| Glee! |
[01 Sep 2004|02:44am] |
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mood |
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 amused |
] |
Cleveland 22, Yanks 0
What a glorious day for baseball.
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| Internet friends are the niftiest. |
[29 Aug 2004|09:56am] |
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mood |
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 okay |
] |
Elly and Ryan, two of my friends from back when I played the Realm Online, came through Chicago this weekend and crashed on my futon. I had such a lot of fun hanging around with them, even moreso than I generally have with the "real life" sort of friends.
It's always seemed strange to me to have two largely seperate lives-- the online one and the offline one. Most of my offline friends have very few interests in common with me when you come right down to it, and would be bored out of their minds if I tried to talk with them about things like games and roleplaying and my other super-fun geeky activities. Whenever I get together with one of my online friends, it's like the floodgates open and I just talk and talk until I'm all talked out.
So Elly, Ryan and I did a lot of talking. We got dim sum down in Chinatown, went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, and saw Hero at the nice theater up in Evanston. My boyfriend came along, and joined in all the conversations since he's cool like that. Overall, it was one of the best weekends I've had in recent memory, and a nice note to end my summer on. I've temporarily snapped out of my grumpiness, though I'm sure it will be back in full-swing as soon as I have a few days of classes under my belt.
Oh, and those of you who played the Realm will be glad to hear that I made good on my long-standing threat to hug Ryan when I saw him. And he didn't kill me. I win!
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| It's strange, but... |
[27 Aug 2004|01:03am] |
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mood |
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 numb |
] |
I almost feel like writing again. For the first time in a few months, there are words tapping against the inside of my skull that want to be let out.
Maybe I'll write tomorrow, if I have time to stop and think for a little while. Friends will be visiting, and my autumn courses begin on Monday. I'll probably end up just staring at a blank screen again for a few minutes, find nothing worthwhile to say but a "I did this" (which is a complete waste of time as far as a journal entry is concerned), and then wander off again.
I used to enjoy writing here, especially when I could be funny. I think I'm losing my sense of humor. Where I used to see humor in just about everything, I've started seeing the world as more upsetting than funny. It's becoming hard to laugh things off like I've always done, and I don't like the new severity that has surfaced in me. I can laugh when I'm with Jeff, but I find it hard with anyone else, and next to impossible when I'm alone. I used to laugh all the time when I was alone.
I'll figure out the root of the malaise eventually, I'm sure. Until then I'll try not to bother anyone with dull and pointless journal entries.
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| Thank you. |
[11 Mar 2004|11:41pm] |
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mood |
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 thoughtful |
] |
I've been quiet lately. Forgive me.
I just wanted to thank the people who responded to my last post-- both those who posted a comment and a couple of folks who messaged me about it. It means a lot to me to know that I'm not alone in the fears and anxiety that I experience. It's nice to have this kind of outlet; in my day to day life, I'm somewhat stoic most of the time. I have difficulty expressing my emotions, and rarely find the courage to let people see much of what is going on inside my head. It's a relief to be able to write here without having to keep up the facade.
I cleaned things today: scrubbed away at my bathroom until the smells of the cleansers burned at my nose. It still doesn't look clean enough. My apartment is old. The building was built in the 1920s, and I think some of the fixtures in my bathroom are at least that old. While I found the place charming when I first moved in, I'm becoming frustrated by the stained porcelain and the peeling tile.
Jeff wants me to get a place with him. I think that would be nice, but at the same time I'm not sure of the proper protocol for such arrangements, and that worries me. I don't want to mess up our relationship, but at the same time, I wonder if I would be more likely to mess it up by never moving beyond the state we're in right now. There has to be a time when a bold move, like deciding to live together, is called for, or else people would just date forever, right?
It's probably the smart thing to do. I just wish I wasn't so scared by it.
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| Isn't it still February? |
[25 Feb 2004|01:45pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 contemplative |
] |
It is stunningly beautiful outside today. The snow has melted, the sun is shining, and the grass in the park that I can see from my window is surprisingly green. Somebody at Mother Nature Co. missed the memo about it still being February.
One of my best friends, who I have known all the way since high school, lives here in Chicago too. Her mother passed away this month while my friend was at the airport trying to get on a flight home. Now, I am sitting here and wondering, probably for the millionth time, why I am where I am. Grandma has recovered from her stroke, and is fine for now. Dad's cancer is being treated, and he's fighting it, and everything will be fine, we hope-- and at least for now, he's holding his own. But I can't help but think about the fact that my grandmother and my parents won't be around forever, and they are so very far away from where I am.
Every time I leave Hawaii, I say goodbye to my grandma and expect in my gut that I will never see her alive again. It's hard, and I've done it about six times already.
It's even harder dealing with my Dad's cancer from this distance. To be honest, I'm afraid to even mention it to him, or to ask how he is doing, because I don't want him thinking that I ever worry about him not beating it. I want him to think that I believe in him completely, and that I never doubt his strength, and that I have no fear whatsoever. Consequently, because I don't ask, I can't really know how he is, and I spend all my time worrying about him. I really wish that I was there to see with my own eyes how he is doing.
When I was a kid, I never really experienced homesickness. I could go away to camp or what have you and I was always perfectly all right. I have a bad case of it now, though, and it is made all the more potent by longing not only for the place, but also for the people in the place.
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| Dialect nonsense. |
[23 Feb 2004|11:15am] |
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mood |
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amused |
] |
I've always found dialects interesting. An uncommon porportion of our meal time conversations at college centered around making fun of the way that people said different things.
I came out at 53% on this quiz, which puts me ever-so-slightly on the Dixie end of the dialect spectrum. I find that amusing since I have never really lived in the South. I did live in northern Virginia back in college, but it's difficult to seriously consider anything within the Beltway to be integrated into the larger region. In fact, were I a Southerner, I would probably disavow any claims that the District is a part of the South geographically, Mason-Dixon Line aside.
Washington is located in its own little dimension. Anyone who has lived there knows that.
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| Screw this! |
[23 Feb 2004|12:00am] |
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mood |
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 restless |
] |
I've just decided to drop my math course.
- I've beem ill.
- The professor never responds to my emails. He has not given out his phone number. This makes it hard to straighten out the being ill thing.
- I am pissed off and stressed because nothing is straightened out.
- I don't need to be pissed off and stressed when I am ill, because it only makes me sicker.
I'll go and visit the dean's office tomorrow, present them with the above list, and withdraw. I'll take the course over the summer, when I will hopefully be healthy and have a professor who at least responds to emails.
It's very liberating to sit here and realize that, yes, I am an adult, and I don't have to put up with this. Frankly, if people in the future want to know why I have a "W" on my record, I'll tell them just that. If I am paying for someone to teach me these things, I expect them to teach me. If I write them a note, I expect to be answered. And having a phone number available would be professional. When I was a teacher, I gave out my number to students and their parents-- my home phone number. All I ask from a professor is an office number, but that is apparently too much to ask for around here.
So, adios stupid eight in the morning math class. I can't say I'll miss you.
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| The new guys. |
[19 Feb 2004|05:43pm] |
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mood |
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 tired |
] |
( Here's Kupo and Stubb! )
Does anyone know a way to prevent naturally red eyes from taking on that scary pink glow when they are photographed in low light conditions? Stubb's my first ruby-eyed rat, so I haven't run into this problem before.
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| Scariness |
[19 Feb 2004|05:50am] |
| [ |
mood |
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 worried |
] |
I fainted or something last night. I have fainted before in my life, but this was something different. There was no dizziness, no fade-to-black, and no real reason for it. I just sat down because my stomach was hurting too much to walk, and then I was out. I woke up an hour and a half later. Apparently, my D&D group tried to call me to find out if I was okay since I wasn't there; I didn't hear the phone ring even though they let it ring ten times.
I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, but it's scary as heck. I guess I'm just lucky that I didn't hit my head or something like that.
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| 40 days until baseball season! And rat stuff. |
[18 Feb 2004|04:06pm] |
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mood |
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 hopeful |
] |
40 days until baseball season. It's like Lent, only without the fasting.
This is going to be the Cubs year, obviously. And to ice the cake, there is a chance that my long suffering AL team, the poor Tiggers, may not suck so astronomically this year. The gods of baseball seem to smile upon Pudge, so he will hopefully pull a few more miracles out of thin air like he did over and over for Florida last season.
I gave Kupo and Stubb (the new rats) a bath this morning. I always feel evil about doing that. They look so pitiful when they're wet, and they squeak in a "WHY?! Why must you TORTURE us so?!" manner. Then I wrap them up in towels, snuggle them, and feed them yogies until they love me again.
They managed to scratch up my hands pretty nicely while attempting to squirm out of the water. I really need to trim their little nails, but they are still nervous about their new surroundings, so I'm going to hold off a little bit longer. Nail trimming is one of those things that requires a bit of trust on the part of the animal, and I don't think we've quite reached that point yet.
They're calming down slowly. This afternoon, Kupo climbed out of the cage and perched on my shoulder of his own volition. Stubb is still the more timid of the two, but he no longer squeaks when I pick him up.
I'm beginning to worry a little bit about what will happen in a couple of weeks when it is time to introduce them to Stitch and Whiskers. Kupo is very active and busy, much like Whiskers. I anticipate that there may be a bit of a scuffle for dominance between them, especially if Kupo puts on a little weight before then. Whiskers is a shrimp; the only reason why he is the alpha now is because Stitch is too lazy to care about his position in the social hierarchy. Kupo will probably be able to overthrow Whiskers if he puts his mind to it, but I doubt Whiskers would give up his rank without a fight. Then again, I could be wrong; maybe they'll all end up loving each other right away, like when I introduced Whiskers and Stitch to Merry. I guess I'll just need to wait and see.
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| Absent-minded professors, letter writing, and other diversions. |
[17 Feb 2004|12:03pm] |
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mood |
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 annoyed |
] |
I was supposed to take a math exam today. The professor forgot to make the test. I'm more than slightly annoyed.
So I arrived home, already verily peeved, and found yet another letter from the RNC in my mailbox. I already told them over the phone that I won't be contributing this year, yet they keep sending me these letters, with their five question surveys to try to give the illusion that they actually care what someone like me, a rogue semi-libertarian among the conservative freakshow, thinks. Ha ha ha.
So I've written them a letter. I shall send it off promptly as soon as I have purchased stamps.
( The Letter )
It feels good to finally have that all off my chest. Barney 2004!
Oh, and always remember:
All right, so it isn't exactly profound, but I couldn't bring myself to embrace the cliche, and the truth-- "Marriage is a tax penalty"-- is too cynical even for me.
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| Blood donations and pet bites |
[16 Feb 2004|10:54am] |
| [ |
mood |
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 disappointed |
] |
Well, it appears that I will never be able to give blood again.
The blood people call me all the time to come in and give because I'm type O. I had recently read on the Rats Rule! forums that someone had been turned down to donate blood after they had been bitten by a domestic animal, so I asked about that when they called me today, and yes-- it turns out that if you are bitten by any domestic animal, you are supposed to wait a year before giving blood. This isn't anywhere on the questionaire they give you when you go in, which I find odd considering that more people probably are bitten by animals than go abroad, pierce themselves, or contract HIV. It also seems odd to me since a large number of animals have dry bites that are highly unlikely to pass anything into the bloodstream when they bite. I've been donating this entire while without any knowledge of that restriction at all, and between my pets, the rescue critters, and this entire going-to-be-a-vet thing, I'll never get to give blood again. I mean, I can't even count the number of times I've been bit by animals in the last year. It just happens, you know?
I'm rather sad about it; I like giving blood.
Merry passed away a couple of weeks ago. On Sunday, Jeff and I drove down to Champaign to adopt two new rats who had been transported from Bloomington, Indiana the day before. They're very cute, and are making it somewhat easier to get along without Merry. I still miss him, though; he was my buddy.
So this has turned into another pet entry. Everything seems to revolve around them recently.
Jeff, once again, drove five hours to help me get rats. He also cooked for me the night before. He's so wonderful.
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| Medical Stuff |
[28 Jan 2004|03:55am] |
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mood |
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 sick |
] |
Here's the short version:
- The moles aren't cancerous.
- My IBS is back in full swing.
- My body is royally out of whack hormone-wise for whatever reason.
Guys, you can stop reading right here and find something else to do, because I'm pretty sure that the rest of this entry won't appeal to you.
I have two prescriptions that I need to have filled tomorrow. One is supposed to alleviate the discomfort of the IBS. The other is a prescription for birth control pills to try to make my cycle more normal. Here's the odd part: my doctor told me that, if I want, I can use the pills to pretty much turn my period off entirely.
One would think that I would have been over-joyed at that suggestion, but my immediate reaction was that doing so would be just too weird. It would be like being eleven again or something. I'm utterly astounded by how uncomfortable it makes me to think of not having my period, even though I honestly despise the discomfort, inconvenience, and cost of the stupid thing.
What a strange decision to have to make.
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| I'm not going to school today, and I wonder if I'm dying. |
[27 Jan 2004|07:13am] |
| [ |
mood |
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 crappy |
] |
I tried to sleep last night, but I couldn't. My mind kept racing in and out of disturbing images that snapped be back to consciousness whenever I managed to drift off, while my stomach contributed to the upset by sending me running to the washroom every twenty minutes or so.
I'm not going to class today. I was supposed to have a test this morning, but it will just need to fricking wait, because I've decided that I can't stand this physical malaise any longer. The pain is too intense; I'm dehydrated, dizzy, and I've barely slept at all for the past several weeks. Even if I went to class this morning, there is no way that I would be able to focus on my exam, and I'd probably walk away with a lousy grade on it as a result.
There must be some sort of medicine that the doctor can put me on to fix my damn digestive track. I can't live with it any more.
I'm also going to show the physician the two odd moles that have recently appeared on my right hip. They've been weighing heavily on my mind since I noticed them for the first time about two weeks ago. They're both irregular in shape and somewhat odd in color, and consequently rather frightening. I'm probably overreacting, but I can't help it. With all the medical problems I have and have had ever since I was a little kid, I can't help but wonder if my body is just waiting for the right moment to turn on me utterly.
I mean, my father has cancer. If my father, who has always been so healthy, has cancer, then what is keeping me from having it? I've been sick since the day that I was born. I've had illnesses that would have killed me if I had been born thirty or forty years earlier. Does that mean that I am living on borrowed time already?
I've become almost disturbingly preoccupied with cancer lately. My dad is fighting his, and in the past seven or eight months, three of my pets have developed tumors. Pippin had to be put to sleep back in the summer due to inoperable tumors in his abdomen. Merry had a tumor removed from his side about a month ago. Song currently has a tumor growing on her head right near the base of her ear. It's in a funny location and she's so little that removing it is not an option, so I'm just waiting until she starts to appear unhappy, and then I'll have her euthanized.
There's been so much of it around me recently that I have developed a sort of cancer paranoia. I've been checking Merry over for new masses every day. I've been wondering ad nauseum if I do my breast self-examinations properly, or if I do them all wrong and could be missing something. And I've been staring at those two moles on my hip and wondering.
I'm also wondering if this means that I am losing my mind. Sometimes it feels as if I am.
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| Daily dose of cuteness, and one less mouse |
[26 Jan 2004|09:12pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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tired |
] |
I left class this evening and walked back across campus to the train station. Along the way, a man carrying a little girl who looked to be about two and a half was walking the opposite direction on the sidewalk. He set her down a few feet in front of me, and the little girl peered at the concrete, where thousands of students' feet had turned the snow into slush.
With unequivocal distress in her voice, she declared, "this ground is a MESS!"
Kids are so cute; I just want to snug them.
Nessawen, the runt of my little mice, passed away today. She had a stroke back in November or December, but recovered from it. This morning, she had a second one. I knew when I left for class this afternoon that she would be gone when I returned, and she was. I'll miss her. She was a sweet little girl, and a fighter from her first day until her last. She outlived all but three of her brothers and sisters despite being born so tiny and frail. I doubt I'll forget her easily.
The mice always seem to die the night before I have a big test. I swear, it is some kind of conspiracy to distract me from studying.
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| Anyway... |
[22 Jan 2004|07:42am] |
| [ |
mood |
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tired |
] |
I'm not sure if this means I'm back or not. Last November, I simply lost my will to write. I couldn't produce a coherent thought to save my life. I still can't. I think that this may be somehow connected to the lack of concentration that accompanies my own peculiar brand of depression, or maybe it's just laziness. I'm not sure.
All I know is that many of the things that I have enjoyed for most of my life have seemed to lose their flavor these last couple of months, and that nothing has surfaced as of yet to replace them. This winter has been very cold and almost empty.
To those of you who commented on my last entry expressing concern for what had become of me, thank you. I really do appreciate it. For whatever reason, I just couldn't even bring myself to look at my journal for a couple of months there. I really have no idea why.
The weather guy on the radio said that today would be "character building". That's never a good sign.
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| Sara is a pantless kitty-person |
[14 Nov 2003|02:08pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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okay |
] |
FFXI is eating my soul. It's such a lot of fun. It's an mmorpg, but it feels more like a traditional rpg. There are quests, a plot, and cut scenes. But you're online with an abnormally nice group of players. It's nifty as all heck.
I've been playing it entirely too much since I bought it earlier this week. I am a mithra on a mission to find pants. Somewhere in this game there must be pants. The Japanese players have pants!
If anybody else gets the game and wants to join me in San d'Oria on the Carbuncle server, let me know before you create a character. There's a loophole you can use to pick which server you are on. Then we can join forces to slay vicious bunny rabbits.
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| One of those days. |
[13 Nov 2003|03:33pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 sad |
] |
I wasn't feeling well today, so I just stayed in bed until now. At first I was studying, and then I started thinking, and thinking led to crying.
I was thinking about my kids-- the kids I taught when I was a teacher. I always referred to them as my kids. Fourteen year olds, many of whom had criminal records considerably longer than their academic records, many of whom ran off after lunch break because they didn't give a damn about school and were only there for the free grub, kids who got in fights, kids who brought weapons to school-- the kind of kids that most of the other teachers referred to as "bad". Those were my kids.
I had my ninth graders write out their autobiographies once as a writing exercise. I'd never cried so hard in my life as when I took them home and read them. There were stories about brothers being shot and killed in front of their eyes, suicide attempts, lost parents, the deaths of best friends, the death of baby siblings due to conditions that could have been easily prevented with proper medical care, and about a hundred other little insights that stabbed at me as I read those papers. I knew then that I couldn't keep teaching forever. I couldn't keep facing my colleagues who, day after day after day, would tell me how rotten the kids were, when I knew that they weren't.
I went off on other teachers a few times about that sort of stuff. So many of the other teachers had no idea what was going on in the lives of their students. The principal once made me justify why I had passed a girl who had missed my class ten days. Her mother had died that semester. Her father had sunk into a serious state of depression, her slightly older sister had been drinking, and the girl was trying desperately to keep her head above water. She took the work home with her, did it, and turned it in. I refused to fail her for that. I also refused to fail the kids who missed class because other teachers had a grudge against them and purposely drew them into situations where the student would get suspended. I also refused to sit by with my mouth shut when people would plot to get a certain student expelled. It just disgusted me.
If we were a suburban school, would we have been trying to find a way to get rid of the kids who cut themselves, or the kids who tried to commit suicide? The problems at our school may have been different in nature, but they had the same root as those problems. We had kids who were hurting in horrible, horrible ways. They were trying to express that. The girl who takes a knife to her wrist is just more acceptable to the hierarchy than the boy in the innercity whose frustration culminates in his throwing his textbook at his teacher's head.
I saw that, but couldn't do a damn thing about it.
I think that my biggest problem is that I love too easily. I love just about everyone in the world unless they give me a direct reason not to love them. I loved all my kids almost to the point of impossibility, but it didn't matter in the end because no matter how much I loved them, I couldn't give them what they really needed, which was more than teaching them about social studies. And it hurt. Every day that I walked into my classroom hurt, because I knew that so many of them were hurting. And there was nothing that I could do.
Those kids in the gangs? They aren't bad. They're suicidal.
And I'm going back to bed now.
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| How well do you know me, anyway? |
[08 Nov 2003|10:49am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 anxious |
] |
Holy smokes. It is snowing outside. As soon as I'm finished writing this entry, I simply must run outside and frolic for about five minutes. Then I'll return to studying for my obnoxious biology test that is giving me anxiety attacks and making my life miserable. I hate tests, and I hate my anxiety order, and I hate that the dread associated with each appears to be cyclic. I'm studying, so I get nervous and the anxiety hits. Then I can't study because I'm anxious, and that makes the anxiety worse.
On a fun note, everyone needs to go to http://lilscamp.friendtest.com and see just how well you know me. It's a groovy little thing, and I just wasted an entire half an hour of study time creating my quiz. Amuse me, darn it.
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| Chlamydomonas! Again! |
[04 Nov 2003|02:28pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 nerdy |
] |
It's Chlamydomonas again! Isn't it cute?
I really wish that I could find a video clip of the little things swimming about and waving their flagella. Maybe then I could justify this love affair with the people who just don't understand me. Alas, I fear that there will always be people who don't understand. Such is the way of love.
Actually, if any of my more talented friends out there could animate that picture so that a flagellum is waving all cutely, I would adore you forever and ever, and probably use it as a user icon with the addition of some text extolling the ever-uber cuteness of the critter. I'd do it myself, but I have no clue how one goes about making an animated image.
I need to study for my biology exam, and the thought is daunting. I think I'll pretend to study by making colorful flashcards this evening.
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