posted 2005/09/28 at 15:44
Remember how earlier in the year I said I was submitting papers to two different conferences, and I'd been accepted at the conference in Wisconsin in November?
Uh-oh ... I was accepted at the other one too. (Scroll down towards the end of the page to get the abstract of my paper.)
Ignoring the fact that this other conference is in Europe (and as such would be prohibitively expensive on account of travel costs), it also runs the same time as the conference in Wisconsin. Poop. What really stinks is that I have the Poppy Z. Brite paper already written, whereas I'm still working on the paper for Wisconsin. Oh well, maybe I can figure out a way to handle this.
posted 2005/09/27 at 14:33
I swear, both my cheekbones feel like they're about to burst from the pressure of this damn sinus headache. Worse yet, I've been getting a bit of nausea that seems to get amplified whenever I'm driving in my twenty-year-old car; I thought I would puke driving home from Bowling Green last night.
Tylenol and Sudafed don't seem to be helping me any, either; Benadryl helps a bit, but thirty minutes after I take Benadryl I'm always out like a light, even if I take the "non-drowsy formula" Benadryl. If I don't feel substantially better here by the time my 1920 class starts, I may very well just skip it to go home and rest. This is not a good time for me to be skipping classes (midterm exams and papers are coming up, plus my comp students have papers due later this week), but I'm in so much pain now I doubt that I'll be able to even focus on anything in class. Crap.
posted 2005/09/25 at 20:37
If you thought the Bears had any chance of beating the Bengals today ... well, You're A Moron. (Oh dur hur hur.)
We've had this huge weather front moving through her since last night, and it's caused my sinuses to go totally ballistic. I've had horrible sinus headaches for most of the past twenty-four hours, the stuff is draining down my throat making me cough, and after going out to the refrigerator in the garage to get some milk, I went into one of the worst sneezing fits I can ever remember having. This is not fun.
I really need to clean my room more often ...
posted 2005/09/24 at 17:01
I just had my first bottle of Bawls, and I have to say that if Bawls is supposed to be the epitome of energy drinks, then that stuff is highly overrated. Seriously, I've gotten a bigger buzz and rush from generic energy drinks before.
Since I was on the subject of cats earlier in the week, I figured I should keep directing you all to good cat sites, so here you go: dailykitten.com. Those of you reading this from the LJ feed, you can get dailykitten.com added to your Friends list by going to the following URL: http://www.livejournal.com/users/dailykittten/.
All right, for those of you in the vicinity of me, here's a quick breakdown of all the events I've got going on that will (or in one case, hopefully will) involve me traveling:
- 10.07: Driving to Westland to play on an ITG2 dedicab for the first time, and also to meet the Lady Summoner again and guard her against the hordes of pseudo-goth creeps who freak her out.
- 10.13-10.18: Fall break. (I have to go to campus briefly on the 14th to get my paycheque.) I'm still hoping that I can go down to Cincinnati sometime over break and have a DDR party with my friends (and their friends too), but until I hear from people that they'll be up for this, I'm not going to make any plans.
- Sometime in November: Drive to Wisconsin for the Midwest Modern Language Association conference and present my first "professional" paper.
- Winter Break, probably sometime after Christmas: Drive to North Carolina, hang out with Lara and JBoy, and hopefully participate in some kind of DDR/ITG tournament. (Hopefully I won't travel all that distance by myself, but I can't really make any plans here until I know when I'm going.)
- Spring Break: Nevada. (By myself.)
Fall break is the real question mark at this point, so if people are able/willing to hang out then, get a hold of me in the usual manner.
posted 2005/09/22 at 03:09
Hey Don B., remember this? Let's take another look now, shall we?
New York Yankees: 88-63, 1st place, AL East
New York Mets: 75-76, last place, NL East
Oh, and another key difference: it's late in the season now, so, you know, it actually counts. El oh el.
Oh, and sorry if my last post about the whole cat photo thing was a bit brusque, but I'd literally become agitated to the point of tears there by some of the shit people were pulling on me. Seriously, it's not like I don't understand some of the darker aspects of human nature, but that shit just goes beyond anything and straight into the realm of serious mental illness.
posted 2005/09/20 at 23:52
A quick note to all the guys on the Internet who think it's a really fun thing to post photos (or misleading links to photos) of cats either dead or being tortured/abused: I HOPE YOU GET DICK CANCER AND DIE, YOU FUCKING SICKOS.
That is all.
posted 2005/09/19 at 03:38
A quick exchange with the people at Virgin Mobile confirmed that my phone was pretty much unsalvagable at this point (why, oh why don't they care about fixing cell phones when throwing them away causes so much environmental damage), so over the weekend I went out and bought a replacement. For the same price I paid for my last phone, this time I was able to get a camera phone with other luxuries like true-voice ringtones. I already bought Tori Amos' "A Sorta Fairytale" for my main ringtone; I would have got Sarah McLachlan's "Fallen" but I kind of figured that's probably what Penny has on her cell phone ...
Anyway, according to the phone itself I've transfered everything over okay, but of course the only way I'll know for sure is if I actually try sending and receiving calls, so for people who have my phone number, don't be surprised if I call you tomorrow just to test things out. (I promise, any picture-mails I send you will be completely G-rated ...)
I should have been asleep a couple of hours ago, but in spite of my sleep schedule returning to normal, for some reason I got super-tired early in the evening on Sunday and wound up grabbing a nap I really couldn't afford. I just finished grading my students' last in-class writings, and I have to be up in about six hours here for a fairly full day of classes. It probably doesn't help that my plans to go back on my diet today were routed thanks to a number of circumstances, including my continued psychological problems that I'd go into greater detail about if I didn't have to get to bed right now. Instead, I will wish you all a good night, and I'll be back to discuss those things later.
posted 2005/09/17 at 15:33
Yesterday I had a chance to talk to my counselor again about all the problems I've been going through lately. I guess if there's one theme that's pervading my life lately, it's the theme of loss. Clearly there are enough obvious examples of that in my life right now (my grandmother's failing health, the cancer scare with Spyder, Rowan being so old), but there are other things that fall into the category of "loss" as well. Not being a part of Spectrum anymore makes that a loss for me, and it's a particularly painful one considering how big a part of my life Spectrum was for so long there. These past few Thursday nights have been real rough on me to say the least.
Given that I really haven't been able to find any sources of support on campus -- I don't think it'll be worth the trouble to try to restart Un/Gagged at this point -- this has all left me feeling very alone, and very confused. I apologize if I've annoyed any of you with my constant requests for conversation here, but I've got a lot on my mind right now, and apart from my biweekly visits with my counselor I don't really have anyone to talk to. I hope to get a replacement for my cell phone here today, so that I can start calling people to talk to here soon.
There's something else I wanted to say, too. I've been meaning to say this for quite some time, actually, but it's not the kind of thing that's easy for me, as a transsexual woman, to say. Some people may read what I have to say and think less of me, or think me less of a woman, but I just can't hold it in any longer ...
I'm so fucking horny right now I can't stand it.
Seriously, I haven't even had as much as a romantic kiss in over a year, and it's been equally as long a period of time since I've had anyone to do BDSM with. Yeah, I know better than anyone that the discrepancy between my identified gender and my body gender makes it hard for people to think about sexual relations with me -- even within the GLBT community I've run into lots of shit about that -- but damn it, I have needs too, and they're not being met, and that's driving me fucking berzerk.
Sorry, but I had to say it.
posted 2005/09/16 at 12:40
Happy Birthday Christina! Sending good vibes to you and Milena right now! ^.^
posted 2005/09/15 at 23:07
Somehow I made it through yesterday all right, got back here and promptly passed out for the next thirteen hours. I probably have caffeine to thank for some of my pep yesterday (we finally got vending machines that dispense energy drinks on campus this semester), but part of it was probably thanks to the fact that I've finally got the Composition class I'm teaching this semester back on track. This time I didn't work so hard to adapt critical teaching pedagogy to the textbook that was forced on me, and instead just did straight-up critical teaching and then brought the book's (poor) lessons into the discussion. I actually managed to fart during class in order to prove a point on what we were discussing, which I'm sure is a first for UT's English Department.
As much as I should be working on school stuff Thursdays, today I've just kind of been hanging loose here. Originally I'd planned to go out and do some stuff, but I had some massive sinus drainage yesterday and wound up bursting a blood vessel between the bottom of my nose and my upper lip. It doesn't look any different on the surface, but it's very sensitive to the touch and it makes me talk even funnier than usual. I have to go to campus tomorrow anyway to get my paycheque and attend a counseling session, so hopefully the problem will have gone away (or at least be minimized) by then.
posted 2005/09/14 at 09:54
Wednesdays are the one day of the week when I need a good night's sleep. Not only is this the only day of the week when I have more than one class as a student, but I also have to teach my comp class early in the afternoon, plus I've got to make it through office hours without dozing off.
You can imagine how I feel right now, then, because this is normally when I'd be waking up on a Wednesday, and I never went to sleep. Oh, I went lights-out and everything about eight hours ago, but my mind never calmed down enough to let me get real sleep. The night before I'd had this odd nightmare about spiderwebs and spiders where I seemed to repeatedly "wake up" from the nightmare, only to go right back into a situation where there were just spiders and their webs everywhere I looked. I don't know what to make of that, but I must have had an awful time of it because I'd kicked the bedcoverings almost completely off of the bed by the time I woke up yesterday.
It's a good thing I decided to go off-diet this week, because I think I'm going to need a shitload of Red Bull to make it through the day today.
posted 2005/09/13 at 16:49
On Sunday my cell phone decided that it just didn't want to recharge anymore. From what I can see, it looks like the little metal pin inside the phone that hooks up when the AC recharger is plugged in has just vanished on me. I hope this doesn't mean I have to get a new phone soon, because that's one expense I really don't want to have to deal with here.
Anyway, I won't be able to do anything about the phone until I get paid on Friday, so until then I'm only turning my phone on while I'm out of the house. As I'm usually in class while I'm out, this essentially means that I'll be unreachable by phone for at least the next few days. When I get the phone situation resolved, I'll be sure to let you all know.
posted 2005/09/11 at 16:34
I should say something here about the Bengals beating the Browns today, but sports aren't exactly a real pressing priority for me right now. (I know, I know, I owe you all a discussion on my feelings about the Red Wings' upcoming season, and I'll try to get to that before the start of the season.)
I don't really have a way of doing a "nawty filter" here, so anyone who might be interested in knowing about my latest acquisition in that regard, IM me.
With a few weeks left to go in summer break I finally felt like I was making some good progress on a personal level, but now I think all my progress in those areas has disappeared on me. Being away from campus on Thursday nights, not having the support system I used to have in Spectrum (even as tenuous as that was in my final weeks with the group), has become harder and harder to deal with each week. Especially as I'm going through all these new experiences as a teacher, I really need people to talk to here just to help me work these things out, and now I don't really have anyone to talk to. I'm not even sure there's any use in trying to restart Un/Gagged at this point.
All of my Internet friends are super-busy now as well, so I haven't even had anyone to talk to in that regard. This has all just left me feeling incredibly lonely and depressed, and I'm not coping with those feelings as well as I used to. I can guarantee you that I won't be going back on my diet here at least until next week, and all I really want to do right now is stay here in bed and hope that things will get better on their own, because I just don't have the strength at this point to try to make things better on my own.
posted 2005/09/09 at 03:03
John Stossel: Price-Gouging in Post-Katrina South a GOOD Thing
A note to all my libertarian friends: shit like this is why I will never, ever ever ever, be a fiscal conservative. Fuck that shit.
posted 2005/09/08 at 17:22
One of the things I discussed these past couple of weeks with my counselor was how aware I've become that I tend to speak of nothing but the troubles in my life -- however large or small -- to engender sympathy from others. After not a small amount of meditation on the subject, I realized that one of the big reasons I've done that in the past is that it seems like a sure-fire way to get attention from people, and that even after I was aware of just how bad I had gotten in terms of complaining about how bad my life was, I was afraid to change how I approached other people because I was worried that if I wasn't constantly pulling people's sympathies towards me, people -- strangers and friends alike -- wouldn't pay attention to me anymore.
After making these discoveries, I think I've at least made some progress. Obviously this isn't going to be an all-at-once thing, especially in light of things like my grandmother's impending passing and the many tragedies unfolding in Hurricane Katrina's wake, but I generally feel stronger, more aware of what I'm thinking and feeling, and better able to avoid getting all "emo" for lack of a better word.
That's all fine and Belldandy, but a new problem has arose, in that now, all of a sudden, no one in my innermost circle of friends is talking to me anymore. Even after I send e-mails explicitly asking for a reply, I'm not getting any kind of response. Granted, my friends are all very busy people with lives of their own to lead, but it's been so long since any of them have gotten hold of me that I'm starting to worry whether or not my change in attitude is, in fact, causing them to stop talking to me.
I'm going to avoid the whole "Oh no one is paying attention to me and no one likes me anymore wah wah wah" shpeel, but I have to say that I am starting to become seriously concerned about what is going on here.
posted 2005/09/04 at 22:46
I don't know if I'd mentioned this earlier, but Spyder (one of the family cats) started developing this weird growth on her neck about a month or so ago. Yesterday we finally got her to the vet, who says that the growth may be cancerous. Given that Spyder's attitude and eating patterns haven't changed, the vet says that if it is cancer it probably hasn't spread anywhere else in her body, but the growth will be removed later this week and biopsied just in case. As if this family didn't have enough going on at this point.
On the subject of cats, obviously the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is still weighing heavily on my mind. Most of you know that I'm a huge fan of the author Poppy Z. Brite, who until about a week ago lived in New Orleans with her husband and some twenty-five cats (along with a dog and a snake). She and her husband tried to hang on, but they wound up leaving New Orleans at the last minute, and were only able to take two of their pets with them. She's unsure as to whether or not her pets will get rescued in the midst of all that's going on down there right now, but she has asked on her LiveJournal for continued PayPal donations to her cat fund. Here are pictures of her cats and a link so you can PayPal money to her for her pets.
posted 2005/09/02 at 17:14
Okay, Grandma Shannon made it to the hospital okay, but the doctors are being kind of vague about her chances of pulling this out. Everyone who's gone up to see her, though, says that the chances aren't good, especially because she really doesn't want to live anymore. I wish there was more we could do about that, but it's been over four years since Grandpa Shannon died, and if she hasn't found another reason to live yet, I don't know as she ever will.
I mentioned earlier that one of my cousins was supposed to be living in the Shannon vacation house with Grandma Shannon this summer and help take care of her, but when my folks went up there the place was a wreck, with garbage all over the place and my grandmother's excrement all over the bathroom. Well, on their way home from the vacation house yesterday my parents stopped at Grandma Shannon's house, where said cousin's twin sister was supposed to be living and keeping an eye on things. According to the descriptions of what my parents walked into yesterday, Grandma Shannon's house would be right at home in New Orleans at this point, what with the huge mess over there.
Phone calls have been made, and it looks like a huge civil war among the three remaining Shannon sons is about to break out, at a time when everyone should really be focusing on Grandma Shannon's condition. It's actually falling on me to be the calm voice of reason right now, which definitely isn't something I'm used to.
This is just so odd for me, because my extended family essentially ostracized me over a decade ago after they found out I was bisexual (years before I realized I was transsexual as well). I used to be mad at those family members for not understanding me -- it's really hurt that I've had three grandparents and an uncle die on me since then and I haven't been able to go to any funerals -- but I moved past that long ago. I want to be angry at all the hate-mongering "Christian" leaders that to this day continue to foster this air of intolerance in America (which, as far as I'm concerned, is far far removed from any of the teachings of Jesus Christ), but this isn't a time for anger right now. This should be a time for reflection and putting this (comparatively) petty shit behind us as Grandma Shannon goes through her last days.
Anyway, I wanted to give you all an update on that. Note to the usual suspects (Christina, Milena, Penny): I could really use someone to talk to right now, both about this stuff and stuff at school (not to mention the situation in Louisiana), so if you have time, please message me the next time you see me online.
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