Day 6780 | Day 6797 | Day 6828

So I've become privy to the information that one of my friends was sexually assaulted a few months ago. Or at least that's what I've decided to call it. She prefers to call it "what could be considered sexual assault under other circumstances". I'm somewhat incredulous as to her view of what happened as it could have easily ended in rape. What's more, she's decided not to press charges and I'm one of the two people she's decided to tell. That's always a fun conversation to have.

I have no particular reason for noding this nor do I have any pretext that this factoid will be interesting to most people. This is all just a part of my personal philosophy on daylogs.

In other news, my list of Top 10 unfilled nodeshells:

1. They have a trendy name for every different kind of fucked up.
2. A devil sick of sin
3. Does this smell like nerve gas to you?
4. We knew the blubbering one in glasses would yield the most meat.
5. Today is the last day of the rest of your life
6. WARNING: Long term exposure to women has been known to cause bitterness and alcoholism during laboratory tests
7. The legend of the three good ass whoopings by Nathaniel Carter
8. The air full of ice and electricity, and then the sky went green and the air raid sirens went off
9. Playing Cyrano for aphasia patients
10. rusty feathers, wings of murky steel eaten clean by age

Firstly, I have been looking for this song for a while. Remembering only a melody makes it difficult to find a song.

(For English I am meant to be writing a recount about some event in my life. I have started with stories about Rose, some stories about horses, considered stories about Germany... There is not much in my life that is interesting enough to write. In my mind are my teacher's words why are you telling me about this? I have no idea what is interesting enough to propose for marking. If I need to, I'll pull one of my Germany stories on here, or at least re-hash it. But that is why I am Thinking About Things. This might be a little rambling, but it is about E2, so you may be at least partway entertained by it.)

Lately I've been feeling very much like a part of E2. Let me explain.

Have you seen the second installment of Pirates of the Caribbean? Will Turner's father, Will Turner, otherwise known as Bootstrap Bill, is a member of the crew of the Flying Dutchman. Part of the crew, part of the ship. He can never leave, and he sort of melds with the ship, he grows into the hull of the ship and never leaves. I feel like I am slowly turning into Bootstrap Bill. Part of the crew, part of the ship. Not yet, though. My brain isn't stuck to the inside of the wall. I could tear myself away with a little bit of effort.

I have been trying to think what I love most about this place.

I love new people. I love seeing a new person post their first writeup, I love giving them pointers and I love seeing them use what I have suggested. I have always enjoyed teaching, and I have only realized that in the last few weeks.

I used to teach eight year olds how to work around horses. Never riding, I've only given perhaps two mounted lessons, but mounted lessons are such a tiny amount of working with horses. I have taught children how to approach, catch, lead, tie up, groom, saddle, rug and wash horses. And I loved it. I love walking down the stable seeing that everyone used the knots that I taught them to make. That they copied my same little quirks and some taught others the same thing that they learned first from me. I hate children. But I love teaching.

I love old people. I am, I suppose, a fairly new user still. I am not sure how I fit on that scale, actually. I know a lot about the workings of this place, but I have not been here for 2 years yet. I give people advice but I am still a new-ish user. At least I feel new.

So yeah, I love the people.

Err... The writing. Yes, I love the writing. I use all 50 of my votes on a regular basis. Not always upvotes. If I don't use my C! I feel bad, generally I give it away to some poor non-C! owning soul. I love the daylogs, I talked about that a couple days ago. So how about my own writing?

I have always loved writing. My first story, written at age five, was an edge-of-your-seat thriller about a princess: Page One - This is the Princess; Page Two - She lives in a castle; Page Three - The end.

Since then I have moved onto things that a little more, uh, detailed. I am currently working on a story that I am "writing for Sangsoo", though it is more of an excuse to write something. I remember some people asking me what my style is, and, well, I am all over the board. I write love stories and murder stories, I write reviews and recipes, how-tos, eassys... Oh yes, and poetry. My poetry is terrible, I haven't seriously sat down and posted poetry since January, I believe. I don't like writing poetry.

But I don't really have a writing style. They're all words, aren't they? Mesh 'em up however you will, they're just words. I think I enjoy confusing people as to what I am like. In Real Life, I choose things that other people don't do. That is how I choose my nail polish. I ask my friends What colour would you be horrified to see? and those are the colors I choose. I wear pistachio-green, chocolate-brown, blood-red, midnight-blue.

I adore writing. I love making words into characters and worlds... You know, you understand. You write.

I don't really have a point here. I set out to do something... Oh yes, RedOmega's nodeshells.

I was going to say something cool and witty about them, but I can't think of what. But they are great and I wish that I had enough fortitude and time to follow through with the brief ideas I had for them. I love number 1 and number 10 the best.

Errr... Not sure where to go from this. My ankle hurts, and I have prom in two weeks. Have a good day, please.

With love,
tentative

<.>

Today has been a good day. I don't have many 'bad' days assuch, at least, not any more. What's made today particulary good is that fact that I've finally finished a list of things that I've been to do for a while now.

Nothing overwhelming exciting, at least to somebody who isn't me.
I've finally finished planting my veg plot and the herbs, as I'm fed up with using substandard food that gets delievered to work. And, let's be honest here, fresh herbs are a hell of a lot nicer than the powdered stuff I'm given. I'm in the process of converting my manager to the realization that fresh food can be got with the minimum of hassle and very little work (although sods law clearly states that the second my contract ends in September when I head of to uni, he'll revert back again. But at least I can say I tried)

I've also finally got my student finance forms sorted, to be sent out tomorrow. God, talk about hassle. I'm a few months off being totally self-reliant with no financal help from my parents, but those few months mean the difference from being classed as an 'independant' or 'dependent' student. Cue long phone call as my parents try and find the relavent p60 or child benefit forms. But at least it's all sorted now.

Looking at tentative's post above, I can't help but think that I too am suffering from a case of the Bill's, and I doubt I am the only one... Ispent what some would no doubt call an unhealthy time on this here E2, usually reading, and posting very little. I will usually go out of my way to walk the mountain behind me in order to get a reasonable signal on my phone in order to log on, check my messages, and recieve my well-earned abuse from Viki. I'm secretly hoping someone doesn't find a cure...
Oh, speaking of which, I've booked my train tickets for the up-coming nodermeet. I'm looking forward to it.

Much love Dan out

The weekend was interesting, emotional, and involved a teddy bear and mortality. Dang it.

Saturday morning I ran around as usual, really pleased that no one was going to give me advice over the weekend. The other doctors have been fabulous about giving me advice, but my brain is full and I am sick, sick, sick of it. I was officially incorporated, approved by the state on Friday, so that was good news.

I went to the Farmer's Market. Talked to the jeweler friend and we are now in a handshake agreement about me using his pendant design as a logo for 20 years in return for advertising and also the jeweler's desk. Cool. I have to get it delivered to him.
Also got grabbed by the calendar person who wanted a photo of the new logo by Monday or Tuesday because the calendar was going to print. I'm half the sponsor for March 2010. Cool. I swore I'd do it when I got home.

Also the felted doll lady was at the market. I have coveted these for a while. Now she has mothers with a tiny baby in it's arms. That was it. I bargained and got one of the little felted purses with a mother, baby and teddy bear. IT rolled her eyes. If I display it in the new clinic then it's a business write off for art.

I didn't send the logo because I was running late by the time I got home. IT and I bopped downtown and got me a black shrug, rushed home to get music, black dress, scarf, toys, especially the new teddy bear, mom and baby and rushed to the 1 pm meeting place. Chorus was there and we car pooled up to the Women's chorus thing gabbing. It was fun but tiring. My fellow choral members laughed at me with the mom, baby and bear, but then our pianist is a single mom, so I loaned it to her ?8 year old to play with. See? How useful! About 6 of us boycotted the educational choral breathing lesson and just sat around. Dinner was very good and then concert at 7 pm with our chorus, the other two and the three combined. Fabulous church to sing in and very nice music.

Home. Went out with chorus and had a whole drink. Wild woman.

Tired on Sunday but managed to tear myself away from the computer and go to church. He was doing his pre-vacation question sermon where the congregation turned in questions. Most interesting was on the subject of why do people do evil things to other people or is it nearly always that we don't know the whole story? He agreed with me and the latter. If you get enough of practically anyone's story you can have compassion for them even if they are a monumental pain in the ass. Doctoring teaches this over the years, since you have to take care of the guy hit by the drunk and the drunk too.

Home. IT annoyed because I was an hour after church. Assigned chores and then went off to the try out for the summer Shakespeare improv. Hope I get in. I was late and he threatened to make me run laps. I was feeling hunted by one of the advice givers who kept emailing me and saying "focus" but not on what I want to.

Home again. Discussed synchronized swimming picnic and we got the camping stove so we could make popcorn there. Drove to the island, pretty much on time, nearly last to get there. Milled around for a few minutes and then heard

Bang!BANG!

Like gunshots. And we were right by the military base but it wasn't the base it came from. And close.

Then a car horn, not stopping. SHIT.

I told the IT to stay with the group and drove. Just out of sight, SUV wrapped around a tree and another bashed car. I and a city EMT were the first responders. One man, bleeding and shocky, sitting on the rear of the SUV, Montana plates, worrying about his dog. Other man, also out of his car, sitting in front of it and realizing that his neck really hurt. The tree was a good two feet buried in the front of the SUV. The EMT's wife caught the golden retriever after a while and the EMT and I went back and forth. No kids, no one dead, give it 7/10. Glad not a 10. Montanan had swerved to avoid deer. Oooops.

Ambulances came and, after looking at SUV, packaged the Montanan and shipped him via helicopter to the big city. Guy's wife showed up with a friend and took the now shocky looking Golden with them. The other guy turned out to be the spouse of one of the choral members. Got a neck brace, she arrived, he went by ambulance to local hospital. He was not very goofy, glancing blow off passenger door, and could say, "You sang with my wife yesterday." That would qualify as alert and oriented for sure.

Back to picnic, one hour later, ravenous. Other parents had helped slow traffic until police arrived. Had my metal water bottle with a decanted bottle of merlot and promptly drank some. We gave the synchro awards and went home. I crashed on the couch with the IT reading to me, by about 7:30 pm. Staggered up to take contacts out at about 10 pm, and went to sleep clutching the teddy bear. See? I'm glad I bought it.

Thankful no one was dead, thankful our kids didn't see it, thankful it wasn't one of us......