October Unprocessed

So this is going to sound kinda weird, but food's been on my mind a lot this week.

It's stemmed mostly wanting to be healthy, and after two weeks of tracking what I eat, realizing that I have significantly worse habits than I'd thought.

Full of determination, I headed to the grocery store to pick up lots of fruits and veggies and lean, healthy meat.... And cringed the entire time because living mostly off carbs has gotten me accustomed to having a very, very low grocery bill. Then, when my week got a little crazy, I ended up not even eating most of it yet. It hasn't gone bad or anything, but I feel a double guilt trip: a) I haven't eaten it yet, and I should, but also b) it's more expensive than I'm used to, so I also want to make it last longer (did you notice how those two are in direct opposition to each other?)

Since I'm also saving up to move in a few months, it started to feel like I need to make a choice between being healthy and feeling financially secure. After a bit of contemplation and some nice, deep breaths, I headed over to Poor Girl Eats Well and Budget Bytes to get some ideas for how to eat cheaply and still healthily.

That calmed me down a lot, since I realized that it's possible to both be healthy and not break the bank. Not too long after that, I found October Unprocessed, a challenge to go the entire month of October without processed foods and decided to go for it.

It was funny, my first thought was that it would be fairly easy since I make a lot of my food at home. Then I spent the last couple of days checking labels on things I use - Cheerios, ketchup, bread, etc - and found that they all have ingredients that I don't have access to, everything ranging from "natural flavors" to words I can't even sound out, which by the challenge's definition makes them out of bounds (the suggested rule is that if you couldn't recreate the item in your own kitchen with all of the ingredients listed, it counts as processed) and I've had the dawning realization that this is going to be harder than I thought.

Other than that, not too much has been going on. I started up my craft blog and have a whopping 1 post and 1 email subscriber. I'm working on a couple projects to put up in my spare time, including a paint chip mosaic table. This should be interesting :)

What I've been upto

What have I been up to... Hmmm. I started back at college about three or four weeks ago so I've had plenty of craziness with that trying to get back into the swing of things with deadlines and doing work and getting up before noon. I also used a large chunk of my loan and saving splashing out on a MacBook for college too and I'm glad I did because it is so much faster than my old laptop.

Something I'm really excited about is my friend and I are working on a short graphic story for a competition. I'm doing the artwork and he is doing the writing part of it. It's really great because we've been saying that we're going to work on something together for a while now and never really done anything. We had no idea what we were going to do so we went for coffee and batted ideas around and ended up with thumbnails for our four pages by the end of that one meeting. I am hoping to have it all finished by the end of the week, which is a tight deadline but I think I can make it.

I'm hoping if the graphic novel thing works out well that I could hopefully make some sort of career out of it but I'm pretty nervous about it because I don't really read comics and I didn't read them growing up, so I always kind of feel like a noob when it comes to that sort of thing. But I guess if we place anywhere in this competition I'll probably give me the confidence to continue.

I guess that's all I've really been up to, it seems like so much less when it's all written down.

Where I'm At

As of the beginning of September, I moved back out of my parents' basement and returned to Halifax.  This is a good thing.  I love my parents, and it's not like they're strict or even tried to control my life in any way at all, but after being independent for several years, moving back in with them was kind of brutal.  So I'm glad to be back out on my own.

Most of friends graduated with me last year, and have moved away to jobs/further education in other parts of the province/country/world, including both of my roommates.  And all of the friends who did stick around kept the same living arrangements as they had before, which left me kind of stuck for housing options.  I considered living completely on my own, and that was always the back-up plan, but I'm scared that if I lived alone I would just become a complete hermit, and never leave home except to go to class, and talk to myself all the time, and fall out of touch with all of my friends, and just generally not be in a good state of mental health.  So instead I moved into a house where all the rooms are rented out separately, meaning that I now live with three total strangers.  Well, I guess they're not entirely strangers any more, since we've lived together for a few weeks, but it's still weird.  They're all really nice, but it still seems odd to be living with them.  Living with strangers is just a completely different way of life than living with friends (or parents).

I love the house, though.  It's bigger than my old apartment, and it's above ground instead of in a basement, so having enormous windows in my room feels like such a luxury and I love it.  Also there's a nice backyard with a deck, and the "furnished downstairs" includes a PIANO in the dining room, which is really exciting.  Plus it's closer to campus than my old place, which is nice (and will be even nicer once winter hits, I'm sure).

Of course, the reason I'm back in Halifax at all is because I've just started law school, which is also weird.  I can't even decide yet whether or not I like it.  It's just all so completely different than anything I've studied before that it's hard to get my head wrapped around it.  On the bright side, I was sort of expecting the profs to be strict and stern but they're totally just regular profs, and the other students aren't as competitive and snobby as I was afraid they would be, so that's all good.

Other than that, at the end of summer my friends and I went on our annual backwoods camping trip, which was excellent, and we went for five days instead of just three like we usually do, so it was extra-excellent.  This past weekend I went rock-climbing for the first time, which was fun but also difficult and somewhat frustrating.  I would really like to go again, because by the time I felt like I was starting to figure out the strategy and technique side of it, I was getting too physically tired to actually do it.  Also this weekend I went to the Word on the Street Festival and appreciated all the books and all the book/writing/literacy related organizations and all the people being interested in and excited about books, and I picked up a copy of Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which I'm really excited to start reading.

I think that is everything important (and a bunch of things that aren't).

Late Post

This one is long guys.

I'm really sorry about about being late with this.

I'm pretty sure this is a free week, right? Time to talk about what's been going on lately. Well, things have been pretty unpleasant and confusing for me ever since around late March/early April this year. And I feel comfortable enough to talk to you guys about it.

So I got really sick early this year and neglected to tell anyone about it. I spent over a month in some really bad pain and it wasn't until May that I told anyone and about two weeks later that I got a fever of 104˚F and was made to see my physician.

But the reason I don't go to doctors is because I'm absolutely terrified of them. I had a major anxiety attack when my physician told me I should drive over to the emergency room just so that they could do some blood tests and a possible scan just to be more accurate than they could at the local clinic. But the idea of the hospital sent me to hysterics and I was given Ativan just so I could enter the hospital without freaking.

I was just planning to go for maybe a total of three hours, they would take maybe two samples of blood and then I could go home. But instead I got a drive-by IV and was left to sit in the hall for 12 hours, they took 15 samples of blood. When they finally told me I could leave and that they had diagnosed me with something, the nurse noticed that I really did have a fever of 104 and they told me I couldn't leave. First, they said I could leave in the morning, then they said I could leave the next day, but it ended up being a week and they still kept trying to have me stay longer. It was a horrible anxiety filled, painful time for me there.

All that was back in May, but I'm still sick now and in therapy to deal with the anxiety that I have over everything and anything medical so that I can actually let the doctors diagnose what I may or may not have. I know that I need to get over this and see a doctor but it's just incredibly hard and mortifying for me, people I know keep trying to just talk me out of the fear and the anxiety but if it were as simple a conversation, I wouldn't need to be in therapy for it.

Sorry if I seem like a whining mess to you now. I thought if I wrote about it I'd feel more comfortable about it.

On the bright-side of everything I went to King Richard's Faire over the weekend. I loved all the costumes and event there. I went to a costume shop and tried on one of the corsets. Not the lingerie "sexy" corsets. They were all really beautiful and made in very vintage styles. It felt really weird, I was not used to the tightness of it but it wasn't painful like I've heard them to be characterized. Ridiculously expensive though they are, I'm thinking about saving up for one for cosplay purposes. Particularly era related ones and steampunk.

Also, while I was there, I got this really beautiful journal. It was handmade and leather-bound with a tiger's eye stone in the center of the cover. It's got really nice fabric based paper and just feels great. I can't bring myself to write in it because it's really gorgeous. I need to take a picture of it for you guys.

That's all, I needed to talk about some stuff that was bothering me but I wanted to talk about something that made me happy too.

TLDR

I've been sick and can't confront it. I also got a cool journal.

My first painted model

Late last week I happened upon a DIY project I wanted to finish to show you guys this week, but unfortunately it's taking waaaaay longer than I expected. Seems like that always happens...

Anywho, instead I'd like to show you something else I'm proud of - the first model I ever painted.

I spent most of the day before I painted it fiddling with palette creators, never really happy with what I was coming up with. Finally, I copped out and settled for one of my favorite color schemes: purple, blue and orange (or, if you'd like to get technical: red-violet, blue-violet, and red-orange).

If you're thinking of the three colors as the ones you find in the rainbow, that's a really loud combination, but when they're muted, tinted, and/or desaturated, it can end up looking really interesting.

I was a bit worried about choosing to make her skin blue, since it wasn't too long after a particularly popular movie with scantily clad blue people came out, but I think it works. It's tinted and grayed out enough that she doesn't look like a Na'vi.

I had a lot of help painting it since I was with several other people, but this was really fun to do, and I even got to do a wash and some dry brushing. Even with her base showing some white (whoops!) I'm really proud of this one.

True Beauty

For this week's topic, I'm going to share a story that I wrote.  It's from almost five years ago (though I edited/improved it last year) but I still think that it is one of my best pieces, which is why I'm proud of it.

            He was a beautiful man.  His skin was tanned bronze, his golden hair shone like the sun, and his green eyes were as bright as the ocean at midday.  He was like a young Apollo.

            We met on the bus.  I was on my way to work.  He was going to the hospital.  His brother had leukemia.

            He told me his name was Matt.  I told him mine was Salacia.  It isn’t.  I wanted him to remember me.

            Each Thursday, we shared our morning commute.  We talked for the forty-five minute ride, telling each other anecdotes from our weeks.

            Sometimes he shared cookies with me.  They were from the bakery below his apartment.  They were very crumbly.  They were very good.

            It rained, once.  It was ten steps from my stop to my office.  It was ten minutes from his stop to the hospital.  I gave him my umbrella.

            The next week, he wasn’t there.  An old lady sat in his usual seat.  She smiled when I sat down, and asked if I wanted to see pictures of her grandson.  I said no.

            Where could he be?  Maybe he had moved away.  Maybe he had switched bus routes to avoid the annoying woman with the weird name.  Maybe he had the flu.  Maybe he’d be back next week.

            He wasn’t back the next week.  Or the next.

            I bought a new umbrella.  It was green.

            He was an ugly man.  His skin was pale and sallow, his brown hair hung limply, and his grey eyes were as dark as cobwebs.  He was like a young Hephaestus.

            We met on the bus.  I was on my way to work, fretting already about the day ahead.  So was he.

            He told me his name was Anthony.  I told him mine was Sally.  I didn’t care if he remembered me.

            Every day, we shared our morning commute.  We barely found words to fill the time, but those we spoke were always the most important ones.

            Usually he brought coffee.  I had my own.  It came from the Tim Horton’s on my corner.  It was very hot.  It was very good.

            It rained, once.  From my stop to my office building was a ten step walk.  It was ten more to his.  I walked with him, sharing my umbrella.

            The next day, he was still there.  He sat in his usual seat.  He smiled when I sat down next to him, and asked if I wanted to go out for coffee.  I said yes.

Where would this lead?  Maybe I would gain a coffee buddy.  Maybe we would date.  Maybe it would last a while.

            It lasted the next year.  And the next.

            I bought a new dress.  It was white.

I saw him once, at the café.  I said hello.  He returned the greeting.

His brother had died.  He hadn’t needed the bus anymore.  I sympathized with his loss.  It was a long time ago, now. 

We chatted about the weather, and about the bus.  The bakery had closed.  He made his own cookies now.  They were very crumbly.  They weren’t very good.

He commented on my wedding ring.  I smiled sheepishly.  He showed me his.  I laughed.

There was silence.  His coffee was gone; he paid his bill.  He gave me his business card and said he’d see me around.  He went home.  I never saw him again.

I went home to Anthony.  I wrapped my arms around him, and I cried.  I cried because he was perfect and beautiful.  I cried because I loved him.

proudness

I have no idea what I've created that I'm really proud of. So I'm going to talk about some things I've done that I'm sort of proud of while I think about this.

I have some major fears and anxieties that I have to deal with and go to therapy for. One of them is a fear of heights. But I went on a trip with one of my best friends for her eighteenth birthday present to Six Flags, and her favorite ride was the Bizarro, which is massively high and frightening to me. But I managed to handle my fear and anxiety for her that day and go on it with her. So I'm a little proud of being able to do that with her.

Okay, figured it out. I'm really proud of my weeping angel cosplay from earlier this year. It took ages to make and I did get a lot of help on it because in need help with the sewing process, but painting the costume and carving and painting the wings were some of the processes that I think really helped make the cosplay and I put so much effort into it I'm glad it came out semi-decent for the convention (The wig didn't get enough grey paint on it). While it was basically a one-time deal (tons of face paint gone and a broken harness by the end of the weekend), I learned enough to make it ten times better in the future. I also learned that I really want to make more cosplays from scratch.

I'm know I already posted pictures of it in a post a long time ago, here's another.


At this point in the day my gloves had gotten wrinkly.



So that's what I'm proud of.

Ready, Set, Nerd!

(Very sorry for being late. Better late than never?)

Here's what I bring to the Nerd Off table:

I may have an obsession with River Song from Doctor Who. I realize that some people have been irritated with how much emphasis has been put on her this season, but I'm fascinated by her story and love getting more bits and pieces of it. She may well be my favorite character. Also Doctor Who related, I have a lovely papercraft TARDIS a friend made for me that sits on my desk.

I'm a knitting nerd, both in what I make (I'm currently up to three Jayne hats and a wizard hat), and with my enjoyment of it. I've been known to occasionally look at swatches of stitching for long periods of time, mumbling "it's so pretty."


In more stereotypical nerd-dom, I've been playing D&D for a little over a year now. I've really enjoyed it, and it would be hard for me to go back to playing MMORPGs. I'm not knocking the companionship you can have with people from a guild, but I really like getting to hang out with the people I'm playing with face-to-face (it also makes it much easier to decode meaning since I can see body language and hear tone of voice).

I'm also pretty nerdy with my cooking and baking, especially the latter. I really like figuring out how things work, even if I don't ever end up making them from scratch again, and I've spent pretty significant amounts of time trying to make different sorts of artisan bread and pastry.

As I mentioned in my last post, I also really love reading. Or in a more general sense, I love stories. One of my favorite classes in high school was Advanced Placement U.S. History, because our teacher helped us see it as a story rather than segmented data about people and years. This story came complete with recurring characters and themes, as well as self-referential points as people tried to correct past mistakes (often over-correcting).

As for works of fiction, I just about grew up hanging out in the library and read a good chunk of their books. While I'm not a fan of stories that have a final "gotchya!" moment where something's revealed that no one could have predicted, I do like stories that surprise me. Often when starting a book, within the first chapter or two I usually have an idea of what that story might look like based on similar ones I've read before. When the story mixes it up on me, I'm pleasantly surprised.

And now, for my not-so-nerdy things. For one, I am awful at video games. I like playing them a little at a time, but generally by the time I come back around to play them again I've lost any skill I might've gained and end up back where I started.

My second one needs a little bit of explaining. I realize that there are lots of female nerds and geeks who've put up with clerks at game stores being patronizing and assuming they were buying things for their boyfriend, or only there because of a male. So when, on occasion, I agree to go to a Games Workshop (the people who put out Warhammer) with the guy I'm dating, I always feel a little guilty because I'm living up to that stereotype. Sure, there are things I'm interested in looking at there since they have some interesting models, but I have no inclination to play Warhammer and wouldn't go into that store if it was just me.

Nerd on!

I think for me the thing I am most nerdy about is Harry Potter and I think it has gotten worse over the years. I remember when I had just began to read the books I would take them everywhere with, I think I have a photo somewhere of me when I was 10 in Italy reading The Prisoner Of Azkaban. This summer I went to the midnight showing of Deathly Hallows Part II with a group of nerdfighters dressed up wearing my shirt and Gryffindor tie, it was unfortunately too hot for me to wear my Gryffindor hat my mum knitted for me though. I also spent hours when Pottermore first turned up trying to submit my email to get early entry. When it came to getting sorted I was so scared I was going to make it into Gryffindor, so many people have said I am more of a Huffelpuff but they were wrong.

Maths is something that I really liked when I was at school. Probably because I was quite good at it but since I'm doing an art course now at college I don't really do any sort of maths now. In fact I can barley remember anything I learnt, but at the time I really like all the long complicated equations and the feeling when you get them right.

I'm also pretty nerdy about art supplies , particularly paper, I'm always searching for the perfect watercolour paper. I like the different weights and grain paper has. Quite a lot of the paper I end up buy ends up in a pile not used because it's too nice to use and I'm scared to use it.

And this the part where I can't think of any more nerdy things about myself and I can't tell if it's because there are no more nerdy things about me or if I'm so nerdy I think it's normal.

Nerdin' it up!

I adore puzzles.  I spend a bunch of my free time doing crosswords, sudoku puzzles, kakuro puzzles, hanjie... pretty much any type of puzzle is cool with me.  When I was studying for the LSAT, I actually really enjoyed doing the Logic Games sections (questions like "6 people have to sit around a table, A can't be next to B, C has to be by E, etc.).

I really like math.  Since I'm not actually studying it in university I don't get to do very much interesting math any more, which makes me sad, but when I was in high school I was in the Math League, and it was so much fun, no joke.  We just had the best time.  Plus, my team made it to Provincials!

I think puns are hilarious, and we all know that puns are the nerdiest type of joke.  I'm not particularly good at coming up with them, but I always feel like I laugh way more than is appropriate whenever someone else makes one.  I also tend to catch unintentional puns even when no one else notices them at all.

I like to learn about really obscure/bizarre history.  For example, I've read a ton of Wikipedia articles about historical elephants, cryptids, feral children, conjoined twins, and sideshow performers, amongst other things.

I read some pretty nerdy fantasy novels.  Aside from the standard ones like The Lord of the Rings or Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, I have read a ton of Dragonlance books, as well as many from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series.  Possibly my most obscure fantasy novel obsession is Robert Holdstock's Ryhope Wood series, which I read most of when I was in high school, and was always upset that my local library didn't have all the books in the series.  Since then, they have gotten rid of some of them, rather than acquiring the missing ones, and it upsets me that I can no longer even re-read them, let alone finish the series.  I realize this is probably for a good reason like they were lost or stolen or damaged or something, but still.  Still.

Also I am a huge nerd about board games.  I love board games!  Some of my favourites are Ticket to Ride, Scattergories, and Identity Crisis.  This past summer I played a bunch of retro games from the 70s that one of my friends borrowed from his grandfather, and they were fantastic.  Stop Thief was especially good, it has an 'electronic crime scanner' and it is just endlessly amusing.

I have two nerdy pursuits where I am definitely out-nerded, but I really enjoy them and would like to become better at them: Dungeons & Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering.  I played DnD a little bit in my first year of university, but my group was kind of disorganized and awful, so it wasn't that great, but this past Christmas one of my friends from back home put together a game for a few of us, and it was a lot of fun.  The same friend also has gotten really into Magic lately, and he's been teaching the rest of us how to play, and I've enjoyed it so much that it has made me want my very own deck!

Nerd off

So going on the "Nerd Off" theme. I hope I'm nerdy enough for this.

I like to look up things like the Higgs Boson in my free time as well as other physics related terms one may not come across in an introductory class. I do this because I think it's really fun and interesting. Physics, chem and bio jokes tend to be my favorite kinds of jokes. But not math jokes, those aren't funny at all.

I spend a lot of time trying to find clothes from the Victorian era, I love the fashion styles, one day when I learn how to sew I'll probably make some dresses. Generally, I just really like things from 100 years or more in the past, clothes, buildings, etc. I'm going to live in a really old house one day and I hope to only write with quills and ink bottles. I don't really know if that's nerdy. I like old things and I like learning about them and I think it

Along with an obsession for really vintage fashions I also love learning the odd history tidbits. I hate history class but I like collecting facts about events from all over the world that no one else would know. Just completely random history facts.

I am a total sci-fi nerd. I love cosplaying sci-fi characters. So far I've only done Doctor Who characters like the fourth doctor and the weeping angels. I plan to do the Silence and the creepy dolls from "Night Terrors" soon as I figure out how to go about making those. One day I'll cosplay Nurse Chapel from Star Trek TOS, she's one of my favorite characters and I don't support the Spock/Uhura pairing the revamp decided upon. Chapel and Spock had something going on in the original series, Uhura and Spock only had non-serious flirtatious comments in something like two episodes.

Slight rant. Sorry.

I just recently got into Battlestar Galactica, and I'm loving the new series. I have to go check out the older series. Other than those I'm really picky about what sci-fi I watch, it has to be of high quality for me to consider it and there are just too many things that through random dates and ridiculous plots at the viewer or reader. Okay, the Star Trek dates were sort of random but there was a lot of effort into what their stories were about and that made up for a lot of the cheesy-ness, the original series confronted controversial issues of politics and civil rights during the sixties through science fiction and that's a pretty awesome thing.

You can tell I'm a big Star Trek fan.

I guess I'm a bit of a folklore and fairytale nerd as well. I like reading stories and origins of mythical creatures. I also get a little peeved when people don't recognize that sirens are bird women and mermaids are fish women. in addition to mythical creatures I really enjoy reading about the Norse gods.

So I really like sciency things and I can get pretty nerdy about old things, architecture, history, fashion, society views. But I'm seriously out nerded in everything too, I love the past, I love history and like I said before anything from and about the Victorian era but there are tons of people who know so much more than I do and love it way more than I do.

I also love video games, but I can hardly ever play them, consequently I am horrible at them, but it doesn't stop me from daydreaming I can be good. I may love sci-fi and definitely cosplaying, but there are even still, people far more interested and more skilled at the cosplay aspect than I am. I'm still new at creating my own costumes.

Where I'd like to be in life

When I started thinking about this week's theme, my initial reaction was, "I dunno, what do I want?", so I decided to backwards engineer this list by thinking about what my ideal life would look like, and then deciding what things I would need to get there.

1. (a continued) social life. While I have a small group of close friends - which is the way I like it - with me moving in a few months most of those relationships will be a little trickier to maintain, and I won't have much of any social network starting in this new city. So I'd like to make sure I find new people to hang out with. This is both exciting and a nerve-wracking. I'm a bit awkward. And as I pointed out last week, I've surrounded myself with people who I can take at face value and not have to second guess their intentions, so as I move into a new social circle that might cause some confusion and misunderstanding. I may try to find a new Dungeons and Dragons group, but even that's rife with possible problems; this isn't like a guild in World of Warcraft where you can hide behind a screen, since you're interacting in person with another 4-5 people, you have to actually be able to get along with all of them.

2. A BIG move. As much as a big deal as I'm making about moving, that's only about an hour and a half away, and it's a city I'm decently familiar with even if I don't have many acquaintances. I'd really like to move a significant distance sometime in the next few years, though exactly to where I don't know yet. Definitely a city, but I'd like for it to be farther from home; after living, working, and going to school in a rural area for 21 years, it's definitely time for a change.

3. Direction. As with Katie, I feel somewhat drift less right now. I'm not entirely sure I want to do this job for the rest of my life, though it's fulfilling for now, and I'm already starting to get people asking me whether this is "it" for my career. I don't know? It'll probably be something along these lines, but who knows where I'll end up or what I'll be doing in 10 years. For now, I'm okay working this job, since I think it's cultivating useful skills (even if those are just people skills and practice working in an office), but at some point I'll need to figure out if this is what I want to do with my life, and if I'm even good at it; I've only been at this for about three months, so it's hard to predict how skillful I might be in the future.

4. Inventive creativity. This one is more specific than simply wanting to do more creative endeavors. I'm at the point in some of my hobbies - most notably knitting and baking - where I feel like it would be possible for me to create some of my own designs/recipes, but it's just so much easier to follow someone else's directions. I'm not even sure what I might make would be any good. I've been debating transitioning from my personal blog into a craft blog, but I have all sorts of qualms; I'm not good enough, I don't have enough time, why even bother when there are so many others out there.... But one of my core driving factors is that I love finding out how something works or how to do something and sharing that with someone else. It's why teaching was so appealing, it's part of why I like my current job, and that's part of why blogging interests me. There may just come a point where I need to suck it up and give it a shot, doing so because I enjoy the process and not just to get pageviews.

5. Fiction. I've realized that I am generally happier when I have something to read or watch. Specifically, a work of fiction. Whether it's Terry Pratchett or a sci-fi book borrowed from a friend, I think the draw is that it takes me out of my everyday routine and reminds me that there are other stories out there (a.k.a. not everything revolves around me). Fiction reminds me forces me out of my little bubble to remind me that I really am very tiny in this universe, and also sparks my imagination. What if Lord of the Rings was gritty and (semi) realistic? Or if in a galactic empire, there was a substance required for all space travel that was produced on one small, desolate desert planet where efforts to alter the ecosystem could wipe out the supply? What if hobgoblins, trolls, dwarves, vampires, zombies and magic exist all on the same planet and, specifically, all within a single metropolitan city? What if sexism was reversed and we were genetically engineered to reproduce through cloning with only slight aid from males, so that males and people born through traditional sex where oppressed minorities (and even better, what happens when a male from Earth shows up?) All of these have fascinating possibilities.*

So... those are things I need in my life. Some may be hard to find, others as simple as picking up a book.

*By the way, in case you're interested, those were simplified summaries of Game of Thrones, Dune, any of Terry Pratchett's books but especially the Watch series, and Glory Season, which I'm only partially through and having trouble putting down to do anything productive.

Got to get you into my life

I've tried very hard not to make all of the things on this list the opposites of the things I said last week that I wanted to eliminate; I think I managed to succeed at least somewhat.

1.  Passion.  I've noticed over the last few years that I don't really have anything that I'm passionate about any more.  I'm not sure why, I just haven't found anything that truly interests me enough for me to feel strongly about for a long time.  I'm not sure how to make passion a part of my life.  I guess I just have to keep trying new things until I find something that works for me.

2.  Direction.  This is pretty related to the above issue, but I don't really know where I'm going with my life.  I know I'm only 21 and I still have tons of time to figure it out, but last year when I was graduating it just felt like so many of my friends knew what they were doing at least for the immediate future, and I'm still not really sure.  I mean, I'm going to law school and all, but I really have no idea whether that's what I actually want to be doing.  I feel kind of lost.  Again, I really don't know what I can do to fix this.

3.  Creativity.  I feel like I've been a little creatively stifled lately.  Part of this is because I don't make enough time for it.  Also, most of my IRL friends are not really creative types, so I don't have people to bounce ideas off of and brainstorm with and collaborate with, or any of that stuff.  I'm going to try really hard to make time to be creative, even if it's only half an hour a day, that would be better than the zero hours I do now.  I've also been trying to get involved in some creative projects online, although Your Pants being down again has put a lot of that on hold.

4.  Fitness.  I'm really not in the best shape, and I know that physical activity helps reduce stress and increase energy and improves sleep quality and all of those wonderful things, so I know I should do it more, but it's just really hard to actually do it.  I took up running this summer so that I could get in shape and then going for a run or something when I was busy wouldn't seem like such a hardship, but I wasn't very motivated about it, so I only made minor improvements.  I should probably join one of the free fitness classes at the university gym, I guess.

5.  Sleeeeeeeeep.  Okay so this is actually mostly a lazy cop-out because I'm tired and I had a really long day and so sleep is something that I want right now but not necessarily in general.  However, with another year of university starting up, I can't help but feel that this will be all too true in the very near future.  I will get this thing in my life by going to bed! ...soon.

PS - Mentioning Your Pants in this post made me remember that we still haven't done anything about getting a new Thursday person.  Obviously this isn't a good time for it, seeing as Your Pants are down, but yeah.  Just thought I'd bring that up.

5 things I'd like to eliminate + 1 rant

1. Drama - Particularly recently, I've noticed that there are people around me who always have extra drama, and seem incapable of solving their own interpersonal problems without and intermediary. Some of these people are family members, so while I certainly can't be rid of the person (and I wouldn't anyway, since that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater), but I can surround myself with people where that isn't an issue. It's really freeing to not have to second-guess what the people closest to me say and do, and be able to take them at face value.

I should probably note, by drama I'm not talking about people worrying over big life issues (paying the bills, getting/keeping a job, etc) I'm talking about things like - and this is a real example - someone getting pissed because for someone else's birthday, a third party wants to go to dinner at a place 20 minutes away and insists that it's closer for everyone, and then complaining about it for a good half an hour and needing two people to calm everyone down and get things worked out.

2. Excess craft supplies - Oh man, this one's really hard, and it's been a big temptation lately. I keep a pretty good sized "project bag", where anything in that bag is something I can work on, and I have to wait until I finish one project before I can put another in. I'm trying to use up my craft supplies before I move in a few months, but I keep seeing interesting patterns and yarns and I reeeeeaaaallly want to work with them. There's not a lot here I can do except keep up my willpower and work on things I already have materials for.

3. Stress - I've been finding lately that I seem to have an almost constant level of stress. It's not a super high level, but enough to damage my immune system and leave me grinding my teeth and getting headaches. I'm the sort of person who always feels like I just need to suck it up, so it's been hard for me to take time for myself and take it easy, but that's really what I need to do to get myself back up to par.

4. Clutter - Partially because of the coming move date, and partially because it feels good to purge my items occasionally, I've been doing a lot of cleaning and organizing lately, both in my digital and physical realms. It's really cool to realize that I genuinely don't need that much stuff, and an interesting challenge to myself to see how well I can organize it and streamline my routines (Cooking for Geeks got me started on this kick; putting things near what they're used with and finding the most efficient ways to store them - seems like common sense, but I definitely don't do this enough!)

5. Internet comment sections - This morning a news/blog compilation I follow posted about how a 9 year old child from Canada with ADHD, Asperger's and ODD (oppositional defiance disorder) was handcuffed by police at his daycare. The jist of the story is that he was being bullied by his peers, got upset (it's not explained what "upset" looked like in this context), was placed by himself in a classroom, and proceeded to barricade himself in and throw paint around. The police were called in and, before a parent arrived, broke through the door and had him handcuffed.

Being in the field of working with kids on the autism spectrum, I was displeased with several aspects of this story. But then I made a major mistake, an internet rookie error: I read the comments. It was interesting to get perspective from people who agreed with the actions of the daycare, but as I went further back in the comment history I started to find comments that were increasingly derogatory toward his conditions, implying or straight out saying that they are non-existent. And then I found one that essentially said that not only is autism not a real thing, it's just kids acting out because of poor parenting.

At which point I stared at my screen in disbelief for a few moments, then slowly closed my laptop before turning into a giant squid of anger and ranting to the nearest person about correlation not equalling causation and how hard parenting is even with a neurotypical child and AAAAAAARRRRRRRGH.

Ahem. Anyway. All that to say, I like being able to interact on the internet, so maybe it's not the comments system I want to get rid of. Instead, I'd just like some civility, thoughtfulness, and understanding.