demeter's Xanga

Friday, September 02, 2005

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 03:47:50 GMT

Moving out

Remember a couple months ago when I said I was moving to my own site? Turns out I wasn't kidding. Prepoceros is up and running, and you're all warmly invited to come visit me in my new home. It's not much to look at right now, but it's got all the same bloggy goodness you've come to expect here at demeter. (I would be more self-effacing, but if you don't like what I write, chances are you've stopped reading long ago.)

Xanga's been good to me in the two-and-a-half years I've been here, but I've outgrown it. I will of course continue to read all my subscriptions, so nothing will change on that end. The only difference will be, for those of you who are subscribed to me, that my new posts will (obviously) no longer show up on your subscriptions page. I hope y'all will still make the extra click over to visit me, though. That's the one thing I'll miss about xanga--the built-in community. I've connected with some really great folks here.

Oh well, no need to draw it out; I'm not going far. I hope you like the new site. Over and out.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 05:45:59 GMT

Hello, September

Call this a cop-out post if you like. Zero Fluegers, two Beebests, whatever. I really don't give a flip. I had a grumpy day today, and the sooner I get this up, the sooner I can go back to covering my head with a pillow and pretending the world doesn't exist.

My convenient excuse will be that either yesterday or the day before was some sort of informal "share the love" day in the blogosphere. Thus, I present you with the following selection of blogs/pages/photojournals you probably have never read/seen but might want to check out if you're in the mood to add to your reading list:

Like I bet if DOGS wrote letters they would sign them "CHEERS!" right before becoming so excited about the WALK! to the MAILBOX! that they pee all over the carpet.

Coworker: What does it mean when your cat starts pooping a lot?
Me: What does it mean?
Coworker: Yeah.
Me: Are you thinking symptom or omen?

I will not decide that Helen of Troy in Troilus and Cressida is actually a sports car, nor will Pandarus do lines of cocaine off of her. (I will especially not do this if I can't afford a real sports car and have to make do with a small toy Ferrari, set on a table).

But the little things are important too, like leaving a car window cracked for them when you stop at the bar on hot summer days. (Before you call Child Services, I'm kidding. I usually just park in the shade.)

Click the left half of the photo to go back, the right half to go forward.

Good night. Morning. What-the-fuck-ever.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 03:43:19 GMT

Southern hospitality

I'm fortunate enough to have been spared Katrina's wrath. Not only did the weather miss Texas completely, but also--thanks to my still-unplugged TV--I've dodged the mind-numbing barrage of reporters in slickers on the beach or in wading boots amidst floating debris and "breaking news" updates in which tired anchors relentlessly inject verve and freshness into the same depressing statistics and video montages over and over and over again until at 4:30 AM they lose their shit on live television and begin bickering like whiny schoolchildren.

Millions of other people, however, have not been nearly as fortunate, and many of them have ended up here in Houston. I'm proud to say that my hometown has welcomed them with open arms. Anyone with a Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama ID has the run of the city. They get free admission to all of the museums, tonight's Comets (WNBA) game, the zoo, the symphony, and a bunch of other attractions around town. Six Flags Astroworld, not too far from my apartment, is also offering half-price tickets, so I expect I'll be seeing plenty of out-of-state license plates around here in the next few days.

I think a bunch of local bars are also waiving their cover charges, restaurants have half-price deals, and some of the apartment companies are setting up supercheap short-term leases for people who need a place to stay. If it were me, I know I'd have a hard time having fun not knowing whether I still had a house. Still, a day at the museum sure beats sitting in the hotel lobby watching looped footage of your neighborhood under ten feet of floodwater.

I doubt I have any readers from the affected states, but hey, if you've stumbled across this page and are looking for ways to spend your time in Houston, click here for a list of things to do while you're waiting for the power to come back on in your hometown. And y'all stay as long as you'd like; we've got plenty of room. This is Texas, after all.

[Edit: It looks like they'll be evacuating the Superdome and bussing thousands of people over to the Astrodome (also down the street from me), to be housed there for an indefinite length of time. The refugees will mostly be Louisiana's poorest, as everyone else would have evacuated before the storm hit, and I'm guessing many of Houston's homeless will make their way to the Astrodome as well to join the crowd, which I suppose is a good thing.

Things are about to get a lot crazier, a lot more crowded, and a lot sadder around here.]

Monday, August 29, 2005

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 03:36:51 GMT

For once, I know I made the right decision.

Friday was a marginally good day--starting sluggishly, peaking around mid-afternoon (in terms of both mood and productivity), and crashing in the evening. Yesterday was a bad day, as was today.

Last night I went to bed at 11, woke up at 8:30, read fifty pages in my book, then dozed off again and slept until TWO IN THE AFTERNOON. Wtf? I haven't done anything like that since I was at school, and the past few weeks have seen me consistently waking up at 7:30 or 8 every morning.

I spent most of the rest of the day (what little there was left) on the floor, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, as is the norm on these sorts of days. Around 8 I wandered over to Barnes & Noble, as I'd run out of things to read. I flipped through two magazines and, just as the store was closing, bought three new books (which I most certainly don't have the money for) because having books makes me happy.

Fifteen hundred miles away at Harvey Mudd College, the dorms opened this morning, and classes start Tuesday. Earlier this afternoon I imagined myself there, feeling as crummy as I do now, but with a whole semester of hard work, an inflexible schedule, and a steady stream of deadlines looming. From a start like this, things could only go downhill. I would be miserable.

Despite all the angst I've put myself through over not being able to be back at Mudd this semester, I am so glad I made the decision to stay here. For once in my life, I've made a prescient, mature decision and staved off what would surely have been a disastrous waste of time and money, not to mention a heavy blow to my self-esteem and joie de vivre.

Now I have only to get down to the business of actually solving the problems that would have made my return to school miserable. After all, I can't hide from college forever. And I don't plan to--yesterday I got my letter of admission to HBU, and I'll be registering for classes on Friday. I also started teaching a new SAT class in Kingwood yesterday, and I'll soon be picking up another--here comes that busy schedule again.

(But busy schedule = more money, so I don't mind at all. Also, I'm much more likely to feel sluggish and depressed when I have nothing to do (e.g., today).)

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 00:24:56 GMT

In which footnotes feature prominently

The night before last I had a funny dream, and yesterday I told people about it. Then last night I had another funny dream. I woke up, spent an hour telling maybe ten different people about all the parts they had played in my dream...and then I woke up for real. So I had a dream within a dream, which has never happened to me before.

It was trippy, to say the least. It's a recursive dream*, or something like a frame story--the Canterbury Tales of dreams. It was about six in the morning when I woke up for real, and I spent the next fifteen minutes hurriedly scribbling down all the details so I wouldn't forget them. I keep a notebook and pen next to my bed for this exact purpose.

I love dreams, and I consider myself lucky that I remember mine almost every morning; most of them are spectacular. When it comes to remembering them over weeks or months or years, I seem to store memories of dreams in a particular part of my brain, separate from my "real" long-term memory. Either that, or my dream memories all have a special "tag" on them that links them together incredibly strongly.

I know this because although I can't often recall dreams from more than a day ago, when I do remember one, several other, semi-related old dreams come streaming back in rapid succession. I find that if I concentrate on remembering one dream, all of a sudden I'll be "transported" into a completely different dream, and then another, and then another, often through thirty or forty or fifty different dreams. Sometimes I'll hit on one that I *know* I haven't been able to recall since the morning after I dreamed it, even though that may have been years ago.

The links are usually between dreams that occur in the same (fictional) location**, or in similar-looking places (on a plane***, in a forest, in a village on a hill). Oddly enough, when the action occurs in a place that exists in the real world (my high school, my backyard), it never triggers a *real* memory of something that happened there--it only works for dreams.

Needless to say, bedtime is usually my favorite time of day. I feel sorry for people who don't remember their dreams--I know my life would be much duller without mine. By the way, does anyone know what I'm talking about? Do you remember dreams this way, too?

* Does this mean that tonight I'll have a dream in which I have a dream, wake up and tell people about it, then wake up again and blog about it? I hope so.

** There are several elaborate "dreamscapes" where several of my dreams have taken place. I usually recognize them while I'm actually in the dream, though when I'm asleep they register as real places that I've visited before.

*** Probably a quarter to a third of my dreams take place on airplanes. Every now and then I'll be on a spaceship, but it's usually planes, planes, planes. I don't know why.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 03:10:59 GMT

Today is a good day!

Today I was in the office most of the day and got all sorts of stuff done and taught a lesson in Kingwood and heard all my favorite songs on the radio and went swimming with Toni and Greg and wrote a run-on sentence and it was FABULOUS.

While I was teaching my lesson I was thinking...Look! I'm teaching! This is the funnest thing ever! Oh! Detail questions! I LOVE Detail questions! Happy happy!...and the time flew right by. Mmmm, I love good days.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 23:38:13 GMT

Today is a bad day

Remember how I talked about the good days and the bad days? Today is one of the latter. So was yesterday--I spent most of that day on the couch. Today I had to go to the office, and to therapy, and back to the office, but I didn't do much besides sit there and try to block everything out of my head.

It's hard to describe that spaced-out feeling. It's like there's a fog in my head, and I can't think straight. I don't want to move, or go anywhere, or talk to anybody (in person), or think about anything. I want the world to disappear, like it does when I'm asleep.

When I feel like this, I usually lie very still on the floor, close my eyes, and try to think of anything besides where I am and what I should be doing. Sometimes I read a book, and then I feel at least semi-productive. Sometimes I play game after game of Minesweeper or Spider Solitaire, and then I feel completely unproductive (and my wrists hurt). I used to watch tv, but that hasn't been a problem since I unplugged it. (56 days!)

I remember feeling like this every now and then when I was little. Back then, instead of lying quietly, I would kick and thrash around and scream. I knew that I felt angry and frustrated in my head, but I didn't know why, and nothing I did made it go away. Today that usually translates into throwing things, which is how my apartment gets as messy as it does.

I think the Wellbutrin might be helping, but I don't know. I'm on a very low dose, so I probably need more.

I'm not writing about this to make you feel sorry for me, honestly. I have a couple other entries planned out in my head, but I don't want to think about them right now, so this is what you get.

The good thing about being in a funk is that I know I'll probably be over it in a few days. Maybe even tomorrow. For now, though, I'm going to go curl up with my blankie.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Sat, 20 Aug 2005 20:02:07 GMT

A Short Poem

I found a pretty cat
And wore it as a hat,
But on my head it shat.
Do I look like a litterbox to you? Geezus.

P.S. The previous post has been protected.

P.P.S. Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory. I heart the Onion.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 05:04:02 GMT

All growed up

My little brother is leaving for college tomorrow morning. He's off to Vanderbilt to become a civil/mechanical engineer. He's excited about it, which is awesome. I hope his college career goes smoother than mine has so far. (*knock on wood*)

I think it'll be rough on my parents finally being empty-nesters. For a while they thought they were going to move to the Bahamas, but now it looks like that plan will fall through. I'll be in town (forty-five minutes away) for the next six months, of course, but it'll be weird hanging out with my parents without my brother around. I haven't done that since I was...two-and-a-half.

Good luck, Nickiss! Rock Tennessee like a hurricane. Because they don't get hurricanes that often, so they probably need their shit shaken up a bit.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 03:33:24 GMT

Yes, Virginia, it's another themed personality quiz.

Of the characters in Harry Potter, the one whose personality is closest to mine is apparently...

...which doesn't surprise me. The description is me all over, and besides, I've always liked Snape, and I was disappointed when HP6 ended like it did. I still have faith in him, though--he HAS to be a mole, or something. He's definitely got his own agenda. So if Snape turns out to be good...you heard it here first.

On most of the Myers-Briggs personality tests I've taken, though, I've come up as INTP, which would make me...Lord Voldemort. Mwahahaha.

(The quiz is here.)