Yuck.

It looks so freaking good in pictures and on the commercials.

Too bad it tastes nasty and the runny sauce dribbles all over everything and it keeps falling apart while you're trying to eat it.

If you'd like a sandwich experience where you have to work to eat mediocre chicken in a sauce that literally stinks, try Hardee's Spicy Buffalo Chicken Sandwich.

I'll just get wings, thanks.

Tidying up

I've made some changes to my sidebar.

In the Links, I have finally gotten rid of my old "Things We Lost in the Fire" Amazon wish list. It's been almost two years! I did, however, move the items from that list that I still want to have into other lists.

I've broken out "Reference and How-Tos" from "Nonfiction", and I've changed "In My Dreams" to "Electronics and Appliances". I've also added my "Games" list, which I'd created on Amazon awhile back but never gotten around to linking.

The wish lists are now grouped according to type, so my list over at Amazon.co.jp is with "Help Me Learn Japanese", "CDs" and "DVDs" are together, all the books--"Fiction", "Manga and Graphic Novels", "Nonfiction", "Cookbooks", and "Reference and How-Tos"--are in a group, and "Games" and "Electronics and Appliances" fall last.

I've also made some changes to Fun Stuff. My Twitter, Ficlets, Dandelife, YouTube, and MySpace profiles are all linked now. I've grouped these with other communities/sites I'm affiliated with. The next group of links are fun Flash videos, then Japan-related stuff, and finally various cool things, to which I've added NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Finally, down in Comics, I've removed Bruno, which is over, Venus Envy, which updates so slowly that I don't even care about the story anymore, and Help Desk, which used to be interesting but is now just "meh", and I don't have time to read "meh" comics. (I don't think the content has really changed...I think I'm just tired of that kind of humor.) I have added Achewood, which I could never get into before but for some reason am finding intriguing now, and Evil, Inc.

I'm more and more wanting to redesign my blog template. I know so much more about web design now than when I first put it together. I'd like to keep the main features--the checkered background, the colors, even the style of the boxes around all the content, if not the boxes themselves. But I think the site could flow a lot better, and I would like to lay out my sidebar in lists. I mentioned before thinking it'd be a good idea to have the search as part of the header, and I'd still like to do that. I'm also interested in creating an archive drop-down up there. Of course, ideally, my design would be achieved through CSS, with none of this table garbage.

We'll see what happens as my ideas congeal. Hopefully this won't go the way of my fabled shift to WordPress.

(Speaking of which, I probably won't make that shift. Blogger has had its issues, but it works for my purposes. I like the fact that I essentially have a backup of my entire blog--the static files here on my server, and the Blogger database of my posts and comments over on their server. Plus, WordPress gets hacked regularly, which means I would have to update my software all the time. Also, one of the main features I found attractive on WordPress is obsolete these days. That feature is dynamic pages, and the reason they're obsolete is that they use too much bandwidth. So, there you have it.)

Reading

I read The Last Unicorn for the first time. I started it yesterday and finished it today.

It was really good.

I particularly enjoyed getting to know more about Schmendrick, and seeing him come into his magic. I was also glad to see Molly Grue perceived as beautiful. I had always thought she was. It was nice that someone in the book also thought so.

I'm glad some of the proceeds from my DVD went to Beagle.

Next up: Snow Crash. Also for the first time!

Day 10

Yes, ten.

Kill me now.

It let off enough yesterday morning and early afternoon that I thought it was over, and then all of a sudden...whoosh.

Yeah, thanks.

Okay, now I really do want to move

To be fair, I'm sure they edited out all the correct answers...but still.

(That one older gentleman who said Hiroshima and Nagasaki were famous for judo-wrestling...shouldn't he know better? I mean...wasn't he alive then? O_o

(I also wanted to die when that guy said Yasser Arafat was the president of Al Qaeda, a suicide group in Israel...and don't get me started on that fake map, and how no one noticed it was wrong!

(Also disenheartening were the responses to the question "Who should be invaded next?" Not just because they were stupid, but because no one said, "I don't think we need to invade anyone.")

Remission

Today, March 25, 2007, is my ninth BMT birthday.

On this day in 1998, I lay in a hospital bed wearing a new pinkish purple Easter dress as my brother's bone marrow dripped from an IV into the groshong catheter implanted in my chest.

It was actually kind of anticlimactic, after the six months of chemotherapy and surgery and pain and vomiting and frustration at not being allowed to go outside. I laid around in bed for two hours and that was it.

They call it a birthday because you're replacing your bone marrow--essentially starting your body over, being "reborn". I had to have all my baby vaccinations again, and it's possible that other things changed. But the procedure was overwhelmingly successful. My body didn't reject the bone marrow, and my immune system had built itself up again in 21 days. I went home and never again set foot in Markey Cancer Center's bone marrow inpatient area.

It's possible that my leukemia was gone before the bone marrow transplant took place. I suspect that the second round of chemotherapy got it, since my tests after that were clean. But we did another round and then did a BMT just to be sure. My particular cancer was rare and my treatment was experimental.

I'd say my doctors made pretty good choices, overall.

It has been a strange nine years, readjusting to normalcy. Some days I forget I ever had cancer. Some days I'm thrilled to be here to experience the world.

Some days I'm still a little angry that the treatments that saved my life took away the one dream I've held constant since childhood.

A large struggle since leaving the hospital has been against the desire to foster my own victim status. Being a victim is very empowering. People have to listen to you. You feel a sense of entitlement. Back in the beginning, I'd manipulate conversations so that I could casually remark about how I'd been in the hospital. I'd downplay it, of course--even then I realized that my experience was far easier than that of many, perhaps most, cancer patients. But usually there was no need to mention it at all. Somehow, I'd always find a reason to.

This was of course a part of my healing process. I'm not saying I should have somehow bounced back immediately. I did need to talk about it. My point is simply that there comes a point when you're saying the same things over and over and not getting anywhere. I've seen that happen plenty of times in my life, but I absolutely refuse to allow it to mire me in victimhood.

No matter how good it feels to be a victim, it ultimately keeps you unhappy. You need the euphoria you feel when someone takes an interest in you, and as time passes and the immediacy of whatever made you think like a victim fades, so does other people's interest. You sense that, and it makes you feel worthless. And you have a few choices. You can continue to desperately milk the original situation; you can come up with a new situation to victimize yourself; or you can get the hell over it and find a proactive way to get noticed.

It's possible that without Sean's influence on me early in my recovery, I would have wallowed in my victim status for years. I will always be thankful that he came into my life when he did.

I now have one thing that still makes me feel like a victim. It was especially bad towards the beginning of my marriage to Sean. That is, of course, infertility--the damage done to my ovaries by chemotherapy. I have for the most part come to terms with the possibility that I may never give birth to my own child. But it does still hurt me when people ask if I'm planning on kids, or when I don't have a period or when my period is strange and I decide to take a pregnancy test. I'm obviously not completely over it.

But I won't be a victim of this, either. I am the one who decides how my life is going to be, and I have decided that I am going to do the best I can to learn and grow and experience the world and people around me. If children someday factor into that, adopted or otherwise, then great...but I've decided that my life paradigm needs to shift. So I probably won't be a stay-at-home mom who gardens and cooks healthy dinners every night and takes the kids out on fun trips...so what? I can choose to do any number of things that make me happy. Just because one door closes doesn't mean there aren't others to choose from.

I can also make the conscious choice every day to think about all the good that has come into my life.

So it's my bone marrow birthday. The anniversary of my rebirth. A day I will always remember, and a day on which I typically find myself looking back and evaluating and ultimately looking forward.

I hope I've grown.

I don't want to go so far as to say that someday I will stop observing this day, but I am committed at least to not letting this day, and the history behind it, define me.

For the love of all that is good and pure in the universe, stop saying "Huh"

"Huh" is the absolute worst word in existence.

Please. Stop using it in your dubs.

Try "Hmm?" or "Eh?" or "Gnah?" or "Err..." or maybe just a slight intake of breath. Something.

And while you're at it, how about not replacing music or changing character names? Yeah, thanks, that'd be great.

(I have to admit that dubs are getting better. They still suck, of course, but they are getting better.)

I have no friends!

Now that Brooke is gone, who am I supposed to drag along when I get free tickets to stuff?

I'm going to Quartetto Gelato tonight at the Imperial, and of course I have two tickets, but I can't think of anyone to invite!

I did ask Wes, but he had play practice, and I tried Mari, but it was way too short notice.

I'm so exhausted right now I don't even know if I want to go, but I've been looking forward to it for weeks.

So blah. I guess my purse will have its own seat.

Either that or I could randomly give it to a stranger. But I doubt I will see many other people attending the concert by themselves.

;P

Edit: I'm still at work at 7:55, and the show starts at 8...so I just called the Imperial to tell them they could sell or give my tickets away to someone else. They seemed to appreciate that, which is good.

I'm feeling a little poopy. Just need to get done here and go home and change into my nightclothes and veg out with my Initial D First Stage DVDs.

She says I'm visiting her in July though

I went to Brooke's old apartment during my lunchbreak to spend a little time with her. Right about now she should be at Augusta Regional Airport, getting ready for the first leg of her transcontinental trip home.

While I was at the apartment I noticed she had a tiny Magic 8 ball sitting above her stove. I picked it up, and, stupidly, I asked, "Will I ever be able to have children?"

There was a big blue glob in the way, so I couldn't see the whole message. The last word was "Doubt".

"Will I see Brooke again this year?" I asked.

The reply appeared to be "Count on it", but I just checked a list of standard Magic 8 Ball responses, and the only one like that in the list is "Don't count on it".

The list does include "Without a doubt", though.

Want to read something totally stupid?

I am completely flabbergasted by this so-called scientific evidence of Creation.

Bowling Green, KY, March 23, 2007 - In what has turned out to be the most controversial document since Charles Darwin penned the "Origin of the Species", "Episteme Scientia-The Law of All that Is," suggests science has been proving God's existence, all along. The abstract states, "An examination of the sequential mathematical and experimental dual proof of the Genesis record of origins underlying the institution of all that is in the universe-from waves to matter to the mind." According to the author, the Scientific Method has been subtly proving the Genesis cosmology in every classroom around the world for more than 450 years-in spite of the fervency to promote evolution and big bang theories.

Known online as "the kid," the author, Samuel J. Hunt, a student at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, boasts of being able to prove all matter was spoken into existence just as Genesis records. The kid says it's as easy as 1, 2, 3. First Order Logic states: if A=B, and B=C, then A=C. This means that if the premises are true and equal, then the conclusion must be true.

1) There is a mathematical and physical relationship between all (a) matter and (b) frequency,

2) There is a mathematical and physical relationship between all (b) frequency and (c) sound.

3) Therefore, there is a mathematical and physical relationship between all (a) matter and (c) sound.

By first order logic (the premises 1 and 2 are confirmed by all physics and chemistry to be true and equal) it can be shown that matter not only has a mathematical relationship to sound but a physical one as well. This proves that God did speak all things into existence; and the body of every living creature from bacteria to human, as all perform this process millions of times per day through their senses, is living proof.

Samuel says that his document is the mathematical and empirical proof that the bible can and is compatible to and verifiable by science on levels that are only just now beginning to be recognized. The proof also answers dozens of other scientific, theological, and philosophical questions. Hunt says, "I'm not here to argue for evidence of this or that. It's important, but that's like putting God on trial and allowing people to believe whatever they want. My document proves the Genesis record as the only infallible scientific explanation for our origins." According to Hunt, his 84-page document holds the missing factor in the quest to find the Grand Unified Theory of Science.

Even now, the Darwinists are taking up arms. After reading only a short quip of Hunt's wisdom they're talking about "a good book-burning," "paradigm shifts," "eating crow" and the threat of losing more scientists "to the other side." The paper's genius lies in its simple, yet profound integration of several mathematical systems, scientific experiments, and observable phenomenon that happen all around us every day. Hunt's book is available for purchase on-line at www.scienceprovescreation.com.

About Samuel J. Hunt: A Third year student at Western Kentucky University majoring in Pre-Physical Therapy and Nutrition/ Dietetics. Funds created from the sale of the book will support further research and experimentation and the dream of opening a rehabilitation clinic after finishing his education.

Let me just pluck out the phenomenally ridiculous leg upon which his entire argument stands:

By first order logic...it can be shown that matter not only has a mathematical relationship to sound but a physical one as well. This proves that God did speak all things into existence

A proposed physical relationship between matter and sound proves that God spoke everything into existence? O...M...G.

I'm half-tempted to ask for a review copy of his book, just for laughs.

Being pissed off makes me so tired

I've spent the majority of the afternoon in a raging fury, no doubt stoked by the flames of PMS. (Is it actually PMS during your period, or just beforehand?) Setting the influence of my hormones aside, I did have genuine reason to be upset.

I was eventually able to solve the problem to a reasonable degree, but not quite to my satisfaction. Still, things are better than they were an hour ago.

Now I'm coming down from the adrenaline rush that fueled (or was fueled by) my anger, and I feel like curling up and taking a nap.

However, there is news to get online! And so I must get to it.

T to the M to the I

You know those T-shirts that say "I don't trust anything that bleeds for three days and doesn't die"?

I hate those.

Not because the joke isn't funny. It's funny, all right. No, the reason I'm pissed is because my normal periods have always been far longer than three days.

Man. Three days. That would be fabulous.

So apparently this is a real, full-blown period, achieved without the influence of hormone supplements. I've had cramps all morning and I still feel bloated. The blood (ewwww, I know, but I told you this was TMI) is bright red, and this is not a trickle.

There was a time when I thought I would love to have a regular period again naturally. I thought that the knowledge that I was "normal" again would supercede the discomfort.

Obviously I was delusional.

I was thinking this morning "At least I'm not all hormonal and emotional like I used to get on my period," but apparently thinking that was all it took ;> So now little things are starting to irritate me. Here's hoping the Midol will help.

Ah, the chalky taste of Midol. It's been years.

Blarg (TMI)

It's one of those days. Not quite awake. Didn't sleep enough. Lots to do.

I'm also on a period that has lasted since Saturday, and seems to be getting stronger. I'm not sure when the last one was (may have been January), but I'm still not on hormones. I want to think of this as a good sign, but I also don't want to get my hopes up about anything. It would probably be too much to hope for to even get back to having normally functioning ovaries, let alone a reproductive system that can foster viable eggs.

So I've got cramps, I'm probably bloated (though honestly, how would I be able to tell these days?), and I'm tired. Hell of a way to run a railroad :>

Spring

I met Brooke up at Riverwalk during my lunchbreak today.

Yes, Brooke...the girl who moved to England. She's back to finish up a few things here, like getting stuff out of her old apartment. I'm taking as many opportunities to see her as I can.

I'm glad we went to Riverwalk, because it is absolutely gorgeous there right now. All kinds of flowers and trees are in bloom. Plus, there were rowing crews out on the river, which is always neat to see.

I did take a few pictures (though regrettably none of Brooke and me together), which I'll post eventually. Still working on the previous batch :P

When did picture-taking become work?

So, I went down Observatory Avenue on Thursday like I'd planned and took 50 billion pictures.

It was so beautiful.

Spring is early this year: all the trees are either blooming or done blooming, and the azaleas are out. I strolled down the road and back up Butler Avenue and took pictures of everything.

So...why aren't those pictures online?

My camera does something weird when I don't use its automatic settings. It'll imprint a bright pink or green dot here and there on the photo. My original camera, same model, used to do this too. It could be this particular model, or it could be what happens when digital cameras get old...regardless, the pictures I took on Thursday have those bright spots everywhere.

And so since yesterday I've been working on cleaning them up in Photoshop.

This is pretty boring work, and since I took so many pictures, it's taking awhile. But I've also been slowed down by something else.

It was overcast on Thursday, which is good for getting details in photos but not so good for natural color. So I started messing with Saturation, and wouldn't you know it, the colors came back! I bumped up the Contrast and the colors really popped.

And so I've been doing that with most of the detail shots and some of the others, saving to a separate file.

I'm glad that I am able to take better photos and then edit them to look the way I want them to, but at the same time it's kind of sad that what started out as a fun hobby, one that only required me to point and shoot and upload and caption, has become somewhat laborious.

Then again, I wouldn't be doing the edits if I didn't want to, would I?

Kanon

So, it's over.

On the whole, I enjoyed the series. It was much more entertaining with an engaging lead character (imagine that). The female characters got less annoying as time progressed, too--many of them actually turned out to be interesting!

I'm not sure what I think of the ending. In some ways it was way too happy, but in another way it wasn't quite perfect, so it almost cancels it out. But there's also kind of a contradiction of logic concerning Mai and Ayu that has me scratching my head. After all, Mai is the one with miraculous healing powers. But somehow, all the happy endings manage to occur without her needing to use them. No...instead, it's the power of the wish of the one inside a dream.

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah.

But I guess it was a decent enough way to reconcile all the heroines' stories while finishing off with Ayu as Yuuichi's love interest. She has to be the most important one, of course.

(Still not sure why Mai didn't just turn around and heal Ayu. She pointed Yuuichi in the right direction, and he was able to bring her out of the coma, but Ayu still ended up wheelchair-bound. I suppose this was to make it mesh with the video game, but it doesn't really make sense.)

It seemed to end really fast, though not quite as fast as Yakitate!! Japan did. I guess it just seems weird for shows that string out storylines for awhile to suddenly pack a bunch of information into one episode.

I did like the Sawatari Makoto thing towards the end. It made you wonder. Was she reincarnated as a fox in the past? Or was the fox reincarnated in the past? Kinda neat, even if neither are true and it was just Yuuichi's recollections of the original Sawatari Makoto that shaped how the fox-girl turned out.

In all, I'm glad I stuck with the series. I really enjoyed Yuuichi's character. And I'm glad to finally know where the whole "sad girls in snow" thing came from ;>

SO angry

I hate having to deal with short-sighted, pigheaded, small-minded know-it-alls.

Arrogance is actually something I find very attractive, but only if it's backed up with actual intelligence and knowledge and thought.

People who demean other people and ignore their ideas simply because they don't mesh with what's already being done are slime, and I can't stand to watch them, let alone pretend to like them.

Lies

Okay, I'll admit it: I am a huge Violent Acres fan.

There. It's all out in the open now.

I've wanted to feature most, if not all, of her posts, but up until now I haven't even featured one. I'm not sure why, really. Maybe I didn't feel like getting into the debates that would undoubtedly arise. Maybe I wasn't in the mood to explain why I like her blog. Maybe I was just wussing out for no apparent reason.

The first post of hers that I really, really wanted to share and discuss was the abortion one, which really threw me. In the end, I can't say that I wholeheartedly agree with her--last time I checked, humans couldn't predict the future, despite what some celebrities say, and so how often would a case arise where you know something terrible will happen to a child? But I don't work in social services. Maybe that sort of time comes more than I want to believe.

At any rate, V makes me think, and that's why I read her.

Today she gets into politics, and her laying bare of the hypocrisies within the various groups who lobby in Washington is so near to the frustrations I feel when I try to make political decisions that finally I was moved to write. Maybe I'm still being a wuss--presenting V's opinions when I should just present my own. But she just says it so well:

The Democrats want me to believe that anyone who doesn’t support government sponsored programs that promote a victim mentality (such as welfare and social security) is a cruel, intolerant, selfish asshole. The Democrats want me to pay minorities for past atrocities (Through affirmative action, etc) committed against their ancestors based completely on the color of my skin. If I argue or point out the fact that my ancestors did not even live in America when slavery was rampant, they call me a racist. Should I be against gay marriage but completely supportive of homosexual civil unions, I am a homophobe. The Democrats want me to believe that supporting speech that is hateful strictly based on a person’s constitutional rights is akin to agreeing with the person being the jerk.

I am starting to wonder if ‘Intolerance’ is the Democrat’s big lie. It seems to me that they use that word as a weapon to demoralize people and create social stigma around any idea that is contrary to their own. Excuse me if that doesn’t seem very tolerant to me.

The Republicans want me to believe that anyone who is an Atheist possesses no morals and will someday commit a crime. They tell me that I only resent being spied on because I have something to hide. If I support abortion because I believe it is more merciful to end a life than to bring it into the world unwanted and abused, they accuse me of being a heartless murderer. If I say it is better for a child to be raised by a gay couple as opposed to being completely abandoned, the Republicans say I lack family values. If I insist that school should be a place for education and not religious training, it is obvious to them that I don’t give a shit about the children.

Perhaps ‘Family Values’ is the Republican’s big lie. That phrase is being used to shame the opposition into supporting religious agendas in a country that prides itself on religious freedom. Just because I am not a Christian does not mean that I do not see the value in a strong family unit, nor does it make me a criminal.

The Feminists tell me that men and women who complete the same job do not make equal pay. If true, I agree that is unfair. However, when I make note of the fact that men do not get equal rights in family court, I notice that the feminists are suspiciously quiet.

Is Feminism about equality or superiority? Do they even know anymore?

Some scientists say global warming is a very real phenomenon. They say that unless we act now, there will be tragic consequences for the future. Other scientists say that the Earth has gone through varying climate changes for billions of years. They note the tropical climate back when dinosaurs walked the planet and the ice age that soon followed.

Who shall I believe when both groups hold their hands out for more grant money?

Her post is actually about how everyone lies, how lying is accepted, encouraged, ignored, and forgiven in this country, and how that makes it pretty damn hard to raise a child not to lie. She makes some good points there. But this little bit about political groups was what really spoke to me.

Sometimes, when I get to thinking about all the things that don't seem to work in our political system, I want to just give up and move to another country.

Collaborative fiction

You know that collaborative writing website I wanted to make? Well, I should have known that if I waited long enough, someone else would do it.

Ficlets isn't exactly what I had in mind, but it covers many of the bases. People can not only continue a story or write a prequel to a story, but they can also comment on individual story pieces. Ficlets also does me one better: there can be numerous prequels and sequels to any story anywhere. Multiple "canons". If you don't like one sequel, you can write another. And the navigation is really simple--once you've grokked it you can follow a story thread easily either way.

If you're wanting to write a story with a select group of friends, this probably isn't the solution for you. But if you want to get feedback and inspiration on your writing, Ficlets looks like a great place to play.

Photos up

The photos from my lunchbreak walks yesterday and the day before are up.

March 12: First Blooms

March 13: More Blooms

Buds are opening down Observatory Avenue, which I commented last year was like a garden. Here are last year's pictures. Things aren't blooming quite to that degree yet, but they soon will be! Hopefully I'll go down there today and get some shots.

I need to stop having such gruesome dreams

Just before getting up this morning, I dreamed that Sean had me order him a comic book in which all superheroes from all worlds and dimensions, both DC and Marvel, came together in a climactic battle against a brilliant villain who turned out to be a famous science fiction writer, and each died violently. I didn't want to read it, but of course somehow I ended up doing so. Except when I did, it played out like a TV show rather than a comic.

I remember Wonder Woman was crushed in the hands of a giant, a Clark Kent from another dimension who'd taken another superhero name and costume was tricked into drowning himself, and an unknown superhero was caught in a wire that twisted around him and sawed him in two.

When my snooze alarm went off, I was glad to force myself awake to escape the deaths.

Something similar happened the other day when I slept in, except the dream I had then was far more vivid and disturbing. A crazed man with a baby strapped to his stomach--was the baby alive?--was hijacking a bus, and anytime people responded in ways he didn't like, he'd freak out and wave a huge knife around and pull bloody body parts from children he'd dismembered out of a big burlap sack.

I've made my decision

Today I finally told everyone involved what I had chosen. I can't get into details here because my decision was of a professional nature, but suffice it to say that I am happy where I am, I feel an ownership of what I do, and I am lucky that others appreciate me and fought to get me what I needed.

Before announcing my decision, I felt calm, and afterwards, I spent the rest of the day in a sort of hazy euphoria. There is no doubt in my mind that my decision was the right one, and I am excited about what the future will bring.

If you want details, feel free to ask privately :)

Went for a brief walk

And it was lovely. Things are starting to bloom. I'll have pictures to post tonight.

We have a vine here that boasts beautiful purple flowers with a star/pentagon shape in the center. I brought one such flower and a pine cone in to my office. Not sure how long the flower will last, but for today at least I have a little bit of nature here to remind me that spring is here.

(Now, if only my office wasn't sweltering...)

Crazy drunk "let me just drive through the mall" guy

Because this is the biggest story in Augusta. Screw T-Mobile, I'm all about ramming an SUV through the second floor of Augusta Mall!

He looks pleasant, doesn't he?

What's scary about this is how deftly he maneuvers through the mall, never slowing down, and somehow managing not to careen over the side and fall to the first level.

Miklos says this story was on CNN, and I also heard that Inside Edition came out to film something. (You know your story's worth something when it's on Inside Edition! ;P)

Time to die

Well. All right then.

Not sure why they picked Big Bird for their scapegoat. These days, it seems like Elmo is Sesame Street. When's the last time they made a Big Bird movie?

Regardless, it's nice of MSN to suggest the death of a children's television character, isn't it?

Here's the article. It's by Brockenbrough!

(Thanks to Sean for the heads up.)

Tired

I feel like I have severe bags under my eyes.

Earlier one of the sales guys came in to talk to me, and he stopped abruptly and said, "Are you okay?"

I'm functional. I just feel really tired.

Just now on our show we had a national story about a study that showed people who have irregular sleeping habits tend to eat more; their metabolisms are disrupted. I don't think my sleeping habits are irregular, though...I think I've just been sleeping too much lately. I'll wake up, and instead of getting up I'll go back to sleep, and when my alarm goes off I won't feel at all like getting up. Maybe I'd feel better if I just got up when I woke up the first time.

Then again, it's not like I've felt alert when waking up that first time.

Maybe it's what I've been eating (lots of fast food). Or maybe it's that Big Decision I still have to make--it's looming ever nearer. Maybe it's a combination.

Whatever it is, all I know is I've been feeling like crap for most of the day, for most of the week :>

Raoul

Last night, as I put the Yaris in park and removed the key from the ignition, the interior lights came on automatically, as usual.

"Thank you, Raoul," I said thoughtlessly.

Raoul has been a standard butler name of mine for some time now. It's the name I gave my IV pole back in the hospital.

For a moment I pondered naming my Yaris Raoul, but...nah.

The Puppetmaster

Joe: Way to go, Brian. You managed to get Helen, who you want to go out with, to fall for a guy who turns out to be a pilot so she won't go out with him but with you instead.

Brian: If we were to diagram that sentence...where would you put the gerund?

Joe: I think you know where.

Detective Conan 457 and 458

Okay, don't get me wrong--these episodes were absolutely hilarious, and I loved them.

But Conan made a grievous error that could have cost him not only his own life, but Ran's as well. And it had absolutely nothing to do with the black organization, so I can't even forgive him based on the momentary lapses in judgement that group tends to bring out in him.

How could he have forgotten that he sensed a group of people in the forest? Why didn't he arrange for the police to go there secretly? True, Yamamura-keiji is a putz, but Conan's smart enough to make it work. But instead he went there alone?

Suspension of disbelief is a little strained, here.

But the ending was cool, despite the almost-deus ex machina. I always love it when Ran kicks ass.

Holy crap, it IS possible!

Okay, I admit it: I thought David was full of...something when he said it was possible to fit a bicycle into a Yaris. But he was not wrong!

Yesterday I decided I would try to go biking at the Canal. Adam from work called, though, to ask me a quick question about getting pictures off a camera, and during the conversation he reminded me that it had rained like crazy the day before. I didn't want to get mud all over my tires and thus all over my Yaris, so I was considering going to the Greeneway, but that didn't sound fun at all...so ultimately I stayed home and did laundry instead.

Today I made up for it.

Getting the bike into the Yaris was interesting. First I had to figure out how to fold the seats down. I ended up using the owner's manual, which is good, because there are certain things you have to do with the seatbelts before you fold the seats.

However, one of the instructions in the manual was totally confusing. It said to flip the running board over. Did it mean these two padded areas on top of the spare tire cover? I wondered. No, couldn't be...they didn't have handles or anything to move them off the cover, and they seemed to be stuck there pretty good. Did it mean the cover itself? I flipped the cover over, but nothing really changed. Was I supposed to use the strange curved piece that had been sitting in the very back of the car for no apparent reason? No, it didn't fit anywhere.

Finally I figured out that 1) the weird curved piece was a cover for the hatch area when you have the seats upright, to hide whatever you might have in the back of the car; 2) I wasn't supposed to flip the spare tire cover over; 3) those two padded things on top of the spare tire cover were the running board. I just had to pop them out of place, and then they flipped over and covered the remaining space.

That accomplished, I spread out my childhood blanket and grabbed the Maou out of the apartment.

I decided to try putting him in there without taking off a wheel, thinking that if I needed to remove a wheel, I could just do that when the time came. So I heaved and shoved the bike into the car. It took a little doing, but I was able to squeeze it in and turn the handlebars so that it fit, without taking anything apart.

Here's a view from the driver's side door:

So then, finally, I was off.

I headed down Wheeler towards Washington Road, then turned left. I'm not particularly sure why; I'm pretty positive that's a longer way to go. But you know, everything north of Washington Road is a mess. There's no easy way to get to the Savannah Rapids Pavilion from where I live now or where I used to live. Where I am now is actually more inconvenient--it's probably faster to go to the Greeneway from here ;P I may need to look into going to a different Canal entrance.

At any rate, I turned right on Old Evans Road (again...why? I don't understand my directional choices) and then had to turn around when I realized I was heading back towards Washington Road. I then took a right on Blue Ridge and another right onto Evans to Lock. And that of course took me straight to the river and canal.

I pulled into my usual parking area--the last row, overlooking the headgates--and said aloud, "Well, I made it! Now I guess I can go home."

But I pushed through my tiredness and got the bike out of the car and put air in the tires and headed down the hill and across the bridge.

My purpose was to enjoy an afternoon of biking and photography. I'm not in anywhere near the shape I was when I used to bike the Canal regularly, so I decided that if I made it to I-20, that would be good enough. That was where I'd seen the pretty red trees on my drive, anyway--I at least wanted to get a picture of them.

So I did just that. I biked until I saw something pretty, then stopped and took photos, then biked some more, all the way up to the interstate. There's a hill there, and by that time I was pretty dang tired, so I stopped at the hill, took some pictures of the I-20 overpass, and turned around.

Here are a couple pictures of the trip out:

On the way back, I finally figured out how to take detail shots in low light. It's been nearly six years since I started using the Olympus C3030 Zoom, and only this year have I really started to take advantage of its capabilities. The breakthrough is partially thanks to Dariush, who pointed out the arrows controls at the top right corner of the back of the camera. Who knew? I had never touched them. This is amusing, because I always wonder about people who never try new features in software. I'm always messing around to see what the new stuff can do...but there are some people who are either afraid to touch it or who just ignore it completely because it's not within their realm of knowledge. I didn't realize until today that I'd been doing the same thing with my camera.

In any case, here's the first picture after I realized what those arrows could do for me:

(After making this realization, I sang to myself, "I know the se-cret! Na na na na na!")

Here are a few more pictures from the ride back. I apparently took a lot more pictures on the way back than I did on the way out.

I also went across the new bridge for the first time. The railings are as high as my nose! It leads to a circular area made of stone that has what appears to be recessed lighting built into its low walls. There wasn't anything else there, though. I'm thinking that eventually there will be benches or something, but who knows?

The bridge's location was a good choice. It's right next to the waterfall that Sean and I showed David the first time he visited Augusta. As I crested the hill leading away from the bridge, I immediately smelled it. I'm not sure what that smell is--it's not just fishy, it's almost like a chemical--but it's not entirely pleasant. But as I approached the waterfall, it faded into the background, and I took some pictures.

[Edit: Mystery Photo Guy (aka Randy) tells me that the waterfall is Reed Creek, and the smell comes from the Reed Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, which is upstream. Yum!]

I was going to head back along the path on that side of the Canal, but it was muddy and filled with puddles, so I went back over the bridge and returned the normal way.

On my way back over the bridge, I decided to take one last picture of the big white crane sitting next to it. After all, I thought, if I didn't take this picture, my crane-lover's cred would be nil!

It's a good thing I did, too, because I really like this picture.

When I stopped to take some final pictures of the headgate waterfall--yes, I'm obsessed. We can just say I'm documenting the area for posterity. March 4, 2007: Muddy--I saw a fishing pole bob out from the wall I was leaning against. Craning my neck over, I spotted a man somehow standing on the other side of the wall, fishing.

He's not supposed to be there:

It's kind of cool, regardless. I mean, how the hell does he get there? And how does he get back? But it's also funny, because there is a bona fide fishing dock just down the trail (at the river side of the bridge). Maybe he doesn't know it's there, because it's also new.

More low-light macro "prowess":

It was rapidly darkening and cooling off, so while I lingered slightly for a few pictures near the museum, ultimately I hurried to get packed into the car and on the road.

And that was it for my afternoon at the Canal.

It was great to get back there. I'm sore in the good way. This needs to become a weekly habit.

I'm also thinking of just leaving the bike in the car when I go to work, and biking around on my lunch break. Biking is far more interesting to me than walking, so that means I might actually do it. We'll see :)

Expensive

I am worth $1,366,630 on HumanForSale.com
How much are you worth?

A few things

Does anyone else find it a little...strange that masters.org is built by IBM?

I loathe the phrase "log on to". You only log on to a website if 1) you're on dialup; 2) the website requires registration. Stop using it, people!

I am so tired. I went to sleep around 1 am, only to be awakened by work calling at 4. They asked a silly question and I went back to bed, but it took forever to get back to sleep. Then my boss called as I was trying to sleep in to ask if I was going to update the severe weather from home. Oh. Gee! At first I thought I must be late, so I asked her what time it was, and it was 8:40. Not a bad time to get up. So I did, and updated the severe weather information, and came to work.

I have no place to complain given how many of our people worked overnight to cover the tornadoes and heavy winds and rain. But I'm still tired! ;P

It was beautiful out the day before yesterday. I went for a walk and took pictures, which I'll put up later. Glad I did before the storm!

Every day as I drive in to work I see things blooming along the Augusta Canal and think that I should go there with my bike and take some pictures. I will try to do that tomorrow. The storm doesn't seem to have demolished the trees near I-20, at least.

PS: At first when work called, I didn't recognize the number, so I ignored the call. It went to voicemail. This scared me a little--why would someone I didn't have programmed into my phone be calling at 4 am? And my first thought was that something had happened to my Yaris.

So I got up and opened the front door...and my Yaris was fine. Whew.

My Yaris

It took me a little while to get the pictures off my camera, but here they are.

These pictures were all taken yesterday before work.

A final farewell

"Bittersweet", cliche though it may be, is an apt description of my current mood.

I just signed over the title to the Subaru to an auto body shop.

I told them if they were willing to tow it, they could have it for free. I probably could have gotten some money out of them, according to a coworker, but what price would have been right for a car that meant so much? It was dying, and fixing what was dying would be cost-prohibitive--better to simply buy a new car, which of course we did. But it was in good condition, and it hadn't even crested the 100K mark. That's amazing for a car put out in 1986.

I thought about doing something "pimp" (as 1997 AJ might say) and saving the little Subaru wheel decorations, then giving one to each of my brothers, one to Grandma, and keeping the last one. Really, I still think that would have been awesome. But yesterday, when I stopped by the car to make sure I hadn't left anything in it, I didn't have any tools with which to get them off--if indeed that's possible without taking off the wheels. I don't even know.

Maybe they screw on and off. I didn't even think of that.

And this morning, all I did was arrive, sign the title, and leave.

I did, however, catch a glimpse of the old car on my way out of the parking lot.

And so that will be my final memory of the Subaru, Grandpa's old car, a car that carted me from Kentucky to Georgia and from Georgia to Kentucky countless times, a car as loud as a tractor trailer, a car with an awesome hatchback style and cute grille, a car with a heavy hatch that couldn't hold itself open, a car that ting-tonged at you if you opened the doors with the keys still in the ignition.

I loved that car. And despite how much I adore my new Yaris, I am really going to miss it.