Prosaic Paradise

The latest from the Frontal Cortex makes an astute file-management analogy about our memories. I love this “Save-as” image; I can think of a great number of times I’ve recounted a story only to have someone else who was there recount a somewhat different one, and the truth is we’re both wrong. Lovely! So anything I tag here as “history” or “nostalgia”, well, you know.

An interesting thing happened last time I was visiting with my parents that proves me a liar. I’ve always had a stumpy middle toe on my left foot. My right toes follow a natural progression from shortest to longest; my left toes have a dip in the middle where my middle toe is all stumpy. I could swear that my father had this exact same stumpy toe and was glad to see such obvious genetic inheritance at work. But last time I spoke with dad, I guess he was wandering around barefoot, and his toes were all normal! Where did I get this totally fabricated memory??

Speaking of memory, mine will be tested this evening on the lecture exam… but really, I know these things are half knowledge and half test-taking skills. Process of elimination, baby.

We had the lab practical last night. Alongside it came the torrent of complaints. The one that was most surprising to me was “I don’t think this is testing me on anything I learned.” Well, I guess that one must be true. -.- There were some tricky questions… how was I supposed to know that a tiny tape marker that’s sitting on both the PCT and the DCT (parts of a nephron but by no means all of it) is meant to indicate “nephron”? I got anywhere from an 88 to a 96 depending on how harshly he’s graded us. Because everyone including the prof was acting all butthurt and emotional about the test I decided to stop caring, not in a ‘give up and get bad grades’ way but in a ‘do my best and ignore problems and let it be’ way.

I did get a call from Dr. B while I was in the exam, though, and afterwards got a chance to yammer at her about nursing school options. Looking at real-university 2nd degree BSN programs reminds me of how much my terrible GPA from Virginia Tech is an albatross. Kids, keep your grades up!! Wait, I don’t know any kids.

Earlier today I had my fingerprints taken. Given a choice to be employed or not, I went along with it although my little paranoid heart doesn’t like the idea. I suppose I was hoping I’d get through life without anyone putting my prints on file somewhere. Our company is part of a bank now and we’re subject to laws that dictate it must happen.

For those of you who were sympathetic to my thoughts about the plastic mess in the ocean, I recently subscribed to Fake Plastic Fish, a blog about reducing plastic waste in our personal lives. There’s a lot of things you can do or stop doing, and it does seem intimidating, but it’s nice to know someone out there is being really serious about it and blazing the trail.

Tags: green, School

Jack & I have been sharing an emusic account for over a year now. I’ve downloaded nearly 500 songs and while I haven’t been in love with everything, I’ve found a whole bunch of stuff I wouldn’t have found otherwise. (Thanks to The Abstract Factory for this instruction on how to browse the catalog before signing up.)

1. $0.40 per song.
2. no DRM!
3. E is for Espers
4. M is for M. Ward and Murray Head
5. U is for universally usable mp3 format
6. S is for Sonata Arctica and The Sadies and the Smithsonian Folkways collection
7. I is for Interpol and Isis
8. C is for Camper Van Beethoven
9. you don’t mind a subscription-based service
10. and you enjoy sifting through new (often independent) music to find gems

I point out #9 because when I was composing this post I went looking for consumer complaints about emusic. I found some but most of them centered around feeling like the person could not use all their downloads. It does take a little time commitment to look around the site for things you might like.

If you sign up for their 50 free downloads note that you want to read the fine print carefully so that if you do want to cancel, you know the deadline. (I think “at any time” is misleading.)

Tags: Music

I’ve been alternating between studying and being a total lump all day. 1 hour studying, 1 hour being a total lump. See how the unstructured time is doing me no favors? In part it’s that I’m not feeling very organized; I need a sequential approach. I have 2 large units of information to review some of which I know better than others. So I try not to duplicate too much effort and in trying to avoid wasting time studying something I already know, I sometimes shoot myself in the foot.

Once I get through the next week, we are 75% done with exams. I will be relieved. And I will start the enrollment process at Howard County, because criminy, this has been a terrible experience. And Micro is only offered at the Largo campus and that is simply not happening.

Last night we were able to attend a party celebrating the birth of the cheetahmaster. I rallied (with the help of some hard cider) despite not being in a terribly party-oriented mood. It was lovely to see my friends and I had some good talk with both new and old friends. And apparently I was having a Hannah Montana hair day, which I certainly can’t complain about. But I left early-ish and feeling kind of down. I wish I could tell whether I’m experiencing dysthymia or just having a bum day. I tend to blog positive! as a tool to fight that feeling, so the blog becomes less a trackable statistic for my mood to check for trends than just a self-help excercise.

If I think about it, however, I know I’m in a period of poor attitude. I feel like need some success at work and success in class to push through this. Attached to outcomes much? Hrm… the more I examine this, the more confident I am my coping mechanisms are not functioning well! The off hours of being a lump look less like relaxation under this scrutiny and more like mind-numbing escape. Ouch.

Day 9 of National Blog Posting Month: apparently a day of reckoning.

Tags: class, introspection, party

This isn’t one of those “such-and-so important thing happened” posts. Keeps with the theme of the ordinary that I aimed for when I created this blog. Apparently I was watching Peter Tork do a cameo on Wings (which I guarantee I heard about on alt.music.monkees) and going to SciCon. I mean, between Sociological Theory (Dr. Fuhrman!) & Soc of Juvenile Delinquency classes. I am not sure what “GR” or “Ed” are, but they must have been classes I took.

Thanks to someone’s old web site, I know that that was SciCon 17, guest of honor Larry Bond. Lord only knows what I actually did at this convention. Costume? Try to write terrible fantasy novels? Follow around my terrible boyfriend like a puppydog? This is the kind of thing that makes me alternately sad and grateful for blogging. If blogging had existed, I’d know! But, then, if blogging had existed… I’d know.

This would have been my junior year -things would have been looking up. The inclusion of “Womanspace” on my calendar indicates my exposure to feminism and women’s studies by that point. It’s nice to have these little reminders. I wish my memory was better, though, so I could fill them in.

Tags: History

Only a day went by before a potentially good biodegradable pen came onto my radar! Over at the Good Pens blog we have a review of the Pilot V Corn. Now, I am not sure where I could find one of these pups, but if I find out I will let you know.

Last night I got in a solid 2 hour study session with Joy. We covered reproductive bits & gametes & oogenesis & spermatogenesis with an eye to the slides and models for the lab. Tonight I am letting myself off from studying but tomorrow I have nothing else planned all day but to study! And then more of that on Sunday! It’s nice to know I have unstructured time to assign as I wish this weekend, but it is dangerous too.

Today I began setting up my 2008 Christmas list spreadsheet. It’s gotten a bit shorter over the years; fewer of my social network of friends exchange gifts and after a few years of “please just get me a donation to my favorite charity!” or Heifer donations it makes the material goods less of a deal. Despite the great ideas that these things are, I still really enjoy finding something someone will enjoy. And it’s not like I’ve made great strides towards divorcing myself from the desire for things, no matter the cost in suffering. Plus, most of my friends aren’t worried about noble truths too terribly much, not to mention the family. Hence, spreadsheet.

Tonight I will be enjoying a brief Angela Lansbury film festival before burying myself in textbooks.

My doctor’s office just called. My cholesterol is good! It’s a flipping miracle. (Eat with me for a week and you’ll understand why I say that.)

Tags: class, stuff

This is one of those pleasures that you can only get through hard work: the spent pen. Even if you have simply been doodling away abstractly that is still, to my mind, a form of creative work. Since nowadays many of us don’t write all that much, seeing the ink run out can be a rare pleasure as well.

The emptiness of this particular pen means the fullness of many pages of notes for work, filled with the minutiae of meetings and the rememberings of important data bits recorded on many legal pads. (It actually pains me to toss the cardboard backing of a used-up legal pad, such is the combination of my compulsion about keeping things added with my twinge of joy at finishing something up.) The blue and red pens from this pack are also on their last legs, one being my A&P lecture pen and the other being my lab pen.

People frequently use ’emptiness’ to describe how they feel when they are sad or feeling alienated. I prefer, when I think of the word emptiness, to think of potential. Or I could think of it as the state after expelling something, that expelling being a loss of something untoward, or a giving of something helpful.

I should note here that I don’t really want to encourage using disposable pens. Creating more plastic trash to clog up the pacific ocean is not my favorite thing to do. Realistically, however, I am guessing virtually none of you use a pen which is entirely reusable. Not to mention fountain pens and ink are not cheap.

Tags: buddhist

I had a post-election hangover this morning. Not from drinking, although I did feel celebratory. I was just so wound up & emotional. I’d wept, like alot of people. I woke up with a migraine of democracy. I dreamed about old… friends and a weird old haunted house. And decided to call in sick the second I woke up feeling like a half-baked turd.

Politics aside life does go on, so today was all about self-care! I followed up on all kinds of doctor crap I’d been putting off, none of which got me anywhere. Still don’t know what my cholesterol is and still don’t have a psychiatrist. But never mind that, self-care was the blankie and a sammich and 2 kitties warming my lap and countless episodes of Without a Trace.

This orgy of pleasantness was interrupted briefly by class. They brought some dean down to tell us the hard line about how they have a contract that says they have to teach the class a certain way and we can’t diverge and worse things have happened and we all should cope blah blah blah. Exams on Monday and Wednesday on the Urinary and Reproductive systems, and then things go on as normal. OK! By 7 the confrontational atmosphere had dissipated. Hopefully, for the rest of the semester.

I am hopeful for the future. But for several reasons I am also a ball of worry.

Tags: class, introspection

Jack and I went together this morning to vote. My work is pretty permissive about time and he works from home so often, it was nice to be able to go with him and hang in line. I thought that I would ensure short lines by waiting until mid-day but I was very wrong. The lines moved fast though, and I didn’t even need to get out my Nintendo DS. Most of the other kids had theirs out, which reminded me that I have no recollection of going to vote with my parents. We saw several of our neighbors particularly Stephen and his kids. It was absolutely a picture of old (new?) fashioned American diversity at the Phelps Senior Center.

We were behind some sour-faced folks who did not seem thrilled at our giddy (well, my giddy… Jack doesn’t do giddy) chatterings. The weather was pleasant (at least until we got out of there) and the approximately 100-150 people I saw in line remained steady.

When I got to the booth I actually got a little choked up as I cast my vote. Yeah, yeah, I’m one to tear up at the commercial where the little kid finds a picture of her grandma in her softball uniform, but I was just so excited. I learned a bunch of mess about slots today since that was the most hotbutton thing outside of president on the MD ballot. I am eagerly awaiting the outcome of that one.

Made it through the rest of the day somehow and now am chillin’ at a friend’s taking in the majesty of the comedy central coverage. Rhino and golden helmet?? What??

Tags: Politics

…with very little effort.

I feel a little guilty about winning a prize with a costume that took mostly shopping legwork, enthusiastic friends, and my native taste in glasses. Another impression: I had not clued in to how hot people think Velma is/was. I should have worked harder on my Velma voice, also. I will note that Jack gave this wig its look – it was originally about 4 inches longer and he kicked out a brilliant bob in no time flat! I think he missed his calling.

Telf threw an awesome, as usual, Halloween party and we all kicked back around the firebowl. Except those of us in really warm orange sweaters, we stayed well back and drank cooling draughts of cheap beer. I actually think Telf’s Dr. Girlfriend costume was the most awesome… you can get a peek of that if you click through to my Halloween set. A fine, laid-back halloween it was. None of this scrounging and sewing and sweating and stressing. Well, a little sweating, as it was a rather balmy night.

The remainder of the weekend was spent visiting my tattoo artist (a mere planning session) and catching up on the DVR (Supernatural is the best show on TV right now) and studying. OK, and a little Warhammer Online. But I’ll get into that later.

Tags: halloween, party