Weekly update.
I’ve had a week to settle in, and I’m pleased enough to report that things aren’t nearly as bad as I had expected. My net time is very limited, though-- so this is most likely the first of several entries cobbled together in Word over several days to be posted. I don’t really have time or energy for much else right at the moment.
As far as my new job goes, I’ve already gotten the hang of doing billing and general money-related tasks. This week, one of the managers is leaving, and so I am training on dispatch, and then on managing the dock in the morning so the day’s shipping begins smoothly. This is not particularly hard work. It’s detailed work, and I do foresee a few personality clashes in my near future, but it’s nothing I’m worried about. I’ve dealt with people who have the maturity of a blueberry scone for years now-- it’s a cake walk at this point. Honestly, the hardest part is getting myself to bed by 11pm so that I can be up at 5:30. My caffeine intake is slowly nudging itself through the roof. I have my own little coffee bar set up in my bedroom for godssakes.
On the plus side, I have tomorrow blessedly off. I plan to stay up for most of the evening and write. I have so many things I need to get out-- some on paper in the journal that I share with Anna, some ideas for poems that have been floating about, more work on the novel. I should be up ‘til about 3am, which will be a rarity for me. Writing is my outlet, and my emotions have been up and down like a yo-yo lately. Everything is so blurred-- the sublime and the exhilarating and the devastating moments all melt together until some days I can barely tell one from the other. It’s a little bit of a strange headspace to be in, and I’m thankful for those who put up with me. Writing is the analytical calm in the center of all that madness; it’s the way I distill and crystallize all of my experiences into manageable chunks.
(As a side note, if ever I should begin to sound like Jenny from The L Word, someone kindly place a gun to my temple and pull the trigger. Thank you.)
I’m also hoping to center myself by entering a period of dedicated spiritual study. It’s been pulling on me for months now, only there was no way I could focus on anything not related to graduating or writing my senior paper in that time. I need that focus and calm more than ever right now. This is a transitional time with a capital T, and I need to face it and funnel it into something positive. I’m beginning by reformatting my Compendium work-- splitting it into two books, essentially. Book one will be a master list of all of the correspondence charts I’ve found useful. Book two will be a more traditional Compendium volume, only I’m going to re-write many of the rituals and workings so that they’re more me and less an amalgamation of others’ words that I used when I was younger and less experienced. This will take lots of time, lots of black ink, and probably a fair amount of White-Out.
Oh, and I’m thinking of getting an indoor plant for my altar because buying cut flowers seems to be a waste of good energy. I, she of the suicidal Christmas cactus, she of the Black Thumb. I was thinking of getting an orchid, but that seems a bit delicate. Maybe I’ll start off with a mum or something. The less killable the better. Oh, I know. Maybe an aloe plant. Those are hearty, right?
In other news, I got a snake. She’s so adorable-- her name is Sita. I’m planning to take lots of pictures, but right now she’s being shy and hiding out in her coconut shell. She’s a wiggly little bastard, though. If you don’t have one hand firmly holding her less-wiggly tail at all times, she’ll be off and squirming and you’ll be lucky to catch a glimpse of her before she’s hidden in some tiny cubby hole. I accidentally dropped her earlier as I was changing her bedding, and I swear, the Goddess blessed me with some lightning-fast reflexes today, or I’d still be looking for her. She’s about a foot and a half right now, and because she’s a ribbon snake, she won’t get much bigger than 3 feet. She’s skinny as a pencil. Right now, she eats little crickets, about a dozen a week. She’ll occasionally get rosy red feeder fish as she gets a bigger, but she’ll never get big enough to eat mice or things that are otherwise smart enough to be afraid of snakes. In a show of how much my sister and I are polar opposites, Andrea got two mice, Jacques and Gus Gus. Add this to four bettas, a tank of tropical fish, two dogs and three cats, and we’ve got a proper menagerie.
But Sita is just darling, if you discount the fact that she pees every damn time I pick her up and so I’ve been resorting to picking her up by her middle and wiping down her back end with a Kleenex before I actually handle her. Also, I have more anti-bacterial hand soap right now than Marc Summers. Heather, don’t freak out. She’s the least scary snake I’ve ever seen, and so you’re not going to have to worry at all. She doesn’t even bite. And her tongue kinda tickles.
The bettas are having a hard transition to aquarium life. I’ve got them set up in a 10 gallon partitioned 4-ways. Despite the fact that they could all see each other before in their bowls, they’ve suddenly begun to be really aggressive with one another. Sushi’s bitten his tail down to a nubbin again. Ivan’s looking a little sickly, and so I’m going to keep an eye on him and see if his overactive stress coat chills on its own of if I’m going to have to isolate him and treat him for a bit. It’s been so warm in my room that I haven’t even had to turn on the heater, and so I don’t think overheating is an issue. I’m going to wait and see. It may be that I have to get a second aquarium to separate the boys into less-aggressive pairs.
On the BPAL front, Carnival Noir goes live tomorrow, and I am ready with my bank card in hand. Okay, so I probably won’t be able to afford more than the initial sampler pack until my pay comes through, but still. It’s like miniature Christmas. I’ve already sampled Midway, which smells exactly like standing in the center of the South Baltimore Little League Carnival in the middle of a sticky August evening, breathing in the euphoric scent of funnel cake and cotton candy.
And
belladonnastrap and I are going in on some Twilight Alchemy oils together, of which my craving list is growing and growing. TAL is the magically-potent arm of BPAL. Beth, BPAL’s creator, is a skilled alchemist and magical worker, and her magical oils are some of the most potent I’ve discovered. I have about half an imps’ worth of Helping Hand, which I carefully use a few drops’ worth of if I know I have a challenging day ahead. So far, it’s helped me through several very difficult exams, presentations, and juries. I really need some more of it. I’ve also tried Yemaya (which I also need more of) and Oshun, two of TAL’s Orisha oils, and they’ve been wonderful as far as helping me to get in tune with certain energies. I wish that they were more widely available, but as it stands, they’re only sold through two shops in the US (Black Broom in LA, and Alternative Realities in Rhode Island), neither of which ships merchandise.
I’ve got a sample of Elegba in on order, and I hear that Oya is on the way as well, but I’ve also heard that these two are reformulations and not meant for the magically-potent TAL line. They’ll be of some help, though, and I’m particularly looking forward to Oya.
What Karyn and I are hoping to get are a few of Beth’s Temple blends. I’m looking forward to Temple: Celtic in particular, considering that some of the Deities that I’ll be working with in the re-writing of my Compendium are from that pantheon. White Light sounds very good as a healing blend, and if I can obtain more than an imp’s worth, I intend to spread it, because some people I know are much more in need of it than I am. (Note to self: Don’t forget to PayPal Karyn on Thursday!)
On the bleccch side, I think I’ve encountered PayPal fraud. I checked my account balance this morning to discover a PayPal charge on a day that I didn’t buy anything. The transaction ID didn’t match anything in my account records, either. I emailed PayPal about it, and I’m waiting to hear back. While I was checking it out, I almost got taken in by a scam-- I’d gotten an email from paypal@paypal.com about security, and needing to affirm my password. I logged in through the fake PayPal site, but before I could affirm any of my billing/credit card info, I noticed that the URL was a few letters off the standard URL. I then logged into the official PayPal site and changed my password straightaway, so I don’t think anything was gotten from the scam. I then called my bank and lodged a claim about the fee ($24.18), and I should be hearing from them within the week once it’s been investigated. So be careful when dealing with PayPal emails, all.
I have internet in my bedroom! (Also, I love Jeff more than anyone else today!) The downside is that it’s 56k dialup. The upside is that I will probably have wireless within the month. This means I can do more than simply skim my friends-list and possibly even add some of the people I had to trim off before I left school. So yay for that.
Tomorrow, I plan to wake up leisurely, work on invites to my graduation party, and then have dinner with my Annabean. Sounds like a good way to spend the day, if you ask me.
PS -- To Heather & Rac: Listening to my mother singing along to The Killers in the morning is surreal beyond the telling of it. Every time I hear "Mr. Brightside" I’m back on the road with you two in Philly in that strange headspace I was in when everything was upside down. Also? She doesn’t know half the words. It’s amusing.
PPS -- If you like Firefly, go check outsaava’s latest round of icon goodies. They’re some of the prettiest icons I’ve ever seen.
PPPS -- I finished Good Omens. I laughed muchly. Didn’t someone make icons from some of the quotes a while back? Links please?
As far as my new job goes, I’ve already gotten the hang of doing billing and general money-related tasks. This week, one of the managers is leaving, and so I am training on dispatch, and then on managing the dock in the morning so the day’s shipping begins smoothly. This is not particularly hard work. It’s detailed work, and I do foresee a few personality clashes in my near future, but it’s nothing I’m worried about. I’ve dealt with people who have the maturity of a blueberry scone for years now-- it’s a cake walk at this point. Honestly, the hardest part is getting myself to bed by 11pm so that I can be up at 5:30. My caffeine intake is slowly nudging itself through the roof. I have my own little coffee bar set up in my bedroom for godssakes.
On the plus side, I have tomorrow blessedly off. I plan to stay up for most of the evening and write. I have so many things I need to get out-- some on paper in the journal that I share with Anna, some ideas for poems that have been floating about, more work on the novel. I should be up ‘til about 3am, which will be a rarity for me. Writing is my outlet, and my emotions have been up and down like a yo-yo lately. Everything is so blurred-- the sublime and the exhilarating and the devastating moments all melt together until some days I can barely tell one from the other. It’s a little bit of a strange headspace to be in, and I’m thankful for those who put up with me. Writing is the analytical calm in the center of all that madness; it’s the way I distill and crystallize all of my experiences into manageable chunks.
(As a side note, if ever I should begin to sound like Jenny from The L Word, someone kindly place a gun to my temple and pull the trigger. Thank you.)
I’m also hoping to center myself by entering a period of dedicated spiritual study. It’s been pulling on me for months now, only there was no way I could focus on anything not related to graduating or writing my senior paper in that time. I need that focus and calm more than ever right now. This is a transitional time with a capital T, and I need to face it and funnel it into something positive. I’m beginning by reformatting my Compendium work-- splitting it into two books, essentially. Book one will be a master list of all of the correspondence charts I’ve found useful. Book two will be a more traditional Compendium volume, only I’m going to re-write many of the rituals and workings so that they’re more me and less an amalgamation of others’ words that I used when I was younger and less experienced. This will take lots of time, lots of black ink, and probably a fair amount of White-Out.
Oh, and I’m thinking of getting an indoor plant for my altar because buying cut flowers seems to be a waste of good energy. I, she of the suicidal Christmas cactus, she of the Black Thumb. I was thinking of getting an orchid, but that seems a bit delicate. Maybe I’ll start off with a mum or something. The less killable the better. Oh, I know. Maybe an aloe plant. Those are hearty, right?
In other news, I got a snake. She’s so adorable-- her name is Sita. I’m planning to take lots of pictures, but right now she’s being shy and hiding out in her coconut shell. She’s a wiggly little bastard, though. If you don’t have one hand firmly holding her less-wiggly tail at all times, she’ll be off and squirming and you’ll be lucky to catch a glimpse of her before she’s hidden in some tiny cubby hole. I accidentally dropped her earlier as I was changing her bedding, and I swear, the Goddess blessed me with some lightning-fast reflexes today, or I’d still be looking for her. She’s about a foot and a half right now, and because she’s a ribbon snake, she won’t get much bigger than 3 feet. She’s skinny as a pencil. Right now, she eats little crickets, about a dozen a week. She’ll occasionally get rosy red feeder fish as she gets a bigger, but she’ll never get big enough to eat mice or things that are otherwise smart enough to be afraid of snakes. In a show of how much my sister and I are polar opposites, Andrea got two mice, Jacques and Gus Gus. Add this to four bettas, a tank of tropical fish, two dogs and three cats, and we’ve got a proper menagerie.
But Sita is just darling, if you discount the fact that she pees every damn time I pick her up and so I’ve been resorting to picking her up by her middle and wiping down her back end with a Kleenex before I actually handle her. Also, I have more anti-bacterial hand soap right now than Marc Summers. Heather, don’t freak out. She’s the least scary snake I’ve ever seen, and so you’re not going to have to worry at all. She doesn’t even bite. And her tongue kinda tickles.
The bettas are having a hard transition to aquarium life. I’ve got them set up in a 10 gallon partitioned 4-ways. Despite the fact that they could all see each other before in their bowls, they’ve suddenly begun to be really aggressive with one another. Sushi’s bitten his tail down to a nubbin again. Ivan’s looking a little sickly, and so I’m going to keep an eye on him and see if his overactive stress coat chills on its own of if I’m going to have to isolate him and treat him for a bit. It’s been so warm in my room that I haven’t even had to turn on the heater, and so I don’t think overheating is an issue. I’m going to wait and see. It may be that I have to get a second aquarium to separate the boys into less-aggressive pairs.
On the BPAL front, Carnival Noir goes live tomorrow, and I am ready with my bank card in hand. Okay, so I probably won’t be able to afford more than the initial sampler pack until my pay comes through, but still. It’s like miniature Christmas. I’ve already sampled Midway, which smells exactly like standing in the center of the South Baltimore Little League Carnival in the middle of a sticky August evening, breathing in the euphoric scent of funnel cake and cotton candy.
And
belladonnastrap and I are going in on some Twilight Alchemy oils together, of which my craving list is growing and growing. TAL is the magically-potent arm of BPAL. Beth, BPAL’s creator, is a skilled alchemist and magical worker, and her magical oils are some of the most potent I’ve discovered. I have about half an imps’ worth of Helping Hand, which I carefully use a few drops’ worth of if I know I have a challenging day ahead. So far, it’s helped me through several very difficult exams, presentations, and juries. I really need some more of it. I’ve also tried Yemaya (which I also need more of) and Oshun, two of TAL’s Orisha oils, and they’ve been wonderful as far as helping me to get in tune with certain energies. I wish that they were more widely available, but as it stands, they’re only sold through two shops in the US (Black Broom in LA, and Alternative Realities in Rhode Island), neither of which ships merchandise. I’ve got a sample of Elegba in on order, and I hear that Oya is on the way as well, but I’ve also heard that these two are reformulations and not meant for the magically-potent TAL line. They’ll be of some help, though, and I’m particularly looking forward to Oya.
What Karyn and I are hoping to get are a few of Beth’s Temple blends. I’m looking forward to Temple: Celtic in particular, considering that some of the Deities that I’ll be working with in the re-writing of my Compendium are from that pantheon. White Light sounds very good as a healing blend, and if I can obtain more than an imp’s worth, I intend to spread it, because some people I know are much more in need of it than I am. (Note to self: Don’t forget to PayPal Karyn on Thursday!)
On the bleccch side, I think I’ve encountered PayPal fraud. I checked my account balance this morning to discover a PayPal charge on a day that I didn’t buy anything. The transaction ID didn’t match anything in my account records, either. I emailed PayPal about it, and I’m waiting to hear back. While I was checking it out, I almost got taken in by a scam-- I’d gotten an email from paypal@paypal.com about security, and needing to affirm my password. I logged in through the fake PayPal site, but before I could affirm any of my billing/credit card info, I noticed that the URL was a few letters off the standard URL. I then logged into the official PayPal site and changed my password straightaway, so I don’t think anything was gotten from the scam. I then called my bank and lodged a claim about the fee ($24.18), and I should be hearing from them within the week once it’s been investigated. So be careful when dealing with PayPal emails, all.
I have internet in my bedroom! (Also, I love Jeff more than anyone else today!) The downside is that it’s 56k dialup. The upside is that I will probably have wireless within the month. This means I can do more than simply skim my friends-list and possibly even add some of the people I had to trim off before I left school. So yay for that.
Tomorrow, I plan to wake up leisurely, work on invites to my graduation party, and then have dinner with my Annabean. Sounds like a good way to spend the day, if you ask me.
PS -- To Heather & Rac: Listening to my mother singing along to The Killers in the morning is surreal beyond the telling of it. Every time I hear "Mr. Brightside" I’m back on the road with you two in Philly in that strange headspace I was in when everything was upside down. Also? She doesn’t know half the words. It’s amusing.
PPS -- If you like Firefly, go check out
saava’s latest round of icon goodies. They’re some of the prettiest icons I’ve ever seen.PPPS -- I finished Good Omens. I laughed muchly. Didn’t someone make icons from some of the quotes a while back? Links please?