Mosquito bites don't leave bruises, do they?

I have infinity more cuts and scratches and lacerations from the time of my last post, thanks to Lola. She loves me harsh.

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
jume goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Silk Spectre.
baloki gives you 19 green lemon-flavoured gummy worms.
lekana gives you 1 milky white apple-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
lilredsarah tricks you! You get a scratched CD.
momijitsuki gives you 1 light blue grapefruit-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
mystickeeper gives you 2 tan lemon-flavoured gummy worms.
piepants tricks you! You lose 7 pieces of candy!
shifty_lynx tricks you! You get a rotten egg.
shiny_mcheiny gives you 11 mauve passionfruit-flavoured pieces of bubblegum.
shlupquack gives you 14 blue chocolate-flavoured wafers.
shoeshine_boy gives you 1 mottled green root beer-flavoured gummy worms.
jume ends up with 42 pieces of candy, a scratched CD, and a rotten egg.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

from protos and ann

There's this guy in the ME deptartment that I always walk by. Like I pass him everywhere. Are our lives diametrically opposed? Anyways I make it a point to smile at him everytime I walk by. Maybe sometime I'll find out his name. I've been meeting other older MEs at a startling rate lately. The classes are so easy to get out of sync and if you have to retake a class it gets worse. So I'm in classes with people who are close to graduating etc. As much as I'd like to have the luxury of taking as long as I like to finish school, I'm under contract.

I feel so relaxed now that my fluids test is over. I did four loads of laundry last night in lieu of studying.

Anyways, you may want to read the last half of this entry.

My grandma died. It's so queer to realize that I have no more maternal grandparents. It's queer to think that my mother doesn't have a mother. They talked on the phone daily. Perhaps I should talk to my mom daily now.

From the Courier:
Mary Alice Jones, 85, of Pottsville, went to be with the Lord on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2009, at her residence.
The daughter of Irvin and Coley McQuiston Peters, she was born June 26, 1924, in Monticello. She was a long time member of the Mars Hill Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Eastern Star. She enjoyed traveling, reading, sewing and crocheting. She was preceded in death by her parents; husband, Billy Warren Jones; one great-grandson, Mason Lee Cowan; and one brother Robert I Peters.
Survivors include one daughter, Kathryn Byrum and husband, Jimmy; three sons, Robert Jones and wife, Nina, William Jones and wife, Martha, and George Jones and wife, Kathrine; 12 grandchildren; 13 great-grandchildren; and one daughter-in-law, Doris Jones.
Memorial service will be held at a later date. Cremation arrangements are under the direction of Humphrey Funeral Service. Memorials may be made to a charity of choice.
Internet obituary and on-line guest book available at www.humphreyfuneral.com.

So, the seal on the front door is really shitty. Like, it's closed and I can see a speck of daylight down at the bottom, and I'm sitting on the couch.

Anyways, since the outside light keeps going out (we got these notices on the door saying DO NOT MESS WITH THE LIGHTS THEY ARE LANDLORD PROPERTY WE PAY ELECTRIC and of course, it stopped working immediately after that), if we have the living room light on at night, bugs are attracted to it, I guess. Or they sense the draft or something.

Anyways, at the beginning of summer, I'd see the occasional big spider. I decided to just let them go because they weren't going to do anything to me. They were definitely terrified of me.

Then, for the rest of the summer, there were these beetles. My hopes that the spider population would feast on the beetle plague were unfounded. In fact, I haven't seen any more big spiders, just tiny ones. (which I squish. They're not big enough to kill anything!) But I have to sweep out the bathroom and the front door area because for some reason, beetles only like to die on tile surfaces. They refuse to die on the carpet (which is pretty convenient).

And one night, particularly disturbing, I heard a clicking sound from the kitchen. I was in here by myself, and nothing was running. I decide it's my imagination, or next door, etc.

Next day, I'm smashing coke cans to recycle, and BAM, this guy shows up, making the same clicking/buzzing sound


I mildly freak out, never seen anything like this before, run it under the faucet to wash the bug back into the can, it tries to crawl out, so I smash it with something, then crunch the can xD

Anyways, right now, it's crickets. There are freaking crickets everywhere. Stu always has to kill a couple before he takes a shower, so there are many corpses behind the bathroom scales, in the corner behind the door, etc. There are many corpses by the front door, as well.

Needless to say, I'm kinda interested to see if any others make it before frost.

And I want to get that freaking gap sealed before it turns freezing cold.

They say my account is going to be hijacked. I get that warning every time I log in. I love getting grandfathered in on insecure passwords.


Anyways.

I kinda like where my life is right now.

My job is easy. I'm sure I'll get busier as their homework gets harder, maybe after their first test xD But I don't foresee it getting reaaaaally bad. Especially not on friday afternoons xD

Apartment life is going pretty well. Leo fits in about how we expected. It's messy, and I feel too sick to clean right now, but I'll get around to it.

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop with regards to classes. Programming is still easy; circuits is a little confusing, but I got the hw done, MDC hasn't really started yet, and I'm starting to worry a little bit. The professor is notoriously bad at timing (I had him this summer, and I've heard the exact same thing from everyone else who has taken his class), so it'll probably be hellish in about a month. Lab is a mix of fascinating background info, tedious lab work, and confusing problems. I haven't done hardly any Fluids homework, nor has the prof mentioned a test. ho snap.

But I think I can handle it.

I'm still reading The Three Musketeers. It's getting really good :D

I've been sick all week (not swine flu; I'm not running a fever. Maybe sinus infection or something? I'm having some crazy drainage). I thought I was getting an ailment of the ladyparts, but it seems to have been nipped in the bud. phew.

There's only a couple of dark spots right now. The first is private, and the other is my dear old grandma.

The story of how she got to where she is right now is really too long to tell. It started last summer, and health problems, and self-identity, and things have all lead her to this bed in the hospital. Dad says hospice care is coming in to take care of her every day (well, maybe every day, he didn't specify). Stu and I went with my parents last week-end to visit her. She could hardly speak for having to breathe so laboriously and constantly wetting her lips with a wet washcloth. They said that was much improved over the last time they'd visited.

I think she wants to die. I think she doesn't really want to say it aloud because she doesn't want to hear the family's responses, but she's stopped taking a lot of her medications, eats very little, etc.

I've asked my dad, and he says he and mom haven't been pressuring her to keep living. Maybe I sound like a frigid monster, but I think that a 85 year old woman has earned the right to dictate how her life will play out. Many 85 year olds don't have the luxuries that she has had. Some of them are living quietly in their homes, where no one calls them, no one visits, they have no animals to love. Some are living oblivious in nursing homes. They no longer know who visits them, what their own lives were like, who they have loved.

Grandma Mary is a pretty short lady. I'm not for sure, but I think she's like 5'2" or so. But she was a child of the Depression, and like a lot of her fellows, is stuffed to the brim with stubborn tenacity. I don't think she likes not being able to take care of herself, but it's at the point now that she just isn't able to.

How terrifying it must be to watch your body fail as you're trapped inside of it.

The Chemical Brothers - Hold Tight London: 208 plays
Jim Croce - A Long Time Ago: 145 plays
DJ Satomi - Waves: 128 plays
Elliott Smith - Bottle Up and Explode!: 126 plays
Françoise Hardy - Mon Ami Le Rose: 78 plays

Anyways, I'm grateful to everyone who indulged me in my last post. Thank you very much <3

Just wanted to whore this picture out one more time xD

Yesterday, I was in the throes of a massive allergy attack. Even after an afternoon nap, I had a hard time staying away through dinner and a movie, but somehow I managed.

We'd gotten a ruby tuesday coupon in the mail that week, so we decided to end PG's trip with a bang; went to RT for dinner and came back to the apartment to watch Dogma. Another movie I'm glad I can enjoy now :]

After the movie, we had a short pillow fight, then went out on the front step to smoke Blacks and drink the last of the mudslide. It was so pleasant, just hanging out with them, with an appropriate level of chemical alteration.

That's about as long as I could last, however. PG's bus was to leave at noon today, and by then it was 2am. Stu had filled me full of benadryl (I feel a lot better today; I've hardly sneezed at all) so I about stumbled into bed.

I guess I have simple tastes. Our housemate, Leo, went to another friend's party; we were invited, but it would've been a little awkward to bring or leave our guest (haiaznasl?). We had all the excitement I really care for in a party, anyways.

---

I have a job tutoring for the ME department. I guess I should brush up on my Thermodynamics. It seems so impossible that I could be good enough to teach others, but then I think back to the tutors I've had and how they've been inept sometimes, and I think back to what my Diff E prof said about his tutoring experience; he started off terrible at linear algebra, but was excellent at it at the end.

I'm a little concerned by how much time this will suck up, but I guess I can manage for a semester. Stu did it last year. We'll see. It's 9 hours a week, spread across four days.

Just look at all these awesome songs
SHADOW DANCER - PALMS OUT SOUNDS OF SUMMER MIX - JULY 2009

BECK // Alcohol
RHYTHM & SOUND // No Partial
THE BUGGLES // I Love You (Miss Robot)
ULRICH SCHNAUSS // Wherever You Are
BANDULU // Selah
μ-ZIQ vs. THE AUTEURS // Underground Movies
THE SABRES OF PARADISE // Return Of Carter
RIC OCASEK // Jimmy Jimmy
THE FLAMING LIPS // Are You A Hypnotist??
HALF COUSIN // Tiles
JONNY L // I Let U
THE CARS // Panorama
AIR // Mike Mills
JON BRION // So Now Then
BROADWAY PROJECT // Revolution Waltz
JEAN MICHEL JARRE // Ethnicolor II
RED SNAPPER // Crusoe Takes A Trip
QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE // No One Knows
MOTORBASS // Fabulous
THE CLASH // Guns Of Brixton
PLAID // Coat
HERBIE HANCOCK // Chameleon
MIKE & RICH // The Sound Of Beady Eyes
ULTRAMARINE // British Summertime
THE POLYPHONIC SPREE // Soldier Girl
BRIAN ENO // Signals
FRIDGE // Cut Up Piano & Xylophone
TUNNG // Bullets
PETER GABRIEL // Games Without Frontiers
PAVEMENT // Summer Babe
BEASTIE BOYS // Jimmy James
BOARDS OF CANADA // In A Beautiful Place In The Country
THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT // Mammagamma (Instrumental Version)
JUNIOR WALKER & THE ALL-STARS // What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)?
DJ KRUSH // Meiso (DJ SHADOW Klub Mix)
REPEAT // Drifting Sounds Of Wikiki
INCOGNITO // Out Of The Storm (CARL CRAIG's Planet E Special Mix)
PAUL GIOVANNI & MAGNET // Willow's Song
SQUAREPUSHER // Tetra-Sync
GRANDADDY // The Warming Sun
MASSIVE ATTACK // Unfinished Sympathy
DOVES // There Goes The Fear
THE BYRDS // Eight Miles High
SIMIAN // One Dimension
RELOAD // Le Soliel Et La Mer (GLOBAL COMMUNICATION Remix)
BOLA // Forcasa 3
DIOS // Just Another Girl

I was around!

(I heard this on kxua last weekend and it was pretty awesome. Or I think I heard it on kxua. The DJ mentioned it, but I'm not good at realizing if they're talking about the last track or previous ones, etc)

link: http://palmsout.blogspot.com/2009/07/sounds-of-summer-12-shadow-dancer.html

I feel so messed up right now that it's ridiculous.
( Read more... )

Your goal: type an entire LJ entry while touch typing. No eyes, no one spotting you for typos. Just your fingers and the cool feel of keys beneath your skin. A long drive on a cool night with the wind in your hair, the stars shining bright, looking for nowhere to go, content with being alone. Perfect.

I've been driving all night, m hand's wet on the wheel
THere's a cvoice in my head that drives my heel.
It's my baby calling says she needs me here.
And it's a half past four and I'm shifting gears.

I guess I could continue typing things, but I'm not sure what to say. I'm trying to drink a cup of coffee right now that has a reese's cup dropped into it. So far, no peanut butter coffee.

Reese's cups do bring out the conspiracy theorist in my dad though. He confided in me that he has a suspicion that manufacturers have shares in paper/plastics companies as well as landfills.

I asked him if he were serious, and he said no, he was just trying to see if I was functioning on a critical level yet this morning.

Thanks dad!

This one seemed particularly relevant, considering the nick I was using.
[23:03:22] <Hermione Granger> dude
[23:03:23] <Hermione Granger> it's canon
[23:03:25] <Hermione Granger> right there
[23:03:26] <Utamaru> Hermione Granger: I suggest you seek professional help, as you don't seem to realize that *you* are Right!

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 :)