Today I sat up with (fairly) good posture. Possibly as a direct result, my middle back is a seething mass of hatred and my stomach thinks I’ve been doing crunches. So of course I went to the gym, and suddenly my body is like AHHH THAT WAS NICE. Wtf body. Seriously. Side note: when people ask me for my last name, I give them the first three letters of it.

I’ve been pretty down lately, kinda going into a death spiral mentally, but I feel awesome right now. Exercising really does do good for the brain. And tomorrow I can sleep in a bit, then go to archery (YEAHHHH) and then work on that bibliography and research and stuff. I have two big writing projects right now - for Writing, I’m doing something on avian influenza, and ideally it will actually be a useful paper that I will be proud of and like send to people and stuff, and for InfLit I am doing a paper on successful features in structures built for the Olympics. Don’t ask me, it was semi-assigned. Okay so I like architechture. I mean jeez, have you seen the finalists for the Beijing stadium? Or the London stadium which is UGLY AS SIN and touted as being cheap and environmentally friendly even though the only way they can say that is by ignoring half the costs and hand-waving half the materials. Seriously.

Why do I like architecture I have no idea it is so RANDOM

Do want.

I love archery.

I’ve said before that I reuse places in my dreams, yes? I don’t repeat the actual dream, but I do use and build on the place where I had it. There is a city in my head, one that vaguely resembles my childhood home. But I always forget about this other place. Probably because I only have nightmares there, never quite bad enough to wake up from in terror, and I certainly don’t want to think about it. Let me tell you about this place. (more…)

Sick. It does not feel good. I finally got over the allergies (except when a storm rolls in and spits out miles and miles of strange things at me) and now I’m freaking dribbling out the nose again. Also achey and tired and grumpy, but hey, it’s Friday. The end of the week baffles me every time. Just as I get into the swing of things, it all crashes to a stop. XD On the other hand, when things go faster than I can handle the weekends are a blessing.

Today I understood absolutely everything in Calc. I even helped answer someone else’s question. I want to dance and cheer. Speaking of questions - I have figured out that for some reason this teacher cannot understand questions. If you ask him “what did you just do in that step” instead of saying “I added and subtracted this term so that I can factor” he goes back twenty damn steps and starts talking about finding the root of a square root. It requires very careful prodding to get the needed answer. I actually stop taking notes when I get hung up, so usually my blank stare as I try to figure out what just happened will catch his attention and he’ll elaborate quickly before moving on, which is somehow different than asking him a question. I don’t know, he’s strange. I kinda both love and hate his class. I think my brain might finally be settling into Calculus, which helps like whoa. I did incredibly badly on my Bio test though. I think I got way too arrogant, so I’m making myself some flash cards. She basically gave us a list of functional groups and said “memorize this” and since I can’t, you know, instantly memorize things, I need to memorize them in some other way. I wish teachers would work that kind of thing into their class, if you need to memorize this stuff. Maybe a worksheet where we do things with functional groups? That might be useful.

Naptime now. Weird to think I have all weekend to work on stuff, not just tonight. I wanna play FFXI. Steph and Geo and Kota and I had a party yesterday, it was awesome. I hit level 50! It boggles my mind.

I did not die of blood loss! It was a nice nap. I want another one. I’m napping a lot lately and it worries me a little. I never used to nap. It’s very disorienting.

So I’ve been telling Steph all about how I found out that Jared broke up with Sandy back in March and NO ONE TOLD ME and dude, they were engaged! And now like, Jared and Jensen are living together, and being unspeakably adorable, and seriously if they wanted people to think they’re gay they’re doing a damn good job of it. I’m finding it hard to argue against, and I honestly do not want to think they’re together. I try not to stick real people into imaginary relationships. But damn, boys. Just… damn. XD Also I find it hilarious that I am finally engaging in celebrity gossip. Item #1: Jensen is an acting robot yes/no. I think he is. Seriously. That man is such a fine actor, christ, I cannot even express. But when he’s being himself, it’s just obvious that he’s a robot. Mm-hmm. Seriously.

But really, they just make me so happy. Just the fact that these guys exist is so cool. Have you ever met someone like that? Someone that just makes the world a better place by simply existing? They’re like that.

Just donated blood! It was fun. I was a little dizzy after, despite having just eaten, so I spent some time just sitting there after. They kinda mummified my arm though - I’m used to just a square of gauze and some tape, but man, they busted out the self-adhesive neon colored stuff.

Kinda tired now. Apparently I’m a little more sensitive to losing a pint of blood than I expected. I really want to curl up with an animal right now. Dog, cat, horse, whatever. Just curl up and nap. Cats know how to nap, man. In fact, I have over an hour to class and absolutely nothing to do, so a nap it is.

iTunes just updated and now includes a neat opt-in service that will try to generate playlists for you and make recommendations. I said sure, why not, since it ignores my sharing preferences anyway - and now I am watching with schadenfreude as it hurls itself again and again at the Everest that is my music collection. For reference: Currently, my collection can provide me with over 31 days of nonstop, nonrepeating music. Yes. Days. I suspect iTunes is going to crash shortly. :D

Turns out I have no Calc homework this week! I am startled and not really happy. He also said something about picking up the pace, and since I am teetering on the edge of completely being lost I am not enthused at that idea at all. You know, I’ve been in Algebra for nine years. Doing something other than Algebra is straining my brain - even when he explains why things work, I’m having trouble remembering that and relating it to how other things work, so I feel like I’m not learning anything. Apparently I’m doing okay in the actual assignments, though. Just can’t keep it in my head.

Apparently it was just chilly enough last night to set off my knee. I need to start getting to the gym to work that out. And, you know, closing my window at night. XD That might be smart, right.

Having so much music - at least half of which I have honestly never heard before in my life, even though I’ve had access to it for the last two years - just makes me so exceedingly happy. And I was looking up random stuff, and I found the best composer ever, and to my surprise he’s still alive! So now I can’t stop listening to the four Karl Jenkins songs I managed to get my hands on. His remix (well, I don’t know what else to call it) of Dies Irae makes me happy in my pants. It’s like - he composed techno. Seriously. It’s orchestral techno. Or something. It kinda defies description, other than “FREAKING AWESOME.” He also did Palladio, the music in the DeBeers diamond commercials, which I have loved for years.

My Calc teacher has yet to post our homework for the next week, so I have literally nothing to do this weekend. So I worked on making a soundtrack to an ancient story I’m still working on, including a little booklet with pictures and stuff. I found a whole bunch of really awesome pictures of the Lockheed Blackbird which is the best plane ever. Man do I love that plane.
So basically my plans for the weekend are “roll around on a giant virtual pile of music making happy noises.” It’s working well for me so far. XD

Tonight was kinda busy for me - I went to a concert with Katie and Barb, the Gala Grand Opening of the college Performing Arts Center, which was quite nice. Mostly faculty performing, and this one guy - he played Chopin, the Ballade #1 in G minor Op.23, and it was the most emotional playing I have heard in my life. Each thread of melody tearing up through the previous one - it was really incredible. Not usually my thing, but damn he was good. So that got me working on a really old story (I did not realize how old, but the wordcounts say I started it in Dec. 2006) and then I started weeding out the new music collection. I forgot to check how many tracks there were when it was all together, but I started with around 800 and I copied over 13077 and now I have 11372, and about 600 of that was the Ramones. I still have a lot of weeding to do, but the major things are cleaned out. Still love the S&M concert. Did not realize Metallica has at least two songs about Cthulhu. This makes me happy.

I think I’m nearly done that old story, too. It needs some scenes in the middle of the second part, and an epilogue thing, and then some serious editing because it’s old and it sucks. :D Too bad I’ve yet to find a decent beta! So I will probably end up posting it anyway and then hating it and making a billion changes in the first five minutes it’s up. It’s kinda epic - already at 8000+ words, and a soundtrack. Not that I’m complaining. I’m actually reasonably proud of it. Man, I like talking about writing almost as much as I like writing.

The more I hear about Palin, the more terrified I am that she’ll end up being VP. It’s got to be a joke, right? No one would actually elect someone that insane, right? …Right?

Anyway. I just copied 13077 songs into iTunes, and it’s kinda started rolling all over them in glee or something. I didn’t break it! And I think I can actually weed out all the duplicates without breaking everything this time! I hope. XD I think before I do the duplicates I’ll get rid of the garbage first, though. There’s all this Manson ick that I do not want at all in any way shape or form, and like 2Pac or something and Beastie Boys and all kinds of weird icky stuff. I am quite happy to have the Metallica S & M concert, though. :D I have many variations of Metallica. I have originals, the orchestrated concert, a cello quartet, lullabies, and bluegrass. I find this hilarious. I think I lost the lullabies and bluegrass the last time iTunes acted up, though. So much weeding to do. Fortunately I have a weekend and only two homework assignments. :D

It’s funny how important music is to me and how very little I know about it. :D For example, I did not know that the Beatles did While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which I first heard on Youtube played on ukelele. Yes, this is where the title of the entry comes from. Oh - oh damn, I forgot Beethoven’s 5th had this melody line near the end. Oh. I can listen to that at full volume over and over again and pretty much be infinitely happy and also crying a bit. I like Beethoven so much more than Bach. Three words: Canon In D.