Not much left to do...

I took the GRE on Monday and while I managed to improve my score by 40 points in each category, it wasn't enough to get to the threshold that the English department set for the verbal. I'm still trying to figure out why my math score keeps improving with virtually no practice (only reviewing basic math concepts like integers, fractions, and decimals), but I can't complain about the test results. I have to wait on the verbal (which I worry won't be good enough), and I need to contact OSU to let them know that the scores are on the way...but may not make it there by the deadline.

All that's left now is to submit all of the writing statements and samples, and to make sure that all of the letters of recommendation have arrived at OSU safely.

I'm kind of tired and don't really want to do much these days, but I still have to write an autobiographical statement for English and pay another $40 for the second application.

At least the test is over. That's a good thing, so let's build on that to jazz myself up for the holidays.

It's Been Too Long

I've disappeared for almost two months, and I've been keeping busy. The Festival of Cartoon art was awesome! I got 18 autographs and I have several artists who have told me to keep in touch, including Ray Billingsley (the creator of Curtis). I'll write more when I have time...which may not be until January: I'm in the last stages of applying to grad school, so I don't really have the time to do much else but panic.

I was trying to get three people to write letters of recommendation for me, but one of the people I wanted to ask (my advisor from when I was an undergrad) had since retired and has been very ill, so I finally asked my supervisor and the VP in my department. One is writing a letter for the English department and the other is writing for the Comparative Studies department. Let's just hope all of the letters will be complimentary.

The Jewish Graphic Novels course wrapped up in November; just in time for the article about the group to be published in the New Standard. I'll provide a link later, but the quote from me actually makes me seem not as crazy as the whole interview process must have been for the author (who is the wife of one of my co-workers, if I haven't mentioned that already). I think I got a great deal out of the course, and I may have shown people a thing or two about life for non-Jewish people. When we discussed Harvey Pekar's The Quitter, I ended up opening up about my life and family back in Cleveland; revelations that I was surprised were being said to a group of strangers. That deserves a longer post, so we'll see.

In bigger news, I am scheduled to take the G.R.E. on December 17th, so I need to spend a lot of time studying for this exam that has me freaked out over the verbal (very important) and the math (important to only me), as I don't have a very large vocabulary, and it's been more than a decade since I've had to do the kind of math required for this exam. I just hope and pray that I can do well on this exam. I just want everything to come together so that I can have a shot at getting into grad school. I even worked with the Comparative Studies professor (who told at least one person that he really wants to be my advisor) to get my Statement of Purpose up to caliber. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that I did have it in me to write at the PhD level; coming up with terms like "cognitive empathy" and using phrases that sounded very scholarly but make no sense to me now seemed to do the trick.

All I have left now is to make sure my transcripts from Kent State make it to OSU safely, confirm (yet again) that my OSU transcripts will be gotten by the Grad School Application office without me having to pay for them, get all my letter writers to get their letters in ASAP, write the autobiographical statement for the English department, choose a stellar writing sample for both departments, and pass the exam. All that, and holding down my internship while changing my schedule drastically for the next three months so that I can audit a Comparative Studies class, and taking steps towards my first attempts at getting published in a scholarly journal. I'm very serious about what I want to study [Strong female characters in sequential art = super heroine comic characters from the U.S. and abroad] and I really want this. I'm not sure that I'll get it, and I'm in a panic for the first time ever about affording it, so I've got to give it my best from now to the end of the year.

I want to set up a schedule so that I can make regular posts to all of my different internet haunts, but I'm probably going to be gone again until at least after the exam. Please pray, wish me luck or whatever you're into, for me as I make one last push towards the end.

Let's see how this works out, so I can tell people what went on in the interim.

I mean, I haven't even gotten to talk about my department's move to the main building on campus, so I'd like to come back more often.

C-ya, peeps!

I feel sicky, oh so sicky...

...I feel sicky, and icky and blah, and I envy anyone who isn't sick today (la la la la la, la la, la la la).

In the grand tradition of throwing bad after good, I'm feeling like hell after finally making some progress towards my grad school applications. I get these really bad stomach pains that are intermittent and, at times, truly unbearable. It is the one thing that I can't handle; given the choice for a migraine-level headache (as I don't have migraines because I only exhibit some of the symptoms) and the stomach pains, I'd rather have the headache. Even the risk of vomiting [which is something that terrifies me to no end...choking on it a long time ago exacerbated the problem] is something that I'd prefer over these damn pains. I've been to doctors for this a number of times and nobody can figure out what is wrong with me. It's not ulcers, it's not gall stones and, after my last trip to the emergency room, it's not a "female problem" (even though, honestly, I have no idea why they thought it was), but it is usually attributed to a build up of gas that doesn't exit out of the two "normal" exit points, but rather tries to find its way out through a 'pocket' right above my stomach as if to breech the skin. It's unpleasant, misery-inducing, and is going to make this weekend completely and utterly terrible.

I'm going to the 2007 Festival of Cartoon Art this weekend, which looks to be a lot of fun (as well as educational, and building brownie points towards getting into grad school) but it requires that I miss a day of work (bummer) and that I be somewhere at 8am on Friday and Saturday (which actually sucks). I'm going to be doing this and going to a Halloween party on Friday, I still need to study for the GRE, and I need make more progress towards completing my grad school proposal write-ups. All this, and only one day off before I have my reading group on Monday. My house is a perennial mess, my husband has been minimally helpful (which is a step up from his usual, I-work-therefore-I-do-nothing-at-home position), and my clinical depression isn't getting better. Being sick just makes it so that eating is an adventure in culinary avoidance, and the distension that this causes makes it look like I've gained a considerable amount of weight.

In short, life sucks.

And, to top it all off, I feel incredibly guilty for complaining because there are so many people who have it worse that I can possibly imagine.

I don't know what my point was. I guess it was to let off some steam. I just hope I'm well enough to eat a little bit more than miso by Friday, or alcohol will be completely out of the question. Later.

I'm Much More Stressed Out Than I Thought

The following is a "note" from my Facebook page that I wrote yesterday about feeling stressed out. After re-reading this, I realized that I was much more upset than I thought.

I'm using this opportunity to vent a little, because I'm trying to do so much in preparation of applying to grad school...and things are feeling more out of control than they really are these days.

I spent this summer talking to professors at OSU about doing a PhD studying strong women in comics (primarily Wonder Woman, Sailor Moon, and how they either reflect or influence their respective societies) and I've discovered that there are other people as crazy as I am who think that this is a good idea [imagine that]. I've been trying to get myself to write the follow-up e-mails to everyone I spoke with as well as the two professors I still need to contact, but I keep freaking out about it and other things in life get in the way.

I've also signed up for a reading group where we're studying Jewish Graphic Novels in the hopes that I will be able to come up with better ideas for my own topic of choice (and get free copies of books like "Maus" in the process). I'm also hoping to sign up for a comic book conference that is meeting at the end of the month, where I can see Alison Bechdel [Dykes to Watch Out For and "Fun Home"] and other artists and get exposed to so many other works that exist in the genre. [Don't ask me why I read a lesbian comic: I read four of them and one that is of gay men, which may be my latent bisexuality coming out or that they are just very compelling stories.]

Add to this that I have been studying to take the GRE [You know; that test I didn't have to take for my MLIS degree] and I'm facing the dilemma that I can no longer do math [Which just sucks!] and that my vocabulary is too limited to do well on most of the verbal portion of the exam. I've also been trying to teach myself how to read Japanese and I've learned 36 hiragana and katakana characters...but I may have to stop until after the applications for grad school are turned in so that I can spend more of my time on what I need to get into school.

I'm still trying to hold down my current job, my husband has been sick for more than a week (which has resulted in me sleeping on the couch for the past six days), and my choir rehearsal schedule got shifted to Wednesdays (which isn't too much of an inconvenience because I usually call home [Cleveland] on those evenings, but it just added to the stress ball that has formed in my back). And to top it all off, my heart hasn't been happy with me and beats hard for no reason at random [I'm going to tell a doctor about that today] and I still have to deal with grief from my grandmother about not giving her great-grandchildren [as if I'm doing this on purpose].

So, in short, I'm really effin' stressed out right now (and, honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way).

So how are you all doing?

Later (because I feel a little better now).

Update: I forgot to mention that I have to earn a second Masters degree before I can even begin to work on my PhD...because the library masters is considered a "professional" degree and not an "academic" one. Fun, huh?

I wasn't feeling too sociable yesterday and really didn't want to go to choir rehearsal because my crappy moods are like the Lasso of Truth times ten: I have a difficult time holding my tongue on everything. If truth serum was this effective, more people would be in trouble.

To not go into it too much, I was majorly pissed that I had to purchase block cheese for the chili dinner the choir had just to find out that someone else bought bagged cheese [Which was something that I was told was "unhealthy" because of the extra additives put in the cheese to keep it from sticking.] and just said some things that showed how much I dislike most things that people like.

And, apparently, I looked very exhausted from the moment I got home from work until I went to sleep on the couch (again).

My husband wouldn't go to the doctor because he was feeling better before I went to rehearsal, but funny enough he was sick again by the time I got home.

I think I've been sleeping on the couch for over a week now, and it stinks!

It is Banned Books Week, so get out there and read something! Also, happy belated Music Lovers Day (it was yesterday).

I wish a person could call in "bitch" the way you call in sick for work.
"I'm sorry, I won't be in today. I came down with a case of total bitch, and I don't want to infect anyone else with my shitty attitude."

And if I actually got sick time, that'd be a very viable (and truthful) situation.

I'm tired, crabby, and prone to bouts of crying or fits of rage, and I'm nowhere near PMS, so I'm logging off.

Enjoy the day & get your hands on a good banned book! ;-)

Goodbye, Miss Moneypenney

I found out yesterday that the actress who played Miss Moneypenney in 14 James Bond films passed away this weekend. Lois Maxwell was 80.

I always loved her character. Playing a woman who longed to be with a playboy endeared her to me, and I always looked forward to her appearances in the films.

She will be missed.

The song Goldfinger came on my mp3 player, and it made me think of Miss Moneypenny because, well, it's Bond!

I'm sorry to see her go, but her films still remain.

First Day of Book Discussion Group

I attended my first session of a discussion group on Jewish Graphic Novels, and I have to say that I'm glad that I found out about this because it was very interesting...and I'm getting free books in the process!

The first book (of five) that we read and discussed was Will Eisner's A Contract with God. It's a collection of four short stories that are about people living in a Jewish tenement house in 1930s New York. This book is the first in a trilogy of works that I'm going to have to hunt down because the stories were all fascinating. One in particular, "The Super", struck me as so sad that I felt very bothered by the ending [I won't reveal it, so you'll have to go and get it from your local library and read it yourself!] and was glad that I got to discuss it in the group.

The group is made up of approximately 25 people from all walks of life. Some are Jewish, some like reading graphic novels, and some didn't quite read the flyer closely enough but came anyway. We talked about some of the Hebrew symbols that you can see in the title story, and how the oppressor/oppressed relationship in The Super gets flipped before the end, and about cookaliens and how they really were like what we read in the fourth story. There was a man who went to cookaliens as a child in New York [And I understand them to be places out in the country where the wife would take her children while her husband stayed in the city to work weekdays and visit on the weekends. The wife would [typically] do the cooking for her family while there, which garnered some comments on how this wasn't so much a vacation for the wife, except that it was a vacation from the husband!] and there was someone who used to work at the resorts in the area in the summer a la Dirty Dancing, which I thought was really cool to learn about in the group.

We got our next reading assignment, Maus, and I'm looking forward to reading both volumes again. While I may not have articulated everything I heard in the group, I did get a great deal out of it. It's being led by an English Professor, and I feel as if I am going to have a better idea of how to formulate ideas for the Masters/PhD program I would like to embark upon. I just need to make sure I get into contact with every professor I spoke with this summer (as well as the two I need to still talk to) by the end of this week so that I can get into the meat of my application process. That, and I need to get more focused on my GRE preparations.

I'll have to let you know about the interview I did for The New Standard, if I haven't mentioned it already...because I can't remember what I've said recently and where.

That Brain Age 2 training has been helping, but I don't think my brain's gotten much better after a week of it.

Here's hoping that I'm going to be able to get "back on the wagon" of blogging more regularly. Later ;-)

Update: I forgot to mention that I need to send a thank you card to the man who paid for all of the books for this group. He's a member of the OSU Friends of the Libraries group and, upon hearing about the group, offered to buy the materials for the entire class!

What I need is time, what I get is...

business, I guess. I've been too busy with trying to get ready to take the GRE and other things in life that I haven't been able to blog. I'm sorry.

I'm hoping to be able to put up entries about Dragon*con, as well as other things of interest, but I don't know when I'll have the time.

Maybe on Wednesday, after I get back from Brook Park and my *gulp* court date.

Instead, I'll briefly regale you with the story of the missing mp3 player.

I was asked to participate in a quartet for church last week, and I went to rehearsal on Thursday (unknowingly) with my Sansa 2gig mp3 player attached to my belt by my Hello Kitty pouch. The snap closure had been acting funny lately, so it must have come loose when I was driving to the church. I was looking for a way in when the choir director's boyfriend opened one of the side doors at the bottom of a hill to let me in. It is at that point that the pouch fell off, but I didn't notice because I didn't know I had even brought it with me and (which was probably my biggest mistake) I had taken off my headphones, which would've jerked around my neck to let me know I had dropped it.

Well, I assumed that the player was on my living room table with the headphones and I didn't look for it until I was leaving for the UNCF walk on Saturday. I was supposed to meet my team at 9:00am for the group photo. I didn't leave the house until 9:45 tearing it apart for the player. I finally asked my husband to call the church and to call the interim pastor. I figured that if I lost it there, maybe they would know something about it. I ended up doing the walk with my old, reliable, Memorex mp3 player, but I still fretted about my Sansa.

We got calls back from the interim pastor saying that a member of the church found a gray item and gave it to her. Unfortunately, she got it on Friday and proceeded to leave it on a table where it could've been during the BREAD meeting [some interfaith bible study that was meeting at our church], and I figured someone took it during that meeting and that I would never see the mp3 player again. I was upset over the loss of money for the player, but I was a little more upset about losing the Hello Kitty thing, because it was a one-of-a-kind, handmade item I bought on eBay that couldn't be replaced. We then get a call from the son of the person who found it in the first place and told us that it was in the church safe.

After trying in vain to get the item back earlier this week, I finally got it back on Thursday evening after choir rehearsal.

Funny enough, though, I haven't used it for more than 5 minutes since I got it back. My head hurts and I have a terrible cold, and I really shouldn't have come in to work today, but I'm here and I'm trying to get some work done...or at least keep my eyes open.

I've returned in one piece (more or less)

This is going to be a brief entry, but I had a great time at Dragon*con! I got to meet & get autographs from Peter S. Beagle (author, The Last Unicorn), Terry Moore (author, Strangers in Paradise), and Lloyd Kaufman (President of Troma Entertainment, The Toxic Avenger), and Voltaire (singer, author, and 'Gothic Clown'). I got to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show done by the stellar Lips Down on Dixie cast, and I got to see so many great costumes.

I also got sick and tired of taking photographs of people whose costumes made mine look very amateurish, and I got more attention wearing a paper hat I made in an Origami panel than for anything else I was wearing this weekend, and I embarrassed myself when I met Mr. Beagle in a tale that I will save for later [because that one deserves to have pictures included]. I even got to see Superman II the way that the first movie's director wanted to make it, and the premier of Poultrygeist, a very hilarious Troma film.

This weekend was great and was almost completely ruined by what happened once we flew back into Cleveland.

We made excellent time in our flight [It only took 1h17min of actual flight time to get back from Atlanta, which meant that our drive back to Columbus was actually 1 hour and 13 minutes longer than the flight] and got back before our scheduled arrival. We were waiting for our luggage like everyone else and what we received was four pieces of mangled baggage; our largest suitcase was open with the contents trying to fall out of the case, and it also had a sizable gash at the bottom. There was fraying on the front of another suitcase and grease stains on that one as well as another. All of the wheel casings were heavily scratched, and it looked like someone roughly handled everything. Why this all stood out is because three of the bags were from a brand-new set of luggage that managed to get to Atlanta without a scratch. Contents were moved around in all four bags, a pirate hat was mangled because it was moved to the bottom of its suitcase, and my bag of costume jewelery [which I accidentally packed in the checked-in luggage] was opened and hidden in a suitcase, but it appears that nothing was stolen...it had no value other than sentimental, so it held no appeal to the thief. We reported our findings to Delta's baggage department & they have offered to fix the hole in the largest bag. It's almost as if we were rewarded for getting to the Atlanta airport early with someone trying to steal from us [The reason why we believe that it was not TSA is because, as the Delta personnel explained to us, the TSA would leave a notice in our suitcase explaining that they chose our bags for inspection].

To top it all off, as we were driving back, I was so upset about the luggage situation that I was speeding in a 60mph part of the highway and got picked up by the cops. I now have to go back to Brook Park to contest the traffic ticket, which is more than two hours away from here, and will require that I leave at 6am [yuck!] to get to court by 8:30 on a Wednesday morning.

I don't know what is missing of my purchases, so I'm still very upset about the whole thing. I do know one thing, however: the next time we go to Atlanta, I'm going to pay to ship all of our purchases instead of taking them on the plane.

Hopefully, more stories from Dragon*con will be forthcoming by the end of the week (with pictures, hopefully!).

[UPDATE: 4:40pm]...and did I mention that my bottle of Luster's Pink Hair Lotion exploded in one of the suitcases? This wasn't as bad as it sounds; it was in a plastic Ziploc bag in a toiletry bag in the suitcase, and it didn't even leak onto the rest of the contents in the toiletry bag. All that happened is that the travel toothpaste, my hair oil, and the travel Listerine has been covered in pink lotion. It's more humorous than upsetting, so I can at least laugh at that one.

Gone to Dragon*con!

Okay, so we don't officially leave for Atlanta until our flight tomorrow at noon, but we are taking off for Cleveland to stay overnight at my father-in-law's place so that we may be able to catch our flight without having to pay to park (he'll be keeping our car) and not driving up for the flight that morning.

I hope to have some great tales about this convention & to also post some pictures as soon as I get back.

I just hope I won't have trouble driving tonight as I've only gotten 2 hours of sleep [I did all the packing] before coming in to work today.

Stay hydrated, everyone, and I'll be back next week!

Taste the rainbow!

I just couldn't resist posting this one!

On the Way to a PFLAG Meeting

Ghetto mama: Gimme some of yo' Skittles, boy.
Little boy: No, they be my Skittles.
Ghetto papa: Boy, you best to give yo' mama some Skittles or yo' ass is nevah gonna taste that rainbow again.

--1 train

via Overheard in New York, Aug 23, 2007

Weekend with my brother

Since I'm actually trying to get a lot of work done today, I'll have to keep this as short as possible.

A while back, I invited my brother to see Transformers with me down here in Columbus, long before the film ever hit the theaters. Well, he saw it with his friends and absolutely loved it, but was still willing to see it with my husband and I so we set up our plan: he would come down on a Saturday, we'd see it on Sunday and I'd send him back on the Greyhound. It took awhile but it finally happened, and while I didn't exactly love the film, it was better than I thought.

Unfortunately, I was being very negative and I feel as if I ruined the movie for him.

What I found out later was that it was the day before my 'cycle', which meant that I had turned into a raging bitch with about as much emotional control as a person has over a whirlpool; it takes you where it wants and there's not much else you can do but ride it out. It's still no excuse for running my mouth and talking about how much I hated certain parts of the film. There was one character in particular that made me so angry that I punched my palm out of frustration [Which is better than where I usually punch myself when I'm on the phone and don't want to betray that I'm angry with the caller; right above my knees.] I know he loves this movie and has loved the Transformers since he was a child, but he started to see flaws in the film and talk about what he didn't like...and that's when I started to feel incredibly guilty.

I wish the audience we had seen it with had been into the film more, because it would've been very easy to get me emotionally caught up if other people had shared his enthusiasm. I probably still would've complained, but maybe not as much.

Even though my husband told me that I didn't really hurt my brother the way I feel I did, I sent him a MySpace message thanking him for coming down and apologizing for ruining his film. His response was simple yet heartfelt; he told me about how he had been wanting to see a film of his favorite childhood show since he was 8, that he was glad that he saw it (and me), and that he missed me. The message made me cry a little the first time I read it (and now the tears are pouring as I remember the message) because I wish he could've stayed longer. All we got to do this weekend was drive down (he actually did the driving in my car...which I guess he didn't know we had gotten a new one until I picked him up from work), have lunch, see the movie, and then immediately drive him to the bus station to catch the 5:00 bus back to Cleveland.

He had never ridden the Greyhound before [Somehow, he's been on an airplane more than a dozen times (2 trips for me) but had never ridden the Greyhound (whereas I had ridden the bus more than a dozen times since junior high).] so I made sure that he was in the right line, and I used the last dollar I had to buy him something to drink for the trip back. We left him there roughly 20 minutes before he was supposed to board, and I didn't want to leave until I saw him on the bus and I have a feeling he didn't want me to leave just yet, either, but my husband wanted to go home, so I left.

[We paid for just about everything this weekend except for the movie itself; I had some silver passes and my husband had a free pass, so that much was free. Greyhound has gone up since I'd last rode with them.]

While I am a bit of an emotional mess right now (and I hate crying in public, but nobody can hear it, I hope), but I do feel very protective of my brother and I cherish and look up to him. I used to get into fights with people because he was he didn't speak to others until he was seven [They tell me he talked to me and I served as his mouthpiece] and while his manner of speech sounds a little slow (due to attending a special school because he was a stutterer, while all the other students had very significant developmental problems), he is in fact, quite intelligent and was the first of all of the siblings to graduate high school on time [I was the second and, so far, the last to do so. The rest...well, let's just say there's still hope that the youngest will pull it off]. My husband understands how important he is to me, so he knows that I would rush to his side if anything were to happen to him. What's funny about it is that my husband and my brother share some characteristics. They both wrestled in high school, they both have the same weird habit of laughing when they lie, and they're both into martial arts. I think it's kind of funny that they say a girl looks for her father's characteristics in the man she'll marry, but I got someone who was a little like my brother.

Funny enough, this didn't take that long to type, but I've definitely got to get back to work. I had a great time with my brother, and I miss him, too.

Pressure

My grandmother found a different tack to use on me in the Pressure-to-Have-a-Baby-2007 campaign: giving a child to one who has been adopted.

That probably didn't make any sense, but it will soon, I promise.

My husband was adopted when he was eight-days-old; his parents arranged the adoption before he was born and after having their first attempt at adoption fail when the mother changed her mind, they made sure to drive right on down to Cincinnati to get him as soon as possible. He and his younger brother were both adopted from teen mothers, but he's always been comfortable with that (as far as I can tell), but it gave my grandmother the [not completely unjustified] notion that he deserves to "have one of his own"; to be able to have a child that is completely his. It's not that I don't want to give him a child, it's just that the body isn't exactly in a cooperating mood of late. It's just that, when my grandmother says it, it feels as if I have more pressure to 'deliver the goods', leaving me feeling as if I'm a complete failure as a woman because I can't (and may not ever) give him a child of his own.

He's willing to adopt if we can't have children. He's the one who brought it up, but he did express really wanting children of his own so I know how much this really means to him. I want to do this, but we need to find out what the problem is so that it can either be resolved or accepted, which would allow us to move forward and do whatever it is we need to do to have a family to raise.

Until more is done to get to the bottom of this, I'm not going to stress myself out about it. I have the GRE to prepare for, and more people to meet in putting together this graduate school endeavor, so I'm trying to take it all in stride and not make myself miserable.

At least, not yet anyway.

Oh well, back to work.

For all the male librarians out there...

I ran across this web comic from Penny Arcade which was a discussion between the two characters on what male librarians are called. I thought it was great because it shows that a) there are some people who think about librarians and b) that gamers can come up with really cool librarian names.

Go check it out (because I'm not posting it here; that would be theft and, therefore, bad!)! Here's the link to The Couch Dialogues.

Have a good day, everyone!

Humor, thy name is Overheard...

Here's another quote from Overheard in New York (now to be known as OiNY). I thought the last one was the funniest, but I feel it would be disingenuine if I strip out the other quotes from this entry.

Bluetooth Wednesday One-Liners

Chick yelling out window of hybrid SUV: I'm a better driver than you, and I'm texting at the same time!

--Westside Hwy

Overheard by: Glad I'm walking

Black guy to no one in particular: Do you have Michael Jackson's phone number? [Taps on cab window] Do you have Michael Jackson's phone number? [To a little girl in stroller] Do you have Michael Jackson's phone number?

--58th & 9th

Overheard by: Jofo

Secretary-General of the model UN: Before we go, this phone was found in the bathroom -- it's a pink RAZR... It says 'Stud muffin' on it.

--United Nations

Crazy guy handing out Sprint flyers: Free camera phone! Soon you'll be eating the robots!

--Outside Sprint, Broadway & Washington Pl

Overheard by: Deby

Hipster girl, addressing iPhone campers: You're waiting for a phone?! I can understand if it was for cupcakes...

--Prince & Greene

Overheard by: non-mac nerd

via Overheard in New York, Aug 1, 2007

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)!

It Was A Good Show

The talent show went very well yesterday. Everyone was at their best with their singing, comedy, and other acts and I performed Eye is On the Sparrow without messing up the words or letting my vocals get out of control. I think I did well, and I got a lot of applause, but I was unable to get the audience into the performance (as is the nature of the song, unfortunately), and there were other singers later in the show who were able to get audience participation (and the guy right before me got a lot of audience response as well). The woman who sang right before the last act got a lot of people with her because her song was an up-tempo number & she had a better voice than the original artist, but the last act was hilarious. They were the Soggy Bottom Boys and they sang "In the Jailhouse" with the worst yodeler ever...but he was so bad you couldn't help but laugh! Overall, I think the show went well, but we're still a good ways off from the goal of $3,000 raised from the show. Last I heard we had raised $500.

While I may not win the show (not by a long shot), I did manage to get an offer to do a duet for the show next year if they do another one. It would be with the guy who took photos in the audience & the song would be Ain't No Mountain High Enough. That would be fun & I'd do it even if I'm not working here next year (which is likely, considering that there's a hiring freeze in place and I'm an intern in need of a full-time position [and this position should be held by a student who deserves to be here rather than someone who's graduated and not moved on]).

Well, duty calls & I must accept the charges :-)

Damnit, I'm tired

Tomorrow is my birthday. It will be officially the first day of the last year that I can declare myself to be in my late 20s. I won't be like other people (t.v. people, mostly) who pretend to be young when they're not; I'll embrace 30 when the time comes. I'll have to; I teased my older brother when he turned 30 last year, so I'll expect the sentiment to be returned in kind. I just wish I weren't so tired all the time.

I've developed some very odd insomnia where I can't get to bed before 4 a.m. most nights of the week. Something always happens where I'm up too late, whether it's because I'm not feeling well, getting caught up in a book or computer game that I had no business starting, or because I'm doing the household chores and finances. I end up waking up at the precise moment I should be on the road to work and spend the rest of the day trying not to pass out. What's more, I'm trying to lose as much weight in a month as possible so that I can get on a new rollercoaster on opening weekend of Cedar Point [The money for the ride is going to the Fireside Red Cross, so I'm just hoping that I don't go all the way up to Sandusky for nothing], and proper sleep is needed for a better shot at losing weight.

It's not just the lack of sleep, it's the stress of doing a talent show in front of my company on Tuesday (which has me freaking out), and needing to look for a job that is full-time and will pay well. And after that two-day scare where I was a complete danger to myself after doing the taxes, I'm doing what I can to stem the outflow of money so that we may be able to save and do the things we want to do this summer.

Since I'm way behind on a project I'm working on here, I'm going to go back to it. At least this post has done one thing; helped me to feel a little less upset about everything.

Money...and stress

I had originally planned on posting in this blog a missive on the current state of my finances, but I ended up moving the whole damn thing to ebloggy. I fell asleep around 6 a.m. and I have too many things to do...and bills are piling up. It's bad enough that we owe the equivalent of 2/3 of a paycheck in taxes, but our cable/internet/phone may have been cut off because we owe Time Warner as well. I've got to stay late for a charity event meeting, stop off at the library, make dinner before I run off to the Historical society to train for 2 hours for a volunteer effort that I'm doing on Friday afternoon, and then I've got to get home and work on cleaning the house before I can even think about getting some sleep.

I don't even have time to exercise. This situation is exacerbating my depression and has led me to be concerned that I'm going to end up doing something terrible if I don't just ruin my health and run myself into the ground.

Daffodil Update

Instead of just updating my previous post, I'm just going to add the images of the daffodils in a separate post because it's 4:30 a.m. and I'm very tired.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Daffodils

The groundskeepers at my company decided (after suggestions from workers here) to cut the daffodils that are growing around campus because of the impending cold snap and make them available for people to take for "personal use", whatever that means. They're pale yellow [my favorite color & one of my wedding colors] and I have about half a dozen of them in a cafeteria cup on my desk. I'll upload pictures if a)I remember to and b)I have time. They smell really nice & it's a little something to brighten up my desk, especially since I'm in a cubicle in the room with only one set of windows in the front and I'm all the way in the back.

I took some daffodils for a secondary reason: a reminder of a fund-raiser I once headed for the American Cancer Society. I was in charge of the Daffodil Days project for my office, where I was in charge of selling, ordering, and delivering daffodils to individuals and corporations in the Franklin County area. My goal (as they are want to set these things) was to raise $15,000, and I managed to sell over $13,000 despite not having a committee to assist me & only having myself, my husband, and a Godsend volunteer who came in off the street to do the bulk of the deliveries. That, and having Battelle order more than 50% of the flowers didn't hurt, either. I only got to head the project in 2004 (I left at the end of that summer to start grad school), but it was my crowning achievement in an otherwise lackluster career as an administrative assistant for three years. It's one of the few things I missed from that job (there were a few co-workers, but not many that I got along with), but I wouldn't go back to it. For one thing, it's not possible; the Ohio Division of the ACS reorganized to be a handful of larger offices instead of the 17 units that were in place when I was still in their employ and so my job doesn't really exist anymore. Also, I wouldn't be too thrilled to go back to a job that only requires a high school diploma when I hold a Masters degree and want to get started on a PhD as quickly as possible.

Wow, that was a tangent! Anyway, I'm luxuriating in the ardor of spring via my flowers, so I shall end this and get back to work!

Outside

I'm a person who loves Winter but, lately, it's been so nice out that I've wanted to be outside. I want to get out and enjoy the warm weather. Even though it has been cloudy today, I just couldn't resist getting up from my cubicle and walking outside; even if it was just to the receptionist's desk on the other side of our annex. The gentle breeze that met me as I turned the corner southward was as invigorating as the sun that warmed me Sunday in front of Cafe Appropos. My little excursion resulted in me doing a little bit of good for the receptionist, which made me feel a little bouncy [Yes, I felt a little Tigger-ish].

I stopped by, looking for a copy of The Other Paper, when I noticed that today's receptionist [there is a group of them who work the desk in my building and the main one across campus who rotate days and desks] was trying to orient a printout in Word to landscape and couldn't figure it out. There was a co-worker who was trying to help her and couldn't find the right command, so I leaned over the desk and attempted to read the screen upside-down. After my neck told me that that wasn't a good idea, I came over to the other side and told the woman to go back to the File command. Once there, I scanned the list and finally found the one I was looking for: Print Preview. Once she clicked on that, the page orientation selection was right there. The gentleman who was helping her said that "Three heads were better than one", and I decided to head back to my desk. She had taken a phone call once she had selected what she needed, and she thanked me as I was on my way out the door (after successfully finding the paper I sought in a newly installed newsstand). It felt good to help someone, so I kind of bounced my way back to my part of the building.

I know that it's supposed to rain this week, but it won't dampen my Spring spirit. It was so nice out that I had the window open in our bedroom all day yesterday because the smell of the outdoors was so intoxicating that I just had to have it in the house.

Now if I can just shake this barking cough, I'd be all set.

The Ides of March

It is the Ides of March and it's snowing. It was just 70 degrees for the past two days and now this.

Gotta love living in Ohio.

Will upload pictures of the silliness that is Ohio weather when I have the chance.

Rumor has it...

that Apple will be pulling their commercials with the Mac and PC guys due to too much sympathy for the PC! My supervisor's son lives in the Silicon Valley area and he [the son] says that they've done surveys and discovered that their commercials were backfiring; people felt sorry for the PC. If that's true, it's hilarious because it answers my question on the effectiveness of those commercials. Most people find them funny; all I got out of them was that I had a strong desire to never buy a Mac. As much as I loved using them in college (even when I got my own PC, I preferred doing my work on the then-new G3 computers), the Mac guy is just too annoying for me to be willing to buy one. That, and the attitude of some of the Mac users I run into online is so abrasive that I want to avoid owning one like the plague.

I can't say that all Mac users are boastful sycophants who'd rather brag about how their computers are superior than do anything constructive, but I've read the posts of enough of them that I'm at least turned off by the machine if not by the owners.

Time will tell if those commercials will be pulled (which would be a good thing for those online ads that would play at work), but I just found that so delightfully hilarious that I just had to post it.

I wonder if Tech Dirt has done anything on this yet?

Taking a sick day

I was supposed to be at church to rehearse at 9 a.m., but my body finally said that it had had enough. I couldn't get myself out of bed (and I tried), so my husband brought me a can of Vernors, a bucket, and told me to go back to sleep. I didn't; I ended up making the bed and sweeping the bedroom floor. I'm hardheaded about taking care of myself, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I didn't go back to sleep.

Part of the reason I'm not in bed now is because I don't want to make him sick with whatever it is that I have.

Yesterday was an exercise in frustration, however; between my violent mood swings and my problems with getting my plates transferred to a new car, I'm surprised that I made it through the day without getting arrested. I went to the BMV to transfer my plates to my new car & everything was going well until I get to the counter and find out that there is a hold on my plates due to some unpaid parking tickets. I was a little upset with the people there for telling me this, but that's not the part the bothers me the most. What is most irksome is the time system that the BMV is on versus the time for the parking ticket bureau. The Bureau of Motor Vehicles is open from 10 to 12 on Saturdays (it was 12:15 when I was told of my problem). The place where I had to pay my parking tickets is open from 8 to 7. If I had known of the problem with these tickets, I could've [theoretically] gone there first, and then the BMV. The only problem is that it takes a day for the fax to be received by the BMV and for them to process it. My temporary plates are expiring today, so I have to go to the place on Monday morning to make my plates official.

My run-ins with a pedestrian will be chronicled some other time (or place).

Sleep...

I really should be asleep, but...I don't really know why I'm up. I have to get my new car registered so that I can (hopefully) use my old plates on the car. This has to be done before the temporary tags expire on Sunday (which happens to also be the birthday of one of my friends from high school), and the DMV isn't open for very long on Saturdays, so I need to stop screwing around with the layout of my page and go to bed. Eventually.

Wow, I've started another one

This is now the third (or fourth) blog I've started. It's my first on Blogger, so we'll see how this goes. I don't post to any of my blogs as regularly as I'd like, and I do come off as crazy with how very different I can seem from post to post, so bear with me as I get this started.

I have a blog on eBloggy and MySpace (and one I don't really use with MSN...I posted twice and I really should just get rid of it and be done with it), so we'll see how this goes.

I have 3carnations to thank (or blame) for trying this out.

I won't post all the time, but I hope to post more often than not.

Welcome to the neighborhood, indeed.