Kerry wins

Yes, that's right...the Redskins lost.

Currently, more Bush masks have been sold than Kerry masks, but as I mentioned before, the publicity of the mask sale may have contaminated the result.

So we will be inaugurating John Kerry in January.

Tomorrow it begins

I'll start writing my book, which will be a tale of intrigue, familial ties, the quest for immortality, sexism, and a whole lot of other stuff, tomorrow. I figured I'd give NaNoWriMo another shot.

I signed up last year, and didn't write anything. This year, though, I have something I want to write. The Mazarin family's story has intrigued me ever since I first wrote Celia's character sheet for the AMRN. Now, due to plans I won't go into here because people on the AMRN read this journal, I'm positive that Celia's backstory will never come to fruition in-game. Even if it did, it probably wouldn't work out the way I want it to. Writing it into my very own book solves both problems.

We'll see how it goes :)

Another announcement

No job for me.

Ugh...malaise! Plus, an announcement

I hate feeling like this. I don't want to do anything today. Ugh.

May as well announce this while I'm feeling poopy, lest I lose my nerve later. (It's so funny how I let my moods rule me...)

I'm going to write something in the month of November. I've set up a page for it. So far I'm thinking it is going to be the story of the Mazarin family (Celia Mazarin is a character I quasi-play on the AMRN), but I'm not entirely sure. All I do know is that I'm going to write 7+ pages of something every day that month. We'll see what happens.

Whatever I do write, I'm already expecting that I'm going to work up character sheets and little outlines/timelines. These will change as I go. I figure it'll be interesting to keep posting revised character sketches and outlines. It will let everyone in on the process (me included, since I've never done this before).

Et tu, Comments system? ;_;

[Note: It is now 2:34 pm. I've been trying to put up this post all day. Blogger's up to its old tricks again :P]

I'm only making this post in the vain hope that all the comments I've made this morning will miraculously appear on the page. I figure, maybe if I force it to republish, they'll show up. :/

But while I'm here, I figure I'll go ahead and remark a little on my life.

I was planning on going to Kentucky this weekend (I would have left yesterday and returned Monday) for Halloween and Connor's birthday. However, Connor is going to Indiana to trick-or-treat with his cousins, which should be fun :) So, since he would be out of town, I've postponed the trip until next weekend, when he'll be having his birthday party. I hope I'll be able to make it, but that depends on what happens with the new job. If I get it, I'll have to see when I need to start and if I can sneak in a trip before then. If I don't get it, I suppose I can go just fine ;P

Concerning the new job, they told me they would get back to me "by Friday at 5 pm". Last Friday came and went with nary a peep. I'm told they had another round of interviews with other candidates (not sure how many) on Tuesday, so perhaps they meant they would get back with me this Friday, and not last Friday. In any case, I've left them two voicemails expressing my confusion on the issue. Still waiting to hear back. If they haven't called by say 4 pm tomorrow, I'll call them.

My lifestyle change hasn't really changed much. I have lost some weight, but I keep gaining some back. Ultimately the loss is still there--today there's a net loss of seven pounds--but it's discouraging whenever the numbers go back up (my largest net loss was nine pounds). I typically end up either starving myself on the days when the weight goes back up, or eating too much.

Counting calories doesn't seem to be the way to go--at least, not in a vacuum. That is, I'm coming to believe I need to be watching my fat intake like a hawk. I also need to balance the other nutrients (I think I'm getting too much iron, for one thing). I'm hoping DietPower will help me with that, but I have to do a lot of work to watch the nutrients. It's much easier to just count calories ;P

Well, that's an update. Here's hoping the comments show up now.

Lunar eclipse

I just found out about this, like, five minutes ago. Here's a picture:

It's hard to get a picture of celestial objects without, like, a telescope, and a tripod :/

Update 9:45:

Update 9:52:

Update 10:00:

Ridiculous Update 10:10:

Here, I was trying to show what the shape was like as well as the color. It's really impossible to see what I was actually seeing, though. The shadowed part of the moon was a very deep red color.

Another Ridiculous Update 10:25:

I really wish I could show you what it actually looks like. 2007 isn't too far off; I'll make it a goal to have decent equipment by then.

The Eclipse, Updated 10:42:

It happened! And it looks pretty richly red:

Really neat. (And impossible to make out in these pictures ;P)

Depleted uranium in Iraq

A 5-year-old Iraqi boy will return home Sunday after undergoing treatment for leukemia, which he is believed to have contracted from depleted uranium used in Iraq war (sic), the boy's mother and Japanese supporters said Wednesday.

When Sean and I were in Japan, there were protestors making a big deal about the depleted uranium. Sean laughed and told me that "depleted" means "not radioactive", and that there was no chance of anyone getting hurt by radiation.

Are the Japanese overly sensitive, understandably, due to what happened in World War II? Or is Sean wrong?

Another Zuma post

An anonymous person kindly informed me this morning (what's with Blogger not putting the date on comments?) that I could get a lot more points if I beat the game by going through from level 1-1 all the way to the end, and that it took about 3 hours.

Well, I actually finished up doing that yesterday afternoon! And it did take about 3 hours. :)

I had seven lives left when it was over, and my final score was 1,312,530. I think I made four combinations and my longest chain was something like 22. Unfortunately I didn't screencap the win, but here's a screencap of my high scores list, if you don't believe me:

It was cool, Sean was watching as I played through the last two rounds, and he was pretty impressed.

I also like that the game translates the frog's "ribbits" after you've beaten it. So now I know what he was saying the whole time! :)

Hey, y'all

Duncan has a website. Just thought you'd like to know.

(Check out those headshots. There's a really, really good one in there. Really.)

An overwhelming wistfulness

Have you ever had a feeling come over you so suddenly that you had to stop what you were doing and just stare off into space so you could digest it?

My computer's regional settings are on Japan, meaning that not only do I have the Input Method Editor (IME) sticking out over my system tray, but also the date displays in Japanese when I hover my mouse over the clock, like so:

If you can't tell, that's in the format 2004-year 10-month 23-date Saturday-day. Those year, month, date, and day things are "counters"...basically little suffixes that quantify what you're talking about. I also have the time set to the 24 hour clock, because they use it in Japan a lot.

This has the effect of giving every day a Japanese connotation; when I hover over the system clock to check what day of the week it is, for example, I have to read it in kanji.

Today I was checking the date. I thought it was the 23rd, but I wanted to be sure so I could date a chat log appropriately. I hovered over and saw the 10月23日 and thought, "October in Japan."

The thought totally stopped me. I lost track of what I was doing. My eyes roamed away from the monitor, unseeing, as I imagined a sea of tiny red maple leaves. How beautiful they must be. I've never seen them in person.

Then I was suddenly sad, because I can't see them, I can't go to Japan right now and look at the changing colors. I can't go back to Miyajima and that exquisite ryokan, where the mama-san called Sean and me "handsome man" and "pretty girl" and wished us a "happy baby", and walk the skinny road down the mountain to see how the lush, verdant forest looks in the fall.

Hail Kentucky, Alma Mater! Loyal sons and daughters sing

When I was about to graduate from UK, I was approached by the UK Student Development Council (I forget how, either someone talked to me or they sent me a letter) in the hopes that I would contribute to the class of 2002's gift to the university. They wanted to get each and every last graduate's money, to make it a unanimous gift.

At the time, I thought it was a great idea, and a nice gesture. I still do, but I think the timing was horribly horribly bad. Why hit people up who are about to graduate or who have already graduated? These people have no money :>

I certainly didn't, anyway; so they wrote my name down and offered to bill me later. When I received the bill, I tucked it in a drawer and then carried it with me to Georgia when I moved. They sent another notice at some point last year.

I believe I finally did send them the $20, but I'm not positive.

At any rate, today I started wondering what exactly the gift was. It was going to be one of those markers you see all around campus (and throughout Kentucky, for that matter) denoting historical events. For example, the historical marker on Administration Drive that tells about Lyman T. Johnson suing for admission to the university was funded by the class of 1999. However, I didn't know what historical fact our marker now presents to campus visitors, nor where it was placed.

Once I determined that they're called "historical markers", though, I hit the jackpot. The KY Historical Society actually has a Historical Marker Database. (Imagine that!) And so I discovered that our marker is at Memorial Hall on South Limestone (or "South Lime", as we always called it). Here's what it says on the marker:

Memorial Hall

Completed in 1929 as a memorial to Kentuckians who died in World War I. The building project was financed by statewide contributions. Rosters of the deceased are mounted on the interior walls. The building has become a symbol of the University of Kentucky. Class of 2002.

(Reverse) The interior contains a fresco, created by Ann Rice O'Hanlon in 1934 for the Public Works of Art Project, depicting historical events in central Kentucky. The Hall and its outdoor amphitheater continue to host many student gatherings, speeches, concerts, lectures, and memorial services. Class of 2002.

So, that's pretty cool. Hopefully I actually sent them the $20.

It's well after 5 pm now.

Dammit.

Two completely unrelated things that are crazy!

One of them is crazy cool, and one of them is crazy huh?

First up, scientists are using living, cultured rat brain cells to run a flight simulator program. This is, in fact, crazy! Did science-fiction ever predict organic AI? (I suppose it isn't really AI...it's more like sticking instinct into a plane. But as the article states, the neurons learn as they go...if sustained, how much might they learn...?)

Secondly, we've got a self-identified "squatter" who broke into another woman's house with a shovel, moved in a washer and dryer and her pet, and changed the electricity into her name. She was even wearing the owner's clothing.

"There's a lot of people saying, 'What?'" [Chief Sheriff's Deputy Stan] Copeland said.

Exactly.

Googling oneself

Jes did it to her boyfriend in her most recent blog post, and then Kevin did it to himself over on the AMRN, so now I want to find some cool websites about me.

Unfortunately, "Heather Meadows" is a common name for subdivisions and apartment complexes, and, apparently, patches of wilderness:

It's a view most people see only during this area's painfully short summer season. On those days, you can drive your car all the way to Artist Point, a scenic viewpoint at the end of the Mount Baker Highway, 56 miles east of Bellingham and about three miles beyond the Mount Baker Ski Area. Those last three miles of road climb through a steep, magical mountain valley known as Heather Meadows.

I'm all about magical mountain valleys, don't get me wrong. And apparently Heather Meadows is quite lovely, and there is a lot of interesting stuff to read about it, like the following:

The good news was that Heather Meadows hosted its first ski tournament in 1930. The bad news was that the lodge burned to the ground in 1931.

But I was kind of hoping to find a person named Heather Meadows.

In order to find people, I'm including other keywords, like "dead" or "obituary" or "news". I'm not having a whole lot of luck, although I did discover that I'm apparently allergic to ragweed (just do a Find, since there are several articles on that page).

Oooh! I was on the Dean's List at the University of Nebraska Omaha in fall 2003! (And apparently I'm from Ralston.)

I also apparently own cats, and live with/am married to(?) a guy named Tim, and have a thing for Alice in Wonderland. (Her/my name's not anywhere on the site, but it is listed in this FAQ from a swing dance(?) mailing list. Powers of deduction, my friends...though that's not really deduction, it's just following links...) And I helped with the site construction of Login_Lore, according to somebody named Tapeworm. (With as few HMs as have shown up, it makes me wonder if this is the same person as miss Alice...)

Actually, now I'm seeing a lot of "Heather Meadows" references pointing to that Alice girl. I wonder if I should change my name...

Wait! I found a different one! She's married to a guy named Mike, and she posts on some site called Zogby Blog, whose archives just froze my browser. Great!

Cutie Honey Live Action PV

I don't really care about Cutie Honey, but the girl in this video, who I understand to be Koda Kumi, is so awesome. She has a website; the current picture doesn't do her justice, and I can't seem to find any good pictures elsewhere, either (though a couple decent ones can be found at Asia's Finest). So, here are some horrible screencaps I took:

These pictures don't do her justice, either. You really just have to see the video. (Ignore the skanky girl--who I'm afraid is also Koda Kumi >_<, though I'm not sure. In any case, she's skanky.)

Japan suffers lettuce shortage--prices skyrocket

Seriously, people have died in these typhoons. Lettuce must be very important to warrant its own article.

I love it when people sigh and high-handedly complain about their Windows PCs

No, really, I do. I mean, I think it's great that so many stupid people feel the need to blame Windows for their deficiencies.

Look, people. If Windows is so horrible, then why aren't you using a different OS? And if you're so smart, why can't you figure out how to keep your Windows box stable and virus-free?

Really, this is just one example of a broader pet peeve of mine: people who lounge around on IRC bitching about things they could change or fix if they would just use their fucking brains. The most annoying thing about those people is what they say when you point this fact out.

"Meh...I'm too lazy."

THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP, DICKWAD!

"Suffrage for foreigners"

I just read an interesting opinion piece by a Japanese professor concerning the right to vote by non-Japanese permanent residents. Check it out. I think I already knew that you can't hold multiple citizenships if you become a citizen of Japan, but that fact struck me as interesting in this new light. I know a guy who is both a citizen of the US and of Italy, and I always thought that was cool.

In any event, letting permanent residents vote in Japan would be a big step. "Foreigners" are marginalized quite a bit, though, so it would really just be the first step of many.

Dumbass!

Blogger had some downtime that I somehow didn't know about, so the true emotion behind this post has been lost. Still, I wanted to record the fact that I was, at one time, very eager to post this.

A pastor says he was "just kidding" when he told airport security he had a bomb, reached into his luggage and pulled out a Bible, declaring, "This is my bomb."

Yes, my children. This is my bomb.

Dumbass!

The hopping...the hopping!

He wanted a bit of company, so he bought a pair of bunnies. He ended up with more company than he could handle. Given the run of the house, the little furballs did what rabbits are known for.

In less than a year, the man, whose name the Louisiana SPCA withheld on grounds that he was embarrassed enough already, had 73 rabbits.

Cute and furry death incarnate! Dawn would be proud.

A pinching, dull, throbbing kind of exhaustion

I went to Firehouse Subs today to get lunch for myself and two ladies at the office, Wanda and Audrey. Wanda had previously called the order in, so I paid for it and then stood around to wait. As the minutes ticked by, I inched closer to the front of the place and finally ended up sitting on a wooden bench.

A long time passed.

The busy restaurant quieted as the crowds thinned and dispersed. People came and picked up their orders and left. They still hadn't called my name.

I was already confused, because I didn't know if Wanda had called it in under her name or mine. I didn't know if I had somehow missed them saying my name. I wondered what sort of priority my order had.

Finally I stood up and asked them.

The guy took my ticket and asked everyone behind the counter, until he got to the girl who'd taken my payment, down at the other end. "It's right there!" she snapped in annoyance, as though it were perfectly obvious that my order would be sitting in a basket near the register, and that no one would have said anything to me about it. "She already paid for it," the girl said in a milder voice.

"So why didn't anyone call her?" the guy asked, sticking the receipt onto the bag and handing it to me.

"Thank you," I murmured, embarrassed beyond belief. I didn't wait to hear the rest of their conversation. I fled.

As soon as I was beyond the doors, I burst into tears. Plopping into my car, I cried and cried. The food had just sat there for almost half an hour. I hadn't known where it would be. I should have figured it out, I thought, because of the signs. But no one called me. And that girl was so irritated. I was just a nuisance to her, an idiot customer with no idea what was going on.

Tears were rolling down my face as I headed back onto Washington Road. Without thinking about it too much, I turned into R. Gabriel's parking lot. I think Mr. Beret--the bearded guy who's always there, and who wears a beret and glasses, and whose name I unfortunately do not know--could tell I was crying. It was pretty freaking obvious. I got myself a nonfat blueberry banana smoothie, and I got a mocha frappe for Wanda. I managed to stop crying, but if I let myself think about what had happened at Firehouse Subs too much, I'd find my face screwing up and my eyes burning.

I wasn't myself back at the office, where I handed out subs and munched mine quietly. I was friendly, but I felt out of place, and I really just wanted to run and hide. Even now, the most appealing place to me is under the covers. I want to go climb into bed at this very moment.

My head feels heavy and hazy and full of painful pressure. My eyes are dry, and I just want to go to sleep and pretend that lunch never happened.

SitRep

Well...

I think I did fine in my interviews this morning.

So I'm optimistic.

I should know something by 5pm on Friday.

:)

1492

No, I'm not referring to Columbus, you brilliant reader you. That's how many calories I've had today! I think that's coincidental enough to stop eating now, and not approach the freakish 2007 calorie limit DietPower gave me.

Seriously, I don't know why it keeps giving me so many calories, but whenever I eat anywhere near 2000, I gain weight. It probably doesn't help that I'm eating fatty foods rather than healthy ones, though...bleh. Changing my eating habits is teh h4rd...

I've got that job interview tomorrow. I'm taking a bazillion copies of my resume to hand out, plus my laptop with some stuff on it that will hopefully make me look cool. (I don't know what that stuff will be yet; working on it now ;P) Anyway, wish me luck.

T-minus one day, three hours, and counting

Due to eating at Shangri-La (Chinese buffet) for lunch, then having two pieces of cake, and then eating some Krystal's for dinner yesterday, I gained back two pounds.

;P

Last night, BoingBoing linked to a cool website about rejected ads. Some of these are great! I especially like this one :> Plot, eh?

(Balance of the Force would have been such a better name...)

This one has me seriously rolling. Dear lord.

Bitch Mode, Activate!

So I started being bitchy the other night, and I seem to keep dipping into the pot of bitchiness. I don't know if I'm stressed about my job interview or if it's the hormones. :P

Pondering my life

I'm pretty happy right now.

I have a sweet handsome wonderful husband, good friends, everything I need to live, some nice things I don't need, a rewarding job, a good job prospect, online communities I enjoy, stuff like that. I've also managed to start doing some good things for myself, like giving up caffeine, and now dieting. Further, I'm working towards being able to have children by going to the doctor and undergoing hormone therapy.

However, there are still places in which I feel deficient.

While writing a comment on Sam's blog this morning, I pretty much laid out my biggest weakness in writing: structure/plot. This has always been the stumbling block whenever I've tried to create anything longer than a post for the AMRN. Short stories, novels...they both suffer from a lack of organization and substance. My characters are great, and their development is not really an issue. But I need to figure out what it is that causes them to develop.

I'm okay at web design. I know enough to get by. But I'm not a web geek by any means. I feel that I would like to learn enough to be able to do all sorts of cool things--and be cross-platform compatible while doing them.

Geek stuff in general, I'd like to know more about. I'd like to be able to dynamically update and export my favorites lists so they would display on my website. (I don't even know if that's possible.) Really, I'd like my website to be the Definitive Repository of Me, easy to update, comprehensive. It's far from that point; I would really need my own custom code to do everything I want. CMSes are great, but kind of cumbersome when you know enough about code to be able to imagine how it could be done better. I feel the same way about the AMRN. There is so much I would like to see done with the site, not the least of which a database that can be referenced both from the boards and from the main page. But I just don't know enough.

I watch a lot of anime these days, and listen to anime music, but I have pretty much halted my study of the Japanese language. I miss it. I want to become as fluent as possible for a non-native speaker learning the language in adulthood, and I know that I am very far from that point. (And while we're dreaming, I'd also like to learn more languages. Mandarin and Cantonese, Korean, French--I've pretty much forgotten everything, Spanish, German. More. I'm interested in what makes languages tick.)

While my diet is successful so far, and I'm feeling better about my health, I haven't been exercising properly at all. I really need to do this. If I am able to conceive, I want to be healthy when I do it. I want to be a mom who is active, not one who sits on the sidelines because she's too tired or too inflexible or too big or whatever.

I haven't been doing FlyLady "properly". I manage, for the most part, to keep my sink clean, and I pick up after myself, but I don't have routines in place for keeping things tidy, and my apartment is covered in a layer of dust.

I'm also not very good about getting lunches and dinners ready every day. This is something I really want to improve on, so that we can save money on eating out, and so we can both eat healthier.

There are plenty of other things I'd like to do as well, and don't.

The commonality here is simply time management. To get better at things, I have to actually do them. Practice makes perfect--or at least, the best you can be. I don't practice anything at all.

When I decide to try something out, I tend to go overboard in the beginning because I'm excited about changing myself. After awhile, be it days, weeks, or months, I burn out, and go back to my normal life. This obviously isn't the way to change myself.

What I need to do is start building habits into my daily routine. Habits like practicing writing, tidying up, studying Japanese, working out. And I need to build in some time for organizing this--what FlyLady calls "Desk Day". I can't do anything if I don't have a plan for it. For instance, "study Japanese" is extraordinarily vague. Study what? I need to think about what is all involved in the study of a language, and work out what sorts of things I can do each day to practice and reinforce my knowledge. But creating a year-long (or whatever) lesson plan can't happen all in one day--or I'd burn out again. So I need to make a date with myself to "plan how to study Japanese".

I don't want to look back at this part of my life someday, like I now look back at my high school and college days, and think, "I had so much time then. Why didn't I use it for anything?" I want to learn and better myself. But I need to make a plan.

The best idea is to add routines gradually. My current evening routine is:

1. Clean up dinner dishes
2. Start dishwasher
3. Brush teeth and change into nightclothes
4. Set out clothes for next day

My current morning routine is:

1. Get up
2. Weigh myself and put weight into DietPower
3. Take vitamins and hormones
4. Take shower
5. Put on clothes
6. Eat breakfast
7. Sit around online until it's time for work

I don't have an after-work routine, and, as you can see, the dishwasher just gets unloaded whenever I feel like it :> I also don't have a specific time of day to do laundry. (I'm doing it all right now--yuck.) I'd rather have a time of day to do laundry, and just do a load every day it was necessary. In other words...break the job down into more manageable chunks.

The dishwasher, laundry, and exercise are big priorities right now. If I have a time that I'm supposed to do things, I think I would be more likely to do them; rather than just thinking "Yeah, I really should exercise sometime", I'd be thinking, "Oops, it's time to exercise!"

So! I'm going to work on following these routines next week:

Morning

1. Get up
2. Weigh myself and put weight into DietPower
3. Take vitamins and hormones
4. Take shower
5. Put on clothes
6. Eat breakfast
7. Unload dishwasher
8. Set out Sean's lunch bag

After Work

1. Do a load of laundry
2. Walk around apartment complex for 30 minutes
3. Plan and start dinner

After Dinner

1. Clean up dishes
2. Make Sean's lunch for tomorrow
3. Load and start dishwasher
4. Shine sink
5. Brush teeth and change into nightclothes
6. Lay out clothes for tomorrow

That's all I'll ask of myself. Tuesday will be a little different since I have a job interview instead of work, but I'll treat the interview as though it were my job and adjust accordingly. This will get me used to taking care of the dishes and laundry and start me on some simple exercise. Hopefully it'll work out well.

Once I'm used to this routine, I'll start adding in the rest of the stuff, like menu planning, grocery shopping, cleaning and the big stuff: practicing my writing, web design, and Japanese.

I want to improve myself, and I don't want to just burn out again. Hopefully I'm starting small enough.

Health update

I haven't exercised lately at all, but I've been sticking to my diet. I feel like I keep being allocated way too many calories to eat in a day, and I don't end up eating them all, usually. (Today, for example, I'm allowed 1902 calories. That's kind of scary.)

I figure I won't worry about trying to match their calorie limit, as long as I don't go over. That was Sam's advice, and I dunno, I tend to trust Sam ;>

My weight has gone down another half pound since yesterday, meaning my total weight loss since October 3 is 7.5 pounds. That's pretty good :D

Dr. Chudgar had me do some labwork at Mullins, and I told Mom what the out of range numbers were. She said that it's not too bad, that I seem to have some allergies. She also said that my cholesterol and lipids could stand to go down, and she suggested eating oatmeal and sushi. I'm game for that :D

I'm going to be finding a regular practitioner soon, and set up some kind of introductory appointment with him/her, so hopefully I'll get more advice then.

After I get that out of the way, the next thing I want to focus on is finding a good dentist.

Hopefully I can get Sean to go to the doctor and dentist, too.

Congratulations, Mr. Lucas

Well, this is nice.

Assuming Episode III rocks (please, Episode III, rock!), AFI will have set themselves up to look brilliant and discerning.

Honestly, Lucas did change our lives with Star Wars, and he has changed the film industry for as long as he's been involved in it with his search for cutting-edge special effects techniques. I don't begrudge him the award.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: SCIENCE RULES

Small amazing things happen all the time. For instance, right now we've got scientists who are altering bacteria to cause it to eat the caffeine right out of a coffee plant. (Is that cool or what?)

But I would have to say that the coolest science news I've heard recently--perhaps ever?--is the development of magnetized-beam plasma propulsion, which could presumably get a mission from Earth to Mars and back in 90 days.

90.

DAYS!

This is so awesome. I love being around to see all this cool stuff happen.

A happy day

Today is good.

I just feel content, and ready to take on anything.

It's at least partially because fall is here.

The leaves are turning, all of a sudden. But what I love the most is the slight crispness in the air, the gently biting breeze. I love that when I left work today and walked outside, it was cooler out there than inside.

I love that I wore long sleeves and didn't feel hot.

I love that I haven't had the air conditioning on in our apartment for two days. I just have the windows open and the fans blowing. I love that I can hear the water fountain in the pond, the ducks quack-mumbling quietly in the grass below my window. I love that gusts of wind blow sweet cool air through my apartment.

I love fall. I love the feeling of change, the feeling that something exciting is beginning. I love the comfort of life getting ready to take a nap. I love that I can fully appreciate the transition, that I'll still be here when the world's asleep, that I'll get to see what the slumbering giant is missing.

I leave you all with this sweet fall picture of my nephew Logan. (Click for the enlargement.) In Kentucky, they already get to wear jackets!

O'Reilly update

Bill O'Reilly says that this sexual harassment suit against him is part of an extortion scheme in which Mackris and her lawyers attempted to get him to pay them $60 million.

I hear big numbers like that a lot, so I didn't really pause the first time I saw the figure. It was only after awhile that it really sunk in.

Sixty.

Million.

Dollars.

Supposedly that's what they're asking for in the lawsuit, too, though I can't confirm that anywhere.

At any rate, AJ told me about this earlier, but I was waiting until I found a decent article before posting about it. Here's one, from MSN.

As far as I can tell, thesmokinggun.com does not have a copy of O'Reilly's complaint. However, Matt Drudge does, and here it is. (Is there a particular reason why thesmokinggun.com would be uninterested in O'Reilly's countersuit? Hmm.)

Of course, I have no idea who's telling the truth here. AJ says that the purported O'Reilly quotes from Mackris' suit don't sound like anything O'Reilly would say--that O'Reilly's speech is more sophisticated. I don't watch The O'Reilly Factor, so I can't really comment on that, but I do think it's dangerous to assume that how someone speaks on a scripted television show is how they will speak casually.

The idea that a woman would lie about this, would write pages and pages of allegations that appall the reader and garner her the sympathy of all women, would use sexual harrassment--a serious and sickening issue--in order to make some money, is despicable. And the idea that a man would do this to a woman, would ignore her protests and force his way into her private life, using her as a sex toy, stringing her along with promotions and raises and all the while threatening to ruin her, is also despicable.

So no matter who's lying here, somebody is despicable, and I hope the courts can ferret out who it is.

haha pwnd

This Croatian bank teller rules.

Vibrators! Plus, my conscience appears

I thought I'd embrace sexuality with my followup post, and point out two items that are presented as being for children, and yet...somehow...are not.

Of course, the previous post has me thinking a lot about sexual harrassment, so I wanted to ask my little readership (that's not a crack about the size of your genitalia!) if you think I should have a separate section for more "profane" things.

When I was younger, I was on a friend's email list. He used to send out really funny jokes, but he also sent out sexual ones. At the time, I wasn't very open-minded, and the jokes really bothered me. I asked him if he could make two separate email lists, one for sending regular jokes, and one for sending everything. He said that was too much of a bother, and that it wasn't his job to protect his readers from the real world. I replied that it wasn't his job to shatter his readers' innocence, either, and that if he truly considered me a friend, he would consider my suggestion.

Of course, I'm pretty sure most of the people who read this site aren't "innocent" and don't really give a flip, but I don't want to bother anybody :/

This is horribly disgusting and scary

When I first started reading this, I thought, "It's no big deal, he's just being a little too friendly. I've had weird discussions with people before where they go a little too far and then realize it and stop."

But then it just kept going, and going, and going, until he was calling her up to aid in his masturbation. I don't know why she didn't just hang up on him. I guess she was scared of what he might do to her and her career. But I'm sure it was humiliating to be granted all these perks and raises by a man who thought of her as a masturbation aid.

I mean, this might all be a lie. Andrea Mackris might have sat at home and scoured the web for badly-written sex stories, then compiled them all into her testimony.

But it also might be true.

And that really bothers me. Do men not understand that women feel violated by this? Does this sort of thing happen a lot?

I'm into sex, and sex stories, and fantasies, and things of that nature...but if someone's uncomfortable with it, I'm not going to keep banging away at them for my own pleasure. Especially not if I'm in a position of power over them.

I can see how that position of power would make sexual domination very appealing, though.

Pretty disturbing :/

I've discovered websnark.

And he is teh funnay!

Understanding people are necessary to perpetuate assholes in the species. And assholes are necessary for the good of the breed as a hole because without them, we are forced into introspective self-examination of the kind that eventually leads to the kind of extended Disney Theme Park existence that Jean-Luc Picard talks about so longingly in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Admit it, after you got finished having sex with supermodels on holodecks, you'd get bored out of your skull in the Federation.

eheheheh.

I gained that pound back again ;P

I've been involved in some interesting discussions over on Luke's blog lately. I'm not sure if I want to go so far as to write full-blown posts here about any of the topics, but I may. They are all three--the environment, writing/art, and religion--pretty interesting (and combustible) topics.

I'm really glad I've found Luke's blog. I feel like I've stumbled across an enclave of thinkers. It's nice to be welcome there.

A disturbing possibility

I thought this was definitely worth looking at. I'm not trying to incite panic or anything. Just keep your eyes open until after the election.

I BEAT ZUMA

Of course you realize that the next step is to...beat my high score x_x

Why do you keep giving me more calories, DietPower?!

Today's calorie allowance is 1713! Doesn't that seem ridiculous, in a weight-loss scenario?

I have 742 calories in my "bank", meaning I've eaten 742 fewer calories than I've been allowed since I started on the 3rd. Is DietPower trying to get me to eat them? Or what? You'd think, once it noticed I was eating less, that it would match the allowance to what I was eating...unless it thinks I'm starving myself...

Maybe if it knew how tall I was it would realize I don't need that many calories...

I'm perplexed!

In other news...

I have several in-person job interviews (for the same job, on the same day) coming up next week. Wish me luck!

"Inez Tenenbaum: too librul for South Carolina."

"Just look at what Tenenbaum did as South Carolina's Superintendent of Skuulz."

Yes, I've heard this radio ad way too many times.

I think the narrator's accent is hilarious.

Recovering from Hardee's; my back!; and hormones

Quick note: the previous post finally published this morning! Yee-HAW. Now, you can all pretend that you were able to read it last night, when I wrote it ;P

My diet is going okay. DietPower is giving me more calories than I feel I deserve...but I haven't been exercising much, so maybe DietPower thinks it has to allow for my total caloric intake (if I were exercising, the exercise would earn me some extra calories, leaving DietPower free to lower my allowance to balance). At any rate, on Sunday night we had Hardee's for dinner, which miraculously fit into my calorie limit...but Monday morning when I checked my weight I was a pound heavier ;_; So I tried to be better yesterday, and that, according to this morning's measuring, brought my weight back down to the "lost 6 pounds" point I was at previously.

My "projected weight" in DietPower keeps going down, which is a good sign that I'm on the right track...right now it's still well over my goal weight, but as time passes and DietPower gets accustomed to my eating habits it should be able to make a more accurate prediction. And, hopefully, if I do my part, I will be at my goal weight by this time next year!

I'm not actually sure if my goal weight is the correct weight for me or not. When I was 10-20 pounds heavier than my goal weight, back in the teenage years, I thought I was fat. Looking at old pictures now, I don't think that was the case at all. After my hospital stay in 1997-98, AJ hugged me, and then said, "You're thin." Due to chemo-induced vomiting and lack of appetite, I'd shrunk down to about 10-15 pounds over my goal weight. (I gained a lot back as I started regaining my health, though.) When I did Atkins in 1999-2000, I got down to approximately 25 pounds over my goal weight, and that seemed to be fine; I looked pretty good, if pictures are to be believed.

So when I get around that point, maybe I'll be better able to judge. I do know that I'm not interested in being a stick figure. I'd like to stay soft and curvy rather than angular and bony--and if I can keep my breasts, that would be a big plus :> (I know someone who lost a lot of weight due to bellydance, and her breasts seem to have stayed the same size--whoopie!)

I strained my back yesterday at work. Robert finally caved in and rented another office. We got some furniture and other items from a recently-closed bakery, and everything was just sort of thrown into the new room. I rearranged the furniture, then, with the help of my coworkers, moved stuff off the old, rickety metal shelving we were using and into the spacious closet in the new office. We ended up keeping one set of shelves and putting it in the closet, but Don can have the other set back.

We moved a lot of stuff, including an industrial paper cutter that has been the bane of my existence ever since Robert brought it to the office and left it in the middle of the floor. (I wrestled it into the printer table later that same day, and there it has stayed since, unused due to a rusted blade. It was a complete waste of space. But hey--it was free!) Wanda and I carried the thing carefully into the new office and put it on the extra desk.

There are three desks in there: a large executive style desk, which will be Robert's; a slightly smaller standard desk with drawers; and a tiny little workstation-style desk. None of them have hutches, so there's ample workspace. Robert's desk was arranged towards the rear of the office, facing the door. As this was a good place for it, I only made a minor adjustment, then pivoted the desk with drawers into parallel along the front wall of the room--rather reminiscent of how Robert and my desks were in the original office, back before we got all the extra stuff. The little workstation matches Robert's desk, and it actually shoves up underneath the lip of the executive nicely, so I put it there, towards the wall. It serves as extra workspace for Robert, the person who'll sit at the front desk, or both.

We also got a new (to us) file cabinet, which fits perfectly behind the closet door. From Robert's desk, looking towards the office door, the closet is to the right. The door swings open towards the back wall of the office. I was able to slip the file cabinet in between the closet and the back wall. You can't see the filing cabinet from the office door when the closet is open.

Organizing all the stuff from the shelves was a chore, but Tammy, Wanda, Audrey and I got it done. Tammy also did something that may get her into trouble--she went through Robert's stuff and actually threw some things away. I'm not touching that with a ten foot pole.

The rest of his things--the stuff that was scattered all over the floor, anyway--were dragged into the new office and piled behind his desk. The stuff inside and on top of his current desk was left there, so he'll be able to work when he gets back (we're not sure if the Internet is activated in the new office yet).

Oh, did I mention that Robert is out of town until Tuesday? Because really, this sort of crazy office arranging never gets done when he's around. He always finds something else for everyone to do ;D

I wonder what his reaction will be...

So there was a lot of shoving furniture around and heavy lifting, and later on last night I realized my back was in a world of hurt ;P It's feeling a bit better this morning after a nice hot shower, which is good.

I got up at 5 instead of 6 today, and wouldn't you know, I feel so relaxed. I should definitely resume my old schedule.

In more health news, I started taking estrogen and progesterone yesterday. I'll be taking the estrogen continually, and the progesterone for 10 days. After 10 days, when I stop the progesterone, I should have a period. This is "hormone therapy".

I'll go through six menstrual cycles--six months of therapy--to see if my body will start ovulating on its own. The therapy is like a kickstart to the ovaries. If I have any irregular bleeding during the six months, that could mean I've already started doing things on my own, at which point I'll tell the doctor and probably stop hormones. If, after the six months, I don't continue having regular periods, we'll do another six months of therapy. So we're looking at what could be as short as a few months to as long as a year and a half before we really know anything.

There is a marginal, slight, virtually nonexistent chance of getting pregnant while on hormone therapy. I wish the doctor hadn't told me that :>

Crazy things going on in the world

It's like something out of a cartoon! Remember that episode (of Freakazoid!?) with the supervillain (Guitierrez? The Internet tells me nossing!) in low-security prison, with waiters, drinks, cell phones, and a huge golf course? Drug smugglers in the Phillippines are living the dream.

Support our troops! Yes, support our troops, and their Constitutional right to have public sex at the Alamo.

I recently watched an episode of Africa on PBS that told of a tribe living in what seemed to be an oasis; they had a very interesting cooperative relationship with a family of crocodiles living in the water. The village shaman/butcher would feed the crocodiles, and in return, the crocodiles didn't attack the humans. Interestingly, while they were well-fed and reproduced regularly, the crocodiles' population stayed stable. It was really kind of neat.

In Australia, however, where symbiosis of man and nature isn't quite as complete, crocodiles must endure the occasional inevitable granny attacks.

Ah, if only this kid had remembered what Smokey the Bear used to say. (I'm sure there was something about spark arresters in one of those educational films...)

And there you have it.

I'm in the mood to search for Freakazoid! episodes on the Internet now :D

[I've been trying to put this post up for almost 40 minutes now. I don't know why Blogger's having so many problems lately, but it's really starting to get on my nerves. Oh well, whenever it publishes, it publishes. ;P]

May as well add this one, since I can't seem to actually publish this post. Ron Jeremy was goatse'd! And it's not really all that spectacular! But I guess it's funny.

Singapore: We'll show you, Malaysia! Your scorpion woman can't top this!

"I'm on top of the world right now, because everyone's going to know that I can shove more than three burgers in my mouth!"

Yes, Ezra, we're all very proud.

Monitoring English borrowings

This was the first I'd heard of the National Institute for Japanese Language, which at first blush I assumed to be similar to L'Academie Francaise. It appears, though, that rather than purifying for purification's sake, NIJL seeks understandability across age groups. So, borrowings that cannot be understood by senior citizens are purged from the official language used in government publications, broadcasts, etc. (I'm not sure how far this purging is enforced.)

However, this purge seems to be only one of NIJL's many functions. Primarily, they seem to be linguists!

The things they've done sound remarkably like things I'm interested in studying. Look at that table of contents! Wow!

I randomly picked this summary as an example (II.2.6. Japanese Homonymy and Its Problems, 1961):

It is said that there are many homonyms obstructing communication in modern Japanese. The degree and characteristics of the obstruction are not uniform, however, the purposes of this study were to determine the real degree to which the semantic ambiguity of homonyms occurs, to analyze the factors working to distinguish homonyms, and to see what problems are encountered in the promotion of communication.

There is considerable ambiguity in some homonyms and not in others. We therefore classified homonyms first, laying down the following criteria: (1) sociological differences, (2) grammatical differences, (3) idiomatic or non-idiomatic, (4) differences in tones, (5) productivity, and (6) frequency.

Besides these characteristics of homonyms themselves, the discrimination of homonyms is influenced by the users’ knowledge. On this point we made an experiment using students of high schools and universities. We found that all homonyms can be discriminated to some extent either by characteristics of the words themselves (for example, part of speech, idiomatic usage, productivity, word-construction, etc.), by phase differences, or by context. It was also made clear that few homonyms except homonymic synonyms have no clue of discrimination. It was also established that the problems of homonyms greatly depend upon the readers’ age and experience.

I'm going to save this pdf and start reading it. This is fascinating. I sort of doubt that the full works are available in English, but I'm definitely going to look into it.

Predicting the results of the presidential election

Did you know that there are two ways to determine who will be the next President without looking at poll numbers? Yes! It's true!

First, you can watch the Washington Redskins play against the Green Bay Packers this Halloween.

Second, you can check how many Halloween masks of each candidate were sold.

These methods are time-proven and highly scientific. Plus, they're absolutely realistic, as they don't bother with third party candidates at all.

Caveat: There's no word yet on how advertising for the Halloween masks will have an effect on the outcome (especially since there is a "cast your vote! buy a mask!" link on the page). Due to that inconsistency, I put more faith in the Redskins game as a predictor.

Why can't third party presidential candidates participate in the debates? Why aren't they covered by national media?

In 2000, I voted for libertarian candidate Harry Browne (look at how many presidential candidates there were in 2000!) because I liked what he had to say. Nowadays, I find myself liking Michael Badnarik, for the most part, but I'm afraid to vote for him because then a candidate I really don't want in office might be elected. The main reason that this is a legitimate concern is not because there's precedent, but because nobody knows or cares about a so-called "third party" candidate. Recent events at the Presidential Debate in St. Louis give us a clue as to why.

These candidates aren't trivial, but they are treated that way by the press and by the structures that currently exist for electing a president. Here's a good (if brief) article from PBS on the subject.

Because I feel that this is totally stupid, I'm going to copy what a Xanga user named Mellifluous posted to her blog this morning.

On October 8th at 9PM, two third party candidates were arrested for attempting to enter the Washington University complex holding the second presidential debate. The candidates, Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party and David Cobb of the Green Party, chose civil disobedience to fight the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). Over half of Americans believe third party candidates should be included, yet politicians continue to funnel public funds into the bi-partisan Commission. S.W.A.T. teams were used to deny the will of the American people while mainstream media ignored this historic event, a shameless suppression of political diversity.

Americans deserve to know about the unjust takeover of our political process. I posted this to take matters into my own hands. If you believe that real democracy thrives on diverse political voices and that it's time to use alternative methods to support these voices, post this in your Xanga, profile, or Livejournal, or e-mail it to those who care.

They should have left the pirating to the professionals in Hong Kong

5 [Japanese] arrested for auctioning pirated anime online

It would appear that Dragon Ball is much more popular than Doraemon. I don't think Goku has a train, though...

"We warned you to spell it right, and you wouldn't listen...!"

Thanks to Nate for the title quote, referring to the following ZOMG headline from Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough.

U.S. nuke city to correct Einstein misspelling

In the UK, they use plural verb inflection when talking about groups, e.g., "Nato have come to a resolution" instead of "NATO has come to a resolution". Think about that, and then you'll see how I was interpreting that headline.

And then you'll get Nate's joke!

Yahoo! discovers Oto-hime

The weird devices on the walls of women's bathroom stalls in Japan have been around at least since March of 2003, and I believe I saw some in 2001, but Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough has only recently picked up on it.

I kept setting it off by accident in the bathroom of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. What's making that canned flushing noise? I'd wonder, frantically twisting around. Finally I spotted the motion sensor, right next to my left arm. Even after finding it I couldn't help but set it off, so I gave up and let it keep making noise.

At the time, I had no idea what its use was, and I kept wondering if I was messing something up. It was only later that the thought occurred to me that it might be there for privacy.

Went over my calorie budget a little yesterday.

I wouldn't have, if I hadn't decided "What the hell, I can't keep going under my limit" and eaten four spoonfuls of...vanilla icing ;P

I've lost 2.5 pounds so far on this diet lifestyle change. That's not really amazing; you typically lose 10 pounds the first week of any change to your diet. It's what happens after that that's critical. I'm still happy to see the numbers go down, though.

My back has been killing me again lately. I guess the pain comes and goes. For awhile there I was feeling fine. Oh well.

I got my voter registration card in the mail yesterday. Whee.

You don't know the power of the Dark Side.

"Thank God nothing happened to the victim," Dearmas told the TV station. "We are very fortunate for that."

"But things could have been much worse," he added, possibly considering the awesome power of the Dark Side.

This article (thanks, Shade) is just full of horrible jokes.

Tipsters are urged to call the Osceola County Sheriff's Office, and maybe Obi-Wan Kenobi as well.

Yeah, what's Obi-Wan going to do about it? Keel over?

I could have sworn I posted this before...

...but maybe I didn't. Maybe I didn't want to steal the original poster's thunder (whoever it was who made this brilliant picture).

In any case, I can't find a good link to it, so I'm going to archive it here, for use in thwapping bad spellers.

ROUGE LEADER!

I want to be important.

This should be obvious to anyone who's read my journal for any length of time.

But things keep happening to make me feel unimportant.

It's only logical that a person would be more interested in a love interest than in a friend. Love interests are far more exciting.

But I'm still jealous as all hell.

I've lost my Zuma mojo

I started back at level 1-1 to try and build up a bunch of lives to use in 13-1. This plan was working pretty nicely until around level 8 or so...then I started dying. By the time I made it to level 12, I was down to the same number of lives I would have normally had if I'd just started playing on 12-1. :P I lost those quickly, and now I have the option of either starting over, or just trying to beat my way through 12 and hope I can somehow pass 13-1. I've been doing the latter, but so far I've been unsuccessful. I barely make it through 12-1!

The only thing I can think of that has psyched me out about this, and that fits the timing, is the fact that my coworker, who took up Zuma recently, has already beaten 13-1. Now I go into it with the opinion that since I've been playing level 12 for months, I should be able to beat it easily. And that's just not the case.

My shots have been sloppy, and I think my tactics are distracted. I think it must be because I feel like I'm in a game of catch-up.

I tried not to let it concern me when she told me she'd beaten the game. I congratulated her, and I seriously didn't think I was letting myself fall into jealousy. But I've been sucking at the game ever since...so that's probably all it is.

It's pretty ridiculous to be crippled like this over a game.

"Did you record everything you ate that day?"

DietPower nagged me this morning because I only had 1138 calories yesterday. (1138!) I would have eaten more, but I couldn't have breakfast due to some labs that had to be taken after work. So I didn't eat anything until around 11 or 12, which is when I had some rigatoni leftovers. After that, I sat around drinking water until, bored, I took a nap. And after that, I went to Mari's, and we went for that hour-long walk that burned (apparently) 315 calories. Finally I made it home and marinated some salmon, jury-rigged a pan to broil them in (I put aluminum foil over a rack that is evidently supposed to be used for a roast, and placed it in a 9x13 pan), and steamed some brown rice.

That really was all I ate yesterday. So biiiiiiiiiiiii da, DietPower.

I'm looking forward to seeing the numbers when this program has enough data to make a meaningful projection. I'm also wondering what's up with my metabolism. I really have no idea what "metabolic rate" means (it's 2418, from the current data). According to DietPower's website, it's

The rate at which your body burns calories. The faster your metabolism, the more you must eat to maintain your weight.

2418 seems like a big number, but I have nothing to compare it to.

Anyway, I don't want to get into the habit of undereating. That will lead to burnout, I'm sure. If I'm not hungry, I won't eat, but I was ravenous this morning when I couldn't have breakfast. So, I'm going to have breakfast now.

Health update

I haven't really felt like blogging anything in particular lately. Not sure why. Then again, "lately" hasn't really been all that long.

At any rate, my blood pressure was 115/90 this morning. The top number, the systolic, seems to have been steadily decreasing. I'm wondering if I just suck at taking my own blood pressure. Meanwhile, the diastolic is hovering around 90.

Just took it again, and the systolic is now 125, while the diastolic is 85. :>

Mari and I walked for an hour around her neighborhood. It was a pretty good workout. My new Payless sneakers work much better for walking than my Wal-Mart sneakers. (While I was at Payless I also snagged a cute pair of black clogs. They were on sale for like, $7!! I love Payless :D)

DietPower has been working okay, I think. My main problem today has been remembering all the water I've been drinking. It's nice to have a record of that, though.

I have 1389 calories left for the day, and I'm not sure I'm going to use them. Then again, tonight's Asian orange salmon might be costly. Plus I'm going to make white rice, which can really do you in.

Blah, I feel utterly boring today, so I'm going to stop writing :)

Road trip!

I want to see these Barbies.

Mainichi has some of the most...interesting...headlines

More Japanese men prefer sitting whizzes

This article is fascinating.

Toilet researcher Junichi Hirata blames the spread of Western-style toilets on the increasing prevalence for Japanese men to sit on the toilet even while only urinating.

I guess people will research anything...

Sitters have also influenced changes in men's underwear. Where it was once normal to have men's briefs with an opening in the front to provide easy access at times of urination, now less than half the 20 types of men's undies available from catalog clothing seller Cecile Co. offer such access.

Well, that makes it harder to get a blowjob from your secretary under the desk.

I mean...what? Did you say something?

"Men are structurally designed to piss standing up," Chiba Institute of Technology Prof. Yoshiyuki Ueno, who has studied toilets for more than three decades, said.

Does Japan have enough people studying toilets? I propose a study!

Today's health news so far

I'm taking Mari's advice and using DietPower to track what I eat and how I exercise. Also, since the doctor told me to, I'm tracking my blood pressure this week. So:

This morning's blood pressure: 125/90

Let me tell you right now that taking your own blood pressure is a pain. Kelly said that it would be nigh impossible due to hearing your own heartbeat in your ears, while trying to listen for your own pulse. This is not really my problem. My problem is putting the damn cuff on! :>

I'm not going to bother listing what I eat here, because I am doing that in DietPower. However, I will say that right now I am sticking to a calorie limit of 1500 a day. This will change, presumably. (I was expecting it to be less...but the program is taking into account my metabolism, or something.)

After stretching (a combination of kung fu and bellydance stretches), I walked for 22 minutes, plus a 5 minute warmup and a 5 minute cool-down. My new Wal-Mart pedometer says I took 3833 steps. It started getting pretty hot, and my feet are unused to my new sneakers, so I called it quits at 22 instead of trying to go for 30 like originally planned. I may actually need to buy more new shoes, because these seem a little loose. I don't think I can take them back to Wal-Mart after having walked in them :(

I'm thinking about going for a swim, and then doing some laundry, and then going to find new shoes. Mari is going to call me later so we can get together and walk more, or bike. Should be fun :) Last night we went out to Longhorn, which tasted great but gave me horrible nausea. I'm seriously considering just throwing my leftovers away. (They probably wouldn't fit too well into my diet anyway...)

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good, although my feet hurt. I'm thinking maybe I should start checking my pulse before and after workouts, to track my cardiovascular health...

Evan

I dreamed about having a son last night. I spent most of the dream gazing fondly down at his face, kissing his skin, rocking him.

He was a tiny thing, barely the size of my hand, with dark, straight hair and pinched eyes. I don't know what color his eyes were.

I had just given birth to him. It was a total surprise. Sean and I weren't ready; we had nothing at home with which to take care of a baby. The hospital room we were in felt more like a hotel room. Sean wrapped his arms around me from behind as I held the baby and said, "You do amazing things, woman."

Time seemed to work oddly in the dream, so that I actually saw the baby as a toddler before I spent so much time holding him as a newborn. Sean was playing with him and calling him alternately "Robert" and "Junior". Dream-logic informed me that Sean's middle name was Robert, even though it isn't. I kind of liked the idea that he'd come around to the whole "Junior" philosophy, but for some reason "Robert" felt wrong; I didn't like it. I remembered the name I'd thought of recently (real life), Evan.

So, later, in the hospital room with the baby cradled in my hands, when the nurse asked what the baby's name was, I said to Sean, "You wanted to name him Junior?"

"Yeah," Sean said. "Were you thinking about something else?"

"I like Evan," I responded.

Sean didn't think too long about it, he just smiled and said, "Okay." He started to spell it "Evin" in his PDA (he doesn't have a PDA), so I corrected the spelling.

Things really went my way for far too long in the dream...you'd think I would have noticed ;P

But I didn't notice until we started to get to the point of taking Evan home, and thinking about how we didn't have any supplies. It just kept going along the same way, without us moving at all, or making any progress, until suddenly I realized I was sleeping and it was all a dream, and I wasn't holding a baby.

"Evan," I thought, "Evan Evan Evan," but thinking his name couldn't make him real, the tiny little baby with the pink skin and pinched up eyes and glossy brown hair. So I opened my eyes and got out of bed.

The kanji for "face"

About.com's RSS feed sent me an article about the Chinese character for "face" in Japanese. I clicked on it, expecting to see something nice and simple (like maybe a smiley face ;P).

But no. Look at that thing!

顔

I wonder if the complexity of the character means something about the nature of a person's looks.

I must see this movie.

I mean, look at Luke's review. How could The Saddest Music in the World be anything but fantastic?

Unfortunately, it's not playing anywhere :P (I did discover, however, that both Fandango and MovieTickets.com have evil pop-up windows for Surviving Christmas. Gee. Like I really need to see another farce on the holiday season...)

Thankfully, it seems to be on DVD!

I want my Touch!

Central Anime seems to have paused in their subbing of Touch in order to put out Macross 7.

Their version of 7 uses their old scripts, as far as I can tell. I have their original sub, in horrible quality, on CD. In fact, this new version might simply be a rip of their old one. I have no idea. In any case, it's not DVD quality...I saw some of that old VHS flicker at the bottom of the frame.

There's no real point in getting it, especially if Central Anime suddenly finds another series to start on and drops 7 in the middle. I'd rather wait seven years for AiA to finish their sub.

But I've already seen 7, anyway. I want Touch!!! Asshats.

I hate Windows XP

It hides everything I want to find, and forces me to use Wizards to do everything. I have no idea what the Wizards are doing to my settings, and I can't just, you know, access the settings.

*runs off to microsoft.com to see if there's any recourse*