I swear, they know just how to get me aggravated in the worst way (sorry foa).

YES I WANT TO STAY UP UNTIL 1:30 TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THIS FUCKING FLOAT TRIP IDEA BECAUSE YOU GUYS WILL MAKE US DRIVE TWO HOURS IN THE FUCKING EARLY MORNING ON OUR DAY OFF. omg.

Yes, I realize most children butt heads with their parents as they grow up, but it seems like mine are particularly worthless at planning vacations. Going to florida with them was a huge headache
(ask stu)

For several years now, I've felt that I was becoming too attention-deficit to make meaningful livejournal posts, and now that the perfect medium for insta-think quick anecdote sharing has arrived, I mean, I'm into it.
Random thought while walking to the bus stop? Twitter it.
One-off link to share? Twitter.

Anyways. I still morally oppose the idea of syndicating my tweets on LJ, but if anyone is interested, I guess I can look into it. I just know that I tend to skip them all on my flist xD (maybe then I should add ljers to twitter then. . No, that would make too much sense)

Summer Session I is over and gone; I got at least one A. I doubt I got two, but hopefully Machine Analysis ends up as a B. I'll find out tomorrow, I guess.

Session II is off to a good start. Lots of people in MechiMat, a lot of whom i at least recognize, although very few are actual mechanical engineers (apparently all the civies took status summer I and are now taking either mechimat or dynamics in summer II. Poor kids). I love Jong though. A semester of Uche has made me appreciate him so much. I was so lazy a year ago! I hope I can avenge that C I made in Statics.

My life is a whorl of classes though. I'm looking forward to this week-end with Stu, and Kishi, and my family. Yes, it's still going forward as planned. Yes, I think it will wendell. No, I don't really feel comfortable discussing it on livejournal, no matter how intimate the group filter.

Last night I redownloaded Princess Maker 2, and played out a life and a half before calling it quits way too late. Got a terrible ending. Finished the second game this afternoon. Slightly better, but still bad ending. I hope the third one goes better.

Tonight I watched Twilight. The university was putting it on as a free outdoors movie, and I partook. There were many girls, a few boys, and some twelve year olds there. It wasn't too bad. the casting was incredible.

I still can't get over being tan. I keep poking my skin and watching it change colors.

and I guess that's my life since the last entry.

Summer school is death; I really enjoy it, but it doesn't leave a lot of time for thinking!

Summary of things that have been going on since the 18th:
seashell necklace turned out FAIL. I strung it all together and it just looked lame. The bits are just kinda hanging out until I think of something better to do with them. (ideas?)

I almost have a tan. Every day I look at myself and I am amazed by the tint of my skin. I'm serious. I haven't been this dark since 2005 (when I went outside in the louisianan sun every day for a month).
I'm almost losing weight. The last few days I've been kinda plateaued, so I don't know what's up with that. I'm not in any hurry anyways; There's still six more weeks of summer.

I really love living by myself right now. I am the mistress of my life and my domicile; don't have to worry about anyone barging in, and I can just not get dressed after a shower. I just love it. (I really love not having my parents around. It was always hard for me to talk on the phone or voice-chat with people knowing that they were in the house with me, or recording singing or anything. So I've been doing a lot of that. I don't know if my voice has improved any, but it's been fun.)

I've been trying to make a decision about something very important for a month; I can't really detail it here because it's too close, too personal, but idk. You all probably know what it is now anyways.

In my schoolwork, we've been using this program called Analytix. It was written in 1989 and last updated in 2002, so you can imagine what that's been like, but you can just draw almost any kind of mechanism you could dream of, and make them move. It's so fulfilling; I enjoy just sketching them out and watching them go through their circuits.

I'm doing pretty well in one of my classes, and fairly poorly in the other. I don't mind [too] much. At least not right now.

I also have no ability to string together a coherent post. Is that the celexa muddying my mind, or am I just not putting enough thought into this?
My anxiety levels are pretty incredible right now, as in, not high at all, so idk I haven't taken any the last couple of nights. We'll see how that pans out. I also don't want to make a doctor's appt to renew my prescription, which is one major aspect. (I have a few months' worth left, but I don't want to totally forget about it and find out I need some RIGHT NOW and not have any) I guess you're supposed to wean yourself off, but I cba to split the pills in half, sooooooo.

If there is one person or more on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

When I went to Florida a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't find any particularly spectacular shells but it occurred to me that a lot of little cute ones would make a nice necklace, so I set myself the task of making one.

The initial design. I swapped the order of the very tiny and the second from the outside large shells for increased symmetry and gave up on the black shells on the right side; they're simply too thick. I can't even get a dent in them. They've been replaced with white/orange shells which are more cohesive color-wise if a little too large.

The small shells are mostly chosen for their beautiful purple interiors. They won't be visible worn, but I'll know how purple they are :)

I did some google searching, and it turns out that seashells are notorious for being difficult to work with. Luckily, I had plenty of extras to practice on. I've only broken two so far though, so! (and had suitable replacements for those!)

I took a pin with a broad head and a panelling nail and started off by digging the nail into a suitable spot on the inside of the shell. Working from the inside makes sense because then you can support the outside of the shell (the convex side) with your fingers, spreading out all the pressure to prevent fracture. Once a dent had been made in the shell, I would switch over to the pin and basically just bear down on that until I could hear the shell begin to break. The pin makes a hole about 1/30" in diameter. Some of the shells had holes already in them, and those are about 3/60".

The only one I broke (my dad broke the other trying to use a drill on it) was because I had just been trying to puncture a particularly thick one (which was why my dad tried to drill it), and forgot how little force was necessary on the smaller ones.

I would estimate it takes about 15 minutes for the more difficult ones, and as little as one minute for the easy ones. Some of the mother-of-pearl looking pieces were very easy to pierce.

I haven't quite decided how to arrange them on a necklace, but my plan right now is to make little clasps out of copper wire and then tie those to fishing line. I might switch to an all-copper get up though. originally, I was going to use all fishing line, but the copper was too tempting <3

( picccccctures~ )

I hope it turns out well! I've been afraid to start working on it the last two weeks, and it took the looming hulk of a test tomorrow to get me eager enough to procrastinate to just start.

Put itunes/winamp/etc on shuffle
20 (I did 21, sue me) first lines of songs compose a poem
the 21st (22nd) is the title of the poem.

You cannot quit me so quickly
Sit by my side, come as close as the air
She's so wonderful
A self-fulfilling prophecy of endless possibility
You're on your own my little nightmare, you cannot stay here
I'm stuck here in the middle of
Can't stop addicted to the shindig

O Green World.
The colors have built up in my mind.
Got woken in the night by a mystic golden light.
We might kiss
In the velvet darkness
Don't worry.
It's funny how your worst enemies always seem to
Là.

If you're alone and you need a friend
We skipped the light fandango.
What will you do when you get lonely?
I was born by the river in a little tent.
So lately, been wondering
Don't kid yourself
No one knows what it's like.

when the guy swapped out the logicboard before we realized it was the DC-in port, he of course, replaced the thermal paste. Early MBPs were notorious for their excess of thermal paste, in amounts that inhibited heat distribution rather than aided in it. I wanted to do it for a long time, but two things kept me from it: 1) my father and stu expressly forbade me to touch the logicboard; 2) I didn't want to buy thermal paste.

But yeah, I'm running with half-speed fans, just interneting like usual, with the laptop on my lap, not on a book, and it's chilling at a cool 54°C. I am so happy.

Hopefully I will be able to photoshop now without having to worry about getting into the 85°C+ range.

---

Today has been a nice rainy day. I woke up this morning to a half dozen little blackbirds playing in the water on the back patio outside my window. It stopped raining by the time I went to class, but it was so much cooler. When I came home, it started sprinkling a little harder, but I just opened my umbrella and it was pleasant :)

Myra Breckinridge;
Endymion;
Anathem
Tigiana
Dark Places: A Novel
The Graveyard Book
Snow Crash
Time Traveller's Wife
The Giver (again)
The Real Story
House of Leaves
The Blade Itself
Death From the Skies
The Ethos Effect
Ender's Game
Accidental Sorceror
Elantris
Lord Foul's Bane
The Belgariad
When Gravity Fails (marid audran)
Naked Lunch

dangit I don't remember.

I'll update this as I think of them.

[edit- added the book of the months from GHF]

my parents have our 20 year old land line (home) and our ten year old one (business), but will probably be cutting down to just one line since my dad is retiring and honestly, the best use the home line was was for dialup ;)

at the apartment, we'll have dsl and three cell phones, but no landlines.

Oh, yeah.

Ever since we got back from Florida, my laptop hasn't booted from battery. Pretty annoying, because if I unplug it, boom it shuts down. And magsafe adaptors are made to be easily unplugged, so. . .

I've been trying to get the guy at the computer store to replace the logicboard (and buy a new adaptor, which is probably why it doesn't work. The LED stopped lighting up a while ago, and now it won't hardly charge my ipod)
Anyways, he's very nice, has heterochromia, but is completely incapable of remembering to call me when he says he will. I, not wishing to make a nuisance of myself, of course have let this drag on for two weeks, so monday I believe I will call him early on and ask if my part has come in and then bring it with me to school so he can replace it while I am en salle de classe.

I need to pick up a new set of earbuds for my ipod as well. The wires are starting to show :X (guess I shouldn't've been so rough on them)

ANYTHING ELSE FROM APPLE WANNA BLOW UP ON ME, HUH?!

:)

But sleep Wilber did. idk, that quote got stuck in my head at a young age (first grade) and I've never bee able to lose it.


Recently, I've noticed I've been grinding my teeth. In addition to making me feel like a speed addict, I've decided it couldn't be good for my enamel, so I've developed the habit of grinding my tongue instead. There's a neat place in one of my canines where a little bit of tongue can stay there without slipping out like the slipperly muscley eel that it is, and I find myself sometimes with my tongue there without realizing it. Habit successful!

(I also seem to have injured one of my taste buds as well. The last two times I brushed my teeth(tongue) I spat out single drops of blood. Not from biting it though. Just hot food I think.)

I dunno, school is going fairly well, but I feel like I'm going to look up this week and see the sword of damocles hanging over my head. Like it's been too easy so far and it's about to just rain down on me.

The diet thing is going well though. I've returned to the tens digit I was accustomed to in high school, just need to work on the ones place.
(why do I feel so uncomfortable typing my weight in my own journal?)
I ate out for the first time since.. Well, Florida I think. Went to Backyard Burgers (and blogged on WILT about it for the first time in five weeks) It was pretty dang good, I'll say. I'm getting used to cooking dinner though. Making sandwiches for lunch, etc.

Can I keep it up for another two months?

I've always implied that 85°F would be the perfect temperature for living, but now I know I am incorrect. 85°F is freaking hot. I broke into a sweat just walking from my car into a building.
Haven't turned on the airconditioning though. I was smart this week-end and ran the dryer while I was out shopping, so the equilibrium cooling coupled with my awesome blanket of thermal protection and a popcicle when I returned managed to win out.

I guess it's living on my own, but lately, I've found myself wanting to do voice chats for the first time. . . well, ever really. Living with parents is always awkward because they're like 'who are you talking to? Oh I see' etc. I just feel so uncomfortable and want to talk all quietly.
But by myself, not only do I feel liberated to speak act just as I'd like, but also, I'm kinda lonely so the presence is welcome. This is also why I've been keeping the stereo on. The DJs on KXUA 88.3FM talk a lot more than your typical radio hosts. It's like they talk to you instead of just hawking things. I like that.

Also, going to plug OMGMyGame again because I think everyone in the world should register there :)

yar_yars, I believe I can one-up you with my dream.

My dream included me as Mary-Anne from the Babysitters Club, a mile long steep slope of slippery leaves, culminating in a half mile drop at the bottom, a silk road strewn with tokens of regard and $100 bills, monks on said road, enano owning a funeral home, an imaginary amusement park in Florida where Bill Clinton and Mr. and Mrs. Obama went through, getting climbed on by full grown cats, and sitting in a state of undress in my living room while the front window blinds were completely open.

This summer is turning into a France-in-America repeat of last summer except without having to be thousands of miles away from everyone (merely hundreds), and without the overwhelming anxiety.

There are the diet and the hw similarities, but also just being able to sit with my window open and listen to people living around me. There were some people moving into one of the units across the parking lot, two guys playing guitar and singing on a porch, kids laughing and shouting.

And a girl in rollerblades going to check the mail and enjoying the immersion.

I've known for a while that I turn incredibly miserly when left to my own devices, spending my own money.

My family, both branches being of poor farmer descent, has a long tradition of scrimping and saving, and in my solo adventura this summer, I have found myself turning to some of the tricks I've picked up along the way.

1) Not eating out. The simplest. One makes one's own meals, and one eats them. Since most meals are made for more than one, one then eats leftovers the next night. One packs one's own sandwich to eat at lunchtime and fills one's waterbottle at the water fountain during the day. One reuses the sandwich bag from day to day :p

2) Not pigging out. This is actually the thing I have the hardest time with. Those of you who are familiar with my ways realize that I have an incredible weakness for snacks. At my worst, I can put way entire bags of doritos without realizing it. This is why I weighed 108 lbs in the third grade. I started this week with a bag and a half of chips and they were all gone by Tuesday. The only thing keeping me from not repeating that spectacle is the fact that I haven't gone to the grocery store.

3) Not running the air conditioner. Today was the first day I ran the AC, and that's because I dried two loads of clothes. Not saying it hasn't been hot. I use a macbook pro, and those get *hot*, but I've toughed it out, locking the doors and going around in a shirt and panties helps. eating popcicles, opening the windows at night, and always leaving the ceiling fan on.

4) Taping a blanket in the doorway. My Granny Sue does not live in a house with central heat and air. She has a wood stove and a window unit. Sometimes in Arkansas summer, it gets to be 107 out. How does she cope? She stays in the living room with the air conditioner and keeps all the other doors shut. There is no kitchen door, however, so there is a sheet perpetually draped over the doorway. Doing the laundry today, I realized it was going to be over 80 degrees if I didn't so something, so first I turned on the AC. Then, ashamed, I thought it over, realized if I could close off the dryer, I would be better off, then hunted around for an insulating blanket. It only blocks half the doorway, but it is the half that heats slips through!

5) Not flushing. At the Rollet's house last summer, the upstairs toilet could go all day without being flushed. It got pretty damn yellow. I reckon, as long as I don't leave a turd in there, I can easily go two uses without having to flush.

6) Turning the water heater down. They say you only need your water heater to run at 120F. Mine was at 130F. Thanks, energy star suggestions!

Now that the initial sadness has released my limbs back into movement, I feel a little better! I even worked on my first hw assignment tonight (well, not very much on it xD) and made dinner for myself. I've gotten all my clothes put up and only have basically one more box of junk to sort out. I've got an idea for bus routeage and reduced my book price by $100.

Here are pictures of the apartment as it stands: (if I spell it appartement, realize that a certain amount of the brainspace necessary for spelling has been taken over by french spellings in lieu of english ones)
( YAYTIME )

So yeah, settling in pretty good.

previously.

I think I will be spending a lot of time texting this week. If you are willing to distract me from the gaping absense of stu and my home life, please comment. You don't really have to do much other than reply!

(there are some people who will get them regardless, but I'd like to cast my safety net plenty wide!)

I almost had 200 lj friends, but I decided it was time to prune. This isn't like what other people call pruning, it's just getting rid of accounts other people don't use anymore.

I took the time to prune my contacts lists on IM also. There were some who hadn't signed in for a year, who I couldn't remember who they were, etc, baleeted.

IM contact organization:

Basic division into groups by website I know them from: eoff, dolling, wofs, school. Obviously some of these groups are larger and have more active people than others.

Then people I really like to talk to/am/have been close with are in a group
Then a group for people I talk to often. They're all set to be visible when they're offline so I can find and leave them messages easily.

well, do you?!

http://forums.omgmygame.com

go join join join and post post post and write write write.

(here's looking at you, jackie, carabit, claudiall, fairsmithchild, etc)

It took me until today to catch up with lj posts from when I was gone. Now I have to start reading to catch up on what I missed while I was catching up.

I felt like such a tard commenting on things from the 8th, but you know, things happen.

I spent today/last night making the house, the car a better place after their week-long neglect. The dog and the carpet and the floor got vacuumed (mussie loves this), the dog got washed and brushed (he has so much hair), the yard mowed, the oil changed, tires rotated, car washed, car vacuumed, car dusted/armor-alled, and there's still so much to do.

Summer school terrifies me for a number of reasons--

I won't get a summer to myself. I guess you could say my summer has already happened, crammed into one week

I will be living by myself. No stu, no dorm. It's freaky and I don't know if I'll be able to feed myself. Well, and still manage classes.

Having to do class work without the safety net of the ME friends I've been accumulating or stu to make me study/do hw

Getting my fellowship to pay for summer living expenses.

At the worst, I'll lose weight, have to drop classes, and have to dip into my savings. Not exactly the most terrible thing that could happen to a person. That's a good way to think of it. I've already started logging my food for the summer. (I was doing it very good last summer then stopped when school started because I was so busy)

Oh yeah, final grades are up: four As and one B. My best college semester ever! It's nice to finally see some payback.

okay, I should be studying right now, but. . . I'll do it after this post.

If you don't keep up with my twitter, some people would say you're not missing much ;) but of course, I think otherwise, else I wouldn't use it.
Stu keeps hinting I should ship my tweets to LJ, but I find that practice to be pretty annoying, and I'm sure that if I did, he'd be the only one to read them, so stu, the answer here is to just go read it from there :p

If you keep up with my last.fm you might have noticed a severe increase in the amount of Kansas being played.

A little known fact about me is that Kansas provided a very large backbone to my childhood, starting roughly around the time we got internet at my house.

I spent the summer of 1999, maybe 2000, on talkcity chat listening to an eight-track recording of Point of Know Return on loop. All day long. That's the awesome thing about eight-track; you don't have to rewind anything.

If I wasn't on the computer, I might've had Best of Kansas in my portable cd player I got for Christmas. I didn't understand most of the songs on it, and they weren't quite as catchy as the ones on Point of Know Return, so I didn't listen to it quite as much.

Still, the last time I went home, two weeks ago or so, I had this urge to listen to Best of Kansas, so I brought mom's old cd back and listened to it in the car while we drove.

And then after that, I had to download point of know return.

I still know all these songs. It's very nice, slightly incredible, and has made me regress to my 10 year old state more than I can explain.

I've always built associations to time frames by the music I listened to then. I have trouble listening to one of my favorite Maroon 5 songs sometimes because I can't stop thinking about a certain unhappy night in France. Jupiter Sunrise makes me think of high school, of being newly in love with stu, etc

Kansas takes me back to a slightly paranoid time; I'm sure the lyrics in Point and Best of rubbed off on me.

Anyways, studying. *le sigh*