Last night was The Big Show, the one I like to have every year where we get to do all the dances; the entire set, audience participation, and a huge sound system. My friend and old training sister Merrie Laugh got the job for us. Even better, she asked if the Gold Dragon could come down and demo some Kung Fu between our Hula sets, which he did.

Originally they wanted us to light the fire pit, and I was more than willing. I was even going to do a live chant with my ipu, just make something up in Hawaiian, something about lighting the fire in the pit, asking Pele to be present or something like that. After all, Pele is ka wahina o ka lua o ke ahi: the woman of the fire pit. I thought it would be appropriate. But in the end, they decided to light it later at night after we had already finished dancing.

So I got there with my flowers in my hair and my red lava-lava and I saw Merrie Laugh, and at first she didn't seem to recognize me. Then she found the perfect place for Kamila and I to set up our gear and stuff: in the apparatus room in the fire house. We were able to hang all of our huge costumes up among the fireman coats and stuff; our implements were on the back of a fire truck. Bear in mind that fire trucks are my first phobia. They scare me just a little bit more than zombies.) But it was an awesome set up because there was a door from there that went right to where we were dancing on the grass. (Oddly, neither Gold Dragon nor Kamila seemed to recognize me right away last night either. In both of them, as in Merrie Laugh, I saw that fleeting moment of "Who is that girl and why is she walking towards me?" Weird.)

The sound system ROCKED. I brought my iPod and was able to hook it up to their speakers which were massive. They had a mic set up so I could introduce each song and read the translation.

The Hula itself went off without a hitch. Well, with one minor hitch as I called out the wrong kahea during Waikiki Hula, but that was about it.

We did a fantastic show. Too bad that most people there didn't really want to see it. I get that; seriously I do. When people go to a hula show, they want to see Hula. That's why they're there. When they go to a party, they want to party, and if a show is going on, sometimes that's neat, but most of the time they'd just rather go about their business. This is why it's so hard to do parties, especially where drunk people are involved.

Interspersed among our set, the Gold Dragon came on and did three forms. At the end, he did broad sword, but he didn't have his sword; luckily I had mine in my car and he used that one.

The whole show was over by around 6:45.

Afterwards, I gave out the leis that I had made for people. I only had nine of them so I gave one to the Gold Dragon, one to Merrie Laugh, a few to the kids (who enjoyed it more than the adults,) and some to the older people in the audience who seemed really into it. But most of the folks there seemed uninterested. They didn't even really watch the sword form and even though they'd been asked to hang onto their kids, because it is, you know, a real sword? There were still kids and even adults wandering around close to him, as if he wasn't even there. As Gold Dragon put it as he was helping me put my stuff in the car, "God...tough crowd."

Kamila had to leave directly after dancing, but they invited Gold Dragon and I to stay and eat. The food was yummy so we both took them up on it. We took seats by the now-lit firepit and ate and talked probably until around 9. The music was terrible (mostly country and some crappy old 80's metal, liek the worst they could find,) and we were right under the speakers, but that's where we ended up so that's where we stayed. It was goddamn cold last night--as it has been this entire summer--and the fire was really nice.

A few people came up to us and said, "you guys did a wonderful job," and one lady apologized for some of the other people there. I told her, "Look, it's a party; people are here to party, not to watch a show that they don't really get. This happens a lot so we're kind of used to it. And at any rate, it's so much better than a handful of shows where people are too into it and get inappropriate."

Another woman came up to me and said, "I know it looked like no one was paying attention, but a few of us were and I have to tell you: Girl, you can move." Then, like I said, there were some older people there who seemed really involved in it. And there was this one little chick around 13 or so who followed us around chatting to us. She asked me to tie her lava-lava on her the way I was wearing mine (as a dress instead of a pareu) and I did, and after that we were like besties. It was really cute.

If even a few people get it, then it's worth it.

But even more than that, last night I got it. I was right down in it with Real Hula; not backyard party Hula, but really doing my thing like I know how to do it. Performance-wise, I think it was one of my best. I did it for Pele and Laka, and I was really happy with it. I think maybe it even shows in the photos. It's weird to me how I look like a totally different person when I'm dancing; like even my face looks different to me. I don't look at those pictures and cringe.

Gold Dragon made a comment too. We were talking about confidence for some reason and he said to me, "The girl you are tonight, when you're out there dancing? That's how you should always feel about yourself."

Anyway, so those pictures!

( These are the leis that I made. )

( The Gold Dragon does his thing. )


( The Gold Dragon does my thing. )
LOL, okay!

( Na Wahine O Ka Mokupuni Lo'ihi do their thing. )


( This is my favorite picture! )
That's one of my favorite sections to that Hula, which is my absolute favorite Hula. It's called O Keahi A Lonomakua and tells the story of Kamapua'a's reaction to the destruction that Pele caused after he insulted her. It's a very feminist chant (Pele is a massively feminist icon,) and I get so much out of performing it. I even chanted it last night too. Anyway, this is the part that says, "Kei ki'i mai nei Hawai'i," or, "Hawai'i is summoning me."

( These are all after the show. )

( When I came home, I still wanted to feel like I was Pele. I wasn't ready to give that person up yet. )

( It is traditional, after Hula, to dispose of live flowers at the beach, or by burying them. )
So I took Sano on a walk to the beach today and threw my haku lei, a maile, and my flowers into the bay.

And that was that!

More, locked!

HOOTAH, I got my blue belt! Remember how I was always saying that that was one of my yearly goals? And the best part is that the Lady Chrysanthemum got hers, too. So we both got our next level belts together. It was awesome. Sifu explained what I have always believed, that the color of the belt really doesn't mean anything in our school, because at the end of the day, you pretty much know what you know, no matter what color you wear. (Not his exact words but that was the gist of it.) But that when he saw a certain amount of improvement, and people had come a long way, they went up a belt and he said that we had both come very far and had deserved our next level.

I was so happy! Usually my tradition is to have ice cream on the night of getting my next belt (all five times, LOL!) but I don't have any tonight, and anyway I have to get up early tomorrow (and ice cream keeps me awake,) and I'm at a nice comfy weight for next week's show and I wanna keep it there. I'll gorge myself Saturday night after the show.

Which, by the way, promises to be one of the best shows ever. If only Kalakalina would be there! I hope nothing goes wrong and everyone is there who is supposed to be there. The Gold Dragon (still not feeling well, wtf,) and hopefully the Empress as well as Te Ji Han, Iron Man and I think that's all from the Kung Fu group.

Also on the squee front, today I got a beautiful, heavenly baby blue jay. He's all bitchy and trying to bite. I feel bad because he's so terrified, and I think he's a little neuro, too. There's just something not right about him. He falls over when he gets scared and then he just stays there. WTF?

Welp, that's tonight's bit of joy. Now I'm gonna chill with ze novel for a little while then get my ass to bed, read Shogun and hopefully fall right the hell to sleep. A&P (douchebag day!) and Eastern Nutrition tomorrow, so it's a longass day. Le sigh.

So tonight, here I am again writing about writing instead of writing.

And mangling. Umm.

( No, seriously. We have to leave the room. We have to leave the room. We have to leave the room. We have to stop it. I came here for you. To hear your story. But maybe it would be rolling around naked on the air. )

I little bit of re-done RC pt 2 for anyone who remembers. Some of the names have changed, but the characters remain who they were. Mostly this is really for boggyb who does remember these stories and these characters.

( Sahrek turned to him, frowning half in annoyance, half in annoyance, half in curiosity. )

So, I know that two and maybe three and possibly four of you have read these stories in their old incarnations and as I said in my previous post, it tickles me that some of you remember them.

I know it was years ago, and even though I deleted the Hero Series (and then lost the originals to a hard drive crash and then *didn't* back them up after retrieving them, along with many other folders,) I still have some heavily revised versions of Raptor Crest and Seer, as well as some outlines of what I had planned on doing with them when they were still fanfictions.

Long story short, years ago I decided that I really liked where the stories were going, and they had gotten so far away from the "fan" part of "fanfiction" that they were really just original characters set in Hyrule anymore. And, I liked the characters. I had these ideas about a different world, and different realities that I really wanted to write about; something I had totally conjured up.

But, I wanted to take the characters with me.

Some of the names I had to change because obviously they weren't mine. Shame, too, because I was always really partial to "Harkinian" as a last name, (it has a cadence, doesn't it?) and I loved "Hisoka" as the first name for a man. However, "Hisoka" is actually a Japanese word and that just wouldn't fly in a story where there is no Japan; not if I was ever aiming for publication.

To that end, "Hisoka" became "Treijin." Why? Because I always wanted his and Sahrek's initials to be opposites, and I obviously had to change "Harkinian" because that name was not mine to begin with. (Wish I'd made it up, though. Really awesome name.)

Sahrek's last name became "Tamret." Funny story about that name. I was driving around by Home Depot once a few years ago, and I saw this license plate that was obviously the vanity plate of some retired guy. It read: "IAMRET". But the font was weird, or my eyes were bad or something, because I read, "TAMRET" and thought, "Well WTF does that even mean?" for a few minutes before figuring out what it really said. Then I says to myself I says, "Self," I says, "that name's got a cadence to it, too." And it sounds really sharp, short and brutal. Sahrek Tamret. Like Juliet Capulet. He is still a frustrated, reclusive criminal; he is still a trickster who just wishes to be left alone, but would just as quickly kill you if it got you out of his way. I still like him and I still have tons of fun with him.

I was never partial to the name "Sheik" to begin with; it was always unwieldy to me and I wished that I could name that character something else. When I decided to bring him along for the ride, I was glad to get rid of that name. He naturally became Kris Makala; and the Sheikahs became Miakadas; something like Native Americans with a Chinese soul. He's still the doomed Seer who can't speak above a whisper. He can still connect himself to his surroundings. He's still that hormonal teenager (in later stories) and the betrayed adult.

"Majat." I think I might have explained this once before, but it still makes me laugh. I used to talk every night to Min (and I miss her like mad.) We had this fab idea that I would write this story and she would illustrate it. This was going to be OUR thing, something that we were going to do to amuse ourselves, and if anyone else liked it, that would be great. The working title of the project was "Min And Jules Amuse Themselves."

We called it "MAJAT" for short.

When Min kind of geared away from it, I was alone in the world of Majat, which I began to populate with these people who were still stuck in my head.

They are not going anywhere, not until I get them out there.

I know that back in the day, Raptor Crest and Seer were kind of popular. To this day, I get emails asking if I plan to continue them; if I ever found the original Hero Series; if there is some way that people could still read about those people.

YES. Someday, YES. But those stories were more or less original sequels to three ass-numbingly long (actually, originally it was FIVE ass-numbingly long) fanfictions. So in order to get those out, I have to get the first ones out first. Which, yeah, if you think about it.

The thing is, those are mostly done; at least the first two. They are unrecognizable from what they used to be.

Leander is still new to me, even after, what, five years? He's really nothing like the hero I used to write. His issues are a little darker and he is a little colder. The queen is now Sunari; also less approachable, tougher, less girlish. Malon has become Ivy, not a farmgirl but a doctor.

And so on.

But those characters that people sometimes ask me for are all like, "YES, we still exist! We still want to breathe and live and kill and die and be resurrected, or not be resurrected."

Sometimes I want to share them like I used to. Sometimes I think, Well, let me put up some scenes from Raptor Crest that are different, hopefully better, and maybe some folks would read them.

Usually I end up going, "Nahh, that's dumb" but when I get into the zone I'm in now I'm like, Damn, I should do that!

I feel like this entire entry reads like the Mangler. Am I making any sense at all? ^_^

Poor Haku-chan just had another seizure. This one was different from the others. He wasn't pre-ictal like he usually is (usually it's about a minute of him kind of fluttering around and trying to stand up, before he finally falls down.) Then, it wasn't as violent as the others. I actually got nervous thinking, “WTH, why is he doing it wrong?” It went for about three minutes then he did his “walk around everywhere” thing, went outside, and now he's laying at my feet with his third eyelids all puffy, which always happens. It looks like he gets a headache after the seizures.

If this was a Pet Shop Of Horrors episode, he would be two different dogs: a docile female and a crazy male, and the seizures would be an electro-spiritual reboot between them. Jeezus.

Speaking of strange animal behavior, my backwards-head sparrow? The one in the video down there? Perfectly fine, flying, as if nothing was ever wrong. Again, WTH.

And Laura came to take the lovely wonderful Denzeru two days ago. It was hard to say goodbye to him, but he's in an aviary now (my aviary is all et up with starlings,) and he's trying to work out how to eat, fly, all that other crow stuff.

Kamila came over yesterday morning and we had a massive, two hour rehearsal for next Saturday's show. There were lots of mistakes and “OMG WHY THE HELL DID I SKIP THAT VERSE?!” moments, but in my experience, that's what last rehearsals are for, and I'm pretty comfortable with the whole thing. We're really not adding anything new to the show except the fire entrance and me probably chanting. Umm, maybe I should be nervous about that. But oddly, I'm not. Yet.

Oh, so I re-DL'ed Advent Children Complete and it looks real swell on the huge Mac Daddy screen. All large and crisp. No subtitles though; guess I have to DL them separately.
( LMFAOOOO” )

OMG what is wrong with me. I'm so easily amused.

Yesterday I had some time and I found this tremendous fan-page on Cloud Strife. (WHY DON'T MY LINKS WORK ANYMORE?) I love it because the writer is not only a decent writer (hard to find in any fandom,) but I agree with so many of the things she says, the nuances, subtleties and facets that I sometimes suspect even Squeenix wasn't aware of, or at least didn't do on purpose. Or at least not at first. I get excited about well-made characters and when someone else sees what I see, it makes me squee in fangirlish glee.

Ummm, fiddledeedee.

Later that night I started writing, revising, etc. all that kind of stuff that I usually put off on ze novel, and I hit that point where I couldn't stop because I was enjoying myself too much. It was 1:30 by the time I closed OpenOffice and then the characters were the men I took out shopping with me today, listening to my iPod going, “Oh yeah, this song reminds me of so and so.” Reading that fan page on Cloud Strife, I began this elaborate fantasy wherein my novel not only gets published, but people actually read it; it gets fans and fanfiction, people pair my characters with one another, have 'ship wars, slash them, do fanart, MarySues and all of that other nonsense, good and bad, that goes with fandom. I was thinking about how iconic some characters in a series become. Like, in Final Fantasy they have tried so hard for years to make the perfect character that everyone would adore. They went through their Squalls and Tidus's and yadda yadda, yet it was the blocky pixels of this one nearly unreadable character from over ten years ago that became The Big One. So I was thinking, gee, if my stories ever got published and had a fandom, which character would be That Character, the one that people made pages about, wrote essays on, did tons of fanart and junk like that? And then I thought, dang, it wouldn't be my protagonist, the hero of the whole series. It wouldn't be any of the main characters. It would be goddamn crazy murderous blood-reveling Jin. Once called “obvious” by someone who read the stories in their original form, he is so natural to me, so easy to write, to visualize, to speak for. I think that the character really is quite obvious; he's not very subtle at all and I'm a very self-indulgent writer to begin with. I release all my gory darkness through him; he's like brain-vomit. I think that possibly the only way for me to write him is with a mallet.

And I think that in my writer-fantasy wherein my self-indulgent work pleases other people too, he would be that character, the one that everyone thought of when they thought of the series. Kind of a shame, really! ;D

Yeah, so my fantasies of being the next JK Rowling. El oh el.

One of my friends, a vet from The Bad Place, just stopped by to bring me a baby starling. I was so glad to see her. She's one of the people who took up for me when that all went down. And not because she liked me (although we have been friends a long time,) but because it was wrong. She's just lovely. I do miss some of those people and I told her, “Say hi to everyone good.”

Soooo I have to feed the puppies, feed myself, (go for a jog?) dye my hair, take a shower, then maybe sit there and write until 2 AM again. We'll see. :)

Okay, I'm going to say this once and get it out of my system for good and never speak of it again:

Against my will, and against my wishes, I feel pity for Michael Jackson. I've never really doubted that he was guilty of touching a bunch of kids, and for me that's a line that once someone crosses it, they might as well be dead anyway. I remember when the last accusation came out and his fans were saying, “Well I don't think it's true. But even if it is, I still love him!” What the hell? Seriously? Yet, like I said, against my will, I feel pity for him. And strangely I feel sad that he died. Not that the child-grabbing post 90's Michael Jackson is gone, but that adorable and mad talented Michael Jackson from before like 1990 or so. The black kid. It's so funny, when my cousin (Boychild's Mom) and I were kids together, one of our pretend games was that we were Michael Jackson's bodyguards and we had to prevent his crazy fans from kidnapping him. (Do you see the theme in my life? The “people need to be rescued and protected because they can't take care of themselves” theme?) We were talking and she said the exact same thing I said the other day: that he must have looked in the mirror and hated himself so much. I said to her today, “Our twelve year old selves would be in hysterics over this. Do you remember when we were his bodyguards?” She said, “Yeah! See what happens when we leave people alone?!” LOL I love her.

(And tangentially, OpenOffice just tried to finish the word “her” as “hermaphrodite” as in me saying, “LOL I love hermaphrodite.” Thanks, OpenOffice.)

Umm, yeah, I had to say it. I hate that I feel that pity but I do.

The last few days were really nice. Jo-chan was over for her birthday celebration and I got her some gifts with which she was really happy (Soul Eater dolls, and Vincent Valentine as well as some manga Tarot cards which weren't really a birthday gift, just something that didn't work out for me but might work for her.) Yesterday the Boychild was at my parents', and Jo-chan and I went to see him and we brought Twilight Princess (the “bame” as he calls it, with Yink who makes the guy fall with the sword.) While we were there, there was a huge thunderstorm and pouring rain. I mean like, lightning splitting trees and thunder shaking the house. Or as Boychild called it, “shundah.” Anyways, it was really fun. Then Jo-chan and I went to my house where we played RE2 some more.

I also set up my Wacom Bamboo tablet which is SO much fun to draw with, and the Painter 11 program which is insanely complicated for a damn hack like me, and I have yet to figure out how to duplicate the original layer so that I can cut things with the wand and paste them elsewhere. There are aspects of it that are similar to OpenCanvas and I like that a lot, but there are about ten thousand more of those “aspects” that I have no earthly clue wtf they do. If I mess with it enough I'm sure I'll get about 25% use out of the thing. OpenCanvas I had for years and I got maybe 60% use of the entire program. Also, while I love the little Bamboo pen, it doesn't let me write in the notepad. What the hell?

ANYway. Let's see. My midterms are over and I pulled a 105, a 100 and two 96's. (Which is odd, I mean what are the chances?) So, I'm glad those are out of the way and happy I did pretty well on them. Now comes the circle of hell known as “registration week.” I mean, I know it's hellish for everyone else too, but my college is a total toolbox when it comes to registering us all. You can't just meet with an advisor and do it all on your own. No, we register en masse, hundreds of us going into the assembly hall, taking a number and doing it cattle-style. Right down the line, in a process that takes hours. Then you have to hope that the classes you want are actually available. Ugh. Because if I've got my schedule down right (always questionable,) and the classes and times I want are available, then I can get five full-time classes in on Tuesday and Wednesday and then OMG will only have to go out there two days a week which is what I do now and is pretty sweet.

In bigger news: THE HULA TEACHING JOB IS ON FOR SUMMER. This is a huge “HURRAH.” I only have two students, but it is a start, right? And maybe they'll spread the word? I start on the 9th, in the evening. I'm so excited. What will I teach first? Maybe Kalakaua. That's a nice, easy kahiko. Then maybe Pearly Shells just to give them something in English that they can hang on to. We'll see! Whoop whoop, I'm so happy!

I have to share this crazy story with you all. Last week when I took Sano for his bloodwork (which I have to do again tomorrow,) the vet there brought a tiny nestling sparrow up and asked if I'd be willing to try to help her, or if we should just put her to sleep. I said I'd have a look at her and when I did, it didn't look too good. But I said I was willing to try anyway.

Because when I got her, and up until yesterday, her head was on backwards. I'm not being hyperbolic or histrionic. Her damn head was on backwards.



I couldn't figure out if it was anatomical or physiological, or in other words if it was structural, like her neck was busted in some way, or neurological, like her BRAIN was busted. The bird was a huge mess. She had to keep rolling over so that she could see, legs flailing. I asked the vet if she'd given her azium and she said no, she disliked azium. She said that if I had something herbal or homeopathic, she would prefer if I could try that, if I wanted to. (This is part of why I like this vet so much!) I told her I would try some arnica but I doubted it would work.

So I put Marlene—that's the bird's name, Marlene--on arnica montana three times a day, and a little bit of sulfatrim in case she had some kind of weird brain infection or something. I don't know which one worked, but something did because yesterday she hopped out of the carrier and started walking around. On a whim I put her in a cage with Mananui (that's my catbird) and she went right up on the perch. She's in there now, with her head on straight, perching, eating and flying.

I've only seen something like this once before, with a paralyzed bluejay. I did arnica that time too and I did end up releasing the bluejay. (His name was Tiki.)

Well anyway, I don't think she is releasable because I don't think that nature intends for her to get out there and breed. But I have a very lovely bird friend who is a big fan of sparrows and she might keep her.

The strange thing is I got another call from the same place the other day asking me if I wanted another bird that they were about to put to sleep. This one was a robin with no legs. Not like they had been chewed off or got stuck on something or anything. It was just a baby robin with NO GODDAMN LEGS FOR WHATEVER REASON. So, what's with the muties? I had to turn this one down though. You just can't be a robin and have no legs. It isn't right.

Okay well I'm going to post this now and then eat some cereal and play my “bame” for a bit before hitting the hay. This morning stuff really blows.

What a spectacularly ridiculous day! I mean, quite seriously, my own retardness wins the day today.

It starts out in the morning, when I wake up and my nailbeds on my left hand are totally blue. My right hand, well those are a little blue, but nothing compared to those on my left. So I wash them like eight times thinking, “Well, blueberry juice for sure.” But it doesn't come off. So I start to think, Well, what could cause hypoxia on one side? That's a little weird. And I look it up on the internet—when I had internet, and obviously I have it back now, but that's anotherr story—and it comes up with some weird disease which I forgot, and heart attack. I'm like, “Oh yeah, heart attack, please. I'm 36. I work out! No one can keep up with me.

...Although, I've been getting really tired in Kung Fu. And in Hula yesterday, well, that was really taxing. I was winded. Gosh! That's not like me.”

In A&P when we were doing circulation, he said that often the only indication a young female is having a heart attack is fatigue. No nausea, no sweating, no pain. And then we saw a special on this woman who was 38, who kept in shape, ate all the right food, did yoga etc and just felt really tired. And it turned out she was having a heart attack! It's so common! If only people would just get checked out when they think something is wrong.

And, what if I just drop dead, like Michael Jackson?

So off I go to a walk-in clinic. I waited and waited and it was goddamn freezing in there. Now I'm going, “God, why am I so cold? Maybe my blood just isn't getting around like it should.”

The nurse came in and took my blood pressure. It is 90/60. My blood pressure is often fairly low, but not that low. She took my heart rate and it was 56. Meanwhile I was nervous and I felt like my blood pressure and heart rate must be soaring, but they weren't. She took my temp and it was 98. Then she had this cool gadget that measures your blood oxygen level and she put it on my right finger and it said 100%. I asked her, “Could you try it on my left?” She said, “It's only going to read the same.” I said, “Please, humor me if you don't mind?”

She put it on my left and it only read 90%. Then she went, “Hmm. Well that is a little strange. Just wait here; we'll probably pull some blood.”

So I sat there going, “But why only on one side? If it was some kind of systemic blood disease, it would be on both sides. Low blood pressure, low heart rate, OMG what could it be? A bleed? Am I hemorraging somewhere? Am I going to have an aneurism? It can't be a hemoglobin disease or an iron deficiency; it's only on one side!” I started going through all these diseases we had learned about in class.

The doctor came in and he was really really really ridiculously cute. He reminded me of Kutner from House only tall and with blue eyes, blue like the color of Stitch. He looked at my hands and said, “Yes, one of them really does look blue. I'll bet you washed them about eight times to see if it would come off, right?” I was like, “Yeah! I scrubbed and scraped and, Oh my gosh, why is my blood pressure so low?”

He went to get some alcohol swabs (me thinking, “Wow, when they check blood gases and oxygenation they have to do an arterial stick; they don't take it from your veins; this is serious business!”) and he asked, “But is that low for you? Are you always this cold? Is your heart rate normally pretty slow?”

I was like, “Errr, yeah to all of those things. But maybe not thislow.”

Then instead of taking blood, he used the alcohol to scrub the cyanosis off my fingers. He was like, “Do you work out, or get sweaty, or were you outside yesterday when it was hot, did you do some work with your hands?”

Ummm, yeah?

He goes, “I see this every week in the summer, especially with women. You all tend to put your hands in your pockets. Like of new blue jeans, or your black sweater there.” (Me, looking down at my sweater like a dumbass.)

I said, “But, when the nurse took my blood oxygen level, it was only 90% on the left?”

He said, “You did that with your mind.”

I just started laughing because whenever something random happens, I always tell people, “Oh, I did that with my mind.”

I said that I felt so stupid and he said, “Don't feel stupid; everybody does it.”

I said, “Yeah, but I'm in a school for medicine; I'm studying this stuff. We just did the circulatory system – I should have known.”

He said, “Come back when you do respiration and you have pneumonia. We'll do an X ray, it'll be great!” He said I had “medical student syndrome.”

I was laughing so hard. But it was an “I am such a moron” kind of laugh.

One thing I did find out though, is that they have a medical massage clinic at this place. The clinic is beautiful (even though it was like 20 degrees in there,) it's really close to home, it's medical massage and not spa massage, it's really upscale and like I said, the doctor is hot.

I wonder if it's a sign. I wonder if they'll be hiring when I get out of school! Not like they would hire some moron who thought that she was dying of putting her hand in her pocket, but hey, you never know.

Well, so I lived. I came home, and the internet is down, and all of the phone lines. My Mom had mentioned that she and Dad had to go out today, so I went by and borrowed her cell phone, and my Dad took his. I had to call the vets because Sano's Doxy ran out and I needed to know if I needed to refill it. So I called the vets. The receptionist was someone I hadn't spoken to, and she couldn't find his records. Then she finally found them and she was like, “Well I don't see any mention of him being on doxy.” I'm like, “That's funny, because I'm holding the empty bottle in my hand as we speak.” She goes, “Well let me run this by the vet and call you back. What's your number?” Well, my PHONE IS DOWN and I don't know the cell phone number off the top of my head, so now I have to call HER back with the cell phone number. Only, the entire network is down and I can't access the “about your phone” thing where it tells you the number. So I decide I need to call my Dad on his cell to ask my Mom's cell phone number. I see his name on her contact list and I dial it and as soon as someone picks up I'm all ranty like, “OMG, unbelievable, they can't find Sano's prescription and they have to call me back, but the frigging network is down and I don't know the goddamn stinking number of this cell phone, this whole thing is so ridiculous and today is so STUPID and...”

The person on the other end goes, “Who is this?”

I'm like, “Uhh... sorry? I thought you were my Dad. Didn't mean to yell at you.”

He laughs and goes, “That's okay! Everyone's entitled to have a bad day.”

I'm thinking, “What a nice guy!”

I look at the phone and I think, well, this is my DAD'S cell phone and he probably has my Mom's, so I call my Mom and I go, “What the hell, I just dialed the wrong number, I pressed Dad's name and got some other guy!”

She goes, “Umm, it was probably your brother.”

'Cause, like, they have the same name and all? Yeah. So, I call my brother back and say, “Hi, it's your sister. Umm. Did I just randomly yell at you?” He's like, “OMG, that was YOU?”

I swear I must have eaten Stupid for breakfast in my cereal this morning. I seriously think that I should not be allowed out into the world today, not until it is out of my system.

Oh, they did eventually find Sano's info and he doesn't need to be on doxy anymore, so that saves a bit of money, anyway.

In other news having nothing to do with my own times of deep, personal stupidity, HAPPY BIRTHDAY [Bad username: ”redrupee”]! May this year kick the ass of the last one.

Hallelujah, internet is back.

I'm sorry; I lost that last entry! I was trying to fix the html and then all of a sudden it put all of these wingdings and junk in there. I reposted it from my saved file but it's still all messed up. WTF?! I also lost all your comments. Sorry!

STUDENTS: Do you like to draw? Creation Engine is offering a wacom tablet (usually around 70 bucks) AND Painter 11 ($399 download!) bundled for $155 if you can prove you're in school. OMG early birthday gift! Has anyone ever used Painter? Is it way past my sphere of experience?

So Mac continues to befuddle me. I have had to download different apps for stuff to work, or to work the way I like it. I downloaded this neat program called Open Office, because iMac's writing program didn't suit me. Open Office is similar to Word for Windows but it has this annoying habit of trying to finish your words and sentences for you. It's okay if you don't look at the screen but if you do, you see some truly random things. Just before when I was writing, “birthday” it finished my word as “BITCHFEST.” Umm, thanks! Then, the screen to this computer is so damn bright, even when I had it on the lowest brightness setting, I had to download a little program called Brightness Control. Then I downloaded some other things to help view Windows videos, but so far they haven't worked. There was also no PixResizer for Mac, so I downloaded a little program called ResizeMe, which is great, except I eventually have to pay for it, whereas PixResizer has always been free.

The biggest problem is with my camera. It worked the first time when I hooked it up. I grabbed my pics off of it, resized them, named them and everything was normal. However it didn't recognize, nor would even download, my videos. BITCH WHY DON'T YOU RECOGNIZE. I couldn't eject it no matter what, because it kept telling me it was in use. So I just unhooked it and the computer yelled at me saying that I had damaged my files. Well, long story short, Mac Daddy no longer recognizes the jpg format. WTFFFFFF come on, people! Everything is a jpg! It recognizes ones on web pages, and older ones from older folders. But anything pics from yesterday or today it says, “What is this .jpg of which you speak? I have never run across this extension before.”

I mean, it's a great computer. It's so smooth. I just don't understand it yet. It does seem to be true that nothing is made for a Mac. I actually ordered VM Fusion to run windows,and I installed it, but when it starts up it's looking for something to boot, and it does the exact same “OMG there is no booting device!!!111” thing that Windows does when the hard drive crashes. What the hell? Do you need to have Windows installed first or something?

Oh, and I did call Apple Support to ask them WTF and they are closed. CLOSED, I tell you. They were like, “Oh yeah, we have hours, and this isn't one of them. If you want to know what the special service hours are, go look it up on a web page somewhere or something. Macs are easy; you shouldn't have to call us anyway.”

Uhh, someone just sent me a .doc file and Mac Daddy is going, “Umm, yeah, don't really know what a .doc is, sorry.”

Anyway, so this morning there was a huge thunderstorm, and I took Sano for his followup. Platelets normal (*knock on wood*) and a lower dose of pred, yay. Then there was a thunderstorm.

While there, the Dr. gave me a teenywee baby sparrow who's ridonkulously neurological, like head all turned around backwards and etc. She asked if I'd like to try to help him and I said "Sure." He eats like a pig; he just can't keep his head straight. I immediately empathized. I brought him home and put him on arnica. During which, there was a thunderstorm.

Then I went shopping with Mom (who bought me groceries!) and there was a thunderstorm. Then, in the afternoon, a thunderstorm. By late afternoon it had cleared up. It was about 80 degrees, humid as hell, sunny, and the air smelled like ocean and roses. I took Sano for a really nice jog. It's great to jog in warm, wet weather because it doesn't hurt my lungs. This is definitely my favorite weather for being outside, and for breathing. ^_^ After our jog, there was another thunderstorm, and then in the evening, a HUGE, TREMENDOUS thunderstorm with insane winds. The sun started to come out just as it was setting, and the sky was just mad with glory, all gold and purple with lightning. I took a bunch of pics, but only managed to retrieve a few (not yet sized,) before Mac decided that it didn't know WTF a camera was. After that thunderstorm, just to mix it up, there was a thunderstorm.

And tomorrow's weather calls for thunderstorms. The next seven days after it are just as diverse, with scattered thunderstorms every single day. Even the plants are like, “Wow, umm, thanks for all the water, but that's good for now. Thanks. Some sunlight would be pretty good. Yeah, thanks for all the water and all, but that'll do.” Everywhere you look is mushrooms and mold.

I'll share something weird and gross. Sano's crap turns fuzzy like a day after it comes out of him. Haku's doesn't. Sano has been on Doxy, which is MAD broad spectrum, for almost a month. I called the vet about this and one of them told me that it was because of the wet, dark weather we've been having. But, I just don't know. I mean, doesn't gut flora kill fungus? Candidiasis and stuff? And anti-biotics kill gut flora and I dunno, I just think it has something to do with it, maybe I'm crazy. But then again, who else do you know that really has deep thoughts about why some dog turds would rot quicker than others? My bet is: no one. I alone offer that service.

Just before I was thinking about that Painter program and wondering if spending the $115 was stupid because I won't be able to use it for being too much of an artistic retard and I said to myself, “The question is: are you man enough for a real paint program?” That is not the point of my sudden tangent. The point of the sudden tangent is that after I'd asked myself that, I remembered a whole goddamn section of Le Novel that was gone, which I'd totally even forgotten I'd written. It was a whole little mini-arc that spanned two books, which I had just added in in sections. I don't even remember what led up to them or where they fit. That's the thing about this loss: I didn't lose fifty or so pages of straightforward plot, but fifty or so pages of little details—and big details—that I had added from start to finish over the span of two of the books. Anyway, in this little sub-theme, one of the characters, who is a scientist, tells the main character that he knows a secret; something from his world that scientists have figured out. The secret is either enlightening or terrifying, depending on how you look at it. Throughout the story he asks the character, “Do you want to know what the secret is?” and the character keeps telling him, “No, I'm not ready.” Then, at the end of the second book, the psychic character goes all trancy and starts channeling bits of the secret to the main character. It was a really long monologue that went something like, “The question is this: (...blah blah blah...) The question is this: (blah blah blah...)” for a few times, and then got to, “The answer is this: (blah blah blah...)” And then at the end he said, “The secret is this:” ...And I think I left it there.

But the problem is, I don't remember the questions, and I don't remember THE MOTHERGRABBING SECRET. I mean, I remember the gist of it, but not specifically what it was, how it went, and how I went about explaining it simply.

*le sigh*

OpenOffice has this little lightbulb thingie that pops up to tell you whatever it just did, whether you ask it to or not. It's like that goddamn little paper clip from Works, except I think you could make the paper clip eff off, and you can't do a damn thing about the lightbulb.

I am a befuddled lass.

I did manage to get some pics before everything went balls up, so I am gonna pic spam you all. Serious rainy summertime picspam here follows.

( ”The )
(“The Ardent Sky” is the name of a song that I love, by Bonten.)

( ”Demonic )
He is really not demonic! He's actually so damn cute. But in that picture he looks like he's about to “BLARRRG I AM THE EATER OF WORLDS, THE STREETS WILL FLOW WITH THE BLOOD OF THE NON-BELIEVERS!”

( ”Two )
I am Agitha from Twilight Princess, no?

( ”DOG )
The Boychild loves “Kaku.”

( ”And, )

Well, there is my picspam for today. Dunno if I can do another one anytime soon because of the whole “OMG, what is a .jpg?” problem here and all, but.

Oh, so tomorrow I am off to C1's house for rehearsal. C2 is the one who is actually doing the show, but she can't be there tomorrow. O_o I had originally suggested O Pana 'Ewa, the pu'ili number, but C2 doesn't feel too comfy with that and wondered if we could do Ka Ua Ulanena, Keali'i Reichel's papa hehi one instead. Uhh, I haven't done Ka Ua Ulalena in about three years? But I don't want to be that dancer that goes, “No, I can't just bang it out like that; I have to skip it.” I can do it. I'll relearn it. That's all there is to it. However listening to it now, I realize I have a different version from the album version.

Oh my gosh. I should go to bed. I didn't realize it was this damn late. Where did the evening go?

AND WHERE THE HELL IS MY LJ CUT TEXT?

ETA: Also with Mac I seem to be having a problem opening, placing, moving, and closing programs. I have to click everything like eighty times to get it to run, then when I dont' want it in the dock it goes into the dock, and when I do want it in the dock, it effs off and goes somewheres else where I can't find it. You'd think that "finder" would help you, like I don't know, FIND things. And then when I want to shut something down it tells me no, and I have to "force quit" everything. "Force quit" makes me feel like a Jedi, but it does get kind of irritating after a while.

Well, I'll say it, then. How utterly odd of Michael Jackson to die today. Honestly, I had no sympathy for the man—I always did believe he was guilty and I still do—but it really is strange for him to up and die randomly like this. And, yeah, like most everyone else in the world, I thought he was a great musician and I totally loved Thriller. And yeah, like most of my generation, I grew up with Thriller and knew the dance etc. I had the world's biggest crush on him when I was 12. Actually my cousins and I all did. When the ice cream man came around, we would all buy these packs of bubble gum because they had Michael Jackson cards inside, with a picture of him on one side and a puzzle-piece on the other. Collect them all, and you might complete an actual poster. I don't think I ever completed mine, but I did make a poster of my own once, and hung it in my room. I started to write his name in huge letters on poster board. But then I couldn't fit his entire name because I'd started too big, so it just said “MIKE JACKSON” in black marker. I hung it up anyway. I guess it's just odd to lose an icon, and on the same day as Farrah Fawcett, oh man. But you saw that one coming anyway.

I'm still more upset about that Iranian girl Neda. That's one thing I just can't get out of my mind.

Well anway, just wanted to document all of that.

I finished up my midterms today, with Swedish Tech practical and written, and Myo written. I got 100 on the myo practical (pointing to different random structures, landmarks, bones, muscles etc.) last week so that's pretty good. The myo written was quite fair. There were a few questions where I had to take an educated guess. I noticed after the test that they were questions about movement involving spatial logic, and right-left. Contralateral, ipsilateral, cause and effect in the 3D world. Those are the ones that gave me a problem, and I realized that those are always the ones that give me a problem. About a year ago I self-diagnosed dyscalculia, but now I wonder if I'm not plain old dyslexic or something. I have never had any reading problems in my entire life, but I have had some left-right confusion, and while I have an uncanny sense of time, I have very little sense of space. (Although my sense of direction is fairly flawless; at any given time I could probably tell you if I'm facing NSEW.) I dunno, I'm weird, but that was just one thing that I noticed. Like, one of the questions was, “such and such a muscle causes left lateral flexion of so and so,” and I had to sit there for a good thirty seconds actually doing the movement so I could understand what the question was. Not what the muscle was, but what the question was.

Weird.

Oh, so on the swedish tech practical I got a 89. Which was the high score (shared by another girl in the class,) and I would have thought it fair if we'd had more understanding of the grading process. (I've noticed this a lot in this class. The first day, she didn't explain much to us in the way of what she expected, and at the end of the class we all got together and went, “Wait...what?” And we only just found out last week that we were supposed to be filling in these weekly diagrams. She only gave us one blank diagram each.) Well anyway, so she took five points from all of us because we didn't do tapotement or vibration. In the first class when she showed us though, she kind of waved them off and said, “no one really does much of that though,” and we never practiced it. Like, ever! The thing was, half the class went first, and I asked my partner who had practiced on me how she had scored him (she gave us our papers as soon as we were done,) he actually told me that she had been looking to see those two things and he lost points for leaving them out.

Well, I couldn't rightly do them after having been told, because that would be too obvious that he had told me! But then, no one else did them either and so we all lost five points.

The other lost points were fair for me. I bend my wrists too much.

But other than that it was good.

I came home, dicked around with the new computer (45 minutes on tech support with my server because my outgoing mail client doesn't like Mac and vice versa,) and then at 4 Haku had a seizure. When am I going to stop documenting those? Maybe I should keep doing it so that I can look for a pattern.

Well, so I'm off tomorrow but I have to take Sano for his bloodwork (every Friday,) then go shopping, then hopefully give them both a bath if it's warm enough (PLEASE, SUMMER, PLEASE,) and then Saturday I think it's Hula rehearsal at C's house, early in the damn morning. :/ Blech, as if I don't get up early enough on school days.

You know, but getting back to the rich, famous people dying, I know how truly goddamn obvious this is, but I can just never get over the fact that at the end of the day I really do have it better than the richest, most attractive people in the world. Obviously, beauty and popularity do not guarantee health and life (well duh,) and Michael Jackson remains proof that you can get as much plastic surgery as a billionaire can afford, and at the end of the day you're still a head-case and you probably never know happiness. I think he hated himself so badly to have done what he did to himself. He must have looked in the mirror and seen things a thousand times more hideous than I will ever see, even on my worst day, and the endless surgery never changed that.

I mean her is a guy who was royalty, who had more money than god and people adored him no matter what he did. He could afford the best health care and he was never alone. And he's cooling in a morgue while I'm sitting by my window with the ocean breeze stirring my plants and my windchimes.

I realize that you never know what may be coming. I mean, my Dad makes sure to tell me this at any time. ;)

I don't know, I guess I just appreciate, you know, things and stuff.

That was me being deep. Did you see that? Good, because it's over and I've got some gaming to catch up on.

Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. If anyone is on twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. The more users at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down.

And a few more helpful tips, if you want to help out Iranians.

Well, in other news, I am home tonight because A) I was running superfly late as it was, and then just as I was going to do my last round of bird feeding before I left, my grackle (the one with the cut up face) fell off his perch and started doing the death-huddle in the corner of his cage. He had never feathered well and never wanted to eat on his own, but I still thought he'd be okay. He ended up having worms (even though I wormed him so many times) and he just couldn't shake them. (For worming, I have started using cayenne pepper, because my panacure was way past its date.) I tried force-feeding him, but he only lived for about an hour after that and then he died in my hand. I felt so bad; he was my favorite of the batch this year.

So anyway I had to clean everything, disinfect all his bowls, change the paper towels under the cages (it's pretty clean usually so I don't have to change them every day,) etc. I hate missing Kung Fu. Damn.

Today I was studying for the myo written midterm tomorrow, when I got a call from emergency about another bird.. I put my books down and went to pick him up. It's a pissed off fledgling catbird (i LOVE them,) with an eye infection. I actually think he might be blind in that one eye, or maybe he just doesn't see very well. Hard to say at this point.

Here's something that's a huge bitch. So as I've whined about for weeks, my old hard drive is dead and I lost a bunch of stuff, including the new TBS album and some songs I'd downloaded. They were on my iPod though, but as anyone knows, you can't upload songs FROM your iPod TO your computer. Uhh, yeah. So I had also gotten the iPod touch for free, so last night after school I spent most of the night ripping a ton of CDs, old and new, and I also re-purchased the album and the songs that I had lost. ITunes kept saying, "You already bought this, you know. You sure you wanna buy it again?" and I'm like, "YES, DICK, BECAUSE IT IS GONE." I synced the Touch and then I plugged in the nano to sync and charge it as well.

You could imagine my surprise when iTunes said to me, "Oh hey, you have a bunch of songs on this iPod; do you want to put them into your computer?" I stared at it for about fifteen minutes.

EFF. But at least I did get that one Faye Wong song back that I couldn't find again.

*sigh*, I hate missing Kung Fu.

Well, I guess I could study some more (I never did finish reviewing my facial muscles; although hopefully by now I can tell the difference between levitator labii superior and levitator anguli oris etc.,) and then continue to try to sync Mac Daddy with, you know, my life. It's amazing how much I rely on a hard drive and the things on it. It's amazing how in the, what, thirteen years since I've had a computer, have changed the way I document things.

And I hate Mac's writing program and this VMFusion thing is wack. Do I need to put Windows in here first? I dunno, nobody told me this! It's confusing.

I thought I posted this, guess I didn't, or something? Anyway HOLY HUGE SCREEN, feel like I'm at the goddamn movies yadda yadda, will take much getting used to, have to figure out how to make the window full size and everything else besides. Why did this post not go through?

I think I want Firefox back actually. :) Should download it. But first I have to sit this biddy all up!

First: Yesterday I posted about my feelings re: Obama's stance (or lack thereof) on Iran. As I stated, I was torn about how I felt he should handle it, mostly because I don't think there's anything for him to handle. But I thought it would be decent if he spoke out against the ridiculous, insane violence that is going on there.

Today, he did. He saw the same videos we all saw and I really believe he feels the same horror:

"I have made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering in Iran's affairs," Obama said. "But we must also bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place."

I agree with him on that. McCain said of him: ""The president of the United States is supposed to lead the free world, not follow it. He's been timid and passive more than I would like."

I hate this midset and I always have. No, McCain, Obama is not supposed to lead "the free world." He is supposed to lead AMERICA. And that is a small part of what I hate about that Republican mindset. That America is the Hero to the rest of the world, we just have to lead those poor, lost bastards because obviously we know the way things should be done 'round these parts. And 'round your parts, too.

That whole culture needs to learn to stay the hell out of everyone's parts.

But anyway. Today is an historic day because this is hopefully to be my last LJ post on Windows! My computer was waiting for me when I went to pick up the dogs today, and I'm going to spend the rest of the night attempting to set it up (the easy part,) navigate it (probably fairly intuitive: it's a Mac,) and then get my internet and email set up. (PROBABLY MANY IRRITATING PHONE CALLS AND SUCH.)

Speaking of irritating:

THE DOUCHEBAG CHRONICLES.

Yes, it is Tuesday, which means I spent most of my day with my eyes rolled so far into my head I could practically see my brain, the whole while thinking, "THE FUTURE OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN."

Guido Midget wasn't there today (much to the relief of much of the rest of the class, who seem to feel the same way that I do about him and avoid him like a raging yeast infection.) But the other two douches were there. Yes, there are three total now. I mentioned the new one a few weeks ago, wondering if he was "inoffensive," but since then he has spent every break talking about all of his girlfriends and what a big stud nice, sweet, loving man he is who just loves women. In the smarts department and in how he presents himself, he's kinda like Ted Theodore Logan, without the intentional comedy or cultural significance. But, we'll just call him Ted.

Today, Ted sauntered in an hour and a half late (like half of the class tends to do, in fact.) Right before lunchtime, Ted decided that the middle of an A&P2 lecture was the best time to make a night-night. So he propped his feeties up on the lab table, propped his chair up against the wall on its back two legs (wait for it,) and went nappie-byes. As I'm sure you have all imagined by now, it wasn't long before his chairiepoo went BANG! against the floor, taking him with it, his two bare, dirty feet poking up over the lab table as he tried to get up.

There was a lot of "OMG ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?!" but honestly all I could do was just bust a gut. That's what you get.

Of course it wasn't just him today; The Atomic Douchebomb (henceforth ADB) was also in attendance, with his frequent, blowing yawns (he puckers his lips, puffs his cheeks out and goes, "WHOOO! WHOOO!" to yawn,) and his enlightening questions and commentary.

I took notes on them today, because they were truly all sparkling gems. Bear in mind, any time he needs to say something, he raises his forefinger to the professor. This is his signal that he's about to share something truly exceptional. We're doing a broad overview of the lymphatic system and immunity, and these were his first four questions on the subject:

1: "Why do fluids have to move around your body? Why can't they just stay there?"
2: "Why don't the lymph nodes themselves move around?"
3: "Is the spleen a pump?" and
4: "Do blood nodes get stuck in your blood stream?"

These all stumped the professor, who, I have mentioned, is way more patient than he should be. His response to that last one was similar to mine. "Blood nodes?"

Later, ADB on seeing a picture of a lymph node: "WHOA! Is that a parasite?"

A few hours later we moved on to cancer. A few questions on cancer (always preceded by that upraised forefinger: )

1: "What's the proper word for when cancer cells become cancerous?"
2: "So you're saying that cancer is just a swelling effect?" (Yes, that's right, everyone. All of this panic is for nothing. Cancer is really just a swelling effect.)
3: (OMG, this one is my favorite.) "Is there a movie or a trailer you could show us instead of a lecture, about cancer? Just so that we can watch it happen? I'd be curious to watch that happen."

Personally, I prefer a lecture, and moreover, I'm not really curious to "watch cancer happen." What I am curious to watch happen, though, is me punching this guy in the facehole.

Okay, just one more! This one is my favorite! We got into immune response to a virus, and a really broad overview of what a virus is, how it functions etc. The professor posed the question, "So, how does a virus get past the cell wall into the cell?"

ADB: *raises forefinger* "Wind?"

People, now you know. You have wind inside of your body, and it blows a virus clean through the cell walls. I'm so sure that after that, it sets fire to the cell, kills its mother and rapes its dog, before the wind carries it somewhere else.

A future health care practitioner, boys and girls! Let's have a big round of applause.

Am I really too mean? Am I? Or would you all have rolled your eyes too, and either laughed or hit him with a studded clue-bat? Or is it really just me?

Well, I want to end my time on Windows on a HAPPY note, so I will say, umm, YAY for Mac Daddy, and from here on in everything is going to be peachy! ^_^

I'll start, I guess, with the politics, although I don't think this goes under "politics" as much as "human rights" or something more along those lines.

I see a lot of people criticizing Obama for not taking a stronger stance on the situation in Iran. (And that whole thing has still been on my mind all day, as I go about my priviledged life with a president that I helped choose.) In a way, I agree and part of me would love to see him stand up and say how wrong this all is, you know, power to the people, really take a stand!

But on the other hand, part of me appreciates the fact that he's not pulling the usual, chest-beating, self-aggrandizing "The USA must take this country in hand and school it on how to do things like the way WE do" nonsense that always annoyed me. I'm really torn on this. What's going on is so wrong, it would be awesome of him to acknowledge it in some really strong words. But on the other hand, what can he do? Or what can any of us do aside from watch?

I dunno.

So that's my mana'o on that. Now back to my priviledged life, where my vote counts and no one shoots me in the chest for standing there.

Kung Fu tonight was great, with Gold Dragon leading the first class in a pad-drill with one of those knock-out ending strikes designed to take the other guys' face off. I'm all bruised and my arms are shaky. I got paired with Otaku-chan, a young 16, and everyone knows that if you're going to get accidentally hurt, it's going to be by someone young, or someone new. But, he did a good job. He's come a long way. In blackbelt, we did a drill that had everyone withering by the end of the class. It was a great drill, led by the Empress. Also, it was about 85 degrees in the kwon, and wet. It's cool outside (hi, summer? Anytime, please!) but hot as hell in there. By the end of the class, Mellow Homeboy (he used to live here, but moved away to FL and comes up for a few weeks every spring,) grabbed the front of his shirt, twisted it, and wrung more sweat out of it than you'd've thought likely.

So as we are leaving tonight, it's me and Empress in my car leaving first, and Gold Dragon and Mellow Homeboy in Gold Dragon's car right behind us. I'm getting ready to pull out of the parking lot and I see Otaku-chan sitting on one of these posts by the highway (where the nearby Chinese restaurant has these big lion statues out there.) And crossing the street in front of me, and going over to where Otaku-chan is sitting (waiting for his Mom to pick up up,) there's this homeless man with a shopping cart. Old guy, stooped over, with an unlit cigarette in his hand. Epmress and I look at each other with similar looks of "I feel sympathy but what are we gonna do, jump out of the car and offer him money?" What if he wasn't really homeless, or he would have been offended or something?

Anyway, the guy goes directly up to Otaku-chan and I say to the Empress, "Okay, this is getting weird; I'm going to stick the car in park, roll down the window and keep an eye out. Of Gold Dragon wants to go around me or leave by the other exit, he can." And I see Gold Dragon back up his car and pull away like he's going to use the other exit. Meanwhile I'm watching Otaku-chan talk to this guy, who shook his hand, and Otaku-chan looked a little bit out of his element.

Then Gold Dragon yells, "Otaku-chan!" (Only he uses his real name.) "Come over here and get in the car." Which he does.

The old guy turns around and finally sees me and I beckon him over. He comes over and I ask him, "What's up, what did you want with that kid?"

He goes, "Can you spare a dollar or two?"

So I tell him, "Yeah, sure," and I give him two bucks from my change purse, figuring, well, okay so that was harmless. (A lot of people say you shouldn't give money to homeless people, because they might spend it on an addiction [which assumes that all or most homeless people are addicts--not true,] but instead you should give them food or drink. Well, A) I don't happen to have that stuff on me, and B) gosh, what if he wants to pick out his own food? What if it was me, walking around with a shopping cart feeling hungry, and all I wanted was a 99 cent burger and a soda or something?)

Then he leans around me and looks at the Empress and goes, "And what about you?"

OMG, the kid doesn't even carry a purse. I'm like, "She doesn't have anything; I'm just driving her home."

And the guy goes. "Well... Okay. But do you two want to come and drink with me? Or maybe smoke with me?"

Umm, yeah, lemme just park my car, and then take the sixteen year old kid with me to a bar somewhere with a stranger so that we can drink and smoke together. WTH? Obviously I told him, "No thanks," and I really begin to think that I want the kids to wait for their parents indoors with the other people, (there's a class after ours,) like they used to in the winter time. Which is kind of a shame, because they do like to sit outside by the lion statues and act all cool in their black Kung Fu clothes. And I don't blame them either. ^_^

Oh, just as I was typing this, my good friend in Seattle called up to ask some questions about an injured baby crow. We got to talking, and evidentally she is coming back to the east coast! WOW! She said, "You know, I've been here for nine years...." and I spent about five minutes gibbering about, "No, stop lying, it is NOT nine years; I remember the day you moved, seriously that was only about five years ago, shut up, there's no way it was nine years..."

IN A BLINK.

To quote Beavis: "Time sucks."

Anyway I have to get up at ass o'clock tomorrow for A&P2 (the douchepocalypse,) and then the eastern nutrition midterm tomorrow afternoon. Laki maika'i!

I very much apologize for double-posting today.I hope I'm not being an LJ pest to my f-list. But this doesn't belong with my last post, and I still wanted to post it because it's important and I know a few of you on my F-list are interested in knowing things like this. Probably most of you, actually.

The attorneys for Fox, owned by media baron Rupert Murdock, successfully argued the First Amendment gives broadcasters the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on the public airwaves.

In its six-page written decision, the Court of Appeals held that the Federal Communications Commission position against news distortion is only a "policy," not a promulgated law, rule, or regulation. Fox aired a report after the ruling saying it was "totally vindicated" by the verdict.


What the HELL? It's "only a policy?" Oh, well I guess that makes it all right then. I want to spit in Bill O'Reilly's eye (actually I would love to do much more than that, involving a fishbat,) but hey, that's just my "policy."

I was gonna come on here and post my usual riffraff about how the day was going, Happy Solstice to my Pagan homies, the weather, birds, Hula, yadda yadda, but I've been following the Iran "election" fallout and it was making me feel horrified. Then I saw that video with the girl "Neda" dying in the street and anything I could say after that is just frivolous. I don't want to link to it or anything, because what are you gonna do? Just look? What else can you do? But what does watching it actually accomplish other than to make you feel sad and give you nightmares? Not much.

But anyway, that's where I am right now.

I do hope, however, that we priveledged bunch are enjoying the Summer Solstice. And if you are, then I hope you can really appreciate it, and know that your life, overall--like mine--is pretty good.

ETA:

And I really, really, really don't mean for this to be didactic; I am totally not trying to school anyone. I am more or less talking to myself. That even as I'm sitting here bitching to myelf about this crappy-ass old computer that hardly works, and oh my hard drive blew up, I just can't wait till I get my new Mac, and gee I'm in so much debt and won't this rain ever stop so that summer can get here, etc., at least no one is shooting me in the street just because they can.

It was pretty decent! It wasn't actually even a show; it was a Hula lesson at a bridal shower. We were outside and it rained lightly the whole time, but it wasn't so bad. Camille and I taught Beautiful Kaua'i. The kids were more into it than the adults were, surprisingly. But there were a few ladies there who seemed to get the hang of it, and they all seemed to have a good time. We were there for I guess an hour, maybe a little more, and we made some decent money and a nice tip.

I still really, really want to teach. Not just as parties or for a season, but to teach a halau. I think it would also be nice to have steady work. Like at a hotel or something, like Auntie Kau'i does. Even at a Hawaiian themed restaurant or something like that. Something close to home.

I'm asking the universe for that. A weekly lu'au at a hotel or a restaurant.

I shouldn't just ask though; I should seek too. I wonder if I jsut put "hawaiian" in the local yellow pages and see what happens?

Hmm.

Anyway, that was today! The rest of the night, I dunno, maybe look around the internet for something like what I just wrote. Maybe watch a movie. Maybe play Twilight Princess. I don't have school tomorrow so I can sleep late. ^_^

Aloha e! Tomorrow is the first Hula show of the season so far. It's a small deal. Just a birthday party, 45 minutes, and I think 80 bucks each or something. It's way the hell in frigging Commack but eh, I drive an hour and a half to school two days a week so I really shouldn't complain much. I still need directions, which I haaaaaaate, but hey.

The real big show, the one I'm really excited for, is on July 11th. That's one for a local fire department and we're gonna do a big production on that one. They want us to do a fire entrance and light some torches or something like that. I'm halfway almost kinda semi considering writing my own chant for that and doing it live. Maybe? O Pele ku'u akuahine, mahalo e ka wahine kapu o ka lua e, ha'ahea ka lei lehua o ka wahine o Puna, O Pele ke Akua o ke ahi e, e o mai, e ala e, e o mai! or something like that. I dunno, I just made that up. OTOH, maybe an actual invocation to Pele while lighting fires isn't the best idea? O_o Maybe something to Laka at the end instead or something.

So I got my (FREE!) shiny new iPod Touch in the mail and a program to load into my new computer that will let me run Windows programs (hurray,) but still as of yet no shiny new computer. Next week, I guess. But until then I can't: burn any music, rip any music, sync my iPod, paint, draw, make any business cards, and all of the other things that I pretend I'm going to do any day now but then keep putting off anyway. Still, it's good to have the option, you know?

Today I went out shopping for Father's Day gifts and I got the most fantastic thing for my cousin Timmy, and I couldn't find anything really fabulous for my own Dad. He asked for a DVD and I got him that, as well as some cards, and OMG Jo-chan's birthday is around the corner and I got her a card and her gifts are all sitting here, she is going to be 17, WTMFF?

I also took Sano down for his follow up blood test, like we do every week now to the tune of 60 bucks each time. Last week his platelets had dropped again and my Wonderful Friend Kim said, "But you can't really trust the machine, because platelets clump and the machine can't read them like that. You have to look at a slide." So the platelets looked low again today and the Dr. was like, "WTH?" and so she looked at them on a slide instead and found, hurray, that the dropping platelets was machine-error and his platelets are, in fact, back to normal! (*KNOCK ON WOOOOOD*) Which means I can start to wean him off the pred, thank god because I HATE stupid pred. It's turning him into such a pain in the ass, with the constant food-seeking. Also it has totally wasted his muscles down to nothing--he even looks about three inches shorter in his shoulders--and he's a drinking and pissing machine. Seriously, the dog pees for like a minute at a time, looking at me like, "OMG, I cannot stop." He's like me, when I see movies with Ewan McGregor, or Joaquin Phoenix or Le Jared or something, except he doesn't squee.

Denzeru the baby crow continues to heal (the belly wound is almost all closed!) and eat and grow and be generally nauseatingly adorable.

Let's see, what else? Oh, I remember. I had my myo practical mid-term yesterday and it went really well. I'm pretty sure I got them all right. Next week I have the Myo written, Eastern Nutrition written, and Swedish tech practical which should go fairly well, at least I hope. Then the following week I have Swed Tech written and that's going to be harder. Why? Because the professor "borrowed" by supplemental text on the second day, then lost it and never replaced it. I ask her about it every week. "Do you have a text for me?" And she seems to remember it only when I mention it, and tells me, "No! And it's really pissing me off!" Yeah? It's pissing YOU off? I paid for the goddamn thing, it's got answers to questions that we don't go over in class (because, hi, it's a tech class,) I no longer have it in my possession, you can never seem to remember having "borrowed" it from me and it's pissing you off? Okay!

Tch! Whatever. I should really start to get into my Hula Zone. Although I think that every year, and I'm never really in it until the show, and by then it will be fine anyway. ^_^ No worries, brah!

Yo my Momma just called me to tell me that she and Da had been in a car accident. OH YAY, one of my worst fears, something awful happening to my parents. HOWEVER, even though their car is screwed, neither of them was badly hurt, and now they are pre-disastered, right? Apparently this douchenozzle had come up behind them and decided to make a left turn around their car, while they were still going straight? I swear, it's a car, people, did we not learn how to steer these things when we were sixteen? Doesn't physics dictate that if you move an object towards a stationary object you are eventually going to hit it? Isn't this, like, common sense? WTF?

Well anyway, I'm grateful both my folks are unhurt. That's just a telephone call you don't wanna get.

Today I had my A&P 2 final. I studied a lot yesterday and I was glad that I did when I saw the test this morning. There were at least three questions where I said to myself, "Whew, good thing I checked that in my notes." I ended up finishing the whole 55 questions in fifteen minutes, and I got 105 on it (because I got extra credit.)

Then I skipped out of my next class because I would have had to sit around the school waiting from 9 AM till 2:30. I'm a bad, naughty student.

But I came home, took care of the birds, went grocery shopping and was back at the computer by noon. Once again I tried to spin the dead hard drive. I should give it the hell up for sure. It's not coming back.

Then I sat down and continued trying to recreate the revisions and additions that I lost. I'm just plugging away.

I am going to clean this bitch up, (with tons of help, doubtless,) I am going to send this bitch out, and I am going to get this bitch published. I mean it. I will. I'm not gonna be like Brian on Family Guy. ("So? That novel you've been working on? How's that coming along?" LOLSTEWIE)

I just got my iPod Touch in the mail. It's free with my new Mac Daddy computer, or at least it will be free once I send in the rebate. Kind of a bummer that I just got a cute little nano for Crimbo this past year, but OMG, free, could you turn it down? I'll keep my nano in my car, I guess.

WTF else? Blood devesation death war and horror? I've realized that my ridiculous, unending, obsessive love for Ewan McGregor is the same exact creature as my ridiculous, unending, obsessive love for Michael Palin. On my dead HD I have two pics of them side by side and they resemble each other, but it's not them, it's me.

Also I woke up hideous today. Sometimes I have good days where I can look in the mirror and some days I have great days when I can look in it and think, "Well, she's not so bad." Today is not one of those days. What I saw in the mirror today would frighten small children. It's definitely a "hide behind the hair" day. At the same time, last year's skinny pants are really loose today. Jeez it's like proportionate opposition: the worse off my face looks, the better the rest of the package is? LOL! Truly a "butterface." ;D

So by that token I'm going to eat a pint of Hagen Daas tonight in hopes that I'll be a little fatter in a few days, but less hideous. ^_~

Oh gosh, do I have a Hula show this weekend? I SUSPECT I DO, but I have lost all the other dancers' email addresses they are on my old HD OMFG I should really get my crap together one of these days. :/

Welp, last night my wonderful friend Kim and her Husband Of Awesomeness drove all the way out here to the middle of effing nowhere to bring me a baby grackle. HOA opened the box and we tried to find it among the towels. I noticed it was kinda quiet. I finally located the baby and he was stone dead like a mahfah. I said, Hey, let me stick him in the freezer for a while and then maybe slave him up to another bird to see if I can't jump start him. It didn't work with my hard drive, but maybe with him? OMG, we did LOL. I felt bad though; they came all that way. Also, I'm so fond of grackles and I hate it when they croak.

BUT TODAY!



Sorry, it's too cute to cut! His name is Denzeru. He is the teeniest baby crow I've ever seen out of the nest. He's got a big old wound on his belly, probably from a raptor that caught him. The people who brought him into the clinic said that he'd fallen clean from the sky into their pool. No trees above it, and Kim (most likely correctly) surmised that he'd been dropped by something that had been trying to carry him off.

Kinda bleak. But I do hope he makes it. If so, he's releasable. I'd love to raise a releasable crow; I never have and it must be satisfying. Eeeee*, this is such a cute baby. Lohi'au is kind of mad though.

I have a few more pics that I uploaded onto my XHD and sized down too. They are among the only ones I will have from this Spring. All my ones of the gardens, my dogs, and the Boychild are gone, gone and gone. (Trauma and anguish.)

( Okay, so, my new stove! )
I love it, and I love the new backsplash, too. Before, I didn't have a backsplash and my wall got all greasy.

( DUEL OF THE FATES! )
Boychild is kind of already obsessed with the shyyyyyaber. I wonder whose fault that is? Certainly not time! ^_^

And two cute spider pics. First, the ( spider of awesomeness: )
He was just chilling out over my computer the other night, making a little web between it and my calander. Aww!

And then yesterday, I ( found one in my hair: )

So sweet!

So, that's that. Last night I actually did sit down with ze novel and went through it, making notes on what I could remember that I had changed. It was so much more than I'd thought, gosh. Intermittently I kept taking the dead hard drive out of the freezer and defiling its frozen corpse with a hammer. This in theory was supposed to shake something free so it might spin again. In reality however I know that it is beyond repair, and all it really accomplished was that I released some of my anger towards it.

Then last night I dreamed of the goddamn thing. I dreamed that I was holding it against me and singing "Spin, Spin, Sugar" to it, and then it finally did spin. Maybe I should try that? ;)

And today, apart from taking care of Denzeru, I have to study for tomorrow's midterm, which is A&P2. I just utterly forgot about that bitch, whatwith all the other nonsense and my own personal catastrophes going on.








*"Eeeeee" I am reading Shogun, finally, and there's a character who mentally expresses his excitement with that sound. It cracks me up every time I read it.

Nope, the freezer trick did nothing, SpinRite couldn't even detect the hard drive. Geek Squad failed. Slaving the HD failed. Trying to get the computer to read it as an external failed.

I FAIL. AT LIKE EVERYTHING.

I'm going through my XHD now and I don't have anything past March 21st. I mean, so I didn't lose everything everything.

But remember last week I was waxing effusive and annoying about how much work I'd done on my novel, how excited I was about the changes I'd finally made, etc.? Yeah, that's what this fool didn't back up!

Oh, but it wasn't only that. I actually started a new story. I was about ten pages in. Not much, I guess, but it meant a lot to me. I was having fun with it, and frig it, it was good.

I also made all of my folders neat and tidy, deleted a bunch of useless stuff, consolidated my info, all this nice junk.

I'm trying to come to terms with, and make peace with my own stupidity and laziness.

The HD is in the freezer again, 'cause you never know? Except that I do know, and it paaaaains me.

When will I learn? Never? Never ever?

Can you tell I've got the Word file open with the old version of the story and am trying ridiculously hard to avoid looking at it? Yeah, I'll bet you can tell.

Kim is coming over with a baby bird. Yay!

Well, needs must, my dears.