Silence...until conditions change

I'm feeling very combative today, so I'm not really going to do any posting of substance until this mood passes. It's a carry-over of a bad mood that started (I think) on Sunday where I dealt with too many people driving under the speed limit, and made my illness [a fever & nausea] worse than it was because I missed getting my prescription thanks to these 'Sunday Drivers'.

I've been getting less sleep than ever before. Soon, I won't get any sleep at all.

Anyway, I'm going to listen to the adage of "If you can't say anything nice..." and not post anything until I either a) feel less like I want to pick a fight with the world by talking about hot-button issues [No, not politics (not those kind of issues), but reading material and the like] or b) find something else to talk about entirely.

Maybe I'll find something on the web to post about. Or not. But, until then, bye for now.

I can't help it...

I found this to be so hilarious that I had to leave the room so that I wouldn't disturb my co-workers.

The Overheard in New York line that I found most funny is the 'black guy with guitar' one. I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to that song ever again without laughing!

Wednesday One-Liners Watch AZN
Teacher: So, for the most part you guys had really low participation grades. Then they made me sit through some psychology workshop entitled 'The Asian Teen and Why They're So Quiet.' After that, I raised everyone's grade.

--Bronx Science

Overheard by: LSB

Lady with accent, to toddler: I don't know about Asians... He just fell over, and they don't even care! They're just gonna leave them there!

--Faye's Starbucks, Washington Square

Overheard by: Sydney M

White mom taking photo of Chinese seven-year-old daughter: Honey, open your eyes! Wider! Open your eyes, dear!

--Times Square

Black guy with guitar: Hey! Hey you! This song I'm gonna sing is for you, Chinese girl. [Sings] Everybody was kung fu fighting, [yells and chops the air] boom, bam! Thank you. Thank you all! I accept pennies, nickels, dimes, iPods, wallets, cellphones, sunglasses, your first born, your mama, credit cards and Asians.

--1 train

Overheard by: Brina Guild

Nerd: You can tell how good a testing location is by the ratio of people to Asians.

--Line for SATs, Martin Luther King Jr. High

Guy, regarding VA Tech: It's not right -- Asians aren't serial killers. If they were, there wouldn't be so many people in China. [Friends stare silently.] What? Too soon?

--NYU

Overheard by: evil new york


via Overheard in New York, Jul 25, 2007

I hope this didn't offend anyone. It was something to break up the typical tone this blog has taken lately.

Maybe she's been reading "Lacerations For the Soul"

I had an utterly demoralizing conversation with my grandmother on Sunday, which amounted to her saying that children are "blessings" and that "if you do good things, God will bestow blessings on you"; implying that I'll have children if I do good things.

She essentially said that I've not had children because I'm a bad person. Well, what she said was that I needed to do good things to be rewarded with children, but it still feels as if she was saying that there's something wrong with me.

My husband told one of his friends what she said, and the friend asked if she was being mean on purpose, or if she was unaware of what she was doing. She knew what she was saying, and I know this because she said it twice. The first time she mentioned "blessings", she didn't come out and say that she meant children, but I fugured that that was what she was talking about. She made it painfully clear when she started by telling me that I need to have children before I turn 30, and telling me that I didn't want to be like Nancy Grace, who is having twins at 46 [Okay, so I may not like Ms. Grace (and she may have driven one interviewee to suicide), but to compare me to her? That hurts]. And then she defined "blessings", and left me holding a phone that I wanted to throw through the glass doors of our new t.v. stand.

I called my husband, who called me back an hour later where I was more coherent but not any less upset than I was when I first called. No wonder I got sick the next day.

I know that children are a blessing. I've never disputed that. I also know that I have been trying to conceive for more than two years, so I don't like having these conversations where I feel she thinks I'm doing this on purpose. Do you really think I would intentionally not have children and then proceed to tell her that I am trying? Do I look like a pain slut? [Answer: no (I know some S&M people, so I do not mean to offend)]

Maybe I'm being too sensitive. I don't know what to think anymore.

I do know this: One's spirit can feel wounds, and I can almost feel the blood flowing from my lacerations. This is not something I need right now.

This is insane...

I'm going to have to send a letter to the manufacturer of my mp3 player to demand that they make it possible to save playlists with music from the mini-SD card that I have inserted in the machine; I'm in need of this so that I can make playlists where I exclude all of the music that triggers a 'negative emotional response' [read: makes me cry in public when depressed] so that I can still listen to music without replaying an emotional song repeatedly because I want to keep hearing it until I've beat myself up enough to move on.

I could, in theory, just skip those songs in my playlist, but I'm getting through the list for the first time and I refuse to skip songs. What about I just listen to it once and move on to the next song? No good: once a response has been triggered, I need to hear the song a few more times to give myself a way to 'come down' gently. Besides, some of the music I hear is just so beautiful that I don't want the experience of the sound to end. And it's fun to hear a song that has a color I can see [My husband says that I have Illio-optic disorder, but since I'm not exactly suffering from it, it's not that bad], so I'm not exactly sure what else I can do. Well, other than find out how to spell that disorder.

At least I'm listening to something at this moment that doesn't have a trigger (The Pink Panther Theme), so I'll be able to get back to work now.

Good news, everyone!

My meeting Friday went over well, so I feel a little better that my PhD aspirations are not half-baked!

[50 points for whomever can guess where my title comes from]

I met with an English professor to discuss the potential of my PhD project, and he spent the first portion of the meeting talking about the challenges of doing a major in comics, and the difficulties of finding a professorship based on a degree on comics. This was the type of spiel that people give to discourage people from pursuing something; it's usually effective in at least dampening one's spirits because it forces you to face the realities of your dreams (and crushes them) and ground you to reality. I've heard this before & I've felt the hurt and low-level devastation from hearing such words in the past [i.e. when I found out that I couldn't minor in music when I first got to college], but that didn't happen this time. I felt that his words of caution were things that I suspected were part of the challenges I would face if I got into grad school to study comics, so I took my feelings as a sign that I really should pursue this degree.

We discussed comic book stores, the possibility that there may be three departments that may be best suited for what I want to study [Comparative Studies, English, and Women's Studies], and who I should speak to in helping me with the dilemma of which department I should try to get my degrees in(because I would have to get another Master's, no matter which department I get into). He made a good sell for working under the English department in that it would be easy to assemble a committee and I would be able to get jobs based on having degrees in English instead of Comparative Studies [Women's Studies has been ruled out simply because of the dearth of faculty who would be open to such an odd focus], but that CS has more flexibilty (something that the CS prof had mentioned in my meeting with him). So the question is this: Do I apply to the department that is newer and allows for greater flexibiltiy, or do I go for the more traditional department with a better chance of getting work in the end? There is yet another option; I can (possibly) apply to both, or get into one and transfer to the other department after finishing my Masters.

What I liked was that this professor told me that he would assist me whether or not he ended up as my advisor (which is extremely encouraging), and he feels that I am in a position to succeed in my endeavors because I didn't rush into grad school; I've taken my time to come to a decision on what I'm passionate about and know the work that it takes to make it through the program. He told me about a program that's coming to the University in October...and how he'll try to help me get in on the student rate, and about a website where there are people who review comics (a possible writing opportunity), and he even likes Hello Kitty (but he may have been teasing me on that one [it's okay :-)]). I've got a lot of research to do on the different programs, application processes, and decisions to make on how I want to proceed. I need to get in touch with more people and prepare to better explain my PhD concept to the Curator on the 3rd.

I felt really good about this, so I've got to work hard and do whatever it takes to get back into grad school. Even though I know I won't be able to study my passion right away, the fact that I'll be studying anything is very exciting for me.

Ja ne!

Tally it up

Yesterday was my 7th anniversary. I try to avoid saying "wedding" because we eloped on that date back in 2000 and had a wedding the next year on July 7th. Complicated, yes but it boiled down to some old-fashioned sensibilities [My grandmother was not about to let us live together and reasoned that we were already engaged, so we might as well get married] and his unwillingness to tell his parents that we had gotten hitched in a civil ceremony. What the title boils down to is trying to figure out, based on all the pros and cons, how great of an anniversary we had. It'll make sense soon, I hope, so let's continue....

We decided to have our dinner at a place called Basi Italia. We thought it was going to be a more formal place than it turned out to be; the people dining were in various stages of casual dress (from business casual to work-out clothes) but the prices were high-end. We were seated outside, which turned out to be a bad idea because it had been threatening to rain for most of the day and the sky opened up soon after we got our entrées. We had never been to this place before and we were treated as if we should know how the experience should go from the outset. It was never explained to us that the menu wasn't everything that you could order, and that we could've gotten some sort of pasta or pizza instead of what was listed. The waiter wasn't that great and there was a large party seated outside with a woman who was so loud an obnoxious that I wanted to go over to her table and tell her to stop embarrassing herself [she was loudly talking about money, and something about selling a boat or property]. It's the kind of behavior that I would get stared down for if I did that myself. Anyway, what almost made up for everything else was the food. The salads we had were great, but our entrées were fantastic! I had a mustard-crusted trout that was very well done, and my husband had his first Cornish game hen and he enjoyed it thoroughly. The wine list actually explained what each wine tasted like, which made it easy for us to choose a wine without asking our less-than-helpful server for suggestions. It was also rather cool that the chef brought out our entrées (but mine didn't come with a starch; it was just a huge piece of fish sitting on cooked pieces of red and yellow bell peppers).

I'm used to going to places where people ask us if this is a special occasion...you know, getting a little fuss, but that didn't happen here. They also didn't seem to notice that we were both dressed up, while the rest of their clientèle wasn't, but these are things I can overlook. Overall, it was a decent experience. We had always wanted to try this place ever since we found it during our evening walks a few years back, and now that we've had it we'll probably never go back, but I won't say it was terrible [That would be Valentine's Day 2002 at Rigsby's]. It was just too expensive for what we got out of it.

We then went out for dessert and after going to a place that was closed, we ended up at a local coffee shop where we each got a dessert and a hot chocolate. Unfortunately, I ended up taking a spill into the street on our way back to the car where I ended up hitting the ground pretty hard on both of my knees. We got home and he cleaned me up as best he could, but I insisted upon getting gauze for my knees. We (eventually) found what I could use, got home to clean me up again, and settled in to watch 'Willow' and eat our desserts. We didn't get each other gifts this year (partly because we thought we were going to be spending even more than we did at the restaurant), but we each got nice cards that made the other laugh. The evening ended with him falling asleep to the History Channel's 'The Universe', while I played a little in the Trivia dome on the World Series of Pop Culture site [I've got to find a way to abbreviate that web site!] and put a newly-acquired ice pack on the worse of my two knees.

Overall, I think we had a very nice anniversary. :-) I'm still having a hard time walking on the left knee (and going up stairs seems to be the worst of it) and my two favorite forms of exercise [walking and Dance Dance Revolution] are completely out for the next few days, but it all turned into a memorable moment in my marriage that I'll keep with me for a long time.

Tally: 8/10 on the remembrance scale.

I did okay...but I'm a little embarassed

I was asked to sing the song "Small Enough" as a solo for church service yesterday. My choir director was delivering the message [which is what I guess we call it when it's coming from a lay person instead of from a minister, where it's called the sermon] and she had a song that had a very personal meaning to her, as it was the song that she heard in her darkest hour that put life into perspective. Of course, I was really freaked out because I didn't want to ruin her favorite song, but we practiced on Thursday and I hammered out some of the rough spots with her and the pianist.

What I wasn't expecting was to be recorded doing the song. I'm not thrilled because 1) I don't like hearing my own recordings [I still haven't watched the DVD of the Talent Show a few months back], 2) My allergies leave me with full sinuses that make me sound very nasal, and 3) I kept screwing up the song! It was written (seemingly) after the artist sang it, so there were a lot of runs and extra notes which kept throwing me off [too many notes for the words]. The choir director and her boyfriend [they are the most awesome couple I've seen in a very, very long time!] made a recording of me singing before service (and I have it on disk now...I'm not happy about that) and I think there's a second recording where the song is in its proper context; the middle of the message.

The choir director (who needs a name...let's call her H, to continue with my relative anonymity theme from my ebloggy days) was delivering a message where she spoke about how people have called out to God in the bible, and how she has felt so small and helpless after all of the things she went through in high school and the beginning of college. [Sadly, I have a bad tendency to not pay enough attention to what people say, so I have the gist (if not everything she said) of her message.] What was really cool about the service is that it gave everyone more insight into how she is so strong in mind, and spirit, even when her Chronic Fatigue takes its toll. I think that you would find her picture next to "indomitable spirit" in a phrase-dictionary because she tries so hard to do everything and won't let anything hold her back.

I'm impressed by her mostly because she one of the few people I've met out there in the world who is genuinely kind. She may have been hurt by her soft heartedness when she discovered the true nature of some people, but it's still there. I have a difficult time trusting people, and I kept up my walls when I met her, but I'm trying to let my guard down a little when it comes to people like her. They're a rare breed in this day and age, and it wouldn't be in my best interest to shut someone like her out...not that I have much to say to her anyway (I've still got my secrets to keep for now).

Maybe, if I find a way to do so, I might make the recording available for people to hear. Maybe. I'm always going to hear the mistakes I made, so I'm not sure I'm going to do it, but I don't really know how to put audio on the Internet without worrying about trying to sell it, or copyright violations (if any), or anything else.

I'm tired; I'm looking forward to getting home and listening to some records I picked up at a record shop yesterday. Yes, I said records. What? I like vinyl. I liked it when I was a kid, but I was only allowed to play with eight-track cartridges because I couldn't break them. Have a good day, everyone ;-)

Damn eBay snipers

I just lost a bid on a Sailor Moon Art Book that I've been trying to get for years, all because someone waited until 30 seconds before the end to put in a bid. They had to bid twice (because I had a higher bid on their first try), so I scrambled to put in a higher bid to keep them from getting it, but it came a few seconds too late.

I know there are a lot of people who think that's part of the fun of eBay. I'm not one of those people.

If I had dial-up, I'd never win anything because the page wouldn't load fast enough.

I have Sailor Moon Art Books I-IV and the Materials Collection (commonly sold as book VI) and I have no interest in book infinity [A doujinshi (fan art) book published by the artist, Takeuchi Naoko, with a limited number of books available] because it's too damn expensive, so all I need to complete my Art Book collection is Book V. I sometimes feel I'll never get that book.

At one point, Book infinity was on eBay more often than Book V (which is from the last season of the Sailor Moon series, featuring the Sailor Moon cast drawn in the manga-style of the creator)...and it seems like those days are here again. It's so damn difficult to get a bid on it & babysit the site in the closing minutes just to get the chance to make the seller a little bit richer. Especially since I don't exactly have money to throw at this type of luxury (My losing bid was in the upper $80s. If I had gotten in my last bid, I might've gotten it for $91 if the other bidder hadn't bid even higher).

I have increasing doubts that I'm ever going to get this book, and it's f*cking frustrating, but there's not much I can do about it except hope that, one day, my time will come.

...I've no good title today...

It's been encroaching my mind for a little while now, but the dark clouds that seem to forever pervade my existence have returned.

It's a beautiful, sunny day outside, but I feel as if the darkness of my soul is eating away at me.

I've been struggling with this...problem for a number of years [if I count the eight or so years it went undiagnosed, it's been 17 years], and I have bouts of self-loathing that can run the gambit from mild displeasure to an all-out war with myself. I'm not feeling particularly self-destructive, so I'll weather through this and continue with my life unabated (for now, anyway).

I never like it when my husband figures out I've slipped under the crushing waves again...and knowing my fear of water, he would really detest that analogy. He always feels a little defeated that he can't "make me happy"; he's frustrated that he can't cheer me up easily & that I'm usually am angry or unhappy when these moods come. I wish there was something I could tell him to get him to understand that he hasn't failed me just because he can't cheer up 'a woman depressed'.

So what pushed me over the edge to the point where I wanted to blog about it? Buying a full-length mirror.

Coupled with issues about childbearing (or inability to do so) discussed at length in my ebloggy blog, and a overwhelming feeling that I've completely stagnated in life with no clear hope in site (for the moment), the body image thing was just the ticket to send a weary mind to a place that is all-too familiar.

To quote Squee, a character from the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac comic series: "The sick thing is, I'm...use to it".

Hopefully, I'll feel better after some sleep, PhD inquiry research, and happier music on my Sansa mp3 player. But this is nothing to worry about.

I've been down this road before, and I always seem to come back out at the end.
Damn my candor.

Rescheduled meeting

I was supposed to meet with an English professor today about the prospects of my PhD project, but he didn't get my e-mail about the times in which I could meet (which I sent back in June on the very day he e-mailed me back to set up the meeting in the first place) and so it's been pushed back to next Friday morning at 11 (I hope).

I don't know what happened to the e-mail I sent; it must have been the e-mail equivalent of those cell phone commercials where the call is dropped at the most inopportune time for the other caller. It's probably a good thing that the meeting was moved anyway; I wasn't exactly ready for it, and since I was late to work, I would have to either stay until I make up the time, or make it up later (which I'm getting tired of doing).

I hope to actually do some research on my project proposal today so that I have something to say to the Department of Cultural Studies professor when I contact him for our next meeting.

On another front, I've resolved that I will cook a minimum of 2 dinners a week to foster better eating habits for both my husband and I, so I am going to be making my upside-down pizza today. It's been awhile since I've made it (not as long as my beef & rice casserole), so I hope I can do a good job at it.

Need...more...sleep...

I don't get enough sleep at all. I've developed a nasty habit of going to bed between 5 and 5:30 in the morning, and I struggle to get out of bed to get to work at 10:00 (with varying levels of failure). I'm not really sure why I'm up so late anymore; it used to be that I would get my schoolwork done after hours because I liked being up so late, but now I'm not really doing much of anything that requires being up that long. Sure, I find things to do that would be better done earlier in the day (i.e. dishes, house cleaning), but it's hard to find the time to fit those in during the few hours I get to spend with my husband before he goes off to his third-shift job.

It doesn't help things (or my family's anxiety) that I like to exercise by going out walking in the middle of the night. I do it for a multitude of reasons, but mainly it's because it's not so hot outside, there aren't that many people out there to see me in my silly pig-tails (which I do to keep the sweat from ruining my hair), and my husband doesn't want to go with me when he has to work that night. Even though I'm in the city, I'm not afraid to be out there at night. I made a habit of it in college when I would walk home to my dorm at 4am (but I looked so angry that people stayed as far away from me as possible -- a very effective mechanism), but apparently I never told my family I did this...or my grandmother would've torn into me for it. As it is, my aunt makes me call her if I happen to mention that I'm going out that night, and my grandmother told me to take a stick with me. I walk with my mp3 player on, but I keep the volume down and I'm aware of my surroundings at all time (plus, I know enough people in my neighborhood that I feel as if I can find someone if my cell-phone doesn't work or something). It's helping me to lose weight, but it's not helping me to get any more sleep.

That, and the World Series of Pop Culture just started a nightly online trivia contest where the winner gets $2,500 (which means I'm trying to play at 10pm & 1am), so that torpedoes the chance of getting more sleep. Oh well...after suffering the written equivalent of blurting out as much at once as possible [Imagine if I had said what I had written...as someone saying it as quickly as possible. That's how I talk when I'm frustrated/nervous sometimes. Sorry about that :-)] I'm going to wrap this up. I have two projects to work on (apparently, I completely misunderstood the one from last week as being more complicated than it was), so I'm going to get to that.

And it's about to start pouring (and I left my umbrella in the car), so I may not go out walking tonight, in case you were worried ;-).

Take care & stay dry, cool, or whatever is your ideal today.

Books...and the widget

I have a Library Thing widget in this blog, which shows all of the books I cataloged (that had covers on the site) at random. I think it's really neat, because it reminds me of all the books I have, and it shows people what I like to read...which is mostly Japanese Manga and Bathroom Readers with a few novels, American comics, and web design manuals thrown in for good measure.

I need to add more books. I read some really great ones from the library, and I've acquired quite a bit more since my last major adding spree several months ago.

Even though I have a library degree, I didn't study cataloging. I do like to catalog my own collections [I attempted to catalog all of my CDs by the track, but I haven't had time to update it in a year], but I have my own system that works for me. Besides, I can only type up the number of video games and things that I have before I get tired of doing so. There are places I can go to catalog all of my media, but I've decided that I'm just going to take my multimedia spreadsheet and turn it into an Access database instead.

You know what? Once I'm done with work today, I'm going to curl up with a nice book. I think I'll read more of my Basara, or finally get through my Full Moon wo Sagashite or Othello manga collections.

If you're curious about these books, just click on my widget! :-P

Sayonara, mina-san! [trans. Goodbye, everybody!]

...I didn't expect that...

I guess I'm back. Surprise!?! I didn't expect to get any comments, but an innocent comment from a blog that I found really cool led to some unexpected traffic that has been very much appreciated.

And after the rough night I had, I needed something to make me feel better.

I was going through our online bank records when I saw that we only had $239 in our account, which would be all fine and good except that our rent check hadn't been cashed yet...and our rent is far more than $200. On top of that, the bank mysteriously vaporized half of my husband's paycheck. I didn't know that a bank could be a magician; they certainly made $400 disappear! In a panic, I called my husband around midnight, and I kept calling until I reached him around 3am [He works 3rd shift, and I'm an unrepentant night-owl.] where he assured me that he would take care of everything. Unfortunately, that wasn't as reassuring as he would've liked it to be, but it was enough to get me to calm down and distract myself with some Gametap games until I could be trusted to go to sleep without incident.

Btw, Gametap has brought out a bunch of free games that I actually like playing...I'm paying for too much crap as it is, so I need something to be free.

My husband's grand scheme to fix things? Go to the bank and get the paycheck issue resolved, then go to Fidelity to raid our mutual fund for some money to make sure that the rent check doesn't bounce higher than the Chrysler building (as I am rife with sayings older than my grandmother). He then promised that we could return any of the money that we don't need back into the account, but I may want to keep it out and put it in a CD or something to help pay the Capital Gaines tax that we are going to have to pay next year [We used this fund, which his mother gave to him after he finally convinced her that the car she gave us was all but truly dead, to buy an '06 Elantra in February.]. What sucks about the tax is that I'm the person who has to do our taxes every year...and I have no freakin' clue how to do taxes with investments in our possession. But I have time, so it's not something to worry about yet.

I've realized that all of my blogs suffer from the same ADD-esque jumps that reflect how my mind works. It's like the radio commercial where the woman says "I'm not dangerous, I'm just bi-polar. Oooh, look! A butterfly!" It's just one of my coping mechanisms (kind of how I laugh when I'm nervous [or upset, or any other emotion] or when I'm trying to reduce my bouts of anger...I never said that I was sane).

I put more music on my mp3 player recently. I can still put on more, but I forgot what songs I wanted to add, so I only added the ones I remembered I wanted to hear. I even added some of the Japanese Anime songs I got from a bittorrent download. One of which is from a show called Full Moon wo Sagashite, which I think translates into "Searching for the Full Moon", which sounded like a very sad song. I don't know enough Japanese to string together a sentence [I almost said "sandwich". Weird, huh?], but I understood enough words to hear that she was singing about her feelings. It was very beautiful. I need to finish the television series so that I can find out when that song is introduced into the show...and get at least some of the lyrics as this is most likely an ending theme song.

I need to make contact with a professor that I'm supposed to be meeting with on Tuesday to discuss the PhD that I would like to get. This guy teaches a course on Graphic Novels, and the man who wants to be my adviser believes that this guy would be a great contact. Unfortunately, we never settled on a time for our meeting, so I'm going to send him another e-mail soon. I also need to e-mail the curator of the Cartoon Research Library at OSU because not only would she be a good contact for starting on this project, she could be on my committee if/when the time comes. She was also my adviser for my practicum when I was working on my Master's of Library and Information Science (M.L.I.S.) degree, so she may actually talk to me :-).

Do realize that I have been laughing at myself while I write this. I'm a little scattered, which is better than being depressed or stressed out, so that's where I am right now...mentally.

I have determined that this post will not make any sense. So I will continue....

Anyway, what I want to study is strong female characters in comics. In particular, I want to look at Wonder Woman and Sailor Moon, their emergence in their respective countries, and the cultural ramifications that they may have had or reflect. I decided upon this when I was reading a collection of Wonder Woman comics and thought about how women's roles had changed in WWII (due to men being sent off to war), and I had read an article about how women in Japan are refusing to go back to the traditional roles of stay-at-home wife and mother, which got me to thinking about when that change had occurred over there. It's a concept that is evolving, but it is something I'm passionate about & hope I get to pursue. The biggest hurdle? Getting in the program. The Department of Cultural Studies has a 6% acceptance rate into their PhD program, and this will be the first time I have to take the GRE (and that is making me uber nervous). My husband says this is the first time I've been passionate about anything in a very long time, so he's being very encouraging of what I want to do (which helps a lot). I've already met with a professor in the department who actually took an interest in my project (instead of laughing me out of the room), so I'm off to a good start.

In other news, I have two songs I need to learn for church in the coming weeks. One is the alto part in a quartet of Wade in the Water on (ironically enough) the Sunday I'm supposed to get baptized [This may not be ironic (Like how nothing in Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" is actually ironic and may, therefore, be the most ironic part of the song) but it's the best term I could come up with], and I've been picked to do a solo on the Sunday my choir director (A very sweet Master's degree of music student) is going to be giving the message(?) to the congregation. It's not a sermon, because she's not a minister, so it's hard to figure out what to call it, but she's talking and I'm supposed to be singing, so it's a lot of work to get done in a short period of time. I love to sing, and I would love to do it professionally, but I've got to straighten out the rest of my life first, so I'm sticking to church choirs and the occasional solos until I can do more vocally.

I really need to get back to work. I finally figured out what I was supposed to do with this project (It took how many days to figure this out?), so I'm going to try to do as much as I can before I leave at 5:30 today. I didn't get to work until 12:30 due to sleeping in & my husband deciding that I needed sleep more than to be to work on time when the rest of my team is on vacation...and nobody seems to care when I show up, as long as I work my five hours and there is no meeting in the morning.

Randomness, thy name is me. Take care, everyone.

Almost ready to pack it in...

I'm just about ready to call it quits on all of my blogs (and most of my Internet activities). I haven't been on this one in two months, and I think I used my other, non-MySpace blog once in the past month. I haven't blogged on MySpace much except to explain my absence.

What's the point, anyway?

I can talk about my endeavors to try to get into grad school to get a PhD, or I can bitch about how hostile I feel towards the Wii, the iPhone, Mac users, and people who are willing to spend $600 on a phone but complain that the PS3 is too expensive...except that I'll get over the whole iPhone & Mac thing soon (enjoy your products, but I have the right to be hostile when you're smug), I'll never like the Wii but I'm okay with that, and I'm waiting until winter of '08 to get a PS3 because we're always broke & out t.v. sucks. If you knew how often I used my Virgin Mobile phone, you would never suggest that I give the iPhone a chance because I don't need a phone with all those bells and whistles that I can't afford any damn way.

I may reconsider my extended hiatus after I finally get all the music I want loaded onto my Sansa mp3 player [I will not own a iPod, I will not own one, Kay I am]. Maybe I'll have some time to actually do stuff online instead of what it boils down to now; posting when I'm distracted from doing other, more important things.

I don't think anybody really reads this. It doesn't really matter one way or the other.

Before I forget: Live Free or Die Hard sucked! Bruce Willis was excellent in it & that jerk who plays Silent Bob was the only other actor who didn't get on my nerves at one point or another in it. It would've been a better movie if it had followed my mathematical equation for action enjoyment: For an action movie to be considered a 'great' one, it must have a balance of good plot and action. If the plot is weak, there must be more action to compensate (and erase the memory of the plot from the viewer, leaving the pleasant memory of mindless violence). Because this movie was PG-13, it had less action to ease away memories of a bad plot and irritating villians. That, and it allowed them to utter 'shit' about 40 times. It's kind of funny that the last Die Hard movie used 'fuck' in an R film far less times than the s-word in this one. There was less swearing 12 years ago because the plot/action balance was in place. There's something to be said for that (and it may end up on other blogs, as I would like others to read about this).

I'm very hesitant on the next movie we're planning to see (Transformers). I think I told my husband that every time Hollywood takes something from my childhood and repackages it, it's like they're ripping my veins out of my arms, placing them back and saying "enjoy!". STOP REPACKAGING MY CHILDHOOD! I'm not sure this is going to be any good but, like everything else I dislike these days, it'll be a huge success.

I'm actually surprised at the number of movies I've seen in the theater this year. I think I've seen more films in the theater this year than I have in the past three, and there are more to come. Like Rush Hour 3.

LFoDH was the first film I paid to see this year that I really didn't like. Let's hope that's not a trend that will continue.

I'm out of here, gentle reader, not certain of when I will return. Take care of yourself...because I highly doubt there's more than one of you out here.

If you feel the need to comment, I will be checking in from time to time to see if anyone does. I'm also on MySpace and Facebook; but odds are slim (MySpace) to none (Facebook) that you'll catch me on for more than 5 minutes.

Oh, and Fantastic Four actually did fit my mathematical quotient. It's not meant to be something better than it is; accept it and all will be well.

Sayonara (I've been studying Kanji, btw, and I've learned 21/45 so far)!