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| Monday, December 21st, 2009 |
dagibbs
|
12:16p |
Maybe Arisia?
Looks likely I'll be in Texas for the first couple weeks of January, and if I can arrange to fly home by way of Boston, I might be able to sneak Arisia into my plans. Maybe. Looks like the main hotel is booked. (Of course.) Overflow hotels look a bit far, but there is a shuttle. Who might be going? Might anyone have crash space to share? |
dagibbs
|
12:58a |
Mm...
That was a most enjoyable evening. |
| Sunday, December 20th, 2009 |
treebones
|
3:54p |
Networking, and solstice.
It turns out, we have a local Unitarian church. Apparently, there are more religious nonconformists around this area than I knew about. Went today. Not a whole lot of people, but enough, and a well-done service which made me cry (which, in this case, was a good thing). Have started my fires for Solstice, one in the fireplace, one candle. Too windy for the fireplace to draw properly, so I have to let the fireplace die down, but at least I'm started on doing something for the holiday. How goes the holiday prep for y'all? We're doing a small Christmas here, though I've got to keep out of the stores, or it is going to keep getting bigger. (: |
blue_duck
|
10:46a |
fyi...
White Castle is cancer and obesity in a bag. J says it is held together by grease, and adds "mmmmm....". :P |
blue_duck
|
7:21a |
gah
I was supposed to bring one of the karate families - the grandma and kids I completely adore, to the train station this morning in J's Jeep. But I completely forgot about it and she had to call up L to bring her because I didn't have the Jeep. I was frantically getting crap out of my car before she called back to tell me L was coming to get them in her bigger vehicle. I feel like a total butthole. I *had* been wanting to get all the junk out of my car for months.... |
blue_duck
|
1:04a |
My Saturday
Babysat today, which was cool even though the baby was a bit fussy (teething, poor guy), but the house's cats got to me unusually severely and my sinuses are rebelling hardcore. Karate class was spent largely in stances, staying still listening to the instructor. My legs hurt. Later, had Mexican with some of the karate ladies. We spent 2.5 hours in the restaurant, which had Spanish tv playing in the background. Something called Miss Santita, with different chicks shaking their butts in very tiny Santa outfits with 6 dudes dressed up as nutcrackers dancing up a storm around them. Interludes of chicks shaking their asses in very tiny reindeer, gingerbread man and snow angel outfits. I was in a sinusy haze and kept getting stuck staring at the tv as the portly host near-groped each scantily dressed woman. Surreal as hell. I expect to have weird dreams. Woke up early for kickboxing with an attitude problem, which I took out on J, which I feel crappy about. I spent most of kickboxing pondering why I can't seem to make myself care about so many of the things I used to - there's so much going through the motions it makes me crazy and sad. I continue to not know what to do about this. |
| Saturday, December 19th, 2009 |
dagibbs
|
12:08a |
|
| Friday, December 18th, 2009 |
dagibbs
|
9:54p |
Hm... 68 wpm
Did a little online typing test -- on my laptop keyboard (where I'm not as fast as on a regular keyboard) I got 68 wpm. Not too bad, actually. |
dagibbs
|
9:23p |
And home!
Car started and everything. Had to dig it out & brush it off, though. Also, need to air it out -- it was parked when it was much warmer, so there's way too much moisture inside the car for how cold it is now. And, someone shovelled my driveway, so I didn't have to shovel my way in. w00t! |
dagibbs
|
5:53p |
on the way home!
I'm at Logan airport with, surprise, free wifi access -- apparently sponsored by Google. I can live with that. Nominally I get home around 8:30pm (airport) but we'll see hot it goes. I hope my car decides to start for me, though. Also, in other excitement, I got to change the tire on my rental car today. Yay. |
| Thursday, December 17th, 2009 |
blue_duck
|
3:20p |
gah
Got a check from the elementary ed karate program and was pleased, only to have it sucked by a bill today. An older client has resurfaced and is supposed to be handing me some money tomorrow, so that is good. I've also got a few prospects that may or may not follow through. Today I have gotten very little done, which is making me frustrated. I'm still losing too many days to non-productivity. Exercise is getting slowly but surely better. My apartment and car are cesspits, which does not help my state of mind, but it's too bloody cold to clean the car out unless I have a super-duper surge of willpower. I've gained weight which I'm not as horrified by as I would have been in the past - too many people were telling me to eat a damn sandwich before (and some were ruder about it) and if nothing else, I guess I'm not as freaking frozen as I've been in the past. Though cold still sucks and I still want to hide from it as much as possible. I do want to lose some as I'm a bit more curvaceous than I particularly like right now, but probably not all of it. I don't think I can be as single minded like that any more anyway. I was talking to some of the ladies at the karate school yesterday about my ice cravings and they told me, like my friend the doctor told me months ago, that I'm probably anemic. I thought further about it and realized that in the last year plus while I've been craving ice hardcore, I've also been super exhausted for no reason (even though I've been able to get lots more rest than I used to), which I'm sure is related to depression, but could also be related to an iron shortage, I guess. I did give blood once during the year and the nurse didn't flag me for it, but being a pre-menopausal female there should be no harm in taking supplements for a little bit and seeing whether it changes anything. |
| Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 |
mightyix
|
10:13p |
|
dagibbs
|
10:10p |
25!
Climbing gyms, that is. Rock Spot Climbing is the 25th different climbing gym I've climbed at. Went out there this evening -- didn't find anyone to climb with, and most of the people there were bouldering anyway. (The climbing didn't look all that exciting.) They had lots of interesting problems, though, since they'd had a comp last weekend. I bouldered until I'd worn too much skin off my hands, then a bit more, then stopped. About normal for bouldering. Even if the climbing wasn't that impressive, would have been nice to get a chance to calibrate their ratings. I always like testing out how another location compares. |
blue_duck
|
3:46p |
Accomplished today: not a heck of a lot. Got to my meeting and clients thus far. :P I'm stressing the money situation right now, and I should probably be stressing it even more, but I'm trying not to. If nothing else I hope it inspires me to get some things done! I don't appear to do as well when comfortable as I do when I'm desperate in one way or another. |
treebones
|
10:04a |
State of the Tracy: Tuesday the 15th.
Okay, doing significantly better than last post. First, built some structure. Now, unless there's a real reason not to, I'm getting up, showering, and eating breakfast within an hour of waking up. This is helping. I figured out a personal energy field thing that had been going on, and fixed it. Even if this is entirely hallucinatory, it gives me an increased sense of personal control, which is likely worth it. It has interpersonal corollaries that are not at all hallucinatory, so. I also figured out what one of the next Big Projects may be for me, downstream of all this, but I'm going to let the idea stew for a bit before I trot it out for public inspection. But it's something I find both exciting and intimidating, and that might well be a good sign. Mum is developing a good day/bad day sort of pattern, but even her bad days aren't anywhere near as bad as they were at the beginning, so I'm having peace with it. Still hoping, if we can get her regular, to give her a better ratio of good day to bad day. We'll see. Oh, and I've gotten semi-permanent loan of snowshoes, so I'm pretty sure I now have an exercise solution. 'Cause if there's one thing we've got plenty of, it is snow. (: |
| Monday, December 14th, 2009 |
blue_duck
|
9:13p |
accomplished today:
- The last 2.5 months' worth of accounting. :P - at least *printed* the pages of people I'm supposed to call re: the northside karate satellite - list of needed business-related actions for the next couple weeks - worked out for 40 minutes. It's not much, but it's something. |
| Sunday, December 13th, 2009 |
dagibbs
|
9:35p |
Rubber Duckie
I'm in Boston, despite some delays. And I found the hotel despite some...difficulties. There's a huge amount of tunnels as you come from the airport into Boston, and GPS Nav systems, they don't work so well in tunnels. I did get a smile, though, out of one of the bathroom amenities this hotel has that I've never seen before. Yes, this hotel room came with a rubber duckie! [edit] And, apparently, the rubber duckie has a name -- it is named "Colette". [/edit] |
treebones
|
1:54p |
Hrm. My body's not holding up well.
Now, this is almost certainly simply me somatizing my stress. But when it manifests at migraines and muscle aches, it feels pretty physical. I got a natural light bulb for my reading lamp. I get my antidepressant on Monday. I got in a bit of a walk today, and a meal outside the house. I am, so far, resisting the urge to get a kitten. But *gods* would a cat to snuggle help. I'm afraid my mother's cat is the standoffish type, so not much help likely to come from there. On the plus side, my mother's eating more (not much, but more); she's comfortable more often than not; and we're learning more about what we're likely to have to do to get her bowels regular (and that seems to be the lynchpin of keeping her reliably comfortable). Fiber One makes a pretty good blueberry muffin mix. We may not improve her fiber intake as much as I'd like, but we may end up improving mine. (: |
blue_duck
|
9:30a |
|
| Saturday, December 12th, 2009 |
dagibbs
|
7:21p |
SAQ
Visited the SAQ -- the SAQ Select had quite a nice Port selection. Also visited the Depot. Not as much selection, but holy cow a lot of booze. Bought some more stuff there. I've now got lots of supplies for my party on the 27th, and probably a couple more Port and other beverage parties. Oh yeah, two more Single Malts, too. Nothing exciting, just a Bowmore and a Glenfiddich -- both 12 year. Still, the collection is growing. |
blue_duck
|
2:35a |
demo team stuff
A couple months ago J formed a demo team at the karate school. I'm the only adult woman on it, and that was part of the reason I wanted to be there. I very much want the girls to have good role models doing all the stuff the guys are doing, and if I'm it, so be it. There are only 4 girls on the team, which I think is less than a quarter of the number of boys. Anyway, it's been a somewhat frustrating experience for me thus far. I'm realizing it's because I feel clumsy and slow next to J and some of the kids, and that drives me nuts. My background before 2 and a half years ago had mostly been in a very efficient, non-flashy weapons style, quite different from what's being done on this demo team. I loved doing demos with that, just making the combat stuff a little slower and flashier. It was all adults, and I'd been doing it long enough that I was one of the star players, which was a good feeling. Here, I don't learn forms and routines as fast as the kids, because before I started doing this kind of karate I'd never learned a lot in the way of forms and routines - I'd learned techniques and contexts to use them in. The closest thing was when I did dance, and we'd take two entire school semesters to work on one three minute routine for a recital. There was marching band too, where we learned routines faster, but I always felt slow at learning that stuff too. And it wasn't much in the way of different movements; it was march over here, now over there. I'm getting better, but the kids pick stuff up right away and I always feel like a dork, especially since I'm supposed to be assisting with coaching them. I also don't know how to do some of the super-flashy stuff - flips, tricks, power-breaking (multiple concrete blocks), and I still feel awkward doing some of the stuff I do know how to do: 360 roundhouses, jump kicks, junk like that. Oh - and each of us is on a particular weapons team; mine is the sword team. Which is sooooo frustrating. A Western style broadsword feels awesome in my hand and I know exactly what to do with it. The curved wooden boken, representing single-edged katanas, kill me. Half the time I end up holding the stupid thing backwards, curve inward, spine out where the edge should be. And they're two-handed when I'm used to a one-handed blade, requiring the two-handed push-pull, which I'm totally not used to. Oh, and for demos, we get to twirl the things around in a way I've done very little of even with Western swords - it was never something I focused on because it was always about fighting, not showing off. I end up feeling like a total idiot. I broke someone else's boken last week twirling mine - something that never should have happened if I was as comfortable with the thing as I should be. I know getting better at this stuff is just about practice, but I get so frustrated with it that I don't tend to work on it between demo practices, so I don't get better as quickly as I want to. Then there's J, who's been doing this kind of stuff since he was 3, and makes it looks effortless to fly through the air and memorize stuff in 5 minutes, which makes me feel utterly deficient even when I know I'm one of the best adults at the school. I'm trying to rearrange my attitude: recognize that a) I'm 29 years old and *haven't* been doing this all my life, and I don't have to be amazing right off the bat, b) that if I keep doing this I *will* get better and better, and at some point it'll feel as easy as all the other stuff I've mastered in my life that once seemed impossibly difficult. Also, there's putting things in perspective. We did a couple demos at a middle school this week and one of J's old teachers, some ridiculously high-ranked tai kwan do guy, happened to be there. He complimented the entire team but apparently mentioned me specifically along with a couple of the kids and teens, as being very impressive. So, I'm working on being less discouraged and taking it as it comes. Maybe eventually this'll even be fun, like it's supposed to be. :P |
dagibbs
|
12:59a |
And I have to cross the US border on Sunday. At least I'm at an airport. Generally too many witnesses for that kind of shit to happen. Cold comfort. |
| Friday, December 11th, 2009 |
blue_duck
|
4:11p |
I stopped posting online for lack of organization, but I've been doing a better job of exercising daily. I plan to try a couple new classes in the next week in the hope of further inspiration. Kickboxing has been, through absolutely no fault of J's, not quite cutting it there. I've just been doing it for so long that I can go through the motions without really being "there", and I don't have much in the way of will to force myself to work at it right now. My diet still sucks, but I'm trying for one thing at a time. I'm increasingly doubtful of being ready for the black belt test in February, and even more concerned about the monetary cost involved. It's an 8 hour test, pretty expensive, especially with the new uniform and embroidered belt and national organization registration thrown in. P has been pushing me to do it, L is a lot more neutral and has said she'll talk to him if need be. But I did have the goal of becoming a black belt before age 30 and this would be the time to do it. I'd also like to do it with the smaller group going through from the A2 school this time; I know of only 2 others besides J and me who will test in February. A whole group of 10 or something will be eligible in August. I need to start writing my paper of "what becoming a black belt means to you." Heh. How to write that one without any bitterness showing through is going to be a bit of a challenge. I'm trying to get my head back in the head business-wise, and J is trying to help me by prompting me to do (administrative) work during free time. But I'm not quite there yet. I need to get some more clients in January - heck, I need it now but know it's not likely before then. It's a very slow start at the new place. I'll be doing a bridal show at the end of January, my first expo, sharing a table with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) shennan. I don't know if that will get me anyone or not, but I'm hoping so. |
tatternym
|
11:06a |
Open letter to dead spider
You know what I don't like about you, giant dead spider? It's not that you're big and hairy and striped. And it's surely not your deadness, because that is the single quality that makes your spidery proximity acceptable. No; it's that you died between the window, which opens, and the screen, which does not. Which means you got out there... from in HERE. Here, the place where I sit all day. And I just want to say that if you left any little white bundles of joy in the house, perhaps to open up on Christmas, then I will send them to see you in spider hell. That's right: I will regift them. I'll do it, too. YOUR MOTHERHOOD DOES NOT MOVE ME. My heart is cold and black and YOU DO NOT GET TO BE ICKY IN THE PLACE WHERE I SIT. Sincerely, the apex predator of the house and don't you forget it |
| Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 |
blue_duck
|
5:23p |
As my previous main inspiration has become, probably permanently, defunct, my new quest is to find something new to inspire me. I think this will help with the motivation problems. That sounds easier than it actually is. |
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