uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

sexy sexy sexy photo of ryan adams i can't stop staring at. look how emo and sensitive he looks. :D

Hehe

I cannot get enough of this:



So come on down to Al Harrington's Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man Emporium and Warehouse!

Ahahaha...I could watch this all day. Seriously. I just watched it 4 times and giggled the whole way through. :D

my right eye continues to be weird, meaning that it kinda hurts still and it just feels weird, and it's extremely blurry. i decided tonight that my sight has definitely decreased in that eye, which scares me because it's my good eye. i made nate examine it today because i figured he wouldn't be grossed out by it, and i can't look at it myself. i tried to take a picture but it didn't work. he said there's a bump and some blood vessel stuff going on. a bump? that's not good. i guess i'll call tomorrow. i really hope they'll go "hey, it's perfectly fine and will go away by itself" because i don't want to drive to edina again and miss 2 hours of work.

 

what else is going on...been doing some sewing/crafting for my halloween costume. i have a bad sewing machine, and i really want a nice one. i feel it would increase my quality of life. maybe i'll ask for one for christmas or my birthday. that's not a bad thing to ask for, since my parents are always bugging me to think of things i need. the one i have really is almost not even worth using. that sentence is very weird but i kind of like it. i'm definitely hand sewing certain parts of it - no way i trust the machine. but i'm making this very long gold sash thing that would take me about 87 years if i tried to do it by hand. anyway........

 

i've been frustrated with work lately. i hope it's just a phase, but i'm kind of bored with what i do every day, and frustrated with different office situations, etc. i did become a problem-solving hero today thrice, though. it's always nice being the person who can do it at the end of a long chain of people who can't.

 

tomorrow's kitty's 6 month anniversary! (and also his 4.5 birthday - i made his birthday april 16 since nobody knew) we'll celebrate if he wakes me up no more than 1 time tonight.

There it is

I think I've regressed into an anti-blog phase. My blog writing is like a sine wave, alternating between lots of writing, very little writing, and just the right amount of writing. I guess lately I've been thinking a lot (brain's definitely working overtime, sorry for the cliche), having fun with friends, and living in a very messy apartment with a noisy cat (next week I'll have had him for 6 months!). My eyes are doing really well as of today. I'd say the turning point was this morning. Finally I woke up in the morning and my eyes didn't hurt. They hurt a tiny bit in the day, but nothing bad. They are also almost not red at all. I still have to take antibiotic eyedrops for a seemingly endless amount of time. I read on the insert the other day that the eyedrops "probably inhibit healing". I keep joking that my doctor must have Munchausen syndrome by proxy. I love anytime I can fit that illness into a conversation. I think it's one of the most interesting illnesses that exist. Besides that, though, "probably inhibit healing"? Don't you think that on a prescription medication insert they'd know for sure? Oh well. I had an ultimate shit day on Sunday, and Monday was pretty bad as well. But, today was wonderful. Not quite sure why. I was listening to a song today that had a lyric that stuck with me: "We are only one argument from death" - don't know why it stuck with me, but it must mean something somewhere. The song is called "The Sun Also Sets" (Ryan Adams) - I must have listened to it 27 times this afternoon. I have pictures in my mind for everything, and songs are no exception - this one's a mountainous landscape, and as you listen you're going over hundreds of hills and mountains and discovering all kinds of surprises each time you get to the top and look down. A lot of RA songs are like that, I guess, but this one's especially sparkly. For a long time I've wanted to do some kind of art thing about OK Computer because I have extremely vivid pictures about every single song on that. However, I seriously doubt I could get anything out of my brain that was in any way similar to what's inside. Oh well.

 

I've spent way too much time in my own head lately. I think it probably contributed a lot to my bad mood on Sunday and Monday. It was good to go to work today to focus on something else for once.

It takes two when it used to take one

N & I went to see Ryan Adams the other night, and it was really good. The strange thing about the show was that his set was only 70 minutes - apparently he had a meltdown about the sound and refused to play any more. His meltdown was not that noticeable to us in the audience. We sort of knew that he wasn't happy with the sound, but it wasn't like ##$@)@(* SOUND #($*&&$##@!!! or anything. The sound sounded great to us. Somehow I managed to get third row seats in the right center (It was at the State). I still couldn't really see because my eyes were all whacked out (I found out the next day I had an infection, more on that later). But I think those are the best seats I've ever had for anything. The opener was a guy named Ben Kyle from the band Romantica. It just took me half an hour to find that band name (I thought it was Romantico...boy was I wrong). It's a local band. Both Nate and I liked him and thought he sounded a lot like Ryan Adams. I think that show might be in the top 10 of my life, for some reason, even though it was so short. It just hit me right, I think. My favorite song was "Two" (which was the first song). He didn't play any other of my favorites, but that's ok. It reminds me of the first time I saw Bright Eyes like 5 years ago at the Barrymore - he only played one of my favorites that time. Anyway I got a little post-concert depression because of it being over and from being emotional, but it wasn't too terribly bad. It was a good night.

The next morning I went to the eye doctor and determined I have an infection in my eyelids, so now I'm taking an antibiotic (which makes me ill in the stomach!!). I'm kinda relieved because my eyelids were hurting a lot and not getting better for maybe 3 days. So now they're getting better. I think that (as weird as it sounds) it affected my vision, because I really could hardly see at all for a couple days. I was looking at my tv from my computer chair and couldn't make out anything, for instance, and right now I can see it fine. I really hope that was the case, anyway. I'm such an invalid these days :)

My sister Meredith is here right now. I was painting earlier. My apartment is messy. Daniel doesn't like getting his nails clipped. I am cold.

Hello

Just writing random stuff tonight, I guess. I don't like using the word random, but can't really think of anything else. I kinda decided tonight that I really like Candy's list of things to do and want to do one myself. I'll have to think about it a little bit. I have a few blog entries to do still, including the final convention entry (a month later), another Nate and Elizabeth's food blog, and some more of stuff from my childhood.

My eyes are healing ok...today the lids are really painful and itchy. The eyes themselves are fine. The black and blue has almost all gone away and the red is maybe 50% away. Today the lids were all purple. I can sort of look at people today without them jumping back in shock and awe. So many people gave me terrible looks like I was a monster. :) Well, one interesting and kind of cool thing is that the bright red makes the irises look extremely light blue. If it wasn't so creepy I'd almost like it. To Candy: sorry I didn't respond to your comment before. My mom drove me and stayed with me for 24 hours. They said it would be painful for a couple of days, but so far it's been pretty painful for 5 days. The redness in my eyeballs could last up to a month. I hope it won't.

They said that some people don't need to use pain medication. Who are these people? I am pretty tolerant of pain I think - I mean, I'm not a complete stoic but I'm also not my sister who is notoriously intolerant of pain. It's not the worst pain of my life, but it has just been really getting to me because a) it's constant and b) it's in my head and I don't really like my head getting loopy, it scares me. Pain in my head disallows the use of my head to play down the pain. If it's in other parts of me, I'm good at dissociating that part, like I'd imagine a Buddhist would do, but in this case my head's already occupied by hurting me.

Work has been ok the past couple of days...good things and bad things. I made DeAndre laugh really really hard today by comparing us to bilingual children.

Emily, Sarah, and I went to a wedding this weekend of Emily's good friend Emily who is also my friend from high school. It was very pretty. I took away some things to write in my notes.

Tomorrow I'm going to a show with Nancy (Joss Stone - she loves her) and on Thurs. to Ryan Adams with Nate. Ahhhhhhhhh I can't WAIT. :D

She doesn't have Oedipus eyes anymore

Surgery went well. I don't know if you all have had surgery, but it's hysterical to me how you have no recollection of anything. I mean, when you go to sleep normally, you at least can recall that you have been asleep, but in surgery it's like you just lost several hours. This is how yesterday is in my brain:

11:30:00 am - anesthesiologist inserts IV with medicine
11:30:05 am - Elizabeth says "Wow, this is making me sleepy..."
11:30:10 am - I wake up

But this is how it really went:


11:30:00 am - anesthesiologist inserts IV with medicine
11:30:05 am - Elizabeth says "Wow, this is making me sleepy..."
11:30:10 am - zzzzzzzzzzzz
3:00 pm - I wake up

I need some of that stuff at home to make me sleep sometimes, I think. ;) I mean, it literally had me out cold in 10 seconds.

Anyway, I'm shocked at how great I can see now. For 25 years I've only had perceived 3-D in my brain because of my eyes, based on the size of things and experience running into things and stuff, but now I can see in ACTUAL 3-D!!! I wonder if I can see Magic Eye now! I was looking around at stuff last night and felt like I'd never actually seen anything before. It's so interesting. Besides that, it kind of feels like when you get new glasses - just a tight sort of feeling in your eyes/brain.

So things are good! Well, besides really painful eyes. I have me some oxycodone though, so I am feelin' good. :)

She's got Oedipus eyes

This looks uncomfortable. Who wants to stand up while a large pointer is inserted into his or her eye while also holding onto some sort of jar?

Well, tomorrow morning I'm going to have my eyes cut out Oedipus-style and then sewed back on. The doctor is even going to use brooches to do it!!!

Just kidding, he's just going to detach the outer muscle, stretch it out, and reattach it (on both eyes actually). Wish me luck! More accurately, wish Dr. Hasan luck!

Chicago Pt. V

Sunday, August 26

This morning we went to the breakfast, which was at 8. We had to get up so early. We hardly got any sleep. I was in a pissed off mood, and I'm sure I was just wonderful to be around. I actually thought about not going, because I was in such a bad mood. The breakfast was ok. We actually ended up sitting next to the people I sat by last year, who last year made me laugh really hard and have a great time. The visits by the actors seemed a little longer this time. Here is a picture from the breakfast.

Next was Steve Bacic's talk. It was pretty funny, I liked it. He had one tiny role and one slightly bigger role in the show. I think he might have been on drugs a little bit (speed).

Paul McGillion was next. We liked his talk the best. Emily liked him because he was a teacher. You could tell he was a teacher by the way he was acting. Ummm...I don't know what else.

Then was Cliff Simon's talk. I enjoyed it. He was at the convention last year. I liked his talk this year better. He talked about being from South Africa and different things he does here, and it was interesting. Ask if you really want to know more. There in those pictures you can see the "stigmata" (it's just a weapon thingy).

Then Michael Shanks was up. You should have seen the question line - it was completely women. There were maybe 2 or 3 guys out of like 50. One guy asked a linguistics question which was my favorite question of the whole weekend.

Then we got autographs. Here they are. Michael Shanks' assistant called me "lovely" and I said "Wow, lovely! Thank you!" Emily said, "What, I'm not lovely?" And MS said, "It's not a contest, girls!" When we were at Cliff's table I reminded Emily to ask him what the thing was on his picture, and he looked at it but didn't know. Paul McGillion's line was really long. Emily told him "Thanks a million, Paul McGillion!" And he said, "Oh, I've never heard that one before!"

Here is a picture of the hotel.

I will do a separate entry of jokes so that it can be easily skipped if so desired.

Good evening

I had full intentions of finishing the Chicago thing, but other stuff came up I guess. I got really excited about Ryan Adams today and I am going to write a little bit about him tonight I think (real writing). I also found an Arcade Fire thing I wrote like 6 months ago and totally forgot about. I may include both of those on my blog here if they are good enough (which they probably won't be). I just noticed that my shoulders have changed shape. How would that happen? I don't do shoulder weight training or anything. Daniel is really cute today. :) I had so much to do today and actually did so little...how is it possible that I wasted so much of a day? What pissed me off today was that I had to mail a Netflix thing in order to get Trainspotting in a timely manner (by Tuesday) so that Nate and I can watch it, and I was too late for the apartment mailbox, so I was going to drive to the one at work because that one has a later pick up time. So as I was leaving to drive to the mailbox, I threw the DVD in the apartment mailbox out of habit. GRRR!!! It was kind of funny, though. It might not have been too late, anyway. I'm not sure. And I was supposed to call to register for surgery today but I kept forgetting. I'd remember in inopportune moments like when I was bathing. I like to say bathing because it sounds like I'm living in the 50s. Did you know that Jerry Seinfeld was born in 1954? He's a lot older than I thought - I thought he was younger than my parents but he is not. I want to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm right now. I wish it was on Watch it now on netflix. I wish everything was on there...however, then I'd probably never stop watching stuff and I think it's probably good that I get out once in a while, like to go to work and things like that. Last night L&M were here and it was fun. We played my new game and it was surprisingly really good. I think it's one of the best I've played. Suleyman Demirel! Good night.

A day in the life of Daniel

I want food! Are you giving me food? Is that food? Are you going to give me food? What's this? A piece of food? Food! Thanks! zzzzzz ... zzz ... Bye mom ... zzzzzzzzzzzzz ... zzzzzzzzzzzz ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ... is that a dog? I think I hear a dog ... zzzzzz ... z ... zzzzzzz ... is that mom? Where's mom?... zzz ... zzzzzz ... zzzzzzzzz ... [goes to the windowsill] ... zzz zzzzzzzzz ... zzzzz ... [goes under the futon] ... zzzzzzzzzzzz ... zzzzzzzzzzz ... [yawn] ... zzz .... Is that a mouse? Holy crap! How did a mouse get in here! I'm getting you, mouse...you're dead...you look just like this mouse I got 17 times yesterday ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ... MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM purrrrrrrrrrrrrr meow meow purr meow purrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz ... Mom, rub my tummy please, thanks... zzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz [the long 6p-10p nap] ... [gets a drink of water] zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ... What's this mouse doing here? How do all these get in here...it's a good thing I'm here to get them all... zzzzz ... Are you going to get me food? I think I want some food... This mouse looks remarkably like a tennis ball, but it can't fool me ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Nate & Elizabeth's food blog

Nate and Elizabeth went to a place called Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers today. He said he knew I liked chicken fingers, and I think he got some extra information there or else is a medium in disguise...I don't know...did someone else tell him about the chicken tender heydays of '01-'02? Maybe the Magenta Incident? Nate thought that for being called "Raising Cane" it wasn't very spicy. I thought it was good, but for some reason I could only get about 10 bites in me. I did drink about a gallon of liquid, though. I think maybe I filled up my stomach with liquid. Driving note: don't try to drive to the restaurant (even a different location) by taking right turns...it won't let you (or maybe just him).

P.S. I realize this isn't an entire blog, just a subset of mine. But it's a good name, and could also double if we ever make a blog out of food ingredients.

Chicago Pt. IV

Did you notice how I kind of don't have any reason for splitting these into parts?

Saturday 8/25

Stuff started at 12:30 - at first there were some music videos, of which I was getting really sick by that time. Morena Baccarin was the first one. She was nice. I guess Emily and I have a girl crush on her. We were talking about that when she happened upon us in the hallway afterwards. It was kind of awkward, but we don't think she heard us. She talked a bunch about how there were a lot of women at the convention, and she liked it.

Then we went to lunch. I think we saw Mr. Gumbo.

At 2 Dan Shea did his thing - it was really manic, like Robin Williams. We discussed later that it was not our type of humor.

Then there was another blonde-chick-infused trivia game and another auction.

Then at 4:30 was Jay Acovone. I liked his talk, he is cool. What else can I say?

Stuff...stuff...after that stuff we did autographs with M. Baccarin and J. Acovone. We had a hilarious time in line because we spotted a case in the back that said "A.C." on it. My first thought was "Hey, they have an air conditioner!" But Emily hit gold with "They're having a Saved By The Bell convention, and that's A.C. Slater's case!" HAHAHAHA! We could hardly stop laughing in time for handing over our photos and doing all that stuff. There was only one picture of Jay and I think he was sick of it. We heard him shout out "BLAAAAAACK CHEST!" as he was signing it once (he signed over his chest which had a black shirt on, as you will see below).

Then we ordered pizza, and it was good. Then we went to the dessert party, "featuring" Morena Baccarin, Steve Bacic, Dan Shea, and Jay Acovone. Ok, here's the million dollar question: how would you say the name "Bacic"? This is what we were asking ourselves up until this point (when they announced it when he came in). We came up with all kinds of pronunciations and it ended up that it is pronounced just like "basic". We still call him "Bachick" though because we like it better. Here are some horrible pictures of them. I apparently could not get any good pictures of anything this weekend.

So, during this dessert party we sat with the same people we ate dinner with the previous night. They had created a centerpiece, for a centerpiece competition that was being judged during the dessert thing. The centerpiece was a gigantic container filled with pictures of every character in every episode of the show. Holy crap. It was huge, and they said it took them like 6 months to make. They won, obviously. It sort of took over the conversation of everyone who visited us. It was ok with Emily and I, though. I swear to god they shortened the times the people could spend with us. I think Steve BACIC spent about 25 seconds with us. Anyway the centerpiece makers let everyone take what pictures they wanted. It turned into chaos, and I was actually sort of scared. People were poring through that thing until 4 am. I actually got kicked and "screamed at" because I was in the near vicinity of the item. Here are the pictures I got, most because they were funny. I didn't do levels on any of them or alter them.

Daniel & teddy bear

Gen. Hammond: "OWWW MY STOMACH"

Brain scan

Some sort of eye

This one is labelled "Creature"

This one was labelled "Zoombies" - must mean zombies that zoom around really quickly

Gate

Nothing compares, nothing compares 2 your stretched out head

This wasn't from the centerpiece, but it was a funny sign in the hotel. We had a long discussion about the photo on this sign.

Chicago Pt. III

Good evening. Here I go.

Continuation of Friday 8/24

Emily was getting an autograph from C.A. and it took forever. I went up into the room because I was tired, and I watched Seinfeld. I watched the whole episode and went back down and she still hadn't even gotten in line. We started to get worried because we were maybe meeting some people at the "fine dining" restaurant and we didn't have all that much time before the next convention thing. So yadda yadda yadda, she got her autograph and we went over to the "fine dining" restaurant. Outside was the same hostess as the previous night, but apparently we were better dressed this time, because she didn't turn us away. There was also this man there that was very jovial. He asked if we were going to eat there and we said yes. He said that it was very good, but very expensive. We looked at the menu that was right there, and it was basically a normal priced restaurant. No more than $15 per entree, really. He was head over heels for the seafood gumbo. He said it was soooo good but also soooo expensive. How much, you ask? $6. :D Well, we called him Mr. Gumbo from then on - we saw him all over the place, always talking jovially to people (some of whom were visibly uninterested in what he was saying). Anyway inside the restaurant we both got chicken strips, and I really wanted BBQ sauce, and so we asked for it and they finally brought it when I literally had 1 bite left of my meal. Oh well.

Some jokes from the dinner:
- This isn't really from the dinner, but one of the girls had a questionable wardrobe, and Emily and I had a long discussion about if she was on What Not To Wear and what would go on during the show.
- Someone was showing some sign language words, and the sign for "ten" looks like a hitchhiking thumb shaking around, so I said, "That would suck if someone got picked up on the road, but they were just trying to say ten!" That got good laughs.
- Are you related to Selmak? (don't feel like explaining that one but it was one of Emily's favorite jokes)

After that we went to this thing called the Cabaret. I hate that it's called that. It was pretty much a "show" where several of the actors came out and did comedic stuff. I was really confused for a lot of it because I had thought one guy was a different guy...who knows what I was thinking. The stupidly named Cabaret was ok. They wrote a fake script and had people come up and read it. The funniest ones were when they read it, though. Audience people don't have as much capacity to be entertaining, because they aren't entertainers by trade. Here are some pictures from that thing and a picture of Emily that I thought was good.