I just spent some time relating some pretty nasty things I did during my school days to some people on IRC, resulting in an uncomfortable sweat and an overwhelming feeling of being drained of all energy. ~_~ I was absolutely miserable prior to college so bringing all these memories to the surface is still very painful. It’s no wonder I’ve blocked out so many of the names and faces of people I knew then. breathes deeply It’s been a very emotionally taxing day overall, and I’m fresh off of getting over the previous weekend’s mind fuck. I need to take it easy or I’m going to have a breakdown.

Augh. I feel really fucked up in the head right now, and have basically the whole weekend. I suspect most of this is a direct result of the types of things I’ve chosen for entertainment recently, and once I explain what I’ve been up to it should make a little sense.

As usual, I spent the majority of the weekend over at the guys’ place. Friday night the three of us sieged dungeons until we were too tired to see straight. Brian left the next morning to hang out with Martha so Jon made us pancakes. After the realization that he only had a tiny bit of butter left, I was sent on a butter run, which took much longer than expected, but in the end we had some yummy food. This time he had the consistency of the batter correct so the pancakes weren’t a mile thick. XD After that we took a brief trip to Radio Shack so he could get some serial port ends so he could make cables for his UPSes. We decided to go see a movie in the theatre since it’s been forever and a day since we’ve done that, so I played Silent Hill 4 for a half hour until it was time to leave. I got past the part I was stuck on, so I felt a little better.

The movie we chose was The Forgotten. (Well, I pretty much chose it and Jon agreed to come along.) I knew very little about it other than it looked like a mystery starring Julianne Moore. That was enough to pique my interest anyhow. It turned out to basically be an extended X-Files episode with different actors, so I was quite pleased with it. I don’t want to give too much away for the sake of those who have yet to see it, but the route they took to explain what was happening was very typically X-Files in nature, and while they did a fantastic job keeping it away from cliche, I think the plot would have been a lot more interesting if the answer had been of a more human origin. That’s probably given more away than I should have but I can’t really be any less specific without it making no sense. So go see the movie and hopefully you’ll understand what I mean. In any case, it was far better than I expected it to be, but that’s not saying much since I didn’t go into it with any expectations, other than the fact that I think Julianne Moore is a fantastic actress. She did a fantastic job in this role.

So after we got back from that we putzed around for a little while then went to Fazoli’s for supper since Jon was in the mood for “cheap Italian-American food.” While we were waiting for the food, I looked down at my receipt and noticed that something wasn’t quite right. So I asked Jon to look at it too, and together we picked out four mistakes in the restaurant’s address. The street was misspelled, the city was misspelled, the zip code and area code of the phone number were all wrong. WTF?! Jon was so intrigued by it he went up and told the staff about it, and they all seemed a bit surprised…apparently in all these years no one had noticed it. Hrm. Nice to see that people are so observant.

When we returned home, the fucked-up-ness of the weekend clicked solidly into motion. Over the course of the evening, Jon helped me through the remainder of Silent Hill 4 with occasional consultation of a walkthrough (the building world 2nd time was very confusing.) After figuring out what to do for the final boss battle it only took me one try to beat him (yes, I was playing on easy mode, because I get too easily frustrated) and I got the “best” ending (“Escape”) so that was really cool. Too bad “Cradle of Forest” was the closing theme…that song is so beautiful but the vocals over it are just horrendous. Eeegh. After saving the game, I restarted it and played up until Cynthia’s death scene because I wanted to see that again…for some reason I find it very beautiful, mostly due to the song “Room of Angel” that plays over it. In any case, we checked a walkthrough to find out what you can get for playing through the game multiple times, and we joked about how there’s no way in hell I could ever beat the game in under 2 hours because of my horrible sense of direction. I needed Jon there to direct me, since so often I knew where my destination was but had no clue how to get there. “Ann, walk towards the camera! Now to the left–NO, the other left!” (One of the rooms is upside down and all the controls are reversed…that REALLY fucked with my brain) ~_~ There was so much “mother” imagery in the game, and so much of it was based on theology (a very fucked-up theology, but a theology nonetheless) that parts of it reminded Jon of The End of Evangelion, which I had never seen. I’d once watched the entire TV series and the first movie in one weekend (which really fucked me up) but hadn’t had the nerve to watch that movie too. So we watched that while I crocheted. Parts of it made sense, while others left me going “Ehhhhh?” Just an absolute overload of mother imagery and theology was had that evening, and before I went to bed I said to Jon “If I dream I’m pregnant, it’s going to be your fault.” I didn’t.

Slept in late on Sunday morning…which I feel rather meh about. It was nice being able to get a bit more sleep, but I felt so dull when I awoke that it didn’t matter. I went home, watched a couple episodes of Twin Peaks, then…as if it wasn’t enough…watched Lost Highway. My god. After that I was basically overwhelmed with psychological anxiety, so I took a 2-hour nap because I didn’t know how else to handle it. Then, once I awoke, I felt even worse than before. I didn’t feel like eating…I was emotionally drained and very very uncomfortable and anxious. So, stupidly, I watched even more Twin Peaks. The problem with being so addicted to such a cerebral series is that the more it drains me, the more I want of it. Luckily Jules came online and was able to talk to me for a bit.

I stopped watching stuff and began listening to some Aussie rock and I started feeling a bit better. I listed a bunch of stuff on eBay and then went to bed. I lay there for over an hour, trying to think of good things to focus on. Thoughts of my upcoming trip to Australia only made me nervous and anxious because the magnitude of it…of everything that will change because of it. I’m very nervous about all the changes that will be happening in the months to come, and once the time draws near, it’s going to be even worse. These are all changes for the better, and my life will be completely upended and I’ll have to plant new roots in an unfamiliar place, but it’s also a welcoming place so it’s not as if I’m headed down the wrong path. This is *right*…it’s just the fact that it’s unfamiliar that scares me. Because I’m still full of youth and vitality, I have the energy and resiliency to be open to change, so this is the time that I need to do this. It’s comforting to know that I have my friends to remind me to keep my mind on what is important, my ultimate goals, rather than the insignificant details that I so easily get caught up in.

And on a tangentially related note, three different people have come on IRC this morning all stressed out and upset, lashing out at the world. I think there must be some cloud of uneasiness and negativity blocking the flow of energy in the universe. If this cloud has a definite shape, I feel as if I’m caught in the wall of it, hanging in a sort of limbo between complete uneasiness and angst and the other side which is full of calm, peace, and contentedness. I don’t completely feel any of those things at the moment…I just slide back and forth lazily from one side to the other, never really pushing my way completely through to either side. Hopefully it won’t be long before I’m past this mood and back to my contentedness.

So a word of advice, do not mix a cocktail containing any combination of two or more of the following: The Forgotten, any Silent Hill game, Neon Genesis Evangelion, any David Lynch film or TV series, and lack of sleep/exercise/stimulation. It’s just asking for trouble.

A pre-emptive happy birthday to Rosey and Phil. :-D

My leg is almost completely healed already, only a week later. Wow. Very little of the scab remains.

It was a wonderful weekend in general, with a few down points. I spent Friday night with Jon, playing Silent Hill 4…made some good progress on it. I was stuck on one part because I knew I’d missed something, so he consulted a map and told me what I was missing and the story continued. I’m about 6 hours into it now, and have just reached the second half of the game. I played through most of the first half of the game again when we visited Peter and Melissa on Saturday and took only 1:45 to get to nearly the same point. It’s far easier the second time through, once you know what to do. Plus things make a TON more sense. So yes, we spent all of Saturday afternoon and evening with Peter and Mel, and it was a fantastic time. We went to a park and played frisbee and rocked on the hobby horses (Jon has some great pics of that which he has yet to offload from his camera.) Also, a group of 7-year olds mugged us! The little bastards grabbed two of the frisbees and tossed them up on the roof of the nearby school. They tried to go for Jon’s camera as well, but he held onto it. Amongst one boy constantly asking Peter if he was gay and three children ferociously pulling on Melissa, we were able to escape relatively unscathed but muttering “What the fuck?!” I was just appalled at their behavior…absolutely no respect whatsoever. I couldn’t fathom acting that way at that age (or ever at *all*)…and I seriously wondered if that boy had any concept of what gay meant, other than knowing it’s “supposed” to be derogatory. I certainly didn’t at that age, though things have changed quite a bit in this world since then. This incident merely drove my conviction to never have children deeper. Thank god Ross shares my feelings towards children. I’m sure any kids we’d have would be really fantastic people and very well-cared-for, but I just do NOT want that responsibility. Plus, the idea of having a child running around that’s part of me is absolutely terrifying to me. I don’t want that at all.

Other than that, they played Hot Shots Golf 3 while I crocheted and we made fun of the caddy’s midwest accent. On Sunday, after I told my parents how awful I thought our local radio announcers’ accents were, Mom commented that she’s noticed I’m beginning to speak like Jon in the inflection and pronunciation of certain vowel sounds. Not surprising at all really. Just wait until I’m around Ross and Jules a lot. Huhu.

I spent all of Sunday afternoon and evening cleaning and sorting through my things in the basement. I had soooooo much stuff down there…all kinds of old art supplies and projects, both finished and unfinished. I was able to get rid of 3 garbage bags worth of stuff, and packed 3 large boxes full of art supplies and paper that I’ll give to my second cousin Kevin because it’s stuff I’ll never touch again (Crayola colored pencils, markers, crayons, etc.) He has a pretty strong interest in drawing, so hopefully he’ll get some use out of the stuff. I know if I were that age and someone gave me some packages like that I’d be in heaven. So hopefully he’ll have a similar reaction.

Once it got to be around 9 PM, I was absolutely exhausted mentally. I’d gone through so much stuff, and I’d begun sorting through the 8 portfolios I had stuffed with drawings and prints. My god. I tossed out a pretty healthy stack of stuff, but there’s still waaaaay too much of it left. I think I’ll have to go through it about 5 more times until I’ve whittled it down to what I really want to keep and what’s expendable. Things like my print editions trip me up some because I don’t know if I should keep one print or the entire edition. Then again, it’s all class work, so what difference does it really make? I don’t know. In any case, after feeling “stuck” by that issue, I hit a brick wall and ended up staring into space for the next two hours. I just kept looking around my room and looking at all the stuff that’s left in there and I started to feel really suffocated by all of it. I mean, I’ve already gotten rid of so much of it, and it’s been a slow but steady process, but there’s still way too much left. I do still have some time left so it won’t be too hard to keep sifting things out little by little. I’ll get there eventually, I know. I’m determined to make this happen, so I have confidence it will. Usually when I really want something, I make it happen. So yeah…I just felt so suffocated. And then I started thinking about the reality of being in Australia so soon and I got really overwhelmed by the enormity of that. Many tears ensued, and I reluctantly went to bed, where I cried some more. It felt good to release that…and I’m fairly certain this will keep happening until I actually arrive there.

When I cry over this, it’s not because I feel upset or sad, or anything negative. It’s just such an incredibly huge thing for me…the *biggest*, most important thing I’ve ever done. Because of the magnitude of my feelings (not just for Ross, but for all of them) it’s just so overwhelming that in order to handle it, I have to release the emotions somehow. Tears are such a natural, convenient outlet for that. I have never been so happy, excited, nervous, anxious, or scared about anything in my life. This truly will be a life-altering trip. Since I realize that the tears are merely a way to keep myself from exploding, I don’t feel sad or ashamed by them, I just let them flow and use them as a path to calmness (of both mind and body.) Because I knew from the start that I’d react this way, I’ve attempted to keep the reality of the situation from myself so I wouldn’t have to indulge in this behavior, but it’s beginning to seep in bit by bit and it’s getting a little harder not to think about it more and more. Every once in awhile I find myself tallying the days left to go, which I tried to avoid altogether for a long time. I just need to stay focused and not lose it, because I have a lot to do between now and then.

Some moments arise when I just think to myself how unbelievably lucky I am to be so completely in love with Ross. I’m always aware of my feelings for him, thinking of him always brings a smile to my face, but there are some particular moments that come up now and again when it just strikes me with powerful conviction that he is just such a wonderful and fantastic and beautiful person, and I am so lucky to be the person he loves. The fact that he allows me to love him freely, without holding back, is monumental to me, having dealt with fear of scaring people away with the intensity of my feelings. This is so important to me, I can’t even stress how incredibly important it is. I exist to love, and I absolutely ache to love to my full capacity. Ross has shown me that my true capacity for love is still uncharted, and that there is still room for me to grow to love him more, despite each moment being the apex of what I considered my range to be at that point in time. Ross is such a special person, someone who is so unique and bizarre, yet completely loveable and charismatic. A combination of so many qualities that seem to contradict each other, but only on the surface…the more I get to know him, the more I realize these things only seem like contradictions because there’s so much I haven’t discovered about him yet, so much he hasn’t discovered about himself yet. Ross is a very mysterious creature, one whom few people know well. I feel so honored and humbled that he’s shared as much of himself with me as he has…this is truly a gift to be treasured, and never to be taken lightly. There are certain people in my life that have an “otherworldly” quality to them, as if they are something that’s just a step above human, and Ross definitely has this. Its form and the feelings I get from it are different than the other people I sense this from (Jules and Will in particular) but it is absolutely there, nonetheless. I wish I had a better way of describing/explaining what I mean by that, but I really don’t. So if that doesn’t make any sense to you, I apologize, but I guess you’d really need to know these people pretty well to completely understand.

I feel really peaceful at the moment. Feeling the soreness/tiredness around my eyes resulting from my tears last night makes me feel really relaxed and calm, as it’s a constant reminder of how I’d purged the overwhelming sensations from my body and soul. I always feel so much better after a good cry, even the following day. I should be tired today but I’m not because I don’t feel as weighed down. I think yesterday was a very important day for releasing so much of the tension that was building as a result of all the overwhelming things I’ve been feeling recently. I really look forward to getting rid of enough of my things so that I no longer feel like my life is a cluttered mess. I’m getting there, slowly but surely. :-)

Slight headache is turning into one of greater magnitude. Grr. Some guy left me negative feedback on eBay because he didn’t receive his dvd. This frustrates me a lot because a) I sent it (as well as all the other items sold on that day) the day after I received the payment and b) because he only paid 99 cents for it. ~_~ There’s nothing I can do about it getting lost in the mail! It’s not like my handwriting is illegible or anything; in fact, it’s very neat, so I really have no explanation for it. sigh I really really wish Jules were around right now because he’s the only person I want to talk to. He understands me in a way that no one else ever can, and I know he’d have me feeling better in a matter of minutes. But I’m sure he’s asleep right now so I must endure this annoyance on my own. ~_~

There are also a few other things that are irritating me at the moment. Namely, I feel that some people are taking advantage of Jon and taking his free services for granted. Since he’s moved his servers from his parents’ house to his apartment, he’s had some issues with user accounts and email and such since he’s been moving stuff from one machine to another. Most people have been pretty understanding and patient about that, which is good because it’s stressful enough for him as it is. Many of the people with user accounts on his server are regulars on his IRC channel so they have been keeping up with the changes and have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.

However, some of them are not regulars anymore and seem to only pop in when something isn’t going right with their account. Jon, smartly, has not been fixing broken accounts until those people have approached him about it. What really bothers me is that some of them have been rather impatient about it. I mean, yes, it’s very frustrating when you want to upload things and you can’t access your account. I freely admit that I go into somewhat of a panic if something of mine is out of whack. However, being rude or getting angry about it is just unacceptable to me. The main reason I say this is because Jon offers these people his services for free simply because he’s a kind-hearted soul and he truly enjoys what he does. I believe there may be a few people who pay him a few dollars here or there but in general, people simply do not offer any sort of compensation for his web services. He pays a hefty sum every month for his net access, and has repeatedly said he wishes people would contribute at least something. A lot of the people using his server, admittedly, do not have much money. In fact, most of them don’t have jobs.

Much of my frustration is on Jon’s behalf, I mean, this doesn’t concern me directly. Jon is, though, one of my best friends, and I don’t like seeing people I care about taken advantage of, even if it’s minor. This frustration is justifiable too, considering that I am his only “paying customer.” I have donated several hundreds of dollars towards his servers (to be specific, he’s owed me money and I’ve told him to not worry about paying me back.) One main difference between me and a lot of these other people is that I do have a job and I can afford to pay him something. My website also gets a decent amount of traffic so I take up a bit more bandwidth than most people. So I think it’s fair that I pay him. After all, if any other company were hosting my site, I’d have to pay them. But I just don’t think it’s right for people to pop in, complain about their stuff not working, have him fix it up while he’s busy with other stuff, then disappear again once it’s kosher. I’ve brought this annoyance up a few times and people have snapped at me and taken it very personally, either because they really felt I was unjustified in saying that or they already felt some degree of guilt over it. Whatever the case is, I just wish people would settle down a bit and stop taking things for granted. Jon has enough to worry about right now, what with his whole family moving away from him and trying to get everything in order, as well as the outside consulting he does in addition to his day job. I don’t think people realize just how involved he is in other things, and that he can’t just bend himself over backwards at any given moment. He may wish to, and he may even try to, but I really think people need to be more patient with him, because sometimes he’s just too busy.

sigh

Headache is letting up a bit now, and I feel a bit less angsty, which is a good thing. The injury on my leg is almost completely scabbed over now, which is a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because it’s not as sensitive and painful, but it’s bad because it’s such a large area that it pulls funny when the skin stretches (such as when i cross my legs) so it’s like having a giant piece of duct tape on my leg. It doesn’t really hurt, it just feels really strange and uncomfortable. I really do heal remarkably fast…I must have inherited that from my dad.

Seems like we’ll be heading up to Green Bay sometime tomorrow for a little get together with Peter and Melissa. That will be nice since we haven’t done that since Will left for Seattle. We pretty much slipped out of contact since then…over time, I basically stopped organizing events since people seemed really apathetic towards it and it was difficult to get anyone to be decisive and it just seemed to be a lot more trouble than it’s worth. I mean, yes, I absolutely love hanging out with these people, but I’ve had a lot of things going on recently (moving, etc) so that hasn’t been the first thought on my mind. I really don’t want to fall out of contact with Peter because I consider him a close friend, but it’s difficult to maintain any sort of relationship if no one takes initiative. He’s talked about possibly setting up a friends/movie/gaming night once a month to avoid that sort of thing, which I think is a fantastic idea. So I’m really glad he’s organized a thingie this weekend because it’ll give us all a chance to catch up.

In other news, I’ve won some pieces of a Thule roof rack off eBay this week for a really good price so hopefully I’ll have the whole thing pieced together within the next few weeks. I’m also waiting for my security deposit check to come back from my landlord…I wonder how much he took out of it. He was all set to screw us over normal wear and tear of people living in an apartment. ~_~ I don’t expect to see much of that money ever again. sigh Oh well, such is life.

I spent the whole weekend over at Jon’s place, playing Dungeon Siege, Silent Hill 4 and crocheting. When I got home today I watched Intolerable Cruelty, a Coen brothers film, and was highly entertained. George Clooney is actually tolerable in the film, and Catherine Zeta-Jones presents herself in a “Look at me, I’m tantalizingly sexy and I know it, and I’m gonna totally screw you over and we both know it” kind of way. Heh. I recommend it, especially if you liked Fargo and The Big Lebowski. Tis the same kind of humor.

After that I decided to go rollerblading. It’s been about a week and a half since I’ve gone and I’ve missed it a lot. It was such a beautiful day out, quite hot and sunny, so it was nearly perfect. Then, on the last stretch of my final lap, I hit a twig on the ground with my right skate, which stopped that foot while my other one kept going, so I ended up landing on my left side, skidding across the pavement for several feet. I landed on both of my hands, which got slightly scraped but are just fine now. (Thank you, wonderful wrist guards!) My leg, however, didn’t fare as well. I have a huge abrasion across the entire outside of my left knee, which trails down about 5 inches along the outside of the calf, and another large abrasion on the outside of my thigh, which is a patch about 4 inches across and down. Some people stopped to ask me if I was okay, but I didn’t want help…I knew nothing was broken, and I was determined to finish my lap. So I got up and brushed myself off and told everyone I was just fine, and skated off to my car. I could see the blood already coagulating on my knee, so I wasn’t too worried. It stayed numb for the drive home and I was able to shower and shave before dressing the abrasions without any pain. After I got dressed I went off to Target to get some more large bandages (I’d used up the last of our gauze pads on my thigh.) It still doesn’t hurt all that much…it looks FAR worse than it feels, but I’ll have to see if that holds up tomorrow as well. sigh Interestingly enough, being injured this badly only registers in my mind as a minor annoyance and slight inconvenience. I think many people in that situation would have freaked out pretty badly but all I could think of was finishing my 10 miles. When I showed my mom the abrasion on my thigh, all she said was “Hmm, looks like you slid into second base.” She has the same rather non-chalant attitude towards scrapes and such, and is no stranger to that sort of injury thanks to the many years of softball she played in her younger years. It was a little strange having to ask for her help putting the bandage on my thigh, but it was okay in the end. ~_~

So I guess I won’t be skating tomorrow. Mehhhh. I probably could but it would probably not be too good getting too much sweat in the abrasions, plus I think that would make the bandages peel off. Oh well, I guess that’s just God’s way of telling me to take a rest for a bit. So I will.

smiles I feel so good right now. My nastybun headache is gone! I thought it was mostly because I haven’t been sleeping well recently but I now suspect it’s because I’ve been crocheting so much. Both my wrists also ache terribly, which is what led me to this conclusion. I guess I’ll just take a few days off from that and do other things.

I lay down for a couple hours last night because of the headache and played about an hour of Silent Hill 4 before it was too painful to bear. I ended up going to bed a little after midnight but I wasn’t tired so I rolled around restlessly for quite awhile. All I could think about was all the things in my room that I wanted to get rid of, namely a lot of the books on my shelf. I started to realize I’m probably not going to read most of them if I haven’t already so it wouldn’t hurt to part with them. I think I’ll still keep all my X-Files books though, since I have no plans of getting rid of any of my memorabilia from that show. I’m almost to the point now where I’m feeling this anxiety to just get it all gone as quickly as possible. Perhaps I’ll actually start boxing up items that I want to take with me when I move once I’ve gone through all the extraneous items. Then again, if these are things I can box up for months without needing them, maybe I don’t need them at all, and should therefore get rid of them. I only want to hold onto necessities for the most part. It must all fit in my car. goes off to look at roof racks again

Meh, I’ll worry about that later. They’re all pretty expensive, even on eBay. :\ I wonder why Yakima racks are so much cheaper than Thule? Strange.

One thing I’m puzzling over is what to do with certain items from my past, in particular, many items from my high school days. For me, high school was a horribly depressing and traumatic experience, as I’m sure it is for many teenagers who aren’t trendy. Looking at and touching items that remind me of that time make my mood gradually shift back to the way I felt then, which is something I never, ever want to feel again. It’s almost as if those things are carrying remnants of the actual emotions I felt, that they are tainted with this negative energy. The items themselves are fairly innocuous, but it’s what they represent that brings up all this pain.

Over the weekend I was looking at printouts of conversations I used to have over email with two brothers I met in my math classes, and I could only stomach a few pages before I had to set the stack of paper aside. It was just too much. These papers are now in the recycle bin, never to be seen again. I had mixed feelings about trashing them simply because I adored both of these guys and they are both incredibly smart and will do amazing things with their lives (one of them works for NASA now, from the last I heard.) But I figured that I still have the memory of our correspondence, and that really is enough. I also have several journals from that time period, which I know for a fact I will not be able to read for awhile yet. I still, however, would like to hold onto them because I remember writing some fairly insightful and deep things in them, such as what I believed God to be and what happens after death, and I’m very interested in going back to see how my beliefs have changed as I’ve grown older. They contain a lot of hurt and pain, but they also contain a lot of love and passion, so it’s not all bad. It’s just incredibly emotional, and I’ll have to wait for a time when my life feels less cluttered to reread them or this feeling of drowning could consume me.

Ever since I’ve decided I need to get rid of a lot of my possessions, I’ve felt their weight bearing down on me, and have experienced an almost desperate need to get rid of them before they suffocate me. I really really want to live a more simple existence, and not be so tied down to things. I’m slowly getting closer to the place I’d like to be so things are improving. Aside from these letters and journals, there are also other items that I wonder what I should do with, such as my cap and gown and my academic letter and numerals. These items obviously mean something because of what they represent, so I feel some trepidation over just destroying them. I mean…these things are nice symbols of my hard work in school, but they were never my goal when I was working hard. Yes, I wanted to graduate, and I wanted to be an honors student, but I wanted those things for ME, not for the awards they would earn. I never had a letter jacket so my letter remained in its plastic baggie, in pristine condition. This pure, clean, white felt “O” with the word “ACADEMIC” stitched into it in blue thread. This is not something that’s particularly easy to earn…I basically got straight A’s through school, so from that standpoint, it’s pretty valuable. But…it’s useless to me, and I don’t want it. So the dilemma is…what do I do with it? Because of what it represents, it would be a big shame to just toss it away, but it’s not really something I can sell. I could give it to some current high school student, but there’s a dilemma there as well because obviously they didn’t earn it. sigh I really don’t know what to do. I’ll probably donate my cap and gown to Goodwill because I’m sure someone could use it as a Halloween costume or something.

I guess I really should be looking at any of these items with the perspective of “Does this have personal significance to ME, or am I just holding onto it because I feel I’m supposed to?” That will really help me determine whether something has real value or is just for show. That’s a HUGE distinction to make, and something I never really considered until recently when I got rid of a lot of old birthday cards and stupid little notes that I thought someone would probably be upset to hear about me trashing. *looking at birthday card from 5 years ago…generic store-bought card…stupid saying inside with the text ‘Happy birthday Ann, from <insertnamehere>’ written in blue pen…wow…that’s so……sentimental..and……wtf, this person will never remember giving me this card….ok, who am I kidding?….*TRASH*

Mmm. I’m all ready to tackle my room now, to purge all this stuff that means nothing to me. I yearn for the feeling of freedom that getting rid of this stuff will afford me. The goal of fitting my whole life into my car is easily attainable if I keep looking at this objectively. :-D

Okay, I have to write this down because it’s too funny to forget about. It’s not a recent event by any means, but talking to Jules and Rosey this morning I was reminded of the incident.

This was probably in like…late 2000 or early 2001, I can’t quite recall. I was in the University Biology lab with my classmates, and for some reason our lab for that day was centered around goat blood. This class was pretty strange to begin with because it was a 5-credit Honors Biology class, so it was full of really smart and motivated people, but it was taught by a man who, to put it mildly, shouldn’t have been teaching a university course at all, let alone an honors one. The labs we did had nothing to do with our lectures or our discussions, so I don’t even know why we bothered. But yeah…I think my group had gotten most of our lab work done and we were just sitting around, or else I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on. (I hated that class!) Each lab table had a Mac sitting on it which we were supposed to use to record our lab data, and for the most part, that’s what we used it for. But due to boredom, I set the default speech voice to “Deranged” and began typing in the text editor. This voice is supposed to be an insane man with a very nervous and wavery voice, but it comes out sounding an awful lot like a goat.

Now, if you haven’t used a Mac very much, you might not realize that there is a feature in the text editor that allows you to have the voice read aloud what you’ve typed. Well, most of my classmates didn’t know about this either and you could imagine their surprise when the computer started talking to them. I had the volume up a little higher than I expected and this deranged goat voice interjected, “Stop looking at my blood, you bastards!” (that link is an audio file, btw) My face turned beet red and suddenly everyone started laughing, including the teacher. Then, once I explained to everyone how I’d done it, there was a chorus of goat voices filling the room.

Ahhhh, so nice to know that some people are as easily amused as I am.

I must have been sleeping wrong the last couple nights because my neck, shoulders, and base of my skull are just aching. It’s fine when I’m looking straight ahead but as soon as I turn, there’s pain. :-(

I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy lately. When I haven’t been cleaning up stuff, I’ve been working on Ross’s blanket (about 10 rows away from being half done) and watching various things I’ve downloaded, including episodes of The Kids in the Hall, The Upright Citizens Brigade and now Twin Peaks. I finally saw Hero on the recommendation of many people. I will have to watch it again as I wasn’t quite ready for it from a stylistic perspective. I’ve never seen a Chinese kung-fu or swordfighting film before so it took me awhile to realize that breaking the rules of physics was the norm. I spent a good portion of the movie thinking “Hey, he can’t do that!” Now I sort of “get it” so I can appreciate its artistry rather than expecting it to be realistic. The colors in that movie were unbelievable…I mean, my god. In a way parts of it reminded me of What Dreams May Come because it was almost like watching a painting in motion. Everything was graceful and flowing and just utterly elegant. I’m pretty sure the version I got was the US version because it was just under an hour long. :\ Oh well, I’ll be watching it again with Rosey in Australia so I’ll get a much richer experience. Also saw Mystic River, which was extremely well acted…Tim Robbins and Sean Penn were amazing….as well as The Cider House Rules which was really interesting and engaging. I kept looking at Michael Caine though, and only seeing him as Nigel Powers with the horrible teeth, so a little of his prestige as a doctor in that role was lost on me. XD

Last night Jules got broadband so he and I talked over Skype for quite awhile, then we conferenced with Will and Hiroko. Waaaaa. That was so much fun. I love hearing his voice and listening to his accent…. :-D I listened to him some more this morning as well, and Rosey was there so I got to hear her too. Rosey’s accent is soooooooooo cute. I told the anecdote described above about the goat blood, and she laughed so hard she was rolling around on Jules’ bed clutching her stomach. Waaaa. I can tell we’re going to have so much fun together! :-D Then a bit later after Jules had taken Rose home, he got an SMS on his phone from Ross, which turned me to insta-guu because it was instructing Jules to tell me that Ross loves me. X3~~~~~~ It was so nice to hear from Ross, even indirectly like that, because it just reaffirms that he’s okay and still thinking about everything despite being so busy. Waaaa, I just love him so much! X3

I’m proud of myself for holding up so well in his absence. In the past, in similar situations (with various people) I’ve gone through a great deal of freaking out and obsessing over the fact that I simply cannot talk to them and desperately want to, where it gets to the point that I can’t focus on anything but that fact and begins to interfere with my life. This time, though, I have been very happy and relaxed for the most part, have maintained a decent amount of focus on important tasks, and have kept myself busy. I haven’t even felt the need to obsess. This is yet another thing that goes to prove that the relationship I share with Ross is very different than anything I’ve experienced before. Instead of feeling desperation and painful longing when I think of him, I feel happiness and warmth, and it makes me smile. :3 Waaaaa, Rossssssss….

Tonight I am getting my copy of Silent Hill 4. I’ve been waiting with great anticipation for this to finally be released…it’s ridiculous that it took this long given that even the Japanese release of the game contained an English version of the text, so it’s not like they had to do any translations or anything. Meh. From what I’ve read it’s supposed to be a pretty big disappointment but I’m not going to expect anything either way so I’ll comment on my reaction to it once I’ve played some of it. Personally I thought Silent Hill 3 was fantastic, even though lots of people bash it. 2 has always been my favorite of the series, if only because I played that one before the others.

I did a little tally today Ross: 64 days to go, just barely over 2 months. :-D

It’s so cold in here right now. I swear the air conditioning must be on full blast. I’m wearing a hooded sweatshirt (with the hood up) as well as long pants and shoes. Not exactly summer garb. shivers

I’ve been back home for a week now, and my room is still a huge mess. I’m cleaning it up ever so slowly, digging things out as I need them. I exiled all my art supplies to the basement for the time being as they are so bulky and take up so much space. I have a feeling I’m going to have to get rid of most of them before I move, which is a damn shame because I’ll probably need all of them at some point or another, probably just after I get rid of them. That’s how it always works. I’m using my brother’s room as a repository for things I’m planning to get rid of or sell, and I’m sure I’ll be able to find a ton more stuff once I actually go through the things in my own room. Being back home isn’t all that bad really. I’m lucky that I get along so well with both my parents and they aren’t annoyingly demanding of me. As long as I’m considerate enough of things like noise and light while they’re trying to sleep and not leaving things laying around in the kitchen, things are just fine. Both of them go to bed pretty early at night because they get up at the crack of dawn for the farmwork. I’ve finally gotten accustomed to sleeping in a bed again. (heh) That didn’t take too long, fortunately. I’ve mostly been crocheting and listening to music or watching shows I’ve downloaded. The blanket is nearly half done now. :3

Other than that, not too much has been happening. 2 months left of work…and essentially 2 months until I go to Australia. That’ll come up really fast…before I know it I’ll have a week to pack and get all my stuff in order and then holy crap, I’m on the plane. Heh. At least I’m not being tortured by it being too far off in the distant future…it helps staying busy and keeping my mind occupied. That’s really important to maintaining the little bit of sanity I have left. Ross picked the perfect time to go away because I’m nearly too distracted to dwell on the fact that I can’t talk to him for 2 weeks. I have so much to do.

I’ve been ungodly hungry almost all the time during the last couple weeks due to all the exercise I’ve been getting. I’ve also been eating a ton more so my metabolism is through the roof. Speaking of which, it’s about time to chow again, so…ciao.