Remember to breathe

You know when you watch nature shows, and you see an old alpha male and a younger male fight for dominance, and you secretly wish for the old guy to win?

I don't know why this template doesn't put a space between the post and the post date. I'll have to figure that out sometime.

"It took me a lot of years to find my personal bridges back from the hidden corners of my own psyche, and years to become aware when I was creating drama in my life to mimic the intensity of the inner exploration so that I could then use the created drama for my work, at the expense of people I love."

Architecture for the Soul. Rosanne Cash. (Performing Songwriter, Vol. 8, Issue 52; March/April 2001)

No posts to twitter for a while. It's a little pointless by now.

There was a twitter thing with this template. It lead to the developer's page, and that was lame, so I found the code chunk and deleted it.

I was doing okay.

I'm not anymore.

It's a lovey day today

Fourth year anniversary. How did that happen, all of a sudden?

Crazy.

Amazing.

Happy Anniversary

I had this dream...

When I took a nap earlier. I don't remember all that much. There was a person with dark hair and darker eyes. They threw me onto the ground, face down, and cut open my back. They then reached in, and ripped something out from inside of me. Something precious. I was screaming the whole time. But it wasn't like, an organ, certainly not my heart. It had a shape. Like a turtle statue or something. But whatever it was, I found my self dying as a result of its removal (and probably also the cutting into my back part).

After taking the object out of me, they turned me onto my back, and sat there, watching me die with this smirk on their face. I remember coughing up a lot of blood. It made me think about the time when I was a kid; I was reading or something, and just stopped, looked at the ceiling and thought, "Some day, I'm going to cough up blood, and then I just won't know what to do with myself." People with tuberculosis did that before they found a cure, back when it was still called "consumption."

Anyway, the last thing I remember about the dream was, as I was laying there, bleeding and dying, I asked the person, "Did you ever feel anything for me?"

And then I woke up. With a migraine. Wondering if I had screamed whilst I was asleep. My back also felt a little sore, but I shouldn't read too much into that, since it's kind of normal.

It's one of the more brutal and grotesque dreams I've had. But interesting. I would honestly like to have that dream again, and perhaps be able to remember it better. It would make a more interesting story.

I took these before the hurricane came along and ripped all the leaves from the trees.

With flash

Without flash.

Black and white.

Stolen brick.

Even if you knew what was there, would you see it?

I saw Dashboard Confessional last Friday. Broke my glasses when a crowd surfing kid smashed the back of my head. I wanted to scream. Panic. Freak out. Why, after all the shows I'd been to, did this happen now? I resisted the urge. I ignored everything I felt to watch the show. It was a good show.

There's vomit all over the bathroom, from the night of the Halloween dance, which was Friday. Last night, I went to use one of the showers, and found a heap of vomit right where I was about to step into the stall. I wanted to throw up myself. Of course, the bathrooms don't get cleaned during the weekend, so we have to wait until tomorrow. I feel like leaving a note about how disgusting and stupid it is. It won't matter though, so I won't.

I took an exam in Inorganic on Friday. Dr Masingale writes long exams, so I'm glad he gives us as much time as we need; he doesn't have anything to do after our class, and there isn't one in that room directly after, so we can stay longer than the allotted time to finish it. It seems like bad practice, but it's a nice gesture. The crazy thing is that I learned something whilst taking the exam: It's thermodynamically possible for Gold and Cesium to form an ionic bond, even though they are two metals. Crazy business.

I'm sad lately. And tired. So tired. Like, I can't get enough sleep, no matter how many hours I stay in bed during the weekend. I don't know why. And everything makes me want to hide somewhere, under the covers, and just cry. Maybe hormones.

After my physics lab midterm on Thursday, I went to see professor Leo, who taught me General Chemistry freshman year. I've been trying to visit her for the last two months, but she's always gone. We talked about a lot of stuff, and then, she suddenly told me that a lot of her students were having trouble, and that there was no tutor at the Academic Support Centre (ASC), and asked if I would be interested in doing it. She said that she would write the recommendation, and if I accepted, she knew that her students would get the right help, since I did well in her class. She then gave me candy (she was having an exam the next day, and passes around a bowl of candy. She also always gives me candy when I see her). After that, I went to the ASC and got an application. If all goes well, I'll be tutoring Gen Chem, perhaps in a group type setting. It's a little scary -- I've never really taught/tutored before (except mentoring in high school), so I worry about not being able to do it well, and also that I won't be able to remember all the information necessary to tutor. I'll try though. Hopefully I get the job. It would certainly help me get hours back that I lost from IT.

Today, I went to the store to get discounted Halloween candy. I got both regular and peanut butter M&M's, Snickers, mini Reese's, and assorted Mini Hershey's. I also got two other things:

Here's a candy dish that I got at JoAnn's when I went there looking for sewing chalk. It was 70% off, and when I did the math, it turned out that it was $1.50. It was cute and cheap, so I got it.

The Chemist in me couldn't really resist this little guy. I forget how much it was at WalMart, but I didn't really care anyway. The candies inside are weird. They almost smell like chocolate, but have a taste that makes me think of Smarties, which I hate. They aren't as bad though, so I'm pretty sure I'll eat all of them.

What attracted me most to this container is that it's a plastic volumetric flask. Most people would call it a beaker. It's not. It's a volumetric flask.

This is a little blurry, because it was taken on my phone; my camera battery died. Cinder is sitting inside of this grassy tunnel thing I got for them, which I cut in half to conserve cage space. I sometimes find it upturned like this. Today, Cinder was just stuffed inside of it, and stayed there long enough for me to take a photograph. Absolutely adorable.

The meatballs weren't so good.

After getting out of philosophy, I walked into the science building, as I always do, and happened upon a group of people who were standing and kneeling around a girl who had fainted on the stairs. Her name was Annie, and she is a sophomore. She had apparently just been diagnosed with hypoglycemia after fainting at work over the weekend. I wanted to help, but the other people around her seemed to have things taken care of. When I heard her mother mention it was recently diagnosed, I jumped in, and talked to her mother about some things she can do to make sure it doesn't happen again, since I also have hypoglycemia (or so the doctors tell me) or some other condition in which I feel really weak and it is magically cured by consuming something with sugars inside. The mother seemed to be happy for the advice, and I stuck around as the fire department and EMTs arrived to help her, just in case I could do anything. After they brought her into the ambulance to be transported to the hospital, I gave Annie's mother my name and number, and said that if her daughter wanted someone to talk to about it, and felt comfortable talking to me, she could give me a call.

I'd like to think I did the right thing in this situation.