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This year. One Post. Now.

Finally back to posting something after a long hiatus. School had been driving me bananas for the past four months and now I finally have a break over the summer. I should have probably signed up for summer school, however completing classes sooner is not insentive enough to give up my free time this summer. This was my first year of grad school and it took quite a bit of adjustment to get the hang of the workload. After the first sememster I kinda figured out a nice balance of what required readings to do and to not do. It's so impossible to do all the readings for my classes, I flat out refuse. Although I think I did miss out on a lot of readings for my Management class last semester, but whatever, the group projects he gave us were so fucking huge. Whatever, class dissmisses. So far I have two A's, and A-, and a B+. I'll kill that instructor that gave me a B!

So summer is here, I'm looking to get back into shape a bit. NO moar chocolate! Damnit! School has totally thrown me off my game as far as working out goes. I think playing tennis 3 nights a week has kept me from becoming a total cow. I'm gonna have to amp it up if I wanna look good for my new swimsuit calendar, available June 2018!

It's been over a week since I spent time with matty_mcphat all up in B'ham. I had such a great time visiting the grand ole state/republic of Alabama. Before I left on my trip I spent endless nights praying to Our Lady of Jesus Take the Wheel, in hopes of good weather, good fortune, and good mojo while away. And as fate would have it, all of those things came into place while visiting with my best boyfriend ever. Aside from being with Dreamy McMichaels, we did a ton of stuff, sweated a whole bunch, and drank 4 nights in a row! We did the Botanical gardens, museum, Civil Rights Institute, the zoo, and traveled through Tennesee to Kentucky! I really loved Louisville, which was a surprise, especially after falling totally in love with Birmingham, I never thought I'd be charmed by another semi-southern city. I was glad we went to Connextions while in Louisville, who knew gay bars in Kentucky were as big as a mall?! (*shout out to brokn2pieces...so good to see you!) Sadly my trip had to come to an end, after a week in heaven it was back to dreary ole broke down California. Sad times.

Back2Reality

I have a three day weekend looming, I'm excited for the time to rest, relax, reset, and create. I have a slew of things to get done, house cleaning, hamster babysitting, and I'm getting a new bed! I'll probably be flying all over the place, getting my usual 3 hours of sleep, and maybe doing a bit of reading in between.
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But all the while I'll be thinking about the earthquake in Haiti. How can we begin to understand the scope of the destruction? I've already donated a bit, but I want to do more for our neighbors down south. Yes our neighbors, no not strangers, we need to delete our psychological borders. On a similar note I love this: http://deletetheborder.org/node/397

Weekend plz come soon. My second to last weekend of freedom before school begins. I'm gonna try to take it slow, to enjoy my time and not rush through the days as per usual. Maybe some tennis, maybe a walk, definitely something good to eat. I'll get in some WoW fun, but definitely not too much. I have a few movies that I'd like to see soon: Precious, Broken Embraces, and maybe Bad Lieutenant. But I don't know about the last one, do I really need to see another bad/demented cop story...um no. I don't.

Oh and I definitely need to gym it up this weekend, I can feel myself becoming soft. Where did the few muscles I had go? Well at least I started running last night, granted it was a super short run, but it was nice to be outside at night, in the dark streets of Long Beach. I'll try to do that once or twice a week, body withstanding. The weather has been so pleasant at night lately, clear and still air, definitely warrents enjoying.

In the back of my head I see January quickly passing by, making way for February and my upcoming 31st birthday! I can't believe I'm already on my way to 40, I still feel like I'm 23ish...without the stupidity. But I'm content, just pondering, it seems that as each year passes, the next feels shorter and shorter.

I finally dropped the kizash for my school books. I almost forgot to buy them...I had meant to do it before my recent trip, but it just slipped my mind. This upcoming semester I'm taking a class on Management (barf!), I mean, I guess it will be kinda interesting. I usually can find something of interest no matter the topic, lez hope so. My other class is on Web information tools, specifically learning XHTML and CSS! Most of the books I had to get were for that. A friend reminded me I should have just requested the books through ILL, but alas, I'm old skool and need my own copy that I can write in. He also suggested that I could just find the information online...which I can, one of the books is online through the libraries website...but I dunno. All that's left is for financial aid to come through...which it will right before the semester begins on Jan 25th! Phew, thankfully I still have a bit of time before the semester starts, cuz then it's back to the madness. I'm looking forward to getting it over though and I feel pretty confident after doing well in my first semester this fall.

Good news to report, M. will be visiting soon! Must...plan...exciting...and attractive...events...to lure him in! What should we do while he's here? Well a few things are already in the works, we're definitely going rock climbing, skydiving, and base jumping. I mean, who visits California and doesn't do extreme sports, right? Okay fine, it'll mostly be hanging out with friends, relaxin', and some good eats. I mean hell, just the pleasant weather alone should win over a southerner like him. :P And yes I'll bore him with trips to a few museums or galleries, I still NEED to see THE*BIBLE*ILLUMINATED, since I love R.Crumb. I wonder what else is going on in LA this month?! Peeplz!@

Well it's that time again, the new year is upon us and MY XMAS VACATION IS OVER! Heh, it sure was a nice holiday though. Instead of the usual holidays at my parents house in Rivercyde, I thankfully was able to spend it with M. in Birmingham. This year I got to lounge around the boyfriend's crib with his animals, play some WoW, go on occational walks and all the lunch dates at the Food Whole. Can I just say that I really do like Birmingham, the south does have it's charm. The landscape is so different from Long Beach, with more trees and old buildings. It was a very relaxing time and helped ease me into this new year...2010! So I'm definitely looking forward to this year, spending more time with M., continuing to do well in Grad. Skool, and not breaking anymore bones in my body.

I'm so glad I didn't stress to much over christmas gifts this year, just a simple card to most peeps. I think everyone was pleased with that, it was a much better alternative to buying random presents that no one really wants. So I think for next year I'll put even more effort into some kind of handcrafted item. :P

I'm so relieved to report that I finished my first semester in Grad school this week! Finally, the semester is freakin' over. It's been a long fourth and a half months since I began. The program is really intersting, I heard so many varing reviews of it before I started, from friends and colleagues. It's an online program that doubles up on reading, and even requires you to take part in group assignments. As if group assignments were already annoying, let's make students who live nowhere near eachother, work together! My Information and Society class was decent, I enjoyed the earlier stuff about the history of libraries, printed text, and information the best. The rest of the stuff was just a long ass disscusion on the current state of libraries. I'm glad that most of the readings are intersting, thank goodness I already work in the field or it'd all be a bit foriegn to me. My other class, the Information Retrieval class was also good, I learned more than I wanted to about Metadata, subject headings, and classification systems. I learned a bit more about searcing and Boolean logic, I should look back at some of the lessons and make more of an effort to memorize searching techniques...some day. Both of my instructors were totally random and hairbrained...in other words, librarians. SO hopefully I'll get A's, but I'm expecting B's with my semi-serious study habits. I better get B's cuz I do not want to retake anything. Next semester I'm taking a Management class(lame) and a Web Authoring class(awesome)...I've been wanting to learn about XHTML and CSS since forever, so now's my chance!

The rest of my life has been good lately, despite being a hermit and having to study and do f-ing homework all the time, I've had time to goof off too. Although I feel like I've been missing out on a ton of things to do in LA. Missed Nads/Selene show, wanted to go the Joey Arias show, didn't see the Marilyn Minter exhibition. Alas. I think I'll maybe go up to Chinatown Saturday morning, I'd like to catch up on all the galleries, and perhaps see the shit on Wilshire and Weho. Just to get out for a while. I need an outlet. OH! That reminds me, maybe I'll work on staining my wood block kitchen table this weekend! It's a pretty neet-o table I got from a garage sale a while back, I'm thinking of staining it blue! AND I wanna tie-dye some pajama bottoms also!...don't ask. But yes, Chinatown it is.

In the bromance department, I'll be heading back to B'ham on the 22nd, staying with HEWHOSHALLBENAMED...matty_mcphat for a week. I'm really excited about visiting him again, I'm not sure he's ready for the serious heat I'll be brrrangin'. I think xmas in Alabama will be interesting,...and freezing! I'm just excited to his face again. The last trip there was great, I did have the added pressure of some stupid assignments for school, so this time, it's gonna be a luxurious staycation!

I'm also tyring to squeeze in some physical activities when I can, tennis is about once a week. It's been fun playing regularly with my friend, he's pretty good, and I think we both keep on improving. I just need to get back to the gym, the end of the semester stuff really threw me off track, just when I was making some progress. Damn you education! Whatever, maybe I'll just try to create a physical fitness routine that involves warcrafting? Yes? No? Maybe? :/