Seems like a good way to go...

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.comEDIT: Ahem. Although now that I think about it, it would only be a good way to go if Chuck Norris was not, in fact, the lover in question.Becasue if he was, then please please, someone, please just kill me now.

"That's n...

"That's not fair!" - me"This is not fair. This is marriage." - dustinasheSumbitch. I got nothin'.

WTF

OK, I was going to turn off the computer and go to bed, but then I ran into this on the Firewater website (love "Psychopharmacology) and had to put it somewhere. After all, it is not every day you run into the option of purchasing a calendar featuring angels and coffins. And in Italian, no less.

It was a...

It was a nice day.I went out to Yucca Valley this morning to check in some kits and get some work done. I love walking into a place and being greeted by people who appear genuinely happy to see me. I especially like it when that place is not a bar.I gave my supe some culinary lavender so she could make some lavender lemonade (most delicious and refreshing) as thanks for working so hard to keep me on at PC. She said, "No problem! You're a gem and we want to keep you!" Obviously, this lady knows that with me, flattery is like a backstage pass, baby. I bonked the Cruiser leaving a gas station. It made the most horrible noise; I fully expected to see the front grille pushed up and warped when I looked at it. As it turned out, the bang was worse than the bite and only a piece of plastic along the front grille was scraped. That noise was like nails across a blackboard. Happily, since blackboards went the way of the mimeograph, no one has to suffer that particular torture anymore.I called the owner of the dealership where I got the car and left a message to advise that I have a large (well, smaller since dustinashe got into it while I was out) pot of gazpacho to drop off in thanks for the excellent service and good deal I got. I will drop it off tomorrow (in the truck - 'cause I will *not* be toting a pot of gazpacho 2 towns away in the new car. I know how I drive.) He left a return vm saying, "That was so thoughtful! I look forward to trying your [long pause] *soup.*] I think he does not kow what gazpacho is. Then again, as it was pointed out to me this evening, this is a gentleman who has Fox News Channel playing on all the waiting room televisions. He probably thought I was bringing over a pot of communicable disease or something.I went up to the folks' house for 4th festivities, which mostly consisted of sitting around eating crackers and dip until I offered to give my mom and sis-in-law the beading lesson I promised for last Christmas. They agreed, and we were all spared a few hours of painful sitting about trying to make small talk.I stopped by at my brother's to ask him to check our dogs during the fireworks show, which is held a block away from our house. He looked disheveled, and showed me the spoils of his newest hobby: home network shopping with a specialty in gemstones. I thought about how crazy I thought him at that moment and recalled a CCS staff meeting in which I would say a majority of the staffers talked about that one brother with the psych issue. I guess if mental illness is hereditary, siblings in the mental health professions is also.I showed my mom & sis-in-law how to make drop earrings. They were very excited, and between the three of us, we knocked out about a 8 pairs in varying states of finished-ness. That was fun, and it was nice to be able to spread everythig out, without some pet trying to eat/sniff/sneeze on/take off with the goods. So I just left it all there. I think my mom is excited about the idea of having one or both of us there more often. It gives her someone to tlak to besides my dad, who you have to yell at amymore; poor bastard's going deaf and is too vain to do anything useful about it. Now mom & sis-in-law want to help me make jewelry for the October art show which I try to do whenever I can, because I make a killing. All the artists do.We watched fireworks at the Country Club, where several old family friends air-kissed at me, and everyone was just so.There was, as far as I could tell, only one small fire. Tomorrow, the golfers will have to watch for that patch. Leaving was orderly and polite; nothing like traffic anyplace else on... well, any other place *I've* ever been. The best part was, all three dogs were still here when I got home. A little bit freaked out and actively psychotic, but since that's more the norm than the exception, no harm - no foul.

Foray into Meme-dom

I escaped from the Dungeon of Rayvenwahine!I killed Veleda the floating eye, Primalfire the gelatinous cube, Dustinashe the arch-demon and Darkpawsage the kobold.I looted the Dagger of Haunting Love, the Armour of Magick, the Wand of Inland Empire, the Armour of Psychology, the Dagger of Entamishmish, the Sword of Unitarian Universalist, the Dagger of Thelema, the Sceptre of Mysticism and 53 gold pieces.Score: 78Explore the Dungeon of Rayvenwahine and try to beat this score,or enter your username to generate and explore your own dungeon...

The Week in Brief

School: Got an "A" on my first midterm (how is it a "midterm," exactly, when there are four of them scheduled for a 6-week class?). Yay! I still like Math. That may indeed be the biggest news. I e-mailed the admissions lady I'd been talking to at UCR about getting in as a 2nd Bac student. I'm liking the Neuroscience program. Also, I scored a bunch of free books from the CHC library, including a couple on esoteric mathematics and one on the history of Archaeology complete with loads o' photos. Work:I am so over CCS. I finally got a meeting set up with the ED there to let her know that, no, thank you, I will not be renewing my contract here. That would be because I dread coming here so much I actually feel nauseous sometimes. I did appreciate the $25 Barnes & Noble gift card they gave to all of us as an end-of-fiscal-year bonus. dustinashe and I blew it yesterday - we each got two books. Mine are: The Museum of the Mind and Good and Evil: In Myth & Legend. I start my newest position, doing TBS (Therapeutic Behavioral Services) assessments on Monday. My first assessment is next Friday at 7pm (who schedules these things?!) I was worried about driving my poor old truck all over Riverside County to do the job, so I bought me a new coach. I wanted to get the new Toyota Yaris because it gets crazy good gas mileage, but I found out that there are only something like 3 of them in the whole state, so instead I got a black PT Cruiser. I love it! It is so nice to drive a car where I am not worrying every minute if this will be the trip where the clutch finally gives out. Also, it is nice to finally run the AC without fear. *makes with happy feet* I was bummed at first that I couldn't get a stick (none of the sticks on the lot had AC which is just a poor purchasing decision in SoCal). I'm actually enjoying the automatic now, though, and I have stopped stomping on the floor of the car where the clutch should be. This purchase being an exercise in the adage, "Leap, and the net will appear" as now we have another two large bills each month as a result: the car payment and the insurance. Personal:Still not smoking! Still nobody maimed or dead! What restraint!Still trying to avoid eating meat more than one per day. That's going well. I did give in to the allure of Baker's the other day, though. Love that Mama meal. :-PToo hot to do much in the way of exercise.Social:Feh. Not much goin' on here. I don't have the time, or when I do, I don't have the energy to get out and do anything. I have been e-mailing people though, trying to work harder at actually keeping in touch with meaningful people. Other than that, my big social moment for today, at least, consisted of the neighbor kid coming over and talking to me for the entire half hour to 45 that it took me to water the front yard. Then I paid him $5 to wash the truck. That seemed to do the trick. I don't remember when it got to be so hard to connect and stay connected to people... it used to come so easy.Spiritual:Still drawn toward the works evoking angels. Looking into it, looking into it. Read the first part of the Chaldean Oracles, through #39. They seemed to be missing, well, a *lot* so then I found the more complete version here at http://www.sacred-texts.comI'm also reading Manly Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages. Good book; hard to believe that Hall finished it while still in his twenties (bastard!). Plan to sit later, and re-acquaint myself with the LBRP so I can start doing it every evening - I beleive that will be of immeasurable help to me, especially as I spend my days visiting people in trouble and pain. Being the empath I am, if I forget to shield, I end up inadvertantly picking up all sorts of unpleasant nonsense from people.All in all, yet another change-filled week! Life is good.

3 Days Smoke-Free and No Dead Bodies!

Well, I finally quit talkin' and bought the patch. I am smoke-free since Friday - yay Will!I am having some crazy dreams, though. I think I'll have to take the patch off before I go to bed tonight. It is hotter than fresh shit here, and that makes it hard enough to sleep... Our AC is, to state it mildly, *underperforming. We have therm set to 80 and it still can't get below 82-84 degrees in here. That would also be a contributor to my ongoing sense of exhaustion and irritability, no?Math test today - I thought it was pretty easy. Here's hoping I wasn't wrong. I have to ace all these classes now. I finally got all 5 transcripts from my previous college career and I have to say, I still can't figure out how I managed to get my first degree. Ack.Spiritually, I'm feeling drawn back toward the esoteric again. I tend to cycle, each time with new eyes. I was reading a thread on Real Magick on Yahoo Groups about working with angels, and for the first time I was not immediately repelled by the idea. Before, I tended to jump right to the "That sounds too *Christian" and I don't want anything to do with that." Whatever! Reactionism is not helpful either! So, whereas before, when I was working more with the Eastern mystery trads, I've swung back 'round to the Western trads, so I'm poking around. I was just reading an article called "Magick Theory" at http://www.sacred-magick.com (which has some good resources, even in the free section)which is a nice little primer on what it implies. What struck me about the article, though was the reference to the Zen concept of Satori, and in looking it up, it sounds like what I felt like I had in meditation last week. Then the article nicely puts to words the concepts of our microcosm and the macrocosmic world without, which is essentially what I saw in my meditation.Huh. Now that I think about it, I was just talking to my good friend who was telling me about the daily request that the Ultimate Observer make itself known to him in recognizable ways (he recently saw What the Bleep) and I wonder if that's what just happened here. I didn't make that request, though, but it does seem synchronicitous that I encountered allusions to my meditative visions in an article I picked to read that I probably wouldn't have normally.

I'm Chock Full O' Math

If someone had told me even 3 months ago that I'd one day *willingly* spend hours per day on Math, I would have shot whatever I was drinking out my nose for laughing so hard.But! Here I are, a newly-minted math-loving fool.There must be a med for that.In other news, I had an intense visualization then astral projection yesterday while meditating on the concept of NO-GOD. That was fun, in a freaky, I-might've-peed-a-little kind of way. I'm working on a way to collage what I saw and the insight I had since I can't draw.So, PC is going to produce for my approval a new offer letter which will have me working part-time as a contract person doing the Prop 63 stuff and part-time as a per diem MFTI doing assessments for their Therapeutic Behavior Services (TBS) program. I'd hate to be the HR person who has to sort all that shit out. Best thing about it? Well, there are two, now that I think about it. They know I'm going to school and are willing to accomodate my class schedule. And, I will get to quit CCS, which will be a huge relief. Yay, me!Now, if I could only find a position in which the money I earn as income is greater than or equal to our outgo....(Dammit! Stupid math! I may need an intervention if this keeps up.)

I meant to wor...

I meant to work more than I did but it still felt like I did a lot. Lucky me, I get to bill for driving... I went to the TAY workgroup for Pacific Clinics in Rialto. The One-Stop Centers proposed are sounding cool - I hope the approval comes in soon, so the money can drop. Then I drove to Ontario to pick up my LiveScan form. Then to San Bernardino to get my fingerprints done (again) - I get creeped out every time. I hate being on paper - the old paranoic reflexes start twitching. Then I went back to the UofR to get the last of the 5 transcripts I need to see what I gots in terms of premed requirements. Getting transcripts from 5 different "institutes of higher learning" is a pain in the ass.I meant to go home then and work, but that didn't happen. What did happen was some wanton e-mailing, agreeing to go to a camera club meeting next Mon nite (oh for chrissakes, stop laughing and give me back my f*&$king pocket protector), and talking for a slightly uncomfortable bit to the lawyer I know with dicey connections who finally returned my call a week too late who pretended not to be sure of who I was but then managed to remember conversational details from like 8 years ago. dustinashe's buddy came by for awhile to drop off an odd gourd-looking Indian instrument that he is leaving in dustin's care while he jaunts off to Paris and India for the next two months. Lucky bastard. I broke down and tried a veggie burger. OK, 1.5 veggie burgers: 1 Boca burger, and .5 Morning Spring. They were not horrible. I like how Boca throws down with that little bit of liquid smoke flavoring so you can pretend you are eating a freshly BBQ'd meat patty instead of ground up and smashed together vegetation. I do not foresee veggie burgers becoming a craving.Some event at the UofR included what felt like the longest fireworks show in the history of fireworks, which set the already neurotic dogs off into hyper-neurotic spasms and fits. That was moderately nerve-wracking. And I think I'm deafer.I read The Soldier and the Hunchback: ! and ? and got mildly annoyed by Crowley's seeming misogyny: "The Christian insists on notorious lies being accepted as an essential part of his (more usually her) system..." (emphasis mine). (I guess that could also be considered anti-Christian, eh?) I also took exception to the several times he wrote about the state "which I call Samadhi" which to me implies that this is his term or concept which is not the case. I did like the comparisons and contrasts he drew between the persons residing in Malkuth, Tiphareth, and Kether. Mostly though, I felt like this was an opportunity well-taken for the man to expound, and expound he did.So, I washed that down with Chapter 10 of the Nurtured Heart book. I like the premise of the approach (to parenting) but I get annoyed by the redundancy of the writing - the same rationale is explained ad nauseum in every freaking chapter. I get that the book is not written for clinicians, but do the authors think that parents are *that* stupid?So, I washed that down with another dose of Bel Canto. I'm almost done with that book, bit like several of our hostages, I could just as easily stay right there indefinitely.As a palate cleanser, #2 from the Tao Te Ching. I'm reading the version in Hua-Ching Ni's "The Complete Works of Lao Tzu" but I just caught this online version which looks like good times...The last line in the version I'm reading, "Because one does not claim credit for oneself, one does not do any damage to oneself" was the line of the day. Closely related to the Buddhist ideal of non-attachment, reminiscent of Liber Librae 11: "Do good unto others for its own sake, not for reward... "Oh, and for you infidels who don't think that Fox News is a legitimate and unbiased source of objective news reportage, this oughtta learn ya. (Thanks haunting_love)

"All tha...

"All that is of the nature to arise is of the nature to cease."I've had that quote stuck in my head for several days now. Good to meditate on.I'm annoyed that I've wasted most of the evening skulking about LJ... so I've gotten off of the keyboard (well, momentarily anyway) and put aside "Bel Canto," which is a great book by Ann Patchett to look again at "The Complete Works of Lao Tzu." I'm stuck on this line from "The Universal Way" which opens the book: The Subtle Essence that is sought by all sciences and all religions transcends all attempts to reach it by means of thought, belief, or experiment.So then the Great Work could also be conceptualized as the Universal Way, no?

Social Butterfly

Well, I finally got out of the house for something besides work... a record *two* times this weekend. Yesterday I had lunch at Las Fuentes (good food!) with my mom's old partners from her store and one of the partners' two daughters, one of whom is pregnant to burstin'. It was a nice lunch, although I found that I do not have very much in common with any of those fine folk.Today dustinashe and I went to his employee party at the UofR pool. It was pretty cool - good food (as it should be - it was by the food company after all), and an interesting mix of people. I love his company - socially responsible and sustainable foodservice, who'd a thunkit?~ Bon Appetit Management Company ~I actually went into the pool (in my first new bathing suit since, what? 2001?) with only minor provocation from the hubby. I am very excited to report that I fit into a small bathing suit again... yay stress! See what it can do for you!It's been a good week - meeting new people and re-meeting some blasts from the past. Defnitely the most contact I've had with others in a non-professional capacity in recent memory. And as far as I can tell, I have not yet made an utter ass of myself! Good that.On the professional front, PC has offered me a per diem job doing TBS assessments throughout Riverside County in my spare time (ha!). I will need a different car for that.... my poor coach is not a young car, and it eats gas like it was at the Last Supper. So, I guess I'll cut back a day at CCS, which is just fine by me - I have never felt very comfortable there anyway, and the more I do the Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, the less I feel like doing it. How the hell did I end up working with kids anyway?! I was supposed to be doing Depth! At least I'll get some more hours toward my license. I need a countdown clock. 3000.... 2999.... fuck it.I'm terrified and horrified at the idea of going back to school next week to take Intermediate Algebra. I bought the book already and was looking at the beginning algebra review chapter the other night and I did not know shit. Med school?! WTF was I thinking? I hope I can transfer to UCR soon. The thought of sitting in one of those lame little student desks with a bunch of 18-year olds makes my ass itch. Especially since they will all probably know a hell of a lot more about Algebra than me. When was it last? 1992? At the latest.... I've forgotten most of the decade since then, I certainly have done my best to repress the Math. Oh well, this will, if nothing else, test my resolve. I downloaded this old-timey picture book I think I remember seeing when I was little. Anyway, this picture kind of sums it up right now:I sat for a bit last night - it was wonderful, wonder why I avoid it like the plague? Took the dogs for a walk yesterday, also wonderful, except for the part where they each take off in opposite directions when a person is nearby which stretches my arms out worse than a rack would. That is probably why I avoid that like the plague.Not much else to report. Life is good, and I'm beginning to feel twinges of high energies again. Last week was great for that, I was starting to get that old back-tingling, hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck-raising feeling again in sessions. Kick ass."Though one conquers thousands and thousands of men in the battlefield, yet he is the noblest victor who conquers himself." - The Buddha

Nicked from DarkPawSage

I'm a werecat? WTF is a werecat?!