So...I didn't get into the program at SJSU that I mentioned in the last post (we won't talk about how long ago that was), but I did get into the MSA program at San Francisco State. I'll be starting that in August.

Anyone out there? :)

I have a sudden need/desire to make friendship bracelets. No idea why.

I'm taking Intro to Business this semester. I'm also signed up for Business Law, but I've discovered that I'm no good at online classes so I need to drop that one. There's a big group project for the Intro class, and I think my group is a little behind where we need to be on working on it. Of course, that's partly my fault because I've somehow been designated as the group leader. Oops.

I am investigating this program, but do not want to talk about it too much so I don't ruin the whole thing. I'm kind of excited about it, and hope it all works out.

My latest craft-love is spinning yarn. I can make yarn, which is actually pretty exciting. Maybe I'll even take some pictures sometime and post them.

Of course, now that I've said that, there's a good chance it won't happen. Oops.

So there you go, the state of the Emy. Whee.

I may have some sort of allergy to ... something. The last couple of days my lips have felt severely chapped, and finally this morning I took a look in the mirror and realized that my upper lip is covered in little tiny blisters. It's not at all like a cold sore/fever blister/herpes, because those are in one spot; with this, my whole lip is swollen. Thinking back, this has happened before, and my doctor gave me some steroid cream, and it eventually went away. Dr. Internet tells me that it could be a food allergy, or it could be a form of eczema. For now, I'm going to see what happens with a topical Benadryl application, and hope for the best.

Last night, it was kind of stormy (and dark!) with rain and wind, which is probably what caused the power to go out sometime between 11 and midnight. We were up and watching something on the DVR, and I swear it had about THREE MINUTES left on it, when *ZAP* everything went dark. Waited a few seconds, *ZAP* it came back on. Then it went out again. After going on and off about 3 times, it finally stayed off, so we headed for the flashlights and candles, reported the outage to PG&E, Ray went to go shut down computers, and turn off all the lights and stuff that had been on. By this point, I figured that meh, I'd just as soon go to bed, so I got ready for that, and laid down with a book to read for bit while Ray puttered around. A couple of minutes later, I hear him say something about water under the fish tank, so I jumped out of bed and ran out to the living room. Yep, there's water seeping out from under the stand. ACK! We both started wiping it up, which was interesting because the water was difficult to get it. See, water weighs about 8 pounds per gallon, which means a 75-gallon tank will have 600 pounds of water in it, and then there's the tank itself, and gravel, and the stand, and so on. Our stand is solid wood all the way to the floor, so you can't get underneath it. We had towels of all kinds jammed up against the edge, trying to draw the water out from underneath, which worked, but it was slow. We didn't really know how much water was under there, or where it was coming from, so who knew how long this would take?

At some point, Ray noticed that the area underneath the filter (that might not be the exact one we have, but it's something similar) was wet, so he disconnected that and took it out. That's what was leaking, not the tank (thank goodness!), but with no power, there's not a good way to figure out how it leaked. Eventually, around 1:30 (?), the power came back on, so he went to work to figure out that part, and it seemed like the problem was that it leaked from a seam around the top, so he added some goop to try to help close that off, and started to prime it. Nope, still leaking. We couldn't see any good reason why it would leak - no cracks in the rubber gasket, no odd gaps, nothing - so after a few minutes of fiddling and looking, he just reassembled everything, and found a bucket to set the pump in, and started it back up. We could still see some water coming out...but it stopped fairly quickly. We figure the gasket had probably shrunk over time, and it's fine once it gets going, but starting it is a problem. Because the power flicked on and off a few times, so did the filter, which is why there was so much water.

Now that the power had returned, we dug out a couple of fans, and placed them around the tank. As far as we could tell, most of the water was gone, because it seemed to take longer for towels to get soaked, but who really knew? I left a towel jammed up against a spot where most of the leaking seemed to be located (low spot on the floor?), hoping that capillary action would take over and suck it out, plus perhaps the fans would assist in drying up anything the towel couldn't get, and finally around 2:30 we called it quits and went to bed.

I'm tired today. *yawn* Really though, I've had my excitement, okay? No more, please.

Is this thing on?

It seems that a lot of time has passed since I last wrote. I don't feel like much has happened in the last couple of months, although if pressed, I'd probably come up with a few things. I took the second semester of accounting, got an A. Took a boot camp fitness class, really enjoyed it. Had a very part-time gig as an accounting tutor, except no one ever showed up to any of my sessions after the first couple of weeks, so I don't think that'll continue next semester. Not sure if I'm going to take any classes this semester, we'll see.

Right now, it seems like what I mostly think about is headaches. I get them a lot. Thing is, they're not migraines, and I have a lot of friends with migraines, which somehow makes me feel like I shouldn't even complain about them. On the other hand, it's not like these are any fun for me. At the moment, I'm on about day 4 of the current one (and currently on a pain scale of 1 - 10, I'm at about 5). They seem to be sinus-related, and one (odd?) trigger is that if my nose gets cold, my head will probably start to hurt. However, it doesn't help to get warm again, because once the pain starts, it's there for at least a couple of days. If I can catch it early enough, Tylenol + Benadryl usually works fairly quickly, although not always.

Really though, 4 days is long enough, don't you think? I'd like it to stop, please. :P

I've been sick for the last two weeks and I'm tired of it. It started out as a little nose tickle, then turned quickly into a cold. Then a week later, I thought it was gone, but that was just a trick; the next day my sinuses were all congested and yet, still draining back into my throat.

I skipped out on boot camp all last week because of it, and mostly just laid around feeling blurgh. (That's an official feeling, you know) This week, I took some Dayquil and went yesterday and today, we'll see how I feel on Thursday, but so far it's looking good, even if I've still got this stupid sinus congestion yuck.

I've got an accounting test tomorrow and I'm about 18 kinds of uninterested in studying for it. Meh. Some of that is probably this sinus congestion and headache, some of it might be the depression trying to come in and take over. I had to call the 1st of September to make an appointment with the psychiatrist in November, and my lucky day is the 9th. I actually tried to call in August, but they told me he was all booked up and I had to wait until September to call. In any case, I'm out of drugs and can't get more until I see him, which is frustrating on a number of levels, as you can probably imagine.

But for now, off to my tutoring job. Maybe no one will show up and I can take my laptop and do some practice bits for the test. If those go well, maybe I'll just come home and take a nap. I like the sound of that.

I had this roasted chicken from a couple of days ago, and as a way to use up the meat, I called my mom and got her recipe for one of our family's classic post-Thanksgiving Day meals, Turkey Curry Casserole. Chicken, turkey, close enough. It's a total throwback to the '50s though - you've got a casserole, chow mein noodles *and* curry powder, frozen peas, the whole shebang. The only thing it's missing is cream of mushroom soup!

I'm hoping it's as awesome as I remember. :)