uncannyvalley

Misquoting Jesus, The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why - Bart. D. Ehrman (242 pgs)
Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code - Bart. D. Ehrman (207 pgs)
Through a Glass, Darkly - Donna Leon (326 pgs)
( Cue rant here: )
Maaaaan, I've only read 3/10 books. I have to start reading faster.

Hi. I'm writing from captivity. Yes, I have been kidnapped. Do not call the police, I'm to be compensated for my trouble with sex and booze.

Well, booze anyway.

Went out for lunch with Morg. Did he take me home? No, he took me to Victoria. To be fair, he paid for my train ticket back. Buuuut this leaves me without Mush access, and I'm already getting the shakes. T_T

I will be back Tuesday afternoon. accioalya, I am so so so sorry for missing the healers meeting Mon night. Any chance of a log? Cleaned or not, no problem.

If anyone needs me for anything, you can email uncannyvalley@shaw.ca and I'll get it! <3 <3 <3

So, one week to beat KH2.

Now what?

Also, I went from not spending a cent for a year to dropping $300+ in two days. Yay for getting sibling a pair of boots, which was nearly 2/3rds of that. She needed them bad though, so it's an early b-day gift. There is one more element I need before I can start mailing packages out, and then I'll be so broke it's not even funny. Thank goodness for that ticket being already paid for.

Ooooh, and irony! The ticket came along with a random sampling letter requesting feedback. AHAHAHAHAHAHAH Oh I'll give you feedback alright!!!

(PS - AIM seems to hate me, and is not currently working. BLARG.)
(PPS - wrote 11 postcards. UG. Will mail tomorrow.)

To Do:
Wash bedding
Call Morgan, con into taking my pack down in his car, considering he'll BE HERE ANYWAY
Don't forget Todd's movies
Pack Toiletries
Call B & T, figure out what's happening when I hop off at Langford. Todd going to come walk me, or is he working?
Pack Lunch
Get to the train

Remember:
Writing paper (shop for more that isn't so bloody ... flowery!)
oragami paper
laptop
Go to bank
go to china town
go to Bastion square
go to inner harbour
go to museum? Buchart gardens?

O.O I want something like this here! *flails*

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1522158746296131750

SO COOL. For anyone wondering, she falls into the 'uncanny valley'.

To Do for today:

Doctors
Bank (withdraw $48.?? for train, $20 incidentals)
Liquer store, so I don't have to beg off someone else for the first leg of the 48 hour party
Mail that thing for Becca, DOH
Finish Laundry - 2 loads to go?
Wash bedding/vacuume so I have a clean room to come home to (Also, so certain OTHERS don't feel the need to come in and clean while I'm away. >.>)
Transfer programs to the laptop, test
Transfer dates to little calander I'm taking
Narrow down the books I'm taking with me to not read down to 3
Bring drawing stuff?
Pass on Boston Legal DVDs to Diana so she can watch while I'm gone
Find my confirmation # back, not that I'll need it. No one takes the train anymore. WONDER FUCKING WHY
Pack

Oh yeah, I'm gonna be dead before I even arrive. Woot.

PS apparently 'visit lady across the street and let her ply me with alcohol' should have been on that list. I have a new Oma (read: grandmother) it would seem.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *wheeze* AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

(note: this is the sound of UV's mind breaking.)

I WILL HITCH HIKE HOME FROM VICTORIA. I WILL WALK. I WILL CRAWL. I WILL DRAG MYSELF ALONG BY MY TONGUE IF I MUST.

If I was into astrology, I'd say Mercury was in Retrograde or some shit. Victoria wants me and WON'T LET ME COME HOME. HOW can it be THIS fucking hard to get a return ticket? *SOBS*

WHAT sort of company prefers mail outs over Eticket print out? WTF? Hi, I'd RATHER spend 50 cents on this than make the client pay 2 cents in ink? ARG! 5 Agents. 5 before they changed it to Langford. It's not that they didn't notice. They just forgot, or only did half the ticket. And the guy who did the website? SHOT. MUST BE SHOT. OMFG. ... No, I take that back. I want dearly to wrap my fingers around his or her neck and slowly choke the life out of them.

*breathes* There. I am done. It's all good. Except the ticket is coming to the WRONG FUCKING ADDRESS.

So I was telling lavander that I never update because my life is sad, and there's nothing to write.

And I look outside my bedroom window, at the brightly sunny lawn and forest, the deer munching on grass and the three bunnies trying to stay out from under foot, the hummingbirds zooming by, and I realize - I'M TRAPPED IN A BAMBIE MOVIE OMG SAVE ME!

Notes from the home reno front:

1) Install new lighting FIRST. Paint wall SECOND.
2) If your hands and arms start itching like you've been fondling fiber glass just from the paint/patch substance, hey - be a pussy and wear gloves!
3) Pressing on the roller to squeeze out the last drops of paint is fine unless you are a) near the ceiling, b) near the floor, or c) in the corner near your mothers PERFECTLY PAINTED WALL.
4) Always have a partner to blame fuck ups on. Your Father works.
5) Why no, I haven't gotten over my deep loathing of ladders and their unstable footing in the last week.
6) Yes. Spending fifteen minutes fiddling with the stereo to make it play the music you want is a necessary part of home reno. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Especially if they aren't holding a roller.
7) The best part is the water fight afterwards when cleaning off your tools. Try not to do this near the cars, where you wind up spraying watered down paint all over them.
8) If you aren't cleaning up all the crap before you start working, at least try not to play soccer with light bulbs.
9) Putting the roller down within a few inches of the ground is fine - UNLESS YOU HAVE A CAT.

Well, hell.

It's freezing over you know. Cause that's when I said I'd take a staff position on a Mu*. Pull on your mittens folks.

Though. If you look past the 'OMG AM I DOING IT RIGHT' angst, it's kinda fun making the little ants scurry - uh, GM that is. Heh.

So I am desperate for new pens, having utterly given up on my art box ever being found. I look in the yellow pages. 2. /2/ art stores in all of the valley, and one will likely turn out to be a kids craft store, while the other has always leaned closer to office supplies. AUGH. Though, I know Totem's carried watercolour pencil crayons, so there's hope. I miss the Ink Well though. *sighs* I had hoped to go today, but it's been put off till Saterday now. I'm holding off my drawing until I HAVE REAL PENS DAMNIT.

Also Saterday, Morgan. Though ... I just realized I've completely zoned on if it's /this/ saterday, or later in the month. DOH. Oh well, not like I'm super busy!

I'm feeling good. My project is done. I somehow managed to escape getting bitched at over it like Alice is always bitched at, even though I totally dragged my heels. God. I hate Wiziwig, or whatever the hell acronym it is. It bloody eats code and swallows it, never to be freaking seen again. WHAT IS SO YUMMY ABOUT VALIGN?! AAAAAAAUGH! Okay, so the project was partially to test the editor.

FAIL

And now onto other things. That book thingy - yeah, I forgot about updating that. I'm a few pages from finishing about three other books, but since last update on that only the following:

A Swiftly Tilting Planet - Madeleine L'Engle (278 pgs)
Many Waters - Madeleine L'Engle (310 pgs)
The Pheonix Guards - Steven Brust (485 pgs)
Five Hundred Years After - Steven Brust (547 pgs)

( 3.0 )
Notice that as I strike books off the list, I add more to it? Yeah. Side note: My next character is going to be named Phineas. Is that not the coolest name ever? XD So I'm partway through Paths of the Dead, The Modern Gentleman, Arthurian Romances and Ghengis Khan - okay, I lied. Four books. Aborigional Myths is sort of an accioayla and me thing, so that's slower going. God, I can't belive it's already June.

Will I ever tire of FF7?

Probably not.

There is something very broken in me though. I've played it half a dozen times, and this time I just wanted one specific thing - just to have Cid in the party the whole time and watch how he deals with things. This involves racing through the first disk.

BUT I CAN'T. The bloody compulsive part of my brain is going, 'But you missed that enemy skill. Go back.' 'Don't forget to go back for all the Fort Condor mini-games.' 'Hey, you've never bothered to do the Yuffie/Barret date sequence. Try for that this time.' AUGH! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

The icon works for games as well as books, yo.

Explain your LiveJournal name and its meaning. When you're done, tag as many people as there are letters in your name.

Uh. Kay, blame accioayla for this one. Some of you already know the story.

I hate coming up with names for things. User names especially. So ages ago I have to sign up for something and I'm doing what I always do - glance around my desk for inspiration.

Alice had handed me an essay on the Uncanny Valley a few hours ago. It's staring up at me. I go with it. Later, I'm thinking about what I read and how it may apply to me, and decided that yes - it suits.

The uncanny valley is the dip in our emotional reaction to things that are so very close to human, but not quite. Realistic andriods, zombies, etc. As I spent years and years out of society from being sick, I often feel like I live there - almost human, but not quite. So there you go, that's where I got the name from.
Here for more info.

Oh, and Alice started calling me D! because she never could say my name right.

I don't have enough friends to assign one to every letter. So.

U - glitterglorygrl was already tagged by Lady A! Ngh.
N - did ladyrane do this already?
C - how about lauranalantha?
A - bets on nosfertum bothering? XD
N - Yeah, you get tagged too suhklee. You should have been tagged first! (this is so stupid XD)
N - xwasa ought to be a good story.
Y - Is innocentsouls quite so innocent?
VALLEY STFU I don't have that many friends. *SOBS*

I have nothing to say but I love accioayla. Thank you for the D! Icon babe!

It hardly seems worth it. 20 min to get to town. 30 min in the shop. 20 back home. And after only a little more than an hour in the public crush of people, I'm exhausted.

BUT! I HAVE BOOKS!

Turns out I'd only lost two books to Chris when he moved to Japan, Yendi and Pheonix Guards. Yendi I will have to luck out on in the second hand shops somewhere. Pheonix guards is on order for me. Picked up Sethra Lavode, because I somehow didn't do that when it came out. Found out Dzur isn't coming out until '08 (THEY TOLD ME THIS YEAR! Bitches.)

Apparently I don't understand how things are ordered in a book shop. I figure, Anita Blake. Vampires, Zombies, etc. Fantasy, right? Wrong. It's in general fiction. Freaks. And they only had the last three, so I'm going to the Library soon. I keep saying that, soon. Soon soon soon. Yesterday was the first time I'd left the house since Morg swung by.

Found a bunch of books to put on my wish list. Book on Canadian Fighter pilots and their anecdotes. Book on a woman who explored much of the north in a 12 year search for her missing husband. Book on China's world exploration. Catch-22, which i still haven't read and want to. And of course, I utterly failed my will save against picking up 'Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World - Jack Weatherford'. I'm looking forward to it. Also need to look for World of Tiers and Riverworld series by Jose Farmer. And I was thiiiiis close to picking up an english-hebrew dictionary and an arabic phrasebook, but I don't want a phrasebook and the dictionary didn't have any transliteration. AUGH.

I'm rather excited that I now know two other people who read Steven Brust. GLEE!

Not much to say, other than after a stint of hell I've slid back into being nocturnal again. I really think this just who I am, what I am, and that fighting it is doing me more damage than good. But unless I get a bunch more acquaintances in the UK or something, it makes for quiet 4am's. Which isn't really a problem I suppose. I've gone entire years without speaking to anyone outside of my family. But I'm a bit afraid of my mind just stagnating... so.

Maybe I should move to the city and get a night job. I hear night watchman is typically a boring one. XD I used to game all night with a guy who did that. Had to get up at 6am to walk around the place. Grrr, intimidating D! Keep the bad men away! Until they glare back, and then I can hide under the desk behind bullet proof glass. Yeah, that sounds good to me.

Er, feeling a little loopy apparently.

Well, that was a mistake. Sort of.

She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, Jennifer Finney Boylan (300pgs)

A topic of recent interest, the book is being passed around. I read a few pages night before last, and then stayed up all night last night to finish it. (This would be the aforementioned 'mistake'.)

The book is written in such a way that I felt I was sprawled on the floor, looking up at her while she was telling this huge long round about story, half drunk or some such so we're laughing at all the places we shouldn't be, because it's really the only way for it to make sense and be bearable. Part of me read the story with this dread knowing it couldn't possibly have a happy ending. But it's a true story, so it's life. Life goes on. And if you've played your cards right, love and are loved by the right people, you muddle through together, and that's as happy an ending as any of us get. Or beginning, in Jenny's case. Plenty of heroes to go round in this book.

A few of you may understand why the following passage made me absolutely crack up, for no reason related to the book's topic at all:

"Sabbatical over, I returned to Colby in the fall of 2002. I resumed my academic career as the co-chair of the English Department, a job I assumed along with a brilliant, charming colleague named Peter Harris, whom I had once almost killed during a hike along the Knife Edge trail up Mount Katahdin, although not on purpose. Peter had never quite forgiven me for nearly allowing him to fall to his death on that occasion, which I felt ensured we would probably have a good relationship as the departments's co-directors. It's hard to trust anyone you haven't nearly murdered, at least in academia it is."

Oh yeah, I'll just finish up the Wellbutrun SR pescription. That I can't find! Arg! So after looking for a few hours, I find it back in my pack. Good. And I study the label to remind myself how to take it. No instructions. So I search for info, and read a maaaaaaaassively long document on it before it tells me (at the end, naturally) how to take it - so. With or without food, first one at 9am. If that doesn't do it for me, take a second at 5pm. I've got 21/30 of the things left... gee, can you tell I hated taking meds and stopped as soon as no one was looking? *facepalms*

Oh yes. And no more alcohol. Which probably is a good thing, as I've been drinking more than I should lately anyway. Ngh. But it makes me sleeeeeeeep... Is it cheating on Lent if you give up something you have to give up anyway?

There's a book I need to read. I'd better get on that, before it has to go back to the library. But once it does, I get to start looking for the Anita Blake series so Davey will OMG not kill me for not having read it. XD

I. SLEPT. ALL. NIGHT.

Well, until 11pm anyway. But then I snoozed off and on until four! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!

This bodes very well, very well indeed. Still going to go to the doctor though, just because if I don't my body will mock me by screwing me over again. It always does.

In other news, a friend who's been trying for children called yesterday to say she was late. She's doing the whole, "I don't want to get too excited." thing, while ... getting very excited. I really, really hope it works out for her, so I'm crossing my fingers.

Oh, and I lost my calander, which pisses me off. There, that is all!

So I was laying with my cheek against the cool wood of my desk, staring past my speaker at the small forest of empty bottles on the edge when I thought to myself, "This is fucking stupid."

Drinking alcohol at eight in the morning on an empty stomach because I desperately need the depressant to kick in and let me sleep. It was still noon before I was able to lay down. I did the math on my average hours of sleep per night this week and it scared me. What's more annoying is I've done it to my self; if I had just stuck with being nocturnal and let my body gradually change over, I'd have been fine. Isolated and useless, but not going without sleep anyway.

I've had this for thirteen years - half my life. In all those years I have avoided sleeping medicine. It scares me, for one. For another I tend to be super sensitive to meds - I traditionally get all the worst side effects, and hard. And there's the fact I'm just adverse to taking medicine overall. But I think I need to throw in the towel. I know this is the tail end of my 'down' year. I know I will be getting better and crawling out of it. But I'm impatient. On the up side, I've not missed a sunrise this month - probably longer. On the downside I'm going BATSHIT CRAZY.

The alcohol helped. I slept longer than I have all week, and it was a beautiful thing. Okay, to be fair I only got five hours of sleep and just rested for another five, but it was the most consecutive sleep I'd had. Monday, calling doctor for an appointment. Blarg.
( boredom leads to crack. )
Oh, and one last thing. Linds' kid cracks me up. Holy shit. Half the stuff he does sounds like stuff I did, and the other half sounds like stuff I wish I'd done back when I could get away with it. I laughed till I sobbed. Thank you, that is all.

Strike Two.

Same trick: Wake up, stay up, hobble off to bed. This time I only lasted until six, when I started getting dizzy. Hobbled off to shower, ate, was in bed by seven thirty. Until about ten. So I got two and a half hours before I was awake all night again.

But I have something I gotta do at five tonight, so I can't just sleep cause I'll crash for a day and a night, so I'm going to carry on through.

Suggestions:
Camomile or Sage tea
Nyquil
Tylenol PM
A great big stick