I wound up having a couple of cough drops yesterday, but that was it, and today I've only got the slightest bit of sinus buildup. Whatever this was I had, I think I'm over it, so tomorrow it's back onto the diet, back into DDR/ITG, and hopefully back to some semblance of productivity.
Of course, being fairly unproductive this past week did have its advantages. Remember how I started the week by getting through the end of disc one of Final Fantasy VII? Well, last night I finished the game. Completely. Not just "get to the end" finish, but finish with multiple copies of each Master Materia, all the enemy skills learned, Ruby Weapon and Emerald Weapon defeated, every character at level 99, all of that fun stuff. Yes, I'm as obsessive about my RPG playing as I am about my DDR/ITG playing, thanks for asking. Here's a cartoon showing what I was up to most of Tuesday.
Now that my Final Fantasy VII game is over, the question now is what game I play next, since I want to complete an RPG I've yet to play through before summer break is over. Last night I started a game of Kingdom Hearts, but I'm thinking that I may switch over and play Final Fantasy X-2 instead. Of course, I still have RPGs for my 8-bit and 16-bit systems that I bought but never finished, so I probably should get to those before my systems stop functioning here.
More tomorrow; if I'm going to be off my diet one last day here (and my throat's finally feeling well enough that I can really enjoy my food here), then I might as well go out and eat something I like.
Okay, I promised you all a brief update on what's been happening the past week or so, so I guess it's high time that I delivered here. I'll try to be as to-the-point as I can be here, but if you've read me for any period of time then you know that brevity isn't one of my strong suits.
Anyway, Saturday I was out shopping and stuff, and I'd already gone off-diet that day because of all the emotions I was dealing with regarding the recent posts I'd made about realizing how I don't know how to have fun, and all that "how I play DDR" stuff. I went to a nearby coffeeshop to have a raspberry lemonade and read from one of my books on teaching, when all of a sudden my throat started getting sore. I didn't think much of it at the time, but when I came home I popped a zinc tablet and a couple of cough drops just to be on the safe side.
The sore throat continued on through Sunday, but I didn't pay it too much mind. I had a normal on-diet day in terms of eating all the way through dinner, and I thought something had just irritated my throat for some reason. Within a few minutes, though, my sinuses went from normal to totally haywire, as I started sneezing all over the place and I was hacking up stuff. I thought for certain that I was sick, and started pounding down the cough drops and, once someone was able to make a store run for me, my normal sick-foods (lemonade and salty snacks).
Normally when I start the whole cough-drops-and-lemonade regimen, it helps alleviate the nasty sore throat pain I always have when I'm sick to the point of bearability. This time, however, the pain was disappearing altogether. I'd drink a couple of glasses of lemonade, and it would be like my throat had never been sore in the first place. I spoke with Mom about this, and she suggested that maybe I was having some kind of seasonal allergy that was messing up my sinuses, and that my sinuses were what was making my throat sore. (The thing about that is that every few years I seem to shift between having early-summer allergies and having late-summer allergies, and this year I was definitely having a lot of early-summer allergies.)
As the week progressed, I'd have sore throat and sinus problems in the morning, but after a zinc tablet and some lemonade the problems would be gone, and each day I woke up with less and less sore throat pain. I still stuck with my sick-time regimen, though, because I was still worried that I was getting sick, and with all I've got planned over the next couple of weeks (Penny will be driving through town in a little over a week and she'll be stopping long enough for a walk in the Toledo Botanical Garden, plus I'd like to go down and see Christina and Milena again sometime before school starts back up), the last thing I needed was to get sick. If I was getting sick, I figured I should do everything I could to fight the problems, so that maybe I'd be at 100% by the time Penny came driving through town.
Flash forward to today. When I woke up, my throat was barely giving me problems. I had one cough drop when I woke up, but I didn't have any zinc or lemonade or anything like that, and although my throat feels a little funny right now, it's nothing all that serious. Maybe I did manage to avert a real illness there with quick action, but if this really was an allergic reaction and there was no danger of me getting sick, then I'm mighty miffed that I wrecked my diet for the week for no reason. (I also haven't played DDR/ITG all this week as an additional precaution because, as one of my DDR heroes so eloquently put it in his PSMO AAA video, never play DDR when you're sick.)
The one thing that makes me think that this was an illness was that, in case it didn't come through in my "I don't know how to have fun" and "these are all the different systems I put in place when I play DDR" posts, I was getting incredibly depressed there, and depression does seem to put my body in a state where it's more susceptible to getting sick. Both those posts helped me to see that I have some real neuroses that I need help with. Ironically enough, last Saturday when I started getting the sore throat, I'd felt I'd made a bit of progress in that regard when I did some freewriting on the subject of fun. Still, I know I'll need professional help to really handle these problems, although I won't have long to wait for that since UT offers free counseling to its students/faculty/staff. Of course, that only serves as a reminder that my break is quickly coming to an end, and I only have one thing to say about that: *WHINE!*
Anyway, that's what's been happening with me. What about what's been happening with you?
I'll have a lot to write about here regarding the past few days, but I'm saving that for when I feel up to a lot of writing here. For now, I just wanted to note that today was my mother's 60th birthday, and I feel older than shit right now. Thank you.
Red Wings Waive Hatcher, Whitney ... AND DARREN FUCKING MCCARTY?!?
I fucking hate hockey.
I just finished Disc 1.
Somebody hold me, please. ;_;
So if you want a good laugh, go to my diet log and read a post I wrote last night called "Thoughts about DDR/ITG." Originally I just wanted to give my thoughts on the games, but as I wrote about stuff I began to realize just how the way I play DDR and ITG is a microcosm of everything that I hate about myself. After writing that post, I couldn't do anything but just meditate on how screwed up I am, and when it came time to go to bed I couldn't sleep because my mind wouldn't shut itself off, as it kept thinking about all the messed-up situations in my life.
As if that weren't enough to have on my mind, a month from today I start back at school, not just as a student but also, for the first time, as a teacher. I'm nowhere near done with all the reading on teaching composition that I wanted to get done here, so I'm going to have to push myself to get that done.
On the topic of things I wanted to get done this summer, originally I'd wanted to play my way through both Final Fantasy 7 and another RPG I'd never played all the way through before break was over, but I'm just now getting to the end of Disc 1 on FF7. As if I don't have enough on my mind, now I've got that depressing me as well. (Am I the only person who makes sure to take Aeris on multiple rides on the gondola in the Gold Saucer before heading to the Temple of the Ancients?)
I'm assuming there's no point in me heading up to Ann Arbor this Sunday, so I'll cancel those plans and hopefully reschedule them at a time when more people want to meet up there.
I suck. Seriously.
Happy birthday Chantelle. I hope you're still being creative wherever you are and whatever you're doing.
Right around now I was supposed to be getting around here to drive up to Detroit and catch the Twins-Tigers game, but due to all the craziness at the house I'm going to pass on that for now. I was really hoping I could make this trip with Christina and Milena and/or Penny, but due to the craziness in their lives I'm not going to push it. One of the biggest regrets in my life was that I never caught a game at the old Tiger Stadium, and I figured if I went up there now at least I could drive by the old ballpark before it went to pot. Still, even if things weren't so crazy here, I figure that maybe it's best if I wait until I can make the trip with some friends here, just so I'm not up there all by myself.
Since the Tigers' weekday games are all on the road here for a while, I may still pass on seeing the Tigers and going up to see the Shock (Detroit's WNBA team) instead. Even at that, though, I'd really rather make the trip with friends if I can. All things being equal, maybe this is one of my summer goals that I should put off until next summer.
To be honest, I think part of the reason I wanted to go up to see a Tigers game is that it would give me an excuse to go off-diet. Mike Ilitch, who owns the Tigers (and also my beloved Red Wings), is the owner of Little Caesars Pizza, so of course said yummy pizza gets served both at Comerica Park and the Joe, and I'm sorry, but I think it's kind of a necessity to eat Little Caesars either when you're going to a game, or during a playoff run of one of the teams. Of course, I could always just go out and get Little Caesars here in town, then come back and watch the game on TV ... sigh, I'm hopeless, aren't I?
Christina/Milena: Has the package arrived yet? It should have been there yesterday at the latest.
We've had the signal booster plugged in all this time outside of the space above the printing/matting room, and even with the temperature hitting 90 outside we haven't had the smoke alarms go off. We're still going to have an electrician come in here to look things over (since this still doesn't cover problems like the power cord for Heather's computer melting), but my father seems to think that the space between the roof and the upper floor ceiling is heating up much more than anyone thought it would at first. I'm guessing we can just put some vents to the outside up there to fix that problem, but of course that'll probably cost an arm and a leg given what the housing market's been doing lately.
Problem solved, right? Imagine my horror, then, when I go talk to Heather after getting up and she says, "Father's been having some numbness and tingling in his ..." Of course, me being in an incredibly paranoid state right now, I think, "It's his arm, he's gonna have a heart attack, no one here knows CPR, what's the number for 911?" The numbness and tingling was in one of his legs, though, and earlier today a big purple blotch appeared on the leg. He went to the doctor -- quite a rarity for him, but I guess the house situation has everyone here being super-cautious -- and it sounds like he just popped a varicose vein in his leg after doing all that driving over his "vacation." Thankfully the doctor pointed out that his health's gone to pot ever since he moved the office into the house, and he was told quite clearly -- in front of Mom, so he's got to obey -- to start eating better and exercising again.
No one needs to tell me how silly and irrational I've been acting lately. I know I'm probably blowing things way out of proportion here, and that I should do something to help myself relax. I think I do worse at relaxing than I do at having fun, though.
Okay, the parental units are home, and after a non-entirely-gentle reminder on my part that I was the one who saved everyone's asses last time, my father has agreed to pay to have professionals come in here and check things out for us ASAP. He's still insisting that we plug the signal booster back in tonight (albeit outside of the space above the office ceiling) to see how that affects things, but with so many of us milling about here tonight I'm sure that if something happens, we'll detect it quickly enough so that it won't be a problem.
I don't think we're totally out of the woods here, but having everyone home (yes, especially my Mommy) makes me feel a bit better. Now, I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do for this next little while, but I am feeling a serious need to do whatever I can to decompress. I'm not sure exactly what form that will take, but I'm guessing that this is one of those moments where some of you would advise me to start drinking. No thanks.
There hasn't been any change in the house situation since last I wrote here, and this time I even made sure to talk to Heather this time to make sure. That being said, right now I'm thinking that because nothing has happened for the past twenty-four hours or so, I'd better be ready for things to go apeshit here in a little while. Why yes, I am paranoid, thanks for asking.
No sooner do I finish writing the previous post than I talk to Heather. Earlier today she was working on her laptop with the AC adapter plugged in, when all of a sudden it shut down on her. She noticed a little puff of smoke coming from behind her, and looked to see that part of the power cable had melted. Geesh.
Anyway, the house is still standing, but now more than ever I'm convinced that there is a serious electrical problem here, and our electrician still isn't answering his phone. The parental units will be back from "vacation" tomorrow, and hopefully that will make things seem more sane here. I'm not going to pretend that I've been acting completely rationally since Saturday, but given my experience with the last fire, I think I've got a darn good excuse for that.
I was going to go up to Detroit on Thursday to catch the Tigers game, but those plans have to be put on hold for now. Le sigh.
I'm still here. The house is still here, and it's not on fire. I'd like to say that I'm holding up okay, but in all honesty I think I'm tired from worrying so much. Hopefully that makes sense.
Anyway, I need to go out later tonight after Mark gets home from work, because I'm out of my fruit juice bars and I can only get those at certain stores around town. I'll probably hit up the arcade to play DDR as well, and hopefully just being out and about can help me take my mind off things.
You know, one of my goals for the summer was to get the other sections of the .org updated more frequently, but I was hoping I'd be updating them under better conditions than this ...
New in the .journal: "A Real Bad Flashback." Details on how yesterday wound up being such a bad day for me (not just piddly-shit bad, but really, really bad), and why I might possibly stop posting here for a while, though I certainly hope that won't be the case. If you all could send some good luck vibes this way, I would be grateful.
Provided I can ever get to sleep here, when I wake up I'll have an awful lot to tell you all about just how bad Saturday sucked. In the meantime, while I'm waiting for my mind to stop racing, I figured I should go ahead and reveal the answers to the latest round of Name That Tune. Since I only got three correct answers again this time, in addition to naming the song and artist, I'll also be including links so you can buy the albums that the songs appear on. (Said links also include my Amazon affiliate link, so in addition to treating yourself to good music, you'll be sending me some pennies to help me expand my own collection.)
1. You treated my woman to a flake of your life / And when she came back she was nobody's wife.
Leonard Cohen, "Famous Blue Raincoat" (from the album Songs of Love and Hate)
2. It's sometimes just like sleeping / Curling up inside my private tortures.
Björk, "Play Dead" (originally released on the European version of Debut, first available in the US on Greatest Hits)
(Correctly guessed by JBoy.)
3. Elysian fields are dead and brown / And your picture's hanging upside down.
Jill Tracy, "The Other Side of Pain" (from the album Diabolical Streak)
4. I was driving a Chevy '72 / Had four on the floor, girl, a hundred-twenty it could do.
Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise, "Once Upon a Time" (from the album Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise)
5. And when they're on a roll she pulls a razor from her boots / And a thousand pigeons fall around her feet.
Tom Waits, "Time" (from the album Rain Dogs)
6. It's not for free / But I'll take your love if your love will pay me.
Helium, "XXX" (from the EP Pirate Prude)
7. There is no hope in regretting now, all the pain that we could not see / We both knew what we wanted, and we took it believing it free / And we took it believing it free.
Sarah McLachlan, "Mercy" (from the album Solace)
(Correctly guessed by JBoy.)
8. I could sneer, I could glare, say that life is so unfair / And the one who made it, made it 'cause her breasts were really big.
Jill Sobule, "Bitter" (from the album Happy Town)
(Correctly guessed by Penny.)
9. The broken glass that fades / The past is a parade of countless days / Painting patterns in the sand.
Sean Lennon, "Home" (from the album Into the Sun)
10. Just before our love got lost you said, / "I am as constant as a northern star."
Joni Mitchell, "A Case of You" (from the album Blue)
In case no one caught the theme I had going here, 1, 5, and 10 are all songs that Tori Amos has covered, although I didn't include any of Tori's songs in NTT this time. Anyway, JBoy wins, and Penny gets her second straight second-place finish, and you all really need to buy some of those CDs. Seriously.
A recent discussion on one of the mailing lists I belong to has caused me to realize that I do not know how to have fun. Literally.
I could blame any number of people for this, and some are certainly deserving of blame, but most of all it's my own fault for being such a damn stick-in-the-mud.
Just thought you all should know that.
Quick note to Christina and Milena: Your package is now fully wrapped up, and now it's just a matter of me getting to the post office to get it sent out. I'm guessing you'll probably receive it sometime early next week.
Anyway, after playing around with Launchcast for a while, I decided to go ahead and rip all of my new age CDs to my computer. I was surprised at how few CDs I have at this point; most of my new age phase when I was younger came when I could still only play cassettes, so I still have a lot of stuff I should move over to CD at some point. (As it is, the cassettes are in one of those boxes of my stuff that should have been delivered to my room after we moved back into the house, but somehow got sent to our detached garage instead.)
After not a small amount of time spent correcting an incredible number of misspellings in the Internet-supplied track information (seriously, does anyone even bother double-checking this stuff), as well as adding some custom tags (such as all the tracks that are piano solos), I've been messing around with jukeboxing stuff on my computer, and I guess it's okay. I'm mostly using the MP3s for background music while I do other stuff, and when I'm doing that I don't notice the lack of high-end and low-end sound on the tracks quite so much. From my computer speakers it doesn't make much difference, but there's still a world of difference between an MP3 coming out of my computer and a CD coming out of my stereo.
I'm not in the market for a portable MP3 player quite yet (ask me again after I'm back in school and collecting paycheques once more), but I guess I could see myself picking one up for listening to music while I'm at my office at school and such. I still refuse to buy anything from Apple, though.
HOLY CRAP go buy five copies of Cyndi Lauper's At Last right now. I should have known when she promoted the album on The Late Show last year that this was worth the money, but I had no idea it would be this good. Wow.
First of all, happy birthday, Heather. I hope you enjoy the baseball bat and baseball I got you, and that you and Mark spend lots of time playing over by our old childhood school (and out of the house!)
Anyway, a couple of nights ago I was finally introduced to the wonders of Launchcast Radio quite by accident. Some of you may remember in the early days of the .org I had a custom Internet radio station I programmed on another Website, but the provider of that service didn't give me enough control over selections and the station wound up playing mostly classical music. I've been playing with my Launchcast station for most of this weekend, and I'm quite pleased with the selection of stuff it has been pumping out. Oh, the link ...
http://launch.yahoo.com/lc/?rt=0&rp1=0&rp2=1301496542
The only real problem I'm having is that it's interpreting some of my selections way too widely as "genre preferences." For example, I've got a few rap tracks ranked highly on my preferences (mostly stuff from Eric B. and Rakim, EPMD, Boogie Down Productions), but it will still spit out something like 50 Cent at me every once in a while, forcing me to go in and say, "Uh, no. I like good rap, not this garbage." I'm sure that the system will get better as I tinker with it, though.
My question is if any of you have experimented with Launchcast's custom stations, and what your experience with Launchcast has been. You know how to reply.
Yes, it's time for my once-every-four-months-or-so game wherein I post lyrics from ten songs and you, without using search engines or anything similar, guess both the name of the song and who originally performed it. (I emphasize "originally" here because in at least one instance this time you might be tempted to answer with the name of someone who covered the song.) As always, .org readers should post their answers in the NTT thread in the .forum, while people reading this on LJ can just post responses as a reply to this post. I'll give you all a week or so, and this time I'm hoping more than three of these get correctly answered ...
1. You treated my woman to a flake of your life / And when she came back she was nobody's wife.
2. It's sometimes just like sleeping / Curling up inside my private tortures.
3. Elysian fields are dead and brown / And your picture's hanging upside down.
4. I was driving a Chevy '72 / Had four on the floor, girl, a hundred-twenty it could do.
5. And when they're on a roll she pulls a razor from her boots / And a thousand pigeons fall around her feet.
6. It's not for free / But I'll take your love if your love will pay me.
7. There is no hope in regretting now, all the pain that we could not see / We both knew what we wanted, and we took it believing it free / And we took it believing it free.
8. I could sneer, I could glare, say that life is so unfair / And the one who made it, made it 'cause her breasts were really big.
9. The broken glass that fades / The past is a parade of countless days / Painting patterns in the sand.
10. Just before our love got lost you said, / "I am as constant as a northern star."
More on my inspiration to do another round of NTT later.
So no sooner do I write that Mark's from outside Birmingham than a bomb threat gets called in there. Sigh. The worst part was that Mark had to get coverage from Fox News Channel (and that sycophant John Kasich) because CNN was too busy covering the hurricane down in Florida. Mark made some more phone calls (good thing I don't pay the phone bill around here), and things seem to be okay for all his friends and such, but good grief. Part of me wonders if I caused Birmingham to be targeted by mentioning them; I seem to have a habit of doing stuff like that.
Anyway, a quick note to Christina and Milena: your package hasn't gone out yet because I wanted to work some more on the arts and crafts part of it. I figure I couldn't mess it up any more than I already had, and at least now it doesn't look quite as hideous as it did before.
Yes, I'll have something to say about all the Red Wings news here soon, but I'm waiting until I get a chance to digest things a bit here. Needless to say, between that and the rumours of the pending deal between the NHL and the NHLPA, I'm not a happy camper when it comes to hockey.
In case anyone's wondering, Mark comes from a small village outside of Birmingham, and he's already called back there and none of his friends or family members were involved in the blasts.
http://www.cutelittlekittens.com/ -- go there now and spend at least five minutes clicking on the button. Believe me, if it does you half as much good as it did me, you'll thank me when you're done.
When I look at pictures of kittens, though, it makes me think about Rowan. Rowan's over twenty years old now, is probably close to blind now based on her behaviour, and she poops all over the place without concern for anything. Alex was only eleven when he had to be put to sleep, and up until I started losing family members, that was the hardest thing in the world for me to go through. You don't know how much I wanted to hurt the people who rebuilt our house after the fire when they just tossed Alex's gravemarker aside like so much garbage. I know Rowan will die some day, but I just keep hoping and wishing that that day doesn't come any time soon.
It's three in the morning, and I'm going to go out to the garage to visit Skooter now. I'd say that I'm going to give her some company, but I think we all know who really needs the company more at this point.
Okay, so last night the real big fireworks stuff starts in my little neck of Toledo, and of course, as happens every year, our cats start getting scared and panicky. This time, though, there was also the issue of Skooter being in the garage. I decided to go out to the garage to check on her, only to be totally unable to find her out there. I went inside and asked the folks what was going on, only to find out that apparently Mark thought it would be a good idea to let Skooter outside so she could see all the pretty fireworks for herself. (Never mind that all anyone cares about in my neighbourhood is the stuff that goes boom, not the stuff that makes pretty colours.)
Yeesh. I go outside looking for Skooter, and find her a couple of times. She's totally freaked out, and even when I open the door so she can at least get back onto the back porch, she runs and hides. I was worried sick about her for the longest time there, and eventually I had to start my workout without knowing where she was, fearing for the worst. Mark and Heather finally coaxed her back onto the porch in the middle of my workout, but I'm still pissed off at Mark. He had a cat back in his place in England, he should fucking know better than to let cats go outside when things are going boom all around them.
There's some other stuff going on with the family too, but I don't really want to go into details here. I just get sick and tired of always trying to be the best, most considerate person I can be to everyone around me, and so often it just seems that instead of people reciprocating my kindness, they just take advantage of me. Being the better person is supposed to be its own reward, I know, but sometimes I wonder what would happen if I started being as nasty and rotten with people as they are with me. I'm avoiding that temptation as much as I can, believe me, but it's hard as fuck sometimes.
I'd like to get started on my workout here, but we're supposed to be getting thunderstorms in here at any moment, and the last thing I want to have happen is for my workout to get interrupted mid-session by a power outage. (To say nothing of the possibility to a power surge knocking out my PS2.)
On the way home from Bowling Green last night I did a bit of shopping (picking up the final items for Christina and Milena's care package), and both in the parking lot of Meijer and on my drive home I was able to see a great number of amateur fireworks displays. You know, I take enough crap for being "un-American" as it is, but now that I have a British brother-in-law in concurrence with me on this, I have to say it: Guy Fawkes' Day is a much better day for fireworks than the fourth. Really, does America have a truly cool holiday of its own that hasn't been twisted or perverted like the Christian holidays have?
By the way, I had to do a bit of arts and crafts last night to finish Christina and Milena's package (which I'm not sending until they get back from their vacation), and I hadn't really done any arts and crafts things in too long. At first I thought I hadn't been doing arts and crafts because of some emotional issues surrounding people I knew a couple of years ago, but doing the project made me realize the main reason I don't do arts and crafts: I fucking suck at them. Ah well.
The original plan for today had been to leave here early in the afternoon, have lunch at Mancino's (and stop by Dairy Queen for dessert), do some shopping, then stop at Little Caesar's for dinner on the way home. Instead, my brother-in-law picked me up the Little Caesar's for a late lunch while he was out grocery shopping, and now Mancino's is set to close and I have almost no desire to go out. I should head out at some point to get the final items for Christina and Milena's package, but I can get those items at Meijer and they're open all night.
By the way, soda isn't nearly as tasty as I remember it being. That's probably a good sign for my future. (Although I'll still have it whenever I'm eating "real" pizza just because I can't think of drinking anything else with greasy slices.)
Quick question for the technophiles here (and when I say that I basically mean Don B., although anyone who can offer up advice would surely be appreciated): I want to start putting some of my piano compositions up on the .org. Now, keep in mind my main "piano" is in fact an electric keyboard (with close-enough-to-real sound), and so I can just hook a line up to the headphone jack to record stuff. Since I'd be posting everything as MP3s anyway (for bandwidth considerations), I wouldn't mind a recorder than automatically does (somewhat) lossy compression. I was hoping to find an MP3 player that had a microphone in jack -- even if I had to buy from Apple (something I'm loathe to do) -- but I can't find any. I've found digital voice recorders with line-in jacks, but they're about as expensive as hard disk-based MP3 players but with piddling storage capacity (usually around 64 MB or so). Are there any good consumer MP3 players out there that have microphone in jacks that I'm just not finding in my searches?