The War on Jasmine and Recommendation Letters

So, for the past couple of days, I've been fighting my mother's arch-enemy mano a... vine...o.  This stuff is like the Texas version of kudzu...wait a second, I'm going to make sure it actually isn't kudzu... I don't think it is, but it might as well be.  If you don't know what it is, it's that stuff that grows at the mall, but they have the advantage of actually keeping it down.  My parents planted it forever ago and kept up with it for a while, but in the past few years it's gotten absolutely everywhere and mom says I'm not doing anything but sitting at the house (which is true, I suppose, but still,) so I might as well be out killing her nemesis.  The actual work part isn't too bad, but wrestling this stuff out of the trees is absolutely exhausting.  I am sore in the weirdest places from trying to not fall over when I finally get it out of the tree (namely, my bum.  My arms are sore too, but that's expected.)  Funny thing is, the jasmine has actually gotten thicker in a lot of places than the 10 foot tall bush it's growing on. =/

Dad is "helping" as usual; he watched me and mom pulling it out of the ground for a bit yesterday, and said, "You know if you don't get the roots out, it's not going to do anything," which sounded more like, "Totally not worth the effort guys, lol."  Best part is the section I cleared yesterday could be easily taken care of with the mower, he just never bothers to mow there.  So today I got to rake everything out of the area and bag it and pull the roots out by hand as best I can, because that seems to be the most efficient way to do it.

I moved on to the vines providing a nice canopy over the bushes (I hadn't realized quite so much of it was actually jasmine, now that I notice the bushes are looking kinda sparse,) and dad came out and watched me for about ten minutes.

Aaaalways waaatching...

He then asked if I was planning on clearing the whole fenceline, and decided cutting the bushes down will somehow help me.  I mean, yeah, I guess it'll help, but it'll also make the yard look like shit.  But that's dad for you.  I think I need to convince him that I'd rather have the shade than super easy weed-pulling...

In other news, Dr. Athreya has agreed to write a recommendation letter for me because I was a strong student.  Whoop!  Also she must live on her email because she responded in less than an hour, which I was not expecting at all.

Seriously, I nearly cried with joy/relief.  Now just waiting for the other professors to reply and probably bugging Dr. Grant too...
Must...find...courage...to ask for favors...

Dogs and Jobs

I think Jock had a stroke or something today.  He's listing to one side like a poorly laden sailboat and can't really stand up at all anymore.  So I guess it's time for a euthanasia appointment, and I really shouldn't be this sad about it.  I was going to complain that my dogs are dying too close together, but then I realized it's been almost a year since Max died and that's not long enough.  We'll see what Dr. Young thinks about it, but I think Jock's quality of life took a nosedive.

In other news, I might be moving up to be a squatter (not really) in my grandparents' house very soon.  Yay job (maybe) and money, boo long distance relationship (again) and probably not being able to go be extremely nerdy at the card shop, which is like my only social activity.

It's awesome cause D&D was canceled last night, which may have been my last chance to go.  Woo.

(Sorry for all the short posts lately.)

EDIT:  We had Jock put to sleep; his right eye was shrunken and probably would have gotten infected, and since he's old and dehydrated we just went with it.

The Borgias

I don't know if it's because I've played too much Assassin's Creed, or if it's because it's full of Jeremy Irons, but I am so stoked for this.

Photophobic

So dad's currently jamming out in the kitchen to a certain 90's era boy band that I forgot he actually...likes...all un-ironically and everything.  He's also improvising his own percussion accompaniment utilizing his hands and various everything around the kitchen.  Thankfully he doesn't know the words, because I really don't think I can handle my dad singing "I want it that way" anywhere in my vicinity.  Dad's like the anti-hipster, he only likes popular stuff ten years after everyone hates it.

In other, totally unrelated news, mom just handed me a book about migraines because she wants me to be more sympathetic or something.  Oh, mom, I'm not unsympathetic, my caustic sarcasm is merely a byproduct of my intense worry for your general health.
Anyway, this book tells me that you can have migraines without the headache bit (kinda a non-sequitur if you ask me,) and that these are called migraine equivalents.  This made me think back to a couple weeks ago when I was taking care of Diedre's dogs and had to invade someone's driveway because I had an attack of severe photosensitivity, as I have on a few other occasions (like at midnight while being driven back home from my grandmother's house--good thing I couldn't drive yet.)  I know, I'm always photosensitive, but sometimes it's like I'm staring into the sun and I literally can't keep my eyes open because it hurts so bad (even when the sun clearly isn't out, see above.)
This symptom is, at least, fairly infrequent; usually it's something about the outside light and my glasses, or if I just woke up and turned on the light or went outside.  Occasionally, it's happened after about ten minutes of playing video games (with my glasses on, but not always the same pair has done it, so I don't know what's up with the glasses thing.)  The weird thing is, it's not right when I step outside or whatever, it takes a few minutes to kick in and make me want to gouge out my eyes, which is how I get halfway down the road before aughing.  At any rate, it has occurred to me that these might actually be migraines, or rather, "migraine equivalents."  Well...shit.
Hopefully, I'm wrong, but I'm not sure what I'd rather my photophobia-that-goes-away-in-a-few-minutes was instead, so maybe not so hopefully.

Take home message here is, stop shining shit in my eyes, and yes I'm totally serious.  They're very broken, okay?

Random Pictures Day!

So I have a lot of random pictures which I like to take because something amuses me.  They're not very good pictures but they're usually from my cell phone, so low quality is expected.  Of course, since this blog post was halfway written in February and I forgot about it, the pictures are from allwhens, and not just recent whens.  Apparently I also had another picture in here that got eaten??? so I took it out but I'm not sure anymore what it was so you may have just missed out on the greatest picture of all time or something, sorry.

These are just so creepy they're so so creepy.

I'm not sure what whoever was thinking when they made these, but they never should have combined Christmas trees and the torso-less horror of bisected Mr. and Mrs. Claus.

No carts here..

 

Wait, there they are!  They're everywhere!

If you've never noticed before, notice that I apparently go shopping late at night and no one else is around. I literally have no idea why I was at the grocery store so late, nor do I know why the shopping carts were everywhere but where they were supposed to be. I think perhaps they were slowly surrounding me, but I'm not entirely sure. It seems I escaped just in time. (Maybe with lots of spare time, they were moving pretty slowly.) Really, check out your local grocery store lots and keep tabs on the movements of the shopping carts in your area. We need to make sure they're not plotting against us. Maybe they just don't like being corralled like cattle into tiny pens, but you can never be too paranoid.













So one night when I was driving home from Chris's house at late o' clock, it was super foggy.  So I was all bad driver and took pictures of it (with my cell phone as usual) and now you can look at the creepy emptiness pictures, but I won't take a picture on a non-foggy night so you can compare it.  Just trust me, there's usually stuff there and it doesn't look like a horror movie set.

Spooky.

One day I will figure out why this stupid blogger layout is so stupid and fix it accordingly, but this seems unlikely as I have no clue what's wrong with it other than it hates my guts. (EDIT: I changed some stuff.  Okay, almost everything.  Hopefully Blogger will stop chewing up my stuff and spitting it out but I can never tell; lemme know if anything looks utterly bizarre.)

Well, it looks like it's time to go take more random pictures as I'm out for today.

Have some dinosaurs.

Om nom nom.

Really, Facebook?

I feel bad because some of my friends have a terrible habit of only communicating through Facebook.  They seem to have forgotten that there are other ways to contact me, even...far better ways to contact me considering that I logged in this morning (and Facebook immediately sent a "we missed you!" email...) and found a note from someone from two months ago that I really wish I would have gotten in a reasonable amount of time.  Anyway, I recently learned that several websites, applications, BROWSERS track your geographical location.  I thought that kinda wasn't cool, so I ran around trying to fix it, which is when I found really old note.  Also, this guy sent me a friend request, which I find hilarious because he was one of the few people I absolutely hated in junior high and high school.  I'm really not sure what he's smoking, as I know he knew I thought he was a jerk.  If you want to know who it is, it's that guy that I always complain about his parents getting him a yellow Hummer as his first car.  Anyway, he seems to have gotten on the "friend people you never talk to!" Facebook bandwagon.
Ultimately, I kinda want to delete my Facebook, but it's insanely difficult and it won't actually disappear for forever anyway, though it's much less forever than, say, your Hotmail account.  Dilemma, dilemma.

DVDs Hate Me

I have a beef with the DVD production industry (I guess that's who I'm supposed to blame?)  When I want to watch a movie, I want to watch that movie.  And only that movie.  Other than maybe the first time I watch a DVD, I am entirely uninterested in previews.  Previews belong in the theaters, when people care, not 12 years after every movie in the previews has a greatest hits special anniversary edition DVD format.  Honestly, is there really a problem with just opening to the root menu?  Is it really necessary to force me to push menu 30 times (or failing that, root menu; or, if the DVD really hates you, the skip button?)  I mean, they claim I can push menu at any time and it will go to the menu but they. are. lying.   Disney DVDs are particularly obnoxious with this, putting almost as many minutes of previews as actual movie on their discs and neither root menu or menu buttons take you to the menu.

You may not know this, but I am plagued with inferior DVD players.  My TV has a DVD player in it, which, in the past, when it was my sister's, worked reliably.  At that time I had an old TV (no, a really old TV,) so pretty much anything was an upgrade (though I honestly miss that TV.  It worked.)  Anyway, when the color started to go on that one, I inherited my sisters TV and she got my parent's old TV (I am, by this point, really tired of how many caps are in this post.  I hate acronyms.)  I guess the color on that one went fairly soon after my getting it, cause now that I think of it, this is my third set.  Anyway, at one point it worked reliably and now it doesn't really.  The disc player usually works on the first try, but more often it complains that I should "Please check the type and scratch of disc."  So I had a separate disc player (you have no idea how my family goes through external disc/tape players, it's ridiculous.)  That one worked right up until a few weeks ago, when it decided every disc ever had an irreparable debilitating scratch (but only about a third of the way through the movie.)  So I eventually got tired of that and dug an extra out of the attic.  Why do we even have extras?  This one, aside from having a ridiculously blinding red light ALL THE TIME, seemed to work far better than its' predecessor.  I "fixed" the light with a bit of electrical tape and was more or less satisfied with it.  Today, I felt like watching The Lion King because I love it so and had the songs stuck in my head.  Now, my DVD player seems to hate it immeasurably and won't play it without pausing every 15-20 seconds.  Maybe I should just watch it on the internet.  At least then it'll be high definition.

Disney, why do you like "modernizing" your movies when they get released on disc?  Take The Lion King, for instance.  When you finally are able to skip to the menu bit, they make you watch a 6 minute, poorly done CGI Zazu flight sequence before it actually gets to the menu (I think you can at least skip this part without confusing the disc, but the first time I didn't expect it.)   As if that wasn't enough torture, they then have Zazu (not even the original actor) explain the menu items.  Come on, Disney, nobody wants to listen to Zazu for longer than they have to.  That goes for the Morning Report song also.  (Plus, it shouldn't auto-play the "extended version," it should auto-play the theatrical version, duh.)
Also, don't put CGI menus on traditionally animated films.  It's stupid.