Last night sucked. Down in the dumps, bigtime.

Then I had nightmares all night long. Bleh.

I sign the new lease today! That's a pretty good start to the day, yeah? Hopefully the whole day will be better.

I was just reading Jeremy's blog again.

Happiness - I think much of life is about being happy, as well. But I guess we diverge at some point because I feel that if you get caught up too much in planning, you forget to just be. Just being - it's hard, but its a good place to sit, reflect, and be happy. If you don't have it, you might not even notice, but when you don't have it you're missing out on some real happiness. It's too easy in this life to become so busy that you don't even realize how busy you are, what you're not saving time for, and how that affects your ultimate happiness.

It sounds like he has had a rough time recently. I sympathize with him. He said something that I found interesting: "I remember reading an article a ways back that discussed an odd deficiency of our current school system. Namely, schools don't adequately prepare gifted children to deal well with failure. While other students experience failure as a natural part of school, gifted children generally don't, and hence they don't learn how to deal with faliure." I can definitely see how that would apply to him. I think it applies to me, too. I freak out when I hit failure. It's uncharted, scary territory, and I deal with it worse than almost any other crisis situation. I have this innate belief that I can do anything, be anything, and achieve anything, and when I hit rejection or failure it jars pretty deep against my foundations.

Off to clean and pack for the move...

I wrote this last night, but blogger was being funny and wouldn't let me post it:

6/4/2003, 11:30 PM

Today I finalized plans to move into Capitol Hill! I've been running around looking at apartments all week, and I've finally settled on one. It's a really nice place right in the middle of things, and actually pretty affordable. Great big balcony for the dog, nice kitchen, nice layout, nice space, lots of storage. Alex and Chris pushed me to really push my limits and haggle, so I also get free parking, the first half month for free, and the landlord is not going to do a credit check so I don't have to pay that fee. Yippie! He seems like a nice guy. Yay for buildings owned and maintained by real people, instead of corporations. Should be a nice change. Additionally, it will be SO nice not to have to commute back and forth from the east side to the west side anymore.

Next step - find a job in Seattle proper. Whee.

Hmm. I just read her blog. Sigh. I wish she were feeling more secure.

I know she doesn't have friends of her own here. That's why I'm letting her get to know the people I'm friends with - not so I can rub it in, but so that they can be her friends too. They're good people. And that's why I'm trying to get her involved with activities outside the house, like dancing - so that she can make new friends of her own. I know she's scared of people, and I'm trying to help her make a painless transition. I guess I'm not doing a very good job. :(

Bleh.

I'll have to think about that more.

Mary's living here now. So far, it's been really great! I'm so happy to have my little sister here with me.

We're looking at moving into a smaller apartment in Capitol Hill. It'll be squashed, but we'll be right in the middle of everything, and it will be much more affordable. I think it will be alright.

Alex makes the world seem a whole lot brighter. Thank you, Alex. Yesterday was a much better day. Today has the potential to be brighter still. Gettin' things done, Feelin' good...

Yesterday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I think I'll move to Australia.

I ripped one of my contacts. It was my last pair. I can't wear contacts again now until I buy new ones, and I can't afford to buy them any time soon.

I had to wear my glasses while dancing. I hate wearing my glasses while dancing. It hurts more when you get hit in the head. "You get hit in the head?" asked Tom. Yes. I got elbowed in the face yesterday, just after that conversation, during one of the morning dance classes. While I was wearing my glasses. It hurt.

My glasses don't fit. They make my head hurt. The lenses are also the wrong prescription; they're outdated by about two years. I can still see, but I get a headache after a while. I should get new glasses, but that also costs money.

I'm going to move to Australia.

I heard back from UW. I guess I won't be going there in the summer. I can reapply for another quarter, winter or later, but that doesn't address what happens now. I meant to apply to SCCC and to SU as backups, but I didn't. I still could, but I'm not sure I will. I don't really want to go to those schools anyway. I don't know what I'm going to do.

I stretched out my money for a long time, but I've finally hit the limit. It can't stretch anymore. I have enough to pay rent at the end of this month, but nothing more. So I need to figure out what to do about that.

Boys, boys, boys. Always a problem. I have relationship troubles up the wazoo, and want to just hit my head against a wall.

I blew out a tire last night while driving my friend Tom to the airport so that he could fly back to TX. We were already running a little late. Alex was with us, and together they changed the tire and put on my dinky spare in hyperspeed time. We had just left a dance, so we called someone still there and some really nice dancers stopped and picked up Tom to drive him the rest of the way to the airport, since, with the spare, my car is no longer fit for highway driving.

Alex took me home with him, kept me on his couch for the night, and put up with me crying a lot. I'm still at his place. He lives on the west side of the Lake Washington, where we were dancing, so we were able to get there on city streets. My car is still on this side of the water. The most reasonable routes over the water involve driving on freeway bridges. That's out until I fix my tire. Fixing tires costs money. As noted before, I really don't have any to spare. Alex wants to get me a new tire for a belated birthday present, instead of the dance shoes he'd been planning on getting me, but he already gives me so much and does so much for me. I don't feel right accepting more from him.

I am unhappy. Everything's going wrong, and I don't have the faintest idea where to start putting things back together.

Anyhow, Alex is going to drive me home to take care of my dog and birds. I don't know what I'll do from there, but I'll probably post an update later. Signing off now. - K.

Mike is far too good to me. We were cleaning frantically yesterday morning, so that my apartment could be at least somewhat respectable for a dancer friend from Austin who is staying with me this weekend, and he did far more than his share. I realized today that I'm not sure I really let him know how much I appreciated it; I'll have to remember to do that later. I don't want to take it forgranted.

Blah.

All my roses are dead or dying.

Why do I find cleaning so painful?

Jeremy responded to some of my earlier comments in his blog recently. At least I think he was responding to me -- hard to tell, seeing as he spelled my name wrong. ;-) I guess it makes up for all the times I pronounced his name Germ-ee just to spite him.

I'm only laughing on the outside
My smile is just skin deep
If you could see inside I'm really crying
You might join me for a weep.

(Yes, I really watched Tim Burton's Batman for the first time ever just yesterday.)

A Tip

Those
who can write
have a
lot to
learn from those
bright
enough
not to.

Piet Hein

Jeremy, I dreamed about blogger last night. I dreamed that they'd implemented an easy way to allow comments on each entry. (I'm addressing this to you since you're the one that whined about not being able to comment on my entries.) ;-)

Alas, it was just a dream. Or maybe a sign that I should get my butt in gear and figure out something like that for my page on my own.

I was reading Jeremy's blog this morning. He's doing a "100 things about me" list. Interesting idea.

I think it might be just as interesting, if not more so, to see a "100 things about So-and-So" list done be someone other than the subject, preferably someone who has been fairly close to them at some point in their life. I'm sure I'd list at least a number of different things about Jeremy than he would about himself, or vice-versa.

Perhaps I'll do a list like that sometime. Or perhaps I'll have a guest blogger do a list about me. Or both. 'twould be interesting to see how the two lists differed.

Wearing wet pants is remarkably unpleasant.

My washing machine broke while doing laundry the other day. The motor pooped out and it would no longer spin or drain. I hand wrung all the clothes and tossed them in the dryer, and then poof, partway through the cycle the dryer broke too. I was in a hurry and all my pants were in the load I was doing, so I wore a pair of slightly damp overalls and hung everything else up to dry.

The pants dried on their own fairly quickly (I was in the car and sped the process up by venting lots of air at myself), but the bit of time while they were wet was still pretty icky feeling.

Yay for dry clothes, and yay for working dryers. Mine is fixed now. I think. I hope. So says the note from the maintenance guy, anyhow.

I finished reading "Kitchen" by Banana Yoshimoto today. A bit of a light read, but really good. I thought of Jeremy while reading it; I think he'd really like it. Even the reviews at the beginning of the book lend that impression: "Ms. Yoshimoto's writing is . . . as emotionally observant as Jane Smiley's, as fluently readable as Anne Tyler's." -- The New York Times, Jane Smiley being one of Jeremy's all-time favorite authors. So Jeremy, if you're out there, you should check this book out. Good stuff.

I thought of Jeremy last weekend, too. I was working a dance workshop, and they fed us lunch from World Wraps. Yum. I think it's the first time I've had that since Jeremy moved back to Atlanta.

I just took a half-assed Myers-Briggs type test. It still listed me as INFP (I=22%, N=56%, F=78%, P=67%), same as I got on the more complete test back in my high school days. I'll have to dig around and see if I can find a more complete test on the net to see if it says the same thing.

According to the informational blurbs following, only 1% of the general population shares my type. A. A. Milne was an INFP. So is Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, if fictional characters count for anything. Yay me. Yay Calvin. Yay Pooh.

Wired News, Making It Harder for Prying Eyes - "A bill in the California state legislature would protect the anonymity of Internet users by requiring Internet service providers to send customers copies of subpoenas seeking to learn their identities."

Cool stuff. I wish all states would do that.

There's no more coming back this way
the path is overgrown and strewn with thorns
They've torn the lifeblood from your naked eyes
cast aside to be forlorn

In the terms of endearment
In the terms of the life that you love
In the terms of the years that pass you by
In the terms of the reasons why

Funny how it seems that all I've tried to do
seemed to make no difference to you at all

---

I may take a holiday in Spain
leave my wings behind me
drink my worries down the drain
and fly away to somewhere new

Hop on my choo choo
I'll be your engine driver in a bunny suit
If you dress me up in pink and white
we may be just a little fuzzy 'bout it later tonight

Well, she's my angel -
she's a little better than the one that used to be with me
'cause she liked to scream at me
Man, it's a miracle that she's not living up in a tree

I may take a holiday in Spain
leave my wings behind me
drive this little girl insane
and fly away to someone new

boo on me. :(

I talked a lot with Mike tonight for the first time in a while. It was good. Also talked with Jeremy, although only for a very short while; it was nice hearing his voice. And then I spent a while catching up with Mary on IM. All in all, it's been a pleasant evening. I'm feeling a bit more grounded now that I've done a bit of reconnecting.

Life is good.

My car has a tic.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, it willl give a swipe with its windshield wipers. Usually just one swipe. Often when I am turning left. For the most part, this is just a cute idiosyncrasy -- I love my car all the more because it is unique in this way.

Recently, however, the car has suffered some damage as a result of this tic. Windshield wipers, when wiping on a dry windshield, fight against much more friction than they do when wiping on a wet windshield. My car wipes indiscriminantly, often when the glass is dry, to the detriment of the passenger side wiper which has begun to fall apart. It has torn the rubber all up, and I'm going to need to replace it soon before it starts wiping metal against glass and does some real damage.

My poor neurotic car -- we're just two peas in a pod.

By the way, yes, my phone has been reconnected. Not that I'm ever home. Feel free to call again and leave messages, at least until the answering machine fills up and accepts no more.

So I went and hung out today with the folk that were involved in the Microsoft Theatre Troup's spring production of Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" with me last year. We watched a DVD of the last show we put on.

It felt like a mistake. Most of these aren't people I was ever particularly close to. I dated one of them at one point, and ended up deciding I didn't really like him at all as a person. He was there, as was another girl from the cast that he started dating way back when and is apparently still with, in some capacity. Almost none of the people from the cast that I really liked showed up. I shared some good conversation with two people there, but for the most part I felt like an outsider. It wasn't even the sort of outside where you wish you were "in", but more the sort where you're happy enough not to be in the inner circle and would be just as happy off spending your time in some other manner with other company.

I'm not good at letting go of things and moving on, but I guess some things are better left behind. Bleh.

One guy there who I did connect with is really immersed in work these days. He's not really happy, and doesn't have time or energy to cultivate any sort of life outside of work. It reminded me of how I felt, about a year ago, and made me feel lucky that I got out of that environment. I'm a much happier person these days, I think. He's a cool guy; I hope he manages to get out of the rut he's in. His wife is apparently pretty unhappy, too; I wish the best to both of them.

Yes, I am aware (now) that my phone has been disconnected. I'm such a dumbass.

I'm working on fixing that. Fixing the phone disconnection, anyway.

Mike is apparently dying of whooping cough. Poor Mikey. I feel for him.

I parked my car in a dark, scary alleyway last night. As I was walking out of the alleyway after parking, I passed a bum sleeping in a doorway.

This morning, I walked back down the same alleyway to pick up my car. It was a completely different world; the sun was out, people were walking their dogs, and the bum from the night before was awake, curled up in his doorway reading a novel.

Reading a novel!

I guess somewhere, deep down, I had some sort of deep seated belief that all bums were illiterate, because this floored me. Kathryn the small-minded.

Heck, if I were a bum, I'd be happy to spend my days sitting in the sunshine reading novels. Homelessness can happen to anyone, or so I've heard -- why should I file homeless people away into some sub-human pocket in my mind, even subconsciously? Why should I assume that homeless people couldn't or wouldn't want to spend their free time reading boooks?

Feh.

Girls are so much softer than boys.

Conscious self	Overall self

Take Free Enneagram Test

So says the Enneagram test. I think the "Conscious self" is probably pretty close. I'm not quite as sure about the "Overall self"; I'm not sure I'm quite as steady, dependable, or faithful as it would make me out to be. I also tend to prefer listening to talking, because if you talk too much you let out too much about yourself and lose some measure of control. ;-)

Mary said I should update my blog, because it told her it feels neglected.

So...

Umm...

Hmm.

I haven't been in a very prolific mood lately. I did find some writing I'd done early on in college while digging through some old papers yesterday, though, and was considering typing some of that up and posting it on the web. It's nothing amazing; a bit of trite poetry, a few short fiction pieces, and a couple of essays that were semi-decent, but they were still better than I remembered them being. So, yeah. Check in every so often, and perhaps you'll find those linked up sometime soon. Excitement galore.

Other news in my life:

My dog is happy. I got him new dogfood today. And we went for a walk -- he got to bark at a UPS truck, at a cat, and at another dog. I wonder if UPS trucks make some sort of noise that is outside the typical human's hearing range; Louie never barks at other cars or trucks, just at the UPS one.

My birds are happy. The sun is shining and their window is open.

I finally dug up my original ACT score report so that I could request that a score report be sent to UW. Both the SAT and the ACT require you to know the exact month and year in which you took the test, in order for them to be able to send out score reports. I knew I took them in '95 or so, but the month was a stumper. It turns out that 10/95 is the magical date on which I took my ACT.

So, having finished off that score report request, I'm done dealing with all external materials for my college transfer applications. Now I've just got to get my butt in gear and finish up my personal statements, and I'm good to go. That's work for this afternoon, maybe.

My tango teacher offered me a deal; I'm going to do some administrative work for he and his wife and possibly code them up a bit of software to help with stuff as well, and in return they're going to give me free private lessons. He's being all formal about it. It's a 1:1 ratio; I get one hour of private lessons for each hour of work. The lessons are transferrable -- I could pass them on to friends or such -- but for now I think I'm going to use them myself. He's also going to feed me lunch two or three times a week, and once in a while we'll go walk around greenlake -- that's the employee health benefits package. ;-) Yay for bartering. It kicks ass.

Seattle is really starting to feel like home. I hope school here works out.

Anyhow, I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of anything offhand and I need to run. More later.

From today's copy of the Rochester Post Bulletin:

Last week's Hot Topic question: "What do you think about the media's coverage of the war in Iraq and the U.S. military's 'embedded' journalist program?"

Here are some of the responses we received:

. . .

Unethical journalism

The media often used the terms "pro-war" and "pro-troops" to mean the same, and therefore perpetuates the myth that to oppose this particular war is to not support our troops. Nothing could be further from the truth, and therefore it's unethical journalism. The vast majority of citizens opposed to this particular war are 100 percent supportive of the troops. There's even a group forming (Parents with Children in Iraq) that's opposed to this war.

Also, why isn't it being more widely reported that relatives of victims of the 9-11 disaster are bringing a class-action law suit against, not Iraq, but Saudi Arabia? Most of those terrorists were Saudi -- none Iraqi.

"Imbedded" journalists, if they're not controlled and maintain their journalistic integrity, are good. They can witness and report the atrocities of war, immediately as it happens.

I'm against this particular war, but, God speed our troops. Win the war quickly, with minimum casualties, and return home soon.

Gene Kivi
Rochester

Deplores word games

Fox news coverage of the attack on a U.S. base in Kuwait was bothersome to me. I have a son in Kuwait.

Headlines repeated that "terrorists" had attacked the camp. They hyped the story, saying it looked like an Iraqi "terrorist" group had snuck across the border to "terrorize" our soldiers. Normally, once you declare war on a country, and launch bombing attacks described by the Pentagon as a "21st century blitzkrieg," you wouldn't label the enemy army "terrorists" because they fight back. Unless you're waging a PR campaign.

Later news updates clarified that it wasn't "terrorists," but a U.S. soldier who launched an internal attack. In my vocabulary, if he is indeed guilty, that soldier fully lives up to the definition of "terrorist."

I can only assume Fox news doesn't believe any American could ever be a "terrorist," no matter how horrendous the crime.

Don't get me wrong. As the mother of one of those soldiers marching into Iraq, I fully support our troops and I love my country. But just as a mother can love her children without approving of or condoning everything they do, I'm becoming more and more ashamed of much of what the current administration is doing. And I deplore the word games the media seems to resort to in order to defend it!

Janet Krueger
Rochester

. . .

Janet Krueger is my mother. Gene Kivi is a friend of hers, and she helped him with part of his letter. Go mommy!

"God bless our troops when they are dodging bullets but God help them when they come home..."

I just got done playing my first ultimate frisbee game in a while. Man; I thought I was in shape, but I was huffing and puffing after just a few points.

On the bright side, I had a nice lay-out for a score on my first point in. It was a great way to start off with the new team -- everybody was all of a sudden all excited to have me on.

Brian's blog is so much prettier than mine, now that he changed up his template. He's got a kick-ass cheese graphic! Where's my cheese? And Zump's blog allows for user comments. I should really fix mine up sometime soon.

Brain prosthesis! Cool beans.

I love you, Lotte.

Apparently, although Lenny Kravitz is now voicing his opinion and has recorded the afore-mentioned antiwar song, he hasn't actually voted in years and years. Interesting link, Brian -- thanks. ;-)

Rock the Vote and Lenny Kravitz today announced a new song by Kravitz called "We Want Peace," which will be available exclusively at Rock the Vote's website. The song, which says, "There won't be peace if we don't try" is an urgent call from Lenny Kravitz for America to be a peaceful leader in the world. Kravitz wrote the song and performed it with Kazem Al Sahir, Iraq's #1 pop music artist, who is better known as the Iraqi Diplomatic Ambassador of the world and a true legend of Arabic Music. In addition, the song features Palestinian musician Simon Shaheen on strings and Lebanese artist Jamey Hadded on percussion.

Lenny Kravitz, teaming up with an Iraqi artist to create his own act of protest -- pretty cool. It causes me to have a bit more respect for the guy.

R.E.M, the Beastie Boys, DJ Shadow, Zach de la Rocha, and Greenday are also among those who have released anti-war songs. Good for them.

Because there are things I need to get done today, I spent much of my morning procrastinating and browsing the web. I like the NYTimes website, I've decided. It may be my favorite US news site at the moment.

NY Times articles of interest:

• More coverage of the US Supreme Court's Texas Sodomy Law case.


• Op-Ed: Casualties at Home. It's kind of scary what Congress is up to, and scary how it gets lost in the mass of war coverage.


• Another opinion piece on current Congressional activities...


• Washington Trying to Curb U.N. Role in a Postwar Iraq. Apparently, we're determined to continually snub the U.N. as best we can.

One more site that I was particularly impressed with:

• DigitalConsumer.org: Protecting fair-use rights in the digital world. These guys have got an impressive news section.

Today at the DMV, there was a group of people running surveys about travel on 520, gauging how we'd react if they were to make the 520 bridge into a toll bridge.

There was an age bracket question in the survey. I had to choose the 25-40 age bracket. I've moved up. Blah.

---

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, That the citizens of the State of Washington do hereby proclaim that Tim Eyman is a Horse's Ass.

---

They didn't ask me today whether or not I wanted to be an organ donor. I forgot to explicitly tell them so. Now I'm afraid it won't be marked on my licence -- ptooey.

---

Texas Penal Code section 21.06, the "Homosexual Conduct Statute,"...criminalizes sexual acts between homosexuals, even if the acts are consensual. Texas is one of only four states to have such a law targeting homosexuals...

...The defendants then appealed to the US Supreme Court to have their convictions overturned and the law deemed unconstitutional...

...Oral arguments were heard on March 26, 2003, and a decision is expected by June. Initial reports suggest that the justices were split on the issue, with Rehnquist and Scalia in support of upholding the law, Souter and Breyer in support of overturning the law, with the position of the other five justices unclear.

The Texas Human Rights Foundation: Lawrence & Garner v. Texas

Side notes:

• As recently as 1960, every state had a sodomy law. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts.


• Four states -- Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri -- ban "deviate sexual intercourse" just between same-sex couples. There are nine other states with sodomy laws on the books, but they apply to everyone, instead of being targeted solely at homosexuals.

Geez. I can't believe that, here we are in the 21st century, and the US Supreme Court vote on this issue could go either way. How can educated people be so closed-minded and intollerant?

I heard some of Rehnquist's and Scalia's oral arguments quoted on NPR today. Crazy. It scares me that these people have so much power over our freedoms and civil liberties.

---

TCPA - bad. Definitely not a fan.

I was telling my friend Chris the other day that my dog, on the rare occasion when he has an accident and dumps inside, will try to hide it. He'll cover it up with dirty clothes, papers, or whatever he can find.

Chris was amazed that a dog, whose world revolves around smell, would learn that sort of behavior. "Hiding" poo doesn't get rid of the smell -- to the dog, the presence of said poo is still quite obvious. The only reason to hide the poo is to confuse silly humans, who have a less acute sense of smell.

I was kind of amazed, too, once I thought about things in that light. My dog is so smart.

I'm now the proud owner of a WA State Driver's Licence. I ended up getting 100% on the test, which made me feel silly for having worried about it.

Happy birthday me.

Technically, I guess I'm not 25 for another 16 hours yet. But it's close enough.

The crew at Mike and Jared's place gave me a cake, lots of presents, and lots of wonderful cards tonight. I feel so loved. I'm sad that Kirsten and Kristen are moving to NYC this summer, that Tiff is moving to NV this fall, and that Mike and Jared are moving to AZ sometime next year. They're a wonderful group of people; I'll really miss them all.

Bummer.

Sigh.

On a semi-related note, I realized today that my driver's licence expires tomorrow. Gotta do something about that.

Another war, another burst of national idiocy

Depressed about all the hoopola going on right now with the Dixie Chicks (whatever happened to free speech?), I browsed around and finally on the above article. Good stuff. It echoes some of my sentiments, anyhow.

Here are a few bits from posts in my swing dance forum that got me thinking:

What are you going to study in grad school?

Do you hate your job because of the specific tasks you need to perform, or is it more the idea behind what you are doing (i.e., nobody reads it anyway and it's at grade school level; not an effective use of your training to be a writer)?

When I feel unmotivated to do the excruciatingly boring parts of my job (grading papers often comes to mind), I set mini-goals for myself and reward myself afterward. I also find that procrastinating until the very last minute creates enough tension to keep things interesting. :) With that extra fire under my butt, I am amazingly efficient.

...

If you are at the end of your procrastination rope and are inundated with projects, that may be also leading to lack of interest in your job, 'cause it's overwhelming right now.

Can you organize each project into stacks (or folders, if they are online) and stack the most pressing one on top and just start muscling through (with lots of treats standing by for each time you complete one)? That's what I try to do with my ocean of work (which you will note I am not doing right now). If the most pressing project is too overwhelming, I sometimes start with the easiest ones in order to just get some feeling of accomplishment going (checking things off the checklist feels good).

...

Anne

This is good stuff for me to keep in mind when I go back to work or school, and even now on a daily basis. I really suck at breaking things down. I'm not great at motivating myself.

Blah.

I was away this weekend. While I was gone, three men forced their way into an apartment here and robbed the owners at gunpoint. There was a rash of car break-ins. Several cars were stolen. The plates off of some cars were stolen and replaced with other stolen plates.

Crazy.

Happily, my car was sitting in Capitol Hill. Not the best place for a car, necessarily, but apparently much better these past few days than the lot at my apartment complex.

Another gem from the newsgroup:

One helpful piece: A request is not a demand. I can ask for some help. But the person I ask can turn it down. Conversely, I can
turn them down when they ask. -- seems that the people who have the worst time about asking for help are those who won't refuse. You're equals, so can ask for and offer help freely, and decline equally freely.

(Robert Grumbine, Re: Who's the craziest? Winner gets a prize...)

I have trouble asking for help. I've never really thought about it in those terms, but I do have trouble refusing others. Perhaps some of my guilt in asking for help does stem, at least in part, from an assumption that the other party is incapable of saying "no". Interesting.

A GREEN Dragon Lies Beneath!

I took the Inner Dragon online quiz and found out I am a Green Dragon on the inside. My Inner Dragon is the embodiment of Nature and the Earth. Greens spend almost all of their time below the canopy or just above the treetops in tropical rain forests. Not a bad life considering every other creature in the forest looks up to me, figuratively and literally. I speak the language of every animal and plant in my domain and know most of them by first name. If people mess with my forests, I'm more than happy to wail on their puny butts. Because of my protector/caretaker role, I am the Earth Elemental dragon.

Naturally my whole life pretty much revolves around the other couple million species I keep an eye on, but that's not my whole dragon. I also like to like to impose my steadfast will on others, commune with Nature, and lobby governments for alternative fuels and conservation. My favorable attributes are gemstones, mountains, caves, soil, respect, endurance, responsibility, prosperity, and purpose in life. Folks shouldn't get the idea I'm a hippy pushover though, because my breath weapon is a nasty Fire/Acid combination. Maybe I should invest in a hemp shirt reading "Don't knock my smock, or I'll clean your clock." *wink*

Alex says those descriptions look pretty bogus. I, unfortunately, do not know my dragons very well, so I can't say one way or another how the descriptions fly.

Happy birthday, Jeremy!

Tonight, I was on top of the world!

Seriously, it's been a great evening. I had an awesome dancing night! I was in a weird mood; really playful. This was the first dance I've had like that where sleep deprivation wasn't somehow involved. I danced with several leads I hadn't danced with for months, and they were all really impressed with my dancing. Idaho Dave said that the dance I had with him was one of his favorites all evening. I had a kick-ass dance with Kevin Buster -- during the dance, I'd do something cool and he'd be like, "YEAH!" and make all sorts of approving noises, and he thanked me for the dance over and over again afterwards. Five thank you's or something over the course of the next half hour. He said it was our best dance ever. Sweet!

Before the dance Alex and I grabbed some Thai food, and we sat and ate it through the first few songs. Just listening to the music, hanging out, eating great food... it was a nice way to start out the evening. And then I was on for almost the entire night. Mike led me in Tango during one of the slower songs, which was cool, but I had a few off dances after that. It's hard to go back and forth. I got my groove back two or three songs later, though, and I think those two or three songs were the only ones that didn't feel absolutely great. And even those few were still good, by my regular standards.

Alex thinks my following has dramatically improved just in the last week or so. Maybe the break I took from dancing was good for me. Hmm. Food for thought.

We all went out to the grill afterwards. It was Tigan's birthday, so even Alex was feeling social enough to hang out for a bit. I had a milkshake, a coffee, and I stole some of Alex's cheesecake. The cheesecake had raspberry sauce dribbled all over it -- yummy! I ended up with a tummy ache -- too much lactose, or the Thai food catching up with me, or something -- but even that didn't bring me down from my dancing high.

I am so happy tonight. Yay.

I just got a copies of the family pictures we had done while I was back in MN this past December. They make me really happy! I wish I had a scanner; I'd scan one in and make you all look at it.

This is the first time my family had all been together in almost a year. It's the first family photo we've had taken in probably six or seven years.

Sadly, with my brother in Kuwait and with me out here in WA low on funds for travelling and all, that Christmas is probably the last time that we'll all be together in the same place for quite a while to come. It sucks, because I really do love my family. I've met all sorts of people out here who come from really disfunctional families and are glad to be apart, but not me. My parents, my sisters, my brother -- good people. I miss them.

I'm the queen of run-on sentences today. Yay me.

It's hard explaining depression to someone who's never really been there. And trying to explain... it makes me feel like something's seriously wrong with me, like I'm so much less of a person because I get sucked down into the depression, without there being any good reason for it, no real motivation for being unhappy.

Blah.

I am feeling a little better now though. I mean, I was feeling depressed anyway and I still am now, but there was other stuff going on that was getting to me. Mike and I had a good talk and worked some of that out. So I'm not happy right now, exactly, but I feel like a lot of weight has been lifted off my shoulders. It's good.

Current mood: Down
Now playing: The Police, Don't Stand So Close To Me

Wow, it's been a while. Only three days, I guess, but they've been a long three days.

I'm so sore now. I danced all weekend. I danced hard. I'm getting a little better at the fast lindy stuff -- my technique still isn't great, but it's getting there. I learned some exercizes this weekend that I can warm up with, and they really seem to help my basic fall into place a bit better.

A lot of people weren't all that impressed with the workshop. Alex loved it; he says he had a better time this weekend than he had at SONW. (Then again, he and I both got screwed on SONW. Long, sad, boring story.) I don't know if I'd say the same, but I had a great time over the last few days. I feel energized about my dancing again.

On an entirely different note, my depression's been kicking up again recently. The last few days haven't been great; I think it was good that I had structured activities all weekend keeping me out and about. It probably wasn't so great that I was eating and sleeping sporadically. My inclination today is to indulge my mood and stay home, but that's likely not a great idea. At a minimum, I think I'll drag myself out to Sonny's tonight.

I'm logged into IM right now. Why is it that the two or three people I'm really not all that into talking wtih are the ones who message me endlessly? Bleh.

Anyhow, I'm off to walk the dog.

Yay! The IRS finally deposited my refund!

As a side note, I found it interesting when I discovered the other day that the IRS has a Where's My Refund? page set up just for checking refund status. I guess I'm not the only one who wanted to know when I'd get my money back.

A response from my grandmother to the rice forward:

I have seen that, Kathy, but thanks for sending it. I read in the paper the other day that people all over the country were sending their bags of rice, but the white House wouldn't say how many had arrived. In one post office some bags burst open and messed up the automated postal machinery. I've been busy the last two weeks with another version of protest. A group of friends are enlisting people to sign a paper with twelve good reasons why the U.S. should not attack Iraq. The paper and names will be published in the local paper next week as well as sent on to the president and congress persons. I also took part in the virtual protest through e-mail and telephoning last week. Did you know about that one? I guess they were innudated with calls and mail.

I got the following email forward today:

There is a grassroots campaign underway to protest war in Iraq in a simple, but potentially powerful way.

Place 1/2 cup uncooked rice in a small plastic bag (a snack-size bag or sandwich bag work fine). Squeeze out excess air and seal the bag. Wrap it in a piece of paper on which you have written:

"If your enemies are hungry, feed them. Romans 12:20.
Please send this rice to the people of Iraq;
do not attack them."

Place the paper and bag of rice in an envelope (either a letter-sized or padded mailing envelope--both are the same cost to mail) and address them to:

President George Bush
White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

Attach $1.06 in postage. (Three 37-cent stamps equal $1.11.) Drop this in the mail TODAY. It is important to act NOW so that President Bush gets the letters ASAP.

In order for this protest to be effective, there must be hundreds of thousands of such rice deliveries to the White House. We can do this if you each forward this message to your friends and family.

There is a positive history of this protest! In the 1950s, Fellowship of Reconciliation began a similar protest, which is credited with influencing President Eisenhower against attacking China. Read on:

"In the mid-1950s, the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, learning of famine in the Chinese mainland, launched a 'Feed Thine Enemy' campaign. Members and friends mailed thousands of little bags of rice to the White House with a tag quoting the Bible, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him." As far as anyone knew for more than ten years, the campaign was an abject failure. The President did not acknowledge receipt of the bags publicly; certainly, no rice was ever sent to China.

What nonviolent activists only learned a decade later was that the campaign played a significant, perhaps even determining role in preventing nuclear war. Twice while the campaign was on, President Eisenhower met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to consider U.S. options in the conflict with China over two islands, Quemoy and Matsu. The generals twice recommended the use of nuclear weapons.

President Eisenhower each time turned to his aide and asked how many little bags of rice had come in. When told they numbered in the tens of thousands, Eisenhower told the generals that as long as so many Americans were expressing active interest in having the U.S. feed the Chinese, he certainly wasn't going to consider using nuclear weapons against them."

From: People Power: Applying Nonviolence Theory by David H. Albert, p.43, New Society, 19

It's an interesting idea. I don't know how widespread the email is or how many people are actually acting on it, but I'm thinking about sending a bag of rice.

I hate being awake and alone in the middle of the night, without even anyone to talk to on IM; I don't think any other time of day ever feels quite as lonely.

What horrible affliction would you be? Take the Affliction Test Today! Grant and I are disease-mates; we're both rabies. I've never had a disease-mate before.

Guh.

I stumbled onto some websites about animal cruelty today and read a few specific case histories. I'm not going to post links here because they're pretty brutal and I don't know that anyone who reads this blog will get anything positive out of reading them.

It's sick, what some people in this world are capable of. And it's sad that even in cases of severe animal cruelty the perpetrators often go unpunished, nothing done to prevent them from doing the same things to other animals down the line.

I don't even have words for what I'm feeling. Upset? Sick to my stomach? Sad? Bleh.

More on the flourescent rabbit:

Kathryn: did you read the link about the flourescent rabbit?
Jeremy: yep
Jeremy: kinda scary
Kathryn: I think it's scary that he found scientists willing to help with that.
Kathryn: so you're of the view that it's "unethical"?
Jeremy: um.. hard to say
Jeremy: probably
Jeremy: art should not harm other creatures
Jeremy: there's no justification for doing so

What if it isn't really "harmed"? How is harm defined?

If the rabbit lives a full, productive life and dies a normal death, was it really harmed?

How is the creation of this rabbit different from people who breed hybrid parrots - breeds and matchings that wouldn't happen on their own in nature, but are genetically possible and are then engineered in captivity?

I guess, though, that there are ethical arguments against the breeding of hybrid parrots, tigons, ligers, and any other sort of hybrid animals, as well.

I was going through some old papers my apartment complex had tacked up my door a few weeks ago, and came across this one:

. . .Archstone has been notified by the National Apartment Association of a possible terrorist threat targeting apartments and hotels. . .Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller raised the national terrorism threat level to "orange" indicating a "high risk of terrorist attacks". . .All residents are asked to be aware of any suspicious activities and report them to the local FBI Field Office. . .

Can you say "paranoia"? Blah.

Ack. Meet Alba, the genetically altered, flourescent green bunny. Art? Social statement? Highly unethical? Just plain crazy?

"For his latest work, GFP Bunny, he created a living green rabbit. With the assistance of French scientists, Kac used genetic engineering to inject a rabbit zygote with the green fluorescent protein gene --hence the work's name -- that exists in jellyfish. The result: a lovable bunny named Alba, whose fur -- under optimum frequency blue light -- glows green."

Rabbit postcards! Kick ass!

I've been feeling a little light-headed today. Not a good thing. I felt like I might pass out for a moment there when I was out with my dog just now. I'm thinking that maybe it isn't such a good idea for me to be driving into the city for the dance tonight.

---

I've been cleaning like crazy today and yesterday. I have my air filter out in the living room while I'm working on cleaning in here, sitting right next to the kitchen. It's rectangular shaped; maybe two and a half feet tall, two feet long, and one foot wide. It does make noise, but not all that much; comprable, maybe, to the noise that a box fan might make.

My poor dog is scared shitless of the thing. He's too scared to walk past it into the kitchen to get to his food and water, unless I actively coax him by. The minute I move away from it again, he hightails it back into the living room to hide as far away as he can possibly get. Poor puppy. :(

Brian's on strike. Mike hasn't posted anything interesting lately. If I can't peer over the fence into their lives, why should I give anyone the satisfaction of peering over into mine? I'm on strike too, then. So there.

Either that or I haven't been posting because I just haven't had anything worth saying. Or something. Blah.

A short response to Brian's most recent blog post:

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

That portion of the email forward he posted jumped out at me because when I was a kid, another kid from my church was out playing at a vacant construction site with friends when a huge pile of sand collapsed on him. They dug him out and rushed him to the emergency room, but he'd already gone into a coma. He died a week later due to complications. That's the only time in my life so far that a peer of mine has died. It sucked.

That aside, however, I generally agree with the email Brian posted. You should consider reading it if you haven't already.

Alright, alright, so that you don't have to actually click a link and browse over, I'll post it here. You lazy bum.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have.

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes too, but I can't remember getting E-coli.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

Our baby cribs, toys and rooms were painted with bright colored lead based paint. We often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt.

We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was not available.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never overweight; we were always outside playing.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.

That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), the term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system. Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention for the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations.

I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot?

He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.

Oh yeah.... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked (physical abuse) here too ... and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough...it wasn't so that they could take the rough Berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations.

I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive. How sick were my parents?

Of course, my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall Donny Reynolds from next-door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes?

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we survive?

(Anonymous)

So, yeah. I agree with a lot of that. I believe our society has become paranoid and stupid. I hate the litigation-happy mentality that we seem to have slipped into. I hate all the ass-covering that schools, hospitals, individuals, businesses, organizations, etc. end up engaging in due to fear of litigation.

I worked as a counselor at a girl scout camp one summer a few years ago. They were so paranoid about litigation that they just cut out all sorts of activities that had I enjoyed at the same camp as a kid, and they really put limits on how counselors could interact with kids. This got in the way of a good camp experience for the kids more often than not. For instance, the girls are no longer allowed to learn how to put up tents. Knife safety courses are gone; no more whitling, no more carving sticks for marshmallows. They could hurt themselves. Girls aren't allowed to share or trade food; what if one is allergic to something the other give her?! When I was a kid and it rained at the camp, we put on our ponchos and continued with whatever we were doing. We felt good about ourselves because we were "roughing it", and it was fun. Now they force all the kids indoors; wouldn't want anyone to catch a chill.

One week when I was assigned to one of the five-year old units, one of the girls whacked another with a stick. The injured girl came crying to me. She wasn't really hurt all that badly; she just wanted to climb up on my lap for a hug and some consolation. I had to tell her no and keep her at a distance, which left her feeling all the more upset. Any sort of contact like that was distinctly against the rules, rules which had been put in place to give the camp administrators peace of mind about protecting themselves from any sort of sexual harassment litigation.

I loved the kids, but it was just depressing for me seeing how much the camp had changed in 10 years and how much it was still changing (for the worse, in my opinion). I didn't go back to be a counselor again for any of the following summers.

It's good to worry about safety. It's good to hold people, organizations, schools, etc. accountable for bad things that they are responsible for. But I think we've gone way overboard. And it pisses me off.

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I drew that. Isn't it pretty? Ah, the joys of ASCII art.

Damnit. I just screwed up my post and now have to re-type it. I hate when I do stupid crap like that.

---

For whatever reason, last night as I was falling asleep I found myself trying to come up with an analogy for a stifling relationship.

Imagine two flowers in a field. One is blue and gold, rounded petals, a soft scent. One is a stunning red with a clean white center, its petals more angular. Both are stunning and beautiful, but they grow well next to each other. Neither draws away from the other. Both have ample access to sunlight and to water and minerals in the ground, and both are able to grow to their full potential; healthy looking, good size, vibrant colours.

Now imagine the same blue and gold flower in the same field, but neighbored instead by a large bush full of delicate yellow buds. When they are small both the flower and the bush may grow well together for a time, but as the bush becomes larger and more beautiful it will begin to block the sunlight available to the flower and it will draw more water and minerals out of the ground, thereby limiting the resources needed by the flower.

The flower in the second example may still live a full life, and it may still be pretty, but in having its resources limited it will never be able to reach its full potential. Its growth will likely be stunted, its colours will never be as bright, and it will never look quite as healthy as it might under other conditions. Looking at this particular flower on its own you might not even realize that was the case, but if you were familiar with the breed of flower, if you could see it in comparison next to the flower in the first example, it would be blatantly apparent that the flower here was ultimately something less than it could have been.

So I fell asleep thinking about flowers and bushes.

Ooh-oo child, things are gonna get easier.
Ooh-oo child, things'll get brighter.
Ooh-oo child, things are gonna get easier.
Ooh-oo child, things'll get brighter

Some day, yeah, we'll get it together and we'll get it all done.
Some day when your head is much lighter
Some day, yeah, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun.
Some day when the world is much brighter...

("Ooh Child" - written by Stan Vincent, sung by many)

I was a little unhappy earlier, and this song started playing in my head. I don't even know the song all that well so I'm not sure where it came from, but I found it strangely comforting.

So I was looking at plane tickets, found some really nicely priced ones... I went to just browse around a little bit to see if I could find anything else comprable, not more than 10 minutes, and then popped back to the original site to find that the original tickets I'd found jumped up in price by $70. Coincidentally, it turns out those 10 minutes were the difference between "before midnight" and "after midnight" (a new day). Blah. Suck.

Other than that, it's been a nice night. It's Tiff's birthday, and she's all about Karaoke, so they set up a machine! And games night has been Karaoke night. Lots of fun. Back to singing...

Wow.

I had just left to go over to a friend's place, and turned around to come back before I'd even left the apartment complex because I remembered that I'd left the coffee-maker on. Ran upstairs, and found that my dog had ALREADY gotten into the kitchen. He found the most recent bag of dog treats I'd purchased for him and was busy helping himself. (Better that than chocolate.)

Well, at least he's a go-getter. Or something.

This time I caught him before he'd feasted, but soon enough into it for him to feel guilty. He's on the couch in submissive mode as I type this.

Anyhow, I'm off again, now that I'm certain I'm not going to burn down the apartment while I'm away.

I feel indescribably happy right now.

My electric griddle is the ultimate kitchen tool. It can do anything.

I just manged to use it to make popcorn. Mmm, freshly popped popping corn with just a hint of butter and salt, and none of that microwave @#%$.

I have ULTIMATE KITCHEN POWER! :)

Wow. I never realized just how profound Brian really was.

Along the same lines, I wouldn't mind a suga-daddy. Or a suga-momma, even. I'm not picky. :)

Jeremy knows about the blog now. Hmm.

I tried to make him promise never to get offended at anything I might write before giving him the address, but he didn't really go for that. Bah. Guess I'll have to bad-mouth him someplace else. ;)

Anyhow - hi, Jeremy.

Mike comes home tonight!

Well, not "home" so much as in "where my home is", but "home" as in "where he lives, thousands of miles away". This means, though, that he'll be available online again, and that I'll be able to call him. That makes me happy.

After finding that, in the last 4 days, TurboTax's live chat system has changed such that it now costs more for one session than the entire amount of the refund I'm seeking, and after filling out a few more web forms only to get more stock responses directing me to web chat (despite the customer support FAQ indicating the forms as being the correct line of action to take), I gave up.

I filed an online complaint with the Better Business Bureau detailing all my woes, and although that doesn't change anything, I feel much better now. I'm ready to move on with my life.

Petty? Yes.

But if I feel like a load is off my chest now as a result, is it really all that bad? Intuit charged me more than they should have and has subsequently wasted my time and given me no end of frustration. It may all be over a trivial amount of money, but it's still not a good way to run a business.

On to new and better things...

Why are there so many stupid people in the world?

I filed my taxes on the web through TurboTax. Microsoft had a deal with ProBusiness, the company that handled their W-2s, that should have ended up giving me a 15% discount on the TurboTax price. I was charged full price.

• I did a Live Chat with a TurboTax support person and explained my problem.


• They directed me to contact ProBusiness. I attempted to call ProBusiness, but their customer support line only takes calls for a limited portion of the day and was closed down.


• I emailed ProBusiness.


• ProBusiness emailed back after several days and said, "Not my problem! Talk to your company benefits or to TurboTax."


• I emailed ProBusiness again, along with MS Benefits, and ProBusiness responded by saying, "Oh, it is our problem. But you'll have to talk to TurboTax anyway."


• I spent a long time searching the TurboTax and Intuit web sites looking an email contact address, but couldn't find any. I DID eventually find a FAQ Question for my specific problem ("I didn't receive my 15% Employer Program discount. How do I get a refund of the difference?") that directed me to fill out a Refunds web form.


• I filled out the form. Some required fields were irrelevant to TurboTax on the Web, so I had to choose answers that didn't apply. It was annoying. I entered LOTS of information in the comment box; should have been plenty.


• I recieved an email response saying that they need more information and I need to do a live chat. (Argh - straingt back to where I started!) There was no case number included. The page they pointed me to has a link to do live chat if you have a case number, but not otherwise.


• I browsed around for a while looking for a live chat link that didn't require a case number but couldn't find it right off, so I responded to the email.


• My email response BOUNCED BACK. They sent me email from an address (taxservice@intuit.com) that is apparently not even a valid address.

All this for a refund that will amount to less than $2.00. At this point I'm not even doing it for the money, just for the principal of the matter, but #@$@#%. I'm thinking now that it's just not worth it; I'm pretty peeved and this is probably doing horrid things to my blood pressure.

Then, I logged back into my mail account to find another, unrelated email. Several days ago I emailed the MS charitable giving program. In the email I indicated that I no longer work at MS and thus cannot access their internal website, and I asked if there was any other means for me to get a record of how much money had been pulled out of my salary last year for the organizations I'd chosen to donate to. Their response gave a link to their internal website and directed me to look it up there. Hello! I mailed you because I can't access the internal website since I no longer have access to the internal network! @#$@#^%.

Argh.

I feel like banging my head against a wall.

Well, I finally changed my blog template, and I've customized it to my heart's content. I think the page is much prettier now. If you don't, well, get your own page or something. :)

---

Dogs having nightmares are so sad.

Reason #537 for not smoking around your kids: I was talking to a friend about smoking the other day. He's never smoked a cigarette, but his dad smoked for the first 16 years of his life. He says that sometimes when he hangs out around smokers he'll feel as if his body is craving cigrettes, despite the fact that he wouldn't even know how to smoke the damn things. Not cool.

I wonder if some of my restlessness is from not dancing.

Going from being really active every day, to hardly at all...

Hmm.

It'd make sense.

I'm restless lately. I don't know what the deal is.

I'll idly surf the net; it feels like I'm looking for something, but I'm not sure what it is. I check Brian's blog, nothing new, Mike's blog, nothing new, Mary's blog, nothing new... and I sit there filling unfulfilled, not sure what I want, what I'm looking for.

I sit here in my chair, or I walk around, or I drive, and it feels like something in me's just about to burst.

I've been burning out on dance a bit, maybe; I'm not going out as much, perhaps 1/3 to 1/4 as often as I was just a month ago. I took much of last week and most the weekend off; I know some of my friends wanted to get together, I know there are any number of social gatherings I've been welcome at, I know that people have noticed my absence and have missed me, but still I've chosen on a number of occasions to just stay home. Hang out with the dog, do chores around the house, read.

I'm not sure what's up, what I'm looking for, what's driving me to all of a sudden act differently than I had been.

. . . I often wonder how my parents survived raising my sister and me and are still managed to stay married for 36 years and still going :).

I think it had a lot to do with both of my parents having their families close by while we were growing up. Every now and then, the grandparents would 'take the kids' for a few days so my parents could spend some time alone. They were't dropping us off every weekend, but often enough to spend a weekend or two alone with each other every couple of months. . . .[Original Article]

I'd like that when I have kids, I think. Live close to either my family, the inlaws, or both.

My parents had that with my mother's parents -- they were just a few blocks away, so they could help out every once in a while. They spent lots of time working and playing with us when we were small. They'd take us in when one of my parents had to go to the hospital. When I was a teenager and just couldn't get along with my mother, when our fighting was at it's worst, they'd let me go hang with my grandmother until the tension cooled some.

I get so tied down these days even just with pets. I wanted to go dance in Portland this weekend - there's a huge Tango festival going on - but I just couldn't swing it with the dog. Pet care is expensive. It's hard to get on short notice. It's hard to trust strangers with it, especially after having one or two bad experiences.

I imagine that it's many times more complicated with children.

I should give credit where it's due.

So, I went back through and posted links to the original articles for each of the quotes. I thought about posting the authors, too, but I'm not sure they want their email addresses splattered all over the net. But if you click on the links you can see the whole articles in their entirety, and you can see who posted them, when, and where.

Mmm. More with the quoting.

. . . I think another aspect that goes wrong when 'looking' for someone is that you are too often concentrating on somebody *else's* virtues and qualities, not your own. I really believe that you can't make someone else love you, you can only make yourself loveable. So concentrate on making yourself a wonderful, happy, secure, confident, person and when you DO meet the person of your dreams, you'll be their dream, too. . . . [Original Article]

Bear with me here; I'll finish reading through all these threads soon, and then we'll be back to my original drivel.

Also interesting:

. . . You seem to be looking for her to explain why she left you--what was wrong with you, or the relationship, that she had to get out. That's kind of like asking an semi-illiterate to proofread a paper. They're likely to miss the things that are genuinely wrong, and correct some things that were right in the first place! If she's not an emotionally healthy person herself, and wouldn't know an emotionally healthy person/relationship if it bit her in the ass...do you think she's going to have much insight of value? . . . [Original Article]

More words to live by.

. . . My suggestion would be to do whatever you could to save your marriage, like I did. If it doesn't work, then at least you'll know that you tried, that it was out of your hands. . . .

And a partial response:

. . . If you try everything you can, and it still dies, then at lease you will not go through the rest of your life thinking 'What if I had done....' . . . [Original Article]

Another gem from the newsgroup:

. . . but unless you can turn loose, life will be a mess for you as well. You tried, but now you have to keep from sinking yourself. You can't save both of you, but don't fail to save yourself. Too many people make this mistake, in my opinion. . . . [Original Article]

I was reading through some old newsgroup threads that a friend posted in a while back, and came across this little gem of advice:

. . . Trying to rescue a damsel in distress is just going to get you a distressed damsel. Get healthy yourself and you *will* attract a healthy woman. . . . [Original Article]

I don't know why, but I really liked that, especially the first part.

Hmm; I've got the tiniest bit of a hangover. First time in quite a while.

Amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.

I tried to find a source for that, but couldn't. It's spread all over the web, no source given anywhere that I could find.

I was filling out the online FAFSA and ran across this:

A federal law suspends federal student aid eligibility for students convicted under federal or state law of possession or sale of drugs (not including alcohol and tobacco).

Ouch.

"You screwed up, so we're going to make you pay for the rest of all time."

Ouch.

I was cutting some flower stems just now, slipped, and made a good gouge in my thumb. Cut pretty deep into the tip, and a ways down through the nail, as well.

Times like this, I feel pretty stupid for not carrying any health insurance.

It's strange how an upbeat guitar or vocal rif on top of a strong percussion set and a bit of bass can make me feel happier.

Mary pointed out that I've "stopped blogging so much lately".

Hmm.

I wonder if I'm just uninspired, or if I'm losing interest so soon.

I tend to do everything in spurts - I'm not good at consistency - so I imagine my blogging will come in spurts, too. Ah well.

My dog is so dirty. Amazing how playing in mud puddles will do that to you. Mmm, black mud matted into white dog hair.

---

I just got done playing spades with Mike. It's nuts how often I'll see a hand and think, "No way should I bid [x]," and then I bid [x] anyway. Especially when [x]=nil. I really want to bid and make nils. 7-9-J of spades? No problem! 5-8-10-J of spades? Sure, I can do that.

Only usually I can't. No matter how much I want to.

And then we lose our game, which makes me sad.

Bleh.

Man, I'm feeling low.

I came home to find that my dog had been digging in the kitchen again. This is his latest thing; when I'm gone and he's bored, he goes digging around the counters and such. It's happened five times in the last week. He gets into stuff all bagged/boxed tightly, tucked away - he really, really digs for it. Today he found an old bag of malted milk balls and went to town.

So I was feeling pretty frustrated. And I really scolded him. And he was so scared of me that he pissed himself.

For those of you that don't know, I got my dog almost a year ago as an adult dog, five years old. At least one of the homes he's been at before was a pretty bad one, and I'm positive that he's been abused. We've come a long way; he really trusts me and is completely devoted.

For me to have scared him so much...

Sigh.

It sucks. I just don't know how to break him of this habit, and I'm worried that he's going to find and eat something really bad for him someday and make himself seriously ill.

I don't want to scare the piss out of him, no pun intended. I just want not to have to worry.

I feel so bad. :(

I'm feeling kind of down and on edge today.

I don't know what it is. It's probably my brother, in part. I called my folks' house a little while ago and chatted with him a bit, with my sisters, with Amber, his girlfriend. I got all stuck up on all the little details I'd never have thought about on my own; he and Amber went and gave her power of attorney the other day so that she can take care of his affairs while he's away. Mary is taking his car while he's gone.

Anyhow, this call was the last time I'll get to talk with Leroy real-time for a long time. Major bummer. All of my family outside myself gathered together for the day. Laurie's there. Amber's family drove over to Rochester, too - it's the first time their family has really met ours since Amber and Leroy graduated from high school. What an occasion for the families to be meeting up. I wish I weren't so far away, so that I could be there too.

Tiff and I are going to hang out shortly. And Chris A. had surgery on Friday; I've been planning on going to harass him a bit. I saw Steve this morning, which was wonderful, and then saw Alex for a while which was really nice too. Trying to keep busy, trying not to let myself close off and shut down, but I just don't have the stomach for it right now. I'm doing all of this, but really what I'd like to be doing is sitting around alone, moping.

I feel so emotionally heavy. Blah.

I gave in this morning and had a cigarette. Mike will not be happy to hear this. Neither will Alex.

I'm sorry, guys.

But... it felt so good. One of life's little pleasures; standing out on the balcony, having the one cigarette, listening to my music, looking around; it's not sunny today, but it's a nice day. Listening to my birds singing, listening to the birds outside, looking around at the leaves and the greenery, the tree just underneath my balcony with the helicopter seeds, the trees just a bit away growing pine cones, the light green and the dark green and the shadows and the light, all of the beauty surrounding me and just feeling good...

Sigh.

It reminded me of the weeks when Jon was here. Some of those days were just so perfect.

This is one of the reasons that it's so hard to quit.

So is driving. Driving in Seattle just makes me want so smoke. Everything's so much more tollerable with a cigarette -- bad traffic, stand stills, sitting there wanting to be somewhere but not there yet and not there any time soon, bad drivers. Bleh.

Alex just called. We're going to go have a late breakfast, and then head over to the computer store. He's almost here, so I'm going to go out and meet him; signing off now.

If you read this before I talk to you again, Mike, I miss you -- I'm looking forward to talking to you again soon.