Musings of the Lorekeeper

Today is Heart Day.



The heart outfit wasn't very interesting, so I didn't take many photos of it. But I present you with a bonus photo from last night: Star Sleeping Photo.



Even a starry pillow. :)

Again Jeaux has made me laugh with his creative way of describing things.

When explaining how he felt when he started disliking a book he was reading, he wrote this:

"But then it was like somebody went and took the book out of my hands and replaced it with a midget who wouldn't stop kicking me in the balls. He just wouldn't stop."

Later in the review he wrote this:

"I'm surprised you didn't burn your copy for this. This is like something Paolini would do. I was livid when I read it. It was like that midget who was kicking me in the balls suddenly stopped and then jumped over a shark with skis!"

Ah, the Jeaux, he makes me laugh.

Whee! It's the Wikipedia FIND SHERLOCK HOLMES game!

Here's how you play:

1) Go to Wikipedia.
2) Click Random Article (on the left navigation bar).
3) From there, only using links in articles, navigate yourself to Sherlock Holmes's page.
4) Post your path here.

My random article was country singer Dottie West's 1969 album entitled Makin' Memories.

My path:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makin%27_Memories_%28album%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville,_TN
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Great_Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_of_Great_Britain_and_Ireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes

Unlike basically everyone else I know, I do, in fact have work today; I think I will be the only one who shows up. I don't generally try and type anything coherent pre-coffee, but for some reason I was thinking of this as I fell asleep, so...

HSM characters. Siblings. Birth order. Hm. (Okay, fine, I was thinking about it because it comes up in the fic I'm writing; sue me.)

Presumably, Troy and Gabriella are only children, because we'd probably have seen other Bolton or Montez kids running around at some point in the movies. Similarly, it seems safe to say that Sharpay and Ryan are the only Evans kids. (I've never given a lot of thought to which one was born first, though. Hm.)

Quick thoughts on others:

- Taylor mentions having a sister, in a way that makes it sound (to me, at least) like her sister is older. That always surprises me a bit; Taylor reads very much as an oldest child to me, what with her very obvious drive and focus, and how often she takes on leadership roles. Possibly, then, her sister is much older; like, 10-15 years? At that point, typical older/younger traits might be less pronounced; and she could have younger siblings, as well.

- Chad? We do see at least one scene of his family in the third movie, when they're at dinner with Troy's family; it's just him, his dad, and (I'll go out on a limb and assume) his mom. Personality-wise, he reads as a youngest child to me (outgoing, very loud and attention-seeking), but most often (though not exclusively) in fandom, he's written as an oldest child. (And I absolutely adore fics where he's taking care of younger sibs, so this is neither complaint nor criticism! I'm really curious about why people write him the way they do, though.) (Also, if his siblings are older, they could be in college/out of the house, which would explain why we don't see them in that scene.)

- Kelsi. Middle child. She absolutely screams it to me.

Other thoughts?

Today is Star Day.




I have way too many star clothes. I could have worn like four different outfits in star themes. I could have done like a star WEEK.

Jeaux and I were screwing around last night like we always do, and in a playful conversation whose origin and direction I forget, I suggested he was gay. (This is in the same vein in which he frequently suggests I am a whore.)

So I said he might be gay, and he replied, "That's what Bruce always says."

"Who's Bruce?" I asked.

"My boyfriend."

I love Jeaux.

Today is Fairy Day.




The sock actually displays an angel, not really a fairy. Deal with it.

I went to the doctor on Friday, and they gave me two new prescriptions. Knock on wood, they seem to be helping. I'm coughing less and am able to sleep more. So that is a good sign.

I am heading off to CA early in the morning tomorrow to visit the family. So today I have been trying to finish up some last minute things. There always seem to be things to take care of before I go on travel. Weird how that is. I kinda miss the days when I could put half of what I owned into a Chevy Cavalier and drive it across the country at will.

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice. That's really the event we all celebrate. At least it was the original, from the days of the ancient Europeans and Hebrews. So, whatever your religion and tradition, I wish you a happy holiday season at this time. I know I am looking forward to being with my family again for Christmas.

Just in case anyone was wondering,

Yes, Negative One is going to update on Christmas. It's a Friday, isn't it? So it's updating!

Don't make fun of my misplaced priorities, sucka.

It might be a tad early for one of these, but I think I like the idea of having it coincide with Solstice (except that technically that's yesterday since it's the wee hours now).

End of year meme!

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before? Got a lawyer. Called in sick to work. Went to a funeral. Went to an OKCupid meetup. Saw a sibling get married. Lost a dangerous amount of weight (weighed 93.5 pounds). Watched a reality TV show week by week. Had a film crew in my house interviewing me. Made a music video on YouTube. Was a featured webcomic author on a podcast. Threw a party with more than 20 guests.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I didn't actually make any last year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? I do not think so.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Yes. :( My dear friend Mike Pinciaro died unexpectedly at age twenty, in June. I miss him terribly.


5. What countries did you visit? I didn't leave the States, yet again.

6. What would you like to do in 2010 that you lacked in 2009? I want my office at work to get more assignments so I can work more hours; I'd like to get all the unfinished sections of my Web page finished; and of course I'd like to manage my time better. I would like to pay some visits to places I've never been, too (to see people), notably my sister in San Francisco and Jessie in Ann Arbor. I want to finish Brisingr and release my scathing review, if I can stomach it. I want to read more (good books, though). I want to take and share photographs more consistently.

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Certainly June 9, which is when I found out Mike died. August 1, when my sister got married. October 22, when I filmed my part for the asexuality documentary with the film crew. And October 25, when Steve and Jessica got married.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Victory in my legal issues. Managing my money and keeping my job in lean times. Making a music video and a cool CD. Making it to 200 issues of my webcomic (and four years of updates without missing one or being late).

9. What was your biggest failure? As always, not getting my novels published or really making any progress on that. Also (so far) didn't finish my Bad Fairy rewrite.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Yes. Got a really bad throw-up bug the day after my birthday in January, suffered a lingering sickness that culminated in an ear infection, eye infections, a week-long sore throat, lots of weakness, and weight loss that continued for nearly three months. WTF?

11. What was the best thing you bought? I did get a new computer. Other than that, I can't think of anything significant that I bought since it was a lean year, so maybe I should just say everyone's holiday gifts.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Meggie for holding things together in such difficult circumstances AND being able to hold onto her goals. My sister for finding and marrying an awesome guy. Angel for coming out to her mom and surviving. My mom for facing and maybe even conquering some of her fears. Cara for getting organized. Jessie for tackling grad school while experiencing some culture shock and loss of superpowers. Kim (Mike's mom) for surviving and remaining as positive as possible when the worst thing that could happen to a parent happens.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? All the people I've seen who displayed racism, sexism, and abject selfishness when it comes to other people's rights. People who shall remain nameless who were disrespectful to me in a variety of ways. Some stuff I had to deal with at work. And, of course, a certain jerk named Matthew who has no idea how many people offered to kill him or break his legs on my behalf for what he did. (Ass.)

14. Where did most of your money go? Obviously rent and bills, secondarily holiday and birthday and wedding gifts, and, of course, that all-important lawyer retainer fee.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? How to choose?? My sister's wedding. Steve's wedding. Being in a documentary and a music video. Rewriting Bad Fairy. Some good feedback for my novel from a professional (even though it did not culminate in a deal). CUTE BABIES. Fanfiction and fanart created for me by others. Some very cool e-mails.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009? "Daniel" by Bat For Lashes.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

• Happier or sadder: I think yet again I'm sadder.
  
  
• Older or wiser: Probably just older.
  
  
• Thinner or fatter: Thinner.
  
  
• Richer or poorer: Poorer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Reading, writing, tennis, DDR, photography, working on the Web site.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Procrastination (of course), complaining, playing that cursed Bejeweled Blitz, crapping time down the drain on Facebook.

20. How did you spend Christmas? Oh crap, I'm supposed to wait 'til after Christmas to write this? Tough. I know I'll go to Mikey's to open presents (and maybe we'll have breakfast?), and I'd like to spend some time with Mom but don't know how she'll be feeling. Hopefully back to 100%.

21. How will you be spending New Years Eve? I got invited to Kim's with Mikey and my mom, but it's looking like maybe my mom doesn't want to go, so we've still gotta figure this out.

22. Did you fall in love in 2009? Not in the traditional sense.

23. How many one-night stands? Take a guess.

24. What was your favorite TV program? Umph, actually I think the only TV show I tuned in for is freaking America's Got Talent, and that's kind of embarrassing. (I watched it online.) I also liked South Park, which I watched online.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? I don't actively hate anyone, but considering I had to get a lawyer to make someone stop being an asshole I guess that's pretty close. And again there are a couple people who showed me sides of them this year that have made me lower my opinion of them overall.

26. What was the best book you read? Sadly I only read 14 books so far this year. :X If I had to pick one favorite for the year, I suppose that's Book of a Thousand Days by Hale, the only book I've stayed up late to read in recent memory. Also would say my secondary favorites were Boy Meets Boy by Levithan, How I Live Now by Rosoff, and Feeling Sorry For Celia by Moriarty.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery? Lily Allen, Kate Miller-Heidke, MIKA, Bat For Lashes, Lykke Li, DobaCarocol, Katie Melua, Vienna Teng. . . . Many of those are Reeny's fault.

28. What did you want and get? Tons of Web page-related fan-mail, recognition for my YouTube videos plus over 350 subscribers, a new brother-in-law, a new computer, no increase in my rent when I renewed, a new Web site to sing karaoke on, and a satisfactory solution to my legal mess.

29. What did you want and not get? The beginning of my publishing career. Again.

30. What was your favorite film(s) of this year? I loved Slumdog Millionaire and Up. It's funny how few movies I saw this year.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 31. Had breakfast with Mikey, got lots of presents and phone calls, had Meg and family over, went to Chinese food, and dealt with both kids being sick (Katie had a stomach ache; Benny was poopin' and pukin'). I made 7UP cake, cleaned the apartment a bit, and went to sleep.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Er, getting a literary agent and selling to a publisher? Pretty much duh.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009? More comfortable than pretty. Low-cut jeans were a favorite. Still lots of thin long-sleeved sweaters to wear under short-sleeved shirts. I left my hair loose more often this year.

34. What kept you sane? My writing and the Internet.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? This year I have no answer.

36. What political issue stirred you the most? Freakin' gay marriage! Jeez! Come on you losers, stop being bigots!

37. Who did (do) you miss? Jessica, Jessie, Victor, Fred, Sister P, SQ, Meg. And I guess there'd be a lot of people I'd miss if I was allowed to "miss" people I had yet to meet. And the obvious: Mike, who passed away.

38. Who was the best new person you met? I'm pleased to say 2009 brought me a nice big swarm of cool OKC people, some of whom I haven't actually met in person yet. I'm particularly pleased with the acquisition of my OKC gang Eric, Stephanie, Kim, Angel, Gary, and some others who came to my party or were invited but didn't come, and I really hope I get to meet Tia soon. (And Mandy, but I have been waiting to meet Tia longer. Hehe.)

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009: Refusing to put up with shit sometimes works out in your favor! Don't put up with shit! Sometimes the good guys win!

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: "You electrify my life / Let's conspire to ignite / All the souls that would die just to feel alive."

Today is Music Day.

I went to Macaroni Grill with my friend Kim last week on Friday. She is the mother of my friend Mike who passed away earlier this year. We are keeping in touch and we have a lot in common, just like I had with her son.

It was fun. While we were waiting to get seated, she showed me a cool book that was made about him, self-published by his uncle. It was so cute! It was like a book for kids with special needs, entitled Mikey Gets New Braces. It was illustrated with pictures of him getting the casts made for his legs to make new braces in the right size, back when he used to actually walk with braces and arm crutches. The pics were from when he was about four years old. It was such a sweet little book! She's going to try to get them in the libraries and stuff. There aren't nearly enough books out there for kids with similar problems.

So we ate, and that restaurant has paper tablecloths where the waiter writes his name on them with a crayon so you can remember it. Then you are free to doodle on the table. Kim and I did that, and as per usual I just doodled a face. She was exclaiming over how great it was, and then the waiter came back and HE was all impressed with it too--my crayon drawing?--and he asked me about where I learned drawing. I told him "Trial and error?" and Kim joked "Obviously not too many ERRORS!" and he said I must have maybe gone to school for this. I told him no, I haven't had any art lessons. He was just shaking his head like he couldn't believe it. I'm always really surprised by people's reactions when I do something like this, because 100% honestly, I know there are some things I do better than most non-artistic people, but I swear up and down that nobody in the art world would think I was anything special. Same as nobody in the music world thinks my singing is anything special. But we'll come to that in a minute.

We went back to my place and exchanged Yuletide presents. She gave me a hat and some other cool stuff, and I gave her two things: One, a CD, and two a doodle. The CD was because back around Halloween I gave her a CD of appropriate holiday music, and when she wrote me back to thank me for it she specifically pointed out the couple of selections I'd included where I was the vocalist, saying she really liked my singing. So for part of her present I gave her a mix of some of the songs I've recorded for my mom before. She was really excited about that, which was flattering. And then the drawing I gave her was a doodle of three characters her son made up.

He used to make up these cute people that were vaguely based on Pokémon actually (well, distantly), and I doodled his character Seedlyn for him a couple times when he was still alive. (He really liked that!) Later he came up with a character named Azure, and he described her to me in a very long e-mail that had a complete bio and everything. (Incidentally, she was raised by a raccoon. Interesting, eh? Ah, imaginative twenty-year-old boys!) I never got around to drawing her for him when he was with us, but I decided to remedy that, and in so doing I also found some sketchier descriptions in the e-mail for lesser-known characters. One named Gaia that he'd based on himself had enough detail that I could draw him, so I did--I drew the three characters for him and printed out the old e-mails so his mom could see the history and stuff. She really liked it! Here's what it looks like.



I was pleased that his mother recognized the two girl characters and then pointed to the one in the back and said "who's this guy?" even though the gender of the character is (purposely) hard to tell. (Mike thought of himself as not exactly androgynous but more like a good balance of male and female. Not so much "no gender" but "both genders." Sometimes more female than male since he would occasionally get jokingly pissed off if you "accused" him of being a guy, even though in general he considered himself just a guy with a heavy feminine side.)

Anyway, she listened to the CD on the way home back to Sarasota, and the next day I had a really nice message from her on the voicemail, saying how she was bowled over by how great my singing was and whatnot. She was surprised at the range of vocals and types of singing styles I had done on the CD, and she says her brother who is a producer wants to remaster my stuff. She also said he wanted to know why I wasn't "doing anything" with my singing since she claimed I was more interested in pursuing my writing. That was a really nice thing to hear, and it's cool that this guy wants to help me out. She later told me he doesn't give compliments lightly. Cool.

Kim is celebrating Winter Solstice today with a small group of friends and I hope she is having a good time. :)

Silly Mommy.

On Saturday I went to my mom's house to bring her some groceries since she was sick. I biked out there and spent a couple hours with her and she paid me back for the groceries with a check.

In the "memo" field she had written "For: sexual favors."

Some things never change.

Today is Cherry Day.

Hi everyone, and hisashiburi! Contrary to what you may have been thinking, this semester did not kill me. I know, I dropped off the face of the virtual Earth. (Would that be Google Earth then?) Part of it was that I have yet to recalibrate what constitutes "interesting" and therefore "post-worthy" after JET (still not used to this whole America thing...peculiar country you guys have here) and part of it is that I just didn't have time to post the things that passed the first part of the test. (And that I couldn't stand being in front of a computer any more than I had to. Virtually all my reading this term was on-line, which was nice a cheap, but made my eyes bug out. I almost don't mind the money I have to shell out for books next term!)

BUT ON THURSDAY I FINISHED MY FIRST SEMESTER OF GRAD SCHOOL! 501 PROJECT IS TURNED IN!! IT'S DONE I TELL YOU! DONE DONE DONEEEEE! (Excitement carries over for over 48 hours, during which realized I still couldn't stand being in front of a computer.)

Ahem. Yeah. Submitted my last assignment at 11:58 a.m. on Thursday morning. It was due at 12:00 noon. I've never cut it so close in my life. It was a group assignment, which made it harder to plan, and I also was slacking the night before so it really is my own fault. Oh well. Why am I talking about that though? I am DONE.

And now my brain is kind of like mush. I don't think grad school is harder than undergrad (but then, K prides itself on being a big ol' graduate school prep school) but it was very nice to be on the quarter system so I had all of December to get ready for Christmas, because this year it seems like the Christmas season started on December 17. Which is sad, really, because it's already so short!

But today I had just the most wonderful Christmas Moment! I was at Borders (Store #1, within walking distance of my apartment! Woo!) with arms full of books that I think the recipients will enjoy reading and that I know I will enjoy giving (the best kinds of gifts!) when a brass ensemble started playing Jingle Bells right in the front of the store. It left me grinning stupidly I'm sure.

When you don't have a lot of money, one good way to make yourself feel like you do is to spend lots of it on other people. :)

(Of course, you have to have enough money to live comfortably enough for this to work, but for my current level of grad student finances, it works nicely!)

Now that I have some time, I am returning to activities that I have really missed. (Where by "missed" I actually mean that I have read almost 900 pages of The Brothers Karamazov since the Sunday after Thanksgiving when I got home from Minnesota. Hmm...it's like how the video games suddenly came out during finals week during undergrad. Not sure how this works out for me, but somehow I have to do that kind of stuff or I don't get the rest of the work done. Though it's pretty much solid paper writing with reading breaks.)

But yeah, I've been reading a lot, and I also have had ideas for various novel projects (new and old) stirring in my brain and I'd love to get some of that written during my couple weeks off, and I also want to draw some pictures. I did this one for Myra for her birthday earlier this month:



And now I want to do more. If I get some time I might do some more to commemorate 2009. But I'm getting ahed of myself.

Speaking of books, though, I'm kind of obsessed right now with various ideas and authors and stories which are all blending together in a cool way in my head. I'm still working on 1Q84, as you may or may not recall, which I picked up at a bookshop in Kyoto Station in July. That's Haruki Murakami's latest book, which won't be translated into English until September 2011. My goal is to finish it before the English version comes out, which I thought should be do-able but at the rate I'm going (210 pages so far) I'll finish it in about 8 years. (It's three volumes, though -- I'm about halfway through the first volume at least!) Of course, I've been reading a lot of English material, so maybe if I actually focused on it, I'd make more progress. I'm going to try to do that, because Murakami is one of the authors I'm currently obsessed with. I would really like to talk to someone else about this book, even though I'm like an 8th of the way through the whole epic, because I am just getting that into it. (I might take a break from it to read one of his books in English so I can talk about that with other people; we'll see.)

But to both encourage me to keep at reading it (not that I need encouragement because the story is compelling enough to make reading even a few pages at a time interesting) and so I can satisfy the need to share it with other people, guess what silly thing I have taken to doing!

I'm writing the book's Wikipedia article!

Yep, that's right, I've pretty much taken ownership of it. There was a "this article needs cleaning up and expansion" type notice on it, which I took off yesterday after polishing up the first section (look at the page's history tab for earlier edits if you're interested in how Wikipedia works and/or what I did). I guess no one else who is reading this book in Japanese but is fluent in English felt like tackling it, so I shall step up! (Most of the other things I could write about already have good articles.) The first segment involved a lot of condensing and revising on my part (with the addition of links about Japanese wordplay, allusions, and parallel worlds; I thought those were nice supplements). I can't remember if I added the plot summary section or if I just entirely rewrote it, but that's almost all my work, and I know the main characters section is all mine.

HI, I'M AN iSCHOOL NERD. :D I WRITE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES FOR FUN. (I wrote a paper about Wikipedia, by which I mean I typed out the words after super_me sent me all the evidence, for one of our core classes this term. It was actually really interesting.) But it is pretty cool to think that I could just go there and contribute to this because I felt like it, and other people will no doubt stumble across it at some time.

(I wasn't sure how I felt about putting up a plot summary at first because I don't want to write spoilers or Cliff's Notes-esque stuff, but I decided that since someone is going to do this eventually, I would just go ahead and be the one to write it because it will be fun. [I also thought about how this would be a lame justification if I actually were morally opposed to something, but I'm not; I'm just a snob who thinks people should read books rather than on-line spoilers, but that's not a moral issue so I can bend my opinion as I like. Oh wow, look at the nerd quotient of this post sail higher and higher, now we're getting into pointless ethical dilemmas.])

Anyway, if you go look at it now, there won't be much in the way of spoiler material there because I'm not far enough into the book to get to any major revelations! But the way Murakami writes (combined with the pace at which I'm reading), it feels like there's a lot of spoilery stuff up there (I was sure shocked at what Aomame did toward the beginning!) so be careful if you do want to read this when it comes out in 2011. ;)

And in other book news, I picked up Brothers Karamazov because one of my friends mentioned it was one of his favorites (as you may know, I can't resist reading a book if a friend labels it a favorite) and I think (depending on how it ends I guess ;) it is becoming one of mine too. I thought a thousand page Russian tome would take me a while to get through, but I was wrong. I'm sure that plenty of you have the experience of really becoming attached to a book character. That's what happened for me here. I pretty much adore Alyosha. I marked this quote in the book, too:

Anyway, what does it mean, being ridiculous? There are so many different ways a man may seem funny to someone else. Especially these days when everyone who has any special talent seems to be morbidly afraid that he may appear ridiculous. That's why so many gifted people are so unhappy.

Yes, Alyosha, yes!!! That's precisely it!
(He was telling this to some upstart thirteen-year-old who was trying to show off how smart he was and then was worried if Alyosha thought he was ridiculous.)

I must say he reminds me of Bobby Kennedy quite a bit. And the whole story reminds me of what the Carlson Septuplets would be if it were written in Russia in the 1880s and they had crazy parents. The Sisters Carlson. Ha ha! So you can see why with all this stuff I am sailing right through the book and getting a kick out of it.

...aaaaand, now I think I'll read more 1Q84 (will save the Brothers for when it's late) and then at 6:15 I am going to a 忘年会 (bonenkai, or "Forget the Year Party") for the JET Alumni Association with two of my new grad school friends who are not affiliated with JET in any way but I don't know anyone at the Bonenkai and we're allowed to bring friends. It's at a yakiniku place! Could be very cool. And tomorrow we decorate our Christmas tree (at home; I'll be going back and forth between there and A2 these days a lot it seems. Easier now that I'm 20 minutes away rather than 14 hours). I must say I haven't liked calling them Bonenkais, because I haven't actually WANTED to forget any of the years for which I have gone to them. 2007, 2008, and 2009 were all pretty fantastic! I prefer to think of them as "sealing this year into memory" parties. So that's what I guess I'll be doing tonight!

And with that it's back to the books. :)

I hope you didn't think I forgot! After a super chill day at work (just me and WorkBFF, grooving to my iPod all day), I dragged my lazy tuchas out to Brooklyn for latkes with poisonivory and company. Lovely (and delicious) times.

As I said a few days ago, grey t-shirt Corbin is my favorite. But since I can't go out on that, have this:



To borrow a phrase from my Trek fandom friends, look at that GQ motherfucker.

I hope you all had a lovely holiday. :)

ETA: Can't believe I forgot to mention! Margot got me the first volume of Flight 29 Down. Apparently it cost $3. That sounds about right.

Oh look, a sort of montage episode. (And that's VERY rare with me considering I tend to like to tell you the day-to-day, detailed version of my characters' lives.)


#0240: dax #29: perfect balance
Negative One main comic page

I got one thing to say to Dax:

Yer still a hippie, man. A tree-huggin' hippie.

I am still sick. For the past couple weeks, I have been coughing up my lungs. And I can barely talk.

It sucks how my health has really deteriorated!

I suppose I shall go back to the doctor tomorrow?

I may have to take short term disability from work if this sickness is much worse than initially thought. So anyway there is a bit of a backstory to this. When I went to the doctor's two weeks ago, they had me see the allergy specialist, and upon his analysis, nope, I did not have a flu. Despite all the chills, numbness, headache, etc. I wonder if he thought I just had an allergy! So I will probably go back.... It's not too expensive, just a $15 copay.

So unfortunately I have been totally antisocial and unpleasant. More so than usual.

I think I also need to get more sleep and rest.

Nothing notable happened today, except that, for various complicated reasons (read: no one stopped me) everyone in my office watched "Bet On It" and "I Don't Dance." WorkBFF loved them (not a shock! she watched HSM3 of her own accord a few months ago and found it charming, and she's seen bits of the first movie, too); Resident Hipster was unimpressed; my good boss was entertained but baffled. (He acknowledged Bet On It was hilarious, and that the dancing of I Don't Dance was both well choreographed and well executed.) My boss did not believe me about the shirt switch. WorkBFF did. Heh.

So.



( Oh, Corbin, you fabulous diva. )

My keyworks for this icon have always been "being cool on a boat" but I don't use it that often. I just changed them to "never thought I'd be on a boat" and suspect I will use it more often now.

Anyhoo.

This morning was career day! This required me to get up an hour and a half early. And then talk to many many teenagers. I had a whole speech, which I did not think would fill my allotted time, but the kids asked pretty good questions so it all worked out. They were actually quote well behaved and darling; that was especially nice because my job is not that interesting. Also fun, every time I stepped into a hall there were a ripple of shrieks and people yelling "She looks JUST LIKE MS. A!!!!" I do not know why that required shrieking, but it seemed to make them happy.

I also stayed and watched Rachel's ninth grade class, since I've never actually seen her teach. It was actually super fun. Her kids are adorable.

The down side to all of this is that, having gotten up early today, not having slept all week for unrelated reasons, and getting home today at 7 being the earliest of all week, I'm so tired I'm a little dizzy. I'm staying up until either Fresh Direct gets here or Rachel gets home, and then I shall pass out. Hooray for passing out.

I am so tired that I need TWO darling boys I love tonight.



Mmm, you know what, my favorite Corbin picture ever this week is from that same red carpet; I was going to save it for night 8, but what the heck. It's a holiday. Have another pretty pretty picture.



( 'Nother from that night. LIPS. )