Adventure 51 - Navigating the Interwebs

Yes, I know how to navigate the Internet. I meant in terms of the dating scene.

As mentioned in the post eons ago, I made my way onto OkCupid and met some people. The first guy, who had originally intended to date me, decided he didn't have the time he felt he needed to dedicate to me, and the friends with benefits thing got old, so that's out. The other guy I've become good friends with, but I attempted to make a move on him and made a complete ass out of myself, so that's on the back burner if anything amounts from it at all. My ex even tried to be nice and say that I'll find the right person eventually.

In the meantime, I had changed my settings on OKC to look for penpals because I like talking to people, and I have two friends in particular that I talk to on a far too regular basis; one is in Australia, the other in New Zealand. I've stayed up far too late and have almost been late to far too many classes, but the two of them are just fantastic. And it turns out they both have an interest in me.

Long story short, I did find the right person. Two of them, nonetheless. They're just on the other fucking side of the planet.

-__-

Adventure 50 - Coming Back

I totally fell off the bandwagon with posting this summer. I shouldn't blame two jobs, but... yeah, I'm going to blame two jobs. Not only did that take up most of my time for posting, it also prevented me from doing much worth posting.

Now that I'm at school and classes have started, I still probably won't have time -_-

It was nice to see everyone again, though, even though everyone was all "Oh my god your hair grew back!" Because, you know, no one else's hair grows.

Plus one of my friends made cupcakes for my birthday extended, and because the three of us can't eat 24 cupcakes reasonably, we delivered them around the building and made a lot of people happy. I think the people in the building are more friendly this year. Then again, that could've been the cupcakes. The freshmen also have better taste in music, because I've found two Dropkick Murphys fans in my building, including one who went to the same concert I went to in March.

I also ended up meeting up with two guys I met on OKCupid. My ex was sick of me pissing and moaning about never being able to find anyone, so he had me make a profile, and I've talked to some cool people. I got together with one (who I might end up dating, I'm not sure yet) on Monday, and one yesterday. Both meetings were... interesting, but not necessarily in the "oh god oh god we're all going to die" way. Just one included a few bottles of San Pellegrino exploding, and the other... well, I plead the Fifth on that one.

I'll try to get back on posting regularly, but no guarantees.

Adventure 49 - Catching Up

I probably should; after all, I haven't posted in over a month.

In that month, I started two jobs, so I've been doing computer work by day and trying not to get nacho cheese all over myself by night. Neither are particularly pretty (and working the occasional double sucks), but I need to pay for college somehow.

I've also been in two different hospitals far more times than I would really like to. My dad's been battling some major health problems and I've been visiting as much as I can (every day when he was in the local one, weekly now that he's in the state hospital and I have to work).

And I'm sorta kinda taken :3

Adventure 48 - Science

It's a verb. And it's pretty awesome. But people don't know a lot about it. Too many people have been plagued with the mindset that science is boring or unreachable, most likely because they have had science teachers that don't teach it properly to foster the proper fascination. There's a big disconnect between all the cool things going on in science and the people who desperately need to know about it. Because, let's face it, celebrity news isn't important.

This is why I want to go into science journalism, to bridge that gap between the scientists and the public. HuffPost Science has a pretty good start, and I want to continue that.

And here's another hellaciously long picture, but I really like it. For whatever reason, clicking actually makes it smaller, so here's the original if you can't read this copy.

Adventure 47 - Coming to Terms

It's been almost 3 months since I was ... let's say, "let go," because that sounds a lot nicer than "dumped" ... and I've maintained some contact with my ex during that time. Nothing major, because whenever I tried to ask questions to determine where I went wrong, I would get yelled at. Baby steps.

My first full weekend back, I had bought a card for his sister, who graduated from college, so I went over the house to drop it off. I wasn't expecting to stay, just long enough to say hi. Instead, I stayed for an hour and a half BSing with him and his parents, like nothing had ever happened. It was certainly nice, but it was bizarre. (I even got a hug. It was the world's most awkward hug, but dammit, a hug is a hug.)

Today, as a proper science person, he had his telescope out at a local beach to try and catch some of the Venus transit (sadly, it was too cloudy to see the sun). He posted a general "anyone interested is welcome to join" on Facebook, so I asked and he said sure, reminding me that the other one would be there too. This was expected, though I knew she was only there because of him and not the science, but I was a good ex and decided to face the facts once and for all.

Baaaaad idea. Even though it has been almost three months, it's still awkward to see your ex and hang out and not be able to do BF/GF things. It's even more awkward when you're there with him and his other (and now only) girlfriend. Man, third wheeling sucks. And it's super awkward when the other one approaches you, tells you your mutual friend told her that you don't like her (which should've been obvious considering what happened) and that despite that, she wants to be friends again.

I consider myself to be a (mostly) nice person. I forgave my ex for what he did. I'm still friends with him. And I haven't socked his current for more or less making him can me. So it was really difficult to try to explain why I didn't like her without offending her. The reason why I haven't lashed out like I've kinda been wanting to is because I don't want to lose what little bit I have of connection with him, plus I'd like to stay friends with our mutual friend as well.

However, I don't think I'm ready just yet to give her a second chance. Over the course of our acquaintanceship, I've found her varying levels of obnoxious and have dealt with it accordingly. Our friendship was tanking before the polyamory bullshit started (though it was partly because she was flirting with my ex). In addition, a pretty significant part of why I don't like her is because she always gets her way, and pretending like nothing ever happened would be feeding that.

So basically I'm stuck between looking like an asshole by holding my own and contributing to her wants by being nice.

I want to go back to school...

Adventure 46 - Keeping Busy

Complications with the application and government clearance and all sorts of fun things have prevented me from starting my internship just yet, so I've been trying to find ways to keep myself entertained. Which is how I wound up knitting for four and a half hours when we lost power Saturday afternoon.

My stepdad's mom had taught me how to knit a few years ago, and I had a potholder-sized scarf knitted before I forgot how to finish it from lack of practice. Luckily, one of my college friends picked up knitting because of a girl she saw in her super-boring honors class who was also knitting. She retaught me how to knit, directed me to a few sites that helped her start, and I pretty much taught myself the rest.

I'm not exactly a classy knitter like she is. She started with the fancy, local-grown yarn and cute little wooden needles she bought at a store back at school. I started with the Walmart special yarn and ginormous needles. My splurge was a ball of Red Heart Soft yarn that was *le gasp!* two bucks more, or something stupid like that.

At any rate, I finished a scarf today. It's almost the length of my arm span, so I'm guessing just shy of 5 feet. I did a 3 knit, 3 purl pattern on 30 stitches, and I used red and black yarn (i.e. two strands), so it's a pretty thick and toasty scarf. Not something I wanted to be trying on in today's 75-degree weather, but it'll serve me well back at school (if it bothers to snow again...).

I had to hang it on my doorknob to get a good length picture.

Up-close shot of the stitching...

...and the stitching stretched out to show the ribbing.

So yeah, I could probably be doing better things with my time before I lose it to a full-time job (I reeeeeally need the money), but it's fun in the mean-time.

Next project: a modified fishtail. I say "modified" because this is the original pattern, and I didn't think I was going to have enough yarn in this batch to make 20 stitches across, so I did it with 15 instead. Pictures of that will come when I'm done (so whenever I run out of this yarn).

Adventure 45 - Back Home

I've been home for almost a week and I'm still not completely unpacked just yet. The important stuff is.

I still have a bit before I start my internship (and before you get excited, it has nothing to do with journalism, but I'm getting paid 12 bucks an hour full-time to be the office bitch and I really need the money), but in the mean time, I am extremely bored. I spent a good portion of the other night looking up knitting patterns. I made shortbread flowers for a friend who is in a show I'm seeing tomorrow night. I'm making dinner tonight. I might be going to the high school later for the softball senior night, and I went to their game on Monday (they won, which was the first time they had beaten that team in 7 years, and I got hugs from everyone, so it was a win-win).

I know I'll be kicking myself later for saying this, but I'm so bored!

Adventure 44 - Reflections

It's a little mindblowing that I'm done with my first year of college. It seemed like it went by so quickly, like graduation wasn't a year ago (well, almost). But my stuff is (mostly) packed and I'll be leaving to go home in the morning.

I feel like I accomplished a lot this year. For example:

• I started off with a core group of zero and now have quite a few friends from several different groups of people.
• I joined new groups, like VOX and sword team.
• And I got my orange belt. And I used a real katana to slice things.
• I took a variety of different classes, ranging from theater stuff and stop-motion animation to journalism and biology.
• I had two pretty consistent part-time jobs at one of the campus dining halls and at the children's science museum downtown.
• I learned to be pretty self-sufficient living on my own (though cooking and laundry were things I already knew how to do).
• I familiarized myself with the city enough so I know where basic things are (like grocery shopping).

And most importantly, I learned how to push my own boundaries by trying new things.

It's been fun. I look forward to more college adventures in the fall.

Adventure 43 - Packing Up

It doesn't officially start until tomorrow, but I had to give my fridge back to the fridge rental people so I started getting things together. I found a box of all the cards I've received the past two semesters from various family members (including my ex's mom, who is the most awesome ex-mother-in-sortof-law ever). The best cards in terms of sayings are as follows:

(front) I don't just think the world of you, I think the universe of you...
(inside) ...including Jupiter and little ex-planets like Pluto.
(Of course, they should've just said "I think the Solar System of you," but I doubt that would've had quite the same effect.)


(front) Chips without dip. Pretzels without beer. Macaroni without cheese. Bagel without cream cheese. Mashed potatoes without gravy. Me without you.
(inside) Not only do I miss you, but now I'm really hungry.

But my personal favorite is still this birthday card I saw in a grocery store once:
(front) I bet the Angels were smiling the day you were born.
(inside) They came back to beat Detroit 10-9 in the bottom of the ninth with a walk-off grand slam.
(horrible baseball joke but I thought it was great)

Adventure 42 - The Meaning of Life

You know I had to do that, though if I really wanted to be accurate, the post would've been titled "Adventure 42 - The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything."

Anyway, I have some video footage from the massive fucking thunderstorm that just hit that I would like to share.

Adventure 41 - Motivation

I'm finally done with my 20-pager, but I'm still running a little low on motivation. I came across this this morning and I'm going to share it, between its inspirationalness and my lack of motivation to post.

Adventure 40 - Crunch Time

Because I have a 20-page paper due tomorrow and I only have about 11 done right now. Ugh.

Luckily, once I'm over that, I don't have any big projects left. I have a presentation, a paper to fix, two others to write and two exams, but no more 20-pagers.

And I love how I can say that presentation + paper fixing + 10 more pages to write + 2 exams is "nothing."

Adventure 39 - Reminiscing

I'm friends with a lot of the girls and some of my coaches from my high school softball team, and looking at all their softball posts made me realize how much I actually miss it. It's not just the hitting, I can get that at the batting cages back home. I mean being part of the team. JV's 13-5 record junior year. Our comeback win over the number-one team in the state after our shortstop busted her knee mid-game. Counting hits, at-bats, runs, any stat I could think of. Making sure everyone's were spelled correctly (most of the time they weren't). Getting my own jersey as a manager. Being able to rattle off game scores on demand. Being the unofficial team mom and lending stuff to the freshmen who forgot theirs. Dishing out bandaids and ice packs. My hideous pink bat. Avoiding all the rocks and dog poop on the JV field. Getting stuck in the briars getting foul balls. Still not remembering the away win cheer after three years. And knowing that my generally unorthodox contribution to the team meant something to someone.

Adventure 38 - Abnormal

I've lived in New England for almost all of my life, so I've had my fair share of weird weather and was prepared for anything upstate New York could throw at me. But 4+ inches of snow in late April is a little extreme even by my standards.

I guess Mother Nature is trying to make up for the lack of snow here all winter, considering that this is the most accumulation we've seen and may be more snow than all winter combined, but April? Late April? I mean, here I was roasting my ass off in my room on Friday because it was in the 70s (and I had my windows shut because of all the potheads celebrating 4/20), plus it was nice last Monday and a few other times between Spring Break and now. And now here I am talking about how I went outside in my rain boots and bathrobe to see how deep the snow was this morning. (Such a class act, I know.)

Generally the groundskeeping crew is really good about keeping the paths clear, I just hope they can keep it up. I'm already sore from the sword team seminar on Saturday (6 hours of stuff), I don't need to add falling to the list of injuries.

Adventure 37 - Banned

(Before I start, this new Blogger posting interface is hideous. Not that you readers have to deal with it, but I don't like it.)

But for the actual content, I was thinking today and came up with the post idea of the reasons why I am not allowed to be brought to a restaurant or bar with TVs. I really only came up with one: if sports are on, I'm going to end up watching them and not paying a lot of attention to whoever I'm eating with. Even if it's something I'm not a huge fan of, like basketball or hockey, I'll watch because I'm curious, especially if it's a crazy play or something newsworthy. And if it's baseball, especially games with any of my teams or players, forget it, I'll be eating my dinner with my head turned toward the TV all night.

Two examples of this came up today. My grandparents came up for the weekend and we went out to dinner to a restaurant that had a bar and a TV with the Sox/Yankees game on. I had been receiving occasional updates from a friend who had been watching the game while helping install his friend's TV, and the score was 9-1, Sox, when we got there.

Then FOX switched to the White Sox/Mariners game because the White Sox's pitcher was pitching a perfect game. Forgetting I'm not at home, I start pissing and moaning because even though it's an honor to the pitcher to do this, they totally jinxed the game by doing it. Every good baseball fan knows it's a cardinal sin to talk about a no-hitter or perfect game before it's finished because you'll jinx it. I'm not sure if the announcers actually said anything about it, but they put a little box on the screen saying "Hey, he's pitching a perfect game right now," which is just bad. Turns out it didn't do anything bad 'cause he finished the perfect game, but still. They should know better than that.

We get seated, eat dinner, and as we're leaving, I check the score again. 15-9, Yankees. I fully admit to a very dramatic whine, but I feel it was justified. I know it's only the first month but they have really been sucking lately, and giving up 15 runs is bad enough, let alone 15 unanswered runs. I'd be a horrible fan for deciding not to watch them at all, but one of my guys is injured, another got booted out of the starting position and with this kind of quality, I don't have much to look forward too.

Come on, guys. Shape up.

Adventure 36 - Inspiration

Which should be driving me to write the 3 papers I need to get done this weekend.

At any rate, one of my friends, who sits next to me in bio and is in the ROTC program on campus, invited me to a presentation at the university across the city. It was a little awkward at first, between us getting there a teeny bit late and me being the only civilian in attendance, but the presentation itself was definitely worth going to. I don't remember most of the exact details, but the lady who presented was a professor at West Point who served quite a few years in the Army and did a lot of cool stuff, including research on gender and power, which is what her presentation was about.

It was cool because even though there was obviously a lot of military influence, what she talked about had a lot of applications in the civilian job world and as a person in general, like knowing your strengths, knowing your boundaries, building a support network, etc. What really spoke to me, though, was her emphasis on not apologizing. I am a compulsive apologizer (the friend who brought me actually gets really pissy when I apologize for anything, so when this got brought up, he looked right at me). I always feel like I'm hassling people. But apologizing makes it sound like you don't think you matter and in turn makes you look bad, plus you shouldn't have to apologize for being you.

Of course, I could come from that lecture thinking that I can now pull all sorts of crazy stunts and not have to apologize for them. Instead, I think I'll take it as a chance for me to revamp myself and maybe *le gasp!* grow some self confidence, because I shouldn't have to apologize.

Adventure 35 - Waiting

One would think that Opening Day is pretty well defined. But since this year included half of the teams opening today, two opening yesterday and two opening sometime last week in Japan, I would beg to differ.

At any rate, I'm glad the 2012 season is here. 2011 sucked ass for the Red Sox, and even though this season isn't off to a stellar start considering the injuries and loss of veteran players, I think that they can come back from the suckage of last year. I hope so, anyway. And I won't be able to watch much from school (upstate New York is kinda not New England, so we don't get NESN), but I'll be able to watch from home. Plus now that I got rejected from the RA position, I'll be home for my birthday, which conveniently enough is when the Sox play the Royals at Fenway.

Oh, right, that was the other thing I was waiting on. Getting rejected from the position kinda sucks because the stipend was basically my only way to pay for an internship in Ireland next summer, but I kinda bombed the interview and presentation, the odds were way against me and I get to room between two of my friends.

Adventure 34.5 - Continued Overdosing

Because going to 3 concerts in 11 days wasn't enough, my aunt introduced me to the Irish pub rock station on Pandora when she came over for St. Patrick's Day, and I have my own Celtic rock awesomeness playlist on iTunes. Plus, I'm hoping to do a song for ASL club (i.e. signing it), and I wanted to do "The One" by Gaelic Storm because it's silly.



And if that wasn't enough, when I was listening to the song, I came up with the idea for this:

Which I'm sure isn't original, but I couldn't find one someone else made so I made it myself. It's gotten 478 +1s on Google, which is awesome except for the fact that I don't remember posting it as public...

Adventure 34 - Overdose

But it's Celtic fusion, so it's a good kind of overdose. In the span of 11 days, I went to three concerts of groups of some sort of Celtic influence and it was awesome.

I'll start with March 10, which was the Dropkick Murphys concert back home. This was the birthday present for my now ex, so we went to an Irish pub nearby and had some killer food; I had boxty with melt-in-your-mouth steak, and he had reuben mac & cheese which was surprisingly good, probably because I didn't get any sauerkraut in the bites I took. I bought a shirt of course, though I had a hard time choosing because I definitely wanted a tour shirt but they had another one that had "putting the 'fun' in 'dysfunctional' since 1996 (I think that was the year)" on the back which I also wanted, but I stuck with the tour shirt.

The two opening bands were Ramshackle Army (from Australia) and Frank Turner and the Sleepless Souls. I liked both: Ramshackle Army had a great fiddle player that was super animated and really fun to watch, and Frank Turner was really engaged with the audience and even let a lady from the moshpit play the harmonica solo in one of his songs.

Obviously the Dropkick Murphys were awesome. They were awesome last year when we went, and this year I actually knew most of the words (which may or may not have been a good thing considering I can't sing to save my life, but then again it was probably too loud for anyone to hear me anyway). They also did a cover of ACDC's "Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap)", which was done very well, and they also did an acoustic set, complete with what Ken Casey referred to as the "goddamn barstools," because every acoustic set needs to be done on barstools. They also did the same thing they did last year with "Kiss Me, I'm Shitfaced," where Ken Casey went out into the moshpit and sang with the crowd. Of course, he told everyone to wait until the chorus to charge him, but at this point everyone was indeed shitfaced so they kinda smushed him right from the start and he's like "You guys do not follow directions well!"

What was also cool (and kinda not at the same time) was in the middle of "Going Out in Style," some guy in the front of the moshpit was having heart trouble, so they stopped the song to make sure he was ok. Supposedly the guy was ok later, and obviously having heart issues is not a good thing, but I thought it was really classy of them to stop and personally make sure the guy was ok.

March 15 was Enter the Haggis, which was awesome aside from the ending (which I already explained). We had to drive an hour to get there, and it was at this bar/restauranty type place so it was a quaint little venue. The only issue there was the fact that supposedly it was a 21+ event without parents even though the site said all ages but the manager let us slide because we had already bought tickets, so he just gave us green wristbands in case we tried to buy alcohol or something.

I kinda ran into the same problem with this concert that I did with the Dropkick Murphys last year in the sense that I knew some of the songs but not generally the ones they played, so I got to sing along with a few and stand there awkwardly for the rest. The venue had us in a little huddle-type thing, and when the band took a drink break, they walked through us and talked to people, which was cool. (At one point, I had the opportunity to grab the bassist's ass but I didn't because I am a reasonable person. Most of the time, anyway.) Overall it was really cool and I'd definitely see them again.

Finally, Wednesday was Gaelic Storm back here, not at school but in town. I had never been in the venue, but supposedly they had recently renovated the theater and it looked really nice. I went with my honors big  (she also took me to the place with the pizza elevator), and it was a blast. I had only listened to one of their albums in full but I knew other songs from video-binging on YouTube over break. The band was also super interactive with the crowd; we had to dance and clap and sing, and one guy threw his hat on stage not once but twice and the lead singer picked it up both times, wore it for a few songs and gave it back. They were all really animated (especially the drummer on the ukelele, good god I thought he was going to break it), and it was a fantastic concert.

The pièce de résistance, however, was the band coming out into the lobby after for autographs and pictures. I was actually pretty surprised how quickly the line went, but I didn't have anything for them to sign so I was a badass and got my arm signed because I am just that cool.

From left to right: Peter Purvis (pipes), Ryan Lacey (drums), Patrick Murphy (accordion and vocals), Jessie Burns (fiddle) and Steve Twigger (guitar and vocals).

It was all sorts of awesome, and I left it there until Saturday morning. I only scrubbed it off because it was starting to fade out (except for Peter's, maybe he just had a really good Sharpie or something).

So basically it was all sorts of Celtic awesomeness and a lot of fun. I would so do it again. Minus the dumping.

Adventure 33 - Out and About

It's been freakishly nice the past few days. I'm talking mid 70s, sunny, great breeze, so definitely not standard March fare. But due to my uncanny ability to sunburn at the drop of a hat, I've stayed in quarantine for most of it. Today, however, I decided that homework could wait and that I wanted to go for a walk, so I grabbed a friend from the floor above me and we walked around campus to enjoy the weather. It was around 4 so most danger of me getting fried was gone, so we walked from one end of the academic buildings to the other (they're in a line for the most part), around the back and back towards the center, sat in front of the science building and BSed for a while, walked to the chapel pond and discovered that there were fish in it.

I kinda figured there were fish in it, but the only time I've gone to the pond was back in October, so I was really excited. I grabbed a stick from a nearby tree and tried to see how deep the water was (the stick wasn't long enough), and then we just decided to pester the fish. It was extremely immature but it was fun to just lay on the dock and BS and poke fish.