Moved Again
Now Playing: Nothing (I'm trying to keep the house quiet)
Topic: Personal
I've moved to a new web-site, so I can do picutres better with my entires.  It's at http://FidgetFidget.BlogSpot.com

Insomnia Strikes Back
Now Playing: Yes: 'Starship Trooper'
Topic: Personal
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03:33 Friday, 03 February, 2006
Endwell, NY


Ugh. This is what I was afraid of. I'd felt sleepyish since 9pm, and almost went to bed at 11:30, but decided to play Heroes a bit to be sure I actually was ready to sleep. I enjoyed playing, but felt bad doing so, since I was wasting time and knew I should just go to bed so I could get up to have breakfast with JollyGreen and her friends. So I stopped before 12:30, and crawled into bed. Once there, I found an inexplicable desire to read, so figured it couldn't be bad for 20min or so, and found myself reading another hour. So it was 01:30 and my alarm was set for 05:33, and I was feeling awfully silly. I lied down to sleep, and managed wonderfully not to. After two hours of lying there, I've finally given up. I had a brief but delicious snack of left-over fajita makings, and now I don't know what to do. While lying in bed, I had figured that my insomnia -- which had left me alone for over a week now -- was tonight caused by the knowledge that I had to get to bed because I had to get up early, whereas on all the other days it didn't much matter what time I fell asleep, since I could technically sleep forever the following day. So I thought about what I was getting up for, and determined I didn't need to. I'd be seeing the same people in the evening at the Ukrainian club, and it wouldn't involve getting up in the dark after only a few hours of sleep. So I'd turned off my alarm, thinking that the fear of the alarm clock would no longer keep me awake. But I still couldn't sleep.

So now I'm here, feeling sleepy, and thinking I should have another go at it. But if I again can't sleep, what then? I certainly won't feel like getting out of my cozy cocoon to put pants and another shirt on, after having taken them off a few minutes before. But I'll also be terribly bored and feeling non-productive lying in bed. Obviously, I can't sleep if I don't let myself try. But I already tried for two hours, and don't want to waste any more. I'm glad, at least, that I have no pressing deadlines or need to be up for work in the morning or anything. But I'd rather not sleep the entire day tomorrow, since I'm down to three days at home before I have to leave, and I have yet to pack.


04:04

O.K., after taking the time to post that, I now feel very sleepy, and I think I'll be successful this time, so I'm going to try. Wish me luck. ;)


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Posting Instructions
Now Playing: The Beatles: Help!
Topic: Personal
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00:46 Thursday, 02 February, 2006
Endwell, NY


I always make things a little more complicated than they need to be, and this web-site is no exception. It's certainly much more simple on AngelFire than it was on Xanga, but I still add levels of complexity that I love but which require more work. And that's all fine and dandy when I'm constantly posting here, but once it's been a while, I forget just how to do the extra things I like to do. So I think I'm going to write myself a little instruction manual as I go about updating the past few entries with my little features.


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Link in a new window:
AngelFire
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Link to one of my owns posts, in the same window:
Christmas letter
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To put at the top of every entry (without the .x):
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Time Date
Location, ST


Text
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To put at the bottom of every entry (without the .x):

Text.


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To insert the image of a book and a link to its Amazon page:

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Updating the Index:
Open the latest Index *.htm file in Notepad
Follow instructions imprinted there.
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I'll probably think of more, so I'll add it as I do.


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Izzy
Topic: Personal
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00:47 Wednesday, 23 February, 2005
Endwell, NY




My good friend, EagerBeaver, is on a mission in Santiago, Chile, this year. She's teaching 4th or 5th grade, at a school for the children of American missionaries in Santiago. She doesn't have to know Espa?ol or anything, but she's learned some for when she goes into town and stuff. Anyway, being in the southern hemisphere, this is her summer break. School ended a week or two before Christmas, which she celebrated with all of her friends down there. Then came the New Year's celebrations, and the day after, EagerBeaver started her vacation traveling. She'd never been to South America, so she was excited to have this time to explore around the neighboring countries. I almost went down there to travel with her during her break, but we ended up deciding not to. Anyway, on this first day of vacation, she and her friends started off by going para-gliding, and were going to follow that up with white-water rafting. However, right before landing, the parachute hit an odd pocket of air that tipped them face-first, giving them nothing to slow their fall, and they crashed. The instructor was fine, but EagerBeaver destroyed her legs. She tore all of the skin off of her knees, and shattered her right foot. They got her off the mountain, into an ambulance, and to the hospital in Mendoza, Argentina. There the doctors took x-rays and told her it was just a sprain and she'd be fine. When the pain subsided enough that she could travel by bus back to Santiago a week later, she went to the much-more-sophisticated hospital in the city and was told that it certainly was not a sprain but that her foot was indeed broken in eight places. Surgery was performed and pins were inserted, and EagerBeaver started her long recovery. She is an exceptionally strong and stubborn girl and has an incredible tolerance for pain, so her recovery is coming along well. But she absolutely *loves* to go hiking, and she now finds herself in a beautiful, mountainous country during a hot, summer vacation, during which she cannot walk. And, she's thousands of miles away from her family and the friends she loves. It has been very difficult for her.



A few weeks ago, she and some of the missionaries' kids found a puppy by the street. She was newly born, but there was no mother to be found. EagerBeaver and the kids decided to take her in and try to nurse her back to health. They went to a vet's office to get some puppy formula and advice, and EagerBeaver stayed up all that night feeding and warming the puppy. She and the kids took turns baby-sitting over the next few days, and things were beginning to look good. They named her Isabel because it's a beautiful, Spanish name that could also be fun ? 'Izzy.' She's a very cute puppy, and EagerBeaver sent me pictures a week ago. EagerBeaver nursed Izzy back to life, and Izzy nursed EagerBeaver into her normal, fun attitude despite the physical difficulties and pain she was facing. After two weeks of devoting nearly all of her time to Izzy, EagerBeaver's mother and brother arrived for the three-week visit they'd planned. They weren't able to do as much exploring as they'd supposed when they had arranged everything in December, but they were all just happy to be together. Izzy got along great with EagerBeaver's brother, and he looked forward to having her come home with EagerBeaver this summer.



A few days later, however, EagerBeaver noticed that Izzy wasn't eating as well as she had been. She would eat after some coaxing, but she wasn't as enthusiastic as she used to be. And then, Monday night, the three of them came back to find that Izzy had died. EagerBeaver was very, very sad. She'd worked so hard to save Izzy, and had been afraid so many times that Izzy wouldn't make it, but after a few weeks it seemed like they'd come through the worst of it and she would have a full life ahead of her. But I guess that wasn't to be. EagerBeaver and Izzy had improved each other's life immensely while they were together, but it seems that was the extent of what God had planned for them. I'm grateful that EagerBeaver's family could be there for her through this difficulty, but I just wish I could give her a hug. :(




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Family weekend
Now Playing: nothing, come to think of it
Topic: Personal
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18:49 Tuesday, 22 February, 2005
Endwell, NY


I had a date with Precocious and Gumby yesterday. We went to see Pooh's Heffalump Movie, then went to Friendly's for dinner. Friendly's is one of my favorite restaurants, but they're only in the northeast, so I always have to go to one just before leaving town every time. Precocious and Gumby had had a bit of pop-corn at the movie, so they didn't eat their dinners too well, but it was fun, and we got left-overs out of the deal, so that's all right.

And the movie was excellent. Roo goes exploring and meets a baby Heffalump, who is very cute. His name is Lumpy and he speaks with a British accent! I'd somehow never noticed that the Pooh animals don't have an accent, even though Christopher Robin does, and we know they all come from England. I guess I always just thought his accent was thicker or something. At any rate, the Heffalump was British, and he was adorable. So I loved it.

And then, to top it off, the moral of the story was about cultural diversity. What a perfect message for today's age! Pooh and his friends were afraid of the Heffalumps and therefore decided they had to capture them. However, Roo was too little to go along on such a dangerous expedition, and sent him home. He didn't like this idea, so went on an expedition of his own. He was scared of the Heffalumps because of the uninformed stories his friends had told, but when he met the friendly, baby Heffalump, he realized he didn't have to be afraid. And once Lumpy ? now Roo's friend ? learned that Roo had come from the 100-acre wood, he told all the stories *he* had heard and said he was afraid to go there. But Roo promised his friends were nice, and wanted Lumpy to meet them. So they ventured over, only to have Roo's friends capture Lumpy! Lumpy felt betrayed and Roo felt said, but in the end they learned they didn't have to be afraid of each other. It was just a great message: both sides of the fence had been taught to be afraid of each other, but there really was nothing to fear. The two groups were just different, and different is O.K.


The other family fun I had this weekend was my surprise un-birthday party Sunday night. I was sent one of those e-mail surveys ? the ones with, like, a hundred questions about yourself so your friends can get to know you better ? about a month ago, and one of the questions was about one's most memorable birthday. I'd answered that I didn't really have many birthday memories, because mine was never really celebrated much. As a kid, my birthday was always combined with my mother's, which is two days later. This is fine, but it meant my personal birthday never felt all that memorable, I guess. I'd never really thought about it much. Anyway, since my birthday is in August, I never got a party at school. I also had a small friend-base by the end of the summer, since our neighborhood was pretty isolated, having only a few other kids to play with. Then came college, again not having close friends at the end of the summer, and since college I've worked seasonally over the summers, so haven't had a family birthday in several years. Anyway, the basic answer was that I hadn't really had any memorable birthdays. The most memorable was this past summer ? partly because it was the most recent (and therefore the easiest to remember), but also because my friends got together to make dinner with me, and two different people made cakes for me.
Anyway, my family is planning on going to the beach for a week this summer, something they haven't done in twenty years. So I really want to be around for it. It will also happen to be the week of my birthday, as it was the last time we did it. At a big dinner one night (every few weeks we get all eight of us local family together for a nicer dinner) we were talking about the beach and birthdays and everything, and I mentioned what I'd recently realized about memorable birthdays. I didn't say it for the purpose of telling them to do anything about it, I was just making conversation or whatever. But I guess my Mom took it to heart, because she sneakily got everyone together Sunday evening and made cake and ice cream and grilled steaks and wrapped up a few presents and all that. It was great. The gifts were really just candy bars put in big boxes, because they knew I didn't have space to take anything extra with me. They also wrapped the packaging for the camera we'd bought last week. So it was cool. I'd been expecting a 'last dinner' kind of thing a night or two before I left, but nothing this elaborate. It was quite flattering.

So all this family stuff made me kinda sad to be leaving. I mean, I'm very excited about it and all, but I always hate missing out on the fun family stuff. And I especially miss the kids, and don't like missing their whole growing-up process. Granted, they're pretty grown-up already, being 7 and 5, but they change so much in such a short period of time, I just wish I could be around. But I know I get all stir-crazy when I stay around, especially in the summer, so I'm happy to be going. I tried staying close-by one year, when I was in Ithaca, but when the summer was over I felt like I'd missed the entire thing, so I can't do that again. It's going to be a fantastic trip, and I can't wait. But I'll miss everyone.


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