Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god!

See my subject? I haven't posted in five weeks. Those are only the subjects I could immediately think of.

I have a job. I'll be starting it next week, sounds like, after finally completing near a month of various training and certification programs. I have one more online training to complete, and then my ON THE JOB training begins. I will be selling life insurance, health insurance, Long Term Care, and annuities. It's been fascinating coming to understand all of these. Certainly increases my awareness of general advertisements, as I see commercials for products I've heard and know the inner workings of. Free tip: Don't go for Humana, especially if you're on Medicare. Nobody takes it. Scary tidbit: 60% of seniors will need long term care. 4% have the insurance for it. And no, Medicare doesn't cover it. And they made it harder for you to pretend to bankrupt yourself and get it from Medicaid and the like.

Anyway, it's opening my eyes to the fact that we all know we NEED this shit, yet put off doing anything about it. Me, I'm going to be my first customer. I want a life insurance policy on me so that if I die, Jeremy can stay independent.

Speaking of, we're still living together, and it's still the easiest thing in the world. About three weeks ago, I went to tutoring and came away with a four week old female tabby kitten. I pulled "a dirty trick" on Jeremy, because while he was comfortable in saying "I'm leaning towards no" on the phone, I wanted him to have to say that to her tiny, fuzzy face. No surprise (we're both animal lovers), we took her home. Lisa was so generous and set us up with kitty litter, food, and a collar. The collar quickly died, as it unraveled hideously once we cut it down to her size, but Jeremy took its hardware and made a little leather collar. It's VERY cute. As is she. We named her Gentle Ben, in a sort of double burst of nerdiness. Jeremy thought "Ben" if only she were a boy, since her buggy eyes remind us of Ben from Lost. I expanded it to "Gentle Ben" because it's the name of my custom character in Lego Star Wars. Yyyyep. Dorks. But! She's cute as all hell, and very affectionate and spazzy by turns. She did nothing but hide under the furniture at first, but now barely ducks under a couch edge before coming out to explore.

Injury, Katy's tragic existence, my Batman Birthday, craft stuffs and fair will all have to wait until I feel like typing again. I'm sleepy, and I just found out that I'm going to be a lot less productive tonight than I thought I'd get to be. I can't start my last online training course until tomorrow. Necklaces it is.

My day just opened up a bit, as both the younger tutor girls now have the disease that the elder just finished with. Amelia, despite her fever-fuzziness and its last-minute nature, turned out a decent paper. The potential for a decent paper. After my thesising experience, I don't judge an essay by its first incarnation anymore. I'll see it after her revisions, and then I'll say what I think. I made a hell of a lot of notes on it, when she sent it to me, but I mean, come on: this is pretty much the first paper she's written. So here's the sum of it: she's articulate, she was able to pull out some analysis on the book that I hadn't thought of. With that as a base, bad habits can be beaten out and fluency in the essay-writing vernacular can be gained, all with practice. In AP Euro, practice she'll get.

My character for the Sarasota Medieval Fair is Aelfwyn, a forester's daughter. I've listened through the "commoner" track of the dialect CD once, and will do so LOTS more. My broad English accent is decent for only a couple of moments before I start going a bit Australian, so I know I need the CD, but I keep coming out sounding either Irish or idiotic. I'll work on it. During yesterday's improv session, though, Carl had us walking around in a big circle, trying to get into character. Historically, I've HATED those. "Walk like a plumber. Walk like you're late for a meeting. Walk like you're five," etc. There's no damn meat in those, and I feel like an idiot. Here, though, we first experimented with body centers. We'd walk with invisible strings attached to some point of our body, pulling that bit before the others. Chin. Top of head. Chest. Feet. Knees. Shoulder. Hand. It was NEAT to try to put each of those into a potential character-walk. Eventually, we were instructed to settle on one for our character, and think about how it all influenced each other. Me, I've been struggling with how to make Aelfwyn non-bland without her becoming a severe pain in my ass, but I settled somewhat naturally into this odd little walk: upright, but sort of eyes-led. Head forward, but constantly moving and looking at things, interpretation of her hunting job. Likely, she's not actually been hunting that long, so it doesn't sit full well on her. She's well suited to it, though, so it's not a complete bum job. We then explored that walk during multiple emotions, and the fitness of my choice was confirmed as I didn't have to struggle so bad as I usually do with that shit. Happy. Excited. Sad. Nervous. Sneaky. Angry. Proud. Various ones, and they all just fell into place. So yay.

The apartment has reached untenable levels of messy. Jeremy and I both've been caught up in Arkham Asylum and lethargy, so we haven't been picking up. The place itself hasn't been vacuumed in two or more weeks. I blame Jeremy for that. We're starting to get it pulled back together, though. I'm starting, and Jeremy's good for coming along for the ride.

We had a bit of a fight last night, which started out academic and got briefly personal. The question of homeschooling becomes mighty charged, because he's never before me had a positive impression of it, and my dismissal of the importance of public schooling strikes at the years he felt were extremely formative for him. We let it go for a bit, then tried again more quietly, and eventually came to some mutual agreements of respect for the other's experiences and acknowledgment that we both are, for whatever reason, very emotional about this. We fight a lot more now than we ever did before moving in together (not hard, as I don't think we'd yet fought at all), but that doesn't worry me at all. What's striking and okay about it all is that we're able to handle it. Annoyances and resentment, hurt feelings and anger, and we're able to either recognize a fight's lack of necessity while we're in it, or able to come back to it later when we're calm and more rational. At the end of one nasty one, which was about nothing more than mundane, domestic cleaning resentments, it all went away when it was admitted that our current anger had no bearing whatsoever on our overall love and good-wishes for each other. And hey, in the light of that, there's no point in staying mad. It helps that we both want this to WORK. Thus, when irritation's wound down, we're both willing to compromise and put out effort to fix the problem. That, makes it all good.

I'll be more than a little glad when I'm not tutoring Rodney anymore. I like the kid a lot. But tutoring Reading Comprehension SUCKS.

Well this has been a headache of a shift. Literally, the last few hours. Not bad people, as I've in fact had some very nice customers and Matt the phone guy was just a delight. But still. Situationally, a headache.

Tuesday, we got hit by lightning. My hotel did. Fried the phones, so I had a very quiet shift on Wednesday. Thursday, the internet quit and another of the computers kerflunked (following the one fried by the blast). I came to work today to find myself using Mel's 12 year old Dell to connect to one bar of next door's wireless to glacially check people in. It also wasn't able to connect to the printer, so all receipts and registrations were hand-written. They would swiftly get MORE hand-written if the shaky internet cut out before I could get all the information confirmed.

It's all better now, though. We have phones. They make both incoming and outgoing calls. I can't quite get wake-up calls set yet, but whatever. We have wireless internet. AWESOME. That let me switch back to the regular station (which doesn't do wireless, thus the laptop's necessity) so I could print shit. The printer promptly stopped working, claiming a lack of paper when I damned well knew it had a bunch. I figured that one out myself and fixed it, though, making me a god among clerks. We have no fax. I do not care. We have phones, we have internet. I have very knotted shoulders and a bit of a headache. Jeremy, love of my life, is going to make mac-and-cheese. I'll get to have some upon my return. Tomorrow, I get to hit people with swords. I approve of this progression of events.

Oh! Also! I had alligator meat today. I was not impressed. It chewed exactly like gum. The hush puppies were kickass, though. I'll have some more of those tonight (had leftovers).

Auggie, Jeremy's folks' new dog, is a doll. A skittish, snappy sort of doll, but a doll. He was very upset with us when Jeremy and I walked in, but I was very impressed with how he calmed right the hell down at Margarita's touch. I approached him slow enough with my hand held out in a fist, crouching so I wasn't towering over him, and got him familiar enough with me that I could pet him. Ended up sitting down next to him and had him sprawled with his head in my lap before long. He's very calm when he's not freaking out. :-P ---He jerked away and barked again at me when I went to pet him too quickly, which lets me know I'll need to keep going slow. He's only been around a few days, so perhaps he'll get less nervous with time. I'll not take it for granted, though, and I'll keep moving slow until he's well and truly used to me.

Also: Arkham Asylum is downright amazing. This is the first non-LEGO action/adventure video game that I've been able to play. Usually, the controls defeat the hell out of me. I'm working this one okay, though. Kinda sad that the most times I died wasn't even on a boss, but these two yokels with guns behind a gate. Took me forever to realize I could grapple to the top of the pass over them, come from behind. I'm getting better and better and sneaking, silent takedowns, and not getting shot.

Jeremy is head-down to his arm rest, snoozing. He was looking up Chinese language sites online, intending to supplement our brand-new studies. From early on, we've wanted to study languages together. Not expecting fluency, but enough to converse. We have LOTS of different ones we're interested in, but we're starting with Chinese. Took the three source books I have out to the park by Marina Jack's that I'd never been to and spent a while on a swinging bench, starting in on pronunciation and the first bits of greetings.

It's fun to find a party theme that works well. "Raw Cookie Dough" is a hell of a lot of delicious.

I know myself to be still held in the thrall of my recently quitted college when I read Jane Eyre and my thoughts turn to paper topics. Jane thinks to herself "I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad --as I am now." This mention of madness immediately follows a full recounting of the debauched madness of Mr. Rochester's first wife. What underlying meaning might we find in Jane's self-proclaimed insanity under these circumstances? Can we suggest meaning to the common denominator --that is, marriage to Rochester?

I barely got past these half-formed notions when I recognized them as remnants of school and (with gay, near Alice Cooperish disregard) released me of any necessity for playing them out.

Incorrect remembrance of its context: she's not yet left, but is running on the grounds to ease her anxious, excited mind:


It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind, delivering my trouble f mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering through space.

Point of note: I don't remember exactly how old I was when first I read this book, some fourteen or fifteen years, but I doubt, much as I liked it, that I truly appreciated it. I want to read it aloud, and read it again, treasure these priceless arguments between Miss Eyre and her Mr. Rochester, now that her hand's been won, and endeavor to commit their style of content to my own voice. I read in passionate eagerness for the passage I recall and once had memorized, though I must wait until after the story's disaster has struck. She, liberating herself from an untenable situation, runs across the green hill in the face of a wind, buoyed by this freedom. Her phrasing was one that caught me, but I never quite succeeded in keeping it in mind. It and the other, though, are ones I always want to stay with me. Hell, were I ever to get a tattoo in English, it'd like to be one of those. The Jane Eyre one I've not yet found again, but the other is from Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher", and goes: "It was indeed a tempestuous, yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty."

I can go years without thinking of that one, and I'll still remember it. It's why I'd consider it as a mark upon me: it's no motto, to fit me for some years and be but my past in the rest. It's no band or lover, to be a passing fancy or carry the possibility of leaving. It's just some beautiful words that caught at me. Like to "he turned and walked down the shore of the ever-resounding sea," like to "For I am no ordinary god;..." When I find my someday Chinese phrase, it'll be a passage from a story. Should I get a tattoo in French, it'll be a story, or a song, or a line from a movie. I'd be damned tempted to find it in Amelie, for that movie's strange sweetness.

My words grow long and my thoughts short. Enough.

I had the thought last night, waiting for sleep, that a great deal of the reason of why I have such difficulty writing here, anymore, is because I've simply fallen out of the habit. Perhaps I arrange my thoughts in a different way. Certainly, I have less of an urge, after some time has passed, because I've inevitably already told whatever tale I would tell to Jeremy, Michael, Mom, or any number of others. I WANT to write it here, to preserve my own memory, but I really just forget to do it.

Today, though. Been having fun. Last night, Jeremy and I took a small stack of unused or will-never-be-used games to Play-N-Trade to put towards a belated purchase of the LEGO Star Wars: Original Trilogy game. We WANT to get the Complete Saga, but they don't make that for the PS2. Some day, when the technology is more obsolete, we will get a PS3. On that day, we'll probably go ahead and get the revamped game then. Granted, we've got all six movies, now, but they apparently put some new stuff on the complete saga, and DAMN do I want that. I am not immune to media producers' cheap tricks. When next we go to the Heidemans', Jeremy's going to grab more of his old, unused games. Those will go towards LEGO Indiana Jones. Hell yes.

We spent the greater part of an hour musing and arguing over what other video game LEGO could put out to continue its genius line, and how best that could be accomplished. Harry Potter is an immediate nominee, though you rarely see those excellent (yet damned expensive) sets. The argument came from how best to divide the difficult number of books. In what's come before, the scopes of the games have easily been divided into three sections. Harry Potter, like Star Wars, would likely have to be divided into two separate games. There's just so MUCH of it. I just had the thought, though, which I'll have to put to Jeremy (he never reads this, so I have to remember what's been said where), about how the Batman game had, in essence, SIX sections, since there were three good, three bad. We'll see. Regardless, there are seven books/movies (eight movies, but fuck that shit) in the Harry Potter universe. How best to divide. I posited, and Jeremy eventually agreed, that it would be best to have the first four books in the first game, and then the last three in the second. This works from both a game play and a storytelling standpoint. In a game play aspect, the first three books are a little tamer. They're funnier, lighter, more trivial. There would undoubtedly be some excellent game play involved in them, but it doesn't get EPIC until the fourth. Beyond just the Triwizard Tournament, the fourth is the return of Voldermort. That, I feel, is an excellent place to end the first game. It whets the appetite, and prepares the gamer for the sweeping tone set in the second. The second, like the second of the Star Wars games, would introduce new options in game play, hopefully influenced by whatever new wizarding things are introduced in those three books. I've only read up through the 5th, and DAMN do I need to re-read those, but I imagine that some new stuff comes out. Jeremy was worried about how to make the second exciting enough to keep people (despite the evidence to the fact that the HP label alone will keep people coming), but I think that dedication to the story, new game play, and the opportunity to play Voldermort will keep the second one exciting. See, 'cause while Voldermort comes BACK in the fourth, I think it would be sneaky yet smart to not let him be played until the second game. You'll have Tom Riddle, you'll have Voldermort's ghost-thing, you could even have his little deformed baby as one of the little characters that can fit in fun places. But no full-on Voldermort PLAY until the next release. I think it would whet appetites, frustrate in good ways, and be fun.

DAMN, but do I want to be in on the planning of this, now. I'm going to be making notes as I re-read the books (almost done with Jane Eyre, so those'll be my next read), marking where levels could be (and where they could expand beyond the pages), how features could be translated into game play, sketching the LEGO characters, the works. I feel nerdy, yet excited.

I took inexplicably sleepy, after I came in here to work, so I'm sipping at cooled, terrible coffee sweetened with half a packet of cocoa. Ew. Better, actually, now that it's cold. Better to sip, too, rather than drink steadily.

My hair falls about my face, swinging spunkily with its new cut. After over a year of growing it out (and cultivating impressive split ends), with it longer than it's been since I was 12 or 13, I cut my hair. And thank God for it, in this fucking Florida heat. I'd been waffling on it, liking the fall of the length but hating its heat and knowing that it didn't really look good with the shape of my face, when some random comment on it with Jeremy spurred my impulsiveness. Mom and Mamo were coming over for lunch, so I just went into the bathroom and cut it to my shoulders. Better. I've been living with that, though I knew that wouldn't last. Looked awesome when I cut it, but crappy when it had less body. Yesterday, on another impulse, I cut it to my jaw. Left two longer bits framing my face, as I'm wont to do, and left the rest more or less even. I never try for layers, so my rudimentary skills are sufficient. I'll get an actual cut, someday, but this looks good for now. It's cute, it's much lighter, and it stays looking fairly neat, even when it's not back. I'm happy, and Jeremy thinks it looks quite good. He liked my long hair, but he apparently likes this, too. I'm glad.

I keep having the fantasy of Katy's silo, Katy's Ren Fair. Her daydream has thoroughly become mine, and I wonder on it, think on it, dream on it. It's one of those things that rarely comes to light because people don't take the risk, but sometimes does, if it's a dream lucky enough to have people who do. Y'know? I would LOVE that. And so I dream on it. Maybe it's not to be. Maybe it's only a dream. But damn, though... Wouldn't that be fun?

It's so beautiful, outside. A storm is coming, bringing wind, dark clouds, and the white flash of underleaves. The sun is still a bit out, though, lighting the trees up brightly. It's something I do love about living on the coast of Florida: The glorious frequency of such storms.

I've had so much on my mind, so many times I thought "I should catch up and do this more frequently," yet right now, I'm coming up blank. Little of note.

The rats which we're babysitting are an absolute joy. Dora is quiet, likes to cuddle by you, get a little attention. Monkey is EVERYWHERE. She's so active, loves to explore, loves to climb, loves to see new things. Their manifest personalities... we're going to be sad when they go.

Yeah. Crap-all to say. I'll come back later.