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Your result for The Social Persona Test (What kind of man/woman are you?)...

The Renaissance Faire Wench (QLAF)

Quirky Liberal Alpha Female

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Hi,

I want to hold an Open House for my tiny non-profit.

What would make you want to attend an open house type event?  (Keep in mind it's a non-profit which means little money to throw around on this). 

So, I'm finally watching "REPO!  The Genetic Opera".

Fantastic.

GOTH PROM 2009

Sunday, May 24, 2009, 8:00 PM - 1:30 AM @ Town Danceboutique, Washington DC

It's during Memorial Day weekend...

Who's in?  :D

http://www.thescene.com/event?event_id=70996

Rest in peace, Mrs. B.

You don't have to fight or be in pain anymore.

Enjoy your garden in the sky.

You are missed, and always, always, loved.

Tonight went ok.  I felt better hearing how my classmates struggled with our assignment too, and how none of them have started our paper which is due Thursday, either. 

I got observed in session, tongiht, and was keenly aware of my flaws, but my client said she'd missed me last week (we didn't come in on the snow day), so that's something.

..............................

The mother of one of my very best friends is...in hospital, and not doing well.  I'm like an extended part of their family and this troubles me greatly.

She's been fighting cancer for a long time, and this weekend her body seems to have given out on her.

I pray for her to recover, to keep fighting, to get well to enjoy her flowers and gardens again.

My friend, close to me as a brother, called me tonight after returning from the hospital with his father and sister, sobbing and choking. 

Breaking.

I feel so impotent to help.  I was flattered he returned my call in his hour of need.  I offered anything, but...what can I truly give?

Sad, thoughtful, and preparing myself for the best, and the worst...I needed music, tonight, so I'm turning to the angel Gabriel.

Right now, I'm listening to the "Passion" album from "The Passion of the Christ".  

Earlier it was pieces like "Darkness", "The Tower That Ate People", "Don't Leave" and "Here Comes The Flood".

I should try and sleep, but I feel like I'm keeping some sort of vigil...letting the music carry me on a voyage.

.............

Ah well, goodnight.

I love you, M.J.B.

I feel really weird today.

Daylight Savings is poopy, I miss my hour and my body clock is all out of whack.

I feel stressed and behind in my homework.  I was bad on Saturday but good yesterday, and still am not where I want to be with it.  I am looking at it piecemeal to avoid freaking out, you know, the old mind trick of  "ok, what is actually PHYSICALLY due today" and concentrating on that.

I really regret taking three 1-credit classes this semester, in the midst of two other "normal" 3-credit classes.  I kinda wish I had just taken another regular class...but the scheduling was off and I think I remember there not really being anything else this semester I "needed" to take, since I'm getting down to electives at this point, and not many were offered this Spring.  Anyway, I regret them at the moment because they take up two whole intense days and require a lot of front-loaded (or end-loaded reading) in a clump. 

It's hard to explain but people have to take off work to attend them and they are intense and far away.  I have one this Friday and Saturday in Baltimore at the home campus.

Wow, I'm really whiny.  I felt so weak this morning - the incubus was with me this weekend and when he left this morning I cried and kind of begged him to stay.  I didn't want to face the stress of my week alone.  I feel like I am making mistakes but I don't even know what those mistakes are.  I just know that things rarely or never seem to feel right, and I can't pinpoint what it is.  Perhaps it's the patterns I've gotten into, they're not serving me but I'm not enlightened enough to realize it? Or maybe it's that I'm not really the master of my own destiny at the moment and I'm sick of feeling like a child?  I just don't know, but it gives everything else I feel, good or bad, an 'edge' that's annoying as fuck.

Yay - this morning we were discussing The Dark Tower, which I admitted to never reading.  

Today baby was helping me at work by handing out flyers at local businesses for my work's upcoming charity event.  One of the places was a funky used bookstore. 

When he came back, he surprised me with "The Gunslinger"!

Is happiness as an "adult" really so fleeting?

Yesterday morning was a good morning, and the afternoon started ok, but then it got retarded until I was pretty much coasting along at a basic level of disappointment and annoyance, which is all too familiar.

Why do people stab at happiness?  How come people get so wrapped up in themselves and their insecurities that they can't let you be happy?  And if you are happy, you must be picked at until you fall back down to their level and be unhappy like them?

I have a hard enough time being happy on my own - I don't need help bringing myself down. 

Just an FYI.

I interviewed for an internship 15 minutes from home, and I got it!!!

When I walked in, little did I think that the director of the whole place would come in to talk with me along with the director of the program, based on my resume...and that most of the interview would involve discussing my undergraduate studies in Anthropology in Ireland and that I would hear the names of Durkheim, Focault, Levi-Strauss, Husserl and Heidegger, and the topics of existentialism, philosophy, phenomenology and the deep psychodynamic mythic brought up and praised!

I was in heaven.  The interviewers were impressed with my grounding in anthropology and philosophy and my time in Europe, and thought that makes me a strong and better candidate than some of the other people who walk through their door.

OMG I'm so happy right now. 

My whole life has basically just been validated.  How many times have I had to defend my stuides, my past, my future - my life, to people?  "What is a degree in Anthropology going to do for you?"  "Why do you think YOU will make a good counselor, miss drama queen herself?"

THIS:  A grounding in how people formulate their reality, which in turn gives me a deeper well of knowledge to draw upon as a therapist.  The correct personality type to synthesize and analyze while remaining empathetic.

And I'm pretty effing articulate and awesome when you give me a chance.

I'm so excited.  This internship placement is going to be very intense and very challenging, and it's unpaid (most are), but omg it's such a good opportunity.  I'll work with various clients, I'll get plenty of supervision and advice and help.

I start it in September and it goes through May...and then I'll be done with school and ready to enter the career world.

WIN.

What a nightmare.

I dreamed that we were performing "Never Swim Alone"...again.  It wasn't PTP's theater, but it was...it was weird.  Anyway, the whole thing was a nightmare.  We didn't have any rehearsals before this performance, so I was going over my lines 5 mintues before showtime. 

I argued with the tech guy because he had someone hanging out backstage that he shouldn't have.  I remember explaining that even though community theater is a volunteer endeavor, he needed to treat it like a job, and not have unauthorized people backstage, etc.  He was like oh yeah?  and I was like "yeah dear, it eats into our quality time, too" and I smirked.  It was an awful feeling.

Then I broke the fourth wall and ran out the curtain to a FULL audience to go up to the light booth for something...the director and producer both were not there!  They weren't going to come to this production for some reason...whaaaat?

Then I started trying to be serious and I was trying to take my place on stage, but the other two actors had decided to change things around and the set was completely different than I was used to...not to mention, one of the actors had a TV on set and was hoping to tape some show he couldn't miss, and he had some techie sitting there messing with a VHS tape...it was all a huge debacle and I was trying to hold it together without freaking out.

The play started and I began my lines, and around then the techie turned on the TV and popped in the tape and started taping the show and watching it...I walked over in the midst of acting and very cooly whispered "that has to go off..." which she did, but I was so off my game by that point I started making up lines...then my fellow actors came down stage and weren't doing what they were supposed to...

Finally, scene one was over, and I crawled listlessly up my lifeguard stand and the actors started doing a mockery of scene two...that's when I noticed the director, complete with Steelers fuzzy pullover thing, jeans and brown timberland-esque boot things, coming in through a side door...I shrugged at him like "I don't know, I tried!" and he shrugged back at me like "don't worry about it"... 

Prepping to run a gauntlet...

Got class tonight, and then I'm staying with someone who lives close to campus because I have a 1-credit class which runs from 9am to 4pm tomorrow and Saturday...then going out Saturday night. 

Some good news - I got a call back on my cover letter/resume about an internship position in the Fall.  Yay!  Now to carve out some time to actually do an interview...

Heh, and it's just as well I didn't try to do a raid last night...while trying to study, my eyes got heavy and I passed out by 9pm.  Sleepy sneaky was sleepy.

I'm off today.  I should be doing homework (So.Much.Reading.) and catching up on housework, because I'm booked solid from tomorrow morning through Sunday afternoon.

So, what am I doing today, you ask?  Well, after volunteering with my young adult group this morning...

I dismantled my beloved 55-gallon fish tank.

It's a sad day indeed, reminding me of my failure as a fish keeper.  All I have left are two very sick goldfish (the new ones I don't even like, the ones that brought the disease in in the first place) and my 3 old golden barbs.   

Do you know how annoying it is to dismantle a big aquarium?  It starts with a garden hose, and then heavy lifting.  It's smelly and disgusting and everything gets wet.  Oh, not to mention the gnats.  I decided yesterday that this dismantling had to be done, once and for all, the moment I turned on the aquarium light and realized the gnat larvae had taken over and the gnats were breeding like rabbits.  No fish to eat them and keep them in check. :(

Thank goodness it's 53 degrees today and sunny.  It was so frigid yesterday, I was dreading this dismantling process.

I've set up my old 15-gallon hexagon tank (with heater) to take in the barbs.  This in itself has been an endeavor as well.  The tank was in storage for a long time, so I had to clean it and set it up.  The filter was leaking from the connection between the motor and the unit (it has to be water-tight) and after freaking out about that, got out another motor I happen to have and used that one.  Will realized the o-ring on the first motor had dry rotted, so at least I know what's up.  Yay for being a fish keeper for years and staying loyal to one brand of filtration devices (AquaClear by Hagen) - so I have all kinds of aquarium crap lying around, such as spare motors.

I'm letting everything settle, and then later I guess I have to throw in the barbs.  It's never good to add fish to a brand new aquarium, but I have no other choice. 

If they survive, I may eventually buy a few more tropical fish.  I love me some tetras, and maybe...just maybe...another pleco.  This is, after all, the tank I first had "Big Al" in, over 8 years ago, when I set up my first tropical tank.

Back to feeling like I work in a pet store...

       Nursing Program/free tuition

       If you know of anyone between 18-28 years old,
       interested in the Nursing field, University of the District of
Columbia  (UDC) is offering FREE tuition, FREE books, a $250 monthly
stipend, and  guaranteed job placement as a nurse at Providence Hospital upon
       graduation (it's a 3 year program) with a starting salary of $40,000.

       The program is recruiting new students now!!

I felt like bragging on behalf of Will, since life is annoying the f*ck out of me in most aspects right now. 

He has read 38 of those books on that BBC "how literary are you" book list going around recently.

You go baby.

My 8+-year-old Pleco "Big Al" just died.



I give up.

The incubus and I just spent the entire morning dealing with my aquarium.

I woke up today to another fish dead.  At this point, I only have 6 left.  I said, okay...whatever I'm doing isn't working.  Eff this.

So we went to the pet store and I looked over the various medications, and realized that I've been treating the tank for the past couple weeks for the WRONG DISEASE.

Now, it was a very easy mistake to make.  Both diseases have similar symptoms and life-cycles.  In other words:  fish start freaking out, fish then get lethargic and stop eating, and become covered in whitish spots.

Both are parasites.  Ichthyophthirius multifilis ("Ich") is a straight up parasitic fish louse, and Oodinium pilularis ("Velvet") is a parasitic skin flagellate.

However, both have slight variations that I wish I had noticed.  Velvet causes spots, but they are "finer" than Ich spots (which I noted, but figured it was just a weird strain of Ich I hadn't seen before).  Velvet causes fish to lose their appetite and gasp for breath.  Also with Velvet the skin starts to peel off.  It's disgusting.  I was watching my fish die as I treated and treated them for Ich, wondering WTF.

When I went to the store and looked through the medications today, it all became clear - it's probably Velvet, not Ich after all.

freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/velvet.htm

So, I picked up a bottle of Copper Sulfate and when we got back siphoned out 1/2 the tank water while the incubus took the top off the aquarium and scrubbed it outside to get rid of the water gnats.  (Yes, so gross.  Since the tank is sick and I can't use carbon filtration with the medicines, the water chemistry has changed and so algae is starting to grow, and opportunistic bastards like water gnats at the surface/on the glass of the light cover have cropped up.  Like I needed more problems.) 

Then I added aquarium salt to soothe their breathing and the medicine and plugged in my old aquarium heater to try and speed up the Velvet life-cycle.

This is all I can do.  The Copper Sulfate stays potent for a month.  Now I wait to see if anyone else dies.

I'm so pissed, because I don't consider myself an amateur "noob" fish enthusiast.  I mean, I'm not a trained Aquarist by any means, but I'm a fish nerd - I've had fish for years and read lots of books and paid attention in advanced biology in school.

I'm so mad at myself that this misdiagnosis cost ALL my beloved fancy goldfish, and possibly next my very sick 9-year-old Plecostomus ("Big Al the Algae Eater"), their lives. 

The Dr. House of fish, I am not.  :(

Did you know that Novacaine stays in one location because it contains epinephrine (aka adrenaline) - which shrinks your blood vessels and disables them from taking the anesthetic away from the location of the insertion!  So, it lasts several hours, until the hormone breaks down and the blood vessels go back to normal and whisk the anesthetic away where it is cleansed from the system in the liver. 

Individuals with heart problems cannot have Novacaine because of this hormone additive; therefore they have to get injected with a less potent anesthetic agent called...something...which only lasts about 25 minutes and isn't as effective.

I asked my dentist, while drooling and numb and bored in his chair!

Just got back from the dentist.  I’m numb and in pain.  I had a cracked tooth/filling, so had to have all the silver filling drilled out and the tooth itself filed down to a nub and a crown put on.  (This is my 3^rd crown.  I have British teeth or something.) 

I also “won the lottery” as my dentist put it – a very, very, very rare chance for the novacaine needle to hit a thread-like nerve in my jaw, which triggers a sensation like a quick and quite painful electrical shock way over in the middle of my bottom lip.  Yowza!

Came home to the last of my old fancy goldfish dead.  Awesome.

On to the hair salon at 1:30 for a trim, and then class this evening.

I should study, but I think I’m going to play some random WoW for a bit.  Blah.