Blather, rinse, repeat

LOL@me getting up an hour too early for my flight, getting dressed, brushing my hair, brushing my teeth, making breakfast and sitting down at the computer and finally looking at the clock. >_

Apart from the fact that when I dropped my dogs off at the new boarding place no one knew what the hell they were doing (and I had to wait 45 minutes until someone came in, because the first person left fifteen minutes early and the next person was a half an hour late,) and the hugely massive NOVEL they had me fill out about the dogs, their temperment, their health, their diet etc. was nowhere to be found, and when they did find it, no one had even looked at it, umm, yeah. Apart from that, the day was great.

After dropping the dogs off I went to Lao Shir's house. I was so happy to see my training brother (who no longer trains) Chris C. there. Also some training sisters who no longer train. It was a reunion of epic proportions. I love seeing Chris C. because he is hilariously funny. A father of two, his main hobby outside of martial arts is building light sabers and doing other Star Wars related things. He's too awesome.

Lao Shir looks fantastic and she made bean salad that was really To The Yum. We chilled in her back yard for a while, and then we all walked to the beach by her house. I took a really cool photo of her.

Then once I got home it was the pre-trip dinner at the folks' hizzy, with Gran and cousins and Boychild. The Boychild got all sugary and ran around like a wind up toy. He has no idea that he is going on an airplane tomorrow to go to Disneyworld. I wonder what it must be like to live int he moment, and to not even think about the meaning of the future. Although if you ask him, "Who's going to Disneyworld?" he raises his hand and said, "MEEEEE!" Still he has no idea what it means; to him it's just a word game.

Today I am cleaning the house as if the queen were coming to visit. I have even borrowed my Ma's rug cleaner and am shampooing the rugs. I cleaned the aviary too, so it's nice and shiny clean. I will return to a spotless house.

Not only is it going to be cool to see Boychild see Disneyworld for the first time, but also on Friday I'm meeting up with three friends I met on the internet through that blog that I go to. We've been joking about it for a month, the things we are going to do! I can't wait to meet them. Good times.

Meanwhile, my house is too damn quiet.

In which time is not my friend:

So here is my schedule for this week:

Tomorrow: Finish shopping. Later, Kung Fu.
Tuesday: Mind the Boychild
Wednesday: Leathermouth / Reggie concert in Nassau
Thursday: Mind the Boychild. Get all birds and supplies ready.
Friday: Drop the birds off to Laura. Pack all my stuff. Get all dogs' stuff ready.
Saturday: Drop dogs off for boarding. Swing by Lao Shir's house for BBQ. Family party that night.
Sunday: Clean entire effing house top to bottom. Shampoo the rugs.
Monday: Fly to Florida.

Yikes.

In which I put the smack down to no avail.

So check this out. Yesterday on a sci-fi/fantasy fiction community for writers, someone asked for some debates on fanfiction. I expected the usual debates re: merit, skill, is it a waste of talent, how do authors feel about it, etc. Instead, this one guy, someone who claims to get paid for writing, flipped his crap. He said that fanfic writers were wankers, choads, trolls, fanboys, thieves, etc. I mean, the list went on and on and got more and more vitriolic as I kept shooting him down with logic. At first he said it was "mental masturbation" and his reasoning was that it was because it was done for one's own pleasure and that "no one else enjoys it." I pointed out that lots of people actually enjoyed it. He said that writing for any other reason than to be published and paid was "narcissistic." That there was no real joy in writing, or that if there was that was somehow wrong: that the real joy was the paycheck. I pointed out that finding joy in doing something harmless from oneself which resulted in neither pay nor praise was far from "narcissistic." He said it was wrong for amateurs to write for the hell of it, because it was, to him, synonymous with ten year olds practicing as doctors for the hell of it. I pointed out the lack of logic there: Doctors often have your life in their hands. Writers, not so much. And during all of this, even while he was spewing hate and calling names, I--surprisingly--kept the gloves on.

Finally he exploded in wank and said that all those trolls and losers who wrote things that they never meant for publication and pay--even piddly little things that you wrote for yourself, or for your friends, etc.--was "undercutting" the real writers. (When I asked him how we could possibly be "undercutting" him when, hello, we weren't taking any money for our paltry, trollish words written solely for pleasure, he had no answer for me.)

Well, I hope that someday I will be a published writer. It would be nice to get paid for it and actually make a living doing something that gives me so much joy (OMG NO!) but I know that's a long shot. I would be content with very little pay. (I will possibly, if all goes well, be a doctor in about four years; hopefully that will at least begin to cover some bills I will incur from going back to school.) I would be overjoyed if someone was ever inspired enough by my work that they wanted to jump into it; that they wanted to play along with me. That they loved it enough to wish to be a part of it. Heck, I'd even love the fanboys (and girls. Oddly this guy seems to think everyone who writes or enjoys fanfiction is a boy.)

My other sincere hope is that I never, ever do anything solely for money, no matter how desperate--or how rich--I ever get.

But more, I would hope that getting paid to write would never, in any reality, turn me into someone who thought it was acceptable to call rude names to people who did nothing to me but have a different view on what constitutes "joy." I hope very much that I never become the kind of person who paints everyone with a broad and ugly brush and makes personal attacks just because they do some harmless bit decent of writing. (I always do defend The Sacred Gates of Aptitude: If you suck and you put your work out there, I call it like I see it. This does not, however, mean that you should not be allowed to write your crap.) I hope that I never, ever shoot someone down for daring to create something only for themselves, to be kept private or among friends, because they wanted to, because it gave them joy.

But I have in me such a streak of bitchiness that, from here on in, I will take a really satisfying pleasure in knowing that everytime I write something for myself, with no intent to publish or get paid--hell, everytime I write a blog entry on my journal, or a piece of work for my friend, or my grocery list--that somewhere out there, some "professional" "writer" is agonizing over being "undercut."

Because I'm kinda a bitch like that, I'm actually really glad to know that. ^_^

In which my mind is made up.

In yet other news. Last night on this blog where I hang out, some anonymous folks were getting on my case for wanting to go back to school. They told me I was too old to go back, and that it would never work out because just last week I was saying I wanted to be a teacher, and now all of a sudden this, and Oh Woe, there is no way in which a person can change her mind so drastically and still be serious! I should stop pretending and just give it all up!

Teaching was a really, really easy decision to latch onto. It's true that just last week I was sitting there going, "But teaching would be so easy. 18 months. The college is right around the corner. Lots of time off." A big part of me still wishes to teach English. But then again, a big part of me still wants to bust down a door and charge into a room yelling "FEDERAL AGENT, DROP YOUR WEAPONS!" It is, to this day, really hard for me to square with the fact that I can't do everything. There's not enough time or money.

I do have those fantasies, like, about being like Dana Scully, or JK Rowling, or a sleek warrior like Michelle Yeoh with unbeatable Kung Fu skills. Those are fantasies. Going back to school to earn another degree and hopefully a doctorate so that I can practice medicine, that is not so far fetched.

A few minutes ago I got an email from one of my older training sisters; you guys saw her recently as the Lady Chrysanthemum. :) She said to me,
"Dear Jules,
I just wanted to tell you again how right your decision to go for a D.O. feels to me. I hope it works out exactly has you hope and I think the world will be lucky to have you in that capacity.
A side effect of your announcing your intentions was to show (Sije Empress Teishi / The Peach) that when one door closes it's possible to open another. I think you are and will be an inspiration to her and I think that knowledge is a major thing for her to tuck away whether she follows in your footsteps or not."

(That is huge to me, because you guys all know how I treasure these people.)

Even when I have my doubts--and I will have them--I will remind myself of those things. I seem really independent-minded and I am, but sincere outside opinions, logical reasons, as well as gut feelings, do mean a lot to me. I value them.

Recently, I have been told that a lot of my decisions and the things that I loved were wrong, and that I should stop. Stop writing for joy, stop speaking out about what I believe in, stop making huge decisions. Yet no one who said any of those things to me has ever offered any logic; just vitriol, knee-jerk reactions and hyperbole. It's good to be made to think, and I appreciate that, but in the end they are, and will remain, wrong.

Took the Ninja Wizards to work today to drop them off. Trisky was hysterical and frantic all the way there and Jo-chan sat in the back with the two boydogs who were pretty good. We dropped them off (Dan taking one look at Jo-chan and commenting, "Whoa! You two look alike!" Yes, that is why she's playing Young Me in the movie!) and then we stopped for ice cream (soft serve with the hard shell, YUM) and discussed the movie. From there we went to Michael's for some prop / costumey kinds of things. Back home, we walked to the beach to film the second shot in the movie. I kind of wanted to rip off FF8 for this with the whole feather motif, but alas, it is windy at the beach. The other thing that kind of messed it up was this old lady in a bikini who was IN EVERY SINGLE SHOT. She stood behind us on the rocks in her teeny blue bikini (allow me to point out that she was pushing 70 and about 200 pounds, and her bikini was positively tiny--I mean, go you, for real, but PLEASE GET OUT OF THE SHOT.) Dude, she just absolutely stood there staring. It was surreal.

We came back and edited a bit, salvaging what we could and trying to cut Mrs. Blue Bikini out of it. Then we had dinner and I decided to shoot another scene, this one involving me falling fully clothed from a chair on the deck into the pool. I know that makes no sense now, but it came out pretty cool.)

I took a shower, then we sat down and watched The Crow. I think that's a movie that comes along at the precise moment you need to see it. At least it did for me and a few other people I know. For someone who grew up Goth Lite, at least in terms of really liking the visual gothic style, the movie just grabbed you. It came out in the early to mid 90s before we were on the internet or any of that, and it just sort of defined an era for me, or a way of thinking and feeling. So I showed it to Jo-chan and she really liked it, too. It was that or Donnie Darko, which I think is, aside from being a great movie, is also a movie that draws today's semi-goth crowd for whatever reason. I'm not sure why. the third choice was Dracula, the original, which I'll be honest, I still think is brilliant and probably always will.

One of these days I'm going to have to show her Night Of The Living Dead. That movie still spooks me to this day. It remains one of the scariest zombie movies ever made. My other really scary zombie movie was Mausoleum (but when I saw it it was called "One Dark Night.") My folks took my best friend Tracy and I to see that when we were ten (or eleven?) This was before ratings kept kids out of the movies. We saw it in the movie theater and it was my first zombie film. I so clearly remember being curled up on the floor, peeking over the top of the seat in front of me. I had a Hershey bar in my hand and I clutched it so tightly that it melted in my hand and I couldn't eat it. I had nightmares for weeks and had to sleep with the light on. It was one of the best movie experiences of my life.

Come to think of it, my other scariest and most beloved film of the early 80s was Poltergeist. When I was a little girl, I could recite the movie backwards and forwards. Dude, that movie scared the Christ out of me and probably still would. And Halloween, holy crap, the part where he is wearing the sheet and just standing there staring, dude, that gave me nightmares, too.

You know I'm going to say it: They don't make movies like that anymore. I'm such a geek. >_>

Last night was Spencer's graduation party in Easthampton. Let me preface this by saying that you have not seen evil until you've seen Easthampton town on a Friday night in the summer. The Townies are out in droves, all bleach and scene and metro and money and attitude. I would rather talk to a crackwhore in downtown Riverhead than associate with these people.

The party itself was fantastic. SB's friends are the best group of teenagers / young adults I have ever met in my life. I have a fondness for teenagers (as well as for old people) in general; I like them ever so much more than young children because teenagers are at an interesting, challenging age where they have so much to say. Anyway, this is the nicest group of kids I have ever met, and they all adore Spencer, and rightly so. ("They think he's a righteous dude!")

SB's parents (my aunt and uncle) also hired a DJ, which is a guarantee for me to have a great time. Jo-chan has recently become obsessed with the song "Come on Eileen" which was my favorite song when it came out in, what, '83? Back then I even made up my own dance to it. It was so neat that Jo-chan had only just discovered it (through the game Silent Hill, no less!) Jo-chan wasn't sure about going out on the dance-floor, but I am like a dance-floor fool as some of you know. I requested "Come On Eileen" and when the DJ played it, Jo-chan and I were the first ones on the dance floor. We just started spazzing out and then I showed her my dance I had made up when I was like 10 or something. By the time we were doing that (and the pics of that are priceless!) a bunch of people decided to come and dance, too. I requested a bunch of songs through the night and we hardly left the dance floor. My aunt and her co-workers and friends were up there busting a move, too. At one point one of Spencer's young friends was dancing with me, too, but this kid was dancing with everyone: people's moms, Spencer, the music teacher... He was just having a blast.

Then their music teacher, the very cool Mr. Howe came over to talk to Jo-chan and I for a good half an hour. He's a supercool teacher and the three of us talked about the state of education and teenagers and school, fitting in, and alternately, choosing not to fit in, which is where Jo-chan is right now in her life. I have always respected her for that punk ethos that has always been so important to me, and Mr. Howe told her how brave she is for choosing to be herself even when it meant not fitting in. (By "punk" I don't mean like street-punk or even necessarily music choice, but just the punk ethos of "this is how I live my life and you don't have to like it.")

At one point Betsy got up and made a speech to Spencer which pretty much had everyone in tears. She told him that it was her honor to raise him, to never change, to never forget where home is. Towards the end of the night some guy in his 50s or so came up to me, grabbed my hand and said, "Don't ever stop dancing, kid." O_o By that time Spencer was hanging around with a group of his friends and his girlfriend and the DJ was playing his song, which, unbeknownst to most people, has always been his song. Or rather, a song that I've always associated with him. It's Billy Joel's "For The Longest Time." The reason I've always thought of SB for this song was that on his second birthday, Celie (our other cousin who used to live with my parents and me) and I had been singing it in the car on the way to their house. Once we got there, we started seranading SB with this song. SB used to hate it when people sang to him or at him, and Celie and I used to torment him by singing to him. (I know that sounds mean, but he was such a funny little boy and he never got really upset.) We sang it to him until he put his head under the cushions of the couch. Anyway, so then last year when SB was in his very small choral group at high school, (The Manly Men,) they did an a capella rendition of this song which pretty much made me want to cry. Last night they closed out the party with this song and it got me all emo again. I can't believe this boy is going away.

I forced him to introduce me to his adorable girlfriend, which he did reluctantly and with an embarrassed grin. But she's the cutest little thing.

Anyway, but most of the night was Jo-chan, Betsy and I dancing around to the side of a group of teenagers who were younger than most of the songs they played. I can happily say that I outlasted every single one of them with hours to spare. But I also stupidly twisted my ankle and today I'm really tight from all my superfly hip-hop moves. ;D I dance like a maniac when there's a DJ but it never occurs to me that it's going to hurt the next day. >_>

AND THEN! I came home to an email from Shane, the guy I have in mind for th lead in that movie. It's a very casual email sort of like, "Sure, sounds like loads of fun! But the blood is going to be expensive." To Shane, this is just another movie he's in on (because he's always doing stuff like this,) but to me, this just MADE MY NIGHT and I peed my pants in joy.

Basically, YES, SHANE ACCEPTED THE ROLE and THE MOVIE IS DEFINITELY GOING ON! I emailed him today giving him the starting date but told him that I would work around his schedule. I only met the dude once but I have the feeling he's going to be awesome. You know what? This finished product is going to be beautiful. I just know it absolutely. I'm so psyched it's all I can think of sometimes.

And today: Cleaning the house and massively cleaning the birdcages again for tomorrow's party. Then, setting down to read HP7. Okay, one quick, non-spoilery note on this series, and I'm sorry if it's less than positive: I love JK Rowling, you all know that. I admire her and respect her, I think she's a terrific woman and I adore her stories. The one complaint I have about her storytelling though, is that she uses all of these extraneous characters when she's already got hundreds at her disposal. I think she could just as easily recycle characters from the other books, characters that have been pointless of have fallen by the wayside, instead of introducing a thousand new ones for each story. In one instance, one character is completely pointless. Why not use an established one? This way when something intense happens involving that character, there is an actual emotional reaction? Instead I sat there and went, "Oh. Well, okay then." Too many useless characters. That's my complaint.

And tomorrow: Going to pick up Jo-chan, stopping for ice cream and last minute shopping, then waiting on folks to show up for our annual office summer party. Evening: me crashing and not wanting to clean up. Monday: Taking the birds to Laura, maybe even more last minute shopping, and then evening: ice cream and movies at my parents' house with Jo-chan. I'm thinking Blazing Saddles unless she's already seen it.

And Tuesday: Dropping the dogs off for boarding and seeing my folks and Gran off to Florida.

And Wednesday: Jo-chan and I getting to MacArthur and getting on a plane to FL.

Holy crap, full week coming up!

Then Disneyworld and the huge Hula show (that I am attending and not performing) and seeing all of my Hula brothers and sisters and meeting new Kumu Hulas perhaps. Then coming home to work and possibly Wong tournament and then starting to film THIS MOVIE THAT IS HAPPENING!

Leaving for Florida just as soon as Uncle Don gets here with the kids. This is going to be such a weird trip. I haven't road tripped with my fam since like '95 or so.

Today I brought the birds with me to work because I had to drop them off at Laura's directly after. Lil Jon, my grackle, has always feathered really badly and has had skin problems (along with his many other issues) since I got him two summers ago, but recently he lost all the feathers on his head and his beak has beenlooking weird. Also his skin looked scaley to me. So I had Rob look at him, and for once, Rob was mystified. It's not mites, it might be viral but he doubted it. He said it looked like feather and beak disease, but he'd only ever seen that in parrots. So he took a "wait and see" option. I brought them both to Laura, and she wondered if maybe it was lack of vitamin D, a common thing in wild grackles kept indoors. I started wondering how I could safely get him more sunlight (clearly he can't go outdoors.) It took me a few minutes to admit to myself that I was thinking about putting the birds in the sunroom, which I admittedly still think of as "Pendragon's Room." It's real hard for me to consider letting something else live in there aside from plants. On the other hand, it hardly seems fair to deny wild birds a nice, bright sunroom because I'm still hung up on the loss of a beloved pet. Which I guess I am, because not a day goes by when I don't miss him. And sometimes in the morning I can still smell him; that smell of warm scales that I don't think I'll ever forget. It smells like the forest.

Well, now I'm starting to depress myself. The point is, I think when I come back from vaca, I'll get a nice, high table and put both of my non-releasables in there. That'll free up some kitchen space as well as being a nice change for them. And maybe some fish, who knows? I'm kind of a fan of fish. I've always liked the sound of a fish tank running in the background of things, and honestly, with all of the stuff that used to be going on in that room (heaters, humidifiers, etc.) it seems so quiet. I'll have to see about that fish tank thing, though. Those can get expensive and I really can't afford extra expenses, especially around the holidays and with my last seminar to pay off. We'll see about this.

Oh, House was loads of fun tonight. Even though it was fully outlandish, and even though I'm seeing a certain amount of handwaving when it comes to really heavy plot points, it was still classic House and I still love it. I think I might stay in next Tuesday to see it. I can't miss two whole episodes this season, when in fact I haven't missed a single one since I started watching in the first season! The only episode I've ever missed was on Halloween, because I was at the concert.

So let's see, tomorrow I have to finish packing, clean the house, get whatever last minute stuff done, and then go work at Green Cloud and then train. I guess I should drop off my rented DVDs although I didn't even watch one of them. Then Thursday I have to bring the dogs down to work for boarding (the hardest aspect of any vacation,) then hang around for the kids to get off from school, at which time they and Uncle Don will drive out here. Dinner, and then off to Florida. Betsy is flying on Friday. I'd have loved to fly with her, but I just can't afford it right about now. Anyway, it'll be kind of neat to be driving down with the fam again; haven't done that since I was just out of college, and holy crap, what a crazy trip that was. There was a lot of drama going on in my life, and with my cousin who was staying with me at the time. I should dig out my old journals from that time and see what kind of stuff I was writing.

Pre-traveling wears me down. By the time I'm in Florida, I'm always so ready for a vacation. ^_^

Awww, sad! Malama pono kou kino, Le Jared, get better soon. Sorry to all you folks out there who made plans to see this concert. Hopefully they will reschedule.

Yeah, I still lurk around the board because it does have the quickest official news, and yeah, I am waiting on tour dates for late winter, because the shows I saw were somuch fun I'd do it again. Jared recently said that they as a group have nothing to do with their web sites, but they have representatives taking care of that stuff, so it's not so much the band that I'm disappointed with over the state of their boards now that i know that. But still, the people there are representing them. And why are there tons of threads cheering racism, cheering violence towards women, cheering the killing of Iraqis, and all of these go unchecked and undeleted? It's obvious that the mods delete threads that they disapprove of (e.g., the one I made in which I commented that the dancers on stage at the Chainsaw awards looked like something out of a Pat Benatar video, not to mention countless other threads by other people that weren't 100% positive.) Logically, one could take it to mean that the mods at least do not disapprove of racism, sexism, violence and all of that other stuff. Or at the very least, that those issues are not a priority while the immaculate reputation of the band and MTV are priorities. At the very least. So I'm still annoyed and I just can't read most of the stuff posted there.

In other news, I went to pick up my contact lenses today and get info on the surgery, but tada! The office was closed. WTF with being closed on a Monday? I decided to come home and pack , but here I am, not packing. I hate packing. But it needs to be done. I have Kung Fu tonight, work tomorrow, Kung Fu Wednesday, and then Thursday the kids and everyone aer here by dinnertime and we're off to Florida right after dinner. So I need to get on this.

And honestly, I don't really have anything to write, exactly. I'm just stalling. God! I hate packing.

I brought Sano in to have his pre-dental blood test done yesterday, and also because that diarrhea problem of his came back for a few days. His kidney values were .02 points elevated. But Rob is sure that it's because the recent diarrhea dehydrated him. He says that otherwise everything is perfect and the dental is a go. If there were anything really going on there, then I think more of his results would be skewed, even just a bit. Plus, Sano is young; he's only seven. So I'm not going to worry, and that's all there is to it.

Haku just mysteriously pulled a 20 dollar bill from between the cushions of my sofa. I have a suspicion of how it got there, (Kim, that basket was a gift for you, stop trying to pay for food! ;D ) but I could be wrong. It was just so funny to see him poke his long, skinny woofer into the couch and come out delicately holding a 20 dollar bill between his little white front teeth.

Last night my three dogs were running around like maniacs and getting into everything they could. Trisky is so bad that I can tell her "NO!" right to her face and she'll just looka t me like, "...Please leave; I'm busy. And lower your voice, too." The Ninja Wizards: Untamed, Untrained, and Just Plain Bad. I have very bad dogs.

I'm going to miss them fiercely when I go away to Florida next week and I have to board them.

So more pictures and videos from Halloween night keep on surfacing as people keep uploading them. This one person videotaped the costume contest and sent the links out, so I managed to get some screen grabs. I couldn't get pictures of my place in it because, well, I was in it, but now it's like someone else got them for me. ^_^

( This is me with Shannon. I am a strange combination of doofy and nervous. My eyes look so weird, don't you think? )
There was something like, "Oh my god, this is my favorite drummer" going on in my head just then, as well as, "Wow, a cute boy!" Hence the look of OMGWTFBBQ. Which is just how I'm built. You should have seen me trying to get a word out to Keali'i Reichel the other day without sounding like a moron, it was pathetic, and he's someone I've talked to at least three times before.

He ahiahi poina'ole, ae? I think so.

It's raining very hard today, chilly but not windy. This morning the rain was too light to really be rain, and too heavy to really be mist. There's currently a mockingbird outside my window, perched on top of the archway to my yard, singing his crazy little heart out. Or maybe he's complaining because he's getting wet, who knows?

I have to call Laura and make sure she's ready to take my birds on Tuesday. O_o Mustn't forget!

And tonight is my first night back at Kung Fu. I feel so out of shape; it's been about a week and a half. Although we did work really hard in Hula this weekend, it's just a different set of muscles, isn't it? I'm probably all tight and will need to do lots of stretching. I've lost a few inches off the side-split I'd been working on. Damn, but that's so hard to get back.

Oh, I know what else: I went to the eye doctor today for a basic regular checkup and to get my year's supply of contact lenses. I mentioned that I was having a harder and harder time finding ones that didn't dry out and irritate the crap out of me, and I asked if I was a good candidate for surgery. He said I was, and told me about all the risks and how the chances of them happening was getting lower and lower all the time. I think I might do it. If I find I'm covered for it, I might go ahead and do it. Yikes, though. Eyes freak me right out the door. We'll see.

If I don't count when I work at Kung Fu, then really I only have three more days of work until vacation! When I look at it that way, I get a tingle of excitement. I could use a week of just going on rides, eating at restaurants and, well, starting my Christmas shopping, really.

And of course: hurray for Democrats. Not so much "hurray for Democrats" really as "haha for Republicans." Maybe things will start to change, and if Democrats don't do anything to screw this up within the next few years, then maybe things can continue to change on a grander level. Let's hope.

Took the two birds (Cid and Ray) to Laura today. She is 90% sure that Cid has got mites! The invisible kind, the likes of which I've never had on any bird before. She had some powder to put on him that she said was totally safe and she had used it to great effect before. She's really interested in working with him, too. If it works, then most of his problems could clear up. It's possible that even his seizures could stop. That would be amazing.

Then, I also brought my dove to work, probably to be put to sleep. That really depressed me. But she is never going to fly again, and I can't keep her caged. I have to do what is right. I was going to put her to sleep a few weeks ago, but Rob convinced me to give her a chance. But her wing is just shattered in a really bad place. The part that kills me is that her crop healed perfectly, which is so rare. God! How sucky.

I'm still in a panic about having to board the dogs tomorrow, and leaving Pendragon. I know I've got my two petsitters and all, but they're not me. Still, it is worlds better than boarding Pendragon. It has to be. Has to be. (Knock on wood.) Then I've got to make a ton of food for Pendragon, and finish cleaning and packing. Then maybe Kim is coming over for dinner and to hang out.

Kung Fu tonight was loads of fun and I really de-stressed in a big way while I was there. It's very hard to be stressful when you're training. We did forms, and then in blackbelt club, we didn't even break to do our usual warmup (including the hundreds of crunches.) We just kept right on doing forms. Somewhere in the middle of class I got in a discussion with Sifu and a new Sehing (new to this academy, anyway--he's been with Holbrook forever,) named John, who is very wee and very adorable with crazy spiked dark hair and awesome Kung Fu. Sifu has this way of cracking me up when he tells me stories about his own training. The part that sucked tonight was that we all got a letter from Lao Shir explaining her full retirement from teaching, and probably from Kung Fu. I mean, there were those of us who pretty much knew it from the start, but now she's told everyone and it's official, and very depressing. Her letter sounded optimistic in general regarding her health, though. She's pretty confident that she can win this one. Right now, that's all that matters.

I still hope that someday she comes back to Kung Fu, though. Even if she just does it on her own sometimes. She is fabulous.

I took some pictures on my digital today. Most of them came out all blurry and crappy, but I'm posting them anyway. One of them--a photo of water from melting snow splashing onto a glass table in the sun--came out really awesome. And some more pics of my dogs, too.

Preview:


( Clickitywhee )