kenske

Hrm. Called the "Oyanna" house or whatever to make sure they knew my Grandma and I were heading down. Apparently they had to make a note that we'd be arriving late (our flight leaves in four hours). Even though the Native clinic is completely in charge of our transportation and housing, they didn't know we were on our way. And we have to pay for a cab from the airport, because the shuttle doesn't run on weekends (no one mention this to me). And after my grandma leaves on the 25th, I'll have to share my room with someone else, and the lady on the phone said I should bring a padlock (her choice of words). And she gave me different directions for where the cab to drop us off.

I'm haven't even left my house yet. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts!

Songs I've been listening to lately:

Golden- Fall Out Boy

Brown Eyes- Lady Gaga

Marc- Louis XIV

Bye Bye Life- Roy Schneider and Ben Vereen (All That Jazz).

Off to Anchorage today! But first breakfast and Twin Peaks. Mmmh. Coffee.

Long story short, dryer machine went schizo and caught fire...or just smoldered into smoke last night. We share a basement with our neighbors, and they put some clothes in the dryer, and they kept drying until it burned. Happened around midnight, had to call the firefighters. They showed up, everyone was safe, and only the dryer was burnt. Emma let us sleep at her place, while we let the apartment clear out the smoke. Pretty uneventful, but stressing none the less. We're lucky we weren't a sleep. Felt bad for the land lords, they live upstairs where the smoke was the worse, and they have small children. But we're all back in the triplex today! Woo!

Performance tomorrow, Voodoo dance show thing. Doors open at 7PM, at the Empress theatre. I'll only be doing one number, but it's Sexyback, so it's fucking rad. Be there?

I often think about how certain dance moves feel when you do them. Where the tension between the partners is, what muscled are engaged, how it feels different as you've gotten better at it. You find rhythms within the moves, they practically tell you when to breath in or exhale. You feel control over the situation, and how the control is lost as the move is executed, graciously gain it back before the next move. You learn to appreciate the feeling of the shapes your body makes. I'm sure this is not only true for ballroom, I can only imagine what it would be like to do 6 o'clock ponches, ron de jambs with your leg above your waist or other moves would feel as you did them with such practice and technique.

Anyway, that's just me thinking too much because I'm not dancing. Surgery this month! One more midterm on Thursday! A performance on Saturday? Thanksgiving?!

Well, here's what happened:

It's winter!
It's November!
The Holiday season is practically here, for better or for worse!
My laptop speakers work for no good reason!

Not bad. LAN soon, yes? Good times. If feels like everyone's social now that winter's for real started.

My problem with the UAF Sun Star Twitter:

40+ tweets in one night. One event, the Nanook hockey game. Most of the people I follow, mostly friends with a few celebrities or personalities. The most I've seen tweeted posted in a day was somewhere around 30. That requires myself to click the "more" button on the bottom of the page once to see all the tweets made within the last 24 hours. It takes me much less than five minutes to check my twitter page. The term "Micro-blogging" is an apt description. I glance, read a few sentences, and then I'm my way to the rest of the internet.

But, I got over 40 tweets of a local hockey game from the universities newspaper twitter account. Here are my problems with it:

-KSUA.org has streaming radio where the Nanook hockey game is covered live. This does an even better job than Twitter covering the event, is also run by the university, and doesn't spam my twitter page. You can even multi-task and twitter as you listen to it!

-Twitter only allows 140 characters. It was deliberately designed that way. This doesn't not mean you get to tweet 10 times to get your 1,400 character article out. It means you plug it, take a key line from it, or sum it up with a link to the appropriate website while not going over the limit.

-Blogs allow you to live update individual entries as events happen. Look at BuddyTV's live So you think you can Dance blogs. It's instant, up to date, and you can refresh it every few minutes and your own leisure, as opposed to trying to read what your friend posted 6 hours ago on the third page back.

-Also, I just don't believe a hockey game needs 40 tweets! Maybe at the end of each period, with one or two before and after? 10 should have done it, unless I was on the "UAFNanookspbp" (play-by-play) twitter.

I guess it's the difference between micro-blogging and rapid-blogging.

IT WASN'T UNTIL THEN THAT SOMETHING CHANGED. The diamonds became chrysanthemums, and the walls grew, yet fell apart. The trees blossomed into colors, seeping out and filling the sidewalk. I followed the road until I came to a fence, and on the other side was a sense of warmth. I jumped the fence easily, possibly not even jumping at all. I continued my walk, with the chrysanthemums, feeling the warmth radiating from the air around me. At some point, and I forgot when, I didn't even know what time was. Finally I noticed the diamonds had returned, and by that point I realized I was sitting on the carpet, sitting cross-legged against the back of a sofa. I was alone in the room and reached for the pack of cigarettes in front of me. I lit up, inhaling the smoke and enjoying the fleeting feeling of contentment. It left and all I could think about was how the kitchen needed to be wiped down.

Hmm. I'm going out on a limb here and saying that SUMMER- 2009 is officially over, with the snow fall and all. So, out of all the jobs I applied for this summer, not even one has called me back.

On another note, I finally got my dates for my UPPP surgery! Only because I slept in though. I missed that class, but it's only for that reason that I was able to answer my phone and set up the date (otherwise it would have been given to someone else AGAIN). But yeah, I have my pre-op on November 23rd, the surgery the next day. I'll have to spend ten days in Anchorage following the procedure to make sure I don't bleed too much. Good times. Hopefully I'll be able to check out some sweet shows or musuems or something. I'd also like to stop by the Fred Astaire Dance Studio and check them out (Mrs. Brown told me when I was 17 that I was good enough to teach there then...what about now?).

It'll be in the middle of the semester, but conveniently between the midterms and finals My two professors seemed not to worried about it, but they might become so as we get closer and they realize what I'll be missing. I'm not sure how this will work out with my incompletes, but whatever.

Anyway that's enough for now. I've gotten a head ach today...but I did laundry and dishes and took the trash out and cleaned my room. Good enough.

EDIT: OMGEEEE, there are so many retro-gaming/ludology podcasts! And Jesper Juul has a website! Maybe someday I can be a ludologist after all! XD

( An explanation of why I find the Ex-Gay Banner at the Wood Center offensive )

On another note, I slept in today, missing my first class. Boo. But, because of that, I got a phone call from the ENT clinic in Anchorage and I'll be heading down the 23rd of November for surgery! Yay! Remind me no ibuprofen, or naproxen, or anything but Tylenol starting the 13th. So yeah, rewards for bad behavior?

Also, anyone with a paid account, could you kindly make an RSS feed on LJ for this website? http://fairbankspedestrian.wordpress.com Thanks!

I need to move a little less than 30 gallons of fuel back to Sourdough Fuel. Does anyone have a way to do this that isn't a couple gallons at a time?

-OR- If I bought say 6 five gallon gas containers, would anyone be interested in buying one or some off of me?

Woke up to find an $80 bill from Sourdough fuel today. They told me in March that they would call me before they would do anything that would cost money. Oops. I don't even know why they filled it up. I mean, i still had OVER 90% OF MY TANK LEFT FROM MARCH. They measured it in late June/early July even! WTF. I called them up and asked why they gave me gas without asking cause I don't need it, and the lady said that they only call people who's tanks are fenced in, locked, or have dogs around them (and it's bullshit that only those people can choose to know when they're getting gas- do I have to lie to them and say I have a locked tank also?). I'll get hearing back from the manager tomorrow.

Before that, I spent 30 minutes waiting in line at the university post office to pick up one of my text books only to find out that even though my home is closest to that post office, my text book was in the one downtown (last time I had to pick up a parcel, it was at the university location). So, that kind of fucking pissed me off. But, I'm teaching a dance lesson today and now that those are my only way of dancing, it's refreshing.

So um yeah, classes are going, I think I'll stay afloat. Paul Winkelman will be up soon. Got student loans coming in to pay for my rent. It'll all be alright.

THIS JUST IN! I found out on Twitter that Patrick Swayze is dead. Dirty Dancing, To Wong Foo, and Ghost movie night?

So, I'm totally scared about this semester. The last few have ended horribly, comparing them to having a 2.5 GPA and graduating within six years. I'm afraid that I'll be doomed to freshmen level courses year round, but those loans, I really can't pay them back, so back to school is where it is.

I just checked out both of my professors on ratemyprofessors.com. Cole everyone said is hard, lots of reading, but good, and I already knew that. On the other hand, Snifka, my Journalism teacher, is also harder than expected but good. Hmm...two hard 100x classes? I sound like such an academic pussy. Oh, and both of my classes are in the Bunnell Auditorium. WTF, that's six hours a week in the same room. Ugh.

Gluten free is going well. I ended up having corn syrup and corn yesterday, as I didn't realize my potato salad from Safeway had corn syrup in it. that, and the only other thing in the house to eat that wasn't fruit was fritos. I'm going grocery shopping tonight, and I'll get lots of non-glutenous/corn/lactose things. Hmm, dried pineapple...

Had my interview with Personal Plus, and I turned in my appeal for Financial Aid (which they forgot to tell me I had to do until Friday, even though I asked about it deliberately two weeks ago...). I might be moving out of my cabin soon, since the leave ends this month. Running water, a kitchen that has more than a microwave and a mini-fridge, and in town? NO WAYS.

I think I'm going to go gluten free again. I felt so much better when I wasn't eating bread and stuff, even though I was still heavier, and I felt more empty and energetic. I've been also trying to go Lactose free, but sometimes I give in (read: Oreo sundae). I'm going to try to cut out corn also, and of course corn syrup and it's even worse brother high fructose corn syrup. Wow, food is intense.

Anyway, classes on Thursday. Hopefully I'll have financial aid by then...paying for school is sweet.

Finally saw the Ear-Nose-Throat specialist from Anchorage today! I got the green light to get my tonsils removed, and the option of a Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP for short). UPPPs is a surgery where they remove your tonsils, uvula, soft palette, adenoids, and pharynx. It's a painful procedure, but I'm totally willing to try, I mean, I haven't had a real surgery ever, so I have no idea how painful it will be, so not just jump into it? UPPPs are only effective a little more than 1/3 of the time, but since I really do have gigantic tonsils (and have had them all of my life) and my sleep apnea was only mild, not severe, I have some higher chances of it working. At any point I can just get the tonsils removed and forgo the UPPP, if I choose.

During the appointment, the specialist asked for my sleep study, and all the clinic had was a piece of paper that said I had sleep apnea from Fairbanks Memorial hospital. She told them that she needed to see the results from the study and they told her that's all they didn't have anything else. She looked over at me and gave me this look like, "they should really have your study on them, this is not okay" and I told her "yeah, for a couple months after I was diagnosed, they didn't know that I had sleep apnea." So yeah, that was fun.

So, probably in October, I'll head down to Anchorage for the surgery, and I'll have to stay down there for 10 days, so they can watch for bleeding (the biggest concern with the procedure). Not sure how that'll pan out with my classes and stuff, but this is for real medical stuff, so they'll have to deal.

Food allergy test results came in. I'm allergic to cats, dogs, and pollen...which I told them before I had my blood drawn. I'm not allergic to nuts or fish of any kinds, so that's cool too, but why did they test for things I've known for over a decade? Whatever, Ear-Nose-Throat doctor appointment tomorrow, and as Ephy has gotten good results, hopefully I will too!

Otherwise, it's another goddamn beautiful day! Who wants to go outside and enjoy it?

I spent the morning reinstalling windows on C drive. My computer is doing much better, but still has too many programs that I'm not sure if I should delete, and the sound is still inactive (but that's a hardware issue). But it seems to be up and running, and I don't really need anything else if I can't watch movies or listen to music.

Anyway, my cabin is pretty damn organized right now, and I'm proud of that. Still waiting to hear back from National Alamo. I'll go to the university on Monday and talk to financial aid folks. My truck is running better than it was in a long time.

So yeah, good times.

Picked up some x-rays of myself from 2007 today. It's weird to see inside my own body on my computer screen. Kind of surreal.

Anyway, I'm registered for classes. Journalism 101 and History 100 with Cole, both on Tuesday-Thursday. Let's try that part time thing again.

I also just emailed Stefani about getting Paul's email to find out how much it would cost to get the choreography and training.

I'm getting stuff done. I still need to talk to the medicaid people, get my glasses readjusted, and hear back from National Alamo about my application (Robin's talking me up there- yay!). On Friday I get to hear about my financial aid at the U, since I just filed my FAFSA yesterday. I've also cleaned and organized a good portion of the cabin. Maybe I'm feeling manic, or maybe I'm just up at 8 AM everyday with nothing else to do...oh, and I got blood drawn today for food allergy testing. Next is getting re-measured for leg length discrepancy.

Also, who's up for a cabin warming party Friday or Saturday night? I still haven't really had one yet...hmm...

THE LOANS AREN'T WORTH IT!

2009 Gazebo Nights- Sway

If I ever have money again, I'd like to get this as a tattoo, minus the text. There's only two questions I have...

Where should I get it tattooed on my body, and where should I go to get the tattoo? I don't want it big or anything, so I just need a competent tattoo artist. Ideas?