Confused and Clumsy

2011-04-24T10:57:00.003-06:00

Hi! Quick update-

I've been debating ending this blog since it doesn't really have a point, and once I get my new blog going I probably will.

The new blog is about crafting- http://craftymad.blogspot.com/

In case you've forgotten or never knew to begin with, my other (now inactive) blog about last year's ankle surgery is- http://peronealtendonsurgery.blogspot.com/

Expect this blog to disappear within a few weeks, but go follow the crafty blog!

2011-04-23T16:14:00.003-06:00

It's not so much that I don't have things to talk about as much as I'm just not in the mood for blogging much lately.

I discussed my new health problem in the last update. That situation has not improved, and it may have worsened some. I was expecting that, but it's still a bummer. I've also been getting a lot of migraines lately from a combination of windy weather, fronts, and stress (my brain is a barometer).

Positive things:

1. My graduation invites got to my parents house (so that my Mom, the Keeper of the List of Addresses, could fill them out for me). Apparently this was the trigger Dad needed to start getting really excited, which is good because they're helping me move back in right afterwards and he'll be dealing with all the heavy furniture.

2. Two weeks of classes left, plus three finals, and then I am done with college. I won't miss it. I've never completely gotten the hang of social interactions and college requires a lot of that.

3. I may have gotten into grad school. Not sure yet. If I did then it means I'll be moving a second time later in the summer back out of my parents house.

4. It's cloudy and chilly today, which means my apartment, which does not have AC yet, is finally down to a bearable temperature and I don't have to have all three fans on to not sweat. They should be turning the AC on ~~about a month ago~~ soon.

5. My neighbor's dog has added me to their 'will pet' list. This means I will go out of my way to pet him. We both benefit from this.

Exciting new injury story

2011-04-18T16:07:00.002-06:00

When I say exciting I don't mean it, that's either sarcasm or irony depends on how bitter I'm feeling.

First, backstory: I have crappy ligaments and tendons, and I sprain limbs a lot. Last year I sprained my right ankle one time too many and shredded up my peroneal tendons. I have a (now inactive) blog about that whole ordeal. I spent seven months on crutches and had a complicated, expensive surgery to fix that. I was finally "graduated" from my podiatrist in the end of January/early February.

Fast forward to last week. I was getting off a bus, hopped lightly like a gazelle down to the curb, landed normally- and something in my left foot went POP as soon as enough of my weight was on it. I was in agonizing pain, went to the doctor....went to my podiatrist who I though I had finished seeing, and it seems that through the simple act of getting off a bus I have torn at least two ligaments. Since my right ankle was just fixed I am not on crutches because I don't need to be hopping around, but I am in a walking boot- the same walking boot from before, just on the other leg.

Official diagnosis is a Grade III sprain, with the aforementioned torn ligaments. I will be in the walking boot for a minimum of three weeks, but judging by the popping feelings coming from various places in my ankle and the general crappiness of my ligaments and tendons, I may be looking at another surgery in the next year. Right when I had just gotten over the last one!

So in case you're wondering if hurting one ankle, and then right when it's better hurting the other happens outside cartoons, yes. Yes it does.

April

2011-04-09T19:13:00.003-06:00

Somehow this blog is the first thing to go when I get busy. This semester has consisted of me frantically running around a lot, so the non-vital things do get sideswept. I'm desperately trying to get into a grad school, not because I necessarily want to go to this school but more of so I don't have to work in fast food while I wait for a career job to magically become available. I finally got my last application items sent out today, so hopefully I'll get admitted last-minute in a few weeks. The only academic coordinator for the entire program in that degree is really good about responding to emails, so I'm led to believe it's a very small department. I'm not sure if this is good or not. On the bright side, I would be able to move out of my parents' house a lot quicker and tuition would be nearly nonexistant.

A piece of good news is that my stupid body finally understands what I'm trying to do to it by going to the gym 2-3 times a week, and in the last month or two I have lost 8 pounds. My goal is to drop 60 (52 more) so I have quite a way to go, but I'll take any success I can get. I am accomplishing this by stationary bike, however now that it's warm, once it stops being windy I'll start walking part of my commute to campus and that'll help even more. :)

And finally, five more weeks of school- including finals- and I'm done with my bachelors degrees. It's plural because I will have earned two (mostly by taking courses during all the summers) in four years. Six weeks until I move back in with my parents...hooray...in the state I thought I was finally free from...hooray again... but it'll work out.

So there. Update. Back to watching tv for awhile.

Airport Sketches

2011-03-27T19:25:00.002-06:00

I suppose I should post about my Vegas trip, but that would be a long rambling blog and I don't have that sort of stamina lately, what with graduation in May. Instead, you get my sketches from airports:

Shrimp Scampi Linguini

2011-03-20T18:52:00.002-06:00

First of all, Supermoon:

And now to the subject of today's blog, a recipe!

I was really feeling the scampi but wanted it in the form of a pasta (as I tend to), so I found this recipe on foodnetwork.com. I think it's one of the Barefoot Countess'.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon kosher salt plus 1 1/2 teaspoons
3/4 pound linguine
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 1/2 tablespoons good olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic (4 cloves)
1 pound large shrimp (about 16 shrimp), peeled and deveined
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves
1/2 lemon, zest grated
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (2 lemons)
1/4 lemon, thinly sliced in half-rounds
1/8 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes

Notes: I did not add any salt or the sliced lemon, and eyeballed all the amounts. I also added quite a bit of what is called Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning, which I am very fond of. Taste may vary.

To make:

1. Drizzle some oil in a large pot of boiling salted water, add 1 tablespoon of salt and the linguine, and cook for 7 to 10 minutes, or according to the directions on the package.

2. Meanwhile, in another large (12-inch), heavy-bottomed pan, melt the butter and olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the garlic. Saute for 1 minute. Be careful, the garlic burns easily! Add the shrimp, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, and the pepper and saute until the shrimp have just turned pink, about 5 minutes, stirring often.

Like so. Garlic, olive oil, shrimp, black pepper, and the Creole seasoning.

3. Remove from the heat, add the parsley, lemon zest, lemon juice, lemon slices, and red pepper flakes. Toss to combine.

I accidentally made the lemon explode. I didn't know my squeeze was so strong.

4. When the pasta is done, drain the cooked linguine and then put it back in the pot. Immediately add the shrimp and sauce, toss well, and serve.

I served it to ME.

Overall I give it a B, because I don't think the flavor was 'shrimp scampi' enough. The pasta toned down the flavor quite a bit, or perhaps some ingredients could have been added. Or maybe this is one of those dishes that is destined to be delicious after a day or two, in which case I approve. It was easy to prepare, quick, and goes down easy, so no complaints here.

Spring flower

2011-03-05T19:43:00.005-07:00

I stalk the fabrics at Joann's like a tiger, and although it creeps a lot of people out sometimes it pays off. Today I found the perfect fabric for a spring skirt. I made said skirt, and then decided that it would look great with a matching flower barrette. My hair is extremely short so a barrette is about all I am capable of. So this is how I went about making said barrette.

First, I made circles (kind of), and cut some 1" slits in all of them. I am distrustful of perfect circles and they don't happen in flowers anyway, so vaguely circular looks great.

Second, I VERY CAREFULLY melted the edges with this scented candle and a pair of tongs so that the pieces would curl by holding the fabric about an inch above the flame. If it catches on fire you did it wrong. Note how I am working on tile and not wood or carpet at this point. Meanwhile, I plugged in the hot glue gun.

Third, I glued all the pieces of the flower together with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on top. Those are the tongs I used for the previous step. That barrette is for the next step.

Fourth, I glued the barrette onto the bottom of the flower. I noticed that the glue came off when I closed the clip, so I re-glued it on with the clip closed after this with more success.

And violá, a new spring look! (I was using Photo Booth and had only three seconds, bear with the bad posture/expression)

And the flower up close on my head!

Why I hate shoe shopping

2011-03-01T12:51:00.005-07:00

Shoes suck. I hate them. Unfortunately it is not practical or wise to wander around barefoot all the time, especially in cities (I parked on top of a pile of broken glass this morning). I am a big girl, and most of my weight is located in my legs. My waist is 34" and my hips are almost 50", for example. My calves were bigger than my brother's torso for several years. This, plus my ankle surgery last year, means I've resigned myself to wearing tennis and orthopedic shoes for the rest of my life.

This is a lot of why I consider myself doomed to being unfashionable and seemingly butch. Somehow all the trendiest looking outfits involve boots! Why is this? Fashion these days simply is not width-friendly- you have to be shaped like a stick. Boots don't fit me above the ankle- not even close, I can't even get them up to judge that they are too narrow- and things like ruffles make me look like a chicken. (My inability to afford shoes will be overlooked for now.)

Fortunately I am too stubborn to stop, and know that I am not the only one with this problem. Far from it. So off I go to the internet to try to find flat wide-calf mid-calf boots for $100 or under that don't look stupid (to put on a wish list until I get a few paychecks in me this summer)!

This is what the Internet has told me about:

1. Avenue $49-$99 (I love bold colors like the blue in the photo, these may go on my wish list someday when I'm no longer unemployed)

2. Avenue $100+ (Ohhh, leather!)

3. First up in boots I can't afford but wouldn't pay that much for even if I could afford it...

4. Step Up Comfort $62-$70 (leather, but not as kinky looking)

5. Comfortview snow boot $45-$50

Things I don't use correctly

2011-02-28T21:42:00.005-07:00

Extremely limited budget and creativity are really, really nice to have at the same time- I've been able to use things I already had for uses they weren't meant for (but not in a kludge kind of way).

In lieu of written content, I give you...photos of everything I don't use properly!

First up, my "nightstand". There are nightstands that match my bed frame and dresser, unfortunately I blew all my bedroom furniture money on a really awesome mattress. I used to use a wire shelving thing but downgraded to the extra dining table chair.

I'm not sure how I acquired a Smarties tin, but I keep earrings in it. Periodically I go through and get rid of more earrings, I'm really trying to cut back on cheap jewelry.

Bamboo in a mug. This isn't exactly uncommon but the mug theme continues with, just below the bottom of the photo, another mug I use to hold bits of thread.

This is a vegetable hanging basket thing that I keep art supplies in, tucked away in the corner of my clothes closet (as opposed to the storage closet).

The tiny bathroom problem means I have nowhere to put the other half of my jewelry, so I had to use the handtowel rack.

And finally, my favorite. I'm proud of this one. It's a towel rack that, due to the aforementioned tiny proportions of my bathroom, doesn't fit even on the door, so I converted it into a scarf/purse/belt/gloves rack in my bedroom.

Eat that, Home & Garden Magazine. You can't say my place doesn't have personality.

My first vlog

2011-02-20T21:02:00.003-07:00

I felt like changing it up. Apparently video blogs take a lot longer than just typing it all out (the ones worth watching, at least)- I spent about 20 minutes filming, and about three hours editing. I now understand why my favorite vlogger does it on more of a monthly basis rather than weekly.

But I've got to say, this was much more fun. That is my actual voice you hear, and my crap you're seeing laying around. I've been sick for something like three weeks straight so cleaning hasn't happened much. I'll have to do more of these sometime.

Robots

2011-02-17T11:20:00.003-07:00

Today I am going to talk about robots (and slowly start to heal my horrible syntax and tendency to invent new grammar). I don't like robots. This may seem odd given my love of technology in general, but it is true. Robots scare me, just like (but not quite as badly as) clowns.

Why I do not like robots:

1. The 3 Laws of Robotics are not infallible. There's at least the one glaring loophole in the book (robots essentially locking up humanity to keep it from getting hurt), but I bet there are more.

2. Geminoid F looks too real. I am comforted by how she is somewhat remote controlled, but still.

3. I don't want my hyptothetical nonexistant child taught by an android. Or taught to love one instead of a real human. Successful interfacing between real people is hard enough, there's no need to throw humanistic robotics in there too.

I am okay with robots that look like robots though, instead of like human simulacra. If there were going to be androids and robots in the world, I would want it to be like Futurama, where they're fully aware they're robots and generally can't be mistaken for humans (or aliens, or mutants). And thus concludes my strange opinion on something random.

My haikus

2011-02-14T23:15:00.002-07:00

Every so often, on days that I have a gut feeling are going to suck, I have Haiku Day. Haiku Day consists of every status I post on facebook being in the form of a haiku. It is addictingly fun and makes the day better regardless of how much it sucks. Today was a Haiku Day because I am single and alone and the candy isn't on clearance yet. So enjoy:

Today is haikus,
because it is really fun,
and i enjoy them.

It is nice and warm,
I don't have a jacket on,
I love this weather

Who should I believe,
young teacher or seasoned pro,
lessons contradict.

At Satellite now,
Forgot about online work,
Must do before class!

One more class today
It is time to learn SCIENCE
And better mankind.

The 14th sucks but
The 15th has cheap candy
I celebrate that.

I saw short-shorts man
Still no shirt but he had jeans
It's just not the same.

One last poem tonight
I am getting sleepy now
Movie and then bed.

Sketch doodles

2011-02-10T18:42:00.002-07:00

I haven't been drawing much this semester, but I made a spirited attempt over the weekend (you know, after the Snowpocalypse but before I caught the flu) so in lieu of writing, here is a picture of all my sketches. It shows that I haven't drawn in a few weeks, but that's why I do this sort of thing, for practice. And it works. Go do it!

Denim Skirt

2011-02-03T22:21:00.005-07:00

I like skirts and sundresses a lot more than I used to. From about age 8 through 17 I absolutely refused to wear dresses in any form, but before and since then I love them! I tend to go through jeans fairly quickly, as a plus-sized girl no one accounts for thigh friction in denim, and so I end up a couple times a year with jeans that are in nearly perfect condition other than really thin spots on the upper insides.

I had three pairs of jeans laying in the floor to deal with that were beyond wearing; this is what I did with one of them.

Cut the pants legs off (but do it better than I did) at roughly knee level.

Cut the pants legs at one of the seamlines so they lay flat like a square panel, and then cut a triangle shape from that squareto fill in the parts of the original jeans to make a skirt shape.

Sew the triangles in and then adjust the length so the skirt hangs even. Mine is longer in the back to compensate for my butt- when on me it is even. I sewed a line along the bottom edge and frayed below the sewn hem just a tad (this will be more evident when I wash the skirt a few times). P.S. I'm not sure why the photo is so blue.

And then done! An added bonus is that since these jeans were well broken in, they still fit fabulously through the hips and waist, and now instead of throwing them away I have a nice skirt to wear this spring- but definitely not now because there's still two inches of snow outside!

Snowstorm in Albuquerque

2011-02-03T12:46:00.007-07:00

I felt this was worth blogging, if not solely because of the novelty of the situation. It snowed in Albuquerque. That massive storm that went through the whole country hit out here first, and essentially shut the state down for two days. Large sections of it still are closed, however ABQ is more or less functional again. It has not been above freezing since Monday either. The highs have been about 10 and the lows around -10, which has also broken several previous weather records.

So, my storm photos:

About halfway through the snowfall Monday evening at my apartment complex. It snowed another two inches overnight.

The street Tuesday. It was exciting to watch cars try to drive on it.

It was about -5 by this point Tuesday night, and my window froze on the inside.

The snowman I made on the hood of my car while I was testing the engine Wednesday. It was 8 outside.

Today, (Thursday). The main roads are pretty clear, and the icicles are getting really big and silly, as evidenced by this house.

It was kind of fun, for me at least, to experience actual winter again. The locals who had grown up here and never lived anywhere else were fairly miserable, but I had fun with it because I knew how to handle this sort of weather from living in the midwest all my life until four years ago.

Sewing and spring semester

2011-01-10T19:12:00.004-07:00

Now that it's been a month, and in that month I didn't do much of anything to prevent a blog entry, I am led to believe I should update again.

Christmas went well. I sat around doing nothing a lot. I got a sewing machine for the holidays, which was cool except they sent it to my apartment and gave me the amazon.com photo of it on Christmas Day, so that I was unable to use it for another two weeks. I returned to town on Thursday night, and am finally able to sew stuff!

I have learned that I am no good at sewing, but I am slowly getting better. Very slowly. So far I made a pillow and I'm about 75% done with a skirt. Next up is a sundress, but since it's in the 30s outside I don't feel pressured to work on it immediately since it won't be warm enough to wear it until April. I also have a sort of fairy-looking shirt to make, also not suitable for winter weather. I really like the 50% off rack at Joann's, two of the three clothing items are based off it- an A-line black skirt at most retailers would be at minimum $20 and usually $30- 40, however the one I'm working on at home has cost me about $12 and I still have enough fabric left over to make a matching small handbag!

My final semester at UNM (regardless of where I go to grad school) starts a week from tomorrow, work starts Wednesday. I am now a senior intern at my senator's office. My sole purpose is no longer just answering phones (I hope), I am to stalk two of the LC's who do communications and outreach. I now have 3 semi-underlings who I can politely boss around, a.k.a. the new interns, and they now have to deal with phones and mail while I get on to stuff that actually feels like it matters. This also includes attending more events, which means nice clothes, and now we have circled back to a nice work skirt.

I also saved around $200 by ordering my textbooks online instead of at the campus bookstore (they're getting enough of my tuition money that I feel no loyalty), and have been watching Monty Python for about three days. My brain is a pudding, and on that note I'm going back to my sewing.

Christmas 2010

2010-12-22T16:07:00.002-07:00

Oops, it's been a month. That actually wasn't on purpose; I try to update the blog when things happen, but too much happened and I didn't have time to update. Go figure. So while I'm waiting for dinner to finish I'll type up a small something.

Firstly, semester over. I passed everything by a decent margin, which is pretty much what I was after. I have finally finished my graduate school applications, many months and even more essays later. I am finishing up my undergraduate degrees with 13 credit hours in the spring, so it'll be a fairly easy semester in terms of hours (especially since one of those classes is a weight-training class so I can start getting back into shape after my surgery this summer). My internship has been extended from a semester to the whole year, which is awesome except that they don't pay. So in the spring I'll be starting that again and dealing with/training the new interns as well.

I am currently at my parents' house in Arkansas. It's still weird to be in my old room again, given how much I've changed in college. I enjoy not having to do chores or hate everything like I did before moving out, but I don't remember where anything is anymore. I don't like leaving my gerbils behind to be taken care of by someone else, but my friend hasn't called to apologize for killing them yet so I guess they're doing alright so far.

Christmas is in two days, Christmas eve dinner the night before, and I'm fairly excited for both. Not having disposable income means that the holiday means more- there's no other time of year that I get to buy anything other than gas and food. This year I'm making a list before randomly shopping- need more work clothes since I work in a U.S. senator's office (they like when people follow heightened personal hygiene standards), another pair of pants, long sleeve shirts, etc.

I donated a bunch of stuff to Goodwill- largely shoes I'll never wear again after the surgery, plus all the clothes I've wanted to clear out for the last few years due to not fitting/looking stupid/both/other, and so now there's room for more.

That will do for now. Enjoy your breaks, the winter, or the holidays, and I'll be back next time I remember to be.

Ad Mockery 6ish

2010-11-26T18:14:00.005-07:00

I realize I'm just walking right into them at this point, but what about this is supposed to be clever? If the alternative to seeing Twitter pathetically attempt to promote features via badly-done fake dictionary words is to just have a blank space there, I'd opt for a blank space.

I mean, that's not even a word. That is a fragment of a phrase. And it's not a noun, either. It's two nouns connected by a preposition. And the syllables aren't divided correctly. In English consonants begin syllables unless there are a lot of vowels, so "Twit-ter" should actually be "Twi-ter/Twi-tter" depending on if you're trying to appear phonetically savvy or not. What happened to combining words, like "Twittoid" or "Twidroid"? That would have been much less painful to read, but I suppose independent thought is too much to ask of marketers these days.

Sketch and analysis

2010-11-13T18:23:00.002-07:00

For once, no food! Although I did cook today. I haven't felt like blogging about food today since I've done it so much. Instead, I'm analyzing my drawing skills! Lots of butts, as you can tell.

The idea was to draw angles, body types, and parts I ususally don't from memory. I had no references when drawing or shading. I'm considering this a mild success but see a lot of work to be done.

Top left: Can't tell what gender that person is. It's supposed to be female. Pose is sort of static too, can't find anything about personality either.

Top right (the guy bending over): Not natural looking, especially in the hip region and arms.

Girl in middle: fatness usually doens't occur quite like that in belly region on girls. Crossed legs could use a little more work.

Bottom left: legs, god those legs. Practice that. The mid and upper back region doesn't seem right to me either.

Bottom middle: Torso too long, legs too thick.

Bottom right: her right leg doesn't match up, it's too thick.

It was fun to do all this though. Especially shading. Enjoy the commentaries.

It looks like junk food but isn't!

2010-11-08T13:09:00.003-07:00

Saturday was a dual recipe day- turkey burgers and sweet potato fries!

Wow, multitasking!

The turkey burgers I have no recipe for. I've never made my own patties from scratch before, so in the face of logic I decided to 100% wing it, no recipe or anything, and they somehow came out really delicious. I recall there was an egg, rosemary, soy sauce, pepper, and some chili sauce involved at various points. Now that I write it down it seems weird, but my neighbor thought they were delicious too. I put spinach on the sandwich instead of normal lettuce, and there were tomatos too. I got the flat multigrain type of bun, so all in all a normal burger-sized serving was probably 300 calories or less, but was actually filling.

It looks like brains.

And if that wasn't enough I also made sweet potato fries! Well, mostly. Again, I got bored with the recipe and jetted off in my own direction.

Garlic, rosemary, and four sweet potatos cooked and cut into wedges,

and sauteed in EVOO later....

That yellow liquid in the top left is olive oil. I told you I get messy when I cook.

Food for several days! It looks like a burger and fries, but isn't! And I will say that this was a lot more filling than a regular burger and fries would have been. I only ate one serving each meal and didn't get hungry again for hours afterward.

Repo: The Genetic Opera

2010-10-31T13:56:00.004-06:00

This was my new Halloween movie this year, even though it's not a holiday film at all- it looked scary so I saved it for this weekend.

Awesome movie review- Repo: The Genetic Opera

Why I watched it: It's a rock opera. What's not awesome about that? Two good genres that go better together.

Casting: I really liked the casting on this one, they did good on getting actors who fit the parts perfectly. Everyone fit their roles perfectly, especially Graverobber and Blind Mag. Nathan was great at that bipolar switch in appearance and singing style between being a concerned father and psychopathic murderer. Shilo (a name I love for a girl, by the way) is convincingly naive and gullible without being stupid. The Largo brothers are creepy beyond belief, and even Paris Hilton acts credibly. But mostly it was Graverobber and Blind Mag that kept my attention.

Music: Very nice variety, from goth rock to creepy circus to opera and everywhere in between. My favorites are "Zydrate Anatomy", which Graverobber sings to Shilo to explain the dark side of GeneCo, which is sort of like a really dark, twisted play on educational childrens' songs. "Chase the Morning", which Blind Mag sings to Shilo to give advice based on her own failures, is eerily intense and genuine. My ultimate favorite song is actually "I Didn't Know I'd Love You So Much", which is one of the final songs and would totally give away the ending if I explained. It is between Shilo and Nathan (father and daughter), and is a lullaby and easily the most beautiful song in the movie. I tear up, at least.

Plot: I do feel that this could have been a little more hashed out. They spent a ton of time on the back story and current ones, but when the movie ended I was surprised and slightly disappointed...until the part that popped up right when the credits started regarding Rotti's kids. The trick was keeping it opera-themed and like a rock concert at the same time. I knew withing a few minutes of starting the movie that it would not be a happy ending, and I was not disappointed, but I was still unsatisfied with the general storyline. I suppose seeing the original stage version of this story would help with that.

Final remarks: Good movie if you want to be alternately fascinated, horrified, and disillusioned with the world. The songs will get stuck in your head (especially "Zydrate Anatomy") and you'll keep thinking about the film days laters. So based on all this I give it a low- to middle- B grade. Now go watch it.

Vegetarian dish time- udon and tofu

2010-10-23T17:01:00.004-06:00

Upfront, I'd like to address the topic in my previous post- yesterday I went in to the tire shop and now have four brand new (if dirty looking) tires. Shout out to dad for handling the financing so quickly.

Now, food- this dish is a) oriental (in origin, at least), b) vegetarian, and c) healthy, none of which are realms I usually delve into. However I'm trying to get my eating habits under control and work out more because I'm reaching unhealthy levels of fat, but in such a way as that I don't have to be miserable the whole time. I found this recipe on foodnetwork.com under a chef I somehow don't usually look to- Alton Brown (he's the kind of crazy one who uses science in his cooking: healthy for your brain too)

So without further ado: Udon noodles with tofu and asian greens

Ingredients:

8 oz udon noodles

4 tbsp roasted peanut oil/ OR combination of 3 tbsp sesame oil with 1 tbsp vegetable oil (I did the peanut oil)

12 tofu (firm)

kosher salt, red pepper flakes, and pepper (to taste)

11 oz asian cooking greens or baby spinach (I used bok choy)

1 bunch scallions (I omitted this)

3 tbsp soy sauce

Pinch of sugar

Make it:

1a. Cook the udon noodles according to the package. Keep about a quart of the drained water when they're done, it will be needed later.

1b. Heat 2 tbsp peanut oil (or the alternative) in a medium skillet at medium heat. Pat the tofu dry, cut into 12 pieces, and season all over with salt and pepper. Put in skillet and cook each side until brown, about 2 minutes per side (HINT: I used tongs to flip the tofu). When cooked, remove from skillet but keep warm (HINT 2: putting on a plate and covering with a paper towel works).

Fresh into the skillet to become delicious.

2. Add 1 tbsp peanut oil to the skillet and add the greens, cooking until just wilted. Add the final tbsp oil, punches of sugar and red pepper, scallions, the 3 tbsp soy sauce, and the leftover water I told you to save in step 1a. Heat to make broth.

Right before finishing the broth. Tofu is hiding in the back under the paper towel.

3. Mix noodles and broth, top with tofu, and dig in!

It smells good too.

Evaluation:

Overall time- half hour from start to finish.

Tastes like: something you'd order at a nice asian restaurant instead of something made at home.

Final grade: A+! I had read in the comments for the recipe that many people thought it was bland- when cooking, I double the amount of pepper I put on the tofu in the first stage and added extra red pepper to the bok choy, and it came out DELICOUSLY FULL OF FLAVOR. This dish has a lot of cabbage in it and is still delicious despite the fact that normally I hate cabbage. It is that good. That, plus the health and the fact that this dish didn't involve dairy (a rarity for me), makes it a new permanent dish in my recipes. Plus, I'm completely full now. Won't be snacking or having dessert for several hours, if at all!

Why I have AAA

2010-10-19T18:40:00.004-06:00

Yeah. So ultimately I ended up over an hour late for class, arriving finally with only fifteen minutes of class left, and still gave my presentation that I'm half-heartedly rehearsing in the first panel there. It went from 'I'm just going to get through today' to 'Damnit, I'm DOING this!". Today was a personal challenge. And I won. So there.

My ghettolicious car until the new wheels come in:

Ad Mockery 5ish

2010-10-14T18:29:00.003-06:00

People who can write correctly are desperately needed too. First of all, the title- "Nurses (in need)". What the heck? Also, don't capitalize random words, and check the syntax- "Nurses are in desperate need"....of what? Coffee? Or are they desperately needed? Hmm. And fragment alert in the last bit there. At least the picture matches the message.

The thing is, if it's an ad that's going to be published, don't gamble on the entire target audience being illiterate or this sort of message will come across as really badly done.

Fall stuff update

2010-10-07T18:38:00.002-06:00

Advance warning- this starts cheerful but turns into somewhat of a rant.

Hi all!

Things are going pretty well overall, almost but not quite bordering on 'awesome'. My physical therapy is over, my ankle is feeling about how it did this time last year (this time last year I went hiking a lot, for reference), even if there is a little surgery damage. I haven't done spectacularly bad in any of my classes yet- though midterms are over the next weeks so I'm trying not to jinx that. I haven't gotten sick any more or less than normal, I'm ahead of schedule as far as prepping for my grad school applications are concerned and got/are getting all four letters of recommendation, etc.

Perhaps the best news concerns my internship for the senator. The legislative correspondant who does all the scheduling for the Albuquerque area is on vacation for the next two weeks, and yours truly is temporarily in charge of that while she's gone! Don't worry, I'm still not getting paid so the only thing going to my head are hunger pangs from my stomach and echoes from my bank account. Although they do occasionally give me scones and other little foods.

Two less-great bits of news that keep everything from being awesome- 1. bills, mainly medical, and 2. starting the new round of doctor appoinments very soon. I've always been a little wobbly on my feet and up until the last few years it's been attributed to clumsyness (and is the cause of all the ankle stuff that climaxed this year with the surgery). However in the last couple years it has gotten worse, and in 2007 or so I was diagnosed with some hearing loss (not sure why, everyone else in the family who has it got it from age, working in factories, or both). I'm due for another hearing test anyway, but the dizziness thing has got to go.

About two months ago I fell- not uncommon- but I whacked my skull on the tile pretty hard and it sort of hit me while I was laying there evaluating my survival that the only thing keeping me from having a dizzy spell and cracking my head on furniture and getting seriously injured is luck. Scary. And then since I've started walking like a normal human again (more or less) I've noticed how often my sense of balance is on the fritz- physically I'm doing fine but my brain insists I'm off balance, so I physically compensate and then I really am off balance. This used to happen rarely but now it's almost daily. Today's a bad day, it's been almost constant. I've been sitting down a lot.

So tomorrow I'm going to call over to Lovelace (who I still owe money from the ankle stuff) and see what I need to do to get both the hearing test I need to do as well as a proper head exam. I fully expect this will include another MRI. Anything that arises is tentative at best, I'm in the range for hearing aids and getting to the point where not being able to separate the garble happens very frequently. I'm useless in a group discussion. I can't regulate volume very well anymore.

I'll let you know how that goes. But like I said, aside from that things are pretty good.

Balloon Fiesta

2010-10-03T10:22:00.003-06:00

Instead of uploading a million photos like I am on facebook, I have made a minute-long video summarizing the balloon fiesta:

Yet another new recipe blog- Taco Pasta by Rachael Ray

2010-09-28T20:08:00.005-06:00

Hi again! Sorry about the food theme the last few days/weeks, but I don't really have time for creative content, I have to cook at least once a week so I have something to take to work for lunch, and it's easy to take photos and blog about the food. Today I have made food for the rest of this week (since I should have gone to the store three days ago and have been eating out out of laziness).

I wanted something simple, fun, and super delicious, while not being unhealthy, so I hopped over to Rachael Ray's website and found this:Rachael Ray's Official Website :: Taco Pasta Toss

I was intrigued as to how a taco and a pasta taste together, so I decided to make it and see.

Ingredients:

Salt and pepper
1 pound penne rigate pasta
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 pound ground beef sirloin
1 large onion, chopped
1 large jalapeño pepper, halved, seeded if desired and thinly sliced crosswise
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1/4 cup tomato paste
One bottle beer (12 ounces) or 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 cups shredded cheddar, Monterey Jack or any Mexican semi-soft cheese
2 small plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1/4 head iceberg lettuce or 1/2 small heart of romaine lettuce, chopped

I did not use beer- didn't feel like it when I already had chicken stock in the fridge- and substituted paprika in for chili powder (I thought I owned some but apparently don't). I omitted the coriander because I couldn't find it at the store.

Making it:

Boil up the pasta, drain, return to pot. While you do that, brown the meat with the olive oil on medium high heat. After it's browned, add about 3/4 the onion, the jalapeno, garlic, chili powder, cumin, coriander, and salt and pepper.

Cook until the onion is softened (6ish minutes). Stir in tomato paste for 1 minute, then add the chicken stock/beer.

Put the sauce in the pasta pot and mix them together. Top with cheese and cover dish with foil for a few minutes to melt the cheese.

When you're ready to serve, add the rest of the onion, the tomatos and lettuce on top like tacos, and dig in!

So, for the analysis-

Overall time- right around half an hour, just like Rachael Ray said.

Tastes like: tacos and pasta put together, sure enough.

Final grade: B. I liked it, but I may have to fiddle with this one before I say it's great. I thought that lettuce was just too weird for a semi-pasta dish, so I had a small Round Two of just the pasta and sauce mix and it didn't taste nearly as 'off' as with lettuce. So if you find that problem, perhaps morph the lettuce into a side salad or something. The dish is aimed towards families and children, which I'd say it's perfect for. Definitely worth a shot at least, especially around kids.

New Mexican chile verde with homemade tortillas

2010-09-25T16:38:00.013-06:00

Part 1- New Mexican Chile Verde:

So! The crazy cooking theme continues with my favorite category of food: anything-mex! And I don't include Taco Bell in this category- I'm talking about delicious traditional New Mexican food, specifically the glorious green chile. New Mexico is world-famous for its chiles. One of the best variants within the state are the Hatch green chiles, which are huge, grown in the town of Hatch (hence the name) in the southern part of the state, and are easy to ship, or in my case, buy at an Albuquerque permanent roadside stand about 2 miles up the road from my grocery store.

The Chile Traditions permanent roadside stand store- they roast the chiles right there in the gravel parking lot! Google them, there are videos!

Chilis as big as your entire hand. If not bigger.

So the green chiles featured below in my ingredients photo are pretty much the best there is, which should counter my general incompetence at new recipes nicely.

So, ingredients:

2 3/4 cups chicken broth

2 tbsp masa (or regular cooking flour, but it's more traditional with masa. also will use this for the homemade tortillas)

28 oz. roasted, de-skinned, de-seeded green chiles (I ignored the specifications and used 32 oz of the medium heat kind)

1/8 tsp salt

3 cloves chopped garlic (I got lazy on this one and got the little jar)

1 tsp cumin

1/8 tsp white pepper

2 tbsp cornstarch

Optional ingredients -

Porkloin or other meat

1 large onion, chopped

1 large tomato, skinned and peeled, or pureed

2 tsp chopped jalapeno peppers (I put two whole chopped peppers in instead for the extra kick)

To make:

1. If you aren't putting meat in it, skip this step, put garlic in pot, and start at #2. Saute the meat in a skillet with some olive oil. When meat is no longer pink (5 minutes or so), move meat to one side of pan and add onion and garlic. When the garlic starts sizzling, put all three things into crock pot and turn it on to high.

2. In a small bowl, make thickener by adding water to flour and cornstarch and mixing together. Add mixture to crockpot. Don't forget where you put the masa- we need it for tortillas later! :)

3. Add chiles, spices, chicken broth to crockpot. Bring to a low boil, then reduce heat and add tomatoes.

Waiting for the crock pot mess to boil, then adding my tomatos.

4. Simmer on very low heat, covered, for at least 1 hour (preferably all day). Makes 4 good-sized servings, freezes very well.

5. Serve over plain or mexican rice, burritos, chile rellenos, chimichangas, etc. Or eat plain, your call. For me, this is where the tortillas come in.

Part 2- Homemade Tortillas:

Okay, this isn't exactly complex- I'm using the directions on the masa bag for making these. Told you the masa would be reappearing.

I started these around the time the crock pot mess was done (seven hours later, when every time I lifted the lid there was an explosion of heavenly smell).

Steps 1 and 2, in case you can't read the masa bag, is mix specific amounts of water and masa and knead it well, and then form it in to balls roughly 1 1/2 inches in diameter.

Step 3 is to use a rolling pin to roll the dough balls into roughly 6" circle shapes. I don't have a rolling pin, so this is what it looks like when I get creative with materials:

Step 4- Frying! I use veggie oil. Heat the oil until it is really, really, super hot (my test is if I can hold my hand about two feet above the skillet and feel the heat). Do tortillas one at a time- 30 seconds on one side, 1 minute on the other side, and 30 more seconds back on the original side A word of caution- do NOT have anything flammable nearby, and don't stand too close while they're frying up. The scalding-hot oil splatters everything. The paper towel with finished tortillas was about a foot away from the skillet. Safety first.

My work station- skillet on left, finished tortillas on the plate, and raw ones under the towel (to keep them from drying out).

Pretty pile of fried tortillas. I like making patterns.

And finished! I spooned some (okay, a lot!) of the chile verde onto one of my fresh tortillas, folded it like a taco, and dug in!

Overall cook time: for the chile verde, about seven hours (non-crock pot-part was only about 10 minutes). For the tortillas, about 1 hour. However the parts where I had to physically be in the kitchen cooking was around 1 1/2 hours, spread out over several hours. The rest of the time I ran some errands, went and got coffee, cleaned a little, etc.

Tastes like: heaven. :P (it tastes like New Mexican food, that's the point)

Final grade: A-. I could eat this all day, except it's 11:30 at night as I write this and I don't need to be eating any more. The one thing keeping it from being an A+ is my mediocre skills at frying tortillas. I discussed this back at the beginning of the tortilla section. However they're still really good. Plus, green chile has a lot of vitamins and other healthy things in it. The only real source of hard carbs in this are the tortillas.

New Recipe: Corn Casserole ala Paula Deen

2010-09-24T17:45:00.003-06:00

Yep, my neglected southern side is coming out today in the form of dinner- a recipe my mom sent from Paula Deen's website for corn casserole, an exciting dish full of yummy carbs! Normally I try to eat really well, but it's a rough semester (I graduate with my double major in May, so close!) and it was a weird week on top of that, so I'm celebrating survival through my stomach.

In case you don't know, this is Paula (start at 4:50 for the cooking stuff), the creator of this recipe and many just as fattening if not more so:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IecLTIhCPWE

She is my soulmate, but doesn't know it. It's on my bucket list to hug Paula on national television. Anyway. Corn.

Ingredients:

15 oz. creamed corn

15 oz. whole kernel corn (drained)

8 oz. sour cream

1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1 box Jiffy corn muffin mix

1/2 cup melted butter

Directions:

Put everything except the cheese in a bowl and mix it up real good.

Spread the mixture (still without the cheese) in a 9x13 casserole dish, and put in oven at 350 for 45 minutes.

When the top is turning golden brown, remove, sprinkle the cheese evenly over the top, and put back in oven for 5-10 minutes or until cheese is all melted.

Let cool and then dig in!

Overall cook time from start to finish: 1 hr (55 minutes of which is in the oven and doesn't involve you)

Tastes like: cornbread

Final grade: B+. I think less cheese would be more prudent, and between the butter and sour cream it's really not a very healthy-tasting dish- but it is super delicious! And it would be good as both a main dish or a side, and would also be really easy to alter the recipe to add whatever you want.

Things I'm learning while working for a senator

2010-09-14T19:45:00.002-06:00

In lieu of an actual update, I bring you a list!

Things I'm learning while working for a senator's office:

1. Yelling at whoever answers the phone doesn't enforce the point. I enter what you say into the system on a computer, which doesn't register tone or volume.

2. Just because you physically walk into the lobby doesn't mean the person you want to see is there/will return any faster. The LC's have a lot of places to be.

3. Eat the cake. Regardless of flavor or occasion. It's kind of like getting paid.

4. They don't mind if you sneak into their conference calls with the senator as long as you keep quiet, it's called a "learning experience".

5. Speaking of which, you never actually meet the senator in person. You just get to tell people his opinions on things.

6. Calling, saying your name fast and slurry so I can't catch it, yelling for five minutes, and then hanging up on me means that your opinion is basically worthless- I have to enter it as anonymous, which means you don't get any credit. If you stay on the phone and give me your info I can make your opinion personalized!

7. Interns will always get the mail. Always.

8. Interns will always answer the phones. Always.

9. Interns are always put in the least comfortable part of the office.

10. Wash whatever kitchenette item you use, it's common courtesy.

11. Calling in to share your opinion is absolutely welcome. I encourage it- the longer you talk, the less I sit around doing nothing. Current record is 15:20. Runner up is 14:10 (same caller as 1st place).

12. The congress legislative information website is really entertaining because of its thorough knowledge of every bill through the House and Senate pretty much ever. The senate website is fun because you can learn about senators past and present. And there are links to their individual sites.

Which isn't to say I don't enjoy it- Most of the negative parts happen only occasionally. You have to be screaming and cussing up a storm to faze me, what most people consider 'ranting' is more of agressive conversation. One lady who is considered a pain in the butt to talk to I actually look forward to- she finds the most random aspects of an issue to support, and never repeats subjects from call to call while still remaining within the same overall cause. My boss and the other permanent workers are nice to interns and willing to help out if it starts getting busy or if someone difficult walks in or calls. I enjoy this one a lot better than my last internship.

Have some intercultural exposure

2010-08-31T18:19:00.002-06:00

Unless you already listen to the Spanish Top 40 stations, in which case you may be sick of this song. However I am not, it has good lyrics and is sang well and is a really catchy tune. Knowing Spanish is optional, however since that is the language it is in you may want to look up the lyrics for the full effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qExd-3oCTl4

Still around

2010-08-25T00:10:00.001-06:00

I've been somewhat busy. School, new job (finally!), this:

Just trying to keep everything real for my final year of my undergrad schooling. :)

Sketchoholic Marathon Drawings

2010-08-18T14:29:00.001-06:00

I was finally free during today's marathon over on sketchoholic.com. I've been meaning to try it for a few days, but unable to until this afternoon. You get an hour to create an art based on a random prompt, and then everyone votes and the winner picks the next hour's prompt. I think it usually goes on for a couple hours. Here's my two entries:

"Bowling Superstar"

"Flying Sea Monster"

Private Sister Bonding Time

2010-08-15T18:25:00.002-06:00

Random and Sopi have an incredible relationship with each other. They're not comfortable separated for more than a few minutes- if they can't sense each other nearby they start fidgeting and running around frantically, searching. I've had a lot of small furry critters of various species over the years, and Sopi and Random are by far the most dependent on each other. They sleep together, they try to run in wheel together (it doesn't work), they play wrestle together, they eat at the same time and constantly pin each other down for grooming and cuddles. They sleep on top of each other, and in their edible hut there they spend a lot of time just sitting side by side, tearing up their bedding companionably.

Normally it's fairly obvious which critter is dominant, but these two don't seem to be concerned with that. Even when I had the rats back in high school, who always got along with each other really well (freakishly well, I found out later when I Googled it and found out about dominance issues in unneutered animals, especially when the group is comprised of critters from different litters) would still know the pecking order, even though 90% of the time they were peaceful and cuddly and loving towards each other.

I wasn't going anywhere with this, I just find it incredibly cute. Gerbils really are the friendliest pets I've ever had (rats are second place).

StalkerVision Photos taken earlier this evening, I was curious what they get up to in their hut.

Ad Mockery 3ish

2010-08-14T09:24:00.000-06:00

Yes, SHE looks like she needs to go back to school. Thank you stock photos.

Alien Rock Star

2010-08-13T17:14:00.005-06:00

I just joined sketchoholic.com (which is hard to spell) which is an art contest community. One of the real artists I stalk likes their random topics for practicing her sketching, and I was looking around too and decided to give it a go myself.

So I entered a contest entitled 'alien rock star' and this is what I ultimately submitted:

It is Quincunx, the most famous rock star alien in the entire EVERYTHING. Below, he is signing his favorite fan's tentacle (I didn't submit this one, but I like it more and wish I had):

And thus, a new story is born (copy/pasted from my deviantart):

He is Quincunx ("kwin- kunks", it's some astrology term that sounds like it would be a good rock n' roll name) this super huge rock star, and the fan is Gearshift Octoprism (because it's easier to come up with names if you just make up words), who is his biggest fan and pretty much stalks him. However since she doesn't seem to have any ulterior motives he doesn't really mind, and every so often when he actually needs helps she's the first to volunteer. However because he's a super sexy alien rock star he gets distracted by other celebrities and hot easy women aliens and such, and hasn't really realized how much Gearshift adores him.

Ad Mockery 2ish

2010-08-10T14:23:00.002-06:00

This was the ad on my DeviantArt today:

"An epic of epic epicness".

I love it when they don't even try and delightfully smarmy slogans come out.

Why I don't like poetry

2010-08-08T14:18:00.004-06:00

I heartily apologize for yesterday's poetry. I promised an internet friend I'd beta her poetry against my will (she's in high school, and therefore deserves to have something nice happen to her, even if it means I have to read a bunch of poems to give it). Well, after deep, critical analysis, I determined why I don't like 95% of poetry and decided to write something myself that fits in the other 5%.

This pie chart illustrates what poetry consists of, to me:

30% angsty feelings, usually depressing

30% lovey dovey gooey

30% drama mama confrontational

5% mysteriously abstract

5% positive cheerful stuff

We can learn several things from this: I have deeply considered as many poems as I can remember having read, by famous poets or otherwise, there may be a sixth category I can't remember right now, I can divide out 100% correctly, and that I'm not as good at Excel as I recall having been but apparently am just good enough to make a simple chart in under half an hour.

Not to say that there aren't a few poems I do like- I'm quite fond of "I'm nobody! Who are you?" by Emily Dickenson (mysteriously abstract), "The Rainy Day" by Longfellow (part angsty, part Unnamed Other Category), whatever that one was I read in Spanish Lit that one time (lovey dovey gooey), and e.e. cummings (positive cheerful stuff), for example. However the vast majority of poems only irritate me for falling into one of the categories above.

The meaning behind all this?

I don't want to study for the GRE this afternoon and will even make stupid charts to procrastinate.

I wrote a poem

2010-08-07T18:49:00.001-06:00

How to Control the Sun

Once upon the world in a great big town

A girl sat at a playground and looked around.

The other kids laughed and ran and played

But she sat alone in an unremarkable glade.

In the wind through the wire fence everything blew.

Looming overhead crane hooks with beams flew.

People always came and went and dreamed in storms,

And when they went to bed they curled up nice and warm.

The girl sat with her hands in the fence chain,

Her body on the playground but not her brain.

The kids used to tease her but not anymore-

Her imagination leapt the fence and started to soar.

She flew over the buildings and into the clouds,

And looked up at the stars and down at the ground.

She did some somersaults, leaps and rolls,

And she smiled and laughed and spread out her soul.

Under her people lived their small lives,

Facing everyday perils and buzzing in hives.

The city, such a large metropolitan pot,

Now merely seemed to be a slight spot.

She flew even higher into the sky,

And looked down again with venom in her eye.

This cruel world that tore up her heart-

This cruel world that had always set her apart-

If she had power she would start it all again-

Maybe make more flowers, have a new plan

There would be less people so each means more,

And she would be queen and loved and adored.

Not sure why, she slowly raised her hand.

Smoke came from her fingertips and began to expand.

Dark clouds formed over the small city.

She frowned down at the citizens without any pity.

Lightning played across the high buildings.

Trees grew from seeds with a sound like keening.

Thunder crashed louder than any other sound.

And down below sirens were heard on the ground.

She smiled slightly and scanned the crowds

Who all gathered and looked up at the girl in the clouds.

On the dingy school playground she had transcended

The body of a small girl lay unattended.

Her body, so small, hidden by the grate,

Her tiny hands wrapped around the gate.

She saw her stand up and look up at her,

And sigh slightly, and start to move in a blur.

‘I can’t do this,’ she thought at herself gravely,

‘People aren’t great but neither am I sagely.

I don’t know what’s best for everyone.

I don’t know how to control the sun.”

The her that was the source of such mayhem

Thought slowly and then they acted in tandem.

Both of her reached out an arm to the other,

And embraced herself with the love of another.

Both of her giggled as they became one,

And soon the clouds parted and out came the sun.

She felt like flying, and she saw she was tall,

But the power was gone, and she started to fall.

Way down below the earth calmly waited,

The streets empty and no breath baited.

She plummeted thousands of feet in a second,

And tried to make the hand fire to send out a beacon.

Her powers gone, her imagination under control,

She fell towards the playground’s hidden grassy knoll.

She slammed into the ground with a shattering yell-

And then she heard the end of recess bell.

She stood up disheveled and dusted herself off,

And weaved her way dizzily towards her teacher’s angry scoff.

She got scolded for sitting way off alone from the rest

And no one ever remember her imagination’s test.

The teacher plucked something out of her hair.

The girl took it, saw, and quietly stood there.

Into her pocket she slipped her new goddess crown.

And with the rest of the kids she left the playground.

Why I am bad at writing

2010-08-06T20:20:00.004-06:00

I already knew I was bad at writing- not at the grammar/spellcheck type stuff (mostly errors here are due to laziness rather than inability)- but at constructing things like plots and conclusions. If you pay attention, this blog will have a crappy conclusion if I don't just randomly stop.

Realizing this, in high school, I changed from wanting to do creative writing to something where I didn't have to make up the content of the writing I was doing, which is why I'm graduating soon with a degree in communications. The content in communications is provided. The creative part there is putting it together so it makes sense, like a puzzle.

Story writing is much harder, and I've all but stopped in the last several years. However for some reason in the last few days I've been trying to construct a story arch for my comic (to keep the relationship spicy), and it's very difficult. I don't have a set length but don't imagine it will be particularly long, and so far everything's come together, but I know the point is coming when I'll think "okay, what happens next?" and draw a blank (literally, since it's a comic). Even with no parameters- I can do anything with this- it still takes a lot of effort to do something that isn't cliched or trite. I'd rather not do a story at all if it's going to come out exactly the way all other stories do. Happily ever after is for writers with no stamina.

Content aside, conclusions are the hardest part of creative writing for me. I don't feel like the story ends when I stop writing it. Things happened before it in the characters' timeline. Things will happen after. If I put an end to the story it feels like I'm imprisoning the characters in a frozen setting where time never happens again, and I don't want to stick that on them. So the tricky part is drawing the line, deciding where THIS story ends. And then it seeps backwards; how do I make the story start to conclude so that a conclusion makes sense?

This is why I play by ear, with writing. I don't plan it. I start at the beginning (unless I have an idea for a later scene, which I will write out then insert later) and progress from there. Life isn't planned for anyone, fictional or otherwise, so I see no reason to write that way. Logical progressions from one event to another don't happen much in real life, therefore they don't happen in my writing either. My characters literally fly by the seat of their pants, say the first things that come to mind, make a lot of mistakes, walk around their homes in their underwear, and make stupid decisions, just like real people. Which is why I come up with great characters but have no story to put them in until they meet each other, and then see what they do with each other. It usually writes itself until that pesky conclusion part.

Writing is torture on the brain, but the reward is great. It's incredibly frustrating while at the same time being cathartic- I can say anything, do anything in writing. I create a universe that makes sense in my head and can spend as much time there as I want.

So for my crappy conclusion (I was going to actually try to come up with something but I'm feeling lazy so I won't), I am going to link to the comic story that prompted all of this- it's just beginning, but should be at least moderately entertaining. You don't have to know the characters for it, but it would make it significantly funnier if you did. So here: FLW Comic.

2010-08-05T12:11:00.002-06:00

Dear ladies who interviewed me yesterday: Please hire me. The thought of yet more job hunting is really, really depressing. Thanks.

A bunch of random things

2010-08-03T10:04:00.002-06:00

Until I come up with real content, that is.

I checked my AdSense account (the reason for all the ads), and this blog has made $0, an all time high. The surgery blog, however- perhaps because of its semi-useful content and overall theme- has made me a whopping $1.31! Unfortunately I don't get paid until I hit either $10 or $100. I couldn't tell, it was a very vague chart. Either way, I'm somewhere between 1.3- 10% the way to income! Since employment is still very unlikely, this makes me excited.

The gray hair increases- I found several more recently. A small part of me, the part that isn't distracted by shiny things, is a little alarmed by how rapidly this is increasing- I had my first gray hair as a teenager, and now there is no chunk of hair on my head that doesn't have at least one gray in it. I was forewarned- my mom's hair was salt and pepper by the time she was 30 and now, in her mid/late forties, it's mostly salt with only a hint of pepper.

I'm getting close to walking again, I can feel it. I've been putting about 10% of my weight on my surgeried foot while I'm doing things that require standing still, like brushing my teeth or putting pants on. It doesn't hurt or anything.

Today I need to get my hair trimmed up. I look a little too rangy for my internship interview tomorrow (think Strider from the Lord of the Rings level of rangy hair. Different color, same mattedness). So I'll be preparing to go out in public soon, after two days lurking in my apartment. And tomorrow I have to not only look nice, but appear to be competent and intelligent as well. Tough act. In a week or so you'll know how that goes.

2010-07-29T22:40:00.002-06:00

Sorry I haven't been writing much. I'm sure I'll make up for it again eventually, such as when school has started and I'm sitting in public trying to look scholarly and important by typing profusely on my laptop.

However for now I just don't care; I'm very aware of exactly how lonely I am, and spend more time sleeping and staring at the ceiling than anything else. While this says a lot about my mental state lately, it does not make for riveting blogging.

And when I do feel human and am not depressed out of my mind and 100% lonely, I am studying for the GRE, which I am taking in two weeks.

It's not so much bad news as much as not having anything happen that is newsworthy. Or positive. No one cares about the negative stuff. So I'll leave you with this- in two weeks (I'm fairly positive about this) I'll hopefully have the doctor's all-clear to start putting weight on my foot again, thereby offering me a smidgen more ease of mobility and hopefully eventually reestablishing my presence in the world. Cheers.

Good Old Days

2010-07-25T20:33:00.003-06:00

In my first two days after my dad drove back to his own home, I have randomly fallen over and hit my head on the tile (I probably already had brain damage anyway), and cut my finger open with a butter knife. It's just like old times. I'm afraid for my life, something stupid is going to happen to me that maims me for life.

2010-07-25T11:36:00.000-06:00

I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE.

My movie rating system

2010-07-24T11:01:00.005-06:00

My dad officially left to drive back to his own home today, leaving me, one-legged, to fend for myself ~~(the first thing I did was crutch through my apartment in my underwear, really fast, yelling 'It's mine again!")~~. While he was here we had a daily problem about deciding what movies to watch- he would eagerly watch anything, while I would turn down almost anything. So to help make my cynicism of filmography easier to understand, I have provided this hi-tech chart I made in MS Paint, and examples of each level:

Bad ratings:

"That was the worst movie I have ever seen"- I can't think of any. I'm phobic of negative extremes. (EDIT- I thought of one- The Passion of the Christ. Don't judge me.)

"I wandered off. Didn't finish it"- Sin City, Harry Potter series, Saw, most shows on television

"Why couldn't you have killed me in an alley, instead of this"- Star Wars series, I Am Legend, Waiting

"Who seriously greenlighted this film?"- all Ice Age films after the first

"I want my admission ticket price back"- Far Cry,

"Why did you make me watch that?"- Casablanca, Philadelphia

Good ratings:

"I've seen better. I've seen worse."- Get Him to the Greek, 27 Dresses, Shrek 2-3

"This was so bad I actually enjoyed it"- the entire MST3K repertoire

"Eh. That was okay I guess"- Indiana Jones 4, The Proposal, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

"Ooh. That was worth watching."- Bladerunner, The Princess and the Frog, The Godfather (Part 1), The Silence of the Lambs

"Interesting. Some bad parts, but mostly good"- Lord of the Rings trilogy, Sherlock Holmes, Toy Story 3, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

"I will dream about this movie"- The Fifth Element, The Secret Life of Bees, Despicable Me, District 9, Zombieland, Pirate Radio

"My life has changed forever due to this film's storytelling"- The Prestige, Pan's Labyrinth, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 12 Angry Men, V For Vendetta, Thank you for Smoking

Note: I did not rate movies I haven't seen or don't really remember. This is why I skip certain movies in a series, or don't mention entire genres. Also, if I don't think I'll like a movie I don't go see it, which is why the 'Good' list is much larger than the 'Bad'. It is not accurately scaled.

Another note: I used IMDB and Netflix to 'suggest' random movies to find enough to fill every category on the list. It turns out that I've seen about half of the 100 worst movies on IMDB, and only about 1/5 of the best 250. This may explain my generally cynical approach to film.

Talking in Circles

2010-07-23T16:57:00.002-06:00

I don't feel like a humorous anecdote today. Although I still can't do pretty much anything (cereal takes me 15 minutes and a full body workout, for example, then I'm beat for a few hours), I'm ready for independence. This was official today because my annoyance outweighed my need to have someone around to help me do basic crap while I'm crippled. I love my dad like a dad, but he has this way of needing confirmation eight or nine times over before it registers in his mind, whereas I'm more of a point-and-grunt kind of person.

An example from today's conversation- the setting is my desk in my living room. I'm trying to finish reading the archives of a webcomic I discovered, and Dad decides that a grocery list has to be made RIGHT THEN so tomorrow maybe he can go to the store.

Dad: (Ten minutes or so into the conversation) ...What else would you like?

Me: (trying to read webcomic) Grapes would be nice.

Dad: Would you like fruit? How about grapes?

Me: Sure, I want grapes.

Dad: What kind of grapes?

Me: Red.

Dad: You could get green or purple.

Me: Purple, then.

Dad: Do you want green grapes?

Me: No.

Dad: Then what kind do you want?

Me: Purple.

Dad: Anything else? (writes 'purple' down)

Me: Probably not.

Dad: How about ramen noodles?

Me: I have enough of those already.

Dad: Do you want ramen?

Me: No.

Dad: (looks at list, gets confused) What the heck is 'purple'?

Me: Purple grapes.

Dad: Really? Do you want purple grapes?

(etc)

If he's like this now I can't wait thirty years when he's senile. I could mess with him so bad. Just saying.

Why I am afraid of geese

2010-07-21T11:49:00.002-06:00

It is true, I am. This is not a fact I hide from people, figuring that the more people know about it, the less likely I am to get into a situation involving geese. This is not an unjustified fear either- I have my reasons. And they have to do with the geese at Murphy Park in Springdale, Arkansas, and french fries.

My high school sat across a side street from the public library and the city park, and in warmer weather it was not uncommon for several of my friends and me to go over there and play (I liked to swing on the swingset, which was interesting because I was goth at the time. More than a few passerby were confused by the sight of me, in combat boots, dyed hair, etc, swinging happily on the playground). Sometimes we would go to McDonalds first and get some food.

One day I was craving French fries and sunshine, so I stopped over at McDonalds and got some and went to sit at a picnic table at the park, near the water because I liked looking at the ducks. I heard geese honking but didn’t think much of it, and start throwing my fries to the ducks. I noticed after a few minutes the geese were getting pretty close. At that point in my life I hadn’t developed the geese phobia and so instead of running away, I started throwing the fries to them and watching them fight each other for them.

Then they started getting closer, and instead of snapping at each other they started snapping at me, and would start honking loudly at me if I stopped throwing fries to them. And then they started nipping at my shoes, so I had to retreat to sitting on top of the picnic table, and I was starting to get alarmed because there was no one else around to witness in case the geese murdered me, and I would die alone with nothing but an empty carton of fries to my name. I couldn’t help but think it was a stupid way to die, and I resolved to try to survive if at all possible.

By the time I started getting low on fries I had a plan. I poured the remaining fries into my hand and stood on the table near one end, waving them around so the geese grouped up. I threw the fries at them, and then ran the length of the table and jumped off over a few dumber geese, and ran until I realized they weren’t chasing me.

Ever since then I have been afraid of geese getting near me and disemboweling me or something, even though the odds of that happening are pretty low. I don’t take chances. If I see ducks I’m fine, but if I see geese I know it’s time to run. The end.

My Camping Adventure

2010-07-20T13:32:00.001-06:00

Last fall I was invited to go camping with a friend and her parents a little north of Taos in the mountains. I was excited- I’d never been camping in New Mexico, and since my friend has no sense of planning I was under the impression it would be a haphazard wilderness adventure like in movies.

It turns out that it was the 20-year-anniversary campout for the Sangre de Cristo Youth Ranch, where my friend’s mother worked as the cook during the summers. She had been asked to cook for this event, and my friend is actually kind of a hippie so I, again, mis-assumed that the camping would be all earthy and mystical.

We got up there, and the first day of our three-day, two-night trip went really well. I got to pee in a doorless wooden outhouse that had an incredible view of the Rockies. I got to burn things, and play in dirt, and make strings of pinecones with my hippie friend. The food was really good. I was having a blast not bathing and being a wild, rough, wilderness girl even though I didn’t have any idea what I was doing most of the time.

And then on day two, around dinnertime, I started feeling kind of ill. I ignored it, because I do stupid things like that, and ate pizza. About two hours later I was shaking really bad, sweating, everything in me hurt, I couldn’t focus on anything and had thrown up so much I was severely dehydrated. I wandered, half-delirious, back over to camp and sat in front of the fire, staring at it intently while around me there was a marshmellow-eating competition in the ten-and-under crowd, until late in the night.

The next day I was still very weak and shaky, but no longer horking organs up everywhere, and so I decided I could go make t-shirts with the little kids. I made a pretty sunflower for my shirt and the little kids told me I was an artist. I got in an argument with one over whether Nintendo DS or PSP was better. It was almost like I was me again, except for the shock my body was in and mild delirium.

Fortunately by day three I had finally gotten better, pretty much right in time to get carsick on the drive back to Albuquerque with my friend’s dad, who kept stopping to talk about architecture and point out good examples in the surrounding buildings. I made it back to my dorm in time for dinner, and then had to be urban and go to my classes and such the next day.

I want ice cream

2010-07-19T14:13:00.004-06:00

It is National Ice Cream Week. I want ice cream. Although I want ice cream also because it is 100 outside, and I am very bored and craving dairy (I crave dairy a lot for some reason). I’ve spent the last half hour planning it out and I haven’t quite found a way to actually physically go to the Dairy Queen on the corner.

It is too far to crutch. I could in theory drive, however I would be driving with my left foot and since I haven’t driven for five weeks it would be a little perilous. Plus my ankle hurts today so I’m inclined to not wedge it under my car seat. And then the problem becomes getting the ice cream. If I eat at the DQ I have to somehow get it from the counter to a table using only the powers of my mind or wrangling a stranger to touch my ice cream. If I were to use a drive thru the problem becomes getting it from my car to my apartment. The Surface Shuffle doesn’t work over large spaces- it’s better for the distance from the kitchen to the couch, where I can move food from the stovetop to the table to the tv stand to the couch, and it only takes about 12 minutes to do on crutches and one leg.

Ah, problem solved. Dad finally got sick of me and has left to get ice cream to shut me up. I like Dad even though he got me the wrong kind of sketchbook- I like the spiral bound ones and he got that kind that's glued or whatever, where if you bend it open enough to draw more than twice all the pages fall out and you end up using office supplies to just keep the pages together.

This is what my life has come to, blogging about whatever I think about. I've been immobile for the last four months and on crutches the last six, so I'm really sick of reading and television and movies and this is all that's fun anymore. My apologies.

Malaga

2010-07-19T11:36:00.003-06:00

Until I come up with something to talk about or make fun of, I'm going to tell stories. Today's story is of my trip to Granada in 2008, specifically the part where I slept in the bus depot. Enjoy.

A few years ago I got to study abroad in Spain, which I jumped all over and spent weeks preparing for. I made it to London fine and spent a few days there ~~pretending to be British~~ getting over my jetlag. Then, on the day I was to do the second half of my traveling, everything fell apart. I woke up and discovered that the hostel I was staying at didn’t start serving breakfast for another hour, and I couldn’t wait for them. So I decided I would eat at the airport.

This turned out to be easier said than done, because between the moment I decided this in my hostel in Soho, London, and when I got to the waiting area in Gatwick, I had to pack, drag my suitcase to the Underground station, ride the Underground, get lost, get found again, turn around, get on the train to the airport, get off, find the airport, get into the actual airport from the train, deal with Customs and Security, get checked in, and figure out which way the waiting area was.

I ate like there was no tomorrow, sensing somehow the rest of my day would be just as difficult. I had too many variables working against me to make the trip easy- it was long distances, lots of connecting forms of transportation, half of which would be in Spanish, and I was traveling alone in several countries I’d never been to before on a continent I wasn't familiar with.

I did not get lost. That was not the problem, ultimately. The problem was that by the time I got to Malaga, Spain, it was ten at night. The currency exchange desks were closed. By the time I got to the bus station, where I could in theory catch a bus the few miles to my hostel, it was eleven at night and they had stopped services an hour ago. I tried to go to the ATM, figuring I could just withdraw money from my account in Euros and get a taxi. The machine was broken. All I had was a few American dollars and a few pounds from England, neither of which worked in Spain.

So I hovered in the doorways of the station, looking timidly out into the city, knowing very well that I was a suitcase-laden woman traveling alone in a strange environment who hadn’t eaten for almost twelve hours by that point. I couldn’t see any other ATMs, and being so late all the buildings nearby were closed too. Even the train station, across the street, had closed when my train unloaded.

I ended up finding a bench in a corner and, not trusting the occasional groups of travelers I saw walking by, opened a very thick book I had bought in London and started reading, refusing to fall asleep in case I got mugged or murdered or something. Eventually the security guard came over and once I explained that I was an idiot college student and had no money (and showed him the broken ATM as proof), he let me hang out at the station all night. I kept reading my book. At one point I went and washed up and changed in the bathroom like a homeless person.

Around four a.m. the security guard unlocked the waiting room and ushered me and a few other early travelers who had shown up into it. My eyes were burning from reading all night, and I felt very gross from having not bathed, slept, or eaten for around 24 hours. Around 7:30 I noticed employee activity and as soon as the station’s workers opened the ticket windows I was there to order the ticket I needed to get to Granada with my debit card. By this point I didn’t care how crazy I looked or how garbled my Spanish was, I had hit a low point in my life and wanted to just get to the correct city and stop traveling.

I sat down on the seat in the Greyhound in Malaga, and woke up two hours later in Granada, still feeling really grungy, still really hungry, but no longer deliriously exhausted (just regular exhausted). The travel wasn’t entirely over even then, but once I rode the city bus to the part of town my hostel was in, got lost again walking there, got found, got signed in, and (since I was about six hours early) waited for a bed to be made up for me, I passed out for six more hours, showered, finally got to an ATM that worked and got Euros, ate, and was ready to begin my study abroad adventure!

A few weeks later, most of the way through my trip, I decided to go back to Malaga to prove to myself that it only sucked because I was paranoid. So I woke up early, rode the city bus to the station in Granada and rode the Greyhound back to Malaga.

I walked to a few touristy locations such as the cathedral and the Picasso Museum, and had a pleasant afternoon stroll along the waterfront, eating ice cream and counting the American fast food restauraunts (three McDonalds, one Burger King, two Ben & Jerry’s, and a Haagen Dazs). At no point did I feel threatened while walking around alone, and the area of Malaga the station was in was perfectly safe and surprisingly clean, and I determined that I could have walked the two miles to the hostel safely after all and gotten money there.

And then, in the upper-90-degree heat and 100% humidity, I realized I had forgotten to put on deodorant that morning, and I decided to go back to Granada where I didn’t do dumb stuff like that.

When my summer semester was over and I had to start my 36-hour trip home, I had to go back through Malaga. Nothing inconvenient happened. Instead, I saved up the miserable part for getting lost in South Kensington, London, that night trying to find the hostel, but the desk man was very understanding when I showed up after hours. It turns out a queen had lived in that building (in it's pre-hostel days) a few centuries ago, so there was history to explore and a 24-hour vending machine, so I had fun regardless of the late hour. The rest of the travel home went fine, and I arrived home safely the next evening.

Ankle Damage: The Beginning Beginning

2010-07-18T14:15:00.006-06:00

In high school I was one of those superfluous girls with the flags in marching band. At halftime we would line up along the sidelines along with the rest of the marching band and march out onto the football field, and I would spin and toss my flag like a maniac, smiling like I was on some sort of drug trip. Aside from the occasional severe concussion it was very fun. We marched every home game and most of the away games, from September until December.

At this particular football game, it was early October, nine or so at night, and about thirty degrees outside. Our flag uniforms were made of a cotton/nylon mix. I was very cold. So I started shaking, and then bouncing up and down on the ball of my foot like some kind of nutcase. And then...

I rolled my ankle and fell down. However since my extremities were already numb anyway I couldn't feel any pain, and so I didn't think any more of it and decided I was going to go ahead and march anyway.

This was one of the dumber decisions I've ever made. I realized this about fifteen steps later, but by that point it was too late to turn around. So I marched the entire ten minute show, walked off the field very calmly, went to sit down in the stands, and only then asked for medical help. My grapefruit-shaped ankle was extremely agonizing, and we did not have a medic at that point in time (however the appearance of one the following year suggested that they learned from this just like I did). However aside from ice and later on, wrapping it up, I didn't really pay much more attention to it and didn't really amend my routines for another week, at which time I realized that since I couldn't fit my swollen foot into my shoe, it was probably okay to get medical attention.

And so I did, and they gave me a brace to wear, and that was the end of that after about three years of constant pain and brace-wearing and two unsuccessful rounds of physical therapy.

What this meant this year, five years later, is that my ligaments are crap because they are composed mostly of scar tissue and are stretched out. This is why, when I sprained my ankle in February, it did so much damage- only my tendons worked to any degree anymore. So when I took out the tendons I pretty much just had a floppy foot, which is why the physical therapy didn't work and I had to have surgery. Now you know. The end.

Grad school search= stress

2010-07-17T12:05:00.006-06:00

There's a reason I've started on this early, because I knew it would be hard- grad schools. I know what I want to do- a Masters in International Relations (also known as international policy, or can be a specialization in public policy or public affairs), which helps because it means I can definitively rule out schools that don't have it and save myself a lot of trouble. Unfortunately I've ruled out quite a few schools. Most of them, actually. And note how they're all named after presidents.

My demands for graduate schools (applied to undergrad as well):

1. Have my degree

2. Have the degree but without it seeming like a stupid place to study it (I study Spanish in New Mexico, it makes a lot of sense.)

3. Have suitable weather- not rainy 95% of the time, NO WINTER

4. No religious or corporate affiliation (they are allowed to have religion or business classes)

5. Have a diverse student body (UNM has 41% hispanic, 7% native american, 50% caucasian, etc)

So in my search for graduate schools I have, based on this criteria, decided on two schools very quickly:

-University of Texas at Austin (Austin)- they have a dual Masters in International Relations and Latin American Studies through the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs that I would LOVE to do- it only takes one extra year/three years total. It's in Austin, which is a cool city. It fits all the other criteria previously discussed as well. This is my #1 choice. I want to be there.

-Texas A&M (College Station)- the George Bush School of Public Affairs has a Masters in International Relations. College Station is somewhere between Houston and Austin, I think. Plus one of my favorite teachers is from there so I have a Power Reference Letter Writer (+10 application points!) I could use.

I'm also considering the following, because I need a third- I like threes (UNM doesn't count). These are situations where I'd put up with living somewhere I don't particularly want to in pursuit of insane levels of prestigous professional education.:

Georgetown University (D.C. or Italy)- They have the Master of Public Policy with a specialization in international studies.

Princeton University (Princeton)- The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs has a Masters in Public Affairs with a specialization in International Relations as well.

I'm considering a few Ivy League level schools mostly for giggles- the worst they can say is no (or really the absolute worst they could say is yes, and then ask for tuition). Or if I did get in I'd pretty much be set.

However to stand a real chance at any of these I have to do fairly fabulous on the GRE this fall. My trial run was beyond horrible, however I'm hoping with enough studying I can get at least 'good' on it, if not 'great'. I'd like 'great' though. A lot.

So this is why nothing particularly creative has been coming out of me, I'm too busy figuring out things that are written with capitol letters.

~~~~

Of course, another option I'm considering that isn't even a grad school is doing a year abroad as a Fulbright Scholar. I could do a research paper somewhere in Latin America. The US Department of the State (which I'm considering applying to for a career in 2-4 years) supports Fulbright research papers, and really likes some topic more than others for certain countries. For example, I am allured by the idea of doing a paper on international relations in Venezuela. So I could move to Venezuela just as easily as Texas in a year. I could research, for example, the use of media instead of military in national and international conflict, which would be good to study in Venezuela.

Food for thought indeed. And then I could pretty much pick my grad school and save the trouble of worrying if they'd pick me.

Another New Product

2010-07-15T21:41:00.003-06:00

I sincerely wish this existed. Mostly I just don't read whatever's on the bestseller list.

Incidentally, this is my comic and I'd appreciate it if you would only appreciate it as well, and not steal, borrow, copy/paste, or freeze frame or do whatever else to it and try to play it off as your own. Thanks.

A few things

2010-07-15T17:14:00.002-06:00

Firstly:

And also:
That's how I feel about it.

An Unusual Enjoyment

2010-07-06T17:33:00.003-06:00

I do have a lot of interests, it is true, ranging from art to economics and beyond. My university transcript reflects this to some degree, especially in the electives I've elected to take. There's a decent sized smattering of random classes spanning many of the departments UNM offers hidden away among the many communications classes and languages I've taken. However a field that somehow leaps out and fascinates me is anthropology, specifically human history. I've taken five or six anthropology classes, and even debated minoring in it for awhile ~~before deciding that a double major was hard enough and I didn't need to complicate things~~.

Anthropology is the only form of science I am any good at at all. It's just embarrassing watching me trying to physics (it goes up here, it comes down there. I don't have to do math to figure that out.), and biology requires a lot more memorization than my puny brain can handle. I digress.

So I found this really interesting, if human evolution is your cup of tea:

http://news.discovery.com/human/early-human-ancestors-faces.html

Your back- he has it.

2010-07-02T21:59:00.003-06:00

This is the knight who shall guard my realms someday. This is assuming I ever have realms. This is why:
1. He's a KNIGHT, it's what they do.
2. He's older, which means he knows how to survive and isn't as likely to die in battle.
3. He's wearing sunglasses 500-1000 years before they're even invented, which as we all know means he's a stylish man and trendsetter.

So there.
Also, the photo in the background is one of mine that I took. It's actually northwest Arkansas. Not exactly Celtic, but green and lush nonetheless.

So every aspect of this picture except the font I used belong exclusively to me and you would be evil and a cheater and jerk if you use it without my permission. This good knight will find you and distribute justice to the full extent of copyright law.

The Fourth- another compendium

2010-07-02T13:12:00.003-06:00

I realize this is somewhat early, since it's the 2nd of July, but my dad is ADHD and staying with me while I'm in a cast so my hands are full keeping him entertained. However, it is on my mind- the fourth of July. I expect fireworks.

When I was a kid, in the heart of the Dallas/Forth Worth metropolis in the 90s, we lived about a mile from Grapevine Lake. All day on the fourth of July my brother and I would be hyperactive and antsy, staring at the sky (inner-city fireworks were banned because of an 8-year drought), waiting for the sun to start setting so we could see fireworks. Around six or seven in the afternoon my parents would load up our red wagon with blankets, bug spray, a cooler, a frisbee, and whatever else we could possibly need, and we would all walk the mile to a field at the lake's edge, frolic and generally revel in holiday glee, and settle in for the fireworks, which were the best ever (since I'd never seen any other at that point in my young life). Then we'd walk back to our house at 9:30 or 10 at night, my younger brother and me alternating between ecstatic joy and exhaustion, and that would be that until the next year.

The first few years after we moved, we didn't go see any fireworks displays, free or otherwise. The way our neighborhood and the one behind us were situated, the semi-concealed fence in our backyard opened onto a cul-de-sac, and the neighbor on that cul-de-sac who bordered our property had a pool, and liked company, so there would be a lot of barbecued meats, relatives and neighbors swimming and running around, and general frivolity. When the sun set, every man who had dragged his family to the fireworks stands set up around the county would drag out their arsenal and we'd essentially blow up the street. I also held a record for eating so many barbeque ribs I physically got ill three years in a row. I am only partially proud of this.

The latter half of my time in that particular state, my dad's boss/coworker and her husband had a house built out by the lake, and invited us out there for their annual fourth of July party. Mostly it was any semi-local employees (the company being one where employees are scattered across the nation and travel a lot), their families, and some neighbors. To fully explain how truly awesome this was, it was a cliffside property overlooking a lake, the house was custom built, three stories tall, with patios running the length of the back of the house on all three stories, and the neighborhood was rich enough to afford to hire professional fireworks displays. Another reason this was fun, if not sadistic, was because my dad built a potato gun (the "Spud Launcher 1.0"), and so people would bring whole bags of potatos and we'd try to shoot the boats down on the lake belows. Sometimes they'd clue in and tease us from the water. And the food and fireworks were good too. One time I couldn't get off work at the Sonic I was working at until seven, and I ended up driving out there as fast as I could in my smelly uniform and changed in their driveway. Good times.

Unfortunately that was short-lived because I moved to New Mexico for college in 2007. The first summer between semesters I was in Europe and missed the fireworks (though to be fair I still got to party because that was the year Spain won the Euro Cup, and I was conveniently in Granada at the time). Last summer and in two days, though, I discovered Albuquerque's city fireworks display.

I enjoyed last year's quite a bit- the entertainment was various singers and then the Blues Brothers- which if you know me you will know I melt into a messy puddle of fangirl at the Blues Brothers- performed a hefty repertoire of jazz and blues. During the fireworks they played patriotic music, which part of me thought was complete overkill (as an atheist I don't particularly care for "God Bless America" but I'll sit through it with my mouth shut, and I'm not much of a patriot at the best of times anyway) but part of me enjoyed it a little as well. Especially since it was free- I had food and water in my backpack, and riding the shuttle cut out the parking fee. There was also a rainbow.

I'm going to see the city's fireworks again this year. Unfortunately there will be no Blues Brothers, but I've copied the scheduled entertainment and shall paste it here posthaste:

4 to 4:45 - Vanessa Aragon
5 to 5:45 - The System (not sure if it's THE The System, from the 80s)
5:55 to 6:15 - Folk Festival Winner (this is not a band- it's a winner of a folk festival)
6:30 to 7:40 - Marsh (don't know them either)
8 to 9:15 - Honor Society (http://honorsocietymusic.com/index.php)

So if you know any of those, be mildly envious. Google has just failed me in finding these bands/people, but I suppose since Honor Society is headlining they're secondary.

Anyway, all this info comes from here if you require validation: http://www.cabq.gov/crs/FreedomFourth.html

Although I'm not a patriot or truly care much for the fourth of July in itself, I do enjoy revelry and really love explosives, so I plan on having a fun time anyway.

My Pets- A Compendium

2010-06-26T10:13:00.011-06:00

As a kid, I wasn't allowed to have pets. Any pets. The most complicated non-human allowed in our home was ~~my kid neighbor who liked following me around because I was bigger and older than her~~ fish and hermit crabs. The reasoning behind this was that they're small, not inclined to run away or poo on the floor, and they don't live long enough for anyone to really form an emotional attachment to. When I was around six or so I "liberated" the hermit crabs from their oppressive cage and got put in time out until all the crabs were found.

When I was eleven, we had just finished moving from the DFW area in

Texas to boondock backwoods Bible Belt rural Arkansas, and I was not a happy child because apparently, Texas schools were about two years ahead of Arkansas schools, and when we moved there it was before the mass immigration and there was a very tight-knit community that I Did Not Belong In. So I was friendless, bored, and would have gotten bullied a lot if I weren't such a bully myself (my brother did though because he was a sweet kid). I came home one day to this big brown puppy asleep in the living room floor. I screamed with joy and woke her up, and almost instantly we were buddies.

Hershey, my brother, and me, summer 2001

It turned out that we were supposed to get the puppy about a month earlier- that one specifically, the parents decided, based on how playful she was when they went to pick one from the litter. However she got playful with a snake, which bit her face, and she was in the doggy hospital for some time with really low chances of survival. But survive she did, and as soon as it was safe for her to be adopted my parents went and picked her up from the vet.

In junior high and high school, after much debate with my mom, I got rats as pets (on the condition they never left my room and were locked up in their cage when Mom was in the room). I had several over a four year period, all except one living 2-3 years each. When the last of them died in 2007 I had to stop getting more since I was moving to a different state for college.

One of my rats around 2006 or so.

When I got an apartment last summer I wanted something small and easy to maintain, so I got hamsters. Reina and Cookie only lived for about six months because my hamster sitter over Christmas Break was incompetent, however since the hamsters were mean as crap and I was tired of being bit, I did not want more.

And then this January Hershey the lab, our first ever real pet/my first friend in Arkansas, was put to sleep. She had severe arthritis, Rocky Mountain Tick disease that I can't remember the name of, and was starting to get little cancerous tumors on her head and legs. Between the three she was so lethargic, sick, pained, and depressed that the best route was to let her go, so Dad drove her to the vet, and came home with her collar. If medical treatment had worked she might have survived a few months longer, but she wasn't responding to any medicines and that was our sign. So we had to say bye to Hershey, our 9 1/2 year old labrador. In this photo, you can see the scar on her face from her snake bite as a puppy. She was rather vain about it, but we had all agreed it added character.

Hershey, summer 2008 (7 or 8 years old)

Also in January, I replaced my dead hamsters with live gerbils, Random and Sopi (for Sopapilla). Sopi and Random are a lot of fun, nice, and if a person is around long enough they will take food from their hands and be generally cute.

So you have now met pretty much all of my pets over the years through the art of photography. I would like to sum this up by saying that I am very much so a dog person (due in part to allergies to cats but mostly due to Hershey), and in a few years when I'm grown up and have a home with a yard and someone living with me I will be getting another lovely large dog, like a German Shephard or Great Dane or Mastiff. But I am also a rodent person, and plan on continuing to have gerbils and maybe rats until I can get large dogs.

Civilization DS

2010-06-25T12:54:00.004-06:00

I know I've talked about it before, but I really love the game "Civilization Revolution" on Nintendo DS. It's a simple world domination game that's endearingly anachronistic (in that you can play as Americans and build the Great Wall in Chicago and be terrifically despotic in your rule as Abe Lincoln for six thousand years).

I also like how I can play it with my broken L1 button on my DS- it's three years old this fall, and has had a very rough life full of challenge, peril, and hardship- like most of my beloved electonics. I think mine was in the first few generations of the DS Lites, and at the time was around $220 (it came with a game or two). Here's what it looks like, roughly:

Pretty

My copy of Civilization for it is starting to get pretty glitchy because it also has been played to death, and so I may have to replace it in the next couple months to years. One of my habits is to run my technologies dead.

Something I'm going to have my dad help me with (since my right leg is still in a cast and I can't drive), is helping me figure out which DS and Wii games I would be able to part with to sell at GameStop and (hopefully) make a decent dent in the price on a new DS, PS3, or games. The flaw in this plan is that GameStop doesn't give you crap for buybacks- last winter I followed a friend around while she sold literally all her XBox games and console to buy a Xbox 360, and still have to pay about half the cost of the 360 console. Yikes.

A sort of catch-22 in this plan is that if I sold games I can't play on my DS, and bought a new DS, I then would be able to play the games I had sold. Otherwise it's a fairly genius plan, since I am still unemployed and will probably remain so through the next year (stupid economy).

And finally, before I go- green cast. Woo! Next week at my second post-surgery appointment I'm going purple.

Surgery update

2010-06-19T10:13:00.003-06:00

Hey all,
I'm doing okay. Had my surgery early yesterday morning and aside from the intense pain, I'm doing alright. The surgery went about an hour longer than planned but the time was well spent- my hot surgeon fixed a tear and two weird stretchy-frayed spots in the tendons in my ankle, and deepened the groove the tendons are supposed to be in, and now I have a big white shapeless cast. Reacted okay to the anesthesia, as far as I've been able to tell, since the shaking stopped after an hour or so and the sickness passed by about noon (since I hadn't eaten for about 18 hours by that point there wasn't much to throw up).

Last night my parents (who are staying with me while I convalesce) ate Chili's in front of me and I kept stealing fries from my mom. They were delicious. Dad and I watched "Die Hard" in the middle of the night, which was excellent. I slept better than expected last night, seven straight hours, and today they got me a Frappe which I am enjoying immensely. I also no longer get nauseated or dangerously dizzy when I stand up (on crutches).

So the first steps in un-handicapping me have been taken and in theory I will only improve from here

Let's analyze this

2010-06-16T09:28:00.006-06:00

This is one of my spams this morning in my e-mail. I had mentioned previously in my list of things I don't understand (and possibly earlier than that too) how it confuses me that spam is so poorly written. This is a good example.

So based on this example, here is what it would take to get me to click on this:

1. Make it shorter. I'm studying mass communications, and any mass comm practitioner, be they advertisers, public relations, journalists, all know the shorter the better. If this could be shortened to something like 'help for chronic pain' or something, it would be better looking and still contain info on what the subject of the spam is.

2. Fix the typos. 'Soms' is not the same as 'some', 'sukfer' is not a word either, and where the heck did the 'w' come from? W and the spacebar are really far apart and not easily mistaken for each other.

3. Put a less obviously fake/stupid 'sender' name with the e-mail. I know that 'crazee4pillzLOL' (made it up I hope) is probably going to slam me with a virus, whereas 'Chad Donovan' or a normal name like that will get me to pause to wonder if I know a Chad, and maybe open it to see if there are any clues inside. I left the sender off this screencap photo, but due to the weird spellings I'm pretty sure it was an alias or secret code or something. Either that or the poor guy with that name has some personal issues to work though, and that is why they send spam to kill peoples' computers for a living.

So now you know, spammers of the world. Follow these steps and smart peoples' computers will be dead in no time!

Get Real

2010-06-14T23:05:00.004-06:00

Like eight orange twitter birds could REALLY fly a whale if swallows can't even carry coconuts. European OR African. I'm just saying what everyone is thinking when they see this screen on Twitter.

Things I don't understand

2010-06-14T09:54:00.004-06:00

There are lots. Prominant among this morning's thoughts are:

1. Why brides freak out if they have a pimple on their wedding day.

2. People who let their small dogs bark all day in their apartment instead of training them to shut up. And yes, that is possible.

3. That guy at my apartment complex who signed the form saying (as we all did) he wouldn't have more than three guests at the pool and would not throw any parties out there, then promptly invited 40 people over swimming for a party.

4. Medicinal marijuana.

5. Food photography. Go Google it- like in the ads for most fast food places, the food isn't real (which we kind of knew because of how tidy it looks), and the process of filming or photographing it takes just as long as a professional model's fashion shoot.

6. The lack of spelling, grammar, and punctuation in spam mail. The worst offender this morning was something along the lines of "y noh try dis you"re self its best eier" and I ended up having to read that out loud to myself in an Irish accent before it made sense. And even then 'eier' threw me off.

7. People who get their kids hamsters. Hamsters are vicious, evil, Satanic little things, and shouldn't be loved. Part 2 of why I don't get this is that I find it really macabre how parents will run to the store to get a new, identical one when the old one dies. That's sick. (I wasn't allowed to have anything more complicated than hermit crabs as a kid, and after I liberated them from their cage into the laundry room when I was seven I was only allowed to have goldfish.)

Creative thinking isn't my forte

2010-06-12T21:18:00.005-06:00

I knew this would be a problem when I first told people, back in 2007 or so, that I liked to draw. So far so good, I've been able to draw for the last two years of the Hobbit Society's calendars- five illustrations from the books between the two calendars- and no one has walked up to me and said "Stop it."

I'm putting off starting on this year's calendar illustrations for the following reason- next summer, one year from now, the Hobbit Society and maybe UNM will be hosting Mythcon! (official webpage here: http://www.mythsoc.org/) Therefore for the next year we have to find a location to host at (candidates include the Hyatt Regency downtown, UNM, the convention center), a guest of honor, invitations, paperwork, other Mythopoeic stuff, etc.

Today I found out that I'm one of the people being commissioned to create the potential logo for next year's Mythcon. And I'm silly enough to agree to this. My problem lies in that I tend to forget to take things seriously, and so far have drawn Graham Chapman (of Monty Python fame) in his role as King Arthur dancing with an umbrella with a smiley face on it while singing "always look on the bright side of life", and also Shrek and Donkey in suits of armor like in the first movie. And a troll. The troll has very little to do with anything, I just wanted to draw it.

However I did manage to draw a quite decent minstrel playing a lute, and I hope it's historically accurate enough for most people because frankly, Google is full of crap as far as knowledge of medieval minstrel wardrobe information is concerned. It kept showing American blackface minstrels from the early 1900s and Halloween costumes.

The deadline for logo submissions is July 2, and ideally I'd like to submit three or four seperate, fully completed ideas to pick from (because I've taken classes in advertising and having several viable options is more likely to get you the job instead of someone else). There is no compensation for this but the bragging rights would be pretty intense, and that will have to do.

And since I haven't done this in awhile, here's the revival of the recommendations segment:

Recommended Movie: Mystery Science Theater 3000's riff of "Werewolf". I've probably recommended this before, but it's special to me. Here, info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0655480/

Recommended Game: Jewel Quest Solitaire on DS. Sounds lame, but it's the only time you will ever actually shout at a virtual card game. Not for the weak of will. Here's a screenshot of the game, with the top screen/bottom screen parts. It gets wacky and normal solitaire suddenly sucks after playing this. The "plot" is just as cheesy as in regular Jewel Quest, but the game parts are fun as long as you take a break before your eyes start to bleed from overstimulation (four to six hours should do it).

Ad Mockery 1

2010-06-12T17:22:00.005-06:00

I knew it would be good after my college rant about how I'm not special, and sure enough:

Have no fears, Google is here to exploit my pain. These are the ads that appeared on my other blog (the one about my surgery this week). Let's summarize- Scholarship for moms, Pell Grants for moms, help for latinos (pero no soy latina, que pena), and I'm not sure what the last one is about but I probably don't qualify for it either. I'm not sure why it's all educational ads on that blog, given the theme is podiatry/surgery. Not sure why that third ad is in Spanish, either, especially on my surgery blog. I think it's because I said 'Albuquerque', that being where I am, and it decided I was latina based on that. I don't really use Spanish on this blog either except for the parenthesis earlier in this paragraph.

However if these do apply to you, then disregard my negative opinion. I'm probably grumpy because this feels like selling out, a little, having ads on here.

2010-06-11T21:34:00.001-06:00

google-site-verification: google3f69ed89791f0a73.html

Why college under-represents me

2010-06-11T19:07:00.005-06:00

Alternate title: "College makes me rant sometimes"

This is a long-standing grief I have with colleges, grant foundations, and scholarships: there's nothing for people like me.

Issues that keep me from getting any freaking money at all for my education:
-I'm white.
-I don't have incredible grades (and that is not an indication of intelligence anyway)
-I'm upper-middle-class
-I'm at an out-of-state school
-I don't have any exploitable talents
-I'm not part of any political group, disabled (permanently, at least), super feminist, a secret genius, ex-military, am not a non-traditional student, or a single mother
-I didn't do any extracurriculars in high school, and don't have many now even after blossoming into a social butterfly (ha).

And those are specifically what the financing people look at. They don't take into account potential for success, or the ability to live a clean healthy life, or the ability to use one's own mind instead of simply following everyone else, or perhaps that maybe there's something special about someone that can't be graded or put on a transcript.

The qualifications for the scholarship I was denied are such: a 2.5- 3.0 is petitionable, and can be renewed annually. 3.0 is an automatic renewal. Because of the C my stupid Portuguese teacher gave me I have a cumulative GPA of 2.8 for last year, as I have every other year. So very close to the automatic range and well within the negotiable range. But even with the level of classes I'm taking, and my study abroad and internships, and activity in extracurriculars, and potential grad student status I still get denied the scholarship renewal.

Most of my anger comes from this: they're not taking into account my $18,000 surgery next week, or the fact that my brother is in college now too (also without scholarships), or how I can't get a job because there still are none and no one will hire me while I'm all crippled anyway even though I would love to work.

I guess I'm just going to have to start selling things.

EDIT- Now the Google AdSense ads are mocking me because of this entry being about scholarships. Ha ha...

Coming Soon

2010-06-11T14:37:00.002-06:00

Ads.

So heads up.

Incidentally, there is a clause in the contract about clicking on the ads to get me money and how this counts as fraud or something and therefore is frowned upon, so please don't do that.

New segment coming up: Ad Mockery, in which I make fun of the ads deemed 'related' to the content of my blog.

An improvement

2010-06-10T21:21:00.002-06:00

Notice the new template on the blog? It's PRETTY. They added options! I have better choices now that don't require hours of HTML translations only to be scrapped. So this is nice.

That's all, nothing particularly interesting has happened lately.

This is for Koop

2010-06-08T20:12:00.001-06:00

I drew you a picture so you would be happy. :)

New blog

2010-06-08T16:02:00.005-06:00

In addition to this blog, I have started one to chronicle my impending surgery and recovery. Why? Because I have nothing better to do.

...

Just kidding (mostly). It's because there are next to no firsthand accounts of what happens in peroneal tendon surgery, and a lot of the information there is about it on the internet is vague and copy/pasted onto many sites. Or, alternately, there are forums. I've never discussed my hatred of forums, and will not because this is a pleasant place to be, but I disregard any information found on them.

So even though I'll be trying to cut down on the smartassery and wisecracking, if you're curious about how this is all going go to http://peronealtendonsurgeryblog.blogspot.com/

I will not be mentioning my ankle-related news on this blog any more. So go to that one for that. Cheers.

Here we go again...again

2010-06-08T15:08:00.005-06:00

That makes me think of this:

Scorcher IV Trailer - Watch more Funny Videos

(This video is of one of the fake trailers at the beginning of the Ben Stiller movie "Tropic Thunder")

Now go back to the iPhone ad at the beginning of this post, and read it like the Scorcher VI trailer. And that moment right there is like being in my head, and why that ad makes me laugh.

2010-06-06T19:22:00.003-06:00

THIS IS NEWS:

'What will Apple Announce?"

Why this caught my eye- they're announcing that there will be an announcement. But there is no actual news. On the front page of yahoo.com. On the other hand, none of the rest of those- 'Tiger's bad shots hit fans', 'Player mocked by fans', and 'Sights kids will love to see' are news either. I seem to have standards that are too high as far as news is concerned.

(I did the screencap myself)

My Super Art Studio!

2010-06-02T22:03:00.004-06:00

This is the epitome of hi-tech, expensive, ultra-modern futuristic artistic ambience-

I have to take my lap table off to put my tablet on to work digitally, as I do, for coloring. And this whole set was a fraction of the cost of a real drawing table! DIY with any flat surface and a $10 lap table (with bean-bag-like cushion on underside) at an angle at a fraction of the cost! :D

Because girls can have useful careers now too

2010-06-02T00:13:00.002-06:00

Update type stuff

2010-05-28T11:25:00.003-06:00

My favorite things about my trip last week:

1. Randomly falling asleep on people

2. That day I was only awake about 7 hours

3. Flying a kite on a fishing pole

4. My brother's graduation

5. Lots of food that I didn't have to make

6. Thunderstorms

7. Seeing a friend

I had to go ahead and get out of the way. Suddenly my desire to blog faded. Actually, I don't feel like doing anything today. I know of several things I should do, but probably won't. My ankle fortunately has plateau'd (not even gonna try spelling today) in pain, however the level it has plateau'd at still requires surgery, so there you go. I'm on no-weight bearing, which if you're not sure what that means it means that I now have no desire to go anywhere or do anything because it takes too much effort to get there (crutches and the good leg only, no weight on the brace). So in the next few days that gets set up, and in a few weeks I get a nice big scar and slight internal rearranging.

Hooray.

A Lesson on Blending In

2010-05-23T16:02:00.003-06:00

Without illustration, since I am not on my own computer and it's kind of bothering me subconsciously. I think this laptop I'm on is my mother's. Pretty sure. I found it in her room.
Anyway.
For this particular blog I will be using myself, my parents, and my grandparents as an ongoing example.

How To Blend In To a New Culture (based on my studies in class and personal observations):
1. Stay quiet and observe.
Figure out what makes people happy and what pisses them off or makes them uncomfortable. In my family, different things make different people unhappy. My mom doesn't like being treated like an idiot. My dad and maternat grandmother doesn't like being contradicted. I don't like feeling like an idiot. My brother doesn't like not getting his way, etc.
2. How to converse.
Chatting with someone who likes to talk is nice because you don't really have to contribute other than the occasional 'I'm paying attention' sounds. Even if the tale leaps around and you can't figure out where in the story the actual story takes place, you don't have to really assist in the conversation. Alternately, a good way to have a conversation with someone is to just ask questions. My grandparents have lived their whole lives in West Virginia, so good questions to ask are 'how is/are _____(insert any name you've ever heard them say)', 'how is Marshall doing?', 'how's the coal mining/DuPont/other old factory doing'.
3.Proper dresswear.
Unless you have a statement to make, people are generally more receptive to you if you dress in a similar manner to them. I.e., if everyone's wearing kilts, bellbottoms are going to make you look like an idiot. Or make them feel like idiots for dressing like Scots. Bad impressions.
4. Food.
Good luck. Obvious diet differences and potential difficulties aside, we shall use my dad's aversion of zucchini as an example- Dad does not like zucchini. If he senses that a dish has zucchini in it, he will get whiny until you prove otherwise. If there definitely is zucchini in it, you are doomed to days of minor tantrums and on the actual meal in which the offensive zucchini is featured, he will not eat any of it. Won't even pick it out or eat around it. So perhaps it's best to find out food aversions in advance and prepare accordingly. Or just eat out.
5. Talk the talk.
Regular transcribed English: [I went down to the creek and Bubba was fishing with Curtis and Jim. They caught a big bass and we had fish tacos for dinner.]
I shall try to transcribe the West Virginia dialect of English: [Bubba was fishin' durn at the crick with Curtis Dolly's boy who went to Parkersburg with Jim's boy Jimbo 'bout ten years back. You r'member them? Wull we was fishin' durn there and caught this big ol' bass- at least a ten-pounder- and so we had us sum fish tacos for supper that night.]
You just have to know how to follow it.

Random and the doom face

2010-05-17T18:41:00.001-06:00

Random, my other gerbil, and her DOOM face. She probably could take over the world.

Sopi the Gerbil

2010-05-17T14:25:00.000-06:00

Sopi knows she's cute.

Bad health day again

2010-05-15T22:44:00.003-06:00

I was riddled immobile again today by sharp, stabbing pain, so I wanted something to do that would take forever. My self-prescribed task: do recycling.

And then I did many things once I finished that, such as playing Guitar Hero

And talked to some friends

But now I think it's about bedtime, so once I finish my coffee and two more hours have passed I'll actually get around to falling asleep. Tomorrow commences my first full week of summer vacation, and will be a satisfyingly busy one from Tuesday onwards. :)

Stalker-Vision Post

2010-05-14T23:25:00.004-06:00

Sometimes I see things that make me laugh in public. Okay, more than sometimes. Enough that most of my close friends and mother think I'm somewhat crazy. And sometimes what I find is too funny to not take a photo of, but in such a way as that no one notices or gets weirded out. Hence, stalker-vision!

First, in my previous post (that I posted less than an hour ago, but whatever. Details.) I drew in MS Paint what putting a room in my car looks like, but it felt in adequate to me. Here is photo proof (and part of my face). In case you were curious, I could see out about three square inches of my back window. And my right mirror was obstructed from view. But as you can see I still had a little room.

Next requires a small explanation- the art studio majors require some kind of big art project as their senior...thing. So around finals there's all kinds of huge abstract Arts around campus. Someone hung a birdcage/teardrop/grenade thing by the Duck Pond, and I had fun watching people try to climb into it.
Some of you will know what this next photo is about. This truly is Stalker-Vision at its finest- this is Gangsta Pharoah (my name for him). His pharoah goatee was about a foot long, I wish I'd gotten a better surreptitous photo of it.
In one of my FLWs, the main characters get mugged by ducks. I had claimed that was based 100% on a real event. This is proof of that. That duck on the right was seriously about to bite my knee.

That's all for tonight. Enjoy the bad-cellphone-camera-quality photos.

While I'm already on here fixing problems

2010-05-14T22:25:00.006-06:00

Let's go ahead and blog!

Well. Let's go ahead and talk about myself some more. I've decided to do this Hyperbole and a half style- I shall add cute but simple illustrations to aid my story. It just looks fun. I've downloaded MS Paint just for this purpose. Plus I had one of those Frappés at McDonalds (why is there an é if it's a silent vowel? Am I saying it wrong? Why isn't anyone correcting me?) and I still have energy.

So today I helped Friend move out of the dorms and into her apartment. My car volunteered, and so I came too to show off my packing prowess, or as I call it, the ability to fit entire rooms into my trunk.

They doubted me. They always do. And now they don't. Then we all hauled this over and everyone moved the stuff in, while I held open the gate. That was my job, and I took it seriously.

After we all had finished moving Friend in, we did social things and experienced a LaPo fail (normal), and then after that Friend and I hung out watching animated movies for awhile. Tomorrow Friend has to go to her parents house to get her furniture ready to move in. Tonight she is celebrating her new (empty) apartment in style:

Sleep well, friend. I'll be needing you after my ankle surgery to do things like get food for me and do my laundry.

Which brings us to another thing I wanted to talk about, impending surgery. I get one. Farmer Giles is going to fix my ankle ("Farmer Giles of Ham", J.R.R. Tolkein. More proof I'm a nerd).

Tomorrow is Friend 2's college graduation party, which I will be at. Last time I went to one of her parties it spawned a comic. We'll see what this one brings.

Commenting Problem

2010-05-14T22:22:00.003-06:00

For the one of you who comments on my blog, I'm trying to fix that. Please try again, sometimes the funky layouts don't allow that but this plain one should. :)

FLW Drama B Gone

2010-05-13T21:58:00.002-06:00

I want some.

By the way, this is my comic and my characters, so don't use without my permission.

Burritos

2010-05-13T14:15:00.002-06:00

This is going to sound weird, but it seems that when I'm taking an abnormal amount of medicine I start omitting words in text. Random.

Also, this is what's inside the velcro burrito on my leg:

The Static Blog

2010-05-12T13:13:00.003-06:00

Today I am going to talk about static! I've spent nearly all morning and afternoon so far looking at silly things on the internet, which is good because otherwise I'd try to walk around, which (at least, based on my usual track record) would leave me maimed and my bad ankle the size of a softball. I've got a lovely collection of bruises on my knee for some reason. I slipped in the shower this afternoon with the foot that does work right, and now I'm paranoid, so I'm doing sitting-down activities. You saw my TODAY drawing earlier.

Anyway, static. I'm not sure what it is, but something about my carpet fills me with electricity so that any time I touch my laptop, my kitchen sink, any light switch, the deadbolt, my tv, the window frame, my Wii, my Wiimote, or occasionally a wall, the little lightning happens. If it's bad enough, the shock is really loud and makes my finger go numb for a moment or two. I've tried various solutions in regards to footwear- they all lose to the static. Even barefoot I still build up a charge.

Now, it could be the boot that builds up the charge, but if that's the case I'll just have to deal with constant electrocution because even with the boot I can barely walk. Without it I have to crawl, sadly and like a dying sea lion. I can't even pull myself because I have no upper body strength (which is bull because I've been on crutches for over three months and somehow still can't lift myself by my arms).

I shall attempt to demonstrate this constant electrocution for posterity's sake.

Today: a day in my life in one act

2010-05-12T12:28:00.000-06:00

It's almost like art. Almost.

Morning Ritual

2010-05-11T11:56:00.003-06:00

This happens almost every morning, except this morning I've illustrated it: I put the coffee in, and while it's brewing I eat. On mornings where I feel relatively awake I go sit at my desk and eat, on mornings where I'm exhausted I stand there in the kitchen and watch it while I eat.

In other news, ankle has died. Semi-emergency doctor appointment Thursday. Frequent subluxation and the swelling is beginning to cover more area now.

New List

2010-05-03T14:25:00.003-06:00

I've succeeded in becoming bipolar, because my mood is very reliant on the weather and the weather's been insane lately- on Friday it snowed, Saturday was about 20 degrees colder than normal, and yesterday it alternated between forceful downpours and thunderstorms and bright cheerful weather. Today is going well.

So, list of awesome things coming up in the next while:

1. This is the final week of school (this is #1 for a reason).

2. Upgrades in online supplemental educational materials dictate that I get lots of practice time before my tests this/next week.

3. Not sick anymore/have been eating all three meals yesterday and today instead of just one.

4. Trying new coffee product- it's essentially the mocha mix for a frappe, just add ice- I like it, but it's really sugary so I'm trying to find the right proportions to dilute it down to where I don't feel high after three sips. :P

5. My gerbils are still alive. That's always good.

6. Two weeks until I fly home.

7. Eventually that stupid job interview will actually happen. First travel problems, now illness. Poor lady is using up all her sick leave at once.

8. I will be making for a presentation in the latter half of the week a Brazilian dish (and will probably blog about it too, afterwards).

9. Hobbit meeting Thursday, those are fun. I'm probably going to make cookies unless I forget eggs at the store again.

10. SUMMER. (technically this should be #2)

11. Still on track to get my GPA up enough/my scholarship back. Currently .1 points away from it.

12. I'm used to the boot and fully capable of walking without crutches, even though it hurts a lot and I'd prefer not to. It's a choice now instead of a necessity.

13. Dad has every intention of coming out to visit at some point this summer, which means I SMELL A ROAD TRIP.

That'll do for now. I just thought I'd share the positive, cheerful things that are happening.

Not too busy to blog

2010-04-28T11:41:00.005-06:00

I'm in a writing mood, so I'm going to blog, see if my ankle feels well enough to go to class- it popped out again, more in this in a few paragraphs- and then start my final paper for my Intercultural Communications class ~~where I will exploit my lack of cultural diversity to explain how ignorant I am for a grade~~.

I figured I should do general updates here. All of the blogs I follow are kind of stagnant at the moment, since April and May are busy months for most people- except me, because due to the constant pain I sit around and watch movies and do homework all the time! And due to my unemployment I have nowhere better to be!

I haven't really tried anything new in art in awhile. I had started a painting but I haven't finished it yet. I need to think about what I want to do before I shlap more paint on the thing, and I haven't done this thinking yet. FLW the comic is sort of happening, often enough that no one's said anything. I've been cooking a little more.

I've been having problems with the pain, it doesn't react to medicine (of course), and even in the boot sometimes the tendon still pops out, which is what the boot is supposed to prevent. It's showing more determination and ambition to move than I do, because nothing's trying to hold me in place and I still don't move much. I've been dizzy lately too, mostly because my weight distribution's all thrown off with a ten pound boot on one leg. Photo:

It's clunk-tastic!

I'll have that on until the end of May, when I go back to the doctor. If it's getting better (one week in it isn't) then I start physical therapy for the fourth time, ~~because three just wasn't enough~~. If not, then we start discussing surgery. And then after that when my seams are hemmed I start physical therapy. Either way at some point this summer I'll have to learn how to balance again. I can't wait to be drugged so I sleep well. Nine hours of crappy sleep does not counter six hours of good sleep. I wish it did.

So that'll do for now. Going to go start that paper now (no guarantees I'll finish it but that would be cool). I'll be back closer to finals to blather more, because I'm waiting for a few things to come into action first before I talk about them. Or to talk about how they didn't happen. Whichever.

More Health Update

2010-04-13T20:09:00.004-06:00

I haven't blogged in awhile, I know. I've been having a hard year, between dying pets, increasingly worsening injury, and moderately bad depression. This'll be a biggie to make up for it, as I'm going to address several things before I go see what anti-inflammatories I possess. In this order, I'll be updating my Medical Saga List of Events, talking about the results of the MRI and what this may mean, mentioning a weird spider bite I have (hence anti-inflammatory comment), and then making a list of everything I can think of that's going right, fun or just plain entertaining.

MEDICAL UPDATE:

February 12ish- Twist ankle standing still. Immediate pain, then no second thought because I sprain things all the time.

Feb 22ish- Go see doctor #1 due to increase in pain. Get told to wear a brace (the kind sold in most pharmacies) and do 2 weeks of physical therapy and return two weeks later. Physical therapist says I have tendonitis and cuts out all exercises due to how my tendons pop out of place.

March 10ish- return to doctor after more increase in pain and lack of ability to walk at times due to it, but get different doctor, #2, who basically says 'tough', tells me doctor #1 was wrong, and to do more of the same. And to make an appointment with a podiatrist. Blatant contradiction aside, I do.

March 25- pain is all around ankle now and growing on inside of ankle and up the side of my leg, and other foot is starting to get sore from overwork. I see the podiatrist, who tells me to do things I've already been doing, says my ligaments may be messed up (which I knew, and despite my tendons being the reason I keep returning), and tells me to schedule an MRI with yet another medical person.

March whateverth- MRI day- lots of pain, but I don't do the random muscle spasm thing that happens sometimes so it goes well. I actually fell asleep, even though it was only about 20 minutes long.

April 7- Stage a minor sit-in at the clinic until they tell me what the MRI results are- more on that in the next section- and I'm recommended to a podiatrist, who I see next Thursday at 8 a.m.

MRI RESULTS

This may get confusing, so I have provided two ankle tendon anatomy charts for reference. Lateral is the outside, where the ankle is, and medial is the inside. Now.

1. Moderate fluid buildup in the peroneal tendon, which is the one I whine about that pops out a lot over my ankle (called 'subluxation'). Subluxation that does not respond to rest or physical therapy- like mine hasn't- is usually operated on.

2. Posterior tibial tendon has mild-to-moderate tendonitis. This can be caused by injury or, as in my case, walking incorrectly by putting weight on inner foot and majorly decreasing foot arch. That tendon is not supposed to do that, but I do because if I don't shift my weight in my ankle rolls, guaranteed, due to peroneal tendon sucking. Solution for that is rest and physical therapy, which can't happen at the moment due to subluxing of peroneals.

3. Major scar tissue on ligaments on lateral side of foot. There are lots of ligaments there. Mine are all scarred up from years of sprains. Scar tissue on ligaments are not as strong as regular tissue, and tend to make the ligaments weak and more liable to sprain again, adding more scar tissue...I have an alarming amount of this. Cure is deep massage, as at a physical therapists', and then physical therapy.

4. This isn't actually an MRI result, but I have really stretchy ligaments all over. I forgot what it's called, chronic ligament something or other. They test this by making you touch your thumb to your wrist- which I can do. Which is also not helpful in that my rubbery stretchy ligaments stretch where they should hold steady.

SPIDER BITE

I has one.

LIST OF COOL THINGS

1. I keep finding pennies heads up.

2. Passing all my classes.

3. Not dead.

4. Only mobility-impaired, my vision and motor skills and everything are doing great.

5. Netflix instant-watch works great on my laptop.

6. Ambidexterity applies to both hands and feet- I can write and paint left handed, and I drive left-footed for now.

7. I found a really inspirational website, www.rollingdogranch.org , that includes a photo blog and youtube channel to show all the disabled animals they take in and care for and the antics they get up to.

Spaceballs, the essay!

2010-04-05T19:03:00.003-06:00

~~International Hooliganism Colloquium April 2010~~

Spaceballs: The Essay!

The Importance of Merchandising for Fantasy and Scifi Films

The movie Spaceballs takes place in a galaxy far far away. The princess Vespa gets kidnapped by Dark Helmet, Lone Starr rescues her, and in the process the Spaceballs, their President Skroob, and Pizza the Hut get defeated and the galaxy is saved. It’s a typical space movie.

Although there are many things I could talk about that this movie does, I can’t help but focus on the running jokes about product placement and merchandising. Spaceballs: The Lunchbox, Spaceballs: The Towel, Spaceballs: The Placemat, and many other fictional products are used as merchandise within the film. However despite the rampant product placement within the movie, there is no merchandise for Spaceballs outside the film. This is deliberate.

When Mel Brooks had been thinking about making a parody of outer space movies, he went to George Lucas to see how he’d feel about having his Star Wars empire spoofed. Lucas was okay with the idea because it turns out he was a Mel Brooks fan, but only on the grounds that there be no merchandise made for the movie- which effectively meant that however successful Spaceballs may be in theaters, profits would be very small.

Mel Brooks must have known this and how it would have affected profits for Spaceballs, but decided to make it anyway and use his restriction to create a running gag of a movie with too much merchandise.

This is best highlighted in the scene in the movie in which Lone Starr, Vespa, Barf, and DOT Matrix are told by the know-it-all Yoghurt:

“Merchandising- it’s where the money from the movie is made!” (movie)

He then proceeds to list off and show several items that he claims are Spaceballs merchandise, which in several cases are clearly merchandise from other films and shows.

“As part of the fair-use agreement between Mel Brooks and George Lucas, no legitimate Spaceballs merchandise ever existed in the real world. The lunch box and coloring book are simply "Transformers" products with a Spaceballs logo stuck on them.” (IMDB)

I investigated after finding this out, and aside from the film, promotional posters, and a soundtrack- which is rare because few remain in existence, there really is no official Spaceballs merchandise. Any toys or other memorabilia are nearly all fan-made.

The use of merchandising in the film critiques the importance of merchandising for a movie’s success. We need to return to talking about George Lucas for a few paragraphs, because today’s movie merchandise industry began with him and Star Wars.

Movie merchandising has its original roots in 1929, after the success of Disney’s cartoon “Steamboat Willie” featuring Mickey Mouse. Mickey began to appear on writing tablets, and then other products “from soap to ice cream to Cartier diamond bracelets.” The money the company made went to finance production, however until the Star Wars empire, only Disney had made products based on a film.

“The current phase of film-based licensing can be traced back specifically to the merchandising successes of Star Wars (1977).”

Dale Pollock, in an NPR story about the pervasiveness of Star Wars’ merchandise, says “[Star Wars] was the groundbreaking film in getting that aisle space in Toys R Us, where you have a whole section now that's film tie-in, that didn't exist before 1977” (NPR SW)

On a list on msnbc of the seven greatest moments in movie merchandising, the very top of that list is about 20^th Century Fox and George Lucas:

“In a move that makes M&Ms passing on “E.T.” look like a nickel tossed in a fountain, 20th Century Fox in the 1970s agreed to cut George Lucas’ fee for writing and directing “Star Wars” — giving the director control over merchandising rights in exchange. Seven billion Luke Skywalker trading cards and Yoda backpacks later, Lucas is funding his own studio with the proceeds, and 20th Century Fox got a relatively small amount of money to distribute the last three “Star Wars” movies.” (msnbc)

“Since 1977, "Star Wars" merchandise has done more than thirteen and a half billion dollars in retail sales. After the release of "Star Wars," studio executives were being courted, says David Weitzner, a Hollywood independent marketing consultant. Those people who would purchase licenses to create everything from lunch pails to lamps to sheets and bed clothing were calling the studios 24/7. We didn't have to go out begging. They were coming to us.” (NPR SW)

An article on filmreference.com states that “[Movie-based merchandising] also is part of a larger, more general merchandising and licensing trend. For instance, entire TV programs and characters—especially those aimed at children—are an obvious and prevalent form of merchandising, while sports teams and players, rock stars, and musical groups have long histories of licensing and merchandising activities.” (filmreference)

“The current phase of film-based licensing can be traced back specifically to the merchandising successes of Star Wars (1977) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), but has continued with the blockbuster, action-figure based films of the 1990s- for instance, Batman (1989) and Spider-Man (2002), as well as the successful franchise films in the early twenty-first century such as The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and Harry Potter (beginning in 2001).”

Filmreference.com explains:

“There is an extremely wide variety of movie-based merchandise, including items based on a specific movie, character, or theme, or ongoing movie characters and themes. While there has been a strong emphasis on children's toys, games and other items, and on video games, other movie-based merchandise includes home, food, and decorations. There are also other, more unusual, less mass-produced items that sometimes accompany or follow movie releases, including "art objects" such as prints, sculptures, ceramic figures, and animation sets.” (Filmreference)

“Lucas understood his characters could live beyond the screen,” says Weitzne, “and [they] allow us to not only experience the film, but to role-play, to be Luke Skywalker, to continue the fantasy.” (NPR SW)

Dark Helmet is an example of exactly this idea with his action-figures of the cast of Spaceballs. In one scene he is seen playing with them, creating a new ending for the movie in which he wins, Vespa falls in love with him, and Lone Starr and the other main characters feature minimally. This fantastic revision of the movie demonstrates one of the chief allures of merchandise.

There is a scene based entirely around false merchandising in which Dark Helmet and some of his crew put in the movie of Spaceballs in order to find out what Lone Starr is doing, explaining that it’s possible due to straight-to-video technology. (movie)

In fact, of all the movie’s props, it is the merchandise that gets used correctly. The non-merchandise props are either misused, mistaken for others, don’t function as predicted, or turn out to be superfluous. On Spaceball One, the ship Dark Helmet and President Skroob reside on, there is a constant theme of this- the coffee machine and the radar are identical, the beam is used to transport people who are merely in the next room, but not when they’re on the other side of the ship. Spaceball One itself changes into a robot a la Transformers- a reference is even made to this. The ring of Schwartz turns out to be useless when Lone Starr loses it in his battle with Dark Helmet and still uses the power to defeat him. The merchandise being used correctly to the actual props’ continual failure or misuse may not be an intentional theme within the movie, but it’s a very entertaining one nonetheless, especially with merchandise from other movies that make cameos.

As I mentioned earlier, although Star Wars jumpstarted the movie merchandise industry an increasing number of films and series have joined in. ET (1982) is very closely associated with Reese’s Pieces and sales thereof. Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) was the beginning of the merchandising for that particular franchise, which is still going strong twenty years later after the release of “The Dark Knight” (2009) and the promise of at least one more Batman film in the near future. “In 2005 one could purchase sculptures of most of the characters from Lord of the Rings, including a bronze statue of Gandalf, for around $6,500.” (filmreference)

Harry Potter merchandise can be found in almost any toy or clothing store, and nearly every Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks movie has merchandise- there is even a merchandise store chain- The Disney Store- to sell it in. “Judy Garland's ruby slippers from "The Wizard of Oz" are one of the most expensive film memorabilia ever sold at auction: $666,000 in 2000.”

So clearly this is out of control. But is movie merchandising around to stay? And how will it affect the movies themselves? Will the characters in the movies be able to watch themselves, like Dark Helmet and Colonel Sandurz did in “Spaceballs”?

I say yes, movie merchandising is going to be around for quite awhile, now that executives have discovered how much more money they can make off of films via merchandise, than just by producing the films themselves. Although it’s nice to think that movies are made from the creative and loving hearts of artists, the presence of some franchises long after the movies themselves get old indicates that until people stop buying, merchandise will be around.

There are around a dozen different Spaceballs merchandise props in the movie- Spaceballs: the bed sheet, Spaceballs: the flame thrower (which according to Yogurt is “A Children’s Toy”) the lunch box, breakfast cereal, towels, the Yogurt doll, the toilet paper, the shaving cream, the place mat, the action figures of all the main characters, the t-shirt, and Spaceballs: the movie itself. Many of these items have counterparts outside the film that are generically used for nearly all movies, such as t-shirts and lunch boxes, and some that are meant to show the silliness that some merchandising campaigns have, such as the flame thrower and the toilet paper.

Just for fun during research I looked up lists of ridiculous merchandise, and the new “Twilight” franchise tops the list with somewhat alarming items for sale, including Twilight Scene-It, a Twilight bra, underwear with Robert Pattinson’s face on them, toys of an intimate nature that sparkle (because it’s not Twilight unless it sparkles), and life-size silhouettes of Edward Cullen to slap on walls and worship. (movietome.com) There’s more- the list covers a fairly extensive amount of items with characters’ faces on them that gets fairly creepy- however I’d be reading that list for the rest of the evening if I continued with it. On the other hand, movie merchandise isn’t necessarily bad. I know that after watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I wanted to run around barefoot with the sword Sting and an elvish cloak and pretend to be in Middle-Earth, and thanks to merchandising I could.

As far as merchandising affecting the quality of movies, I think the recurring gag in Spaceballs is a good analysis of trends in that. Some items make sense, and are the type of memorabilia nearly everyone has had at some point for some obsession, like a t-shirt, bedsheet, or lunchbox. Other merchandise is a little weirder but still appeals to a large amount of people, like placemats and towels. And some items, like my favorite- the flamethrower- are more of an example of what happens when marketers go insane, rather than a tribute to a film.

The simple fact is that without merchandise, a science fiction or fantasy movie isn’t going to do as well fiscally as, for example, a romantic comedy. Imagine watching Lord of the Rings, and not seeing any merchandise anywhere- no replicas of the One Ring, no cloaks or false elf ears or small action figures of Aragorn. It’s almost inconceivable. Even before the films when Middle-Earth only existed in book form, there were still things you could buy, or make and sell, that would tie in to the story.

Another way merchandising is important for sci-fi and fantasy is as a form of advertising. This is something George Lucas did- merchandise for Star Wars came out long before the films started. People thought the stuff was neat and bought it, and learned about this new sci-fi movie that way. When it came out they went and saw it, and afterwards went and bought more merchandise. Not only is the film making money off theaters and admissions, but it’s doing at least twice that with merchandise at toy stores. And then when that proves successful, other avenues can be pursued to continue making money such as sequels (planned or otherwise), spinoffs, comics, television shows, conventions, and anything else that could possibly be conceived up to and including whole channels on television.

So rather than being just a running gag about the omnipresence of movie merchandise, Spaceballs sheds light on how pervasive merchandise is and how important it is to a movie’s success. Throughout this essay we’ve learned a lot from Spaceballs about merchandising and can sleep well knowing that with the mystical power of "The Schwartz”, we can “bring peace and merchandising rights to the entire galaxy!” (MGM)

Works Cited:

Spaceballs. Dir. Mel Brooks. Perf. Mel Brooks, Rick Moranis, and

Bill Pullman. Brooksfilms Productions, 1987. DVD.

“Merchandising”. Retrieved from http://www.filmreference.com/

Brand, M. (1995, May 25). Star Wars’ Merchandise. NPR.  Retrieved from http://www.npr.org.

Sydell, L. (2007, May 25). ‘Star Wars’ Merchandise Still Sells After 30 Years, NPR. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org.

Spaceballs. Wikipedia, 16 Feb. 2010. Web. 23 Feb. 2010. .

Screencaps from the movie “Spaceballs” courtesy of: http://www.leavemethewhite.com/caps/thumbnails.php?album=218

“The Top Ten Most Bizarre Pieces of Twilight Merchandise”. (2009, November 19). http://www.movietome.com/news/30479/the-top-ten-most-bizarre-pieces-of-twilight-merchandising

“Galaxy Quest”. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177789/

“Spaceballs”. (1987, June 26). http://www.mgm.com/view/movie/1873/Spaceballs/

“7 Moves That Changes Movie Merchandising”. (2010). http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19568020/ns/entertainment-movies/page/2/

“Disney History”. (1998). http://www.billbam.com/disneyhostory.html

Learning About MRIs

2010-03-28T19:38:00.003-06:00

Copy/pasted from: http://generalmedicine.suite101.com/article.cfm/what_to_expect_when_getting_an_mri

For many people, the idea of having to gown up and lay in a strange machine is intimidating. Others who have never experienced an MRI may find themselves more fearful of not knowing what to expect. Whatever the cause for insecurities, understanding the standard MRI process can make the test seem less frightening and more tolerable.

Step 1: Eating

Although many medical tests require that a patient is NPO (without food or water) prior to a procedure, rarely do MRIs require this.

Step 2: Checking in

The day of the MRI, begins with arriving at a hospital, medical plaza or radiology center that has an MRI machine. The patient will be asked to check in and fill out any necessary paperwork before the procedure begins.

Step 3: Changing

Because of how sensitive MRI machines are to magnetic items, the patient will be shown to a dressing room and asked to undress into a metal free gown as well as to remove any jewelry, hair ties, etc that are metal. Women will be asked to remove their bras. All belongings should be placed in a designated locker.

Step 4: Questions

After changing into a gown, a series of questions will be asked in a small room or nursing section of the clinic regarding the patient’s medical history. At this time, if a patient has a pacemaker, metal pins, or any type of metal in their body they should inform the nurse. If the MRI requires dye or medications, an IV may be placed at this time.

Step 5: The Technologist

Finally it is time to meet the technologist. He or she will be responsible for positioning the patient and performing the scan. Now is a good time to bring up any last minute questions or concerns to decrease anxiety.

Step 6: Ear Plugs

The machine is very loud while scanning a patient. Ear plugs will be provided and should be worn to drown out the sound of the machine. Depending on the facility, ear plugs that provide music may be provided for relaxation.

Step 7: Getting Positioned

Now comes the actual part of entering the machine. The patient will be asked to lie down on a table that slides out of a tunnel-like machine. The technologist will position the patient for the scan and in some cases will prop up the patient’s knees.

Step 8: Inside

The technologist will slide the bed into the machine and enter a different room where he or she is able to administer the scan. The scan normally takes between 30 and 60 minutes depending on the MRI ordered. Breathing during the scan is acceptable but the patient should lie very still and try his best not to move. It is normal to hear clicking sounds.

Step 9: Communication

One thing that makes many people nervous is not being able to communicate with their technologist. The technologist is able to hear and respond to the patient at any time if the patient is not tolerating the scan or has a question or concern. Because of this system, a patient is never “stuck” in the machine against his will.

Step 10: Finished!

After the test is complete, the scanning table will be withdrawn from the machine and the technologist will help the patient back to his dressing room to change. A radiologist, a doctor with a specialization in radiology, will later look over the images created during the scan and will write up a report to send to the patient’s doctor regarding the results. The patient will meet with his doctor in a few weeks to discuss the results.

Health

2010-03-25T17:09:00.006-06:00

Okay, so I never liked healthcare to begin with. Or doctors. Or appointments. Or lobbies. So having a really boring adventure into all of these isn't any fun either. What's going on:

February 12ish- Twist ankle standing still. Immediate pain, then no second thought because I sprain things all the time.

March 25 (today)- pain is all around ankle now and growing on inside of ankle and up the side of my leg, and other foot is starting to get sore from overwork. I see the podiatrist, who tells me to do things I've already been doing, says my ligaments may be messed up (which I knew, and despite my tendons being the reason I keep returning), and tells me to schedule an MRI with yet another medical person. I do, they say they'll see what times are available and call me to schedule an appointment, which they have not yet done. Despite a lack of diagnosis on my doctor's part, she extends my handicapped parking permit another six weeks, effectively the remainder of the semester.

So I'm kind of grumpy lately. The saga continues.

EDIT- Saturday-

MRI scheduled for this Wednesday afternoon, meaning I'll be missing two Portuguese classes in as many weeks. Not cool. As if my teacher didn't already not like me, I'm missing a lot of his class. If it didn't meet daily I'd miss many less, but there you go.

Refund plz

2010-03-07T13:53:00.006-07:00

I've had a surprisingly lousy year so far, and spend most of my time in some state of depression. So I'm going to make a list of everything that's going right or cheerful.

1. My gerbils can do the 'dramatic look gopher' thing, like in that viral video.

2. I have a coffee machine and a blender so I can many nearly any caffeine product.

3. I've got somewhere to live and a car.

4. Someday I'll get a job instead of just filling out 65 applications over the course of a year for nothing.

5. I have internet, and a laptop to enjoy it on.

6. Mel Brooks continues to make funny movies, and I own most of them.

7. My brother graduates this year and I'll probably be able to fly in for his graduation.

8. My crutches are pimpin'.

9. I haven't food poisoned myself yet this year with home cooking.

10. My itouch works 98% of the time, and my itunes library is extensive. So I have music to hide in. :)

11. Spring is finally coming, and it's warming up enough I put my winter coat away.

12. I got lots of new music this afternoon. Yay!

I do feel somewhat better. It's amazing what making happy lists can do. Highly recommend.

Recommended activity: See above.

Recommended reading: "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen. I'm only about halfway through it but so far I really like it, perhaps more than "Pride and Predjudice" or "Emma".

Recommended movie: "The Producers" (2005 musical remake). The songs are so catchy.

Cripple McGrumpyPants

2010-02-24T20:03:00.005-07:00

What happened: I tore the posterior something-or-other-long-word ligaments in my ankle. They're behind the ankle but not in the back. This happened on a similar scale back in 2005, and that time I went through physical therapy for several months with little progress, however eventually it did improve. And then I did it again to the same scale recently, and on Monday I start physical therapy. In a few weeks, I go back to the doctor for a reevaluation. If there's been improvement I continue the therapy, if there isn't then I'm looking at surgery. In the meantime I'm on crutches and have these wonderful anti-inflammatory pain pills.

I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be swollen like that, so I'm spending a lot of time on my couch with a makeshift ice pack, mostly watching movies and occasionally doing homework and working on my Spaceballs paper for the colloquium in April.

Last night I woke up four different times from the pain, and after the fourth I gave up and got up at 5:30 this morning. The sunrise was an awesome purple/pink combination, which helped with the grumpiness some as I like pretty colors.

And also this morning, I pimped my crutches, photo goes HERE:

All new Fiesta Crutches, ready for anything! And in a few weeks when I'm tired of green and blue, I have red and yellow ready to change it out for. I'm gimping around in style now- the other be-crutched kids should be jealous. :)

New Mexican Green Chili Enchilada Casserole- the food blog

2010-02-19T18:42:00.009-07:00

Normally, when I cook for myself, what I create comes out of a box, such as Rice-a-roni or mac n' cheese. However lately I've been into cooking actual meals (I have the time, still unemployed), and I've been wanting to try to make New Mexican food for awhile. I've lived in Albuquerque for three years and I've developed an intense addiction to green chili, and I didn't want to make anything too complicated, so I used the Google machine to find a casserole-type recipe I could do, following the above parameters.

Boy, did I. And then I destroyed it.

Here's what I did: Enchilada, the documentary.

Ingredients: lots of green (or red) chili, cumin, salt, corn tortillas, onion, cheddar cheese

Dishes: blender, pot for the sauce, pan for deep frying the tortillas, 13x9 casserole dish, cutting board for onion. Grater for the cheese unless you're lazy like me and just bought it pre-grated.

Step 1: Make sauce out of green chili. I used a blender. Once that is suitably juicy, put in a pot with 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, and 1/2 cumin (which smells incredible!). What I Learned: Use more than 14 oz. green chili, that isn't quite enough.

Step 2: While doing that, fry some tortillas. What I Learned: Make sure they're corn tortillas, so they don't fry hard. The idea is for soft fried tortillas. And that probably isn't the right utensil to use but it's the closest I have.

Step 3: Dice up an onion, grate some cheddar cheese. Or buy a bag of grated cheese. It was a weird way to be lazy, given how much work the dish took.

Step 4: Make sauce. Put the green chili in the pot with the spices and whatnot, bring to a boil.

Step Whatever: Put a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of the dish, then tortillas (like so), then more sauce, then onion and cheese. Rinse and repeat. This is where I learned about the needing more sauce problem.

Step Whatever-next: Cover dish with foil. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes. I don't have a photo of that. But I do have a photo of taking the dish out of the oven, which is here:

Step Final: Shlap some on a plate, and perhaps sprinkle with shredded lettuce and tomato (tomato goes really well with green chili), and chow!

Final Grade: Given that it was my first time making this dish, frying tortillas, blending food, and making enchiladas, I give it a B. However if I learn from the mistakes I made, this has the potential to be an A+!

A Lack of Journalistic Integrity

2010-02-10T10:09:00.004-07:00

Hello anonymous readers, and hello those of you who I actually know. Anonymous readers shock me, I never expect them.

Today's topic is journalistic integrity, and how my school's paper doesn't have any this year. I shall sum this up with a rather hilarious (but not on purpose, I just have a twisted sense of humor) quote on the front page of this morning's paper in the prime-time spot called front and center:

"The Daily Lobo staff was curious about how difficult it would be to light a bulletin board on fire. It's not terribly hard, but we made sure to have a fire extinguisher and a bucket of water handy."

I feel I should clarify, this quote in itself does not upset me. Quite the opposite, this is exactly the sort of thing I would do myself. It was part of an article about yet another small bit of arson that happened on campus, this time in another of the dorms (making it the second of the two dorms I lived in to be slightly aflame in the last year), in which a billboard on the first floor was set on fire. Why? Who knows. Apparently it's fun to light office supplies on fire. Who dun it? No one knows. Security isn't very good. The creeper earlier this year proved that it's quite easy to break into the dorms. You don't even have to have a key, really. Just look overwhelmed and exhausted and pretend to search your pockets and wait, and eventually a student with a key will let you in, thinking you're like them. Not that I've tried this. But the idea of 'hmm, how hard would that be to do, anyway?' happening to someone other than me is both reassuring and alarming at the same time.

Anyway, journalistic integrity. Specifically, not having much. There have also been more misprints than usual this year, such as charts mislabeled, bias, not getting permissions for photos, photos in general that are more 'hei itz pretti i lik de colorz' rather than photojournalistic which is a photo that conveys information about an event, person, etc in a way that could either assist a news story or replace it, NOT an avant-garde blurred out photo in the dark of a person dancing, with only the caption to help figure out what's going on like the photo on a front page earlier this week. Although setting a bulletin board on fire 'just to see' would be fun, I don't see how slapping a photo of it on the front page is good journalism. Go take a photo of the actual arsoned billboard in the dorm, or don't put a photo up at all! The article itself was good enough, it fit all the criteria for the front page, but not their ~~not very good anyway~~ photo wasn't helpful at all.

Normally I don't really read the articles anyway, I get the paper because it's a) free, and b) has that crossword puzzle and sudoku on the last page that I can do in class. So I suppose if the price is a sign of the quality, I'm getting what I paid for.

2010-02-09T11:40:00.003-07:00

I keep getting worse about these blogs, it's because I'm busy in school. Or rather, I'm busy outside of school. I'm in school right now and I'm doing this. :) Again, I'm a bad student, I know. I'd pay attention, but a) I'm a senior this year and just don't care as much as I did three years ago, b) this is a lecture hall class so there's over 100 people in it, c) it's full of freshmen-types who love over-analysing everything, yet still need incredibly basic concepts explained to them because "college is hard".

What they don't know is that no, college is not hard. The classes are just as difficult as high school, and by the time they pick up you don't really realize it anymore. It's college LIFE that is hard, and usually by their junior year they realize it. Or rather, it's not even college at all that's hard, it's just life that is. College is just a side dish to the entree of life. What's hard for these kids is how they feel the need to suddenly grow up, to prove that they can be adults too because they're not in high school now. And then in a few years they realize that you can't get good grades and then go binge drinking on Friday night and be a responsible adult, it takes more than that.

...It also takes coffee. So there.

Class is over, so that's all for now. Bye.