Chronically Distracted

Well it's the last day of NaBloPoMo, and I think this is the worse I've done. I'm scared to go back and look at past years because maybe I've written the same amount and quality as past years.
But since I have made it this far I'm not giving up! I think it's only fair to do a homework peek, er, school work peek at one of the reasons I haven't been able to post as much as I would like.

This is just a small part of Assignment three:
"Article Title: Free text, in quotations, word indexed. This field also includes chapter titles for a chapter taken out of a book and used as class texts. Field is only a required field if item is article or chapter, not if it is an entire book or journal.

Author: Required field, free text, written as “last name, first name” without quotations, repeatable, word indexed.

Source title: Required field, free text, word indexed. The name of the journal, book, or any kind of document that either the article or chapter is from, or book or journal name if that is the text used. Journal name includes volume and number, when the information is available, written as Vol. and No. For example “Vol. 5 No. 2”."

Those are just three out of ten fields that I have been working on. The harder ones are at the end, those took much more work. I still have to put the finishing touches and turn it in, then finish and write a final draft of a research paper in two days. I can totally do that. Sure.
See you in a few weeks!

Here is a picture of my cat, Clover:



She is adorables. Now I have to get back to indexing. Bye!

My thoughts this day:

1. Things that should not be done between two people in a car, when there are a total of five people in the car: whispering.

2. I apparently can't eat nearly as much sugar as I used to be able to. It tastes amazing, but I feel like I ate a spoonful of sugar afterwards. Today I actually turned down gelato.

3. I still feel like I should be fixing (or be able to fix) everyone's problem.

4. I rock at minigolf, even if I don't win.

5. There are just some things that elude people, no matter how obvious they are.

We were miniature golfing (all eleven of us), and on the third to the last hole I saw the neon green ball in front of me, the hold to my right, and the concrete curb/wall to my left. The angles just might work, if I had it with the right strength and accuracy. One quick hit of the club against the ball and perfection. Hit the ball to the wall, and it ricocheted right into the hole.

One of my proudest moments in family mini-golf history!

Didn't come in first, second, or third (or fourth), but I think that was one of the more awesome feats that happened on the course that day, amongst the blue fountains, wind, and candyland houses.

I made this pie today: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/11/pecan-pie/
But it turned out more like pecan pie soup in a pecan shell. And it turned out very, very delicious.

Not that that's over, I can get back to schoolwork!

I do want to make gingerbread cookies, because baking makes me feel like I can make life happier.

Life has felt so heavy recently, all I can hope for are those moments of simple breathing and being. My jaw muscles have felt tight, and my brain-stomach connection is off, and my bones feel a little hollow.

With the lights around the garland on the mantle, the tiny christmas tree with red and gold spheres and sparkly, little snowmen, santas, and fairies, the nacimiento set up for the first time in years, and the tigger santa hat on R2D2, reminds me that I have love and I cherish it so much.

The two pecan pies in the fridge sure helps give everything an extra shine, too.

Tomorrow, I will not be making this pie:

Boolean search: Queen and "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Jim Henson and Muppets



Found via twitter, thanks to http://twitter.com/cakewrecks !

School work to finish before/by December 3:

Finish Assignment 2, which I thought I had finished well. Looks like I misunderstood part of the directions.

Start Assignment 3, which entails coming up with multiple indexes for a set of fifteen articles about information science.

Write a 15 - 20 page research paper on graphic novels in libraries.

If you want to see why I'm barely keeping myself from falling apart, check out the instructions for both Assignments: http://intertwining.org/sjsu/LIBR202/assignments/assign2.htm, http://intertwining.org/sjsu/LIBR202/assignments/assign3.htm

Good news is I actually understand assignment 3 now. Still a lot of work. Bad new is the guests are going to be late for Thanksgiving, so looks like I (and mom) will be doing more work than planned.

There may be a lot more youtube videos and pictures in this year's version of NaBloPoMo, but it's one year I'm just going to have to not care about it.

Looks like any superfluous baking will have to happen after December 8 (last day of classes).

What's keeping my spirits up? Listening to Pirates of the Caribbean with Rifftrax. Here's a sample (possibly NSFW, I didn't really check):


I've watched it so many times it's background noise now. Really funny background noise.
Rifftrax website: http://www.rifftrax.com/

[note, I'm not dissing any of the assignments, just the overwhelming sense of doom I'm feeling. It doesn't help that I have to go to the doctor because of my inner ear hurts. Yay]

Right now I am cooking this: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/03/monday-night-dinner-pasta-alla-marlboro-man/, but I halved the recipe.

So far it looks exactly like the picture, but I'm not going to put in the parmesan because parmesan = salt.

My task for the next week, besides orchestrating the Thanksgiving dinner because I like feeling like I'm in charge, is to finish my research paper (graphic novels in libraries) and Assignment 3. Assignment 3 is as foreboding and intimidating as it sounds.

Assignment 3 pulls together everything that has been given to us regarding databases, datastructures, and classifications.
It is unfortunate that I don't understand about half of the instructions for Assignment 3.

So right now I'm concentrating on making my "pasta alla marlboro man." Because cooking like this doesn't make me supremely annoyed and grouchy about my anemic tendencies, and for tonight I'm going to let myself relax a little before taking apart Assignment 3.

Ah, Thanksgiving has begun.

Relatives are arriving and arguments about pies have begun.

With four vegetarians and three meat eaters, the turkey keeps getting smaller and the vegetable plates are starting to take over.

Once again we are making acorn squash with some kind of filling, couscous or something. Everybody seemed to enjoy it last Thanksgiving, and I'm hoping to actually eat some this year!

Recently there has been quite the upswing in my thoughts on how I would go about doing things if I was Master of my Domain, or something like that. (Totally stole that from Under the Tuscan Sun).
Given my tendency to go overboard I would probably want to have pastries (perhaps homemade) ready for visitors and prepare some sort of breakfast foods for the day of. Which would probably send my stress levels off the meter and I would vow never to do that again!
Ever!

Except that I would be queen of Thanksgiving, so everyone would have to do my bidding and cook the turkey and everything else to my specifications. If they listened to me.

Also I would have a hopeful-holiday-budget for decorations and the like.

It's (or may be) my need to have things be cohesive, sequential, warm and cozy, and thematic. That's really all I want, and I figure, like many things, it will remain elusive. Until I get my own place. And realize that I'm just waay too tired to pull any of it off! (You know, or not ;D )

[In conjunction with plotting to take over Thanksgiving dinner (again) I'm trying to finish as much work as I can on my final assignments so that I can have fun when we go to Disneyland!!!!!!!]

Day 20 already?!

Geeze, normally National Blog Posting Month takes forever.

I am feeling better today, and realized that my stupid anemia was making things worse. My parent's took me out for a burrito (with MEAT) and it was amazing. Also I bought yarn! I suspect this year it will be much easier to make crocheted Christmas gifts, since I'll have a little more time after school ends (on the 8th, yikes!).

I've been smart and crocheting a little bit everyday. Today, for example, I crocheted intermittently between reading an essay about the difference between the words used by indexers and words used by people actually searching the database. (It makes me wonder that I more or less understood the last half of that sentence.)
I crocheted this: http://creativeyarn.blogspot.com/2008/02/crochet-openwork-handwarmers.html

I haven't eaten meat much this week or the week before. I enjoy eating meat (helps if I know it's the good kind) but I haaaaaaaate eating it everyday. Having to eat it.

Hate.

Yes, I could have much worse food problems. I know.

I just don't want meat to be a pill I have to take.

And if it is a pill I have to take I want it to be delicious. I mean, if it's meat.

Which would be greeaaat if I had time to cook it, and if I could eat red meat more often than not, and are you still listen as I mercilessly complain to the internet?

I can handle eating less salt, eating less sugar, whiiiiiiiiiich I may or may not have been doing lately, but damn looks like I'm going to have to keep a better eye on how much chicken, turkey, and beef I'm eating. So I don't get all woozy when walking down the hallways and wondering which window I should be looking at on my computer because nothing seems to remotely hold my attention and my appetite nosedives.

Stupid iron pills not doing their job *grumblegrumblegrumblegrumblegrumble*

~
On the upside this song is really keeping my spirits up (saw this Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on Broadway and it was so Awesome). It's Here I Am from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and the sound is off but it's the best video. The song is not nine minutes long:


p.s. CUTE CORGI: http://cuteoverload.com/2009/11/20/friday-haiku-dewey-love-ya/

My tongue hurts. And I'm cranky and don't feel all that good.

Thusly:

Here are some dancing star wars characters. I suggest you watch 'til the end ;).

This has bothered me ever since I heard the change in a certain band after they became Disney boys.

And pretty much a lot of the Disney singers.

There is quite a difference in the kind of sound you hear coming out of someone when they are sing pop music then when they are singing another kind of music. This may seem clear and obvious, but sometimes it results in a really whiney sound that annoys me because I know that person can sing better.

Since I don't want to force anyone to listen to the bad examples of this, I'm gonna use my latest fangirly crush to illustrate my point. His name is Kevin McHale. He used to be in a boy band. He is currently on the television show Glee playing Artie.

Listen to this song, which I have posted a few days ago, but I'm going to post again, and . . . okay, just listen:

(In case this disappears the song is Dancing With Myself sung on the TV show Glee by Kevin McHale)

Obviously when I found out he was in a boy band I had to investigate, and found the video that is a few posts down. The songs they sing are really fun and they sound good, but they are definitely singing pop, with "urban influences." (Yes I did watch an interview with the boy band. How else am I going to unwind from reading about libraries all day?). Now watch That Girl, but fast forward to about 1:23 and listen to his voice. (I can't embed the actual song I wanted to, so if you're curious go here: http://www.nltmusic.com/player/default.aspx?meid=2535 and fast forward the karma video to :50).


(That Girl by NLT)

Hear the difference?

Dancing with Myself has a light quality to it, while in That Girl the sound feels more constricted, so that kind that goes with the style of music they are singing. Not constricted in a bad way, but just changed a little so that his voice is doing what he wants it to.

While my descriptions are lacking, I like to feel I finally go to get my point across, and hopefully you can hear how Kevin McHale actually gets it right. If you want a bad example of this, go listen to the Jonas Brothers.

And that is why I have been fangirling over him since I realized that was his actual voice on Glee. And because he's adorable and talented.

And yes mr. boyfriend already knows ;).

I had this great post in mind, something with some appearance of depth and thought.

Then as I poured freshly boiled water into my mug somehow my hand strayed and I poured it on my pinkie and ring finger and managed somehow not to cry.

So now it hurts to type, but I'm going to have to tomorrow to get my work done.

Because the semester ends in three weeks and I have a lot of writing to do.

Unfortunately.

I'm going to take some tylenol and hope that the pain subsides, so that I can sleep.

I'm also most likely going to buy some boy band music to soothe my troubled mind.

(If it weren't for Glee, this boybandness would not be happening. Totally fangirling over Kevin Mchale.)

The side of my tongue hurts.

The few details are that the result of one of my medicines is that every once in a while I get these little parts of my tongue that hurt. And sometimes I bite down on them and they really, really hurt. For a week. Hopefully not two.

It's kind of like a really bad headache that kind of goes away when you're distracted, but then all of sudden attacks again and just leaves you feeling miserable.

Whenever something like this happens, and "something like this" includes sore throats, my father tells me to gargle with salt water. In this case I think it'd be more like swishing with salt water.

I don't care that he's right because it's so gross!!

I don't care!

Except that out of desperation I will probably, once again, use some salt water to heal my wounds.

Actually last night I did. Sort of. The water to salt ratio was off and I couldn't taste the salt so I had no idea if it helped, but today it sill hurts.

le sigh.


I also "presented" my powerpoint presentation to my class and people seemed to enjoy it! I couldn't see them, and answered questions that were written out in text, but it was pretty fun.
a'course I was tootally blushing the whole time my presentation played.

Okay, salt water time tomorrow.

And no more posts about side effects until after november.

Unless I can't stand it.

It was my mama's birthday today!!

There is this restaurant that has pizza that is delicious and gourmet and someday I plan to have the pizza that, among other toppings, has spaghetti and meatballs on it. They also have a pizza with an egg on it and I am a bit curious.

Other than eating delicious pizza (margherita and funghi) we went to a craft fair, came home, baked a delicious vegan (as far as I can tell) chocolate cake, ate it along with hot chocolate, and watched the soloist. Which was quite the good movie.

A good birthday all in all from what my mom says. :D

~

Lately I've been reassessing my room and wanting to make it feel much more cozy and happy than the sort of attack of stuff and manly pop culture references that I seem to have acquired. Manly pop culture references is a loose term for my DragonBall Z poster, my (awesome) VanHelsing poster, my X-Men poster, the small Outlaw Star poster, and my Harvey Birdman Attorney at law clock that doesn't work and probably doesn't really count as a manly pop culture reference.

So I'm attempting to make my room more functional and more nice. Not necessarily "girly" just less posters of men with superpowers or the like.




How did all this stuff in my room end up in my room?

It must be my really nerdy version of boyband and music posters.

('cause I love it!)

(And I still haven't actually taken down VanHelsing or DragonBall Z or X-Men. They're in my system, how can I let them go?)

Speaking of Boy Bands, Glee lovers go to 1:20 and after a few seconds you might see a familiar face. Also the song is really catchy:

I worked on this PowerPoint presentation all week, tried to get the narration to record correctly all day, only to find that the words look blurry on youtube.

It's a good thing I didn't keep track how many time I read this out-loud, it would just be so ridiculous how much it didn't want to work.

But, I think it looks nice (even though the words are blurry, *toomanygrumbles*).

What is the best equation for a PowerPoint presentation? Narration that follows closely with the outline on the screen, narration that goes in and out of being verbatim, verbatim narration? Pretty sure that last one is out.

Here it is, a peek at my research paper about the goodness that it is to have graphic novels in libraries (not that I'm biased, or anything):



Let me know what you think! Turning it in tonight. :)

Emergency hurry post!

Anvil!

Explosives!

Sexism!

Here:


Okay, I'm off to the SF Opera now!

1.29

That's how much the song Dancing with Myself sung by Kevin McHale a.k.a Artie from Glee costs.

1.23

That's how much money is in my iTunes account.

~

There's something about friends that makes me feel looser, so thank goodness ms. honeybear, a.k.a Ravina Sniper visited me today.

She took this picture of me: http://www.flickr.com/photos/0honeybear0/4099992454/

It has come to my attention that there are moments when I'm pretty sure I look evil in pictures. Which in this case lead to a conversation about Evil Pinkie which of course had evil powers. Or something. We were laughing too much for me to really remember what we said. These are the kinds of leaps of logic that regularly show up in our conversations and I feel that I'm a better person for it.

Let me also note that I don't think looking evil in pictures is necessarily a bad thing. Especially when I get such a good picture out of it.

Let's just say that I haven't been feeling very "up" lately.
Not a personal, angsty kind of "down," although the usual has been contributing, but there are other "down" feelings, all necessary I think, that I have been trying to keep as personal as possible.

The other reason I bring this up is because this is why I love watching Glee, SYTYCD, How I Met Your Mother, Castle, even Project Runway. I want happy feedback. Not like, creative criticism. Feedback like when you get too close to the speakers with your microphone. Happy feedback. Reverberations of goodness.

It's the reason I like to fall asleep listening to HIMYM or that recent Monty Python documentary that I got off of itunes. The sound of people talking in a context that is neutral, in any way, keeps me level. I'm working on keeping the feedback constant and I'm not always sure how to do that.

I've realized that this is why I squeal so much when I'm really, really, genuinely excited about thing, the reason I latch on so hard to something when it resonates, why I get so scared about catastrophes, and why I try to tone it down because I know people don't realize what I'm doing. It's considered an outburst by most, and when I see other people doing it I don't necessarily get it either. I just need it, and I love it.

This is why I keep certain media and genres shut out of my life, why sometimes I shy away. I'm keeping my life as level as possible.
I want to keep from getting to stuck in what I'm doing.

(ignore the picture, it's totally creepy even though I love him, just listen to the song ;)