Summarized Summer

So, I left NC to go to a wedding. The wedding involved Jason and Kara Robeson, who are now lawfully responsible for each other's college loans. They're good kids.

A couple weeks later I went to Minnesota and met Meghan's family (or most of it, anyways). Her brother and I had already met, but her parents, one set of grandparents, and younger sister were shockingly nice to me. Apparently, everyone out there is that friendly, maybe it's the silly accents? Also, while we were there, we went to a very pretty (but very dull) wedding.

A couple of weeks after that I went to my cousin Chris Avery's wedding to a young woman named Sasha, which just happened to take place in North Carolina. Meghan, my younger brother, my parents, and I spent a couple of days at the beach afterwards, and she managed not to hate my family.

Earlier this week I started working at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, and it is pretty great. In the middle of the week I moved into my new apartment, which I will share with Ken when he gets back from Russia. Ken has a lot of heavy stuff, which his brother and mother helped move. Still, he needs to have less heavy stuff. When we move out, I am abandoning him to do it himself.

Ok, that's a basic summer summary.

Appendicitis

To me, there have only three distinct time periods since Saturday night. Crippling pain (Sunday-Monday around 4), bearable pain (Monday round 4 until the morphine was in my I.V. for a minute) and morphine (asdfghjkl;). I feel much less like I'm going to die today than I did yesterday, though I am pretty sure that late last night (when I was messed up on drugs) a couple dudes in masks cut me up and took something from me.

So, the reason I didn't type up those stories with the other stuff is that I was beginning to feel some stomach pain Saturday night, and I couldn't concentrate on thinking, typing, or talking on the phone. Sunday morning the pain was worse, so I took an ibuprofin and some Pepto-bismol before church. After church I felt bad enough that I spent the rest of the day laying down in bed or throwing up in the bathroom. By that point I was running a bit of a fever, with chills, shaking, and sharp abdominal pain. Sunday night my Mom drove back to PA and I waited up for Heather's parents (my brother's in-laws), going to bed as soon as they arrived (around 9:30).

Trying to 'sleep it off', I stubbornly remained in bed until 10:15 am Monday morning, without getting any sleep because of the constant excruciating pain. I came downstairs then, and had a conversation with Heather's parents, which I don't clearly remember. They said they were going to take the kids for a walk, and I should keep away in case I was contagious. I looked up my symptoms online and decided that I probably had appendicitis, and needed to go to the hospital. They said to lock up if I left, and then took the house keys (and the keys to Avery and Heather's van), and went off for a walk.

In the course of the next hour I phoned my dad, my mom, Heather, Avery, and a hospital. Heather sent her pastor, who drove me to the emergency room and stayed there with me for the first four hours that I was in the waiting room. He got to see me go from "curled up in a fetal position spasming and unable to speak" to "sitting completely still with my mouth hanging open while staring off into space", which was a huge improvement. I was down to "hurts like hell but I can carry on a conversation" when my cousin Aaron arrived at about 4:30. And things only improved until Aaron left me (around noon today).

It only took me about forty minutes to get from the "take-a-number" lady to hospital registration (where I got a wristband at 12:23), but it was another two hours before I saw a triage nurse, who said to me "You certainly have appendicitis, and a fever over 102." She then sent me back to the waiting room, where I remained until about 5:30. Three seperate nurnes took blood, urine, and vitals while I was in a hospital bed in a hallway, and the floor doctor said it was the "most textbook case of appendicitis" he'd ever seen. So he sent a bunch of med students my way (with my consent) to poke and prod me while I was waiting on a surgeon. The surgeon arrived at 7:20, and by 10-something I was in surgery. Next thing I knew there were two very nice, very fat nurses named Anna and Tracy (I think? she was the white one) who were eagerly bringing me ginger ale and pain medication. And then my Mom arrived (against my wishes, she came the whole way back from PA) and began mothering me to death.

Stories

My favorite story about Lucas in this mess regards his hair. The oil covered his entire head, and when the nurses tried to wash it out of his hair and scalp he wouldn't let them. They were worried that he had burns there which they couldn't see, but the next day, when asked about it, he revealed that he wouldn't let them wash it just because he liked the way it looked.

Yosef and Mihret have been holding up really well, and they're generally delightful kids to be around. Mihret likes to do a "No? Yes?" game, where she will say something and then add "Yes?" or "No?" to the end of the sentance to make it a question. If the answer is what she want's then the game is over, but if not, she'll just say the other one over and over for a couple minutes. Here's an example: "Watch T.V. Yes?" "No, Mihret, it's time for bed." "Yes?" "No." "Yes?" "No." etc. etc. etc. I think I should be annoyed, but she's so adorable and her voice pitches ridiculously high (which makes her even cuter) that I enjoy it.

Yosef made me wait outside his room the other night when I told him to get to bed. He said he was going to get something and I couldn't look. So after a couple minutes he ducked his head out and asked me for tape. I didn't know where any was, and I told him so. He frowned, looked thoughtful for a second, and then ducked back in. A minute after that he opened the door and was standing there with a lumpy object in his hand, wrapped in notebook paper and covered in stickers of bugs and battleships. "Present!", he said, grinning. I opened my present, and it was a black toy motorcycle that he'd had on his desk earlier. I told him I didn't have any place to keep it until I went home, and asked if I could leave it in his room for safekeeping. Then I tried to explain what safekeeping meant. Then he went to bed.

My nephew Lucas, and the rest of the family

At about 6 pm on Thursday my nephew Lucas was burned by oil during a cooking accident. He's been in good hands (in addition to those of his parents), mostly intensive care and has begun to recover, but even if everything continues to go perfectly he'll be in the hospital until the 25th. On Friday my Mom and I drove down, so that my brother and his wife can stay near Lucas and won't have to worry about arranging for someone to watch their 3 other kids.

Sunday afternoon my Mom will be going home, but I'm going to stay down here to help until about a week after Lucas gets out of the hospital. This will take some pressure off while everyone is adjusting. I'm so glad that I can be here, and not have to worry about anything back in Pittsburgh. All of my roomates have been great about things like bills and living arrangements, including lil' Emily, who's going to be moving in in June. Speaking of June, that's when I'll be getting back to Pittsburgh.

Go to these for more info on what's going on with Lucas:
http://leaveittoavery.wordpress.com/
http://burakaeyae.blogspot.com/

I have a series of funny/nice anecdotes, which i'll get around to typing up some other day. Right now I'm going to bed.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Internet!

This holiday always makes me think of this comic strip, which has a "swear" in it for those of you with grandmotherly sensibilities. I still love the holiday, because it's fun without any seriousness, controvery, or obligations. Nobody expects gifts, candy, or delicious foods today, but it is a perfectly good excuse to give them. Of course, I didn't really take advantage of that this year, but the principle is the same.
http://www.partiallyclips.com/index.php?id=1210&c=1

The simplest tasks can become incredibly complicated when the object of your affection is involved. Not being totally disgusting is something most people master by the age of 3, but people in a new relationship have to learn that all over again. Patrick (Meghan's brother) and I got hit it off during his week here, except when I was being excessively cute with his sister. We've learned to tone down the everything because there was more than a little too much affection for other people to put up with us. After all of our closest friends became totally sick of us we grew tolerable, and are coming back into favor with the people who love us. The next task we're focusing on is "saying goodbye". When real people do this, it takes moments. When we started to do this, it took 3 hours. Last Wednesday I made blueberry pancakes for breakfast but didn't leave Meghan until around 1 pm, and even then it was really difficult. The good thing is that we're beginning to phase out of the crazy smitten dreamy-eyed fools stage and into a more committed only-barely-disgusting cutesy stage. For instance, instead of resting my head on her shoulder and wrapping my arms around her when we're sitting together I can sit next to her and hold her hand. I'm stopping myself now because it occurs to me that I could possibly alienate you, my readers, by gushing about Meghan until you puke.

Other things I'm really exited for: MY BROTHER'S FAMILY IS ONE! Avery, his wife, and their four children are all together in one place and it makes me very very happy. I mean, I know I won't get to see them all for a while yet, but just knowing that they're finally finally with each other makes me smile bunches.

Essages

Recently I've been having trouble with error messages (or essages, as I like to call'em). My computer randomly gives me error messages that have nothing to do with anything and/or make no sense whatsoever. Usually they don't say what program they're related to, and give only a vague description of what has gone wrong. I don't know what an "Assertion failure" or "Incoherent_exception" is, and I don't care to poke around the webtubes for a few minutes to find out.

Examples include "This script was not meant to be called directly." and "Application has suffered a fatal internal error." They don't tell me which script or which application so I don't know if it was something vital or just some spyware that only got partially removed.
"Unknown error"s seem to occur an awful lot, and I think my computer just gets bored and begins making new things up to entertain itself. "A generic error has occured but no information is available" or "A General Error has occured" are very specific in telling me that they're vague. "Abnormal program termination" is a nice way of letting me know that the program I was just using closed out without
my express consent or deliberate choice. As if I wasn't there.

Sometimes the errors confuse me into making choices about things I don't understand. Most commonly I get "A runtime error has occured" followed by a string of numbers, followed by a "Yes" box and a "No" box. In these situations the little "X" in the corner won't close the error message and clicking outside the boxes doesn't work. I hope I'm not agreeing to give Microsoft my firstborn or saying, "No, I don't care if you destroy all of my data".

"Unable to create the file. (There are no more files)" seems to signify that because there aren't any files of a particular type, my computer is unwilling to make one that would be lonely. Recently, I even got an "Error: This file exists." in the middle of my surfin the web. Which file? I don't know. Why would it tell me that some indefinite file exists if it isn't doing anything? I don't know. My computer is trying to keep me wary of suspicious files, on my toes, as it were.

RealPlayer is gone from me because it once gave me an "Unable to contact Technical Support" error regarding another error, and and underneath it said "For more information contact RealNetworks Technical Support". The occasional "Unexpected Error. Please investigate." has inspired me to check my tower for gremlins, but I have yet to catch the little buggers at work. I've gotten an "Amnesia Error" before, and it kills me that I can't remember when. Sometimes it'll tell me I have a "User error" but I'm the user and I haven't done anything.

Errors like "TRAP_CAUSE_UNKNOWN" and "PANIC_DRIVER_INTERNAL" are threatening, but unclear, and not investigating their source hasn't had any effect.

What bothers me the most is when I don't get to make decisions I wouldn't understand anyways because Windows has made them for me. I'd rather be given the illusion of control then hear, "Sorry Dave, but I can't do that." Recently I tried to get my old Microsoft joystick working and I eventually discovered that Microsoft made Windows reject it to promote sales of newer models. Before I found that out Windows (which refers to itself in the 3rd person because it's a pretentious jerk) told me that "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems." and "Windows is removing this device." I was not asked for consent or oversight, simply informed so that I could look on as Windows does what it wants. If somebody stopped me when I had problems I'd be permanently stationary. Later, Windows told me that "Windows has blocked the software for this device because it has been known to have problems with Windows.", which I understand as "I know you invited that guy into your home, but he and I don't get along, so I killed him for you."

Once, I tried to go to the Microsoft's webpage to download a newer version of IE and it told me that I needed a newer version of IE to view the page and gave me a link to itself.

Dates in an upward direction

Well, it's been a busy interlude. We'll be having some one sentance summaries now to catch up.

My sister Grace is married, so she's Grace Whyte now. I haven't gotten much of a chance to talk to her since, but I think she's got to be pretty happy. Last time I talked to her she was taking 22 credits and working 20 hours a week, so hopefully she's cut back to less superhuman work levels by now.

My oldest brother and his wife have finally gotten the last bit of the adoption through the courts, and are flying to Ethiopia to get their kids on March 15th, so that's exiting. Their kids are all crazy adorable, and I really hope that Yosef and Mihret pick up the Southern accent like mad. The relief and joy at the finalization of the adoption can't be understated, the process irritated even unflappable me and I wasn't even peripherally involved. I refer all y'all to Avery or Heather's blogs for more info (AND PICTURESES!).

On Valentine's day I had what was basically the best date in the history of the day or my life, at least and am still (almost a week later) dating this wonderful girl named Meghan. We've been friends for a couple months, so for her to want to be in a relationship with me after actually knowing me can be considered a small miracle. We've been trying to take it slow to garantee things go well, so we didn't go out Friday, we just met for coffee Saturday, and I blew her off for my men's group Sunday. Of course, after I got back to the house from Friday night I went back out to see her Friday, coffee Saturday turned into dinner and a movie, and she waited around with another girlfriend Sunday until my men's group was done. We're being good this week, though, and won't see each other today or tomorrow and probably not the day after that. Then her little brother (A 20something, so not so little) is coming to town for a week to visit, so I'll get to meet him.

In other news, I have to make a decision by Friday about what I'm doing for Spring Break, and I don't know yet what I'm going to do. There are two trips I've been asked to go on, and another part of me is leaning towards visiting the family while another bit wants to spend the whole time in the city.

ooh, watch yourselfs America

http://scrapsofcrap.com/bush-speech-early-draft/


In other news, I'm getting a new roommate named Jerome to replace the one who moved back on campus to be safe from the muggings and whatnot. He's a pretty cool guy.

Pooters and Mugs

I had intended to do some sort of summary of my year, but I found that idea bored me. Then I thought to chronicle the saga of my baby (computer) and its transformation during which I replaced the motherboard, processor, etc. etc. etc., completely stripping and rebuilding it multiple times in an effort to make it work properly. Then I realized nobody (myself included) would be interested in such a description and something else came up.

Earlier this week, one of my housemates was mugged at gunpoint by three guys about 200 feet away from our house at around 1:30 in the afternoon. Since he was headed out to buy books they got a couple hundred dollars of cash in addition to his credit cards and whatnot. Then, yesterday, my roommate was coming down our street from the other direction and he noticed three shady looking characters standing around on the street so he sped up. One of them yelled for him to stop and then the other two ran at him and tried to knock him off his bike. He managed to pedal fast enough that they didn't get ahold of him, but he stayed at a friend's house instead of coming home. Since there was a party going on across the street I went over with two of my other roommates and we let them know what had happened and asked them not to let anyone leave their party falling down drunk and/or alone. The guys who had been manning the door there said that three guys fitting the same description had tried to get into their party about an hour before and had gotten pretty angry but still walked away when they were told the party was "closed".

I was reading the newspaper today and there was a front page article about the recent increase in burglaries and home invasion robberies. Other then smash and grab style break-ins the most common tactic has involved the robbers going to a party to get the layout and feel the place out and then coming back a couple of days later and stealing everything valuable at gunpoint.

Honestly, I'm surprised at how scared everyone has become so suddenly and a little disappointed by the reaction of the police (indifference). I'm not about to start carrying a gun (as some people have suggested) but if I see anybody hanging out on my street who fits the description I might follow them from a reasonable distance and I will definitely call the police. That is of course assuming that I have my phone with me, since I seem to be losing it about once every other week.

UPDATE: (though not an interesting enough one to warrant the caps) Tonight, around 11, a couple of us were sitting in the living room and noticed three guys walking by our house on the sidewalk very slowly and they noticed us noticing them. A little later we checked outside and noticed them hanging out down the street where the first mugging was. The guy who got mugged earlier this week called the cops immediately, but they said they couldn't pick someone up without him seeing them up close and recognizing them. About fifteen minutes after that a girl came running down the street crying and was met by a guy almost right in front of our house. He said she was okay and soon the police showed up to take her report regarding her mugging. If we'd called the cops as soon as we noticed them (or if my roommates had let me go down there) maybe that wouldn't have happened. There's no point getting worked up about it now though. Shortly after the police left two more police cars and a paramedic ambulance thing showed up and went into the house I used to live in. Tomorrow I'm going to go over there and ask what happened. I think this neighborhood is becoming too exciting for me.

Yeah, it's been a while

I've been busy, and other things. Basically, I typed out a couple posts over the last few months and then applied the "if you've got nothing nice to say it's better to say nothing at all" rule. As a result I've been pretty silent on the internet front. For the same reason, the few of you who might have been looking for me on AIM, yahoo, MSN, or ICQ (who am I kidding? nobody uses ICQ) wouldn't have seen me hardly ever. I apologise, I've been in a bit of a slump and when I'm down I feel like talking to other people will just pull them down too. If you called or e-mailed and I didn't get back to you I'm doubly sorry, by now you must realize that I'm a jerk sometimes.

Enough of that crap. At the moment I'm pretty proud of my dad, cause he's on facebook now. Oh yeah! I feel like it's at least a half step up from myspace and a full step up from the other 'social networking' websites even it it's still a grease spot on the underbelly of the internets.

What have I been doing instead of bloggings? Here's a big laundry list:
Did pretty well in my classes, at least relative to how I've done every other semester.
Made it about a week and a half as a member of the human resistance (armed with a nerf six-shooter) before succumbing to the zombie horde, and starving to death as a zombie.
I'd like to say I've been more involved with Hot Metal or Cru, but honestly there were a couple weeks where I barely left the house my room so I'm kinda just now getting back into things.
On that note I haven't shaved in about a month and I look absolutely ridiculous. I've got entire sections of my face where hair should grow that it doesn't, while my neckbeard has come in at least as full and thick as anywhere else. Small children laugh at me.
I also made pies as a group activity one day (pecan and pot), played some poker (losing), got a 97 on a midterm in a class I've still only attended once, got beat up by some toddlers (I bled), critiqued a professor's hygiene (in writing), voted (twice!), wrote a couple (terrible) stories and (love even more terrible) poems, lumberjacked a ton of trees (literally), set up two (maybe three?) couples, read a bunch (more then 20) of books, tried to organize a football game (pansies didn't want to play in freezin' rain), had my shirt literally ripped off of my body (I ran away then), and wrestled a bear (maybe I exaggerate a little).

Things I haven't been doing this semester include:
Getting a job, dating (or even considering it), shaving monthly, sleeping regularly (I'm better lately), drinking (y'know what I mean), failing classes, taking risks (except in the board game), watching T.V. (I tell myself it doesn't count if I download it), combing my hair (seriously, who ever does that?), and wrestling bears.

If you would like a bigger story for any of the above say so, and I'll provide it or fashion something out of DIRTY DIRTY LIES. Whichever you prefer. Feel free to laugh heartily at my misfortunes, they're where I get most of my daily chuckles.

For the last time. . .

For those of you who were unaware I recently had a haircut of monumentous proportions. The main purpose of this venture is to improve my employability, but I expected certain other benefits which I now find lacking.

I was headed home from the local grocery store yesterday when I realized that I had been a little hungry when I began shopping and had thus made some bad decisions. Sometimes your eyes can be bigger then your stomach, but my eyes were actually bigger then my biceps. I was laden with significantly more food then I should've been able to carry, to the point the my forearms and hands were completely numb from lack of circulation.

At the bus stop I crouched so that my bags wouldn't dislocate my arms and so that I wouldn't have to attempt to grap all of the bag handles when my bus came. With my wallet (displaying my Pitt ID, which serves as a bus pass) gripped firmly in my teeth and my arms tenously hanging from my shoulders I managed to stumble onto a bus. The bus driver greeted the old man in front of me with a "Good afternoon" and the fat man behind me with a "Good afternoon", but I recieved a hearty "Good afternoon, Ma'am." So at my stop, where I was the only one getting off the bus, I made sure to say "Have a nice day." in my deepest, manliest voice, and I was rewarded with a clear and well-enunciated, "You too, Ma'am."

One of my roommates suggested that I have transformed myself from a very ugly woman to a very ugly woman with short hair, even likening me to our landlady and attaining a consensus from the house that I now resembled her very strongly.

Have you ever heard of rotoscoping?

It's a technique where live action acting is filmed and then artists go through the footage frame by frame and paint over it, adding costumes, backgrounds, etc. as they wish. Ralf Bakshi's version of the "Lord of the Rings" is the first example of rotoscoping I ever saw, but it failed to live up to its potential. In that case, it was used to keep costs down and the art was inconsistent, even within some individual frames.

"A Scanner Darkly" is a movie currently in limited release which uses a digital version of rotoscoping and it's pretty. If you don't know if you'd like to see this movie you can watch the first twenty-three minutes and fifty-five seconds of it over at IGN.

The end of neighbors

The people who rent the lower half of this house are a little strange, but I didn't expect them to be racing grocery carts and the moving carts the University gives out at 2 in the morning the day they're moving out. The imaginary baseball on the front lawn was strange, but this is stranger. The weirdest thing is that by the time I got outside they were already out of sight. I hope the people who replace them and the people who move in here when we move out are at least as interesting and more social.

I do things like this all the time, but almost never when next to a computer

Having decided to go to bed I went into the bathroom and began brushing my teeth. While I was doing this I realized that I had to pee so I stepped over to the toilet and did that. Then I turned off the bathroom light, closed the door and walked into my room. I shut the door, took off my pants, shut off the light, and laid down in bed.

Laying awake in bed I realized that I could still taste toothpaste very strongly and that my toothbrush was sticking out of the left side of my mouth a bit.