Giving up

I'm at a dangerous point right now, where I want to give up and run away from many things. Primarily I want to quit my job, but yesterday I started feeling discouraged about exercise as well. I don't want how I'm currently feeling to screw me up, but right now it's so easy to just want to stop worrying about working or exercising and just lose myself in books and anime.

Yesterday, between Harry Potter movies, Mari, Brooke and I went bike-riding. The two of them have been riding much longer than I have, and they both ride more frequently than I do. They also do other exercise, like walking or going to the gym. I am way behind both of them in terms of fitness.

I was successful in not letting this get to me until yesterday, when we rode down a different way on the bike trail. There was hardly any coasting to be had; it was all pedaling, and by the time we got back to the regular stretch my legs literally would not move. It was like the muscles didn't want to function. I could walk fine, and I wasn't particularly out of breath, so this was extraordinarily annoying to me. I felt like the Supreme Wuss of Wussonia.

So they went on, and I headed back towards the apartment, just wanting to die.

When they finally got back, they were panting heavily and glowing and smiling. As they talked about what a pain their ride had been, I was so jealous. I wanted to be pushing myself to the limit, going further. I wanted to be able to ride my bike really fast over 7+ miles, and then grin and complain about it. Already I was feeling those old familiar feelings...I should have been able to do that. I just quit because I'm a baby. I'm so lazy and stupid.

"Someday I'll catch up to you guys," I said, trying to bolster my spirits, but it really didn't work. I'm back at that point yet again where I realize I'm not the best at something and that it will take a lot of work to catch up. This is the point at which I usually stop trying...at which I give in to my self-brainwashing. Too fat/stupid/ugly/lazy/untalented/boring to do what I feel like I want to be or should be doing.

It seems like I keep being faced with these huge challenges, and my emotions are warring with themselves over every one of them. Do I stand and fight for the first time in my life? Or do I continue to run?

How many times have I had this conversation with myself?

Happy Birthday to me!

Last year, when I turned 25, I was in a new city with few acquaintances and family around me. I knew that I wasn't going to be getting a sweet little birthday party like I would have gotten at home, with cake and presents and a nice family dinner. So I decided to have my own party.

I invited all the people I had met through Sean's friend Paul to come over one evening to play games, eat dinner, and hang out. I baked and decorated my own chocolate cake with white frosting. And I cooked a meal, which I think was curry beef (I've cooked for friends several times in the past year, so I'm having trouble remembering).

We played cards and videogames, and just talked and ate. It was a fun time. Leonard skunked me, Kelly, and Chris at Hearts, although I was doing pretty well. I think Mari and Kathy spent the entire evening talking about bellydancing ;) And Dave, Paul, and Sean (and maybe some others, I can't quite remember now) stayed glued to the TV, playing some sort of game on the Xbox. (We don't have one; two guests brought theirs and we hooked them up to both of our TVs.)

My guests had fun and I had fun. I remember thinking, though, that only a loser would have to organize her own birthday party. Why didn't people want to throw me one? Didn't anybody like me? But I squashed these thoughts as best I could, with the logic that I was new in town, and not many people knew it was my birthday anyway.

A year passed; I became close to Mari, Kelly, and Chris, and added a new friend, Brooke. The time for my birthday came around again.

This time, I didn't even think about people throwing me a party. Instead, I already knew what I wanted--to spend time celebrating my birthday with my new friends. So I announced my intention to have a party, and we all picked a date--yesterday--and agreed on what to do--watch anime, eat Japanese food delivered from Mikoto, and go bowling.

I bought snack food, drinks, ice cream, and a "backup cake". Kelly made his famous chess cake (which is sinfully rich and delicious) and he and Mari brought M&M sugar cookies. Brooke didn't have to work, so she was able to come this time. Chris, unfortunately, already had plans for that weekend, so he wasn't able to make it. Apparently he is willing to commit seppuku to make up for this crime ;>

When everyone arrived, we first just hung out talking while Kelly made the chess cake. (He is only a month away from getting a full-size kitchen! Woohoo!) While the cake baked, we watched the first five episodes of Naruto--up through the bell test. I think Brooke is afraid of Kakashi ;> Then we took some time out from our snacking on chips, dip, veggies, and cheese to eat cake and ice cream. By the time we were done, we were so stuffed that we pretty much had to go out and take two laps around the apartment complex, which we did. The geese hissed at us to stay away from their goslings, beaks parted and long round tongues sticking out. Mari and I led the pack, while Brooke and Kelly hung back and talked. We all had way too much sugar :D

Mari and Kelly had brought their Gamecube and some games, so we started playing when we got done with our walk. I didn't care too much for Super Smash Bros., mostly because I had no idea what I was doing. Warioware was really fun--and really strange. (To the delight of the others, I entered my name as "fuck". This led to some interesting phrases on the screen in the minigames, like "while praising fuck..." and "li'l fuck wins!" I had really only chosen the name because "Heather" was too long ;>) Mario Kart was, of course, Mario Kart--I can play racing games until the cows come home. But I think my favorite game of the evening, which took forever and a half to finish, was Mario Party 5. Lots of different games to play while trying to gather the most stars--there was strategy and then pure chance, just like a real board game. I was in the lead, but Brooke came from behind at the very end with a zillion "bonus points" to take the win. (It reminded me of Gryffindor conveniently besting Slytherin in the first Harry Potter book...;>)

We stopped playing Mario Party to eat dinner. It was fantastic--several shared appetizers, sushi, and miso soup for me. Then we finished off our game before finally heading out to Brunswick for bowling.

Our lane was pretty shitty--when the bowling guy tells you that "it was messed up, but now it's fixed", just ask for another lane :> The monitor was all screwed up so that the option buttons were hanging off the edge of the screen (or, later, scrunched into the middle, but you had to touch the part of the screen where they would normally be in order to access them, which was challenging). The pin counter got things wrong several times--I think I lost three points due to that, but maybe more. And the pinsetter also messed up a few times, leaving one pin missing when it set them all up for the next person.

But we didn't let it bother us too much. Kelly and Brooke, totally hopped up on sugar, continued their running gag from Mario Party, in which they would count by flipping each other off. "How many pins are left, Brooke? One?"--and the middle finger would be up, somewhere; scratching an eyebrow, tucked against the chest or body, etc. Brooke was laughing uncontrollably for much of the time :)

I did really well in the first game, getting strikes and spares galore; my score was 147! The second game didn't go as well; my arm was fatigued from holding and throwing the ball, and my balance had started going off a little, so I wasn't as deft as I'd been. I did manage a few strikes and spares, but my final score was something like 98. We'd paid for two hours (and gotten a pitcher of Sprite as part of the deal), so we didn't have time to finish a third game. That was fine by us, because we were pretty tired by then--it was after midnight!

All in all, it was great fun. I was really glad to get to spend that much time with my friends, and do all those fun things :) I'd originally wanted to watch much more anime than we ended up watching, but that's no big deal. It can get boring just sitting around watching stuff with no breaks for something else. And plus, playing those games was great!

Mari, Kelly, Brooke, and Chris also all chipped in to get me a great birthday present: Friends season 2! :D Mari said, "It's so fitting, to get Friends from your friends!" Kelly's response: "That's so clever, Mari." ;D They also gave me a hilarious card; on the cover is a picture of the view a driver has while driving a car, and in the rear-view mirror is...Death! Inside the card, it says "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." ;D

I couldn't have asked for a better birthday party. I'm not sure anything would have happened if I hadn't organized it, but unlike last year, I don't think that makes me a loser, or unloved. Think of it this way: how many times have you organized a party for someone else? ;> I think planning your own party is really the best way to go, because you know that you're going to do stuff that you like. Plus, your friends don't have to worry about what they should do for you--all they have to do is show up. It really just takes the stress off for everyone. The proactive approach: always a good choice. :)

Today is my actual birthday. I got a call from Grandma Flo to wish me a happy day :) She was hoping to come over and give me my card, but I had already made plans to go to Mari and Kelly's for a Harry Potter bingefest. So she's going to mail it. I feel bad about not being able to see her, but I wish she'd given me more notice.

Cheryl and Reid are down in Beaufort (pronounced Buford, which is really confusing because there is also a Buford, GA) this weekend, hanging out with Cheryl's friend Martha at the beach. They'll be going to the lake as soon as they get back. Since they knew they wouldn't be seeing me, they already sent me my card :)

Mom is sending me something, too, and I have no idea what it is. All I know is that it's late ;>

So now I'm looking forward to a fun day of working out and watching the Harry Potter movies with Mari and Brooke. What a nice weekend :)

Never cut and dry

I was told today that I have "some" ovary damage, and that in order to conceive I will need to see an endocrinologist.

This is good news because it means there is still hope. But I had been preparing myself for a more definitive answer.

You'd think I'd be used to being strung along by now.

Geekalicious

You are 39% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.

Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend.

You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines!

Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals!

You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

It's pretty bad when you have to fix html errors in the results of a geek quiz. I mean, come on.

Just in case any of you were confused, the previous post was written by my husband.

I fell asleep sometime yesterday afternoon and didn't get up again until this morning. I didn't want to get up even then, but duty calls. Work is really annoying right now because I'm doing order-taking and dispatch, two things I never wanted to do, and which I told Robert time and time again that I didn't want to do. He has invested some time in talking me into it; this happens every week or so. The last time, I got a $0.50/hr raise, which unfortunately doesn't make it any more worth it to me.

It's not that I can't do it, I can--I just don't want to. I don't like having to drop everything and answer the phone in a cheery voice, and I don't like having to try and figure out who's where and how fast they can get whatever food to someplace else.

Compounding the issue are all the problems we've been having lately. We manage to pull it off, but it's by the skin of our teeth. I feel that we are severely unprepared for what we've gotten ourselves into, and since I'm the one answering the phone, I'm the one who's going to get to hear about it when we finally slip up. It's going to happen, if something doesn't change soon.

So far, people have been patient and understanding, and I've really appreciated that...but how long can it last?

A big issue is the fact that we don't have enough personnel. This is especially annoying today because I am really not in the mood to be at work, but I can't even have a lunch break because Robert is out of the office doing the deliveries. We need another delivery driver and we need another office worker.

In my dream world, we would have an order taker/dispatcher working during my shift, and not just coming in at 1 like Robert has planned. I would do backup order-taking only, and really I'd prefer that we have several people working from home taking orders during the day so that I would never have to it at all. I don't even really want to manage the order takers, but I guess that would be better than having to take the orders directly.

I don't know if my dream world will ever come to be.

The most hectic times are between 11 and 1, I've noticed. People seem to realize that they're hungry at 11, but by 1 they have probably made their arrangements. So things have calmed down a bit now.

I missed a call earlier due to being on the phone with someone else. Fortunately, she left a voice message, so I called her back. I missed another call due to not being logged in to receive calls, and I was distracted trying to do something anyway, so I just let it go.

I hate shoddy service. But that's all we can apparently provide at this point.

It just feels like we were never prepared to do this, and we're still not prepared, and I'm starting to wonder if we'll ever be prepared for anything. Mom and I tend to over-prepare well in advance...I like that system a lot better. It may not be business-savvy, because I guess you'd lose money more often than not that way, but at least you would know what you were doing before you had to do it.

I hope 2go-Box starts turning a huge profit so that we can do everything we need to do.

And I wish today was Friday! :P

You could say that all of this stress is good because it's distracting me from the issues weighing on my mind, and that might be true, but I'm not sure. I think it's more likely that the issues weighing on my mind are adding to the phenomenal stress that already exists. There's no way of telling for sure, because the delivery service and my "period" (or whatever) started at around the same time...but I think I would be annoyed and stressed about this kind of work regardless of anything else. I have never liked this sort of thing and I doubt I ever will.

I just want a job where I can work mostly by myself, maybe discussing things with a few others in person or through email/chat. I want to be able to do a wide variety of things, including menial tasks, because there are some days that I'm in the mood for that. I want to be challenged mentally in areas that are interesting to me. I want, ultimately, for my job to be a part of who I am--something that I do because I like to, and not because I have to because I need money in order to enjoy myself and take my mind off of work.

I thought I had that sort of job, but it sure hasn't been that way lately.

Living up to my name.

Heather fell alseep in my arms many hours ago now. We have the air conditioner going pretty much non-stop, but for some reason or another the house still seems a bit warm. Long story short: I woke up because I was uncomfortable from the heat. She meanwhile is still soundly asleep.

There's not alot to add from what she already said about the visit. I've directed my emotions into the role of Devils' advocate and the ugly, ugly realist that lurks in corners and dashes hopes. I'd like to think the truth might prepare her for the pain, but I think we all know that's folly. There's entirely too much emotion wrapped up in this subject for any acceptance of the truth.

The reality is that she is still menopausal and we've seen an overgrowth of the lining. It most conviently explains the "Why now?" question without introducing any miracles or beating incredible odds. The simplest answer is usually the right one.

I am more upset that this aspect of nature had to arrive now. In some way I feel like it's a very cruel joke. Suddenly after five years a little gremlin of the body has set her up for a painfall fall again. It tossed out a tasty treat that was impossible to ignore.

I ask for Heather to try and ignore those hopes. To accept the painful answer now, but I might as well ask a STOP sign to say GO. She wants a child so badly that it basically haunts her. I don't know if she'll ever escape that ghost.

Of course another painful reality is that I can't make this pain go away. No amount of tears, love, or comfort can make this better and I think that's what hurts me the most. This is a ghost that tortures us both in different ways.

Bloodwork will hopefully be back by Friday

Breast exam and vaginal exam checked out fine. Pap smear results will be available in three weeks.

The blood test is the important part. It will (presumably) tell us why I was bleeding. The doctor gave us these possibilities:

1. My ovaries are working again, which would mean that I can conceive.
2. I am menopausal; the bleeding would therefore be simply a buildup of uteran lining that finally broke loose.
3. I was bleeding for another reason, which would be more sinister than the first two. This is, fortunately, the most unlikely scenario.

If I am menopausal, then there are two things that I must watch out for:

1. I will need an ultrasound to determine whether or not my uteran wall is too thick. If it is, there will need to be a biopsy, and I will need to take progesterone to keep the lining from building up.
2. I will need to have my bones checked to ensure that I don't have osteoporosis, and if I do I will need to take medication.

After the appointment, I got my hair chopped off to just beneath shoulder level, and donated the long remaining portion to Locks of Love.

Today's the day

Although test results might be a day or two, this is the day of the actual testing. Understandably, I'm a little nervous, and trying not to be.

I have to work a half day today, and then leave at 11 and meet up with Sean for lunch. After lunch we're going to work out some car insurance stuff. Then, at 3:30, I'm going to see a gynecologist.

I've been thinking about so much lately--getting a house, how if we have a child I want a car with air conditioning, where my "career" is going and how I can start making more money, how and when we'll ever go back to Japan. Sean and I already determined that we will have to wait at least a year before we're ready for a child. I've been wondering if that's enough time to get everything settled...I really don't want to live paycheck to paycheck, I want some assets and investments.

My business plan is something that will really have to wait until we're more financially stable. I've been thinking that real estate might be the way to go. If I can just buy up some property and rent it...I think that would be a good way to build wealth. I just need to figure out how to do it.

Of course, there's always the chance that we can't have children anyway, that all these dreams and hopes are based on nothing.

I hope the doctor can give us a definitive yes. I feel so naive, but that's what's in my heart.

I've officially retired from the AMRN.

After four and a half years, I've decided to quit playing, GMing, and administrating for the Anime-Manga Roleplaying Network. I've tendered my resignation, as it were, and given the AMRN my permission to use my character concepts in non-profit ways. (I retained the rights for my own future publishing. We'll see if that ever happens.)

I was pretty much coerced into playing by Sean and Shade, but I did grow to enjoy it. Eventually I became a Q-GM, then an A-GM, and then a Head GM. I even created and ran a game based on Sailor Moon, but it was during that experience that I really started to dislike the play-by-post format. Over the latter half of my AMRN career, I've come to realize that I prefer writing stories to playing and arbitrating games. My goal in quitting the AMRN is to allow myself the freedom to expand into different writing projects.

I believe that writing on the AMRN helped me with technique and with characterization. I will always remember what I learned there, but it's time to move on.

There is a new project that has been congealing in my mind since around 2002 (or before), and I hope to get started on it sometime soon. For now, I plan to be horribly vague and mysterious about it.

Goodbye, AMRN. It's been fun.

When it's too troublesome to just say no, try lying instead!

This site offers phone numbers you can give to people who hit on you. Great for people with no spines.

Yet more thoughts on photoblogging

The one thing I wasn't too sure about concerning Blogger's "Hello" service was the fact that each photo would be its own post. While this is fine if I only wanted to share one photo a day or a week or whatever, it makes it difficult to set up nice photo galleries for trips and things. I have plenty of photos I want to share, and I'd like to have a nice place to do it.

I can't install software on this site because my hosting plan doesn't allow over 1500 database accesses an hour. I don't know why anyone would think that 1500 database accesses an hour would be even remotely useful on a website. If you have a database driven site, the database is accessed every time someone loads a page. I had been testing the new Macross 2051 website on this server, and I continually hit the limit and had to wait for it to reset. The only way to get past this is to pay my host more money, something that I'm not willing to do at this point. (I have been thinking of shifting to a new host, but that has to wait until my current contract runs out.)

In any event, even if I was able to install software, I was worried about the storage cap. Most good webhosts have them. I wanted to be able to share as much as I wanted, without worrying about whether or not I was at my limit, or having to delete things to make room.

Enter smugmug.

Smugmug is a photo gallery service with a beautiful interface, plenty of customization options, and unlimited photo storage. With the two more advanced plans you can host unlimited videos and change the design to match your website, too. It does cost money...but it's very reasonable money: a standard account is $29.95 per year, and a Power User account is $49.95 per year. Some webhosts charge $49.95 per month for the features you would need to run your own gallery! The next step up, Professional, is a very reasonable $99.95 per year, and comes with Guest passwords for adding (but not deleting) photos, use of your own domain, automated watermarks, and print sales.

So I'm going to be thinking about setting one up, with either the Power User or Professional account. I like the idea of being able to sell my photos (although I'm not sure who would buy them). The main draws for me, though, are the ease of use, the customization options, and the unlimited space.

"What Tree Did You Fall From?"

No one but Matt showed interest in the "What tree are you?" post, but I figured I'd share all the possibilities anyway. Below is the exact email as I received it, except that I've 1) linked the trees to their descriptions to make it easier on you, 2) listed some people's birthdays for my own reference, and 3) formatted it a little better.

Note how they repeat, and how some days are set off by themselves. One of these is Sean's birthday, September 23, which makes him an "Olive Tree". (I would say that some of that is true, but I'm not sure about all of it.)

Also note that Mari is the Lime Tree. heheheheh.

This seems like a neat reference for character creation.

Find your birthday and then find your tree. This is really cool and somewhat accurate, also in line with Celtic astrology.

Dec 23 to Jan 01 - Apple Tree
Jan 01 to Jan 11 - Fir Tree (Dad)
Jan 12 to Jan 24 - Elm Tree
Jan 25 to Feb 03 - Cypress Tree
Feb 04 to Feb 08 - Poplar Tree
Feb 09 to Feb 18 - Cedar Tree
Feb 19 to Feb 28 - Pine Tree
Mar 01 to Mar 10 - Weeping Willow Tree (Chris Libby)
Mar 11 to Mar 20 - Lime Tree
Mar 21 (only) - Oak Tree
Mar 22 to Mar 31 - Hazelnut Tree
Apr 01 to Apr 10 - Rowan Tree
Apr 11 to Apr 20 - Maple Tree
Apr 21 to Apr 30 - Walnut Tree
May 01 to May 14 - Poplar Tree
May 15 to May 24 - Chestnut Tree
May 25 to Jun 03 - Ash Tree (me)
Jun 04 to Jun 13 - Hornbeam Tree
Jun 14 to Jun 23 - Fig Tree (Logan, Brooke)
Jun 24 (only) - Birch Tree
Jun 25 to Jul 04 - Apple Tree
Jul 05 to Jul 14 - Fir Tree
Jul 15 to Jul 25 - Elm Tree (AJ)
Jul 26 to Aug 04 - Cypress Tree
Aug 05 to Aug 13 - Poplar Tree
Aug 14 to Aug 23 - Cedar Tree (Ben, Mom)
Aug 24 to Sep 02 - Pine Tree
Sep 03 to Sep 12 - Weeping Willow Tree
Sep 13 to Sep 22 - Lime Tree (Mari)
Sep 23 (only) - Olive Tree (Sean)
Sep 24 to Oct 03 - Hazelnut Tree
Oct 04 to Oct 13 - Rowan Tree
Oct 14 to Oct 23 - Maple Tree (Kelly)
Oct 24 to Nov 11 - Walnut Tree (Connor)
Nov 12 to Nov 21 - Chestnut Tree
Nov 22 to Dec 01 - Ash Tree
Dec 02 to Dec 11 - Hornbeam Tree
Dec 12 to Dec 21 - Fig Tree
Dec 22 (only) - Beech Tree

YOUR TREE (in alphabetical order)

Apple Tree (the Love)
Quiet and shy at times, lots of charm, appeal, and attraction, pleasant attitude, flirtatious smile, adventurous, sensitive, loyal in love, wants to love and be loved, faithful and tender partner, very generous, many talents, loves children, needs affectionate partner.

Ash Tree (the Ambition)
Extremely attractive, vivacious, impulsive, demanding, does not care for criticism, ambitious, intelligent, talented, likes to play with fate, can be very egotistic, reliable, restless lover, sometimes money rules over the heart, demands attention, needs love and much emotional support.

Beech Tree (the Creative)
Has good taste, concerned about its looks, materialistic, good organization of life and career, economical, good leader, takes no unnecessary risks, reasonable, splendid lifetime companion, keen on keeping fit (diets, sports, etc.).

Birch Tree (the inspiration)
Vivacious, attractive, elegant, friendly, unpretentious, modest, does not like anything in excess, abhors the vulgar, loves life in nature and in calm, not very passionate, full of imagination, little ambition, creates a calm and content atmosphere.

Cedar Tree (the Confidence)
of rare strength, knows how to adapt, likes unexpected presents, of good health, not in the least shy, tends to look down on others, self-confident, a great speaker, determined, often impatient, likes to impress others, has many talents, industrious, healthy optimism, waits for the one true love, able to make quick decisions.

Chestnut Tree (the Honesty)
Of unusual stature, impressive, well-developed sense of justice, fun to be around, a planner, born diplomat, can be irritated easily, sensitive of others feelings, hard worker, sometimes acts superior, feels not understood at times, fiercely family oriented, very loyal in love, physically fit.

Cypress Tree (the Faithfulness)
Strong, muscular, adaptable, takes what life has to give but doesn't necessarily like it, strives to be content, optimistic, wants to be financially independent, wants love and affection, hates loneliness, passionate lover which cannot be satisfied, faithful, quick-tempered at times, can be unruly and careless, loves to gain knowledge, needs to be needed.

Elm Tree (the Noble-mindedness)
pleasant shape, tasteful clothes, modest demands, tends not to forgive mistakes, cheerful, likes to lead but not to obey, honest and faithful partner, likes making decisions for others, Noble-indeed, generous, good sense of humor, practical.

Fig Tree (the Sensibility)
Very strong minded, a bit self-willed, honest, loyal, independent, hates contradiction or arguments, loves life and friends, enjoys children and animals, a social butterfly, great sense of humor, likes idleness and laziness after long demanding hours at work, has artistic talent and great intelligence.

Fir tree (the Mysterious)
Extraordinary taste, handles stress poorly, loves anything beautiful, can become depressed at times, stubborn, tends to care for those close to them as well as helping strangers, rather modest, hard worker, talented, unselfish, few sexual relationships, many friends, doesn't want foes, very reliable.

Hazelnut Tree (the Extraordinary)
Charming, sense of humor, very demanding but can also be very understanding, knows how to make a lasting impression, active fighter for social causes and politics, popular, quite moody, sexually oriented, honest, a perfectionist, has a precise sense of judgment and expects complete fairness.

Hornbeam Tree (the Good Taste)
Of cool beauty, cares for its looks and condition, good taste, is not egoistic, makes life as comfortable as possible, leads a reasonable and disciplined life, looks for kindness and acknowledgment in an emotional partner, dreams of unusual lovers, is seldom happy with its feelings, mistrusts most people, is never sure of its decisions, very conscientious.

Lime Tree (the Doubt)
Intelligent, hard working, accepts what life dishes out, but not before trying to change bad circumstances into good ones, hates fighting and stress, enjoys getaway vacations, may appear tough, but is actually soft and relenting, always willing to make sacrifices for family and friends, has many talents but not always enough time to use them, can become a complainer, great leadership qualities, is jealous at times but extremely loyal.

Maple Tree (Independence of Mind)
no ordinary person, full of imagination and originality, shy and reserved, ambitious, proud, self-confident, hungers for new experiences, sometimes nervous, has many complexities, good memory, learns easily, complicated love life, wants to impress.

Oak Tree (the Brave)
Robust nature, courageous, strong, unrelenting, independent, sensible, does not like change, keeps its feet on the ground, person of action.

Olive Tree (the Wisdom)
loves sun, warmth and kind feelings, reasonable, balanced, avoids aggression and violence, tolerant, cheerful, calm, well-developed sense of justice, sensitive, empathetic, free of jealousy, loves to read and the company of sophisticated people.

Pine Tree (the Peacemaker)
loves agreeable company, craves peace and harmony, loves to help others, active imagination, likes to write poetry, not fashion conscious, great compassion, friendly to all, falls strongly in love but will leave if betrayed or lied to, emotionally soft, low self esteem, needs affection and reassurance.

Poplar Tree (the Uncertainty)
Looks very decorative, talented, not very self-confident, extremely courageous if necessary, needs goodwill and pleasant surroundings, very choosy, often lonely, great animosity, great artistic nature, good organizer, tends to lean toward philosophy, reliable in any situation, takes partnership seriously.

Rowan Tree (the Sensitivity)
Full of charm, cheerful, gifted without egoism, likes to draw attention, loves life, motion, unrest, and even complications, is both dependent and independent, good taste, artistic, passionate, emotional, good company, does not forgive.

Walnut Tree (the Passion)
Unrelenting, strange and full of contrasts, often egotistic, aggressive, noble, broad horizon, unexpected reactions, spontaneous, unlimited ambition, no flexibility, difficult and uncommon partner, not always liked but often admired, ingenious strategist, very jealous and passionate, no compromise.

Weeping Willow (the Melancholy)
Likes to be stress free, loves family life, full of hopes and dreams, attractive, very empathetic, loves anything beautiful, musically inclined, loves to travel to exotic places, restless, capricious, honest, can be influenced but is not easy to live with when pressured, sometimes demanding, good intuition, suffers in love until they find that one loyal, steadfast partner; loves to make others laugh.

THX 1138

In theaters! On DVD!

I'm too emotionally worn out to start complaining about what "George Lucas Director's Cut" might mean.

A terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day

Today sucked.

I thought the period was over, but it evidently wasn't. I hit the high point for emotionalism today, and then got some fresh spotting in the afternoon. By the time I made it home after my Workday from Hell, there was quite a bit of blood to clean up--fortunately I've been wearing a pad "just in case".

If that was too much information...well, I don't fucking care.

Work was just horrible--or, as I put it to AJ, "SUCKITY SUCK SUCK SUCK". I have like three times the responsibilities now, but I'm still being paid $6.50 an hour. This week was especially stressful because of the new delivery service. I had to take orders and dispatch the driver, and every time something went wrong I would get really upset. I hate not providing good service, and I hate having dissatisfied customers. It's our job to please them, so when we fail, I feel that we are just screwed.

Due to this perfectionism about customer service, I don't think that high-pressure customer service jobs are right for me. But you know, I guess that doesn't really matter when we can't afford to give me what I'm worth, much less hire someone else.

Add to this my regular responsibilities, plus my boss throwing new things in my inbox all. the freaking. time. and you have a recipe for me sitting on the toilet in the office bathroom bawling my eyes out.

Life: a thing you never expect

After my cancer treatments, I couldn't have periods naturally. I started on hormone shortly after I recovered, and took it for a few months. With the artificial boost, I was able to have periods. Transitioning on and off the hormone gave me horrible mood swings, and I didn't like having to pay $10 a month or whatever it was to get the pills. So I finally just decided not to take them. I didn't go back to the GYN who'd prescribed them, either; not because he wasn't good, but because I thought I knew everything I needed to know already. He'd performed a blood test, twice, that showed that my brain was sending too many signals to my ovaries. This told him that my ovaries weren't functioning properly--they weren't responding to the brain by releasing the proper hormones. He said that he'd never seen someone with that result get pregnant.

For the past five years, I've been trying to deal with that prognosis. I've failed, pretty much; if anything, it's been even worse lately. Seeing mothers and their children has filled me with such bitter longing that I've had to force myself not to cry.

And then, on Sunday night, I started having a period.

It went strong, very strong, just like a normal period. The cramping and moodiness was the same as I remember. It seems as of this morning to have died down...meaning the length was pretty much normal, too.

I don't know what this means, and for these four and a half days I have struggled to hold back my joy. Everyone except Sean seems to assume upon hearing this that I can have children. Sean is more skeptical; he doesn't understand why I would suddenly have a period out of the blue...and why it would happen now, after so much time.

He doesn't want me to get my hopes up. I don't want me to get my hopes up either. I think it has already happened, though, subconsciously. I think that my natural state of being has been to not give up hope. Somewhere inside, I always felt there was a chance, even as my conscious mind tried to stay logical. It was probably those two dueling sides that kept tearing me apart emotionally.

I'm going to try to stay as neutral as I can until my doctor's appointment next Wednesday. If we run the same test as I had before, that should tell us something. Either things are the same as they were, or they've changed somehow. Maybe there's another test they can do, too; I don't know.

Right now I am just a prickly ball of barely-contained emotions.

I don't want congratulations at this point...you're free to give them anyway if you wish, but I'd rather not celebrate anything until I know for sure. That, and just letting the whole thing sink in, is why I haven't written anything about it until now.

Photoblogging

I would have to open a blogspot account to get the free hosting (I must have misread earlier, in my enthusiasm). I'll have to think about that, because I'm not sure I want to have two different places to update.

Bleh :>

This may soon become a photoblog.

Or I might set up a separate blog on a separate page. Or a separate blog on this same page. Either way...photos!!! @_@

Yes, that "free hosting" part is very, very, very, very nice...

Blogger totally rules. I am so glad I didn't quit using it back before all these awesome updates.

Wings on DVD

Sign the petition, pretty please?

It's really cool when this happens.

I subscribe via RSS to About.com's Japanese guide. This morning I received a short lesson about the kanji 海, meaning "sea". Without even looking, I thought, "umi".

It was just neat that I knew the pronunciation. It was almost instinctive. I guess some words have filtered their way into my vocabulary.

Template tweaks complete!

I have finally finished tweaking the template to make the comments look right, to fix some messed up links, and to add some new links. You'll notice a new navigation bar at the bottom of the pages now; this will hopefully assist people who have scrolled down while reading to get to where they want to be without having to scroll back up. I've also made the title graphic into a link to the main journal page--I don't know how many times I've moved my mouse cursor over to it and wished that it was a link, so now it is one.

Miscellaneous other changes have been made that are small but that satisfy my anality. (Is that a word? Sounds better than "analness", anyway...but I'm prejudiced against the suffix -ness.)

Blogger has been lagged recently, which has made the publishing process take a lot longer. I imagine this is because everyone is realizing how cool it is and there are people signing up left and right. Plus, there are probably a lot of existing Blogger users who are updating their templates to include the comments (just like me!). Needless to say, I'm very relieved to have finally gotten all of this done. :)

I hope that those of you who are planning on posting comments a lot will go ahead and sign up for a Blogger account. You don't have to use it ever except for posting comments. I promise that this is the last thing you'll have to sign up for in order to respond to my posts, at least for the foreseeable future. I'm very pleased with Blogger right now and see no reason to suddenly change to something else. So to those of you who signed up for Xanga or LiveJournal accounts solely to post to my blog...sorry! Please indulge me!

Koizumi is watching you!

Found this fun story via Carson Fire.

"Don't send email on your cell phones or read comic books in Parliament while in session," Mr Koizumi was quoted by the national Asahi newspaper as saying in a lunch on Thursday with 30 first-term lawmakers from his Liberal Democratic Party.

"You can be seen very clearly from the prime minister's seat," Asahi quoted Mr Koizumi, 62, as telling the lower house members in his office. "You should really stop that - it's disgraceful."

It would be awesome if freshman U.S. senators were playing video games and reading comic books in session.

Well, it wouldn't be awesome, but it would be funny.

Blogger comments enabled

As you may have noticed, the old Blogkomm system is gone, and in its place is the new Blogger comments. You may register for a Blogger account to post with, or you may post anonymously. If you choose the latter, please include your name (or alias, or whatever) in your post. I like knowing who I'm speaking with :)

Last night I spent many, many (I don't even want to think about how many) hours porting all old comments into this system. By "porting" I mean "copying and pasting one by one". I put in not only Blogkomm stuff, but stuff from Xanga and LiveJournal too. Now this site is completely autonomous.

The comments are pretty messy right now...I have them center-justified, which of course won't do, and the name of the poster and post time isn't very well differentiated from the rest of the message. I'm going to have to redo my template again to fix this problem, something I'll work on when I have the chance. I need to incorporate the archives better, anyway, and include a link to my Blogger profile too. (Plus I have to remove the Blogkomm link...)

But for now, things are working properly, which is good.

Found him.

In the episode "Hatchery", Ensign Walsh was in the armory when T'Pal's mutiny began. Here's a shot of him as he meets up with the rest of the officers (click thumbnail for full image):

Walsh went with Trip down to the hatchery to get Captain Archer. After they moved through the hatch and into the chamber, I got a pretty good shot:

His only line, as far as I can tell, was saying "Yes Sir" after Trip told him "You're with me".

I'm not sure if he's going to end up a red shirt, or if he'll have a recurring role as Walsh. It'll be interesting to find out. His name wasn't even in the opening credits, though, so I guess he's not important enough just yet. He might have been listed in the closing credits, but I don't have those to check.

TV Tome doesn't list him either. I submitted the info; we'll see if they add it. I listed him as "Duncan K. Fraser", because there are two Duncan Frasers in Hollywood already. Useless Trivia: the K stands for "Kirkson", because he's the son of Kirk Fraser. Yes, that is true.

So yeah...he's on Enterprise.

(Funny that they're fighting "the Insectoids" now. AJ might--might--understand that joke.)

A blog entry from 1994.

The first of my old diary entries is up. This one is from when I was 15 (I would turn 16 in two months) and a sophomore in high school.

I had a little trouble with Blogger...first of all, I don't like any of their new templates. I'll have to design a new one myself (I'd rather not use the same one I use over here, though the new design might have echoes of this one). Second, I can't set the post date back further than 1999. I was hoping to be able to set them to the exact dates that my diary entries were originally written. I've emailed Blogger support to request that feature...we'll see.

In the meantime, I'll have plenty to do getting this site compliant with all the new features (including the integrated comments) and designing a new template!

As far as the post itself goes...it's fairly representative of my writing back then. I tended to ramble and obsess over potential and nonexistent love interests. My prose wasn't very tight back then, but I'm not particularly embarrassed by it. Like everything else, my writing has evolved over the years.

The fact that Michael Perry was interested in me was something that fascinated me at the time. He was very good looking, and had a sort of tragic air about him that teenage girls flock to. His life wasn't the best, and one time in a fit of angst he threw himself out in front of a car. As far as I know, he was uninjured.

Basically, he was the type of guy that a girl just wanted to mother.

After almost-but-not-quite having sex with Jazz (I'm not actually sure what happened, since my memory of what was said is warped by my primitive understanding of sex at that time)*, Perry moved on to her friend...Amy I think was her name. He quickly got her pregnant, and they got married and moved to Florida. I developed the opinion that his goal the whole time had been to get someone, anyone, pregnant so he'd have a reason to move out of his mother's house. But who knows, really? I think that opinion was at least partially affected by my feelings of resentment at having been so easily passed on.

You'll see more of Perry in later entries.

Also featuring in this post is Duncan Fraser. You'll see this name often in my high school posts. Duncan was, essentially, my dream guy. As I told my discussion group at GSP (a memory I now cringe at), "I even love the warts on his hands." *cringe!* (Emotions evolve too, but yeesh.)

Complicating this matter was the fact that Jazz liked Duncan too. I think it was just my lot in life back then to like the same guys as my friends. It ultimately didn't matter, though, because he was completely uninterested in either of us.

For those who are curious, Duncan is now an actor on Star Trek: Enterprise. No, seriously. Apparently back in February, his role was expanded. Now his character even has a name! :>

He still doesn't have an entry on the IMDb, nor is he listed on the Enterprise page on startrek.com. To be honest, I've actually never seen him on Enterprise (since I don't watch it). An elaborate hoax by the Jessamine Journal?!

Maybe I should download that episode in which he supposedly features...it's this one, as far as I can tell.

* Update 2005/03/12: I'm not in the habit of censoring things that have already been published. That goes against my personal ethics. I am not a revisionist; I want people reading this journal to see nothing but the truth of who I am and who I have been throughout my life. What I wrote in this post was what I knew and how I felt at the time, and so it will remain. But as the Internet is permanent, and people will see this post later and not otherwise know that my knowledge has changed, here is an addendum, for what it's worth: Jazz did not have sex with Michael Perry.

March 21, 1994, 9:20pm (15 years old)

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."

I am not a man.



Therefore, I still cling to a few of the precepts I clung to in my youth. For example,

"When you wish upon a star,

"Makes no difference who you are;

"Anything your heart desires

"Will come to you."

I have been thinking about wishing on stars lately. I used to wish on a star when I was a kid. I would wish that me and my brothers could turn into cartoon characters and live in a parallel universe whenever we wanted to. Guess what? It never happened.



I've had a lot on my mind lately. Like guys. Especially Michael Perry.



It's weird, but we never seem to like each other at the same time. He liked me in Middle School, I like him when I was a freshman, he liked me at the beginning of this year but then started liking Jazz. I kind of like him now. The trouble is, he still likes Jazz. Says he loves her.



He called me yesterday to talk, and we were on the phone for over an hour. I don't know how long really. But we talked a lot. I've never had a guy call me before, and so it was kind of interesting. I take that back...Mark called me a couple of times when we were going out (back when I was young and silly), but we never had anything to talk about.



Anyway, Perry and I had a lot to say, and so we talked forever. I talked about Duncan, and how I'm getting over him, and he talked about the pain he's experiencing now with Jazz.



You see, Jazz broke up with him. She said they were becoming "co-dependent". Isn't that what a relationship is? But anyway, Jazz seems to be scared off by anything that she enjoys. I don't understand that about her. Why can't she just pray about it and find her answers?



She wasn't at school today, or last Friday, so I called her house and asked her mom to have her call me back. I don't know if she will or not, but I hope she will, because we need to talk. Perry was supposed to call me tonight, but I guess he never found the time.



I like this font, so I'll stick with it.



Anyway, I'll go into how I got over Duncan.



I'm still physically attracted to him, but I find no interest in him personally. That's no problem, I'm physically attracted to several guys and it doesn't mess me up. I still admire Duncan for his dedication to his workouts and stuff, and for how he's in track and everything, but I really don't like him much anymore. He makes crude jokes and acts like a jerk sometimes.



Perry informed me that he makes crude jokes a lot and I still talk to him. I guess my answer for that is that he likes me, and likes to talk to me, and that's why I still talk to him. Besides, he's getting better. But that still doesn't explain David Sadler. Who knows why I stopped liking him. But I did. Maybe it was the way he leapt into it. He shouldn't have gone so fast. He also embarrassed me. That must be what it was. He should have taken it slow, and then I might have started liking him. But you see, he liked Jazz this year and now he likes someone named Jennifer Lowry (I think).



My mom's a sweetie. She just brought me down a Diet Dr Pepper. I love them. The boys are watching "Strange Brew". How annoying. I like the movie, but I don't know how they can stand to watch it so often.



I wore a black dress today, and Stephen Watkins comes up and says "Whose funeral is it?" I replied, "Yours."



Anyway, I don't like Duncan anymore. I'm not obsessed with impressing him, or showing him what an awesome person I am, or anything, so I think I'm over him. Wouldn't it be funny if he started liking me now. Doubtful, but it would be ironic.



Mom's breathing down my neck now. She wants me to get off the computer so SHE can use it. I just read those sentences to her and she made her little cute face, then decided to read a WinFax book. She's trying to figure out how to talk over the terminal with Aunt Carol, who just got an IBM. They've been faxing each other stuff like crazy. Dad's fax machine is awesome, by the way. I wonder if Noelle has a fax. We could send each other stuff for like 14 cents. That would be cool!



I feel kind of empty, not having a crush on anybody, and yet I feel free. I'm single, and glad to be! I think I'd like to get to know Noah Kinderknect, because he seems like a nice guy, but he's shy. But I still have these silly feelings about Perry. That's not good, because if I somehow got him interested in me again, it would hurt Jazz. Plus, I might get hurt in the process. So I'm going to stay away from that territory. It's very strange that Perry liked me, because I never thought anyone would like me. But he did. I wonder if he ever will again.



My goal for my weight remains the same: to be able to wear biker shorts and a sports bra and look good. That would be so awesome. I would never wear them in public, but when I was working out I could and then I'd feel great. But it seems like I'll never reach my goal. Today Mom came home with a lot of chips and some French onion dip (my favorite). I didn't totally mess up, but I did enough damage to where I won't be losing any more weight. Yuk.



Anyway. Enough about that. I think Mom's going to be reading everything I write from now on. She's silly.



Oh guess what! We are trying to fax Aunt Carol a little certificate that says: "Gift Certificate from the office of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, M.D. Good for one visit only." Isn't that hilarious? I love it! I want to copy it and give it to people. I should give one to Duncan, but he might get the wrong idea. I'll give one to Perry. He'll appreciate it.



Well, I think I'll stop now, because I really don't have much more to say. Until whenever I write again...



-HA

The trouble with autobiography

I'm on lunch, and I wanted to make a quick note.

Encapsulating a life is a difficult task, especially when it's your own, simply because you know when you're leaving something out. My huge autobiographical profile seems comprehensive and complete, but every time I think about it I think of something else I could have added. I wrote it all in one sitting, and so of course whatever I'd been thinking about at that time affected what I put down. There are other things I didn't mention at all, or could have emphasized more, but didn't.

I suppose that in some ways I consider this entire journal to be my autobiography. This is the record of my thoughts and adventures and stories from my past, written in my own words. To that end, I have decided to open a separate page on pixelscribbles for diary entries from the past. I'll be posting, word for word, things I wrote as a child. I'll post here, too, to inform readers that a new diary entry is up and to maybe discuss it a little. I think this will be a fun, unique experience.

I'll let you know when I get started...

"There are so many ways that obesity can kill you."

This is kind of scary.

I'm an Ash Tree

My friend Troy from EFNet's #starwars! (ah, the good old days of sitting around resenting the elitists in #starwars...) sent me an interesting email about what tree you are based on your birthday. Here's mine:

May 25 to Jun 03: Ash Tree (the Ambition)
Extremely attractive, vivacious, impulsive, demanding, does not care for criticism, ambitious, intelligent, talented, likes to play with fate, can be very egotistic, reliable, restless lover, sometimes money rules over the heart, demands attention, needs love and much emotional support.

This is supposedly based in Celtic mythology. If any of you want to know what tree you are, just post your birthday below :) (Ha! I've found a good way to get more people to post! Ahahahahaha!)

Unappreciated, or misunderstood?

Lately I've felt as though my contributions, to friendships and to online communities, have been written off or ignored. To a person with an ego like mine, this is highly distressing. I have worked hard in most of these cases to help out as best I could, but either the people involved don't care, don't like what I'm saying, or don't realize that my framework allowed others to draw the conclusions that ultimately helped them. Some of these are personal friendships and some of these are more professional things, but they all affect me the same way. I feel devalued by these people's avoidance of or missing of the point...especially when the credit for a final decision winds up going to someone else, or to the person who needed the help to begin with.

I realize that I shouldn't do things with the goal of receiving acclaim or thanks, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier not to think that way. I get quite a bit of positive feedback at work, so maybe I feel that I should receive adulation from everyone. I don't know.

All I do know is that it's been bothering me. At first I thought it was just a problem with dealing with other women; having a good friendship with a girl is about the most impossible thing in the world. (If you're a guy, it's a lot easier, as far as I can tell, to befriend a girl.) I think girls keep internal score cards and expectations that are impossible to predict and live up to, and while guys can usually get over this and not care whether or not they fit the mold, other girls have more trouble with this. I personally go back and forth between wanting to please the girl and being annoyed that she wants me to change who I am.

So it would be understandable if it was just girls I was having trouble with. But today a guy misinterpreted me (apparently) and also didn't take everything I said into account in his response. I understand that he's busy, but I almost would have preferred that he not respond at all, if he was going to give so little thought to my input.

I want to be respected, seen as someone whose advice is useful and good. But all I've seen lately is people ignoring or misinterpreting what I say. I think I'm intelligent and have good thoughts...I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong in presenting them to others.

Maybe I'm doing the girl thing and having unrealistic expectations...

Apparently I'm way too long-winded for Blogger's new "About Me" profile section

I wrote a nice big autobiographical piece for my Blogger profile, but when I try to include it in the update, I get an error. Until the issue is resolved, I'm going to go ahead and post it here. Enjoy!

I love talking about myself, and tonight I seem to be in the mood to ramble, so I hope you have some time.

My name is Heather Aubrey Meadows. I have two younger brothers, AJ and Ben, and a mom and dad. My brother AJ is married to a wonderful woman named Faye, and they have two sons, Connor and Logan. Ben is engaged to a great girl named Manda.

I was born and raised in Nicholasville, Kentucky, and until I was 7 I lived on a street called Lois Lane towards the outskirts of town. As a fan of Superman, this street name delighted me. While I lived there I went to private school at Lexington Christian School, which later became Lexington Christian Academy. I grew up using an Apple II e computer, playing games and typing and eventually writing my own BASIC programs.

Sometime around second grade, my parents moved us to a house in Nicholasville proper, and in third grade I started going to public school. I had always been a shy person, but the realization that these new people were unfriendly and superficial (at least, that was my impression) made me more reclusive than ever. By the time middle school came around--I attended East Jessamine County Middle--I was something of a freak, wearing sweat pants, T-shirts, men's belts with huge buckles, and a brown trench coat. My hair was always back in a messy ponytail and I wore huge, red-rimmed glasses. Annoyed at how no one seemed to understand me or even want to, I began literally talking to walls, which really did my social life no good whatsoever.

Meanwhile, my dad invented a tool for electricians, which he began selling out of our house. We had to learn how to run a mail-order business essentially from scratch. Back in the beginning, before we had the parts extruded, I would cut them from a long bar of aluminum using Dad's band saw. I'd then drill holes in them with the drill press and sand down the edges. We took orders through the mail and over the phone, and we stored customer information on 3X5 index cards until we finally, around 1993 or so, got a modern computer. I discovered "chatting" at the age of 15 on BBSes, and I engaged in all kinds of interesting and intelligent conversations there.

Come high school, I joined a kung fu class and started to try to make myself normal. If in middle school I thought I was superior to all others, in high school I strongly believed the opposite. I felt that I had stunted my own emotional development and that now I was a worm beneath everyone else's feet. It was during this time that I developed my first real crush, a crush that lasted for years, on a guy one grade above me. He was in my kung fu class and I was highly impressed by his determination and abilities--not to mention the fact that I thought he looked like Luke Skywalker. Nothing came of this crush, of course, and the angst made it difficult for me to properly pursue normal friendships.

My junior year of high school was probably the best. I sometimes wish that I'd graduated early, to end it on a high note. I was a member of several clubs, I was physically fit, I had good friends, and I went to Florida that year for spring break, which was amazing and fun. That summer I attended the Governor's Scholars Program, which I look back on as one of the greatest experiences of my life. I met a guy who will probably be a lifelong friend, Matt Gunterman, and I learned a lot about the world outside of high school. This made me itch to go to college.
Senior year was very depressing by comparison: I'd lost the election for BETA president, I'd quit kung fu and gained quite a bit of weight, I suddenly realized that I really didn't have any friends--lots of people had moved away, and my regular group was all closer to each other than they were to me--and I was also very slow in applying to college, with at least one teacher telling me that I had made the wrong career decision. (He was right, but I'll get to that later.) Plus, GSP had shown me how cool college life was going to be (or so I assumed), and I was bored with the high school dynamic.

Needless to say, I was very happy to get out of high school. In the fall of 1996, I packed up and moved to Huntsville, Alabama to learn to be a mechanical engineer. The idea of pursuing this profession had come to me after a friend's little sister informed me that astronauts had to have 20/20 vision. Indeed, I had been toying with the idea of becoming an astronaut. The new knowledge devastated me, but I decided--in typical martyr fashion--that if I couldn't be an astronaut, I'd be the next best thing and design the ships astronauts flew in. This decision had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not I would actually like mechanical engineering.

It turned out that while the general principles were interesting, I was very bored by the specific details. I slacked off in class, missed tests, and failed/withdrew from some courses while getting Ds and Cs in others. I did manage an A in physics lab, but I already knew at that point that I'd chosen the wrong path.

It was during this first year of college that I did something pretty horrible, even though at the time I thought I was somehow justified. During the first hall meeting, my roommate and I met a guy who lived across the hall (yes, co-ed floors; can you believe it? We lived in four person suites with two bathrooms apiece, too. UAH had it good). This guy ended up dating my roommate, but over time it came out that he'd originally wanted to date me instead. As time passed and he began seeking me out more and more as a means to "escape" my roommate's temper and perceived selfishness, I found myself wanting to date him as well. By the end of the first semester, it was decided that he'd break up with her and go out with me after my roommate had a chance to move out.

(This rather clinical description is as far as I'm going to go in this profile, but bear in mind that it was far more messy than that.)

The next semester saw me enjoying myself, wasting all of his money and treating him like crap--because he let me. I'd tell him to do something and he'd do it. He wouldn't change his opinions for me--he was a staunch atheist and Democrat--but pretty much anything else went. The most telling aspect of our relationship is the fact that while I was satisfied sexually, he was not, and I didn't want to satisfy him.

I broke up with him twice during that semester. I felt like I was leading him on, that since I knew I didn't really love him I should set him free. But he always wanted me back, always slipped into such great depression that I felt that maybe I should be with him, should try to help him, should try to love him. It didn't work. I've come to realize that you can't be in love with someone you pity. (Sympathy is another matter entirely, though.)

Over the summer I tried to break up with him again, only to say I'd take him back...but by that time he'd had enough, and he broke it off with me. I have to say that that moment was the most bittersweet of our entire relationship. He was standing up for himself and doing what I wasn't strong enough to do, which automatically made him infinitely more attractive, but at the same time I felt an inordinate sense of freedom. I felt that I could live again, that my mistake was finally over.

My behavior was inexcusable, and I am ashamed of how I treated both my boyfriend and my roommate. My roommate has since graciously forgiven me, and we saw each other once when she came into Lexington for a family wedding. I have no idea what happened to my ex; he seems to have dropped off the face of the Internet.

I considered my first year of college to be a dismal failure at the time, although now I look back on it as a learning experience. In any event, I dropped out of UAH and made no immediate plans to return to school. I had no purpose, no direction, and then no boyfriend...so I started fresh, got my first real job--at Willis Music in Lexington Green mall--and bought my first car.

I'd only been working for a few months when I was diagnosed with biphenaltypic leukemia and admitted into the University of Kentucky's Markey Cancer Center. From September of 1997 until April of 1998 I lived on the third floor of Markey, only occasionally being allowed to go home for visits. I underwent three rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, and I of course lost all my hair. I also had a catheter implanted in my chest, which left a round scar the size of a dime between my breasts, and due to abdominal pain during treatments I also had an exploratory procedure that left a six inch scar across my stomach. As I was immuno-suppressed, this wound didn't heal for months.

While I was in the hospital, I got online quite a bit--my mom brought my computer in and I used my hospital room's telephone to log on during the evening. Typically I stayed awake all night, met with the docs in the morning, and then went to sleep. During this time, I learned how to make webpages in Microsoft Word. (Yes, I know; you can stop writhing in agony at any time.) I also chatted quite a bit on IRC and ICQ.

Despite being able to get online and play around, I was still very much tired of being cooped up and having my life on hold. Once I was free to go, I immediately registered for classes at UK, signing up for whatever sounded remotely interesting. I ran into my old high school crush at orientation that summer, and was highly embarrassed to have him see me bald. It's strange how strong feelings like that can come back years later...but obviously, nothing came of seeing him again.

1998 was a highly eventful year, apparently, because that was also when I started growing closer and closer to a guy I met through a Robotech chatroom. I'll spoil any possible suspense and let you know right now that I am currently married to that guy.

We first met in person in the summer of 1999, when I drove down to visit him in Augusta, Georgia for two weeks. In many ways that trip felt foreign and strange, and in many other ways it felt like coming home. We knew each other so well online, but being in person really added to the breadth of knowledge. Facets that I hadn't had to consider before were now large factors. It was an intriguing shift from an "online relationship" into a "long distance relationship".

We managed to stay together, long distance, while I finished college. I considered transferring to a college closer to him, but ultimately I decided that I didn't really want to take all the core classes over, so I'd best stick it out. Plus, after 13 months of working full time I quit my job to pay more attention to my studies, so I couldn't have really afforded to move out of my parents' house anyway. I stayed in Kentucky until I finally graduated in fall of 2002. (During this time I traded my old car, a 1993 Ford Taurus, for a 1998 Ford Escort. I loved that car, and drove it until I unfortunately totaled it in an accident on my way home from a trip to see Sean. After that I had no car payments, due to the fact that I inherited my grandfather's 1986 Subaru GL hatchback, so I was able to quit my job at GRW Aerial Surveys, which was data entry that had already gotten boring, and did so without much remorse.)

After taking several different courses in things that sounded interesting, I ended up majoring in Linguistics and minoring in Japan Studies, and towards the end of my college career I tacked on a major in English because I had more than enough credits. I really stumbled into Linguistics and Japan Studies randomly; I'd taken courses because they sounded like fun and I ended up loving it all. I wasn't sure what I would do with my degrees, but I felt that doing linguistics or something involving Japan--or, preferably, both--would make me happy.

On January 2, 2003, my whole family drove down to Augusta to help me move into a beautiful apartment and to celebrate my wedding. On January 4, 2003, Sean and I were married in a small ceremony at Augusta Golf and Gardens, where multiple pictures were taken, and then we enjoyed a reception at the apartment clubhouse before my family left to return to Kentucky and Sean and I finally began our new lives as husband and wife.

The first year was a big transition for me; living away from my family was very difficult, more difficult than I remembered it being from Huntsville. This was largely due to the fact that I didn't have a job or anything else to really do during the day once the apartment was settled. I made frequent trips to Kentucky and felt very cut off and alone.

Towards the end of 2003, I received a data entry job offer from a good friend of ours, a former boss of Sean's. I took it. From these extraordinarily humble beginnings, I worked my way up to the business manager position at the company, 2go-Box, a local restaurant marketing firm (and now, a delivery service). My background working with my parents' business, plus my natural sense for organization and customer service, have really helped me to blossom in the new position. I work closely with the president and salesperson, Robert, and am planning on starting my own business one day.

Due to the cancer treatments, it seems that I am unable to have children. This has been a blight on an otherwise very happy existence. I still fall into depression about it. On the plus side, being over five years in remission means that it's extraordinarily unlikely that my cancer will return.

In 2004 I became closer friends with some great people who live in and around North Augusta. If I had to make an analogy, I'd say that North Augusta is a lot like Nicholasville, while Augusta would be Lexington, and the area where Sean and I currently live (to the west of Augusta) is something like the Richmond Road/Man O War side of Lexington. Essentially, Sean and I are on a growing, developing, prospering side of town with lots of popular stores (the Augusta Exchange is just down the road) and restaurants. North Augusta is growing, too, but the sheer distance from our side of town, plus the fact that it's in South Carolina, makes it feel a little different. It's not on the cutting edge of growth, though I imagine it will get there someday; instead, it just feels like a really nice place. I've been thinking very seriously that it would be nice to buy a house there and really settle down. This is a far cry from my depression of 2003, during which I wanted to run home to Kentucky at the soonest possibility. I'm finally fitting in, making friends, forming routines, and doing a job I love. I finally feel like I'm home.

Okay, wow...

Blogger has just added a crapload of new features, including comments. Their comments feature appears to be far more robust than the Blogkomm thingy I've been using; I can turn comments on and off individual posts, I can limit comment posting to a specific group of people... Wow.

Blogger will also let me archive individual posts on their own pages along with their comments, which is what I was trying to do by archiving by day (which obviously doesn't work if I post more than once a day). Plus, all Blogger templates are standards-compliant and machine readable, written in CSS, so that means I can look at the code of their new templates to see what I can do to make my site compliant too.

Essentially they've gone through and added almost everything I could want. (One feature that I would like that isn't present is a means to truncate posts on the front page and only show a certain amount of characters, so more posts could go on one page, and so the reader could immediately tell if he/she has already read the post and see how many comments there are without having to scroll past huge, robust diatribes filled with gargantuan paragraphs. I'd also like an easy way to post photos, but you know, I'm just amazed at what they've done already, and I don't really have the webspace for a photoblog anyway.)

So yeah, this is pretty impressive. I had logged in to write a story about "my first date", but the new Blogger look totally derailed me. I'll probably come back to that post later after I mess around in here a little.

Ben's Game

This has got to be one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Children are awesome.

"The fast pace of modern life is stretching our Stone Age brains to the limit."

This is a fascinating article on how the limits of our short-term visual memory. I think that the idea that "limits on visual memory are related to limits on the number of items we can attend to at once" holds a lot of water. I've noticed that when I'm being inundated with information--such as articles on my Bloglines--I tend to feel like I'm overloading, often to the point that I scroll past things without looking at them, or even unsubscribe to something that is giving me too much to take in. Likewise, while I'm focused on a writing task, I have a hard time paying attention to anything else, including the music I'm playing in the background. The song could be running over and over for hours, and I wouldn't realize it. Sean has tried to talk to me while I was writing (or reading), only to have me bark, "I'm busy!"

Less cognitive-intensive things, like making printouts, mailing packages, and sorting items are easier on my brain, so I can usually do two or three of those at once while listening to my boss explain something else. However, even then I sometimes have to ask him to repeat himself.

This limit on our conscious attention actually seems to be a fundamental behind a book Robert loaned me, Getting Things Gone by David Allen. Allen posits that having no plans or routines for dealing with multiple tasks causes them to pester us via our subconscious mind. His organizational system hinges on setting up areas in which to file work items so that we don't have to think about them until it's time to...thus freeing our minds to think about what we need to at the moment.

I don't know if this is something we can, or even necessarily should, evolve out of. It seems to me that noticing what is important and then acting on that knowledge is a necessary part of life. Perhaps this is our brains simply being efficient. If we don't need to see or know something, our subconscious minds may simply be ignoring those things in favor of what our conscious minds are dealing with. Would it really be better for the subconscious to stop doing this, and to allow the conscious mind to process everything? I'm not sure that it would be as easy to focus if that were the case--this might even have something to do with people having short attention spans/ADD.

Pretty interesting stuff.

Well, I didn't fall on my face.

My butt was pretty damn sore, though. I always forget about bicycle seats. They are truly the tool of Satan.

Just watched Star Trek: Nemesis for the first time. It was pretty good. It was actually a movie, instead of a two hour episode. You'd think that I could quantify why, given that I took two whole film courses in college. But I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, although I do think that in general the following factors had an effect: there were more things going on than you'd usually have in a two hour episode, a lot of stuff happened very quickly, and a main character died. There was the typical beginning with the group assembled like family again, but it didn't go on monotonously forever, and all of a sudden we were thrown into the action. I think that definitely changes the experience.

There were also several emotional things going on at once, including Deanna's mental rape experience, that were not plunged into and explored laboriously as they might be in an episode. I suppose the following comparison can be made: episodes are like chapters in a book, while movies are like short stories.

I dreamed about adoption last night, I guess. There was an alcoholic man who was trying desperately to give away his son. The boy was a real cutie, with spiked blond hair, and I guess he was around Connor's age. (Didn't look a thing like Connor, though.) I took the boy and we got along famously. It was just weird. I explained it in the dream to some skeptics with a speech about how I understood why the alcoholic had to give up his child, and why that made me feel that I should take him. The rest of the dream was me carrying the boy around and talking with him. He was really sharp. We discussed all kinds of things, which of course I can't remember now. Dreams are silly like that...I don't even know what the boy's name was.

Then today when I was leaving Publix I saw a woman and a cute little toddler, and I almost started crying. I winced and grimaced and told myself to stop letting it affect me. Because that's really what it is. I'm allowing myself to be in pain.

Lately I've been thinking that I would really like to buy a house in North Augusta, to be near my friends and to start a more "mature" part of my life, but today I started wondering if getting a house would be too painful without children in it, or if I'm thinking of a house as a substitute for a child. I don't know. I feel like I want to do things that pretty much require a house, like garden, and have a guest bedroom, and have cookouts, but at the same time I wonder if I'll feel weird about it knowing that there won't be any little ones to fill the larger space. Maybe I'm just leading myself towards more pain.

I don't even feel like I'm expressing this coherently. There's so much in my head that refuses to come out. I guess...I just want to know. For sure. And once I do know...I want to make some sort of plan.

I always try to tie things up tidily and explain them away. So there you go, emotions; get over yourselves. I am so incoherent right now it's not even funny, and the more I write, the less sense I make. I need to just stop writing now.

More on obesity

I have been thinking more about the "obesity isn't unhealthy" argument that I linked to in a previous post, and I don't know...it just seems like bullshit. Maybe the idea that obesity is bad is too far ingrained for me to have an objective opinion...but I don't know. I tend to think that things that have historical precedent have stronger arguments. We come from a line of hunter-gatherers who ate natural foods. They weren't necessarily rail-thin or bodybuilders, but they weren't fat, either, in general.

That was one of the things I wondered about from that article--it said that an overweight person who worked out could be more healthy than a thin person who didn't. That's certainly true...but how many overweight people do you know who work out regularly? The ones I know who do have lost and are currently losing weight, so I hardly think they count.

The argument seemed to be that being fat is natural for many people, and therefore there shouldn't be a stigma. I can agree that overweight people shouldn't be stigmatized, but I'm not sure that the proliferation of obesity these days is "natural". Something is causing it; and just because something is caused to happen doesn't mean that that is the natural order of things. It is one of humanity's responsibilities as thinking beings to evaluate how we affect the world and how the world affects us, and to try to correct damaging behavior.

Today I got an interesting motivational mailing about fitness and obesity from Leanne Ely, an associate of FlyLady. I think the FlyLady policy is that I can quote the emails in order to spread the word about the system, I just can't archive emails for people to get elsewhere...so I hope it's okay that I'm quoting this part:

We do ourselves no favors when we eat stuff that merely puts volume into a space that requires nutrition. I believe one of the reasons obesity levels have hit such highs with children is because they can't get the nutrition they need--they keep eating because their bodies are screaming for real food! When your body wants and craves nutrition, until it gets it, you'll want to keep eating. Have you ever noticed how junk food just doesn't satisfy? That's why--it's not real and you need real food to fuel your "engine"--all stuff you can pronounce, not the chemicals, colorings and additives that are so prevalent in junk food.

Ms. Ely is a nutritional therapist, so it's not like she's some housewife who just came up with an idea...but it does ring of common sense, doesn't it?

(I know that sometimes my body screams out for chocolate, but I don't think that invalidates the theory.)

Right now I'm home for lunch, eating some leftovers. I suppose that's mildly healthier than going for fast food...although part of this is meatloaf :> After work today I'm going biking with Mari and Kelly (and maybe Brooke; haven't seen her to ask if she's coming). I'm really looking forward to it. I haven't been on a bike since 1997! Time to see if the phrase "it's just like riding a bicycle" is a viable simile.

Hmm, hope I don't fall on my face.

Blood everywhere

I dreamed last night that I saw blood on my underwear when I went to the bathroom. I had already cleaned up and left the bathroom before I realized that I might be having my period--for the first time in five years. Terrified that I was raising false hopes yet again, I was about to check...but then I started seeing blood everywhere. It was spraying all over everything in a fine mist. Even though I realized that this new blood was coming from somewhere else, I still felt that maybe I was having my period too. I never got a true confirmation.

Stupid dreams.

Looks like the Nigerians have moved to Europe!

Check out this email I just got:

INFOEUREKO INTERNATIONAL LOTTERY AND PROMOTIONS.
EGASTRAAT 254,
AMSTERDAM,
THE NETHERLANDS.
FROM: THE DESK OF THE MANAGING DIRECTOR
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION/PRIZE AWARD DEPT,
SCFN: GWK/5333/025648/03UAD.
BATCH: 241/2002/BLL.
ATTN: CEO,
We are pleased to inform you of the release today the 3th of APRIL, 2004 of the INFOEUREKO INTERNATIONAL LOTTERY/PROMOTIONS, NETHERLANDS held on the 19th of APRIL, 2004. Your e-mail address attached to the ticket numbers 1001-58255563-2285 with serial number 8888/03 drew from the lucky numbers 02-22-00-66-99-85-52-12-36-50, which consequently won the lottery in the FIRST category. You have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND EURO ?120,000.00)in cash credited to security file number GWK/5333/025648/03UAD.This is from a total cash prize of ?3 million share among four individuals and Six international companies lucky winners in this category. CONGRATULATIONS.
Your funds is now deposited with our Payment/Finance Department in the security company to your name ,Due to the mixed up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep this winning a top secret from the public notice until your claims has been processed and remitted to your account as this is apart of the security protocol, to avoid double claiming or unwarranted taking advantage of this program by participants. All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from the 100,000 company/individual email addresses from all over the world as part of our international promotions program, which we conduct every decade. We hope with a part of winnings ,you will take part in our end of year stake ?20million international lottery. To file for your claim and your winning certificate to enable our fiduciary agent to transfer your winning sum in to your bank account, please contact our fiduciary agent. be sure you call or by email.
------------------------------------------------------
ADENT
-----
SECURITY COMPANY SERVICES
TEL: +31-642-680-688
E-mail:scs@starspath.com
E-mail:euscs@netscape.net
MR.D.ADAM.
( Director of payment )
------------------------------------------------------
For processing and remittance of your cash to a designated account of your choice. remember,all
winnings must be claim not later than MAY 14th 2004, After this date,All unclamps funds will be returned to the promotion company. NOTE: In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please remember to quote your security credited file number and batch numbers respectively in every correspondence with our fiduciary agent. Furthermore, should there be any change of your address, do inform our fiduciary agent as soon as possible. Congratulations once again from all members of our staff and thank you for being part of our promotions program and publication.
Yours sincerely,
MRS.ROSEWISA KATS,
FOR MR. CLIFF BROWN.
(promotion manager).

I'm about to die laughing. If people actually fall for this...well, I don't want to say they deserve to have all their money taken away, but they pretty much do, don't they?

(I especially like how the scammer says I should keep my lottery winning a secret. Clever.)

Well, DUH!!!

Today's Captain Obvious, from this article:

A spokeswoman for the Royal College of Surgeons of England told BBC News Online: 'Operations should be carried out so that does not happen.'

There's one brilliant lady.

On the funny side, I came across the article through Metafilter...and the title of their entry on the subject was "Tetsuo!!!" :D

My birthday's coming up...

...so if anyone's interested in buying me stuff, I've updated my Amazon Wish List.

I'm so terrible ;P But really, this is the most efficient way of letting people know what I want. If you're going to buy me something, please buy from the "would love to have" or "must have" categories (just sort the list by priority).

Yes, my highest priorities are: 1) Japanese language; 2) the Friends television series! ;P

I really want those Pimsleur CDs. From what I can tell, they are the best on the market. It's possible to find them used...

...aaaaaaand it's time to go to work. Buhbye!

Reminiscing

I've been working on the Macross 2051 website this weekend, adding and updating content. When I got to planet Tir-Na-nOg, I decided to revisit some old posts: specifically, my first-ever GM position, running the D.I.R.E. Wolves for the Arcadia Task Force.

There's a lot of great stuff there, IC and OOC. So I thought I'd share a bit:

By Q-GM Illusion on Wednesday, June 28, 2000 - 02:27 am:
OOC: Sero, you are onboard the Falcon, the stealth ship the DIRE use for subtle little infiltration operations like this one. Everyone posting on the thread is also in the Falcon. You are in the back section with the rest of the team, and Rollins, Cormann, Jade, and Ikaru are up front. Jade and Ikaru are piloting. I wish you would read the thread more carefully before asking questions, because I'm pretty sure all your questions are answered in the roleplay.

By Nexx on Wednesday, June 28, 2000 - 09:54 am:
OOC: Come on Illusion. Dont let it get to you or your heart will expload like a baked potato.

By Q-GM Illusion on Wednesday, June 28, 2000 - 05:54 pm:
OOC: My heart exploded years ago, leaving nothing but a hard, crusty shell in its place...devoid of feeling, of caring, of emotion...perfect for being an EVIL GM!!!!!!!

Err, sorry...I think I was channelling someone else just then. ^^

The problem of people not reading what was on the board was not limited to Private Hirimoto. I learned that soon enough.

I also learned that people tend to disappear for long periods, only to either 1) reappear later; 2) never come back and never tell you they're not coming back. One such case was Aricelle Santos. He hadn't been posting for awhile, so I decided to do this:

The forest floor had so far seemed quite firm, so it was quite surprising when Santos took his next step and his foot suddenly sunk into the ground. There had been no indication of any sinkholes or underground burrowings, he mused, even as he lost his balance and fell face-first.

Unfortunately the spot he had chosen to fall on had previously served as a rest area for some passing forest creature. A large forest creature.

With a sickening squish, Santos' upper body landed right in a huge pile of putrid dung. The feces smeared itself across the front of his power armor and some of it squeezed into Santos' open helmet. He'd be smelling this lovely aroma for quite some time.

As an added bonus, the fall had twisted his ankle.

Santos never posted again.

I had to wrap that scenario up too quickly at the end, with one of those annoying fast-forward posts that take the actions away from the players. I'm actually not sure if I've ever completed a scenario without having to do that.

My NPC, Captain Roger Cormann, was a fun character. Rereading the thread made me want to play him again. I suppose, if I ever go back to playing on the AMRN, I could pull an Alias and say that he was given a drug to feign death so that the Guild could steal him away for their own evil purposes. And then brainwash him. Or something. I don't know. You can get away with a lot in science fiction!

As a final note, I'd like to include this snippet, without context (because it's more fun that way) from my favorite character in that scenario, Anthony Patrick Jameson:

Anthony got himself to his knees and started undoing what was left of the lower part of his fatigues. "No, I'm not tha' shy sar. Jus' don't go around telling the rest o' tha Wolves about me underwears."

Mailing list feature added. Stroke my ego and sign up!

Some people mentioned to me that they forget to check my site because it's not on a huge portal for blogs and they don't get my posts in their email. Well, now those people can sign up to my Yahoo! Group and receive each and every post, complete with horribly huge and annoying banner ad!

I took the opportunity with this update to shift my About and Links sections into separate .js files. Now when I want to add a link or change some information, I can just edit those files instead of republishing the entire freaking blog. Why I didn't do this to begin with is still beyond me. I have teh best hindsight evar.