So What's It Like To Turn 30?

This was the question my older brother asked me on Saturday. Seeing as he is the older of the two of us, I said "I don't know; you tell me." I had a very nice birthday on the 19th that resulted in being spoiled at a nice restaurant and getting some nice gifts.

My husband had to wait until he got his paycheck to buy me gifts [which I didn't want him doing anyway, but he was determined...] and he ran out that morning to go shopping. I ended up waking up early [Hey! 10a.m. is early for me on a Saturday] and watched t.v. until he brought up breakfast. We went to the mall so that I could use my 20% birthday discount at FYE where I limited my purchases to a couple of CDs and then we went home to hash out where to go for dinner. My usual birthday spot of choice (the Melting Pot) was way too expensive even with my coupon for a free chocolate fondue dessert, so I went looking up the different Cameron Mitchell restaurants in town to pick something. We ended up choosing a place called Martini's, a place we last went to for our anniversary a few years ago, and he called to make reservations. I also got to talk to my mother-in-law to wish her a happy birthday and to thank her for the gifts she sent to me [a necklace and a yarn(?) woven basket]. It's kind of weird to share a birthday with my m-i-l, but it makes it easier to remember when it is, so it's a decent trade-off.

At dinner, we discovered that Prom season starts early in these here parts, as there were a ton, and I mean a ton of prom goers at the restaurant. There were eight couples seated right behind us and another ten couples in other areas of the restaurant [not counting the couple of girls who came an hour later to be horrified at all of the "popular" kids who were already there; I'm not sure if they were dating each other or going as two friends without dates, but they were nice sized girls (read: not skinny) and very cute]. Note to Project Runway judges: That dress that Victorya won with for the prom dress episode isn't the style that prom goers are wearing this season. Sweet P's and Chris' dresses were much closer to what I saw Saturday: Every dress reached the floor and there were a number of ball-gown styled dresses were on display. By ball gown, I mean that they were Cinderella-esque in the skirt (but not too full). Some were taffeta and others were silk in the skirt. The rest of the girls wore dresses that had a split up to the thigh (usually showing the left leg) and they all looked very nice. I haven't seen many people wear short-length dresses to the prom, from high school (where I didn't miss one; dating an upperclassman had one privilege) until now, so I don't know what they were thinking on that show.

Anyway! If you are ever in Columbus and go to Martini's, ask for John Z. He is the nicest waiter you will ever meet and he gives great suggestions for substitutions for the dishes that make them better. And if you are nice to him, he'll be nice to you [We are always polite, but to get it back in spades was quite a surprise]. He was catching hell from another table because he was delayed dealing with one of the large prom tables when my husband decided that he would tell the manager how great a job John was doing even before the meal was finished. The manager, who I thought was a class-act, said that John is his best waiter and that he hears compliments for him a lot, but he appreciates hearing them every time. John gave us a little extra sauce to go with our leftovers and even packed up the little bit of dessert I had left. When he brought out the desserts, he put a pink candle in my husband's dish and a blue one in mine because he didn't know what kind of baby we'll be having, and he apologized for not singing to me because, in his words, "What little appetite you have will be gone" if he had. After dinner, he offered me some tea for the road, helped me gather everything from the table, and even put me in the car once my husband returned with it. We're the kind of people who are usually good with tips (even though people would sometimes assume we weren't going to tip when we were younger), but John went above and beyond to be the best server we have had anywhere. He did so well, we are going to return to Martini's for our anniversary this year (if we're not broke again).

So what did I get for my birthday? The Second Bathroom Reader (I own a ton of these books), a new manga, a little Charlie Brown Book called "Security Is...", and the new Gnarls Barkley CD. Oh yeah, he surprised me at home with the Dave Gahan Hourglass Remixes LP (you read that right; I wanted vinyl) that I had been trying to get for over a month. He (smartly) held onto it when he surprised me with it because he didn't want me to break it in my excitement; something that is, sadly, a possibility with me. I wanted it because it would be my first new record (I have a collection of old albums, but nothing contemporary & you'd be surprised at how many new records are put out in the market today) and it comes with a bonus CD. I just love the idea of the CD being the bonus.

I got to talk to my mom and uncle on my birthday, and my brother sang to me (which was hilarious!). It was a very nice birthday, and here I was ready to sleep through the whole thing.

So what's it like to be 30? It's not bad. I don't feel different. Am I supposed to? I don't know.

Edit: The link for the prom dresses immediately defaults to Sweet P's dress, so the link may seem a little out of place because of it, so my apologies.

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! ;-)

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.

...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.