammoths and Irish elk and burial rites and hunting practices and eventually narrowly avoiding crashing over said texts and drooling all over books that I have to return to the library. I have startled Max with my sneezing, which I consider vengeance for the many times he's woken me up at three in the morning with his pathetic wheezing squeaky-toy cough. I slept with earplugs last night, not sure if it made a difference, but I woke up an hour before my alarm went off, so I sat at my desk and zoned out in the general direction of a book on Neanderthals, then realized it was almost time to go and I hadn't even gotten dressed yet. I'm sure I did something at some point. Maybe.
By the way, the pronunciation is Knee-AND-er-tall, because I'm part German and I say so. (Although apparently Knee-AND-er-thall is acceptable for non-Germans...)
Which, by the way, is the epitome of lazy naming, since "thal" means "valley" in German, and the first Neanderthal was found in Neander Valley in Germany. Nothing like the giraffe, which is named camelopardis, get it, cause it looks like a long-necked camel, right, with leopard spots? Get it?
But neanderthalensis? That's almost but not quite on par with naming your dog Perro or your dragon Draco or your lion Simba...

I do find it funny, however, that we named the horse Equus ferus, and then we domesticated it and it's not really feral anymore, so we're gonna call it Equus ferus caballus. In my mind, it should be the wild horse that should be named Equus caballus ferus, since we're calling it a feral horse, and we don't really call them domesticated horses anymore, being that there aren't that many wild horses around anymore.

3am and I'm still awake, writing this song

Okay, really not going to start singing pop alt songs in my blog, but I figured the lyrics were apt enough as a title. There was a crane fly buzzing around my room earlier, with a tendency of hovering around my head while I'm lying in bed. I named him Fred, but he was annoying and now he's dead. Fred's death was a blow to our hearts, but Max disrupted the service, coughing in fits and starts. Tomorrow (today?) somebody comes to see the apartment, my room will be clean and I've gotta pay rent. Don't know yet what Miriam will do, her room is dirty, through and through. I don't know why I'm speaking in rhyme, but I think it must be due to the time. I managed today to give a presentation; I'm sure that feat should have shocked the nation. Speaking of feet, I need to repeat, that I love walking barefoot down the street. I need to stop, though. The reason? It'll soon be too hot for bare feet meet concrete season.

Aren't you dying to start living?

I don't think I have much to say today, but I decided that I should post before half a month prolongs into a month, and then into three months, and then into a year, and then into yet another project that I never finish, that goes gently into that good night, that I look back on and say "why didn't I pursue that?"
I'm intelligent, I know that, but it doesn't stop me from feeling overwhelmed and under-prepared.
Not thinking too well today, didn't get enough sleep again. I think when I graduate all I'll do is sleep. And, I guess, work since I have to.
It's hard, vacillating so much between wanting to do something to make a difference and wanting to give up.


Sometimes I think I'd be happier

I guess this is going to be one of those blogs.
Scott got offline but wasn't really there to begin with.

I have to get a new job and don't want to. I have to work on my vet applications and don't want to. I have to ask professors for recommendation letters and am scared to. I have to take the GRE and don't want to. I have to find a new place to live and don't want to.
Why is there so much stuff I have to do unwillingly?
The proverbial They say that tasks are easier to accomplish if you make yourself want to do them. I don't know where to begin.

Some people say they don't dream. I remember that I have dreams and don't remember what they are.

What am I really meant to do?



There are way too many applicable songs stuck in my head right now.

The Zed Word

I've been hanging out with my sister, got to CT last night around the same time as I said I would (with my amazing clairvoyant powers.)  Sadly, again no one is online to talk to, and my sister's dog snores like my dad, only more quietly.  Maybe my last couple of entries have been a little obsessed with sleeping, but I guess that's because I'm usually doing something like updating my blog instead of sleeping like a normal person.  I wouldn't say I'm an insomniac, since I CAN sleep (just not very well,) but I don't.  There's a tantalizing box of crackers juuuust out of reach that would fix my late night munchies wonderfully, but oh, I can stop complaining since mom finally passed me the box like I've been asking her to for the last hour.  My eye keeps twitching and it's really annoying.  Most likely just another sign that I don't get as much sleep as I should.
Enough with the whining about sleep, I hear ya, I know I can't complain if I'm staying up for no good reason.
I almost picked up a book of disease microorganisms today, like a self-diagnosis book, just to see how much it takes to make me a hypochondriac.  Then again, there was also a huge dinosaur encyclopedia, and I was really torn.  I ended up not getting either cause I don't really have the space, and how many dinosaur books can I possibly need, anyway (more)?
(There would be hidden stuff in this post, but my netbook really doesn't like the edit HTML tab, so you get none.)
I miss the seams on nylon stockings.
Now it's nearly three in the morning and my eyes are burning because I should have taken my contacts out a while ago.  And Alfie starts coughing like Max.  How depressing.
Someone should play Pictionary with me, only all the normal people are asleep and all the not-normal people are probably partying for St. Patrick's still.
Also someone should help me collect chicken bones so I can build an Apatosaurus out of it.  I have the instructions and everything!


What's with all the zombie apocalypse stuff lately?  I saw a learning Zombie as a foreign language book (with sounds!) today.  Not that I'm kvetching, mind you, because I will watch cheesy zombie movies and consider buying horror apocalypse novels all day long.

Losing Time

Daylight savings time is horrible!  Not only did we lose an hour going across the time zone, but we had to set the clocks forward an hour too!  Now it's almost midnight locally and I'm not tired.  Crud.

I thought we were supposed to get better sleep this trip, but stuff just keeps happening.  On Saturday morning some jerk group of kids (presumably a school trip) woke us up at 5:10am by ..."singing," yelling at each other, and just generally being loud.  It took them over an hour to leave, and we'd checked in sometime around 1am.
This morning, mom woke me up talking in her sleep at 6:16am (again, checking in about midnight.)
She was saying something like: "ststststSSSST!," punctuating it every once in a while with a "Hnh!" or two.  She scared the crap out of me at first, because it sounded like she was hissing at me (like we do when the dogs are getting into something they shouldn't,) and I'd been sound asleep and wondering what the crap I did to piss her off.  I realized that she was talking in her sleep (or making sounds, anyway,) and waited for her to quit, since she usually doesn't do it for very long, but after about a minute (a crazy long time for talking in your sleep), I woke her up and asked her what she was dreaming about (plus it sounded like she should have been soaking her pillow with drool--apparently she didn't.)
She told me: "Well, I was trying to catch something, and I was really angry at it.  It was a little demon or something, taunting me, and I was flailing around trying to get it because it was invisible.  Every few seconds it'd change directions and say something to me, taunting me, and I just couldn't catch the damn thing!"

So mom has gremlins in her dreams.

We went back to sleep, and she woke me up about an hour later making the same kind of noises.

That time I just threw a pillow at her.

Co(s)mic Retribution

Well, the 12th my mom and I were tooling around Marshall TX looking for a hotel at about one in the morning.  I was driving, and this is all back country roads, so I kinda expected some wildlife to be hanging around the roads and just generally being suicidal.  So I was talking to mom when this rabbit jumps out in front of the car.  I swerved and missed it, which made me happy, and I mentioned to mom that I hadn't hit anything yet.  We turned around at the town where they turn all the signal lights off at night since we assumed that if the town closed down, it probably wouldn't have a hotel.  Well, on the way back down the deserted highway at about 1:30am, another rabbit leisurely hopped in front of my car.

I didn't miss that one.
Now mom won't stop calling me "Rabbit Killer."
So I mentally told that first rabbit that it'd better make good use of its' life, since the second rabbit was sacrificed for it.


In other news, Animal Planet tells me that there are an estimated 3000 tigers in Texas, which is more than a little alarming.

I can't say Arkansas was particularly exciting, but then, that doesn't surprise me.  In Memphis, though, we stopped for lunch, and I let one of the workers know that the handicapped toilet in the restroom was, frankly, terrifying.  (Trust me.)

He didn't believe me, so I had fun teasing him about it when he went to go look.
Last night I had some dream about magic worms.  Maybe I'll remember to write down my dreams.
Sorry haven't done much, so don't have too much to say.  Some of you will be getting postcards soonish, so keep an eye out!

Frothing at the Mouth

I swear my father is the most frustrating individual I've ever met. (Or at least that I've had to live with.) Here I am actually doing my homework, damnit, and he sets his alarm to come trot in the living room and play games (loudly), completely ignoring that I'm in here (and may have wanted to play when I finished, which is pretty soon). Not to mention mom is still asleep, and I know she hears it cause she just got up, and she complains to me every day about how dad has no respect for her. What's even more frustrating is that he's playing Bioshock, which I want to play, and I get treated to spoiler cutscenes all the time, and I hate that.
Then, he'll get up, turn the game off (the only time he'll do this all day,) go out, and get lunch, never asking me if I want anything, never offering to take me somewhere for food.
When he gets back, he'll continue to monopolize the tv, because he can't sit and read or be quiet for five damn minutes.
Now he's trying one of the puzzles on the game, and thank goodness he actually managed to do it right this time, because otherwise I'd have to listen to him cuss in apoplectic fury and complain that the game is too hard, because that's the OTHER thing he always does. But I may get to have that anyway, since the game has just frozen and he'll have to do that part over again.
Not to mention that he complains that I don't pay for anything and I just spend his money, and the only thing I spend his money for is my effing tuition which I couldn't possibly afford on my own. I buy everything else I need on my shitty pay, driving home two hours every weekend for three years for a job that I now hate, having to listen to him kvetch about the stupidest things, listening to mom practically cry because he consistently tells her she's stupid and her work isn't worth anything (not necessarily in that phrasing) because his retirement pay gets all the money even though he retired TEN YEARS EARLY and if he'd waited another TWO YEARS he would have had his full pay, when mom worked TWENTY-THREE YEARS at minimal pay at a job that treated her like crap and, finally quitting, still gets shit-for-pay. I keep trying to convince her (and apparently my sister also) that she should get her CPA certification and make like three times what she makes now, easily, and get better jobs but she keeps saying she's too old and will be hit by a bus anyway, which throws me because it's not like she's in contact with buses like...ever.
It's strange that, despite my sister being five years older than I, she never once considered that mom and dad didn't work together until I mentioned it when I was twelve or so.

Tl;dr: I hate living at home and I'm frustrated enough for paragraph sentences.
Max is doing worse, again.

You know...

That you've got great friends when you can hold entire conversations about naked flag football with them without them batting an eye.

Anyway, I'm in a really good mood despite having to call my auto insurance company tomorrow cause they're stupid and not having done my homework, cause I'm certainly having fun.

I wish I had my bike up here so I could go ride it, now that temperatures are getting reasonable. Okay, honestly, this post is more about pushing sad post off of the top for a while than actually having anything to say. But for the sake of keeping my blog interesting (other than oily naked flag football, which I think is considerably sufficiently interesting for any gourmet blog-viewer,) I'll attempt to keep the bar up. Or at least not quickly sinking.

Tomorrow I'm taking Chris and Scott and Danielle to see the Hall of Anatomical Anomalies (which isn't officially called that, but I thought it was a suitable name) just because it's so awesome, as the name suggests. It's like A&M's own little Animal Body Horror Display. Maybe I should start calling it the Pet Shop of Horrors. I'll name everything in it, because they all have boring names like "Porcine" and I just got "Porky the Pig" on so many levels, how pathetic is that?

How's everybody's Lent going? Apparently you should all be eating kosher, all the time, according to a known authority.

My room is clean for the landlord to not get annoyed or take away the security deposit, and we had a fun spring cleaning couple of days. Everything is all sparkly and temporarily clean (because we know it will never stay that way,) and I'm suddenly wondering why I have so much stuff here. What is this accumulation of stuff from? I hardly ever buy anything!
Also, in true girly fashion, I have too many shoes. Ah, my shoe fetish takes up too much of my closet floor, but I refuse to get one of those door-hanging shoe racks, because that means I have too many shoes.

I guess it's back to dirty conversations before this becomes tl;dr!

The box

(Sorry for being kinda a downer today; I guess it just happens the later it is and the more tired I am.)
I wish I knew what to do with my life. Seems like what I thought I wanted, I guess I don't want anymore. If only I knew that I didn't want what I thought I wanted, or better yet, actually knew what I do want. Better better yet, someone take care of me so I don't have to anymore. I feel absolutely demotivated.

I guess I'm fated to always wonder if people think about me as much as I think about them. It's weird to think that a lot of my peers are married and a lot of those even have kids already, when I still haven't grown up yet, and doubt that I ever will, really. Maybe this is why I chose a career path with the most possible school...

Someone on Facebook asked me to complete a personal survey. I don't think I'm that interesting, which is exactly why I have a blog (Hah!). Plus I'm always wary about sharing that sort of thing with other people, because I'm just that shy and secretive. Should I really be giving people advice? A lot of people seem to ask for it, but I feel distinctly unqualified. I would hate to say the wrong thing or have my advice interpreted in a way I didn't expect or intend. I just want to do the right thing, and I want everybody to be happy. These are my confessions; all I ask is forgiveness.


I guess Lent starts now?

Max, stop coughing, damnit!

I was going to tell you about my dream, but now I've spent too long loafing around on the internet (and not studying for my test in an hour or so) and have forgotten it.

Is it terrible of me to just wish that my dog would stop coughing so I can sleep for more than a couple hours at a time, and debate whether kid's cough medicine or sleeping pills will help more? Sometimes I really want to leave him at home so my parents can deal with his coughing and I can sleep for once.

I finally found the source of my toe hurting--the (probably) spider bite is nice and swollen now so that I notice it (but I don't see punctures) so I slapped some analgesic on that sucker and am hoping it wasn't a brown recluse bite and my toe won't become gangrenous and fall off. I am happy with my current state of reasonable symmetry and would like to keep it that way.

I'm really happy that I spent $15 less at the grocery store yesterday and got more (and healthier) food than usual. I'm going to try this "actually cooking" thing, which seems like it'll end up "throw stuff in a skillet and be happy."

V-day is coming up and I get to see Wolf Man, how great is that? Still trying to decide if I should make lots of cookies for everybody, but I guess I'd have to do that tonight.



I really wish I could remember that dream...

Supersonic Tech-tonic

Someday I'll get something that will let me update posts via airwaves, because God forbid I remember anything long enough to get out of the shower and get dressed.
Part of what I was musing over (in the shower) was this:
If we accept, for simplicity's sake, that phenotypes are solely the physical expression of your genotype, then why do people seem to choose those that look like themselves? From an evolutionary standpoint, it would seem more beneficial to choose a mate who looks less similar to yourself to increase the gene pool and the chances of mixing beneficial gene mutations.
Is this just a remnant of social traditions and geographical proximity? If it were the case of geographical proximity, then in an age of global transportation and more people moving away from their hometowns, this should have disappeared. To some extent, we will choose phenotypes similar to our own simply because phenotype is partially linked to the environment: since most of us stay in our country of origin, then we're not going to see radical phenotypical differences, but there is still enough variation to choose between even in relatively small countries.
If it's a remnant of social traditions, then why haven't we gotten past that yet? Get a move on, people!

Sadly this is mostly moot because I can pretty much explain everything I've brought up, just not in the context I've given.

I've also always wondered where everyone else is going, when I'm careening (not really) down the freeway. It's strange to see that in such a techno-communicational age, where you can contact anyone in the world in a matter of minutes, that I don't even talk to my neighbors much. It's very oxymoronic to live in a world where we have global communications but at the same time are so isolated.

One last thought: why, in this super-information age, does everyone blindly refuse to use what resources are available to them? Kids at work keep asking me what seem to be the most blazingly obvious things, and I just want to hand them an encyclopedia, or for the technologically literate, Wikipedia. Why not learn when it's all at your fingertips? If you want to know about something, look it up!
Which just reminds me that Wikipedia is horrible for my procrastination, since I will gleefully spend hours clicking from link to link and end up on something that's a far cry from my original topic.

TLDR: People are weird.

Why the fuss?

For some reason, some pendejo stuck chewing gum to the rear windshield of my car in the twenty minutes it was parked at the Walmart parking lot. I mean, seriously, there's a trashcan right outside the effing door! Don't make my loathing of Walmart any worse!
To make it more vexing, they didn't have the vacuum belt I explicitly went to Walmart for, and the one I guessed at was too small.
At least the cold meant the gum wasn't sticky.

I had a really awesome thought earlier but I forgot it...

I guess I'm not being even vaguely interesting today, I just wanted to complain about the mild vandalism that runs rampant in the world.

In my human variations class we discussed the arbitrary classification of what makes a gene, which was resoundingly similar to the discussion we had considering the arbitrary distinctions between human races. Honestly, I think humans should stop being so anal about classifying everything, and just use whatever definition is most useful for what you're trying to explain. Definitions about such abstract ideas should be much more fluid than what the professor was trying to make us choose between. However, I like her because she thinks like I do, and likes using such concepts to confuse everyone and twist them around until they don't know what they believe anymore. It's similar to playing Devil's advocate, and I love doing it.

Since I'm talking to my friend about beards, I'll mention it here. If you're going to have facial hair, you'd damn well better take care of it. No one wants unwashed scraggly facial hair, or haphazard lazy I-didn't-feel-like-shaving-this-week facial hair. To make it simpler, I'm going to make a table. (Enjoy that I remember some HTML!...except for the weird space right after this)
Boys &dArr:

Well groomed short facial hair	Good
Unkempt facial hair	No. Bad.
Goatees (cut short)	Acceptable
Long beards	Two words: Pubic lice
Soul patch	Definitely no. Never.
Neckbeard	HELL. NO.

Now, this may just be my opinion, but who thought neckbeards are ever attractive? I don't care if that's the only place you can grow hair, DON'T DO IT. YOU LOOK RETARDED.

Like those guys that wear their pants around their knees. DON'T DO IT. YOU LOOK LIKE AN INEPT MORON. Plus it makes me want to set an angry bear on you, and you really don't want a half-ton of angry grizzly bear on your ass cause you can't run when your pants are around your freaking knees.

Indispensible

I can't say I have much to say today. I had to euthanize two feral cats at work. I always wonder; what if we'd found them earlier? Would they still have been feral? What was the turning point? The worst thing was, I missed the heart on one of the cats and had to inject it again or watch it die much much more slowly. If I'd had the choice, I'd rather I'd never missed and instead it died immediately, the first time. This is starting to seem like a veiled metaphor, so I think I'll stop.
Life is always harder when death is on my mind.





Just seems like everything is ending, lately, everywhere I look.

Maybe it will be better in the summer...

A New Dawn: A Re-iteration

I often find, in my trials and tribulations as a member of Studentiae universitii that I need an outlet for all the crazy chaotic cogitations that have no place in either academic society or... society-society. I get the feeling that this blog will fit its' title nicely; sometimes my posts will make sense, and most of the time you'll be stuck wondering where the heck that came from. I'll be witty when able, and I might even attach a drawing for you, isn't that sweet of me? Because these posts will be more stream-of-conciousness than streamlined, I can't guarantee any sort of within-post continuity.
I've also found that my life is hella boring, and with luck only a tiny piece of my real life will invade the fantasy world I'd much prefer living in, where I don't have to scrape up the money for next month's rent and can instead live the dream of being a paleontologist Mondays, jazz saxophonist Tuesdays, author/artist/travel journalist Wednesdays, biological anthropologist Thursdays, veterinarian Fridays, make those fake foods for restaurant ads Saturdays, and I just might take Sundays off. (Schedule up to negotiations.)
I really miss the days when I could roll around in the grass chasing bumblebees, climb trees, and commit rampant horseplay with my friends without getting strange looks from stranger people. (Stranger Danger!)
If you were wondering, I'm a female Biomedical Science major with an emphasis on veterinary medicine, and an Anthropology minor, and that really sounds way more impressive than it has any right to.

If I were a dinosaur, I'd be a Troodont of some sort, most likely a Saurornithoides.


I never grew out of the dinosaur phase...